Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)(35)

Yesterday, she sent me a picture from the kitchen at Donner Bakery, her nose flecked with flour and an annoyed expression on her face when a batch of pastry dough cracked open during baking. She was holding her middle finger up to one of the offending baked goods.



Joss: Asshole pate a choux didn't bake up right. Joy can't figure out how I learned so many swear words during my young life, and I had to try to explain how spending my impressionable teen years with the Buchanans gave me the vocabulary of a drunken pirate.



Me: That's cute. You say that like you weren't the one to prove to me how many times someone could use the word 'fuck' in the span of sixty seconds. You made my ears curl in on themselves.



I scrolled past my response to the picture and stared at her face, a strange combination of helplessness and desperation making me twitchy and uncomfortable. Was it as simple as sitting down her with, holding her hands with mine, and admitting that I loved her?

"Yeah, right," I muttered, shoving back from the desk after I slammed my laptop shut. Roughly, I unbuttoned the dress shirt I'd put on for the interview and tossed it onto my bed. I flopped back and scrolled through our texts, randomly stopping at the pictures she'd sent me.

When that felt like nothing but an exercise in frustration, I dropped my phone and stared at the ceiling. Joss had come over after her PT because she felt restless and in need of an outlet for the type of energy that made her feel good and strong and competent.

She was always good and strong and competent in my eyes, but that didn't mean it felt the same way in her head. I'd long ago noticed how she favored the activities that made her feel strong after something poked at the places she felt were her weakest.

I sat up, an idea floating up like a bubble.

It was one of the hottest days we'd had all summer, so I knew exactly what she and I could do that afternoon. Something that I just might be able to capture some of that snapping tension from the gym.

Five minutes later, I hung up my phone with a grin on my face and sent Joss a text.



Me: You're done with work, right?



Joss: I am. Just got back from taking Nero for a walk. It's stupid hot outside.

Joss: What do you have in mind?



Me: I'll pick you up in twenty minutes. Wear your bathing suit and leave the beast at home.



The GIF she sent me of a woman staring suspiciously at the camera made me laugh. This was either completely genius, or it would explode messily in my face. But at this point, I was willing to risk it. I'd probably risk anything as long as it got me Joss. Maybe that should have scared me, but as I pulled on my swim trunks, I knew it didn't.

The only thing I was really scared of was living a life without her in it.





"Oh great," she mumbled from behind me. "Now we can add breaking and entering to the list of horrible ideas you've had."

Over my shoulder, I gave her a pointed look. "It's not B and E if you've got the code to the lockbox, Sonic."

"Whose house is this?"

"Someone who loves my dad and said we could use their pool while they're out of town this weekend." I glanced to the side of the garage and told her to wait in the driveway while I checked the backyard, so she could decide whether she wanted to go through the house or the yard.

The sprawling home, one that my dad had been trying to sell for about four months, sat along the winding Tennessee River in Maryville. Our drive out there, farther than I remembered, consisted of Joss singing off-key to country music and me quietly obsessing over what the hell I was trying to accomplish with this little outing.

We could've gone swimming somewhere in Green Valley, but I wanted time with just her. I didn't want to worry about who we might see, or who might be jotting down the comings and goings in order to satisfy the local gossip wheel.

As I jogged down the slope of the side yard, I knew she'd be able to navigate that in her chair just fine because of the pitch of the grass. I shaded my eyes with my hand, grimacing at the flight of stairs going up to the pool. The view would be worth it once we were up there.

The hills of green were a gentle rise and fall, leading down to the tree-lined river, which hooked in curves and angles through the valley. The sun's rays reflected off the water's surface in a way that made me squint. I only took another moment or two to look at it before I ran back up to the driveway, only to stop in my tracks when I saw Joss maneuvering her chair down the grass. I shook my head, smiling at the way she'd mastered this. I'd seen it before when we were on trails around Green Valley.

The best way I could describe it was that she took the slope in one long wheelie. She knew how to lean back just enough to suspend her small front wheels in the air, the larger wheels held all her weight, and she released them in a slow, steady grip of her hands on either side.

From where I stood, hands on hips and a smile on my face, I saw the pink of her tongue pinched between her teeth in concentration.

By the time she made it to where I was, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were bright.

I leaned down to stop her with my hands on the armrests.

Joss grinned up at me. "I'm wheelie impressive, huh?"

It took every shred of self-control not to lean down and kiss the hell out of her right there.

"Yeah," I said with a smile.