Page 10 of Tempt

I shift uncomfortably on my feet and of course she laughs like she didn’t call me out, loud and clear in front of Kyra.

“No worries, you get one freebie since you rescued her last night.”

She starts to whistle, and I want nothing more than to flee the scene. Taking a chance I peek back over my shoulder and find Kyra pretty much doing the same thing, with a smile on her face. It’s contagious, these women and their happiness. I too can’t help but to smile as I focus back on the task, as Lily attempts to teach me. There is no worry, no irritation that I’m not getting it right and making a mess.

“Kyra, sweetheart,” Lily hollers out as she brushes off her hands. “Can you take over?”

Both Kyra and I look at her and then each other. Her cheeks redden as she steps up to my opposite side. “This man can sift like a master, but he’s not the greatest at the mixer.”

I chuckle, and notice how Kyra is watching me. She looks at me with a grin that does something to me, and I take in a deep breath to calm myself.

“Sure Gran,” Kyra says in a low whisper that I’m not even sure her gran can hear. Only it doesn’t seem to matter as Lily Mae hurries off leaving Kyra and me alone.

“She’s full of energy,” I say, trying to break the silence that settles over the kitchen.

“You’ve only seen a small tidbit of it.” She shrugs and I can’t help my grin from widening. This version of her is so much different that the withdrawn and angry girl on that first day I met her. “There is never a dull moment with Lily Mae, that is for sure.”

“Did you always want to work at the bakery?”

“When I was younger I wanted to be a ballerina,” Kyra doesn’t look over at me, only continues to mix the ingredients without looking at a recipe. You can tell she’s done this very thing a million times over. “Then when I turned ten I wanted to be a DJ,” I chuckle and it's then she looks over at me. “I went through a strange punk rock phase. It was not my finest hour, walking around wearing a set of headphones yet they weren’t even plugged into any device. I pretend that year didn’t exist now.”

“I wanted to be a bull rider.” I confess and she grins, but then bites her lip trying to hide it. “My mom told me this strange story about when she first met my dad. There was this neighbor of my grandads in Savannah, and he rode some barrel in his backyard like it was a bull.”

“A barrel?”

“Yeah, some kind of strange thing the man created to mimic a bull. It was attached to cables which made it extremely bouncy and unpredictable. I didn't believe her; thought she was making fun of me because I said I wanted to travel and ride bulls.” I shrug. “Turns out she wasn’t teasing me and there was that man, who’d go out in his yard and ride that damn contraption each day. He was decked out with a helmet and all. Granted I think the guy was a little bit insane, but hey he had a dream.”

Kyra laughs, a full-on belly laugh like she’d held it beyond her breaking point.

“Wow,” she fans her face, trying to hold back her tears of laughter. “So did you build your own bull then?”

“Nah,” I turn toward her and lean my hip against the counter. “Mike had a friend whose dad worked at Mercy.”

When she widens her eyes I chuckle.

“Let’s just say my dream of becoming a bull rider quickly vanished.”

“Aw, that’s sad.”

“Tell that to my broken tailbone,” I scoff.

“Oh my God!”

“I had to sit on a damn donut inflatable pillow during class for weeks, and kids are mean. Especially teenage boys, and you don’t want me to tell you what they were saying was the cause for me needing that pillow.”

Again she tries not to smile but she can’t hold off and her mouth shifts into a wide grin.

“Precisely,” I nod, and she bends at the waist laughing. Her shoulders shaking, her hand covering her mouth and it doesn’t even matter that she is laughing at my embarrassment. The sound of her laughter is beautiful.

This girl has been my object of attraction for years and she doesn’t even know it. I’ve watched from the sidelines as she’s been flirted with and asked out by other guys. The time I saw my buddy Keith kiss her is still something that makes my stomach twist into the most uncomfortable knot. It doesn’t matter that they were barely fifteen, that shit still hurts.

Once she stops laughing and rights herself she clears her throat and gets back to work. “Working here with Gran has actually been the greatest part of my days. My life before moving to Brooklet wasn’t always the greatest.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“No reason for you to be sorry, it's my momma who should be apologizing. Can’t count on that though because I’ve only seen her once since I was twelve and she was drunk and high and sleeping on Gran’s porch.”

I don’t react, but fuck if her words don’t feel like something pierces through my chest.

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