Page 45 of Faking it with my Bad Boy Crush

"Why?" The question came out barely above a whisper. "Why are you doing this?"

Ethan was quiet for a long moment. "Because you deserve it. Because your grandfather would want this. Because—" He stopped, his jaw tightening. "Because I believe in what you're building here."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer I can give right now." He met my eyes, and I saw conflict there. "Can we just work on this? Please? I need to do something productive instead of thinking about impossible choices."

So, we worked. For three hours, we built the business plan together—me providing the operational knowledge, Ethan translating it into financial projections and strategic frameworks. We mapped out expansion possibilities, partnership opportunities, revenue streams I'd never considered.

"You could do baking classes," Ethan suggested, typing notes. "Weekend workshops for tourists. Two hundred dollars per person, maximum of eight students. If you run one workshop every Saturday during tourist season, that's an additional forty thousand dollars annually."

"I'd need to hire someone to cover the bakery while I teach—"

"Already factored in. See?" He showed me the expense projection. "Part-time weekend coverage, plus ingredient costs, plus facility fees. Even with overhead, you're still netting twenty-eight thousand."

I watched him work, his fingers flying across the keyboard, his mind clearly several steps ahead of mine. This was Ethan Caldwell the lawyer—brilliant, strategic, relentlessly competent.

But this wasn't corporate acquisition strategy. This was genuine care for my success, my future, my bakery's legacy.

"You're good at this," I said quietly.

"At spreadsheets?"

"At seeing potential. At taking what exists and envisioning what it could become." I gestured at the screen. "You're not just helping me survive. You're helping me thrive. That's... that's not nothing, Ethan."

He saved the document. "I meant what I said at the farmers market. About you building the future instead of preserving the past. This plan—" He gestured at the laptop. "This is your future. Documented. Undeniable. Successful."

"A future you wouldn’t be part of." The words came out before I could stop them. "If you take Marcus's deal. If you left."

Ethan's hands stilled on the keyboard. "Maya—"

His phone buzzed. We both looked at it, and my stomach dropped when I saw the notification on the screen:San Juan County Court System - Priority Alert.

Ethan grabbed the phone, opening the alert. His expression shifted from concerned to furious in seconds.

"What?" I asked, having a feeling it was bad.

"Gerald Hutchins just filed an emergency motion." His voice was cold, controlled. "He's claiming that because the property dispute is still pending, and because I allegedly intimidated him with fraud accusations, he has the right to immediate injunctive relief."

"In English, please?"

"He's asking the court to freeze your business operations until the property dispute is resolved. No deliveries, no customers, no revenue." Ethan scrolled through the filing, his jaw clenchingtighter with each line. "He's claiming you're using the disputed parking area in defiance of the pending litigation, and that continued operations cause him irreparable harm."

My blood went cold. "Can he do that? Just shut down my business?"

"He's trying. Judge Morrison has scheduled an emergency hearing for tomorrow morning at 9 AM." Ethan was already typing on his laptop, pulling up legal precedents. "This is aggressive and unusual, but if the judge grants it—if she issues a temporary restraining order freezing your operations—you lose all revenue for the next two weeks until the independent survey is complete."

"But Sweetheart Week starts next Friday. If I can't operate for two weeks, I lose the vendor contract. I lose the biggest revenue opportunity of the year." My hands were shaking. "They're not just trying to force a sale anymore. They're trying to destroy me."

"They're getting desperate." Ethan's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Which means they're scared. They know the independent survey will expose the fraud. They're trying to cause so much damage before that happens that you have no choice but to sell."

"What do we do?"

"We fight." He pulled up a legal template. "I'll draft a response to the emergency motion, file it tonight. We argue that the injunctive relief request is baseless, that you've been using that parking area for fifty years without incident, that Hutchins's claim of irreparable harm is manufactured. And we show that he's the one acting in bad faith—filing emergency motions to harass and intimidate rather than waiting for the legitimate legal process to play out."

I watched him work, his lawyer brain engaging fully, building our defense with the same meticulous care he'd built the business plan.

"You haven't decided yet," I said quietly. "About Marcus's offer. About keeping your law license."