“You’ve left me with worse.”
She breathes in sharply, and then she wraps my arm around her shoulders. “Okay, big guy. You’re coming with me.”
I’m too tired and nauseous to argue, as much as I want to. “Where?”
Grunting as she struggles to her feet without much help from me, she doesn’t say anything until we’re walking. Guess I’ll have to trust that Brody will get to the shop soon and things will be fine until he does.
“You can lie down in the back of the bakery,” Georgie says when we hit the sand. “You probably shouldn’t be alone like this. Do you need an ambulance?”
Like I can afford that? I’m running two businesses, one of which is barely staying afloat and the other which only sees significant profits during a few months of the year. I groan.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
The journey down the boardwalk is agony, and I have to stop at two different garbage cans before we finally make it to Kingston’s. Georgie smartly brings me around back, given the sheer number of elderly customers in the lobby that I can smell more than I can see. I’ve never hated floral perfume more than I do right now, and it nearly triggers another heave, though at this point there’s nothing left.
Georgie deposits me underneath the desk in the corner, giving me an apron as a pillow and a mixing bowl in case my stomach magically finds more to empty, and then she heads up front like she owns the place.
And as I curl up in a ball and hope whatever this is passes quickly, I can’t help but think about how Georgie will own this place because I just agreed to give it to her. Worse than that, I just agreed to marry her. And while I can’t claim to be the best of men, I have always been a man of my word.
This marriage will only last long enough for me to transfer the bakery to Georgie’s name, but no matter how short it is, it’s going to be…
I grab the mixing bowl and heave again. That. It’s going to be that.
Chapter Four
Georgie
I like Meg. She has a no-nonsense attitude about her, and though she was skeptical at first when I appeared out of nowhere and offered to help, she warmed up to me as soon as I showed her the photo of me and Bill from when I was a kid. She liked me even more when I moved to the kitchen and started making cookies as quickly as I could to help appease the never-ending line of senior citizens who had apparently heard about the bakery on a travel blog and each were determined to have a taste.
Being in a kitchen again, without a dozen cameras in my face, feels nice. More than nice. I feel like myself again instead of an extension of Lane, and there’s something warm and familiar about Bill’s kitchen. It’s badly out of date and needs a million upgrades, but this is where I spent my summers until I graduated high school, and I’ve missed this place.
I can already feel all my anxieties from being aimless melting away.
It’s that feeling that I cling to as thoughts about my proposal run through my head nonstop. I asked King to marry me. Which is insane on so many levels. But no matter how many times I run through my options, I can’t think of another way to make it work because the ovens need to be replaced and the floors are perpetually sticky and the point-of-sale system is so old that it takes way too long to do any transactions. If I’m going to save this bakery, I need money to fix it. Money I don’t have but the bakery does.
I don’t stop baking cookies until two teenage girls show up to relieve Meg, and she tells me I can take King home, glancing at him while she does. He’s been snoring softly for a couple of hours now and looks a whole lot better than he did when we left the surf shop. I’m assuming he got hit with food poisoning, but it came on so violently that I’m genuinely worried he has a stomach bug or something. I do need to get him home, though I have no idea where that is. Last time I was here, he lived with Bill, but I wouldn’t be surprised if his housing situation has changed along with everything else.
After taking the last batch of cookies out of the oven, I clean up my workstation and then crouch beside King, who is still a bit pale and sweaty. I nudge his shoulder. “You alive down there?”
He jolts awake, taking a few seconds to focus on me. “Georgie,” he rasps. “Where…” He looks around the bakery and then winces. “What time is it?”
“Almost four.”
He swears under his breath and starts trying to sit up. He’s not doing a good job of it; he looks completely spent, and I’m wondering if it’s all because of the illness. He looked tired before all this came on. “I need to get back to the shop.”
I grab his arm and help him sit up, though I stop him from standing. “You need to take it slow, big guy. Meg called the surf shop and talked to someone.”
“Brody. Hopefully.” He runs a hand down his face and grimaces, but then something shifts in his expression. “Do I smell snickerdoodles?”
I laugh. “I don’t think a cookie is a good idea right now, King.”
Turning a bit green, he nods slowly. “I agree. I meant…” His eyes meet mine. “You baked them?”
“There was a serious lack of product on your shelves. Someone had to feed the masses.”
He grits his teeth and then grabs hold of the folding desk chair, using it to lift himself to his feet. His muscles strain as he moves, easy to see because of the way his sweat-soaked shirt clings to his body, and I still can’t comprehend how the boy I knew turned into this. King is the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome, and it’s a miracle no one has locked him down yet. I really figured he would be married with several kids by this point, given how excited he was about the whole idea of starting a family.
My stomach does a little flip, and I almost hope it’s the same bug that got to him. Otherwise, this uncomfortable feeling is guilt, and that feels like a bad emotion to have going into a marriage.
Honestly, I’m not sure King even realizes that he agreed to my harebrained idea.
“Let me help you home,” I say, hoping we can have a conversation about my proposal when we’re not in danger of being overheard by sweet and bubbly seventeen-year-olds.
King grumbles something, probably telling me that he doesn’t need my help, but his legs nearly give out halfway to the door and he stops. Looks back at me. Nods.
I wrap his arm around my shoulders like before and follow his directions to his truck, and when he squints at the big vehicle, I ask him for his keys and bring him to the passenger seat. I’ll have to come back for my car at some point, though I don’t like the idea of leaving it in the boardwalk parking lot for too long. Most of my possessions are in that car, which reminds me that I still don’t have a place to stay tonight.
It might be too much to hope that King will let me camp out in his guest bedroom, assuming he even has one. I’m imagining him in a bachelor pad with nothing but a pullout couch and a miniscule kitchen.
“Where am I going?” I ask when King eventually manages to get his seatbelt on. He looks like he might fall asleep before I even turn the key.
“South,” he mumbles and then holds out his hand. I’m not sure what he wants, and I’m certainly not going to hold his hand. I might be willing to marry this guy, but it’ll be on paper only. He sighs. “Your phone, Georgie.”
“Oh.”
He types in an address and then slumps back in his seat. It isn’t in the direction of Bill’s house, and curiosity has me driving a little over the speed limit until I pull up outside a cute little bungalow right off the coast. It’s surrounded by mature magnolia and oak trees and looks well-maintained. I don’t really know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.
