her deepest fantasy, all for show, just seemed too masochistic.
And yet, it was hard to say no to him, too. Not when, as much as it galled to be asked to do this, it would give her this sort of strange, out of time, experience with him.
And definitely not when the whole thing was such a big deal to the future of Roasted. Her wagon was well and truly hitched to the company, and in order for her to succeed, the company had to succeed.
Her wagon was hitched to more than the company, if she was honest. It was Zack. Zack and his wicked smiles, Zack and that indefinable thing he possessed that made her want to care for him, even though he never let her.
Zack was the reason she didn’t date. Not because, as a boss he kept her so busy with work, though she’d pretended that was it for a long, long time. It was Zack the man. Because her feelings for him were more than just complicated. And she was … she was a doormat.
She’d baked the man’s wedding cake. And then what had she thought would happen? She was going to stay at Roasted, after Zack married? Play Aunt Clara to his kids? Watch while he had this whole life while she died a virgin with nothing but her convection oven for company?
Sick. It was sick.
And now she was really going with him to Chiang Mai to play the part she knew he’d never really consider her for?
She needed to get a life.
She was right. What she’d thought earlier at the hotel had been right. A moment of clarity. It wasn’t healthy to have him in everything. He was her boss, her best friend. He filled her work and personal hours, and even when he wasn’t around, he was in her thoughts. Zack had dates, he had a life that didn’t include her and she … didn’t. She couldn’t do it anymore.
“If I do this. If I do this, then it’s going to be the last thing I do at Roasted.” She thought about the bakery, the one she’d been dreaming of for the past few months. The one she’d drawn up plans for. It had been in her mind ever since Zack and Hannah got engaged. Just a mere fantasy of escaping that painful reality at first, but now … now she thought she needed to make it happen.
She needed to make some boundaries. Have something that was hers. Just hers.
“What?” he asked, his dark brows locking together.
“If I go with you and play arm candy then I’m done. It’s not … it’s not the first time I’ve thought of this.” It wasn’t. When he’d come into the office with Hannah and announced that the whole thing was official, well, she’d just about handed in her resignation then and there.
But of course his smile and his innate Zack-ness had stopped her. Because in her mind, it was better to have crumbs from him than everything from someone else. Because he was so enmeshed in her life, so a part of her routine. Her first thought in the morning, her constant companion throughout the day. And it was his face she saw when she drifted off to sleep.
He was everything.
And the real truth of the situation was that while Zack cared for her, and even loved her, possibly like some sort of younger sister figure, she wasn’t everything to him. And he didn’t want her the way she wanted him.
“What the hell?” he asked.
“I’m. I’m having a revelation, hold on.”
“Could you not?”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m. I’m sorry, Zack. This really has been. It’s been brewing for a while and I know it wasn’t the best day or the best way to say it, but … it does have to be said.”
“Why?”
“Because. Because it’s eating my life!” The words exploded from her. “And if that isn’t made completely obvious by the fact that I’m agreeing to drop everything at the spur-of-the-moment to fly to Asia to go on your honeymoon in place of your fiancée and pretend to be your new girlfriend … well … I can’t help you.”
“No. No, I don’t agree.”
“And what, Zack? You can’t force me to stay at my job.”
He looked like he was searching for some loophole that would in fact give him that authority.
“I need a good severance, too. I want to open my own bakery.”
“The hell you will!” he said, his voice hard, harsher than she’d ever heard.
“The hell I won’t,” she returned, keeping her own voice steady, though, how she managed, she wasn’t sure.
“Non-compete.”
“What?”
“You signed a non-compete.”
“A bakery would not compete with Roasted, not really,” she said, planting her hands on her hips.
“It could, on a technicality, especially as we’d likely share a very similar desserts menu, seeing as you planned all of mine.”
“I’m not talking about a worldwide bakery chain, I’m talking … I want to open one up that I run myself. Here in San Francisco. Something personal, something me. Something that would give me a chance to have a life.”
“No.”
It was shocking, Zack’s transformation from unaffected, jilted groom, to this. She would have expected this kind of reaction from Hannah not showing up to the wedding, not to her asking to quit the business. Where was his control? Zack always had control. Always.
Except now.
“Then I won’t go with you. And I get the feeling that a female companion is a bit more important than you let on. I know you too well for you to hide it from me.”
His gray eyes glittered in the dim light of her apartment. “There is some competition. Sand Dollar Coffee is competing for the chance to get these same roasts, and Mr. Amudee, traditionalist he is, is very likely to give preference to their CEO. They were just there for a week in the villa, Martin Cole, his wife and their four children. Mr. Amudee was charmed.”
“So you do need me. You need me to give you an edge. To make sure Amudee knows you’re a macho man who can have his way with whomever, whenever. We’re friends, Zack. I don’t know why it has to be like this..”
“You were the one leveraging,” he bit out.
“Because I can’t do this anymore. The beck-and-call thing. I need more. You were getting married, you should get that.”
“You want to get married?”
Her stomach tightened. “Not necessarily. But I don’t even have a hope of it as long as I’m working sixty-hour weeks. And since I don’t believe in practical arrangements, like the one you and Hannah have, that will keep me from having a successful relationship.”
“Fine,” he said, the word stiff. “But you stay on until the deal with Amudee is done. Got it? I’ll need you to be around, at the business, my assumed lover, until the ink is dry on the contract.”
It
