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The cooking show, or rather the more correctly labeled entertainment venue disguised as a cupcake battle, wrapped up the next day. Viv won the final round and Franca cheered from the sidelines, pointing to her phone, where she was presumably checking out the stats on Cupcaked’s new digital storefront. Every time the show’s camera zoomed in on Viv’s face, they put a graphic overlay on the screen with her name and the name of her cupcake bakery. Whatever results that had produced made Franca giddy, apparently.
It was all too overwhelming. None of this was what she wanted. Instead of cooking shows, Viv should have been spending fourteen hours a day working on her marriage. The what-ifs were all she could think about.
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On the plane ride home, Franca jabbered about things like click-through rates, branding and production schedules. They’d already decided to outsource the baking for the digital storefront because Viv’s current setup couldn’t handle the anticipated volume. Judging by the numbers Franca was throwing out, it had been a good decision.
Except for the part where none of this was what Viv wanted. And it was high time she fixed that.
When she got home, she drafted a letter to Franca thanking her for all of her hard work on Viv’s behalf but explaining that her career was not in fact the most important thing in her life, so Franca’s services were no longer needed. The improvements to Cupcaked were great and Viv intended to use the strategies that they’d both developed. But she couldn’t continue to invest so much energy into her business, not if she hoped to fix whatever was broken in Jonas’s head that made him think that saying a few words a decade ago could ever compare with the joy of having the kind of marriage she’d watched her sisters experience. Viv had been shuffled to the side once again and she wasn’t okay with that.
Jonas came home late. No surprise there. That seemed to be the norm. But she was not prepared to see the lines of fatigue around his eyes. Or the slight shock flickering through his expression when he caught sight of her sitting on the couch.
“Hey,” he called. “Didn’t know you were back.”
“Surprise.” Served him right. “Sit down so we can talk.”
Caution drenched his demeanor and he took his time slinging his leather bag over the back of a chair. “Can it wait? I have a presentation to the board tomorrow and I’d like to go over—”
“You’re prepared,” she told him and patted the cushion next to her. “I’ve known you for a long time and I would bet every last cupcake pan I own that you’ve been working on that PowerPoint every spare second for days. You’re going to kill it. Sit.”
It was a huge kick that he obeyed, and she nearly swooned when the masculine scent of her husband washed over her. He was too far away to touch, but she could rectify that easily. When it was time. She was flying a little blind here, but she did know one thing—she was starting over from scratch. No familiar ingredients. No beloved pan. The oven wasn’t even heated up yet. But she had her apron on and the battle lines drawn. Somehow, she needed to bake a marriage until it came out the way she liked.
“What’s up? How was the show?” he asked conversationally, but strictly to change the subject, she was pretty sure.
“Fine. I won. It was fabulous. I fired Franca.”
That got his attention. “What? Why would you do that?”
“Because she’s too good for me. She needs to go help someone run an empire.” She smiled as she gave Jonas a once-over. “You should hire her, in fact.”
“Maybe I will.” His dark eyes had a flat, guarded quality that she didn’t like. While she knew academically that she had to take a whole different track with him, it was another thing entirely to be this close but yet so far.
“Jonas, we have to finish our conversation. The one from the other day.”
“I wasn’t confused about which one you meant.” A brief lift of his lips encouraged her to continue, but then the shield between them snapped back into place. “You’ve decided to go.”
“No. I’m not going anywhere.” Crossing her arms so she couldn’t reach out to him ranked as one of the hardest things she’d done. But it was necessary to be clear about this without adding a bunch of other stuff into the mix. “I said I was going to do you this favor and as strongly as you believe in keeping your word, it inspires me to do the same. I’m here for the duration.”
Confusion replaced the guardedness and she wasn’t sure which one she liked less. “You’re staying? As my wife?”
“And your friend.” She shrugged. “Nothing you said changed anything for me. I still want the marriage I envision and I definitely won’t get that if I divorce you.”
Jonas flinched and a million different things sprang into the atmosphere between them. “You’re not thinking clearly. You’ll never meet someone who can give you what you want if you stay married to me.”
“For a smart man, you’re being slow to catch on.” The little noise of disgust sounded in her chest before she could check it. But men. So dense. “I want a real marriage with you, not some random guy off the street. What do you think we’ve been doing here but building this into something amazing? I know you want to honor your word to your friends—”
“Viv.” The quiet reverberation of her name stopped her cold and she glanced at him. He’d gone so still that her pulse tumbled. “It’s not just a promise I made to my friends. I have no room in my life for a real marriage. The pact was easy for me to make. It’s not that I swore to never fall in love. It’s that I refuse to. It’s a destructive emotion that leads to more destruction. That’s not something I’m willing to chance.”
Her mouth unhinged and she literally couldn’t make a sound to save her life. Something cold swept along her skin as she absorbed his sincerity.
“Am I making sense?” he asked after a long pause.
That she could answer easily. “None. Absolutely no sense.”
His mouth firmed into a long line and he nodded. “It’s a hard concept for someone like you who wants to put your faith and trust in someone else. I don’t. I can’t. I’ve built something from nothing, expanded Kim Electronics into a billion-dollar enterprise in the American market, and I’m poised to take that to the next level. I cannot let a woman nor the emotions one might introduce ruin everything.”
She’d only thought nothing could make her colder than his opening statement. But the ice forming from this last round of crazy made her shiver. “You’re lumping me in that category? I’m this nebulous entity known as ‘woman’ who might go Helen of Troy on your business? I don’t even know what to say to that.”
