there and watched, like he’d never even given a damn about his ex-wife.
“When I teased you into making the éclairs…” Marc paused, seeing how everything would look to her, in this moment. Suddenly every wild, shitty, crazy thing he’d ever done came back with such force it smacked the wind out of him. He was going to lose her. And it was all his fault. “I am so sorry, Lexi.”
She looked at him for a long, tense moment. Her face crumpled, and the first tear rolled down her cheek.
“No, sugar, don’t cry.” He ran his thumb across her cheek. “I know I fucked up. I was going to tell you, but I got scared.” Another tear fell, then another. “I’ll fix this. You need to believe me.”
Unable to hold back, he reached out and cupped her face between his hands. “Please, believe me.”
“I’m trying, Marc,” she whispered. “But it’s really hard. I don’t know what’s real, and I’m scared that this whole thing was—”
“Wait,” Jeff interrupted. “What do you mean, you’ll fix this? Do I need to remind you how much money we have riding on this? Monte, your brothers, hell, my restaurant.”
Jeff paused, his eyes darting between Lexi and Marc, a grin sliding across his face so slowly Marc wanted to smack it off. It was an ah-yeah grin that he’d flashed Marc a hundred times, reserved for poker night and mornings after at the gym. “Jesus Christ, really?”
Jeff was so obvious he might as well have given him a high five and scratched a notch in Marc’s belt that read, Alexis Moreau, Great Lay.
Lexi snatched her hand back and wrapped it around her stomach. The look of utter humiliation on her face said she got the message loud and clear.
“I know I told you to keep an eye on her, but damn, really?” Jeff shook his head, and Marc wondered what he’d ever seen in the guy. Under all of the shine and flash was a tool. A worthless piece of shit who didn’t see anything outside the realm of Jeff.
“What part of shut the hell up did you miss?” Marc snapped, but when he turned back to Lexi, his anger fled and all he felt was this gut-wrenching knowledge that Gabe had been right. He’d played this one fast and reckless and he’d blown it. And in the process he’d lost Lexi.
“You were keeping an eye on me?”
“Lexi.” He took a step forward, but she backed away again, shaking her head.
“This whole thing was a big game to you guys. Just like back in high school when you set out to seduce a new conquest. The menu, my grandma’s books, the bistro, the dinner at your family’s house, all of it. Only this time you weren’t just out to get in my pants—” Her voice caught and her eyes went round with understanding. He knew where she was going, and she was so wrong. “That was fake too. All of it was fake.”
She looked around the bakery, as if remembering that there was a roomful of people watching and chronicling the most humiliating moment of her life.
“Lexi, that’s not true.” But she wasn’t listening.
“You made me feel sexy and beautiful and like I was special.”
“You are, God, baby, you are. To me, you always have been.”
“You told me I could make the bistro a success. And I listened and like a stupid woman I believed you, Marc. I believed you so much that I stopped listening to the voice inside of me, warning me to take it slow. I believed you to the point that I don’t think I have any belief left to give.”
She reached up and untied the top of her apron, the lavender one that he loved so much. Folding it in half, she laid it on the counter and gave him one last look. A look he would never forget. He knew that whatever Jeff had done to her was nothing compared to what he’d just accomplished. Marc had played and lost, and in the process he’d completely devastated her world.
With a whispered good-bye, she walked out the door, the bells of the bakery giving a final jingle. Marc somehow made his way to the window and watched her disappear behind the alley. He rested his head against the glass when he was sure that she was gone, and that she wasn’t coming back.
And that’s when he finally understood. Understood that old man Charles wouldn’t come to the Showdown, wouldn’t try to ruin