Make Your Move - By Samantha Hunter Page 0,47

it out there, like you always do. There’s nothing you can’t tell me. Nothing we can’t work through.”

She stood, throwing her arms up. “See, that’s what I mean. That’s the problem.”

The poor man looked sincerely flummoxed.

She tried to explain. “Being friends with Ginger has made everything harder. I need to be able to be objective with employees, to assess their performance, have expectations, and fire them, if necessary, without it being an emotional disaster.”

“But you didn’t let her go, you worked out a compromise.”

“Yes, but I could also be out of business, or unable to afford a full-time employee, and I didn’t tell her that because I didn’t want to lose her—as a friend. Friendship—and in our case, sex—they’re a real problem when you mix them with business.”

“How exactly would you lose your shop? And how does this involve me?” His eyes narrowed as he watched her, and Jodie took a deep breath.

“You know what my mom said to me once? That if she wanted anything from my father, just one thing, it was that he could put us—her—first. Before anything. That she could know she was the most important thing to him on the planet. But he never did. He was the most important thing in his universe, and he expected us to believe that, too. And yet she stuck with him anyway, always hoping that things would change.”

He did turn then, his body tight with tension. “I have no idea what this has to do with us, Jodie.”

“Really?” she said, knowing her words were taking her down a path she wasn’t sure she wanted to travel down, but she was speaking the truth, exposing the real fears in her heart, and there was no stopping now.

“How about every time you took off on a science project, and didn’t even let me know where you were off to or when you’d be back. You would just pop up in my life and expect me to be there. And I was.” She gulped a breath, trying to focus. “And the times you forgot my birthday or couldn’t meet me for dinner or a movie because you were too wrapped up in some work? Or how about now? I’ve worked damned hard all of these years, building that bakery up to what it is, and yes, you gave me the chance to do it, but I made it what it is. And if something goes wrong, I’ll be the one who loses everything,” she said.

He took a step forward. “Jodie, do you really think I would take the bakery from you even if we broke up?”

“No. But you wouldn’t do whatever it takes to save it, either, would you?” she accused bitterly.

“What do you mean?”

“I talked with Jason today. I know you denied his research funding, and he’s going to sell the icing formula to my competitors, or put it up on the Internet so anyone can make it. And when he does, I lose the biggest profit-maker I have. It might kill business. Maybe all of it,” she said, letting her anguish overtake any final words.

11

DAN WAS STRUCK DUMB. “Jason came to see you?” he said, unable to really get his mind around everything she was telling him.

“He came by the bakery earlier. He told me he’d never intended to go to the FDA, but that he was trying to blackmail you into approving some funding for his research, and since you hadn’t, he was going to publish the formula and undercut my business.”

“But that’s so stupid. We’d sue.”

“Sue who? We still don’t have any solid proof he’s done anything, and I can’t afford the kind of legal fees he would cause by fighting me. He said the only way he’d change things was if you changed your mind and approved his project. Which I knew you wouldn’t, so I guess that’s that.”

“And you took this as disloyalty, Jodie? That I didn’t give in to his threats?”

She shook her head, running her hands through her hair. “No. I just wondered why I didn’t know about any of it. Jason was able to blindside me because I had no idea that he was blackmailing you. I didn’t know why you wouldn’t tell me. No matter what, I’m the collateral damage and that’s true, because he knows how we feel about each other. If we didn’t have a relationship, he never would have thought he could use me against you….”

Dan held his hand up and closed his eyes as if for patience.