“But…” Fuck buddy didn’t seem right as a label for Jocelyn.
Sure, that’s what they’d done. Sure, that’s what he hoped they’d do again. And again and again and again. But there was more here. He couldn’t explain it. He wasn’t the in-love-with-love one of the two of them. But he felt something more, something softer and deeper, for her than just a desire to get naked.
“I like boyfriend better,” he finally said simply.
She seemed surprised but she nodded. “Okay. If I need to call you anything other than Grant, that’s what I’ll say.” She turned and started for the doorway again.
“I mean, at least until you’re back on Monday. Then you’ll be able to call me your husband.” He wasn’t sure why he’d felt compelled to add that.
She stopped again and turned back. “Right.” She looked at him for a long moment, then added, “But maybe just sticking with Grant as much as possible would be good all around.”
She didn’t want to call him her husband?
It was ridiculous for that to bother him. This was a short-term fix to a money problem. That was it. It probably took even really-in-love couples time to get used to calling each other husband and wife. By the time he and Jocelyn adjusted, her gall bladder would be healed, and she would have been his assistant for the three seminars or whatever she would agree would make them even financially.
But as he watched her leave the kitchen and listened to her climb the steps and move around on the second floor while he drank his second cup of coffee and then washed his plate and cup in the sink, he didn’t miss how domestic it all seemed.
And how nice it was.
Plus, that French toast? Definitely worth loving and cherishing her, if not until death, at least for a while.
“Hey, Josie, do you—”
Josie jumped and dropped two eggs on the hard tile floor of Buttered Up’s kitchen.
Make that two more eggs. Because she’d dropped three earlier when Zoe had barged through the swinging doors with an order for three-dozen pumpkin-spiced muffins that Mrs. Andersen needed tomorrow.
“What is going on with you today?” Zoe asked, eyeing the eggs.
“What do you mean?” Josie knelt to wipe up the mess.
“You’re so jumpy.”
“You’re the one who keeps coming in here and startling me,” Josie protested.
But that was a really weak comeback. And Zoe’s hand on her hip and raised eyebrow told Josie that her friend thought so too. Zoe came in and out through those swinging doors all the time, all day long, every day. There was no reason that it should be startling Josie. And honestly, Zoe hadn’t barged. Not this time or last.
Josie was anticipating Grant’s arrival to whisk her off on the “surprise” weekend trip to Chicago, and Josie knew that her chances of convincing Zoe that she’d known nothing about it were a million to one.
“I’m startling you?” Zoe asked. “Maybe if you had your mind here at work and not on the hot millionaire who’s been rocking your world, you wouldn’t be surprised when your partner walks into the kitchen of the bakery that you run together.”
Josie realized in that moment that Zoe often referred to them as partners. She often called Buttered Up theirs. And Josie had never noticed that it was strange. Or really thought about it being untrue.
But it was.
Grant had made her recognize that this morning.
Of course she knew that she didn’t own a part of the bakery or have a financial stake in it. But it really had always felt like theirs—hers and Zoe’s. Together.
Now, though, it felt weird to hear Zoe say it.
Josie frowned.
“You are thinking about Grant and sex!” Zoe said with a huge grin. “I knew it!”
“I’m… yes, I’m thinking about Grant,” Josie admitted. That much was true. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You getting laid so well that you can’t concentrate on baking things you’ve made so many times you could do it in your sleep is so worth a few eggs!”
Josie blinked. “I’m… wait, what do you mean I can’t concentrate? I dropped a couple of eggs but… oh my God, did I make something wrong?”
Zoe laughed. “The blueberry muffins had no blueberries in them, and you left the sugar out of the chocolate ones.”
“What?”
“It’s okay,” Zoe assured her.
“It is not!” Josie couldn’t believe it. She’d never messed up baking like that.
“It’s fine. I just told everyone we were already sold out. Which was kind of true. We were sold out