He walked out of the kitchen while he still had the will to do so and quickly gathered up his things. Minutes later he was gone, knowing there was a good chance he'd just lost the only woman he'd ever truly loved.
Chapter 11
Kayla was so immersed in her baking and her misery that she didn't hear Jillian enter her house until her sister was standing in her kitchen. Kayla turned from pulling a sheet of sticky pecan rolls from the oven and nearly dropped the pan on the floor in surprise.
"Damn it, Jillian," she grumbled as she slid the pan onto a cooling rack she'd set up on the table. At this point, it was just about the only vacant space left in her entire kitchen, which was currently filled with an abundance of cakes, pies, and other desserts. "Could you at least let me know you're here before you barge in and scare the living daylights out of me?"
"Hello to you, too," Jillian greeted her, unfazed by her grouchy mood. "And for your information, I knocked twice before letting myself into the house. Considering your employees told me that you haven't been to the shop in two days, and I haven't heard from you either, I thought I'd check up on you."
Kayla shoved a pound cake into the oven to bake and tossed her oven mitts on the counter. "I'm fine."
"Okay," Jillian said in a placating tone as she strolled through the kitchen and eyed the various sweets lining the countertops. "What's with all this?" The wave of her sister's hand encompassed the array of treats.
Kayla stirred the ingredients for a carrot cake, beating the batter longer and harder than necessary. "I'm working at home."
"You haven't baked at home like this since before you opened Pure Indulgence," Jillian commented thoughtfully. She picked up an Almond Joy Cookie and took a bite of the chewy chocolate and coconut confection. "In fact, the last time I remember your kitchen being an explosion of desserts was when I came home from New York for a visit after things ended between you and Doug."
Kayla winced at her sister's too-intuitive speculation. Baking was not only Kayla's livelihood, but she'd discovered long ago that it was also therapeutic when she needed to release stress, tension, or anger. In this case, though, she was baking up a storm to keep her mind off Jack and to keep her emotional grief at bay.
So far, her therapy wasn't working worth a damn.
"So, are you going to tell me what's going on, or am I going to have to tickle it out of you?" Jillian waggled her fingers at Kayla threateningly.
Despite her heartache, Kayla laughed at her sister's attempt at intimidation-another childhood antic they'd made up as kids when they wanted to extract important information from one another. Jillian was a ruthless tickler and always managed to persuade Kayla to spill her guts.
She inhaled a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Jack and I… well, it's over."
"Over?" her sister echoed, her expression almost as devastated as Kayla felt deep inside. "What do you mean, over?"
"Not our business relationship," she explained, just in case Jillian thought that's what she meant. "Our affair."
Jillian's gaze narrowed and she braced her hands on her slender hips, her entire demeanor going into protective mode, even though she was the younger of the two of them. "Maybe I ought to go and have a talk with Mr. Tremaine," she said haughtily. "No one hurts my sister and gets away with it-"
"Settle down, Jilly," Kayla said, knowing her sister wouldn't hesitate to confront Jack on her behalf. "It wasn't him. It was… me. I'm the one who let things end."
Jillian's shoulders slumped, and she reached for a brownie on a nearby plate. "But why?"
Kayla turned around and poured the carrot cake batter into a pan, unable to bring herself to explain the whole aphrodisiac candy situation to her sister and unwilling to end up sounding like a complete fool. "I guess Doug did a bigger number on my confidence than I realized."
"Doug was an idiot and you can't compare every man to him," Jillian said from behind her.
Jack had told her the same thing the night he'd come to her shop to taste the cheesecakes.
"I have to tell you," Jillian said went on, "if you let Jack go without a fight, then you're being the idiot."
Leave it to her sister to be blunt, Kayla thought as she scraped the last of the batter into the pan. But as each minute of each hour of each day passed by and a deeper loneliness settled within her, she was inclined to believe that she was very much an idiot for allowing Jack to walk out her door two mornings ago.
Except she was having a difficult time getting past the fears and insecurities that kept her and her aching heart in their relentless grip.
Unable to turn around and face her sister, she squeezed her eyes shut, summoned an extra boost of fortitude, and admitted, "I'm scared, Jilly. Scared to believe in something so good."
"I know," she said, a deep understanding in her tone. "But aren't you more afraid of losing such a great guy?"
Kayla's throat closed up with emotion, cutting off her ability to speak. But the words still came, filtering effortlessly through her mind. Yes, she was petrified of losing Jack, which was part of the problem, too. Going after Jack meant taking a big risk… the risk that he might eventually end things with her. The resulting heartache and overwhelming sense of rejection could devastate her.
Yet she was beginning to accept and understand that loving Jack meant taking that risk and trusting him enough to believe that he'd never intentionally hurt her that way.
"Oh my God, Kayla!" Jillian exclaimed appreciatively. "These candies are fabulous. What are they?"
Jolted back to the present, Kayla whirled around and found her sister eating the leftover Caramel Caresses that Kayla hadn't touched since Jack had left her house. Her first instinct was to snatch the box out of her sister's hands and berate her for helping herself to something she had no business eating.
Instead of freaking out over this interesting turn of events, Kayla watched her sister consume another piece of the candy and decided to gauge her reaction to the Caramel Caresses. "Those are part of the new line of candies I'm creating for Pure Indulgence."
"Wow, they're very yummy." Jillian examined another piece closer. "You know, the shape of the candies kind of reminds me of a woman's breast."
"They're meant to look that way, to add to the sensuality of the candy." Kayla washed her sticky hands and dried them on a terry towel, but kept her gaze on her sister, who popped that third candy into her mouth and was chewing blissfully. "Jillian… do you feel anything at all?"
"Feel anything, like what?" Jillian asked, clearly confused as to what Kayla was suggesting.
Kayla recalled all the sensations those aphrodisiac candies had induced in her when she'd eaten them. "Warm. Tingly. Maybe a little… turned on?"
A frown creased Jillian's brows. "Are you having a nervous breakdown?"
"No." Kayla bit her bottom lip, looking for some kind of external sign that her sister was affected by those candies, but found none. "So, you don't feel anything sexual at all?" she persisted, needing to know.
"Look, I don't know what's gotten into you, but you're crazy for thinking a piece of chocolate, or two or three, can send a person's hormones into a frenzy. If that were the case, half the world's population would be walking around, completely turned on all the time."
Realizing that her sister truly wasn't affected by her candies, Kayla experienced a mingled rush of disappointment and relief. Disappointment because her exciting idea to start a new line of aphrodisiac candies at Pure Indulgence wasn't going to happen and she'd have to rethink her strategy with those new confections, and a huge surge of relief because the truth had just set a part of her free.
Free to believe, free to trust, free to love.