DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(57)

“Yes, ma’am. My conference period is from eleven to noon. Or I could see you after school.”

“It’ll have to be after school.”

“Great. I’ll see you at four.”

He hung up before I could say anything else. I glanced at JT again.

“What’s going on in English?”

JT shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“There must be something going on or he wouldn’t have called.”

JT just stared out the window.

“I really don’t want to go in there without some sort of idea what’s going on. Are you failing? Did you do that essay he assigned last week?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? Maybe you forgot to turn it in.”

“I didn’t forget.”

“JT…”

But we had pulled up to the school by then. He grabbed his backpack and jumped out of the van before I even had a chance to pull to the curb. I groaned as I watched him rush off toward the main doors, high fiving several of his friends as they came over to greet him.

JT had always been something of an enigma to me. I remembered the adoption process. I was nine when my parents first met with his birth mother. That day sticks out in my memory because my mother was crying when they came home and my mom never cried in front of me. She showed me a sonogram picture the woman had given her, talking about the little brother I would soon have. And, sure enough, two months later, my parents disappeared in the middle of the night and arrived home with a screaming little baby wrapped in a heavy blue blanket. I wasn’t the kind of little girl who played with baby dolls, so I wasn’t terribly impressed with JT—Jonathon Tyler. As time went on, and JT took up more and more of my parents’ attention, I liked him even less. And then we moved and I was forced to leave my school, my ballet classes, my friends, my house…I had to leave everything. I was heartbroken. And I blamed it on JT.

Sometimes I thought that resentment toward JT is what brought me to this place. I mean, I learned to tolerate him as I matured. By high school, I was pretty much okay with having a little brother. I was relieved to go to college and be on my own, but I was okay with JT. But then, just as I started my own life, I had to come home and take custody of him. If not for him, if not for the bakery my mom loved so much, if not for all the regret and guilt that settled on my shoulders along with the grief, the loss, the pain of their deaths, I might have stayed in New York. But I owed it to my mom and dad to make sure their dreams stayed alive in both the bakery and JT. They wanted JT to have the experience of growing up in a small town like they had. Both my parents were from small towns—my dad from a small town in Florida and my mom from here, this little town in the panhandle of Texas—and both had wanted that for JT. So my dad quit his job as a literature professor at the State University of New York at Albany and we moved here. And I spent the next eight years trying to get back. And I did. And it lasted eight months.

I eased the van back into traffic and turned back toward the town square where the bakery waited for my return. I parked the van out front—free advertising—and stepped out, waving to Mrs. Olsen as she walked out of the bakery with a box of donuts balanced on her arm. Everyone knew everyone around here. I could tell you who owned and worked in each of the businesses along the square. The bank building across from us housed the doctor, a small pharmacy, an insurance office, and, of course, the bank on the bottom floor. Next to it was the library. Beside that was the county museum. Then there was the bakery, the bookstore next to it, and the city offices down on the corner. That was about it, all of downtown.

It was a very small town.

I pasted a smile on my face and pushed through the front doors of the bakery, nodding to all the familiar faces standing in line to get their morning sugar fix. Angela, one of only two employees I was able to afford, flashed a genuine smile as I slid behind the counter. I don’t know how she could always be so happy. It was like nothing bad had ever been bad enough to steal Angela’s joy. I wish I could be that optimistic.

Nick was in the back, carefully laying fondant across the cake we were working on when I left. It was a seven layer cake for an afternoon wedding that was taking place in less than five hours. We were due to deliver it in two. We weren’t going to make it.

“How many is that?”

“Four.”

I shook my head as I washed my hands and quickly dried them. “Why don’t you get started on the flowers and I’ll finish the fondant.”

He just nodded, silently finishing what he’d begun.

I’d known Nick since high school. He was a few years older than me, but with the town being so small, we had a couple of classes together. Then he started working for my parents his senior year and never really left. He attended college locally, graduating the same year I did. Yet, he stayed. I didn’t understand it. But, of course, there were generations and generations of people who elected to stay in this little town for reasons I would never fully understand.

I grabbed another layer and set it on the table, taking a ball of fondant and running it through the rollers to flatten it to the proper thickness. We worked in silence, covering the remaining layers in half the time it would have taken otherwise. Then I began to stack them on the hidden supports while Nick created delicate flowers out of buttercream frosting.

“JT’s English teacher called me. Said he wanted to talk to me, but JT claims he has no idea why.”