Cade’s back. Or that he’s somehow even hotter.
“Lily, come!” Jean-Michel called. “The cupcakes, they do not, how you say, ice by themselves.”
“Ice themselves,” she said as she walked into the back.
“That’s what I say. Who is the new one?”
“Huh?” she asked as she picked up the pastry bag.
“The new fireman.” Jean-Michel stared intently at his own cupcake.
“Oh. Sorry, you’re out of luck, Jean-Michel. He’s straight.”
“That is not why I ask,” he said. “What you think I am? A whore-man?”
“Manwhore,” she said with a laugh. “And no, that’s not what I meant.”
“Straight, you say. All Americans think they are straight.” He raised a brow. “You are interested then?”
She frowned at her perfect pink cupcake. “No. He’s EJ’s best friend. And I already have two very overprotective big brothers, so he’s super off-limits.”
“And the floodgates open,” Jean-Michel said. “You have many excuses.”
She sighed. “I had a huge crush on him back in the day, okay? But I would never act on it. I know he’s not interested. And besides, he’s kind of a slut. My brothers had a nickname for him. They called him the Morningside Manwhore, actually, because he left so many broken hearts scattered all over the Morningside neighborhood. So sorry, even though you’re not a manwhore, that title’s already taken.”
“That’s not a ‘not interested.’ That is reason why you should not be interested,” Jean-Michel said. “Difference, there.”
“Aren’t you French supposed to be all about free love or something?” she demurred.
“Free love?” Jean-Michel laughed. “Love is never free. Sex, on the other hand. Sometimes free. Sometimes very pricey.”
Lily rolled her eyes and went to work icing the cupcakes. That didn’t stop her from wondering about Cade, though…
What had he been up to the past three years?
And how in the hell was he hotter than he’d ever been?
2
Cade
Cade mindlessly trailed behind the guys as they would their way towards the firehouse. He hadn’t thought seeing Lily would jar him so much.
Sure, he knew she worked at Wilde’s because of her LinkedIn profile that he stalked. It was the only covert way he knew how to keep track of her without her knowing.
But Cade thought popping in would be a fun little way to fire up his return to Salem. He didn’t know Elijah would be there, too. Or that seeing Lily like that, her face flushed from the ovens in the back and the way her chest pushed at the buttons of her crisp button up shirt would instantly turn him on.
Damn, it had been awkward having an erection while Elijah welcomed him back.
Cade was used to the girls in the Montana college town, the Instagram models who looked like perfect plastic Bratz dolls online but tired and haggard in person. Lily was different.
He’d always known that, even before what happened between them. However, she’d flourished since he’d been gone.
Cade couldn’t get over it. In the bakery, without a whit of makeup on, she looked at home.
And hot as hell.
The last summer’s freckles scattered across her nose and that dark brown hair that whorled in imperfectly fantastic peaks. Those nearly indigenous cheekbones highlighted her heart-shaped face, and it took all the strength he had to look at her eyes instead of that pout with the sharp cupid’s bow.
Or those tits, he thought as he pulled into the firehouse.
Fuck. This is Lily, he reminded himself. A sense of shame washed over him. If either of her brothers had any idea what I was thinking... Hell, if they had any clue that he’d been with her once, they’d beat me within an inch of my life.
Cade still couldn’t forgive himself for what he’d done the morning after he and Lily were together. He’d gazed at her, trusting in sleep beside him, and just couldn’t believe it. She’d chosen him. She could have had anyone, and it was him.
Then you went and screwed it all up, he said as he shook his head. In just a few moments he’d destroyed any chance of them ever being together for real.
That, and the fact that Elijah and Aiden would love pounding him into the pavement was enough to have him running for the hills—literally. When he’d driven to Montana, across the rolling hills of eastern Oregon, he couldn’t move fast enough to outrun the guilt that stuck to him from back home.
He thought three years would be enough. But he was wrong. Even now, at the bakery, he’d struggled to find the words. Any words, something to tell her that he was sorry, but they got stuck and messy in his throat.
Cade shook his head at his past self as he pulled his gear together.
If I’d known back then how precious life is, maybe I could have stopped thinking with my dick for a minute and either not slept with her at all. Or … or maybe I would have made her mine.
Cade paused, one hand on his duffel bag. Is that really what I want?
“Stop it,” he said aloud.
Lily made it impossible to think straight. He’d been in a non-stop tailspin every since he’d left. And it didn’t help that something about what had happened made him wonder. It wasn’t just how tight she was, though he got hard every time he thought about it. There was an innate innocence to it that almost made him stop right there in the moment.
Was she a virgin? But no, she couldn’t be. She’d just broken up with a boyfriend of three years. Plus, she was at one of the biggest party schools in the state.
It had to just be how vulnerable she was given the circumstances, right?
Yeah. And that makes you even more of an asshole.
“Get it together,” he whispered. He needed a clear head, a head free of Lily, before he walked into his new job.
“Get lost out there?” Elijah asked as Cade walked in. “I know it’s been a few years, but it took you long enough.”
Cade shrugged. “Where’s the fire?” he asked.
“Haha,” Aiden said as he tossed Cade’s new standard issues at him.
Cade
