“Have you missed your Naked Baker? Because I sure have missed you.” I can do this. I can do this.
She waved a hand over the baking supplies. “Today I have a special surprise just for you. We’re going to make nipple cupcakes.” She narrowed her eyes and winked at the camera, feeling sick to her stomach. “That’s right, just the right amount of frosting for you to settle that dirty little mouth of yours over and enjoy.”
Over the next few minutes she struggled to push the hurt and stress of the day to the side, to push past the love she and Blue had shared, the tenderness of his touch as he bathed her, the look in his eyes when she’d said she had to tape her show—This is for Maddy. I can do this. I have to do this—and she concentrated on doing what she’d been doing twice a week for what felt like forever. For better or for worse, this was her life.
***
BLUE STOOD AT the top of the stairs unable to tear himself away from the seductive voice traveling up from below. Even here, standing in Lizzie’s home and knowing that she was downstairs dressed in an apron, filming the show, he couldn’t reconcile that feigned seductive voice with the woman he loved. He didn’t know what drove him down the stairs—morbid curiosity or jealousy—but he walked down quietly, stopping when she came into view. He’d seen her on the video wearing the blonde wig and thick dark glasses, but it still shocked him to see her in the getup right there in person. The apron she wore outlined the swell of her breasts, wrapped around her hips, and barely covered her private parts. His gut clenched when she turned and he saw she was wearing a skin-colored thong that covered absolutely nothing.
He watched her in silence, taking in everything she said as she moved around the kitchen, removing one tray from the oven as she put another in, all the while narrating each step and dropping seductive lines like teaspoons of sugar. Blue couldn’t help but be mesmerized by her, because he wasn’t seeing the blond beauty everyone else saw, the woman who was working meticulously to perfect frosting on cupcakes. No, the woman he saw was the one who was hiding beneath the costume. The woman he held in his arms, and in his heart, who’d taken the time again tonight, when she was upset and worn out, to go to the cemetery to pay homage to people she didn’t know. The woman who, despite the way her life had been upended, despite the fact that it was almost midnight and she had to be exhausted, still came down here to film a show so her sister wouldn’t have student loans.
The woman he loved, admired, and worried about, in equal measure.
A part of him still felt the videos were demeaning. She was a strong, intelligent businesswoman, with radiance that lit up a room and a heart of gold. She was the woman who was making him question all the things he believed to be true about people and trust, loyalty and lies. All the things he believed to be true about himself. She was the woman he loved, and he wished there were some way he could help her achieve her financial goals without putting her in such a compromising position. But what he realized was that while he worried the videos were demeaning, she’d obviously been able to overcome that aspect for Maddy’s sake.
Didn’t he feel like a fool? He’d never known anyone who put others first the way she did.
Blue quietly retreated upstairs, not wanting to disrupt her. He gathered his things and drove home, trying to figure out how to reconcile the situation in his mind with the one in his heart.
Chapter Twenty-One
FRIDAY WAS A blur. After getting up early and redecorating the cupcakes she’d made the night before so they no longer looked like giant nipples, Lizzie dropped them off at the homeless shelter before finally arriving at work late, nearly missing her supplier. She’d been too busy all afternoon to answer Blue’s calls, and if she were honest with herself, she also wasn’t ready to speak to him. She really did understand why he hadn’t stayed last night, even if she wished he wasn’t bothered by the webcast.
She was living a contradiction that she didn’t know how to remedy. Knowing she was doing something that he didn’t readily accept, something she felt ashamed of—even if thinly rimmed with pride for being able to take care of her own finances, and Maddy’s as well—warred with her unwillingness to refrain from doing it. And the whole situation left her feeling empty and lost.
But last night when she was in Blue’s arms, she’d felt full again. She’d felt found. She tried not to analyze the precarious position she’d put herself in, or the fact that she felt trapped by her own desires—teetering between the man she loved and the need to help her sister. She thought about calling Blue, but she knew she’d be too emotional to drive and talk, and it was already after four. She’d promised her parents she and Maddy would be there by six thirty, and she needed to haul her butt down to Harborside University if they had any hopes of making it on time. She grabbed her purse and locked up the shop.