Make Your Move (10 page)

He took her to a science exhibit at a local museum, and she took him shopping. He took her to the planetarium—where, granted, they had missed most of the show when the room turned dark—and she took him on a food-tasting excursion.

It was his turn now. Since he had met her friends, and liked them, he figured it was time to introduce her to some of his buddies. Dan had work friends at the university, and in various areas of life, like most people did. But the people he was introducing her to today, they were special.

“Hey, I know you’re beat from the deluge of customers, but I wondered if you’d want to make a stop on the way back to your place?” he asked as they left the store after a busy afternoon.

He’d been helping out more at the shop and enjoying that, too. It was the nice thing about his academic schedule—he could be very flexible. He could see why she enjoyed working at the shop. It was a very different kind of gratification than what he got from intellectual
work, but no less important. She made beautiful pastries, not just the cookies, and people enjoyed them. She had regulars who came by all the time, and Jodie always asked about their families, their lives. She connected with people, and they liked her. She was extremely good at what she did, which made the business more of a success than any secret formula ever could.

She looked at him with sexy mischief. “What did you have in mind?”

He chuckled. “I’d like to introduce you to a few of my friends here, at the park.”

“Sure, who?”

“You will love these guys. And they are going to think you’re the cat’s pajamas.”

She wrinkled up her brow at his phrasing and he smiled, putting his hand out for hers as they closed up and walked along the streets of Old Town, past the quaint specialty shops and beautiful historic houses. Jodie turned to him.

“Where are we going, exactly?”

“Just over to the shore.”

She eyed him speculatively, shrugging, and Dan enjoyed every moment of strolling along the street with her hand in his. They stopped to buy some drinks, and turned out toward where the busy Lake Shore Drive was between them and the sparkling waters of Lake Michigan.

People ran along the paved walkway past the looming structure of the Chess Pavilion, where he’d spent many of his off hours since living in Chicago.

“My dad taught me chess when I was three, and he
told me if I knew chess, I’d always have friends. That there would always be someone to play with,” he explained. “Ended up being the truth.”

“Oh, is this your chess club?”

“Yeah. They’re a bunch of great guys. They have a group at the university, too, but I like this better,” he said.

He’d mentioned playing chess to Jodie from time to time, and had even tried to teach her, but she didn’t really get into it, which was fine. But he wanted the guys to meet her. His parents were in Florida, and they had met Jodie plenty of times, though he hadn’t told them yet about the new turn in their relationship. He figured it wasn’t safe to say anything until he knew for sure how Jodie felt about him. But meeting his chess friends was almost like having her meet his parents.

His entire body relaxed as it always did here by the water. Several pairs of players concentrated fiercely on their game on this gorgeous afternoon, several of them with money on the table.

Dan pulled Jodie along to a group of older men at the rear of the pavilion. Two played while four more looked on.

He glanced at Jodie and lifted his finger to his lips, until the move was made. Then another, and another in quick succession until a queen was toppled and a shout of success went up from the winner, a moan from the guys on the other side of the table.

“That was the whole game? I thought people took a long time between moves in chess?” Jodie blurted out, and Dan laughed.

“Sorry I’m late, fellas. I brought someone by for you to meet,” Dan said, and all of the men turned to look, their faces lighting up as they saw Jodie.

He’d told them about her over the years, of course. He never revealed his real feelings, but his friends weren’t stupid. They’d advised him from time to time, and he valued their age and their wisdom.

“Why this must be Jodie,” Jerry Saunders said, standing to take Jodie’s hand, which he brought to his lips in a debonair gesture. Jodie chuckled and turned a little pink.

“Jerry is the playboy of the bunch, watch out for him, honey,” Clip said, pushing his way forward and breaking Jerry’s hold. “You stick with me, beautiful.”

Dan watched as his chess friends stumbled over themselves charmingly in their welcome of Jodie. Karl Hanover, a quiet man who sat over behind Harry, sent a quiet thumbs-up.

“You guys settle down, you’re going to have to have your pacemakers reset,” Harry Trumbull, the man at the table, said as he looked up at Jodie, as if taking her measure.

“You play?” Harry asked Jodie.

“Uh, no. Dan tried to teach me, but it never stuck,” she said apologetically.

“Well, watch and learn, then. Dan, come on, we wondered where you were, boy.” Harry, the oldest of the group and the winner of the last match, beckoned him to sit.

“Sorry. Things got crazy over at Jodie’s bakery,” he explained, taking his seat.

Jodie had a plethora of seats to choose, and stood looking bemused for a second, but he turned and grabbed her hand.

“Here, guys. She’s sitting with me. My good-luck charm,” he said, squeezing her hand.

Someone slapped him on the back and Harry sighed heavily. “Can we play now, lover boy?”

Dan grinned and nodded, and the timer was set.

For several rounds, he nearly forgot Jodie was sitting next to him, watching quietly. Except for her scent, which hit him every time a breeze came off the water, and the way her hand brushed his thigh when she moved.

Soon, however, Harry beat him in two rounds, and then Jerry beat him. Dan won a few after that, but he knew his focus wasn’t where it normally was.

The guys knew it, too. They played ruthlessly and with delicious intent as they took him on, one by one. In the end, a round of drinks for the rest—their weekly stakes for whoever lost the most games—was on Dan’s tab.

“They’re a bunch of sweeties,” Jodie said, standing at the bar of a local pub with Dan, sipping at a double shot of expensive Scotch, watching the guys argue about chess strategies. “I’m surprised, though. I never imagined you losing at anything.”

Dan balanced several bottles of beer between his fingers and had Jody grab his own Scotch from the bar as they made their way back to the group. “Are you kidding me? You kill me at gin every time we play.”

“I mean
smart
games. I would have thought you’d
be a chess champion or something. Harry’s a hoot. He loved beating you.”

“He beats me most of the time. He invited me into the group, and he knows my moves.”

“Not the ones I know, I bet,” she said, grinning and winking at him as they walked back.

“No, I imagine not,” he agreed, pausing midway to the table. “But I’m not foolproof, Jodie, and I think you’d know that more than anyone. I botch plenty of things and, to be honest, one of the reasons I’m glad you accepted my invitation to the reception is because I absolutely hate delivering papers. I have never liked public speaking. No matter how much I do it,” he said with a shudder.

“I didn’t know that,” she said in surprise. “Hmm.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Just surprised, that’s all.”

“I know it’s hard for you to accept that I’m not perfect. I get that a lot, actually.” He tried to say it in complete seriousness but could barely repress the grin.

She moaned. “Puh-leese.”

“There are so many things I guess we still don’t know about each other, even after all this time,” she said, shaking her head.

Dan grinned, loving how she fit in with his group. He enjoyed her friends, too.

Maybe they didn’t know everything about each other, but they knew what was important.

J
ODIE HUMMED HAPPILY
as she baked, feeling light and positive as she worked. Life was good. Business was good. Things with Dan were very good.

The trouble with the bakery had more or less blown over. There had been no big disruptions and business was buzzing along as always. They had lost a few customers, and she’d had to arm wrestle the local organization who listed her bakery as a stop on their local food tours into not dropping them, but overall, things were settling down.

There was an ongoing back and forth on the editorial pages in the paper where local people made some scathing and unfounded judgments, but then there were people who spoke up for the bakery, too. It was encouraging, and they had even picked up some new business.

Overall, Jason’s plan had backfired, she thought with satisfaction, sliding a tray of cookies into the oven. They had taken a few lumps, but it was turning out okay.

Checking the clock, she frowned. Ginger was late
again. It had been happening more, and she was distracted when she was here. Jodie didn’t know if it was because of her new romance with her ex-husband, or if she was taking on too much between family and working two jobs, but it was difficult not to be annoyed.

Jodie tried not to be judgmental, but Just Eat It was her business, and she had to have reliable help. Hopefully, whatever was happening with Ginger and Scott would sort itself out soon. She didn’t want to have to be “the boss” with her friend, but if it came down to it, she would.

Needless to say, she was relieved when she heard the back door open and shut, and turned to greet Ginger, hoping to find out what had made her late, but found herself staring in wordless shock at Jason Kravitz instead.

“You! You turn right back around and get the hell out of my shop,” Jodie hissed, her fingers opening and closing around the handle of a very large rolling pin.

“Is that any way to greet a guy you almost slept with?” Jason said with a sickening smile.

“Get. Out. Now.”

“Jeez,” he said, walking around the other side of a large stainless-steel table, putting it between her and him as he eyed the rolling pin. “I’d think twice about the rolling pin—don’t want your business in the paper again so soon, do you? Bakery owner not only sells hopped-up products, but is charged with assault. Could there be a link?” he said mockingly, as if citing a newspaper headline.

“It would be self-defense,” Jodie countered. Why wouldn’t this creep just go away?

“Your word against mine, just like everything else,” he replied without missing a beat. His eyes were trained on hers, cold and calm. How could she have not noticed before what a jerk he was? Normally, she had good instincts about men, but this time, she’d really botched it.

“Why are you here?” she asked between clenched teeth. “Were you hoping to steal something else?”

“Hardly. Maybe I’m here to ask you on another date?”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

“You never know.”

“Oh, I know. And we’ve seen record sales this week. So it didn’t work anyway,” she said, hoping the news bit him hard. “Your sabotage didn’t work.”

Jason’s expression was feigned shock. “It wasn’t my intention to cause you to lose your business. If it was, I would have gone to the FDA directly. They probably wouldn’t have done much, as your formula is harmless vegetable extracts, but it would have been a concern for your customers, wouldn’t it? Of course, I knew that the news coverage and minor controversy would probably bring in as many people as it would discourage, maybe more.”

“So what? You want me to thank you for defaming us? Our product?” she asked sarcastically.

Jodie was confused. If he hadn’t been trying to get revenge on her and Dan, then what was his endgame? She asked him as much, and he shrugged, pursing his
lips in a very unattractive way. It gave her the willies to think that she’d almost gone to bed with this guy. Or that she had thought that he was ever, remotely, like Dan.

“Well, basically, I wanted to yank Dan’s chain. He’s our departmental golden boy,” Jason said with no small amount of derision. “He gets whatever he wants. Funding, projects, graduate student researchers…it makes me sick. Now that he’s been appointed Chair, it gives him even more authority. Plenty of other scientists deserve those resources he sucks up.”

“Jealous much?” Jodie said with a tight smile.

“Hardly. I’m a brilliant scientist. My work in agriculture could help feed millions, but my work is being waylaid by politics and schmoozing, and Dan is the main offender. He’s the one who’s jealous of me. I expect you to do something about it.”

Jodie blinked. “Listen, I don’t know where this is all going, but what on earth can I do?”

“Let’s put it this way, I said it wasn’t my intention to damage your business, but that’s not to say I won’t.”

Jodie ground her teeth, hearing the bell ring out front.

“I have to get the counter. If you’re staying, you’re going out front. No way am I leaving you here alone.”

“Fine, you first. I love watching you walk out of a room, you know,” he said, making her wish she could avoid turning around as she left the kitchen.

It took every bit of discipline she had to wait on a couple of young women who seemed to take forever to make their choices, but finally she rang them up and returned to Jason.

“So, I believe we were at a point where you were threatening me again?” she said bitingly, her good mood down the drain.

“It’s simple. I asked Dan a favor, to help push through approval on a project of mine, and he’s declined the application. It was stupid of him. If he had made a wiser choice, none of this would have happened.”

Jodie saw red, and held her hand up in a stopping gesture while she got hold of what he was telling her.

“Wait—you mean this was all about blackmailing Dan? You’re using me and my bakery to try to make him do favors for you at the school?”

“I don’t think of it as blackmail, I think of it as fair play. I have been on the unfair side of things for a while, and I want to even the playing field. You were a handy tool in trying to make that happen.”

“You’re the one who made the huge mistake, if you ever thought Dan would sell out, for anything. Even for me, or this bakery. You played the wrong hand, buddy,” she said.

Jason’s eyes widened. “You aren’t the least bit upset that he would betray you, that he wouldn’t do something as simple as signing over some money to a good project in order to save you more distress, and maybe even save your business? If he really loved you, don’t you think—”

“Stop right there. Like you would have any notion of what it means to love someone,” she accused.

She was the last one she thought would be making this particular argument, but her heart told her exactly
what to say. “I would never want him to sell out on his ethics for scum like you.”

In truth, though she would never let Jason see it, his words scorched her. Why hadn’t Dan told her about this? Dan had been operating on a whole other level. Was he afraid to tell her what was going on because he thought she’d stop having sex with him?

No, she couldn’t believe that. Not of Dan. But she also wondered why he would keep this from her, and what she was going to do now. His betrayal wasn’t in holding the line with Jason, but in not telling her what was really going on. Didn’t he think she could handle it?

“That’s sweet, but not very practical. Are you sure he’s worth risking this business for? What you’ve worked all these years for?” he asked with a sweeping gesture of his arm around the kitchen.

Jodie tipped up her chin, ready to fight. For herself, Dan, and for her bakery.

“And just how do you suppose you can threaten any of this? You’ve taken your best shot. And you’re right. The FDA doesn’t have any concerns about my formula. Dan already ran it by the people he knows there, so you’ve been cut off at the pass on that one,” she said with no small amount of satisfaction.

Jason nodded, looking far too calm. “Right, but should your special formula be released into the wild, then you have a whole new set of problems. What would happen should your competitors get hold of it, or say, it just sort of made the rounds on the Internet?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I have no choice. Dan seems to need a little extra motivation to push that proposal through. Sharing that recipe…that would hurt, wouldn’t it? Your product would be one more overpriced cookie among a sea of them, driving down the price and making it not very special at all. You might survive, like you did before, but your signature product would be a thing of the past.”

Jodie felt the blood drain from her face down to her feet, and the hand that had been around a rolling pin earlier now gripped the counter.

“You can’t do that. I’d sue you. That’s a patented formula, and we could take anyone who used it to court.”

“Sure, you could, and rack up legal fees, more press coverage, wasted time—and meanwhile, you have no proof I stole or distributed anything, and your competitors would be selling cookies like hotcakes,” he said, and frowned mockingly. “Hmm…that is a mildly humorous comparison, isn’t it?”

Jodie was mute with rage. He was right, but what could she do? She walked to the kitchen, needing to catch her breath, and heard him follow her.

“So what do you think I can do about it, Jason? There’s no way I’m going to ask Dan to approve your money. I couldn’t do that, and he wouldn’t change his mind anyway.”

His eyebrows went up as he turned for the door. “That would be unfortunate. It seems to me that maybe you are far more devoted to him than he is to you, but that’s your business.”

“Get out,” she said in no uncertain terms, her hand around the rolling pin again.

“I’m on my way. You think about it. You have until Monday,” he said. “Then your secret formula won’t be so secret after all.”

Jodie took a deep breath as the back door slammed behind him, and she rushed over to lock it, something she should have done in the first place, but her mind had been elsewhere that morning.

Just as she did, she saw Ginger pull into the lot behind the alley, and so Jodie stood in the doorway like a mother waiting for an errant child who had come home after hours.

“Where have you been?” she asked as Ginger walked up to the door. She knew she was being less than gracious, but her mind was fried from dealing with Jason, and her emotions raw. What was she going to do?

“I know I’m late again, I’m sorry but—”

“I can’t have this Ginger. I have a business to run, and I needed you here this morning. I can’t keep coming in and having to guess if you’re going to show up that day or not,” Jodie said again, knowing she was being too severe, but she was angry and Ginger’s excuses felt like one more betrayal.

One more person who put their life, their needs, their wants, before hers. One more person who asked her to understand while she shouldered the cost of it.

Ginger looked shell-shocked and exhausted. On some level, Jodie was concerned, but her own emotions were so frazzled, she couldn’t make room for Ginger’s at the moment.

Wouldn’t it be better just to have a reliable employee she could count on? Being friends with her employees
maybe wasn’t the best policy, she thought darkly. All of her friendships, the one with Dan, the one with Ginger, were getting far too complicated and problematic. Still, what could she do?

Ginger shook her head, not coming through the door. “Jodie, I don’t know what to say. You’re right. I know I’ve been struggling with meeting all of these new things, the job at the hospital, finding time for Scott and Anna and working here. I’ve wanted to do it all, and Scott was saying he thought something had to give…” Ginger trailed off, searching for a tissue in her pocketbook.

Jodie’s heart seized up. She knew something bad was coming, and she held her breath.

“He thinks I should quit,” Ginger said in a choked voice, and Jodie froze.

Revved up from Jason, her emotions jangled and Ginger’s quitting did hit her as a betrayal.

“Do you want to quit?” Jodie asked stiffly, her fingers gripping the doorway so tightly they hurt. How had this good day gone bad so quickly?

“No! I love working for you. If anything, I’d rather quit the hospital. It’s so stressful and political there. With Scott’s income, I could work here and maybe eventually start my own physical therapy business. But…”

“But you can’t trust him enough to put your life in his hands that way. Not yet,” Jodie finished for her.

Ginger nodded. “I want to, and I want us to have a chance, but I don’t know what to do.”

Jodie sighed, her temper settling down, and she opened the door wider. “Come on in. You’re not quitting, but we are going to figure out how to make this
work. You can’t just keep doing what’s right for everyone else, Ginger, and not for yourself.”

Back inside, they did talk it through, and Jodie was relieved that Ginger, who had become more friend than employee, wasn’t going to quit.

Ginger figured she could go half time at the hospital, lightening her load there, and keep the bakery job. She also promised to be on time more often.

And if Scott didn’t like it, he could get lost.

Jodie found herself hoping they’d work it out, and was surprised at the change in her own thinking.

“Are you okay?” Ginger asked, after she’d calmed down, happier that a solution had been reached. “You looked kind of upset when I showed up.”

“I…just have a lot on my mind,” Jodie hedged. Ginger had enough to worry about without Jodie adding on the worry that her business could be in real danger, depending on what happened with Jason.

Being with Dan had put her in the potential position of losing everything she’d worked for. She also knew that she had spoken the truth to Jason—Dan would never compromise his ethics, not even for her. And she wouldn’t want him to. She would never ask that of him.

But couldn’t she at least ask Dan about it?

It wouldn’t go over well, she knew, but she had to at least ask him. What happened then would, like Ginger and Scott, tell Jodie what their relationship was made of.

W
ITH EVERYTHING GOING ON
, Jodie had almost forgotten that she had a date with Dan that evening. He’d insisted on taking her out for dinner, like a couple.