One Kiss, the Billionaire's Bride novel · Chapter 12 of 24
Chapter 12: Gone
The ride took three hours, a gas station and her last forty dollars.
Bryony got to the bakery at four in the morning, soaked to the hip.
She unlocked the back door with the key she'd kept on her ring since she was fifteen.
The kitchen smelled the way it always did, of yeast and old butter.
She stood in the dark in her wet coat, and for the first time all week nobody was looking at her.
She put on an apron.
She lit the oven.
By half past four she was shaping rolls with her hands shaking, because it was the only thing she knew how to do.
At ten to five, the back door opened.
She did not turn around.
"Go away, Holbrook."
"I drove behind your cab for eighty miles," he said. "I lost you at the exit."
"Then you can go back the way you came."
He shut the door.
She heard him stand there, breathing.
Rain dripped off his coat onto the tile.
"I was wrong," he said. "I asked it wrong, and it was the wrong thing to ask."
"You asked it in front of my mother."
"I know."
"You asked if I slept with you for a deal."
"I know what I asked."
She turned around.
He looked terrible.
His hair was wet and flat, and he had not shaved, and his eyes were red.
"Say what you came to say," she said. "I have rolls."
"I'm sorry."
"For which part?"
He opened his mouth and found nothing in it.
"At your grandmother's table," Bryony said, "your cousin called me a gold digger in front of three people. You looked at your soup."
"I was thinking..."
"You said that. You said you were thinking."
"I was."
"I stood in front of thirty cameras and you kissed me, and I thought it meant you were on my side. And then the first time anything could be my fault, you looked at me and asked if I'd known."
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