Page 22 of Sweet Rivals

My mom made it sound like it was an emergency that I get here. Like Jared was waiting impatiently to start making urgent phone calls to order fresh fish from Frankie’s By The Bay (our go-to guy for the best priced catch of the day).

But now, I just stood here like an idiot. The longer I waited, the more a war waged between my need for revenge and my familiar anxiety. Maybe I couldn’t start the sabotage just yet, but I could at least get a peek at what he had been up to inside my bakery. I was doing him a favor after all. A little look-see wouldn’t do any harm. I knew if Cat was there, she would mock my colloquialism, but I didn’t care.

I tried the door. It pulled open easily, letting out a burst of artificially cooled air. I let it swing closed again as I looked around. The boardwalk held its usual cast of characters. The guy running with three dog leashes attached to his belt. The older ladies speed-walking with swishing track suits. The tourists meandering slowly without purpose. The kids running in bathing suits, unable to wait for their parents. Nothing out of the ordinary. No one watching me, and no sign of Jared.

I pulled the door open again, shifted my gaze around one more time, and slipped into the cool, relative darkness. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust as I lifted my sunglasses. I dropped the binders quietly onto a table by the door and took in the place. It looked much the same as I remembered it. The floors, tables and vinyl booths were covered in a layer of dirt, but still had the same 1950s kind of vibe that the previous owners had either done purposefully or had been an outdated remnant from earlier times when everyone was big on Back-to-the-Future-style nostalgia. Now with the place shut down, it just looked like a relic that belonged in a post-apocalyptic movie. Clearly, Jared hadn’t started the renovations he had talked about.

I wouldn’t be sad to see the old bakery go. There was a reason it went out of business. The family that had owned it were sweet people, but they hadn’t been able to keep up with changing times. Still, I didn’t want to see anyone else in the place beside me. I knew every change he made would be a little hit to my heart.

I walked carefully through the seating area and moved back behind the counter. I didn’t have to worry about my shoes leaving footprints in the dust because it was clear someone had traipsed through here more than enough to stir up the dirt. Still, I was careful not to leave any hint of my presence. Was I breaking and entering? I wondered. Presumably Jared knew I was stopping by, and the door had been open. I wondered if any of that would stand up in court.

“Hello?” My whisper sounded like a shout in the silence.

No answer came, so I moved further behind the counter. I skulked through the place, not thinking about what I was doing. The building had a strange layout with a long counter along the left side, seating along the right so that you could come in off the boardwalk but still have seating overlooking the ocean view. That meant that the kitchen was out a door to the left behind the counter.

The kitchen looked like someone had either left in a hurry or simply didn’t care about cleaning up before they vacated. Pots and pans were still in the sink. Cooktops looked grimy with grease. It had the chilling effect of making me question my choices of ever eating there when it was open. I didn’t know what I was doing as I skulked through the place. In all my morning admiration, I hadn’t been inside.

Now that I stood there, I felt the pain of lost opportunity and my failure to act sooner even more acutely. This could have been mine had I not let my worry and hesitation drive my decision-making. I was angry at Jared, but even angrier at myself, when I was being honest—which wasn’t often lately.

The office was in the corner of the kitchen, almost straddling the front and back of the bakery. I had walked past it as I toured the kitchen, but now I stood in the doorway, biting my lip and wondering if I should take a quick peek. The answer was an obvious and resounding no, but of course, I did it anyway.

Chapter Seventeen

There wasn’t much to see inside. It had a window overlooking the beach, which caused my chest to tighten with envy. There was a folding card table that held an open laptop and a pile of mail. The screen put off an eerie glow into the small room that was lit only by the window. If it was on, that meant Jared wasn’t far. I should have cut and run, but with a pounding heart as if I really was one of the women in a horror film making the worst possible choice of her life, I stepped around the table and looked at the screen. His email was open.

I could barely see through my panic as I skimmed through the words on the page, picking up the general gist. Whoever had written to Jared didn’t approve of the purchase of the bakery. That it wasn’t part of the long-term plan or some business lingo nonsense. A ding came from his computer that was so familiar, my first reaction was a little excited heart flutter before I had to remind my nervous system that it wasn’t a message for me. It was a message for Jared. Did he use the same messaging software as Ed-U?

“Oh my god, Jenna, who cares. Everyone must use that software,” I whispered to myself.

I stood up straight, trying to make sense of the email I shouldn’t have skimmed. So Jared had gone against his family’s wishes to open this baker.

I pondered if I could use this ill-gotten information to my gain when a noise echoed through the bakery. I ducked down and crawled under the card table. I couldn’t tell if the noise had come from the front or the back door, but I figured my best bet was to get to the front and pretend I had just arrived.

I crawled out the kitchen door and behind the counter. I cringed at the filth being picked up by my hands and knees on a floor that hadn’t seen a vacuum or mop in far too long, but I had to get out of there. I slid my hands along the floor, as quietly as possible, leaving long streak marks in the grime where I had been.

I was pretty bad at this, I thought to myself when I stopped short.

“What are you doing?” I had been crawling with my head down to keep from being seen over the counter. Now, I tilted my face upward and saw Jared, standing, hands on hip one foot in front of me.

“Damn it,” I muttered as I sat back on my heels which brought my face directly in line with his crotch. The thought brought a blush to my face and threatened to push out the very real dilemma I had managed to get myself in. This was not a moment to be sexualizing the man I had sworn to destroy. Nor was it a time to fall back into pathetic one-word answers. “I … dropped something,” I spoke with as much command as I could muster, which despite my endless pep talks, wasn’t much.

“What did you drop?” he asked.

I hadn’t looked up at his face yet, avoiding it to prevent my brain from turning to mush either from burning rage or undeniable attraction. I didn’t know which was worse. Instead, I tried to look anywhere but at him, but I could hear the smile in his voice. Why the hell was he always smiling? Normal people didn’t smile that much. If I hadn’t distrusted him already, the unhinged smiling certainly would have pushed me over the edge.

“I, um, dropped my pen. I thought it rolled under the display case,” I said finally venturing a look at his face.

He nodded. “Gotta be careful with these dangerously sloped floors,” he said. It was probably meant to be deadpan, but his compulsive smile prevented that.

I stood up, brushing off my jeans and trying to get the dirt off my hands. “You should probably clean these floors. I’m pretty sure this is a health code violation,” I said.

“I wasn’t expecting company just yet,” he said.

His eyes hadn’t left my face once, and I struggled to keep my composure under his scrutinizing gaze. He probably thought I was a giant idiot. Since meeting him, I had been plagued with the inability to form coherent sentences, was covered in lobster guts, launched lobster shells at him, ran away from a kiss (what the hell was that by the way?), screamed at him about “my” bakery", and now was crawling around on the damn floor. I tried to maintain some amount of false confidence with my chin tilted upward, but I really just wanted to slink away to my bed and never come out from under the covers. I could just hole up there and order DoorDash for the rest of my life.

“You weren’t expecting me?” I asked when my brain finally processed what he had said.

“No, should I have?”

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