AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Kip had many of his own reasons to worry, too, yet the man in question did not seem worried or tortured. We hadn’t mentioned his late wife and daughter since the big blowup the day his mother arrived. Nor had we revisited the big blowup. I couldn’t decide whether I was still mad at him. Some stubborn part of me wanted to be, just on principle, to make it difficult, maybe. It was only a small part of me, though. Most of me had gotten over it. Most of me was enjoying the sex, the doting husband, the cat he had successfully trained to go to the bathroom outside, the upcoming arrival of our daughter.
Maybe I’d be ‘nesting’ if Deidre hadn’t already decorated the entire nursery and didn’t have new baby items arriving every day. Nora was often at our place, helping me unwrap things, put them away, explain what half of them were.
Our baby girl’s room was perfect. All the walls were white, except a feature wall of woodland wallpaper, complete with branches, swallows, and butterflies. The crib was wrought iron, and there was a midcentury changing table, a floral rug, and a large, comfortable rocking chair facing the window and the ocean for nursing. I often sat in there, rubbing my stomach while staring at the waves and letting myself believe I’d be holding a little girl in my arms in a couple of months and that Kip would still be here and be my husband.
And he was acting like my husband in every possible way. My real husband. He fucked me every day. Sometimes twice a day. My hormones were out of control, and I only got hornier the bigger I got. I worried that my growing size would turn him off, not to mention the human inside me. But he made me feel sexier than I ever had, and apart from the one time he freaked out when she kicked him pre-orgasm, he was able to separate me from the baby during sex.
Then there was all the food he was cooking me. And our friends. We’d had a couple of dinner parties since Kip and I… reunited—if that’s what you wanted to call it—and he’d cooked at both of them. Everyone was impressed. Even Tina had grumbled about his lasagna being the best thing she’d ever tasted, and she was the last one holding on to her grudge with him. All of my other friends had forgiven the man now that it was clear he was making up for lost time.
Nora hadn’t pried a whole bunch into the nature of our relationship beyond telling me she was happy for me. I was happy for me too.
We’d closed up for the day, and Nora had yelled at me when I tried to help her clean. I’d yelled back telling her I was able to wipe a fucking counter.
She’d relented because I guessed my temper was pretty scary. Granted, it was a force to be reckoned with before I got pregnant. But Kip was the only one brave enough to go up against me these days, and I was pretty sure he only did that as a form of foreplay because I always got what I wanted.
“Here,” Nora said, pushing a cupcake over that had a single candle in it.
“It’s not my birthday,” I said, already licking frosting from the cupcake.
“No, but we’ve got something to celebrate,” Nora said. “I spoke to a lawyer, got this drawn up.” She nodded down to the paper between us.
I stared at it. It was a whole bunch of words in mighty small print and looked very scary and legal.
I’d had experience with scary and legal these past few months, and I was still not a fan of it.
“I’m signing over half of the bakery to you,” she explained as I looked down at the contract, trying to make sense of it.
I blinked as I saw my name on the paper, then gaped back up at my best friend. “What the fuck?” I uttered. “Are you dying or something? Like really, not you just thinking you have a brain tumor or whatever.”
My best friend had an anxiety disorder that had ruled a lot of her life and made her spiral many times. Though she hadn’t spiraled at all since she got married to Rowan. Since she got together with him, actually.
It wasn’t that he cured her but that he made her feel secure enough to work on curing herself. It was a wonderful thing to see.
Nora chuckled. “No, of course I’m not dying. Not today, at least,” she joked. “I’m looking for a partner.”
“You’ve got a partner,” I said without hesitation. “You don’t need some legal contract, and you certainly don’t need to sign over half your bakery to me. I’m your best friend. You’re stuck with me for life, bitch.”
She smiled. “I know. But I also know that you’ve taken over running this place a whole fucking lot whenever I’ve needed you to. That you’ve gone above and beyond every damn day.”
“You pay me generously to do that,” I stated. “And you’re a pretty kick-ass boss. Plus, Tina has done a whole bunch too.”
Tina had been working here almost as long as me. And she loved the place as much as I did. She loved Nora almost as much as I did.
“Tina has her own diverse investment portfolio,” Nora said. “And she’s looking to slow down her hours eventually.”
I bit my lip. This was true. Although judgmental eyes wouldn’t think it on first glance, Tina was a shrewd businesswoman and independently wealthy. She and Tiffany could retire now if they so wished. But that wasn’t the kind of people they were. They both liked working.
“Okay, well,you’rethe one who started this bakery,” I reminded Nora. “You’rethe one who built it from the ground up.You’rethe one who makes the things that have made it wildly successful. This bakery is you, Nora. All of it. And it should be all yours. Always. I did nothing to make this what it is.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “You’ve had your own important hand in making this what it is.” She gestured to the empty bakery. It was decorated in shades of pink, the frosted windows showing the peaking ocean beyond. Even empty, it was utterly beautiful, one of the most Instagrammable spots in Jupiter, hands down. “Without you, I wouldn’t have been able to do this. I wouldn’t have made it through anything,” Nora said softly.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I snapped. “You are much stronger than you tell yourself, and capable of anything.”
“See? Without you, how am I supposed to know that?” she joked.
I smiled. “You’ve got a husband to remind you now,” I said. “And he likely does it naked.”
Nora’s cheeks reddened at the mere mention of it. Rowan really had given her a great sexual awakening, and I was fucking glad about it. “He does do that,” she murmured, eyes going faraway for a second. “But,” she said, snapping herself out of it, “I am a grown woman, of sound mind, and I have discussed this with my very reasonable, protective, and fiscally responsible husband, who also agrees that this is a wonderful idea.” She tapped the paper. “I’m a mother now, and I want to have a whole bunch of Rowan’s kids. I also want to keep this bakery because you’re right, it is me. But I don’t want one thing sucking the life out of the other. And I don’t want you ever thinking you don’t have a place here. I want to help make sure you have roots. That you won’t be put in a position where you have to marry a man you don’t love in order to stay here.”
