Always the Baker, Finally the Bride (5 page)

“With pleasure,” she replied, and her lips stretched into a grin. “I love you.”

Jackson sighed. “See you tomorrow.”

“Count on it.”

Emma let him disconnect the call before she folded up her cell phone and laid it on the desk. She said a quick, silent prayer for Jackson to have an easy night’s sleep, asking God to guide him to the right decision and thanking Him for such a wonderful man with whom to share her life.

And my pulse is pounding against my skull again, Lord. Please make it stop
.

Staring down at the outline of a cake on her sketch pad, Emma recalled that first day when she met Jackson at the bakery where she used to work. She hadn’t even known it was raining until she spotted the droplets on his jacket.

“You know, these brownies are awesome with hazelnut coffee. Can I interest you in—”

“No, thanks,” he said, cutting her offer right in two. “Just black.”

Emma tried to resist the urge to tempt him further, and she was successful for about twenty seconds. Then, with a charming smile, she extended a glass coffeepot toward him
.

“Dark roast. Extra bold. Hazelnut’s perfect with chocolate.”

He didn’t raise his chin, only his eyes, as he glared at her across the bakery case. “Just black. Thank you.”

Emma shook her head and slipped the pot back to its place before grabbing the Colombian from one of the adjacent burners
.

“Black it is.”

He raked his dark hair with both hands, and his milk-chocolate brown eyes met hers without warning. There was a world of conversation between them in that one frozen moment in time, and she peeled her gaze away, trying not to stare at the slightly off-center cleft in his square chin
.

“That’ll be four dollars and eighteen cents.”

He slipped a five toward her and muttered, “Keep the change.”

She hesitated, wondering if she should bother to point out that she was the baker and not a waitress. And then she realized the tip was only about 80 cents
.

Stand-up guy.

While GQ took his cup and plate and settled at a table near the window, Emma wiped down the counter and started a new pot of decaf
.

A sort of happy grunt called her attention back to her customer, and she tripped over the crooked grin he aimed in her direction
.

“What’s in this?” he asked her, wiping a smear of chocolate from the corner of his mouth. “It’s fantastic.”

He’d ordered another six of them to take back to his office, and Emma hadn’t realized until much later that the chance meeting in the bakery where she worked had actually marked the start of the rest of her life.

She opened the box of colored pencils and spilled them out on the desk. Less than an hour later, Emma’s scavenger
hunt ended in success, and she leaned back and admired the wedding cake on the page before her.

Flowers on top and between each layer . . . a simple ribbon adornment . . . and a thin, leafy scrollwork pattern on the sides . . . It was the perfect cake to represent the fairy tale that had begun that rainy day in The Backstreet Bakery.

Emma quickly scribbled a title beneath the cake and smiled. There wasn’t another man on the planet she’d rather spend Once Upon a Time with.

Do you have a minute for me, boss?”

Jackson glanced up from his computer screen to find his assistant, Susannah Littlefield, gripping the doorjamb, smiling at him.

“Of course. Come in.”

She smoothed the salt-and-pepper bun atop her head and removed the wire glasses from her knob of a nose as she approached him.

“Have a seat,” he invited, waving toward the chairs on the other side of the desk. “What’s up?”

“I’m not sure how to begin,” she admitted.

“Well, Susannah. Nothing good ever starts with
those
words.”

She chuckled. “I suppose it’s all in your perspective.”

“After fifteen years together, I would think there’s very little we can’t talk about,” he reminded her. “Just spill it out on the table, and we’ll sort through it.”

“All right,” she said with a nod. “I would like to retire in the spring, Jackson.”

He felt the words thump to a landing somewhere at the top of his gut.

“This
coming
spring?”

Susannah chuckled again. “I thought I might. After the wedding.”

Jackson raked through his hair with both hands before leaning back against the leather chair. Susannah looked so expectant, but he couldn’t think of anything to say in reply.

“There’s time to hire someone else, and for me to train her in the basics of hotel business, and I think—”

“Retire, Susannah? Really?”

She nodded.

“I can’t even remember what I did without you.”

Susannah smiled at him, one of those maternal, knowing smiles she’d been smiling even before her dark hair entertained notions of silver strands.

“I won’t leave you in the lurch,” she promised. “I’ll find someone just as accommodating . . .”

“Not possible.”

“. . . whose computer skills are top-notch . . .”

“Well, I’ll need that, won’t I?”

“. . . with outstanding references.”

Jackson fidgeted with the pen in front of him while he processed the thought of losing Susannah. When he’d left his corporate career in pursuit of his late wife’s dream of transforming The Tanglewood Inn into a wedding destination hotel, this woman had blindly followed him into the great unknown. He’d once told her that he felt as if the two of them had entered a jungle armed with nothing but machetes and boots appropriate for wading through knee-deep mud. She’d done her fair share of swinging that machete since then, carving out a clear path toward a successful business. Without Susannah, and his sisters too, he never could have come through it with his sanity intact.

And, of course, there’d been Emma by his side.

Jackson sighed at the thought of her, and he checked the time on the clock that sat on the shelf by the door. She’d be home from Savannah in a few hours.

“You’ll have to give me some time to digest this, Susannah.”

“Of course,” she said, rising to her feet.

“Can we talk about it again at the end of the week?”

“We can.”

“But in the meantime, I’d just like to thank you,” he told her in a hoarse, emotional tone. “You’re a treasure.”

She paused at the door and smiled at him. “Thank you, Jackson. I’ve enjoyed working for you more than I can tell you.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She started to turn away, but she stopped in her tracks. “Oh. Don’t forget you have lunch downstairs with your sister in half an hour.”

He grinned. “I did forget, Susannah. Thank you, yet again.”

As he slipped into his jacket and straightened his tie, Jackson wondered if Susannah’s impending departure wasn’t just the first sign that the end of an era approached. Perhaps the sale of The Tanglewood was simply a logical conclusion?

“I’ll be back in an hour,” he told Susannah as he crossed through her office and headed down the hall.

Jackson pressed the call button for the elevator, and it rang almost immediately. His thoughts still behind him with Susannah and her retirement announcement, he took a step forward the moment the door slid open. But in the same instant, a small tornado blew out of the car and smacked hard into him.

“Whoa, whoa there,” he said, taking the little girl by the shoulders. “Watch where you’re going before you hurt yourself, or someone else, huh?”

A coarse mane of reddish-brown hair masked half of her face, and she glared up at him with one chestnut eye. “Sorry,” she muttered halfheartedly, wriggling away from him.

“Wait a second. Where are you headed in such a hurry, huh?”

“Nowhere.”

“Well, this floor isn’t for hotel guests,” he informed her. “This is our suite of offices. Where are you trying to go?”

“I told you, Nowhere.”

“Well, Nowhere is not on this floor, so let’s turn right around and get back on the elevator, all right?”

She thought it over, shrugged impatiently, and appeared to toss herself back into the elevator. Jackson followed her and pressed the Lobby button. “What about you? What floor is your room on?”

“Two,” she said without looking up at him.

“Okay,” he replied, and he pressed the button for her. “And when we arrive at the second floor, maybe you could dial it back, just a little, so no one gets run over?”

She chuckled. “Yeah, okay.”

When they reached the second floor, the little girl slid through a minuscule opening and tromped down the hall before the doors even opened completely. Jackson shook his head as he pressed the button to close them again.

It wasn’t until he reached Morelli’s and Norma waved him toward her table that his thoughts drifted back to his conversation with Susannah.

“You look like you’ve had quite a morning,” his sister observed.

“You have no idea.”

“What is that all over your suit, Jackson?”

He glanced down at the smears of white powder and grimaced. One of them bore a strange resemblance to a small hand, and he groaned as he dusted it off.

“A small hurricane barreled into me on the elevator,” he said. “I have no idea what she’d been into to make this mess.”

“Is she a guest?”

“I assume so. She said her room is on the second floor, but she was trying to get off the elevator on four.”

“Ahh,” Norma nodded with a grin. “An explorer.”

“A messy one.”

“I would say so. Have a seat and let’s get a little lunch into you. Now tell me, when is Emma Rae due back?”

“Later today,” he replied, still brushing the front of his jacket as he sat down. “Seems like she’s been gone for a month. Hey, did you know Susannah plans to retire?”

“Oh, she talked to you, hmm?”

Jackson looked up at Norma and glared. “You knew?”

“She may have mentioned it.”

The youngest of his three sisters, Norma was the one who knew Jackson best. In turn, the glint in her hazel eyes, and the way she brushed back her sandy hair as she opened the menu before her, told him all he needed to know. Like everything else around his hotel, Norma had no doubt known about Susannah’s plans even before she’d cemented them.

“Anything else I’m not privy to around here, Norma Jean?”

She giggled without answering his question. “I’m thinking . . . the beef stew in a sourdough bowl. What do you think?”

“I think you’d make a lousy spy. You can’t bluff worth a dollar.”

“I’m so proud of you, Em. Do you want me to order extra flowers for the cake, or will you make them out of sugar?”

Emma grimaced at Sherilyn and shrugged.

“Don’t tell me.”

“Well, I was sold on this cake last night. It just seemed to fit Jackson and me so perfectly. But in the light of day—”

Sherilyn’s groan cut her words in two.

“What did I miss?” Fee asked as she blew through the front door. Sherilyn’s expression drove her to pivot onto another topic. “I’ve got all of the bags in the car. Who’s driving, Emma? Me or you?”

“You’d better drive,” Sherilyn interjected. “Emma Rae is preoccupied. We might end up in Key West.”

“Preoccupied with what? I thought things were great since she decided on the . . .” Fee paused, looking from Sherilyn to Emma and back again. “Ohhhh. That’s not good.”

“I just think there might be—” Emma began, and Fee pressed a hand to her shoulder, nudging her toward the front door. Sherilyn waddled past her and took the front porch steps with caution as Emma pressed the security code into the keypad next to the door. “—you know,” she continued as she and Fee followed Sherilyn, “I just thought there might be another cake that is more representative of our whole relationship, you know?”

“You’ve got shotgun,” Fee told her as they parted at the rear bumper of the Explorer. “Let Sherilyn sit in the back so she can put her feet up.”

“Feet!” Sherilyn exclaimed. “They’re nothing but big waterlogged stumps at the ends of my calves.”

“Anything you need for the drive back?” Emma asked her.

“I don’t know,” Sherilyn began, rolling her eyes upward as she twisted her red hair into an elastic band. “Maybe some water. But then that might mean we’ll have to stop in a few
minutes. Maybe a snack instead. What do you think, Em? What snack is most representative of a pregnant woman whose best friend is plucking her last nerve?”