I spend the rest of my day on the ladder Reid let me borrow--mounting his tool. I laugh softly to myself. Just a few days of living next door to Reid Riggins and he already has my mind nearly as dirty as his. I yank handful after handful of pine needles from the gutters, my mind anywhere but the job. I should be completely preoccupied with the threat of losing my bakery, but that possibility is so catastrophic I can’t even begin to run through what I will do. I don’t know if I have the mental energy to start all over. It took so much to do it the first time around. And how could I drive myself forward when I might just lose it again?

Then there’s Mark and Tara. My first impulse was to call Tara and kick her out of my place, but that would just be a spiteful, useless move. I just can’t believe she’s dating the guy who is pulling the strings behind getting my shop taken away from me. No matter how much I tell myself it’s unreasonable to blame her, I know I’m going to end up confronting her about it. I have to. I can’t just let this settle in my chest and fester.

Above all of that is the crazy, improbable, and absolutely unbelievable fact that I think I might be falling for Reid Riggins. He’s everything I always thought I wanted to avoid in a man. There’s more to him, though. He guards it well, but I’ve started to see glimpses of it. I saw something in the way he looked out over the hills on his back patio, a thoughtfulness and kindness. It made me realize Reid is a rare creature. He’s a man who has found what he wants in life and will fight to keep it.

Most people spend their whole lives trying to find the courage to go after what they want and doubting whether it’s the right path. They second guess themselves, waste time, pass opportunities, and don’t take risks. They end up unhappy because they were too afraid to go after what they really want for fear of failing. Not Reid. He’s already living his dream, and now it’s going to be taken away from him, just like mine. It all feels so tragic, and I burn with a desire to do something about it, even if I have no idea what that something is.

I climb down from the ladder and go inside to cool off. If I think I’m starting to have feelings for Reid, I must be getting heatstroke.

I make a quick call to the bakery to see if everything is going okay without me. The girls assure me they are doing fine and that business is going as usual. Still, I need to make time to get down there and put in the order before Tuesday or we’ll be spending all week apologizing for being out of half our products. Mrs. Parsons would probably burn the bakery down before the city had a chance to demolish it if I had to tell her we couldn’t make her cinnamon rolls in the morning.

For all I know, Reid is finished with my car already, but I can’t quite bring myself to go back over there right now. I just keep replaying the moment when I was leaning in and actually thinking about kissing him. It’s amazing what a little buzz and a lot of stress will do. Now that I have some distance, it all seems like an insane dream, like none of it really happened.

I put him from my mind as much as I can and decide to take a quick walk over to the place I’m renting Tara and Mark. My place. I’m only going over there to check on the property and make sure they are taking care of it, of course. I’m going to keep this strictly professional. I will not say a single word about how Tara is being the world’s shittiest best friend for dating the guy who wants to tear down my bakery. Not a word.

I knock on the door and wait. When Tara opens it, her eyes light up and she moves forward to hug me. “Hey girl!”

“Hey,” I say, grimacing over her shoulder.

Tara is ninety to ninety five percent sweet and loving. She was the first and last person to see me at the hospital when I had the embarrassing line dancing incident last summer and sprained my ankle. She was there with sweets and movies every time I had a rough breakup. She has talked me through some of my darkest moments and been there to share my happiest.

She’s a friend, in every sense of the word. And sometimes friends are back stabbing, heartless--

I force myself to calm down. She probably doesn’t even know. The least I can do is talk to her and feel it out before I start holding a grudge. I owe her that much.

She’s drop dead gorgeous too. Blonde hair, startling green eyes, full lips and a pert little beauty queen nose. She does yoga five times a week and still finds time to go to the gym in between. All of that is absolutely true, but over the years I’ve come to realize there’s just something else about her. Somewhere beneath all that sweetness and kindness is a small, almost imperceptible ball of nasty.

Like one time when we were in junior high, the special education kids used to join us for home economics class. One of the special ed girls, Heather, was carrying a bowl of pancake batter across the room and tripped. Half a bowl full of batter spilled all over Tara, who smiled politely and helped clean everything up. I thought nothing of it until two weeks later. We were passing an art display by the special ed kids, and we both saw Heather hanging up her piece and talking to the teacher about showing her parents when they came for parent teacher night later that week.

I still don’t know if it was her, but I saw something in Tara’s eyes as we passed that gave me a sick feeling. Sure enough, the next day the artwork was torn to pieces and left on the floor. Heather cried for hours and had to be taken home. Tara never mentioned it, but I still suspect it was her. The sweet teacher’s pet with a nasty side. That’s Tara.

My past with her is littered with small memories like that. Moments where her perfect veil nearly slips. Her cheating on Reid was really the first time I ever saw it out in the open. People aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. They do shitty things to others for no reason. And whether she has a nasty streak or not, she’s my friend.

“It’s still your place,” says Tara. “Come on in, make yourself at home. Roman’s at his friend’s house playing right now.”

My plans to stay civil had started to erode on my long walk over here from my new place, but as usual, Tara’s sweetness is making me forgive her already.

“It’s Sunday, right? Where’s Roman?”

“He’s over at a friend’s house.”

“Oh, Is Mark around?” I ask, sweeping my eyes around, taking in the way she has arranged furniture and set the place up.

“He’s out of town, actually. He’s doing something with the mayor.” There’s a slight hint of pride in her voice.

“Wow, so he’s pretty connected?” I ask, helping myself to a seat on the couch.

“Yeah. I’ve met so many people since he and I started seeing each other. I never thought an architectural planner would have so many connections, but he really does. It’s wild. The politicians he works with treat him like a superstar.”

“Huh,” I say a little distractedly. “Must be nice.” They probably treat him so well because his projects could bring tons of money to their districts and cities. I’m sure they are all bending over backwards to offer him the right to uproot businesses and people if that’s what it takes to get his development company looking their way.

“Uh, you okay?” asks Tara.

I let my head fall back against the couch, staring at the ceiling as I try to resist saying something. Just let it rest, Sandra. Don’t make a big deal out of this. “I’m fine,” I say.

She moves to sit beside me, leaning forward. “You’re not fine. Is this about the bakery?”

I straighten, feeling my heartbeat quicken. “You knew?”

She looks down at her hands, clasping them in her lap. “Mark told me. I tried to talk him out of it.”

I breathe out, frowning in disbelief. A cold, sharp pain seeps into my chest. “And you let me find out with a letter on the door of the bakery? You didn’t think to call me?”

Tara reaches to hug me, but I push back off the couch, standing. “Don’t touch me,” I say, voice shaking with anger. It’s all rising up now. The feelings of betrayal I felt. Not just from this, but from the way she brought Mark into her life and let him become her priority, blowing me off to spend time with him. It’s far from the first time, too.

“Sandra,” she says, pleading. “Mark said he was going to offer a fair price for your bakery. I thought it’d be okay.”

“Wow,” I say, backing away and grabbing my bag by the door. “You really don’t know me at all, do you?”

“Sandra… Don’t say that. Come on, I’ve got ice cream in the freezer. Let’s put on a movie and--”

“No,” I say. “Save the ice cream for your slimebag of a boyfriend.” I step outside, hand still on the doorknob when a thought occurs to me. It’s a dark, black thought I’ve never let reach the surface of my mind before, but now in the heat of my anger it rises up, too strong to push down or control. Too strong to stop. “Reid deserved better than you,” I say over my shoulder.

I slam the door and squeeze my eyes shut, breathing heavy. God. Everything is falling apart. Everything I’ve spent so long building and worked so hard for. It’s all falling away and I can’t see how I’m going to stop it.

I stop by the bakery on my way home because I don’t know what else to do. The girls are happy to see me. I spend close to thirty minutes listening to Julia go on about how she handled an unhappy customer and try my best to sound like the properly proud boss I should be. I help the girls roll out dough for croissants and spread the butter on them. I top some cakes. It’s all work that normally brings me more joy than I can describe and yet it feels empty and meaningless today. It feels like I’m just going through the motions.

I never started this business for the money. My only goal was to create something worthwhile. I wanted a business that people enjoyed coming to and I wanted to be doing something I enjoy. I found all that here. Knowing the end is inevitable strips all the satisfaction from that. So what if I do a good job? So what if I make the recipe just that much better by experimenting? It’s all going away.

I decide to leave early. I apologize to Lauren and Jennifer, but other than a few sarcastic remarks from Lauren, they seem to understand. It’s only on my walk home that a shameful thought starts to coalesce in my mind.

I could hook up with Reid to get back at Tara for letting this happen. Even though she cheated on him and complained all the time, I know for a fact she’s still not over him. She told me as much. Tara thought she deserved to have the most gorgeous guy in town. It was part of the fantasy she built up around herself, and she ended up making it a reality. But when the most gorgeous guy in town didn’t fulfill all her desire to be rich, she went and slept around, hoping to scare him into submission. Instead he got a lawyer and divorced her ass.

The thought makes me grin. Reid doesn’t play around.

I shake my head in disbelief at how low my thoughts have turned. Did I really just consider hooking up with a guy to get back at my best friend? Even if Reid was interested in me, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I thought that’s why I was doing it. As much as I’ve tried to tell myself he’s not the one for me, I still keep coming back to the idea of him. The memory of his touch and how it felt. The scent of him, manly, strong, and sexual. More than that, I recall the look in his eye when he gazed out over the hills. I saw for the first time the depth of Reid Riggins. He’s more than just a beautiful face and body, he’s thoughtful, even if he goes out of his way to hide that from the world.