Page 101 of Sweet Ruin

Kane’s eyes hood over, but he waits patiently for me to finish.

“This is debt service,” I continue. “That’s all this is. It’s not a date. It’s not a courtship. It’s not you and me getting to know each other. My shithead ex-husband borrowed four million dollars from you and slapped my name on it without asking, and now, I’m paying it back in the only currency I’ve got, which is my time and my company, because I don’t have the money and I don’t have the year it would take to prove in court that I’m right. This is business. Just business. It’ll only ever be just business.”

Still, he waits.

“I’m not saying it to insult you,” I go on. “I’ve just had a real bad couple weeks in the area of finding out what people actually meant while I was busy assuming something nicer. So I’d like to be clear this time. Up front.”

Not a peep.

So I blather on. “You hold every card. You’re the Big Bad Wolf and I’m… I’m not even Little Red Riding Hood. I’m, like, one of the two little piggies that he eats before the story even really gets going. I know that. I know what happens on January 15th if I don’t go along with what you say, so this is me submitting to your whims and desires, okay? But just because I’m going along with it doesn’t mean I have to like it. Whatever this ends up looking like—dinners or parties or wherever it is you take people—I need you to understand that I’m not there because you charmed me into it. I’m there because you’ve got a gun in the room. Metaphorically.”

Finally, Kane’s mouth curves upward. “Who said the gun is only metaphorical?”

I sigh. “I think you have a pathological addiction to scaring people.”

“Oh, sladkaya, you haven’t even scratched the surface of all my pathologies.”

I think it’s a joke, but I’m not certain enough to joke back. Instead, I shudder and wrench my gaze away to look at the snow in his little walled garden for a minute.

“So we’re good then?” I say when I give my attention back to Kane, who’s never once stopped looking at me. “That’s that?”

He’s still toying with the letter opener. “So it would seem.”

I’m halfway out of my seat. But there’s an odd tension in the air that keeps me from getting up altogether. “You know, I still don’t understand how this suits you. What are you getting out of all this?”

“I told you last night: That’s my business, not yours.”

“That’s the answer that keeps me up at night.”

“Then don’t sleep.” He stands up.

He’s very tall and I despise having to look up at him. So I get up, too.

“Fine,” I say. “Keep your secrets. I’m not going to beg. When’s the first one? Valentine’s? That’s in, like⁠—”

“Tonight.”

I gawk at him. “Tonight what?”

“New Year’s Eve is a holiday.” He looks at his watch. “And it starts now.”

My jaw drops. “I have a shop full of people,” I protest.

“I happen to know that you left your very capable head baker, a Mrs. Priyanka Osborne, of 543 46th Street, Apt. 2, in charge.”

I do not, for even one second, want to think about how he knows that. “Okay, fine, but I’m not dressed for anything,” I argue. “Look at me. There’s dye on my arm. I’ve got sanding sugar in my bra. Whatever the plan is here, this isn’t the outfit for it.”

“If you think I don’t have solutions for that, Lilah, then you’re sorely underestimating me.”

“Fine! What if I already have plans, huh?”

He moves in closer, just a few inches away now. His scent flows over me, crowding out the sugary sweetness of the bakery and filling my nostrils with that smoky, woodsy musk of his.

“Do you?” he rasps. “Have you promised your midnight kiss to someone else?”

No, I don’t.

And no, I haven’t.