Sweet Talk Ch. 02

Jay's jaw muscles flexed as he shot him an angry look. "I have things on my mind, okay?" Dumping an indeterminate amount of flour into the mixer, he turned his back, hoping Sam would take the hint.

Instead, he felt his neck muscles tense up when Sam asked, "What kind of things?"

"Things that have nothing to do with you," Jay shot back, flipping the mixer on to its low setting.

"Okaaay," Sam said, and Jason swore he could hear the amused grin in his voice. Leave it to Sam to find humor in his shitty mood. "Mind talking about things thatdohave something to do with me, then?"

"Like?" Jason asked.

"Like, Sugar. You know, the shop we own?"

Resisting the urge to swear, Jay rolled his tensed up shoulders. "Fine. Whatever."

"Good," Sam said, his tone turning all business. "I talked to Harry. He double-checked our accounting and he agrees that last month's numbers look great. And I'm thinking that we..."

Even though Jason was trying to pay attention, Sam's voice faded as he stared at the whirring paddle in the mixing bowl. The batter or dough or whatever the hell he was making probably only needed a few minutes to combine, but only half his attention was on the mixer.

Every time he thought he'd calmed down, he'd have a flashback to that damn fight with Anna. He kept hearing her shouting, "I'm not letting you drag me down with you!"

His fists clenched against the cool, steel countertop. Anger, as hot and consuming as what he'd felt earlier, came roaring back with the memory of her words. Well, screw her. She thought he was messing up her life? Fine. She could quit and do whatever the hell she wanted with herself. And he'd find another assistant who—

"Jay, you're not even listening to me, are you?" Sam's slightly irritated voice pulled Jason back to himself. Now Anna's little tantrum or whatever the hell her problem was, was messing with his work? Yeah, let her do whatever she wanted. He didn't need this.

"What, Sam?" he impatiently bit out.

"Jeez," his friend muttered, "tone down the pissed-off party, will you? What's your problem, anyway?"

Three controlled breaths kept Jay's temper in check. Swearing silently, he ran a hand through his hair. Anna had him all messed up; he'd gotten his temper under control years before and now here he was about to cuss Sam out just for trying to talk about work.

But even though his argument with Anna was the last thing he wanted to talk about, Jay knew Sam was going to find out eventually, so he might as well just tell him now.

He turned around, bracing the small of his back against the edge of the countertop. Staring past Sam's shoulder, he muttered, "Anna...quit this morning."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam's face change. A look of pure shock passed over his features before he schooled his expression into one of mild surprise.

Finally, one light brown eyebrow went up. "Damn," he said, at last. "Why?"

Shoving away from the counter, Jason paced a few steps one direction, then the other, both hands digging into the pockets of his loose-fitting jeans. "Hell, I don't know. She just went all moody out of nowhere. Said she was quitting. Then we sort of got into a fight. And she..." he turned so only his right shoulder faced Sam. "She said some stuff about my career going down the drain and me dragging her down with me."

Shit. Just saying it out loud had him pissed all over again.

Sam let out a long, low whistle. Jason glanced at him and stiffly asked, "What was that for?"

Sam shrugged, his face serious. "Nothing. Just...I had a girlfriend once who used that line. 'You're dragging me down with you.'" He shook his head. "Not a good thing, my friend."

Jason made a face. "Yeah. I kinda figured that since she was yelling at me when she said it."

"So," Sam slowly said, "she didn't say why she's quitting? No explanation or anything?"

Swiping a hand across the back of his neck, Jay tilted his head toward the ceiling, then met Sam's questioning gaze. "She said she wants to go back to school."

The confusion in Sam's dark blue eyes cleared up almost immediately, only to be replaced by returned incredulity. "And you're mad at her for quitting? What the hell's wrong with you?"

Jay's hands dropped to his sides again. He shot his friend an irritated glance. "Look, you weren't there, okay? She was being bitc...catty. And for no good reason. It pissed me off." He turned his back again, muttering, "How the hell am I supposed to find a new assistant? She knows how crazy my schedule is. Now she decides to quit—"

"After two years of taking care of everything for you," Sam interrupted, "and basically doing all of the boring crap that you don't want to do." His tone dripped with a sarcasm that renewed Jay's desire to punch him or, at the very least, cuss him out. "Shit, Jay, she's practically been wiping your nose for you these past two years. Can you blame her for wanting to be more than your glorified nanny or—"

Sam stopped talking when Jay spun around, glaring at him. "I didn't ask you for a damn lecture, alright?" he spat. "You asked me what happened and I told you, but you can keep your commentary to yourself." Furious, Jay stalked around the island on his way past Sam.

"What the hell, Jay?" Sam called after him. "You need to calm down—and I'm not done telling you about my ideas for the shop."

"Do whatever you want," Jay growled over his shoulder. "I'll be in my office. So, unless the kitchen catches on fire or something, leave me the hell alone."

Not slowing or turning around, he strode out of the kitchen and down the short hall that lead to a staff bathroom and two small offices belonging to him and Sam. Walking into his office, Jay slammed the door closed behind him and slumped down into his leather desk chair.

Within seconds, he was back to staring at the wall.

Just when he'd thought he'd gotten his anger under control, Sam had to make that crack about Anna wanting to be more than his nanny. It had hit too close to her saying she was tired of babysitting him.

Damn it.

His entire body was so damn tense and wound up, it almost hurt to lean his head back against the chair, but he did. He tried to think about something else,anything else, but for a long time all he could do was sit there, replaying the argument over and over. Thinking about Anna's betrayal.

*********

On Thursday night, Anna had just gotten home from the community college near her apartment. She'd wanted to sign up for some summer classes to help prepare her for starting college again, but the registrar had told her she'd missed the deadline. In order to get into any classes, she'd need to pay a ridiculously large late-fee and get a bunch of forms signed. She'd taken all of the paperwork, but couldn't help but be a bit disappointed. If she'd quit sooner, she could have been enrolled by now.

In a way, this was Jason's fault, too.

Even three days after their argument, she was still angry. And damn him, she hadn't wanted to fight. Not really, but he'd just kept making those self-centered comments, and she couldn't hold her anger in check.

She hadn't talked to him since Tuesday and, she bitterly thought, he hadn't tried to call or see her either. So now she was at home watching the evening news, trying to distract herself. But she was kidding herself; even days later, she was still preoccupied by their fight.

Ofcoursehe'd made her quitting all about him. Nothing entered Jason Blake's sphere of awareness unless it somehow affected him—and her quitting was just an inconvenience for him. He hadn't even seemed happy or supportive about her plans to go back to school. No, instead he'd only suggested ways for her to continue working for him, making his life the same cushy joy-ride it'd been for the past two years, without giving a damn how that might affect her studies.

Well, screw that, she was tired of being at his beck and call even though her stupid heart already missed him. That was part of the reason she was still so mad, though; if she let the anger go, she knew she'd just sit around wanting him. Or, at least, wanting the old him.

He hadn't always been this way—so entirely self-absorbed and careless. She'd fallen in love with him gradually over the years. It started off as a little-girl crush, but, by the time she was seventeen and he'd moved to New York for culinary school, she knew it was love. She'd religiously counted down the weeks and days between his school breaks, when he returned to Sweet Water. And she'd been terrified he'd fall in love with some sophisticated New York girl.

For her, there was always just something about him, so strong-willed, talented, charismatic and armed with that sometimes-biting sarcasm. And, thinking of his once-boyish features, now sculpted into a chiseled, masculine face that was basically catnip for the female gender, Anna knew she'd never had a chance when it came to loving him.

If only hating him could be just as easy.

With a frustrated sigh, she turned the TV off and went into the bathroom to run a hot bath. She'd spent the last few days trying to get her mind off the argument, but she kept circling around and around it, fueling her anger. On top of everything he'd said to her, what really bothered her was the fact that he'd implied that he hadn't needed her help. Like she was easily replaceable or something.

Personal assistants are a dime a dozen,he'd said.

It wasthatcareless remark that had really gotten to her. Was that all she was to him? Just a personal assistant? Someone who made his appointments and kept his calendar organized? If that was the case, she felt like bigger fool than ever before for having stuck around so long.

Utterly weary, Anna walked into the living room and dug her cell out of her purse, then went back into the bathroom. Stripping out of her clothes, she sank into the hot, steaming water before the bathtub was even finished filling up. One-handed, she dialed her cousin, Keera's, phone number, while the other hand squeezed a liberal amount of bubble bath into the churning water. The bubble bath was expensive and French but, she told herself, today she needed it.

She kept trying to be rational and calm, but with her irritation still as strong as it had been three days ago, she felt like she needed a second opinion—even if that opinion would be biased toward her side of things.

The phone rang three times before a breezy, efficient voice answered, "Sweet Water Sweets. Good evening, this is Keera."

Despite her anger with Jason, Anna smiled at the familiar greeting.

It was the same one her dad had taught her, Nate and Jason to use when answering the phone around the bakery, Sweet Water Sweets, which Keera now ran.

Suddenly missing Keera and Sweet Water, Anna playfully said, "Yes, hello. I'd like to order two-thousand cupcakes for next weekend."

After a moment of stunned silence, Keera recognized Anna's voice and the older cousin laughed into the phone. "Anna, you'd better be glad that's you. Otherwise you'd be driving your butt over the mountains to help me out with that order."

Grinning, Anna stretched forward and shut off the faucet before leaning back in the tub.

"Youwouldtake on a two-thousand cupcake order, wouldn't you?"

"Damn right," Keera muttered, "Cousin Keera has bills to pay! Oh crap," she exclaimed a second later, "you're distracting me. I just piped a lop-sided rose onto Jill Mahaney's wedding cake."

Trailing her hand through the warm, bubble-filled bathwater, Anna imagined Keera sitting at the kitchen table in her small apartment above the bakery, perched on a stool as she meticulously decorated one of her famous wedding cakes. The entire Marsh family, it seemed, had a hand for creating fabulous baked goods. Well, everyone besides herself and her uncle Raymond, she mused, thinking of Keera's father, who'd been an accountant but who was now mostly just a broken old man.

Frowning, she edged that dark thought from her mind. "Who's at the bakery?" she asked, knowing that Keera liked to work in the quiet of her apartment when she had a pressing cake deadline.

"Trudy's down there, probably getting ready to close up," came Keera's voice, sounding further away, which told Anna that she'd been put on speaker so her cousin could talk and work at the same time. "And I think Tucker came in earlier this morning."

"Hmm," Anna murmured, cupping her hand and watching water trickle through her splayed fingers.

"Uh oh," her cousin said, "I know that noise."

"What noise?"

"That sigh of dejected, world-weary, 'woe is me' sadness," Keera said, her tone a mix of amusement and concern. "What's wrong?"

Chewing her lip, Anna took a deep breath and said, "I did it."

She'd talked over the whole quitting thing with Keera dozens of times, so half-expected her to understand that cryptic comment.

But with part of her attention on the cake she was decorating, Keera wasn't exactly the most intuitive conversation partner. "You did what, sweetie?" she asked. Then, before Anna had a chance to respond, bellowed, "Noel Marie Marsh, if you keep jumping rope inside this house I swear to you, you won't see your eighth birthday!"

Anna pictured Noel, Keera's seven-year-old daughter, with her brown-green eyes, milky skin and that head full of unruly, cinnamon-colored corkscrew curls, and couldn't hold back her laughter.

"What'd she do?" she asked Keera.

Sighing, Keera said, "She just got this new jump rope for her birthday last week and she won't stop running around the house with it. She almost took out half the cake but only knocked a few empty piping bags off the table." Her tone turned amused. "And that's lucky for her because if she'd done any damage, you might be short one second-cousin."

"I really hope you're joking about harming that adorable little girl," Anna laughed.

Keera sputtered into the phone. "Adorable? Oh, you've clearly never seen her at three in the afternoon when she's all cranky and bratty but refuses to take a nap," Keera said in a wait-til-you-have-kids tone. "But anyway, what were you saying?Whatdid you do?"

Oh, right.

Anna sank lower into the tub until only her head, knees and the arm holding the phone were above the water. "I...um," she murmured. "I told Jason I'm quitting."

A full ten seconds of silence followed that statement.

While Anna, Nate and Jason had practically grown up together, Keera hadn't really spent much time around the bakery when they were kids, especially since the two-year age gap between her and Anna seemed much wider back then. But Keera knew Jason, having hung out with all three of them during summer vacations. And she also knew how Anna felt about him.

"I...wow," Keera said, at last. "What happened?"

Anna sighed. "I don't know. He was late—again—on Tuesday morning and then..." she paused, not really wanting to talk about his interlude with Stacey-the-busty-receptionist. "It was just one more thing added to everything else and I couldn't take it anymore. So I told him."

"How'd he take it?" The tone in her cousin's voice told Anna that Keera had a pretty good idea how he'd taken it. You didn't know each other for as long as they all had and not have an idea of how Jason would react in a situation like that.

"How do you think he took it?" Anna mumbled.

"Knowing Jay? There was probably a bit of a tantrum involved."

A humorless smile touched Anna's mouth as she remembered their argument.

"That's an understatement," she said.

There was another pause on Keera's end followed by, "What do you mean?"

"We got into a huge fight and said some...pretty horrible things to each other."

"Why?" Keera asked, apparently planning to stick to short, concise sentences.

Anna's brow knit in confusion. "Why what?"

"Why did your quitting turn into a big fight? I mean," she continued before Anna had a chance to respond, "you broke it to him easy, right? Gave him a few weeks' notice?"

Closing her eyes, Anna sank deeper into the tub, not stopping until the top of her cell phone was dangerously close to joining her in the bathwater. "No," she muttered, then added, "But he didn't give me a chance to talk things out with him. He just kept going on about how could I do this tohim. And how muchhecouldn't deal with this right now."

Keera laughed lightly. "Honey, that's Jason. You know that. For him, the world revolves around his perfect little head. You couldn't have been surprised by him flipping out a bit, Anna. The boy hates change. Even I know that."

Scowling at the silver bathtub faucet, now dripping an occasional drop of water into the tub, Anna wondered how, in less than a minute, Keera had managed to turn this all around and make it so the argument wasn't entirely Jason's fault. Which it was. Mostly.

"Anna?" Keera persisted when she hadn't responded.

"What?"

"Could the argument have had anything to do with...your feelings for him?"

Anna wanted to say no, deny it, but she couldn't. It'd be a lie. A huge lie. A monumental one, actually. She knew that most of her anger with Jason stemmed from the stress of dealing with his carelessness while trying to cope with being in love with him. And this time, for some reason, she couldn't take it anymore. With the addition of Jay's self-centered, hurtful comments, she'd just snapped on him.

Letting out a tired, frustrated breath, she admitted, "Okay, yes—yes, my feelings for him had something to do with us getting in that fight, but..."

But what? What else was there to say? It wasn't as if Jason knew she was in love with him. No,she'dlet her feelings build to the point that she'd blown up on him.

And, from his perspective, the whole thing had probably come out of nowhere. Dammit, now Keera had her seeing his side of things?

"I think you missed your calling as a psychiatrist, Keer," Anna grumbled.

Chuckling, Keera said, "I just call it like I see it. And the way I see things right now is you finally deciding to move on from Jason and get back into school, which is great. But at the same time, I can understand why Jason reacted so badly. I'm not excusing whatever he said or did—and knowing him, it was probably pretty bad. But, deep down, he's probably afraid of losing you. Both as an assistant and as his always-there-when-he-needs-you friend."

Nodding even though Keera couldn't see her, Anna chewed her lip. "I guess...I did sort of just throw the whole thing at him out of nowhere. That's part of why he was mad, actually."

"See? Just give him some time to calm down.Thentry talking to him. He'll understand."

Scowling, Anna shook her head. "I'm not apologizing to him, Keer. He was acting like a jerk." But, these days, what else was new?

Anna heard Keera sigh before her cousin said, "I didn't say you should apologize to him, did I? I actually think you probably did him some good by confronting him. But I know you, Anna. Do you really want to stay mad?"

"I...no," Anna murmured, and it was true. She didn't feel like she was wrong, but she also hated fighting with Jason. Everything just seemed off-kilter when they weren't talking.

"Okay, then," Keera urged, "you should talk to him."

"I'll think about it."

"Good, but," Keera's tone turned breezy again, "my frosting's getting warm, so I'm gonna have to let you go."

"Okay. Thanks, Keer," Anna said.

"No problem. I'll talk to you later. Good luck with Jason."

"Thanks. Bye."

After hanging up the phone, Anna stayed in the bathtub as the water slowly cooled. She grudgingly admitted to herself that Keera was partly right. Jason's reaction was understandable, considering the circumstances. It didn't mean she forgave him for his rude, careless comments, but she could at least understand where his anger and frustration had come from. And maybe, if she really decided to be the bigger person, she could be the one to try and talk.