The Baker's Beauty by Rebecca Norinne & Jamaila Brinkley

Author:Rebecca Norinne & Jamaila Brinkley [Norinne, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rebecca Norinne

Chapter Fourteen

After the fantastic, toe-curling night they’d just shared, the last thing Jess expected was the sound of her bedsprings startling her awake as Sean attempted to sneak out without so much as a goodbye. But that was precisely what was happening. She blinked her eyes all the way open as he shoved his legs into his jeans, cursing under his breath when his toe connected with the leg of her bedside table.

Jess pushed herself up into a sitting position and reached over to flick on the lamp at her side.

Sean’s head quickly darted back around. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I kind of gathered that.” She had about a million and one other things she wanted to say, but she didn’t want to be that girl—the girl who cried at the first sight of rejection, the one who begged for an explanation, or the one who blamed herself for a man’s bad behavior. Still, she had to know one thing. “Were you planning on saying goodbye?”

“I—” He huffed and blew out a long, slow breath, rubbing the heel of his palms against his eye sockets. When he pulled his hands away, his gaze connected with hers, and she saw the truth before he spoke the words. “I was going to let you sleep in.”

Lie.

She pulled her feet up and crossed her legs, turning to face him. “I have to be up in an hour anyway, which you know.”

He nodded once, and pulled his gaze away, scratching the back of his neck as he looked around the room—anywhere but at her.

Jess might not want to be that girl, but she was coming dangerously close to it. As it was, it took everything she had not to begin crying. His dismissal and apparent regret over their shared night together sliced like a hot knife through butter.

“Look, Sean. It’s obvious you were going to sneak out, so go on ahead. I’m not going to stop you.” She tossed the covers aside and stood up. Pulling a thin cotton robe off its hook, she wrapped it around herself, giving the bow an extra hard tug when she finished tying the knot. “You know where the front door is.”

“I’m sorry, Jess. I really didn’t mean for it to be like this.” He pushed to his feet, his gaze averted.

“Yes, well. Be that as it may …” She pulled a deep breath into her lungs and swiped away tears that had begun pooling in her eyes.

Sean raised his head, his face a mask of regret. “I’m in a really weird place right now. I should have thought of that before … well, before all this—” he gestured between them “—but you were the first good thing that’s happened to me in a while, and it was too hard to resist.”

Jess rolled her lips between her teeth, biting down on them in the hope that the sting would override the one lancing her heart. She’d known deep down there was a chance rushing headlong into something with him when they hadn’t hashed out his past could come back to bite her in the ass.

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