Bridgette
“All right, and three fourteen is your change—“
The sound of something hard colliding with concrete resounded up through the stairs leading to the bakery’s basement. Bridgette winced.
Her customer, a middle-aged businessman who was likely on his lunch break, stared at her, wide-eyed. “What the hell was that?”
“Renovations,” Bridgette lied smoothly, doing her best to keep her voice apologetic with a tinge of frustration. “This is an older building, and the storage space downstairs was starting to have some major problems. I’m really sorry for all the noise, but I couldn’t afford to shut down until the job was done.” She handed the man his change and the oatmeal cookie she’d bagged up for him.
The man still stared at her, his surprise colored with a little suspicion. “What are they doing, tearing out the foundation?”
Bridgette winced again. God, I hope not, she thought. “There’s a lot of work to do,” she hedged, still smiling saccharinely. “Was there anything else?”
“I’d look into your contractor if I were you,” the man muttered under his breath before leaving the shop.
Bridgette let loose a pent-up sigh of frustration. This was not going well.
When Kyle had told her he and the guys were going to search the basement, she hadn’t thought that their search would entail so much noise. Or outright destruction.
It hadn’t been bad at first. That morning, when she’d been prepping recipes for the day before opening shop, they’d been pretty quiet downstairs. She’d heard the occasional scuff of a storage rack across the concrete floor, but she’d chalked that up to the emptiness of the bakery and her own hypersensitivity.
But after that, as the hours dragged on with apparently no success, things had grown noticeably louder. When her first few customers had come in to get coffee and muffins, she’d heard the unmistakable sound of something hard and heavy colliding with drywall. When her customers had asked, the lie about her “renovations” was born. It was a convenient excuse that explained away why she’d been closed for a couple of days as well as the strange noises coming out of the basement.
She’d found time in between serving customers to run downstairs and see what was actually going on. She’d found Kyle and the three other guys tearing out chunks of drywall and using a small flashlight to search the wall space. The smallest of them—Shark, she remembered—held a hatchet in his hand. All four of them were covered in white dust. It looked as if they only intended to intensify their efforts going by the other tools spread out on the ground—a sledgehammer, crowbars, ice pics, even a power tool she couldn’t identify, though her best guess was a mini jackhammer. Her first thought was that they intended to completely demolish the basement.
“What the hell are you doing?” she’d snapped at Kyle, though she’d been careful to keep her voice down so it wouldn’t carry up the stairs. “You’re wrecking the building! And we can hear you upstairs—“
“Well, that’s just how it’s going to be,” Kyle had replied, unconcerned. “We’re not going to pussyfoot around with this. It’s going to be loud, and you bet your ass we’re going to search every crack of this place until we find what we’re looking for. If someone doesn’t like it, you can tell them to get the fuck out.”
That had stoked Bridgette’s temper. “It doesn’t work that way! Look, just try to keep it down. I told them you’re renovating down here, but if it sounds more like you’re trying to collapse the foundation, it’s going to scare people off.”
Shark snorted at her in disbelief. “Falcon told you to stay home, right? Look, sweetheart, we don’t know where this shit is, and we’ve gone over every inch of this space. Now it’s time to dig deeper. If you want this over quicker, you’ll let us do our work.”
Bridgette wanted to snap at him that she didn’t need any of them, that she had done nothing to make herself a part of this. But that didn’t change the fact that he was right. The slower they went, the longer it would take. The longer her life would be in danger and the longer she’d be jeopardizing Gabby’s life. And the longer she’d have to keep away from her daughter.
She realized then that she would just have to deal with it. So she’d stalked off, still seething, hoping to God that they’d find the stuff behind the next wall they tore down.
They didn’t, of course. And things only grew worse after that. After the businessman left, the loud noises became more frequent. She was sure they’d moved on to breaking into the actual concrete structure behind the drywall, though she had no clue what they thought they’d find there, or why they thought someone would have been able to stash something in a concrete wall in the first place.
Whatever the logic behind it, the constant noise and clamor coming up from the basement was enough to spook off her customers. By noon it was clear to her that her efforts to keep the bakery open were hopeless.
So she closed up. She flipped the sign, stored her unsold merchandise, and cleaned up the front room. Then she headed downstairs to watch the progressive destruction of her business. It was fitting, she thought, that Kyle and her guys were tearing it apart physically as she was falling apart financially.
When she reached the bottom of the steps, she sank down, rested her elbows on her knees, and observed. Drywall dust was thick in the air. Part of her knew she should have a mask to protect her lungs, or that she should at least cover her mouth with her shirt to filter out the worst of it.
But in light of everything going on, taking care of herself seemed entirely inconsequential. So she suffered silently as Kyle and his guys worked to remove each segment of drywall.
It was a while before they even noticed her sitting there.
Kyle left ripping out the current wall to the others, choosing instead to move over to her side. “Aren’t you supposed to be selling cakes or something?” he demanded.
Bridgette glared bitterly at him. “My customers couldn’t take the noise. It sounded like the whole building was going to collapse from up there. So I closed up. I figure, what’s one more day of lost profits? I’m already pretty fucked over. It can’t get any worse.”
Kyle ran a hand through his hair, a telltale sign he was agitated. “Christ, how many times do I have to tell you not to worry about that? If you need any help after all this—“
“I’m not taking anything from you,” she growled. “I’m not going to owe you a dime after this. Just…don’t worry about me. This is my problem. I’ll deal with it.”
Kyle glanced back at the guys, who’d all stopped working at tearing out the wall. The three of them were focused on her and Kyle, faces split by shit-eating grins. It seemed to her that they treated her fights with Kyle as a spectator sport.
“I’ll be back,” Kyle told them curtly before grabbing Bridgette by the arm and escorting her up the stairs.
She went without protest, scowling the whole time.
Once they’d reached the top of the stairs, Kyle pulled her into the kitchen. So he wanted a private conversation, she surmised. But it didn’t matter. Nothing he said was going to change the fact that she wouldn’t take money from him. She was independent now, even if that meant she went broke again. At least she wouldn’t have to rely on him for anything. At least he wouldn’t be able to pull the rug out from under her feet again.
“I’m not going to let this sink you,” Kyle told her quietly. His words were hard with conviction. “I don’t know how you got caught up in this, and I don’t care. It’s not fucking right. And don’t think for even a second that I don’t know what I did to you. I left you in a tight place, and I still owe you for that. So all this—keeping you safe from Martin, helping you get back on your feet—it’s not charity. I’m paying down a debt. And once we’re square again, maybe….”
He let his words trail off again, and for a moment she was both afraid and hopeful that he would suggest they could have a future together. “We’ll see,” he finished dismissively.
She wanted to believe him. She saw the sincerity in him—the way he met her eyes unflinchingly and made those promises. She wanted to think he could keep them. But he’d burned her before, and she wasn’t young and stupid, not anymore. It was easier to expect nothing of him. That way, she could only ever be pleasantly surprised.
“You’ve already done thousands of dollars of damage. I’ve lost all of my stocked ingredients. On top of that—“
Kyle backed her against the kitchen counter and covered her mouth with his hand, silencing her. She thought she saw a momentary ripple of pain in his eyes, but in the next instant it was gone, replaced by his mask of calm and indifference. “Shh,” he hushed her. “I don’t want you worrying about any of that. I don’t want you even thinking about it. For the next few days, your only job is to lay low and keep yourself safe. Do you hear me?”
He uncovered her mouth so she could answer.
“You think I can just forget all about this?” she snapped. “You think it’s as easy as just deciding not to worry? It doesn’t work that way—“
Kyle silenced her again, though this time by enveloping her mouth in his. She fought him at first, furious that he would try to placate her with a kiss. But the velvety touch of his lips against hers, the way his tongue moved in her mouth—all of it elicited a carnal response in her. Instinct took over and she gave in, kissing him back with just as much intensity.
His touch was like a hit of something potent. Even something as innocent as this—a quick little kiss—was enough to coax her back into the state of mind she’d been in the night before. The force of the desire in her temporarily erased the past and future by heightening the present moment, until all she cared about was the feel of his arms around her, the wet warmth of his mouth, the tickle of his stubble, the sweet perfume of his skin.
There was no rational reason, she knew, that his kiss should soothe her. There wasn’t any inherent meaning in it. His attraction to her hadn’t been enough to make him stay before, and there was no reason it would be enough now.
But her skeptical mind had no effect on her body. Her tingling spine and the warmth coursing through her blood told her that everything was going to be all right. And that was the only argument she needed.
Kyle drew back and gazed down at her. She could see lust rekindled in his eyes, and she knew if he didn’t have to find Martin’s stash he’d take her right then and there.
She wouldn’t have minded.
“Just give me a chance, Bridge,” he demanded. He cupped her face in his hands, pinning her in place and forcing her to meet his intense blue eyes. “Let me prove to you that I can take care of you. That I’ve only ever wanted to take care of you.”
Bridgette let her lids fall shut. She nodded softly against his unyielding hands. What else could she do but sit back and wait, and hope that he meant what he said?
“Is there anything I can do to help you here? I know the place pretty well—“
“We know it pretty well now, too. We’ve gone over every single inch of that basement at least five times now. Whatever it is, wherever it’s stashed, it’s hidden good. We’ve got it handled, baby. Why don’t you go hang out at the house and take it easy?”
That was the last thing she wanted, to be alone with her own thoughts. But, again, what choice did she have? She was sick of fighting against the current. It would be easier to just give in to Kyle, to let him handle things. And hadn’t she always wanted a break from everything?
Of course, she’d always envisioned that break as a trip to Disneyland with Gabby—a vacation she could share with her daughter without stressing out over the next month’s rent or her car payment or their uncertain futures. But it looked like hiding out in her ex’s house was the best she was going to get.
“Okay,” she agreed.
Kyle released her face. “I’ll be home soon,” he promised.
“You want me to swing by the airport?”
Her question caught him off guard. “What?”
“To pick up one of those drug-sniffing dogs,” she clarified, grinning tightly at him. “It might help you out here, you know. Maybe even save the rest of my poor basement.”
Kyle smiled wryly at her joke. “Shit, I don’t know why we didn’t think of that in the first place.”