Page 55

I shake my head like that’ll delete the last three seconds. “No. Ignore that. Tell me why you’re here and then I’ll tell you why I’m baking.”
“I do not know what a zaddy is,” he says, entirely too entertained and not letting me off the hook. That smile of his makes a full comeback, shifting into a smirk as he adds, “Care to tell me?”
“No. You’ll have to do your own research, just like I had to.”
He pulls out his phone, taps for a second, reads, and then lifts that smirk right back up to me like it was made for this very moment. “I now know what a zaddy is. I’m still clueless on the whole-ass situation, though. Google says it’s a problematic situation, but that doesn’t seem accurate.”
This man.
For real.
“Right,” I say, calling on every ounce of bossiness I have. “That smirk needs to go. And you need to tell me why you’re here. Then you need to pack up all these cakes and take them home. And I don’t care if you don’t want them, or have no room for them, they’re leaving here in your arms.”
“I should have come ten minutes earlier so you could issue more orders.”
I don’t know what it is about Gage, but he’s got this maddening, irresistible pull that I can’t deny. He knows exactly the effect he has on me, and even when I’m trying to hold my ground, he makes it so I can’t.
I shake my head while a smile breaks through. “You’re impossible.”
His smirk gives way to a questioning look. “Are you going to tell me the reason I have so many cakes to take home?”
I sigh. “I have a publicist. She’s annoyingly young and I don’t understand half the things she says. Today, I may have given her the wrong idea about us.”
He waits for me to elaborate.
“She texted looking for an angle for us. I had no idea what she meant. Apparently, the internet is coming to their own conclusions about us, and she was looking for which way to push them.”
“What’s the angle she chose?” He doesn’t even look bothered by this.
“I told her you’re the father of my daughter’s best friend. She took that to mean friends to lovers.” I wince. “I am so sorry to drag you into my mess, Gage.”
If I thought he looked unbothered a second ago, whatever you call the level below unbothered... that’s where he is now. With a side of heat.
“Right,” he says, moving around the island to where I’m standing. “So you and I are a thing according to your publicist.” It’s not a question. It’s a statement that he looks very pleased to be making.
“Uh, yes.” I watch him come closer, zero idea of his intentions right now, while also feeling all kinds of bothered myself. I am far, far above Gage on that scale.
“And you thought I’d be upset about that angle?”
“Yes.”
He stops just shy of the line between close and too close. “You have a lot to learn about me, Amelia.”
My heart beats so loudly I’m sure he must be able to hear it. “You’re okay if people think that about us?”
His eyes blaze with intensity, and I feel iteverywhere. “I don’t give a fuck what people think about me. And if I had to choose a woman for my name to be linked with, it would be you.”
My fingers curl against the island as my body sways toward him. Heat blooms low in my stomach, and it spreads fast. Every nerve tuned to him now.
I want this man.
Goddamn, do I want him.
I have never felt this kind of pull.
It’s raw need.
Desperate and undeniable.