So much for making a good impression. Muttering to himself, he flicked away the overly browned bits with his knife, then frowned down at the pies and made his decision: salvageable. With a satisfied grunt, he lifted the heavy sheet tray and slid it into a free slot on his tiered rolling rack to cool.
“Thanks,” he said, turning back to Molly. Only she wasn’t there anymore.
While he’d been dealing with pie shit, she’d evidently wandered across the workroom. Right now, she was poking her head into his cramped, messy office, a few strands of her coppery brown hair falling forward, off her shoulders. Still center-parted and stick-straight. Still shiny. And after all this time, the woman hadn’t lost her love for men’s-style button-down shirts and—what had Emily called that loose, cuffed fit again? Oh, yeah. Boyfriend jeans.
She wore sneakers instead of boots now. Otherwise, her style hadn’t changed much over the years, and it didn’t need to. Looked great on her then. Looked great on her now.
With her bent over like that, he couldn’t tear his stare from the lush curves of her ass. That ass was even rounder than it used to be.Allof her was rounder, and all of it was sexy as hell. The swell of her belly. The rise of her breasts. Her long, strong, thick thighs.
Helplessly, he stepped closer.
When she straightened and turned her head, the overwhelmingfamiliarityof her profile struck him hard, the same way it hadwhen he’d first spotted her through the cracked workroom door. If it weren’t for those fine lines across her forehead and at the corners of her pale blue eyes, she could’ve been a memory made flesh. Could’ve been one of thousands of fantasies he’d had over two goddamn decades.
Her curious gaze scanned his sinks. His refrigerators. His ovens.
Then she swiveled on her heel and faced him again.
He stilled, arrested once more by the sight of Molly Dearborn—Molly fuckingDearborn—in his bakery, only half a room away from him, after all that time. He didn’t move. Didn’t exhale. Didn’t even blink, in case she might disappear.
“Karl,” she said slowly. “Please explain something to me.”
“Yeah?” Sounded like he’d run a microplane grater over his vocal cords, but that was the best he could do right now.
“After almost twenty years with no contact, how did you recognize my voice?”
Before he found an answer that wouldn’t incriminate him, another timer went off. Pineapple upside-down cakes. If those went too long, the caramel mixture at the bottom of the pans would turn dark and bitter.
No choice about it. He’d have to walk away from this conversation. So sad.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Molly said, dogging his heels all the way to the oven. “Your name isn’t Mark-Paul Gosselaar. The bell isn’t going to save you, Dean.”
“Watch out,” he warned her, then braced for a gust of heat from the oven as he opened its door. “These pans are hot.”
After he’d deposited the cakes on another sheet tray and shoved that tray into the cooling rack, he checked out the cherry pies. Notquite ready yet. Lattice was still too pale. With his towel-covered fist, he bumped the oven door closed once more.
When he turned around, she was right. Fucking. There. A hand’s breadth in front of him, max.
Crossing his arms across his chest, he glowered at her. “Move it or lose it, Dearborn.”
“Answer my question,” she said without budging an inch, “and I’ll get out of your way.”
“I repeat: Move that sweet ass of yours, Dearborn.”
Her brows shot skyward, and he barely bit back a frustrated groan. Yeah. If she hadn’t realized before then why he’d recognized her voice in an instant, even when she was narrating a weird-ass story about that billionaire guppy-asshole—
“Go ahead, Dean.” She slowly smiled. Leaned even closer, until her cool breath wafted across his chin as she spoke. “Make me.”
4
Make me.
Did Molly realize what a dangerous game she was playing? Because Karl would gladlymake her, if she wanted that. He would take any excuse to get his hands on her miracle of a body and put her exactly where he wanted.
Right now, out of his path.
Eventually, under him.
“Make you,” he repeated, a low rumble of warning.
