Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)(34)

As I drove away, my skin still humming and twitching the same way it did when I left PT, I realized he didn't answer my question about the interview. Their street disappeared in my rearview, and I told myself I'd ask him about it tomorrow.





Chapter 12





Levi





Have you ever accidentally popped the seam on one of those refrigerated tubes of cinnamon rolls? If you pressed too hard or even just peeled the wrapping off, you risked releasing the pressure. Once that happened, you had no choice, no way to undo what you'd just done.

It was the worst, most accurate analogy I could think of for what was happening once I'd realized I had to start trying to get Joss to see me as something other than her best friend.

There was no way for me to undo it.

Bringing her a box of flours was … ill-advised, considering I'd forgotten that we'd once watched that movie together. So what if some clever scriptwriter thought of it first? But the look on her face, even after she realized it wasn't precisely my idea, made the whole thing worth it.

It made her happy. Made her smile. But that was still not what made me feel like I was driving a runaway train.

Working out with her was.

In the five years of being friends with her—being friends with her while also being in love with her—I'd never felt the tension between us like I had in the gym today.

I wanted to lick the sweat off her collarbone. Prowl over top of her and take her mouth with mine while gripping her hips for an entirely different reason.

And even if it had only been for a split second, I saw how still she became before I lifted her up, when my hands were on her. Joss was holding her body so tightly, with such control, because something had popped open, air hissing from a split seam, and there was nothing I could do to undo it, even if I'd wanted to.

It would have been so easy to lean forward and touch my lips to the back of her neck, to wrap my arms around her and bury my nose in her hair and inhale her like an addict would a neatly tapped line of drugs.

Which was why it was so ironic that I now couldn't figure out what to do next. For as much as Joss gave me shit about my ease with women, she was the puzzle I couldn't figure out how to put together. The edges were connected, the majority of the picture clear and assembled and snapped in place, but you needed the missing pieces to see the full picture. Without them, you couldn't quite figure out what it was.

Did I think I was the best man for her? Hell yes.

In a very masculine and non-pathetic way, I'd love her for the rest of my life, no matter whether she ever realized it or not. The Buchanan men had never done it any other way.

The story was told that when my Great-Great-Grandmother Kathleen died of pneumonia at the age of thirty-two, leaving my great-great-grandfather a widower with two sons, he never once thought of remarrying. His heart was done for long ago, it was said. It met its match, found the one that changed his life, and he never regretted the years he spent alone because he had twelve years with the person he loved.

It was as good as gospel in my immediate family. Anyone who met my parents viewed them as the holy grail of partnerships.

Maybe that was stupid. My dad's brother, Uncle Glenn, thought the entire thing was "twice-baked bullshit," which was why my cousins, Grady and Grace, thought we were insane for buying the stories.

Easy for them to say. They'd never felt their heart leave their body at the mere presence of the right person.

Joss still had that effect on me, five years later.

When she worked the next day, we texted but didn't see each other.

And as I sat, staring at the blank computer screen since I'd closed out the window I'd used for my video interview—something that I'd thought it was only a favor from my oldest brother, but now it felt like a real opportunity, one I'd be a complete idiot to turn down if they offered it to me—I knew I'd have to find a way to stick those opened cinnamon rolls in a hot oven.

Groaning at the stupid, stupid comparison, I dropped my head on my desk and banged my forehead against the hard surface a few times.

When Hunter called favor, he called in a favor.

I have a family at my school that would probably talk to you, he'd said in a text. Let me see if they'll look at your resume.

That family owned an NFL team in Seattle. The wife was the owner. Of a professional football team. The professional football team that won the freaking Super Bowl the previous year. Her husband was the retired quarterback. And I'd spent an hour chatting with their head trainer because the daughter of the owner was a student at my brother's school.

It was a dream come true. Working with athletes of that caliber had my mind racing and my heart thudding in my chest at an uncomfortable pace, like someone had replaced that simple organ with a bass drum mallet and was hammering away at the insides of my rib cage.

And if they offered me a job, I'd be a fool to say no. An absolute, utter fool.

But the only thing I could think was how wrong it felt to even consider living across the country from Joss. The idea made my stomach curl with acid. Might as well chop my arm off and leave it back in Tennessee.

How did I explain this to her in a way that would make sense that I'd want her to come with me if it happened? The trainer, Brian, all but promised me that they'd want to fly me out to Seattle for a final interview.

I rubbed at the aching spot in my chest when I imagined trying to tell her.