Page 18 of The Gingerbread Bakery (Dream Harbor #5)

Chapter Sixteen

Now

D amn snow, damn royal icing that wouldn’t harden, damn best friend who decided to get married in the middle of freaking December!

Damn George for getting the flu and not being here to help her.

Annie took a deep breath, the snowflakes swirling in front of her as she stood in the open door of her bakery.

The snow had been coming down hard for nearly an hour.

The light flurry from earlier had turned from scenic to a mess.

It was dark already, which seemed impossible because she had only stayed a little late to put the finishing touches on the gingerbread house she was making in lieu of a wedding cake for Logan and Jeanie—and now, somehow, it was very late. And dark. And snowy.

It had been hours since Mac left her at the spa, hours after the incident .

The orgasm admission had been a low blow.

She knew that but he deserved it. She didn’t need his half-assed apologies, and she certainly didn’t need him knowing how much he had hurt her back then or how much it still hurt now.

She didn’t need anyone knowing that. It was far too humiliating that as a fully grown adult she was still devastated by something that happened when they were teenagers.

After she hadn’t answered his texts and got a ride from Hazel instead, Annie hadn’t heard from him.

She was assuming he hadn’t found Nana, either.

And that was the real problem here, not Mac and his apologies but the still-missing Nana and her possible accomplice, Aunt Dot.

Annie had searched all the favorite senior locations in town and the ladies had been at none of them; and now she really didn't know what to do.

And she had to get this damn gingerbread house up to Kira’s farm. She’d promised she'd help with the set-up at the barn tonight.

She took another deep breath.

Annie was not going to panic because Annie was a competent and successful businesswoman perfectly capable of balancing her bakery and her friendships and her need to be perfect.

She slammed the door and stormed back into the warmth of the shop.

She could do this. She could very carefully carry this monstrosity of a gingerbread house out to her delivery van and not slip and fall on her ass and then she could just as carefully drive it up to Kira’s farm on roads that were probably not at all treacherous and potentially deadly.

It was fine.

All she needed was a teensy, weensy Christmas miracle.

She circled the house where it sat on her worktable in the back of the bakery.

She’d built the house on a wooden platform so she could lift it and move it wherever it needed to go, but it was clearly a two-person job.

She made another circle. This house was huge.

An exact replica of Logan’s farmhouse made from gingerbread and royal icing.

How in the hell was she going to carry it on her own? And in the snow?

The gingerbread-cookie versions of Jeanie and Logan looked at her with skeptical expressions.

‘I can do it,’ she told them. ‘I just need to figure out the right angle.’ And yes, it was normal for bakers to speak to their creations. Perfectly normal.

‘I just need to…’ Annie was about to attempt to wrap her arms around the house without knocking off a roof piece when a bang on her front window startled her out of her concentration.

‘What the hell was that?’ She sighed and stomped back to the front of the store. Her windows were fogged over from the heat of the ovens and the cold outside, so all she could see beyond the glass was a dark figure.

‘Oh good, a mysterious stranger, just what I need.’ She used her hand to clear a small circle on the glass. The dark figure was much worse than a mysterious stranger.

It was a very familiar pain in her ass.

Mac smirked at her through the glass.

So much for Christmas miracles! Annie stalked to the bakery door and flung it open.

‘Did you find her?’

‘Unfortunately, no. I stopped up at Logan’s farm to talk to Henry. He seemed to think Nana and Dot had gone to visit a cousin or something. But with this snow I don't think they’re coming back tonight.’

Annie blew out a frustrated breath. She had no idea what Estelle and Dot were up to, but unfortunately Mac was right. With this snow, nothing was getting accomplished until the roads were cleared.

‘Then what the hell are you doing here?’

‘I was leaving the pub, and I saw your lights were still on.’

‘So?’

‘So, the whole rest of the street has closed up shop.’

‘Well, thank you for the local business report, but I already knew they’d closed up.’ Leaning in the open doorway, she crossed her arms over her flour-covered apron. Mac stood in the glow of the streetlight, the snow dusting his dark hair and broad shoulders.

He tried to peer past her. ‘What are you doing in there that’s so important?’

‘Bakery stuff.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Bakery stuff?’

‘Yes. This is a bakery.’

His laugh sent a puff of breath into the cold air. She was not going to invite him in. She’d been doing too much of that already, letting Mac get close to her again. She had to draw the line somewhere: it might as well be the threshold of her bakery.

‘I like the name-change by the way,’ he said, gesturing up to the new sign.

Annie gave him a begrudging thank you. The bakery had gone through many changes over the years; the new name was the most recent one.

She’d gone from her little table at the Christmas market to an online shop, sharing the kitchen with her parents and siblings and still managing to get her orders filled.

When she got approved for the loan to lease this shop five years ago it had been one of the best days of her life. But Mac wasn’t here for any of that.

She wasn’t about to discuss with him why she thought The Gingerbread Bakery was a better name for her business.

‘What’s so important that you’re here late on the night before your best-friend’s wedding?’

‘Well, we were kinda busy all day, remember? And besides, it’s for the wedding.’

‘The cake?’ he asked, his interest piqued. Annie had kept her plans for this house completely under wraps. Only the bride knew that they’d replaced the cake with a gingerbread house, a gift for the groom, who had an aversion to frosting.

‘Let me see it,’ he said, inching toward the door.

‘No way.’

‘Come on, Annabelle. Let me see it.’

‘Don’t call me Annabelle, Macaulay .’

It was his turn to frown and Annie laughed at the reaction.

‘As the best man, it’s my duty to check the cake in advance.’

‘You’re still not the best man. And that is definitely not within the realm of groomsmen duties.’

Mac shrugged. ‘Logan didn’t want strippers so what else am I supposed to do?’

‘Of course he didn’t want strippers. The man didn’t even want frosting. It’s like he’s allergic to joy.’

Mac’s eyes lit up and Annie realized too late that she’d given away a vital piece of information.

‘Logan doesn’t like frosting?’ He stepped closer until they were both crowded in the doorway.

‘What did you make, Annie?’ Their breath mingled between them, creating their own little steam cloud.

‘Let me in.’ He held her gaze and it felt like he was asking for so much more than entrance to the bakery.

His offer from earlier to try again ran through her mind.

‘Please,’ he added, his gaze flicking to her lips and back. Annie hesitated, her resolve weakening like it always did around this infuriating man.

The problem was, Annie hadn’t been lying earlier, not exactly.

So maybe he hadn’t given her an orgasm but that didn't mean the sex hadn’t been good.

It didn’t mean he hadn’t been sweet and tender with her for her first time.

It didn’t mean she didn’t think about what sex could be like between them now.

It was like her body had had sex with him eleven years ago, and her brain had kept it up ever since.

His head dipped closer to hers, his breath a welcome warmth on her face. Her eyes fluttered closed.

‘Please, Annie.’

She put a hand on his chest and relished the small hitch in his breath as she opened her eyes and saw it, the hunger in his eyes. Hunger mixed with hope. And she almost felt bad before she pressed that hand harder and shoved.

Mac skidded back in the snow, slipping and sliding but, much to Annie’s dismay, remaining upright.

The obnoxious smirk was back on his face by the time he got his footing, but the earnestness with which he’d said please was long gone.

‘Sorry, Mac, no strippers and no sneak peeks for you tonight. You should probably head home. Drive safe!’ Annie wiggled her fingers in a wave goodbye and was turning toward the door when Mac’s words stopped her in her tracks.

‘How are you going to move it into the van?’

Shit. He had her there.

‘You don’t want to ruin whatever it is you made, Annie. I know you don’t want to disappoint the bride and groom.’

Double shit.

Of course she didn’t want to disappoint the bride and groom.

She'd spent the whole day trying desperately to make sure this wedding would go smoothly. What kind of monster wanted to disappoint the bride and groom? Annie quickly assessed her options. She could tell Mac to go to hell, which was what she really, really wanted to do, and then wrestle the very large, very delicate gingerbread house into the van herself and risk dropping the whole damn thing and ruining Jeanie’s secret gift to Logan or… she could let this asshole help her.

Ugh.

‘Fine,’ she said over her shoulder as she strode back into the bakery. ‘But I’m only doing this for Jeanie.’

She didn’t bother to turn around and heard Mac’s footsteps behind her as he followed her to the back room.

‘Shit.’ She rushed over to the gingerbread house.

‘These damn gables keep sliding off. I must have mixed the royal icing too thin,’ she muttered to herself as she went to repair the damage.

‘I just need to… a little bit more…’ She piped on more icing and almost had it…

there. She stepped back to assess her work and collided with Mac’s firm chest.

He grabbed her upper arms, keeping her clutched tight against him.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he whispered. His voice was low and admiring in her ear.

Oh no, you don’t. Not ‘sweet’ Mac again.

‘Yeah, well,’ she said, squirming from his grasp. ‘The damn roof keeps falling apart.’

‘It doesn’t have to be perfect.’

She spun to face him. ‘Ha! It’s like you don’t even know me.’

Mac’s gaze bore into her, his eyes flicking down to her mouth again as though he was thinking about all the ways he did in fact know her. Annie’s face heated under his stare.

‘Of course I know you, Annabelle,’ he said, and she knew immediately that she was in danger.

That was the worst part about all of this.

He did know her. And that was the problem.

He smiled smugly as he went on. ‘You’ve been working for days to get this house exactly right because you want it to be special for the people you love.

And you’ve been doing it all while filling Christmas cookie orders for the entire town and fulfilling your bridesmaid duties which somehow included a manhunt, and if I know you, and I think I do, probably babysitting for half your nieces and nephews while your sisters go Christmas shopping.

And every single one of these tasks you’ve put your whole heart into.

And you want things to be perfect because you think being perfect shows people that you love them, and a little piece of you believes they would love you less if you weren’t. ’

Annie swallowed hard. Damn it.

This was what she got for never leaving this town, for hanging out with the same people since she was five, for showing this man too much of herself back when she thought it was safe.

Mac stepped toward her, tipping her chin up to meet his gaze.

‘I also know that by this time of the day your head hurts from having your hair pulled back too tight and your feet hurt from standing for hours but you never, ever complain.’

Annie couldn’t breathe. This little speech had literally stolen the air from her lungs.

‘ And I know that a part of you wants to forgive me but you’re too damn stubborn to do it.’

That cocky grin spread across his face at her wide-eyed expression.

He leaned in closer, so his words brushed across her lips.

‘But lucky for you, I’m just as stubborn.

And I haven’t given up yet. Your little admission earlier today gave me even more motivation.

I’m not nineteen anymore, Annie, and I don’t leave women unsatisfied. ’

Annie swallowed hard. Holy shit . She forced herself to take a step back, to step away from this man and his smirk and his alarmingly accurate knowledge of her inner workings.

Because he was right on all accounts, but especially the fact that she had not and would not forgive him.

And it was that and not his very appealing offer that she had to focus on.

‘Just help me get the damn thing in the van,’ she ground out.

Mac chuckled, knowing exactly the effect he was having on her. ‘Of course, darling. Anything for you. But you’re not taking the van.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Because I’m driving you.’

‘No, you aren’t.’

‘Yes, I am. The roads are terrible, and I have snow tires.’

Annie nearly growled in frustration. ‘ Fine .’

If this man was her Christmas miracle, she would like to file a complaint with Santa or the baby Jesus or whoever was in charge, because the only miracle here would be if she didn’t kill or kiss Mac before the wedding was over.

And either option felt equally ill-advised.