Claiming His Read online

  “No, just take the muffins.” I’m feeling bad about the way I spoke to him. If he really didn’t know anything about me losing the storefront I wanted then I shouldn’t be mad at him. He grins and points at the case.

  “Then how about an éclair?”

  Reaching in, I grab a fat éclair, still dripping with warm chocolate frosting. Before handing it over, I take a huge bite and run my tongue up the side to catch any drips. His eyes widen as he watches, and I feel the low thrum drop from my stomach to between my legs. My lower stomach tightens, and I have trouble looking him in the eyes when I hand it over the counter.

  “What time do you close?” Our fingers brush lightly against each other when he takes the éclair, and it’s all I can do not to jerk back. Or pull him towards me, I can’t tell.

  This is all very confusing, and I’m not sure that I like it. Oh, who am I kidding? I like it, I’m just overwhelmed. The last time I was flirting with a guy like this was with Damien, but I don’t like to think about him. He was the second person to break my heart, and while he left me with something amazing to remember him by, I still won’t forgive him.

  “Before lunch. I wanted to make and serve sandwiches, but there’s no room,” I tell him, and then immediately feel bad. If he really didn’t know about the problem with the space, then I need to quit making him feel bad. It’s just hard. “I do have cupcakes, though.”

  He glances over at the case of cupcakes. I’m proud of how high and bright I got the frosting. They look delicious and, even though I taste test every batch, I still want to run my finger through the frosting every time I see one. I can tell by the look on his face that he’s thinking the same thing.

  “Okay. I’ll be back here then and I’m taking you to lunch. Decide where you want to go.” He turns to leave but then turns back. “It was really good seeing you, Maggie. I’ll look forward to lunch, and I want to try your cupcakes sometime.” He winks, and with that, he’s gone, leaving me in the empty bakery, watching the door shut behind him.

  What the hell just happened? I’m not totally surprised that he would suddenly show up in my bakery, as it is a small town, but I am surprised about how he makes me feel. It’s like the years between high school and now never happened and I’m still crushing just as hard on him as I was then.

  Because I don’t know what to do, I pull my phone from my back pocket. His sister, Julie, should have told me that he still looked so good. She should have told me…what?

  That as soon as Lance Carter walked in the door, I’d want to stop everything and kiss him?

  That the crush I nursed our entire childhood never went away?

  That seeing him for just five minutes makes me feel like I’m in high school again?

  Sighing, I fire off a quick message to her.

  Me: Ran into your brother! Still has a huge appetite, I see.

  Julie: Lance came in? I’m so glad! I didn’t want to tell him you were there just in case you got mad.

  Me: Why in the world would I get mad?

  Julie: Come on! It was the worst case of unrequited love I’ve ever seen.

  I scoff and toss my phone onto the counter as the bell rings for another batch of customers.

  Sure, I sobbed into my pillow when he took Lisa Brown to prom, but freshmen weren’t allowed to go.

  Sure, I cried for a week when I saw him kissing Connie Wilson under the bleachers at a football game, but I was in the marching band and couldn’t have possibly snuck off for a make-out session.

  Sure, my brother had teased me mercilessly every time I mentioned his name.

  Oh, crap. It was unrequited love.

  The customers leave and I lean back against the counter. Okay, so I had a thing for Lance in high school, but any girl breathing did, as well. He was hot, funny, successful, and kind.

  He still is.

  Oh, crap. I’m still in love with Lance.

  There’s just one tiny, yet huge, problem, and he doesn’t know about her.

  Chapter 2

  Lance

  “So, where did these muffins come from?” Jeremy, my assistant, can barely speak around the huge bite he’s taken. Handing him a cup of water, I wait to see if he’ll be able to swallow or if I’ll have to perform the Heimlich before answering.

  “Blue Sky Bakery. You heard of it?” He gulps the water I hand him gratefully and nods.

  “Yeah, it’s hopping. It’s just a damn shame that they didn’t get that space over on first avenue. Isn’t it now a bakery for dogs or something?”

  “A barkery. Ridiculous. Do you know who was in charge of her not getting the property? I want to find out why they didn’t get a bigger space. Seems like they need more room to grow than a company that makes custom dog biscuits.” I take a huge bite of a muffin and remember how Maggie ran her tongue along the end of the éclair. That is going to make it hard to concentrate all day, so I’ll need to revisit that memory later. Tonight. Alone. “Is that really what they do there?”

  Jeremy shrugs and takes another bite of muffin. “I have no idea. Never been in the place. A barkery? My wife would kill me if I came home with a dog. Two kids are enough, let me tell you.” He looks appreciatively at the box and choose another muffin.

  “They’re not really that bad, are they?”

  “What? The kids. No, not really, but you’re lucky you don’t have them. They change everything, that’s for sure, and it’s not always for the best.”

  “I’ve heard.” Kids just haven’t ever been something I’ve been interested in. Other people have them, which is great, but they seem like a hell of a lot of work for a long time before you get much back from them. That and they’re snotty. Messy. Gross. Walking bags of flu. Germ factories. I could go on and on, but really need to get to the bottom of Maggie’s property problem.

  “But who had the accounts?”

  Jeremy chews while he thinks before answering. “Oh, I think that it was Ben. You know how he likes to play favorites with clients, and the barkery girl is supposed to be kinda cute. Not my type, though.”

  He wanders off and I take a deep breath. Of course, it was Ben. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to talk to him about giving property to the wrong company. I believe not only in helping people find a place to have their stores, but also making sure that they’re set up for success in the future. We want happy clients, not ones who are going to throw us under the bus when talking about us.

  Glancing at my watch, I see that I have about an hour before I get to see Maggie. Plenty of time to talk to Ben and then take her out to lunch. It’s stopped raining, my whole team loved her muffins, and I can’t wait to see her again. Today is shaping up.

  ***

  “Well, I talked to Ben,” I tell Maggie. We’re sitting across from each other at a tiny café down the street from her bakery. Both of us have huge Cuban sandwiches in front of us as well as thick home fries and lemonade.

  “Ben. Yeah.” She takes a bite of her fry and waits for me to continue. It takes me a moment to be able to concentrate. I’m watching her put the fry in her mouth and thinking….

  Not that I’m in any way comparable to a fry. That’s ridiculous. It’s just the action that has me a little scattered. First the éclair, now the fry. What’s next? Chocolate dipped bananas for dessert?

  My cock stirs at the thought and I bite my lower lip before continuing.

  “I’m sorry he dealt you such a crappy hand. I’d like to help you find a better space for your bakery.”

  Her eyebrows shoot up. “I’m not moving to a new space right now. I just got settled in a few weeks ago. Can you imagine how many days I’d lose trying to move? Thanks, Lance, but some things you just can’t fix.” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes while she speaks.

  The lemonade is really tart, and I close my eyes while I take a sip. She’s right, and I know that, but it doesn’t mean I like it. I still want to fix this for her.

  “You’re thinking about how you can fix this, aren’t you?” She smile
s a little and takes a sip of her lemonade. “Holy cow, did they add any sugar to that?” When she bursts out laughing, I find that I have to laugh, too.

  She’s always had that effect on me.

  “I was,” I admit.

  She’s also always done a great job reading my mind. It was disconcerting when we were younger, and it’s just as disconcerting now.

  Oh, God, does she know what I was thinking about the French fry? I glance at her, feeling guilty, but she doesn’t seem fazed.

  “Nothing has changed. Listen, Lance, I appreciate you being worried about me and how having this smaller space will affect me, but there’s a problem in your company, and you need to worry more about that. Eventually I will want to upgrade to a larger space, but right now you need to worry about Ben. How many other clients of yours is he treating like this?”

  She’s right. “I’ll deal with Ben,” I tell her, raising my glass in a toast. “But we’re here to celebrate you. I want to know everything you’ve been up to. Julie has told me that you guys keep in touch, but she didn’t tell me that you were opening a bakery here. You know anything about that?”

  “Actually, yeah, she thought that I’d be mad if you knew. We texted this morning after you left.”

  “Why in the world would you be mad? Does she know about the problem with finding you the right space for your bakery?”

  She shakes her head and I see a slight flush work its way up from her collar. God, she’s pretty, and seeing her flush like that is making me shiver.

  I can’t help but wonder what else could make her flush.

  “She said something about me having a huge unrequited crush on you in high school and thinks that I never got over it. Ridiculous.” She takes a huge bite of her sandwich and studiously avoids looking me in the eye.

  A crush?

  “You had a crush on me in high school?” I ask her. I’m surprised, to be honest. She was always just Julie’s friend, and I never knew that she felt anything more or different.

  “Um, yeah, a little. I guess.”

  Now Maggie’s bright red. She takes a huge drink of her lemonade, trying not to screw up her face at how sour it is. While she avoids looking at me, it gives me a chance to look at her.

  She’s grown her hair out since high school, and it curls around her shoulders and face. Since she gave up the glasses and got contacts, I can see that her eyes are a gorgeous deep blue, not the brown I always thought they were.

  And, of course, her curves.

  If high school me could see Maggie now, you better believe I would have paid her more attention. Looks like culinary school did more than simply make Maggie a master pastry chef and help her turn out damn good muffins and eclairs.

  It also made her into a curvy goddess. My cock twitches in my pants and I reach down to adjust while she’s not looking at me.

  My movement catches her eye and she looks up at me. “Lance, can I ask you something?”

  I have no idea what she could possibly ask me, but I’ll be as honest as possible with her.

  “Anything.” I’m ready to put it on the line. I may have dated other girls in high school, but knowing that Maggie would be at my home, hanging out with Julie, at all hours of the day was a relief. She was a lot of fun then, and I can’t imagine that she changed much.

  “Do you like ice skating?”

  This is not what I was expecting. As much as I love watching sports and hitting the gym, skating around on a thin blade of metal on top of a hard sheet of ice isn’t really my thing. Knowing that and seeing the look of expectation on Maggie’s face, there’s really only one thing I can say.

  “Of course. When are we going?”

  Maggie

  Lance has to go back to work, but I opt to sit at the café and think for a bit before heading out. He walks away and I stare at his ass, enjoying the way his suit fits on his trim body. He’d been hot in high school, but this is on another level. Shaking my head, I try to concentrate.

  After we talked about ice skating we sat and talked about our families and jobs. I told him that one of my favorite parts of being a baker was seeing the kids come through and pick something out.

  I love kids. They’re fun, happy, and total messes. Lance, on the other hand, apparently doesn’t. He didn’t say it outright, but I’m pretty good at reading him, and his scoff and scowl made it clear that kids aren’t topping his to-do list.

  So, I didn’t mention Liv. Just the fact that I didn’t bring her up makes me feel incredibly guilty, but I wasn’t sure how I could after how he acted. I love my daughter. I want her to be surrounded by other people who love her, like Julie.

  I guess I just assumed that he would like kids, too.

  Even though the rain has stopped, but the day is dreary and damp. It’s not conducive to feeling productive, but if I can get plans for some new recipes hammered out then I’ll be in a good position.

  In my bag I have my idea notebook, which is where I jot down plans for new recipes, designed the space when I moved, and have outlined my goals for the next few years. I flip to that page and click my pen, thinking.

  As much as I’d love to be able to stay open for lunch, I just don’t see how I can swing it with the small space I have.

  Nowhere on my list do I have anything about falling in love, especially not with someone from my past. Especially not with someone who doesn’t want anything to do with kids.

  Currently, my list is about halfway crossed off. Some of the items I have finished include opening my new restaurant, designing cute new aprons, setting up a website, and hiring someone to paint a mural on the front windows.

  I still haven’t made a trip to France, where I want to take a pastry class, or made new business cards after my move. I really should make that a priority, so I put a star next to it.

  Before I can stop myself, I’m writing get to know Lance on the bottom of my list. I immediately feel silly and shut my notebook before anyone can walk by and see what I’ve written. After a moment, I open it back up and cross it off. Why get to know him if he doesn’t like kids?

  Why did I ask him about ice skating? Sure, I didn’t know that he disliked kids when I asked, but now I’m going on a date with someone who doesn’t know a huge part about me.

  What in the world have I done?

  As if she knows that I’m dreaming about her brother, my phone buzzes with a text from Julie.

  Julie: Wanna grab lunch? I’m on break for a bit.

  Me: Already ate. With your brother.

  I cringe for a moment after sending the text, but she was sure to find out soon enough. Just as I imagined, her response is fast and full of emotion.

  Julie: MAGGIE ARE YOU KIDDING? Did it take you back to high school?

  Me: You mean, feeling awkward and wanting to impress him while feeling like a foolish freshman? Because if so, then yes.

  Julie: Please tell me you weren’t weird. I bet you were weird. Are you guys going to get together again or will I have to get the details from him?

  Me: I think we’re going ice skating, but no real plans yet.

  Julie: Count me in! Find me a double date and I’ll be there. I’ll text Lance and make sure he brings someone. It’ll be great!

  I sit and stare at my phone for a moment before biting my lip and making up my mind. Lance obviously wants to spend time with me, but there’s something about my past that he doesn’t know, or he acts like he doesn’t know.

  It never crossed my mind that he may know about my daughter and was just hiding it at lunch.

  Me: Does your brother know about Liv?

  I shouldn’t be worried about whether or not he knows. I’m not ashamed of Liv. She’s my world and the best thing to have happened between me and Damien. When he made it clear that he wasn’t interested in being a dad or dating someone with a kid, it left just the two of us.

  It’s been just the two of us for six years.

  Julie: I never told him. You know that we stopped being really close a few years
ago. We talk, but not like we used to. Didn’t ever think that it was my place to say. That okay?

  Me: No worries. Just asking.

  If I was honest with myself, which I try to be, I was worried. Most people don’t want to date someone with a kid. Lance is busy, driven, and focused at work.

  I’m deep in thought and staring off into space when I see feet.

  “Excuse me, are you done? We need the table.” My waitress has been standing close by for a few minutes, watching me text furiously with Julie, and now that I sit back for a breath, she walks up to intervene.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Quickly I grab my notebook and shove it into my bag before pulling out my wallet. “How much was lunch?”

  “It’s covered. Your boyfriend took care of it.” She flips a rag across the table and eyes me, making me blush. Dammit, I’ve never blushed this much in one morning before.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” Standing up, I push the chair back and move out of her way. She works quickly cleaning the table for the next diner.

  “Well, then tell him to come see me sometime then. He’s the kind of guy I’d love to lock down.” The waitress winks at me and I feel my stomach twist.

  I have no claim on Lance, but that doesn’t mean I want other women looking at him. Frowning, I look down at her nametag. Becky. Of course. She seems like the kind of woman who would steal a man.

  But he’s not mine, so it wouldn’t really be stealing, would it?

  “Becky.” I say her name louder than I mean to, and she glances up at me. Her dark brown bangs hang almost to her eyes, which are a deep chocolate brown. She’s cute, and exactly the type of girl that Lance would have wanted to date in high school.

  Taking a deep breath, I push in my chair. “I’ll let him know you’re interested.”

  Her face lights up and I feel the same twist in my stomach.

  There’s no way I’m letting Lance know that she’s interested. In fact, I’m going to call him now and make concrete plans for ice skating, then I’ll let him know that this really isn’t my favorite restaurant. Maybe. If I can pull it together enough to pick up the phone.