Ruby
I sighed as I covered the casserole I was making with shredded cheese, and then put it back in the oven.
It had been a busy day.
Once Jett had left for the office, I’d sourced the products I needed to make a full range of pastries, and then went out to get them purchased.
Then, I’d decided it was time for me to open a checking account, so I’d stopped into the bank and took a reasonable amount of money out of my ridiculous savings account and established a checking account.
Since I wasn’t going to get paid very quickly for doing pastries, and I knew I needed new clothes to go with Jett to his sister’s wedding, I’d caved in and decided to use some serious money from my account. I didn’t want to go to Rocky Springs looking like a homeless woman. I wanted to look like Jett’s girlfriend.
I’d spent most of the afternoon trying to find appropriate outfits for Colorado in the fall. And I found some good prices with Pete’s help. Seattle was a bit overwhelming at times, but I was slowly getting used to the different areas.
I just wasn’t ready to get into the traffic with a brand-new BMW quite yet.
As I walked across the kitchen, I noticed the same sore muscles that had been screaming at me all day. But they still put a smile on my face.
For a guy who claimed to be encumbered by injury, Jett certainly wasn’t lacking in stamina or endurance. We’d woken up a couple of times during the night just to experience the pleasure of being together all over again.
Unfortunately, I was paying for my sexual gluttony with aching muscles I hadn’t even known existed.
But I wouldn’t have traded last night for any amount of discomfort.
It had been…perfect.
I’d been somewhat surprised when Jett had gotten dressed in a gorgeous suit and went off to his offices this morning. But I’d somehow sensed that it was some kind of turning point for Jett, and I hadn’t questioned him after I’d seen the grim determination on his face.
He’d seemed…different. Not in a bad way, but in a I’m-fucking-taking-back-my-life sort of way.
And it looked pretty damn hot on him.
I grabbed a potholder to pull French bread out of the bottom oven.
I was pretty much doing my lazy recipes since I’d gotten home late. Jett was getting a casserole I’d thrown together quickly, the bread I’d just pulled from the oven, and I’d whipped up some easy lemon bars as soon as I’d gotten home.
Not that I thought Jett would know the difference between a difficult pastry and an easy one that could be done in fifteen minutes. Pretty much everything sweet worked for him.
I heard the front door close, and my heart skittered because I knew Jett was home.
He was in the kitchen in less than thirty seconds, and he looked just as hot as he had this morning.
But there was one difference.
“What happened to your face?” I asked as I gently touched the bruise under his eye that hadn’t been there when he’d left in the morning.
He didn’t answer until he’d given me a kiss. “My brother’s fist collided with my face,” he answered gruffly.
“Your brother hit you? Why?”
I knew there was some kind of distance between the Lawson siblings. But I didn’t understand why.
“We had an old score to settle. So I settled it.”
“What happened?” I asked softly, hoping he’d confide in me. I wanted to understand his family dynamics, but he rarely talked about anybody except his sisters. “Why don’t you get along with your brothers?”
“Mason and I get along fine,” he said as he took his jacket off and tossed it over the back of a kitchen chair. “But Mason is rarely around, and he works too damn much. Something happened to my family when my parents were killed. We just all seemed to scatter. Harper and Dani went off to do their own things, and Mason, Carter, and I decided to work together. We sold off most of our parents’ assets to divide up the inheritance, but we kept my dad’s fledgling tech business so we could make it our own since we were all educated in technology. Everything happened pretty fast once we moved the company to Seattle and it really took off. We each have our own division, so pretty much all we ever did was work. We fell into a relationship that was more about being business partners than brothers.”
He grabbed a beer out of the fridge, popped it open, and sat down at the kitchen table.
I took a seat across from him. “Were you close as children?”
“Yeah, that’s the weird part. We were all pretty tight. Harper and Dani were close, and Mason, Carter, and I were like best friends. We did everything together.”
“Your parents’ deaths had to have been traumatic for all of you. Don’t you think that sometimes those things either draw you together or tear you apart?”
I had no idea what it was like to have siblings. I was just trying to understand through my own experience of losing my parents.
He nodded and took a slug of his beer. “Unfortunately, it didn’t draw us closer together. I think we were all so raw that we couldn’t talk about it, so we didn’t. And we didn’t talk about anything else, either. Somehow, we just completely lost our family, and it went on for so long that we couldn’t seem to get it back again.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said softly. “But it’s not too late.”
“It might be,” he contradicted in a solemn tone. “I just wish I had noticed years ago, after our folks died. I guess we just got so caught up into becoming a leader in the tech industry that I never stopped to see how dysfunctional my family had become. And it wasn’t like we needed the money. We were filthy rich before the company started its rise to the top because of my parents. But it wasn’t really about the money. I guess we were caught up in the challenge. We’re all hardheaded. Even my sisters.”
“It’s part of who you are,” I told him. “And that’s not always a bad thing.”
Jett was stubborn, but that’s one of the qualities he’d needed to get through his injuries.
“I’d really like it if we could reconnect. But I have no idea how to rebuild a family. Harper and Dani will be in Colorado, but it’s not difficult for any of us to see each other. It’s a fairly short jet ride.”
“I’m glad you’ll be seeing your sisters soon at the wedding.”
“Maybe we could go a few days early,” he suggested. “It might give me time to talk to my sisters and figure out where in the hell we fucked up.”
“I’m ready when you are,” I offered. “I can make my last delivery to Indulgent Brews near the end of the week and I’m free.”
He grinned, and he looked like a naughty schoolboy with his black eye. “I have another job for you.”
“What?”
“Can you supply breakfast pastries for my staff? They’d all worship you. We have a contract with a bakery for morning stuff, but the quality is crap for what we pay them.”
“You know I’m always happy to help.”
He shook his head. “Nope. This isn’t something you’re doing for free. Like I said, we already pay a bakery to provide stuff. You’d be paid accordingly. We can try it out with my office, and if it goes well, you’ll get the rest of the offices, too.”
I folded my arms across my chest and gave him a skeptical stare. “You’re not setting this up to help me make a small fortune?”
“Absolutely not. The idea came up when I was talking to Shirley about how bad the bakery items are. Even I couldn’t eat the donuts. They were stale.”
I cracked a smile. “Okay. Since you never meet something sweet that you don’t love, then maybe you really do need something different.”
“My staff needs something better,” he corrected.
“I think it’s pretty nice that you actually offer the service to your staff. Most companies don’t.”
“It’s mostly selfish,” he answered. “We get more work out of them if they aren’t thinking about lunch because they didn’t have time to get anything in the morning.”
I laughed. “You know that’s not why you do it.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not the only reason, but studies show that it ups productivity.”
“I’ll do some stuff tomorrow.”
I ran some ideas by him for items he might want, but I could see that he was distracted.
Finally, I said, “You never did tell me what you fought about with Carter?”
“Like I said, it was an old score.”
“What?” I pressed.
“He slept with my ex-fiancé,” Jett said flatly.
I was speechless, unable to ask all of the questions I had that were screaming through my brain as I saw the grim expression on Jett’s handsome face.