Baker’s Law (15 page)

Hopefully, though, her request that Jax stay away would ensure nothing happened again.
She could focus all her energies on work, even if she was a wee bit frustrated and
flustered every time her mind unceremoniously replayed her morning in the bushes.

To distract herself, and because she already trusted Hill with the use of her store
and had given him a key, she decided she might as well train him as she would any
employee. By midafternoon, he had a pretty good hang of the register. So much so,
she took it upon herself to run out and get lunch for the both of them and left him
alone for the time it took to run the couple of blocks to Taco Bungalow.

When she walked back into Sweets by Marissa, her stomach was growling. “Lunch,” she
called out. Hill didn’t immediately pop back and get his grub, so she tossed her keys
aside and went to the front to see if he needed any help with customers.

Hill stood blocking the front door with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. A
blond guy, a little bit smaller than Hill, stood in nearly the same position, both
almost nose-to-nose. A chill ran up Marissa’s spine when she recognized the guy from
the previous week. He’d been standing outside the shop with his buddies. Watching
her.

Two other guys—maybe from the other night, too, but she couldn’t say for sure—stood
behind him shifting around from foot to foot. When one of them caught sight of her,
he tapped the blond guy on the arm. The frown he’d been focusing on Hill turned into
a sneer as he locked eyes on her. He said something low under his breath and sauntered
away with the kind of swagger a young guy gets when he feels entitled to the world.

Hill didn’t move until the three young men were completely out of sight. And then
he moved back but still stayed all puffed up. She’d never once been afraid of Hill,
but she didn’t ever want to be on the other side of that quiet aggression.

“Everything okay, Hill?”

Finally Hill rolled his shoulders and relaxed a bit. He still didn’t speak but gave
her a quick nod.

“Go on back and eat. I left the tacos on the work bench.” She was suddenly not hungry
and she wanted to give Hill a moment alone to calm down.

She left him completely alone until the foot traffic picked up and she needed to call
him up front to help. The after-church crowd came with an unexpected volume. She recognized
a couple of people from the club that morning. No one said anything but she did get
a couple of odd glances. As long as they bought cupcakes she didn’t care how many
sales were generated from curiosity.

When it slowed down, she handed Hill a soda and cupcake and told him to take a quick
break. As he got settled at the worktable and took a big bite of the snack, she asked,
“Are you going to tell me what’s up with those guys who were here earlier?”

A blush cruised across his cheeks as he practically swallowed the bite whole. “Nothing.
Just guys I used to go to school with.”

“It didn’t look like nothing.”

Hill shrugged, then shoved the rest of the cupcake in his mouth.

She waited until he’d finished before she said, “They’ve been here before.” His gaze
shot up to hers. “The morning I found you in the store, they were outside the shop.”

His shoulders went rigid.

Marissa reached across the worktable and set her hand on his. “You can talk to me,
you know. If you can’t trust me at this point…” She let the words hang there but Hill
didn’t budge. She didn’t want to scare him away by prying. She was probably the only
adult who’d helped him since his father ran out—and maybe even before that. He needed
someone on his side.

A little voice in the back of her head screamed that she was making a fool out of
herself, trusting him and letting him into so many aspects of her life. Marissa stood
and went back into the front of the shop, not sure what to say. Or do for that matter.
Did she continue to trust Hill? He hadn’t given her any reason not to. And
technically
those guys were potential customers as long as they didn’t become a nuisance.

She could always call Jax and report them as a nuisance. That, however, would bring
up more questions than she was willing to answer. They’d left without issue, so for
the most part the point was moot. If they came back… She might seriously consider
calling Jax.

By the time the shift was over and it was time to close the store, Marissa was all
but dragging. She longed for a hot bath and a glass of wine. She showed Hill how to
close out the register. She wasn’t stupid, though. She took the night deposit with
her.

She told Hill good-night and made him promise to call if he needed or wanted to talk
about anything, though she didn’t think she’d hear from him. With the deposit bag
under her arm she waved a quick farewell and left him to get some sleep.

All the way to the bank, she had a tingle shooting up and down her spine. The feeling
of someone watching. Several times she glanced in her rearview mirror. It was so strong,
in fact, she once again considered calling Jax. But with the light traffic, nothing
nor no one stood out overmuch. Still, she was careful when she pulled into the bank
lot, and up to the night deposit. She made sure no one was near her. When she dropped
the bag into the slot unharmed she berated herself for being paranoid and silly. The
rest of the way home, though, she still couldn’t shake the feeling. She drove past
her house and up to the convenience store at the corner and stopped in to get a half-gallon
of milk. She would need some soon, anyway, and it would save her a trip.

When no one appeared to be following her, she headed straight to her house. “I’m just
being silly.” She pulled her SUV into the garage.

Once she’d grabbed her glass of wine and kicked off her shoes, she decided to forgo
the bath. She was too tired to mess with it. She’d just take a quick shower in the
morning. Instead she snuggled onto her sofa and flipped through the TV channels until
she found a sappy romantic comedy on cable.

Marissa downed the remainder of the red wine in her glass and debated having more,
but the bottle was clear across the room.

She snorted to herself as she set the empty glass on the table. “Lazy bum.” She sunk
lower in the sofa and grabbed the green afghan Marlie had given her for Christmas
one year. Her eyes grew heavier and heavier. She should get up and just go to bed,
but she was warm and comfy.

As her lids slid shut for the third time, a sound roused her. She sat very still and
listened. “It was probably nothing,” she said to the kissing couple on the TV screen.
She chalked it up to exhaustion and tried once again to focus on the screen.

Yet another noise jolted Marissa awake again. The TV was still on. On the screen,
a car blew sky-high, the noise ridiculous. She was surprised it hadn’t woken her sooner.
Her romantic comedy had long since ended and some action flick was in full steam.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was just after midnight, a couple of hours
after she’d first cozied up on the sofa.

She rubbed her eyes and dropped her feet to the floor, then turned the TV off. She’d
just snatched up her wine glass to take back into the kitchen when she heard a rustling
noise again. She froze midstride. It sounded like it was coming from the backyard.
Her backyard.

Still clutching the wine glass in her hands, she walked on her tiptoes to the window
that overlooked the fenced-in yard. She pulled the edge of the curtain back and scanned
the yard. A dark shadow crossed from one side to the other. She stepped back and dropped
the glass to the floor. It shattered into hundreds of tiny little pieces. “Dammit.”

For a moment, she stood frozen in her spot. She could call 911. It would go to an
after-hours officer if she was lucky. She could call Jax, have him come out and look
around, though she was afraid he might think it was a ploy to get him to come over.
Then there was her brother or father. But she didn’t want to wake up either of them
so late if it turned out to be nothing.

One hand on her hip, the other on her forehead, she took several deep breaths and
weighed her options.

Careful not to move her feet too much, she leaned forward and peered out through the
curtain again. Nothing seemed out of place, nor did anything move in the moonlit yard.

She shook herself. “You’re stressed, leading to paranoid.” She backed away from the
broken glass to go into the kitchen to get the dustpan and broom. On the way, she
turned on every light in the house as well as the one that shone into her backyard.
She might be paranoid, but that didn’t mean she was going to sit in her dark house
with shadows scaring the crap out of her.

By the time morning came around, Marissa was bleary-eyed and grumpy. She hadn’t slept
longer than a few minutes at a stretch as she kept hearing noises. But as nothing
happened by the time daylight broke, she was glad she hadn’t called anyone. It would
have only given two people an uneventful, sleepless night.

She was dragging herself through the motions as she prepared for work. When she poured
orange juice in her cereal instead of milk, she hoped it would be the worst thing
that happened in her sleep-deprived day.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Hill had taken one look at her when she walked in
and told her she looked like hell, then stammered and quickly apologized—several times.
She waved off whatever else he might say, because he wasn’t wrong. Then, shortly after
Hill had left for school, she bumped her hip hard on the counter. Later, she dropped
a carton of eggs on the floor and broke every last one of them—cussing up a storm.
By the time Kya came in at noon, Marissa was afraid she might start scaring off customers.

“Why don’t you go on home? I swear, it’s like you haven’t slept in the last two weeks
and it’s finally caught up with you.” Kya wiped down the counter, putting some distance
between them as she offered up her suggestion.

Marissa was seriously considering it, but she was waiting for Callie Carlisle to call
about her bridal shower order. “Soon,” she said, hoping it to be true. “I’m going
back to my office for a bit. Come get me if…” She waved her hand. Kya was competent
enough to handle the shop. Marissa was going to sit down at her desk and put her head
down for just a moment. Maybe a ten or fifteen minute catnap would give her enough
of a boost to get through the rest of the day—or to bide her time until the phone
call came and then she could just go on home.

She’d barely put her head down when there was a knock on her door. Kya fought back
a smile.

Marissa blinked up at her several times. “What?”

“You have paper—” Kya motioned to her cheek.

Marissa reached up and peeled a piece of paper off her cheek. “Super.” She rubbed
the sleep from her eyes. “How long was I out?”

Kya snorted. “About an hour and a half.’

Marissa blinked harder, “Seriously? Dang.” She pulled the band from her hair and scrubbed
her fingers through it, then pulled it back into a ponytail. “Did you need something?”

“Oh.” Kya jumped and her shoulders straightened. “There’s a customer out here asking
for you.”

“Okay. Give me one sec.” Marissa crossed to the small bathroom and splashed some water
onto her face. Once she’d straightened her apron she headed out to the front of the
shop.

“Marissa, how are you?” Callie smiled brightly.

“Callie, hi. What are you doing here?”

Her smile slipped slightly. “We were going to go over my order for my bridal shower.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Marissa pasted on a smile. “I was expecting to hear from you today.
I just thought you’d call in your order.”

The smile turned back up to its thousand-watt beam. “What fun is that? I thought I’d
come in and taste a few. With a couple of my bridesmaids. If that’s okay.” She waved
over to a table with three women ripped right from the junior-league directory. They
all had their heads bent over their phones. One, Logan Ramsey, perked up her head
to give a jaunty little wave before typing madly away. “Did we come at a bad time?”

“Absolutely not.” Marissa hurried over to her and walked her back to the table where
her friends sat. “Let me get you a list of what all we make. I have most here now.
And if you have about an hour, I can make a few up that we don’t have on hand.”

“I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. I enjoy it.” She motioned for Callie to sit. “Can I get y’all anything
to drink?”

An hour and a half later, Callie nailed down the four flavors she’d decided to go
with after Marissa insisted four wasn’t too many. Marissa also had a potential subsequent
order from Logan when she hosted a small fundraiser in a few months. As the ladies
gathered up their things, Callie took a moment to pull Marissa aside. “About yesterday…”

Marissa closed her eyes. “Callie, I am so sorry. I never meant to cause any trouble.”

Callie chuckled. “Don’t you worry about that, hon. I’m just sorry my mother was so
rude to you.” Her smile fled. “She had no business telling Jax to arrest you.” She
stared at Marissa for a moment, then asked, “Are you okay? I know we don’t know each
other well, and I mean this in the most helpful possible way. But, hon, you look worn
out. If this order is too much for you—”

Marissa believed the comment came from a good place. Callie was sweet. She didn’t
seem to have a malicious bone in her body despite being birthed by Medusa’s half-cousin
Bunny.

“It’s not a problem, I promise. I wouldn’t take the job if I didn’t think I’d be able
to get it done. And done right. It’s not very good advertising to have half-assed
cupcakes representing my company.” She yawned before she could stifle it. She covered
her mouth quickly. “Excuse me, sorry. I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep well. Too many
bumps in the night, I guess.”

Callie’s eyes widened. “What?”

Marissa waved her off. “I’m sure it was nothing more than my overactive imagination.
I appreciate you asking, though.” The bell over the door dinged, which gave her a
reason to excuse herself. “I’ll have these ready Friday night so there’ll be no rush
for you to get them on Saturday.”