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Looking at her features was a nice distraction, especially since he was about to make her very, very angry. Normally he didn’t care for other people’s feelings. Not enough to lose any sleep over. He was in command of his world, and he didn’t question his decisions.
But Clara was different. She’d always been different.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you yet.” And it might have been wise to save it until she was safely on the plane. And had had a glass or two of champagne.
“What’s that?” she asked, eyes narrowing.
“I was supposed to get married today.”
Her eyes became glittering, deadly slits. “Right.”
“I was meant to be going on my honeymoon with my wife. And now, here I find myself jilted. No bride. Barely any pride to speak of.”
She arched her brow, her mouth twisted into a sour expression. “What, Zack?”
“I need you to come with me. As more than my friend. Not really more than my friend, but more as far as Amudee is concerned.”
She shook her head and let her pink bag slip off of her shoulder and onto the hardwood floor. “That’s … that’s insane! Who would believe you’d hooked up with someone else already?”
“Everyone, Clara. I’m a man who, as far as the public is concerned, is in the throes of heartbreak. Everyone knows about our business relationship. About our friendship. Is it so insane to think that, after suffering heartbreak, I looked to my closest friend and found so much more?”
Oh, it was sick. It really was. To hear him saying something that was … that was so close to her real-life fantasies it was painful to listen to the words fall from his lips. “No. No, I am not playing this game. That’s ridiculous, Zack. Go on your own.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Look, my pride will survive. But if I show up alone, and without my wife, looking the part of lonely loser who couldn’t hold on to his woman … well, who wants to cut a business deal with that guy?”
“So offer him more money,” she hissed.
“That’s the thing with Amudee. Money isn’t the main objective. If I could throw a bigger check at him, I would. But it’s not only about that. It’s about people, the kind of people he wants to do business with, and for the most part, I am that man. I care deeply about fair trade, about the work he has going on there in Thailand. I have to look like I call the shots in my own life, and I will not let an inconsequential hiccup like Hannah’s cold feet affect that.”
She shook her head. “No. Zack just …”
“If I lose the deal because of this …”
“I’m fired? I doubt it. And I can’t imagine him passing this up just because you aren’t getting married now.”
“This growing project is a huge thing for him, his life’s work. He’s poured his entire fortune into this. He has high principles, and, yes, a lot of it does have to do with bringing money into Northern Thailand, for the people that live there, but he won’t go into something if he doesn’t feel one hundred percent about it. I can’t afford to let it slip to ninety-nine percent. And if you tip the deal over, then I need you.”
“So buy your beans from someone else,” she said. “Someone who doesn’t care what your personal life looks like.”
“There is no one else. Not with a product like this. He understands the foundation I’ve built Roasted on. That it’s always been my goal to find small, family run farms to support. He’s a philanthropist and what he’s done is give different families in the north of Thailand their own plots to cultivate their own crops. Tea and coffee is being grown there, of the highest quality. And I want the best—I don’t want to settle for second.”
Clara bent and picked her bag up from the floor. She really hated what Zack was proposing. Not just because she didn’t exactly relish the idea of lying to someone for a week; there was that, but also because the idea of playing the part of his lover for a week made her feel sick.
She’d done a good job, a damn good job, of pretending that all she felt for Zack was friendship, with a very successful working relationship thrown into the mix. She’d pretended, not just for him, but for herself.
Because she didn’t want to desire a man who was so out of her league. A man who dated women who were her polar opposites in looks and personality. Women who were tall and thin, blonde and as cool and in control at all times as he was.
Wanting Zack was a pipe dream of the highest order.
Yes, it had been harder to ignore those sneaky, forbidden feelings when his engagement was announced, but she’d still done it. She’d baked his wedding cake, for heaven’s sake.
But this, this was one ask too many. Even for him. To go to a romantic setting, pretend she was experiencing her deepest fantasy, all for show, just seemed too masochistic.
And yet, it was hard to say no to him, too. Not when, as much as it galled to be asked to do this, it would give her this sort of strange, out of time, experience with him.
And definitely not when the whole thing was such a big deal to the future of Roasted. Her wagon was well and truly hitched to the company, and in order for her to succeed, the company had to succeed.
Her wagon was hitched to more than the company, if she was honest. It was Zack. Zack and his wicked smiles, Zack and that indefinable thing he possessed that made her want to care for him, even though he never let her.
Zack was the reason she didn’t date. Not because, as a boss he kept her so busy with work, though she’d pretended that was it for a long, long time. It was Zack the man. Because her feelings for him were more than just complicated. And she was … she was a doormat.
She’d baked the man’s wedding cake. And then what had she thought would happen? She was going to stay at Roasted, after Zack married? Play Aunt Clara to his kids? Watch while he had this whole life while she died a virgin with nothing but her convection oven for company?
Sick. It was sick.
And now she was really going with him to Chiang Mai to play the part she knew he’d never really consider her for?
She needed to get a life.
She was right. What she’d thought earlier at the hotel had been right. A moment of clarity. It wasn’t healthy to have him in everything. He was her boss, her best friend. He filled her work and personal hours, and even when he wasn’t around, he was in her thoughts. Zack had dates, he had a life that didn’t include her and she … didn’t. She couldn’t do it anymore.
“If I do this. If I do this, then it’s going to be the last thing I do at Roasted.” She thought about the bakery, the one she’d been dreaming of for the past few months. The one she’d drawn up plans for. It had been in her mind ever since Zack and Hannah got engaged. Just a mere fantasy of escaping that painful reality at first, but now … now she thought she needed to make it happen.
She needed to make some boundaries. Have something that was hers. Just hers.
“What?” he asked, his dark brows locking together.
“If I go with you and play arm candy then I’m done. It’s not … it’s not the first time I’ve thought of this.” It wasn’t. When he’d come into the office with Hannah and announced that the whole thing was official, well, she’d just about handed in her resignation then and there.
But of course his smile and his innate Zack-ness had stopped her. Because in her mind, it was better to have crumbs from him than everything from someone else. Because he was so enmeshed in her life, so a part of her routine. Her first thought in the morning, her constant companion throughout the day. And it was his face she saw when she drifted off to sleep.
He was everything.
And the real truth of the situation was that while Zack cared for her, and even loved her, possibly like some sort of younger sister figure, she wasn’t everything to him. And he didn’t want her the way she wanted him.
“What the hell?” he asked.
“I’m. I’m having a revelation, hold on.”
“Could you not?”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m. I’m sorry, Zack. This really has been. It’s been brewing for a while and I know it wasn’t the best day or the best way to say it, but … it does have to be said.”
“Why?”
“Because. Because it’s eating my life!” The words exploded from her. “And if that isn’t made completely obvious by the fact that I’m agreeing to drop everything at the spur-of-the-moment to fly to Asia to go on your honeymoon in place of your fiancеe and pretend to be your new girlfriend … well … I can’t help you.”
“No. No, I don’t agree.”
“And what, Zack? You can’t force me to stay at my job.”
He looked like he was searching for some loophole that would in fact give him that authority.
“I need a good severance, too. I want to open my own bakery.”
“The hell you will!” he said, his voice hard, harsher than she’d ever heard.
“The hell I won’t,” she returned, keeping her own voice steady, though, how she managed, she wasn’t sure.
“Non-compete.”
“What?”
“You signed a non-compete.”
“A bakery would not compete with Roasted, not really,” she said, planting her hands on her hips.
“It could, on a technicality, especially as we’d likely share a very similar desserts menu, seeing as you planned all of mine.”
“I’m not talking about a worldwide bakery chain, I’m talking … I want to open one up that I run myself. Here in San Francisco. Something personal, something me. Something that would give me a chance to have a life.”
“No.”
It was shocking, Zack’s transformation from unaffected, jilted groom, to this. She would have expected this kind of reaction from Hannah not showing up to the wedding, not to her asking to quit the business. Where was his control? Zack always had control. Always.
Except now.
“Then I won’t go with you. And I get the feeling that a female companion is a bit more important than you let on. I know you too well for you to hide it from me.”
His gray eyes glittered in the dim light of her apartment. “There is some competition. Sand Dollar Coffee is competing for the chance to get these same roasts, and Mr. Amudee, traditionalist he is, is very likely to give preference to their CEO. They were just there for a week in the villa, Martin Cole, his wife and their four children. Mr. Amudee was charmed.”
“So you do need me. You need me to give you an edge. To make sure Amudee knows you’re a macho man who can have his way with whomever, whenever. We’re friends, Zack. I don’t know why it has to be like this..”
“You were the one leveraging,” he bit out.
“Because I can’t do this anymore. The beck-and-call thing. I need more. You were getting married, you should get that.”
“You want to get married?”
Her stomach tightened. “Not necessarily. But I don’t even have a hope of it as long as I’m working sixty-hour weeks. And since I don’t believe in practical arrangements, like the one you and Hannah have, that will keep me from having a successful relationship.”
“Fine,” he said, the word stiff. “But you stay on until the deal with Amudee is done. Got it? I’ll need you to be around, at the business, my assumed lover, until the ink is dry on the contract.”
It was cold and mercenary. And it was tempting. Tempting to play the part. To immerse herself in it for a while. Just thinking about it made her stomach tighten, made her shiver.
No. You can’t forget. This is just a game to him. More business. “Yes. I won’t let you down. If I say I’m going to do something, I’ll do it.”
“I know.”
“And when it’s over?”
“You can open your bakery. I’ll make sure you’re compensated for your time here.”
Clara stuck out her hand, her heart cracking in her chest. “Then I think we have a deal.”
CHAPTER THREE
ZACK was in a fouler mood than he’d been when the double doors of the hotel’s wedding hall had opened to reveal, not his bride, but a very panicked wedding coordinator who was hissing into her headset.
He leaned back in his seat on his private plane and stared at the amber liquid in the tumbler on his tray. Turbulence was bouncing the alcohol around, sending the strong aroma into the air. He wasn’t tempted to take a drink. He didn’t drink, it was just that his flight attendant had heard about the disaster and assumed he might be in need.
He looked across the wide aisle at Clara, who was, sitting on a leather love seat in the living-room-style plane cabin, staring fixedly at her touch-screen phone.
“Good book?” he asked.
Her head snapped up. “How did you know I was reading?”
“Because you always read.”
“Books make better company than surly bosses.”
“Do they make better company than bitchy employees? If so, perhaps I should read more.”
She looked at him, her expression bland. “I wouldn’t know.”
“No. You wouldn’t. Look, I gave you what you asked for.”
“After a big ugly fight.”
“Because I don’t want to lose you.”
A strange expression flashed in her brown eyes. “Right.”
“You’ve been here since the very early days of Roasted, and you’ve been key to the success of the company, of course I don’t want to lose you.”
She looked back down at her phone. “Well, I can’t live my entire life to make you happy.”
He frowned. “That’s not how it’s been, is it?”
“No,” she said, her tone grudging. She put her phone down and stretched her legs out in front of her and her arms straight over her head, back arching, thrusting her breasts forward. His body hardened, his blood rushing through his veins hotter and faster.
That was a direct result of the fact that he was supposed to break his long bout with celibacy tonight, on this very plane, and it wasn’t happening now. Still, his body hadn’t caught up with his mind yet. Damned inconvenient considering he was now fixating on his friend’s breasts. Breasts that he was not supposed to fixate on. Basically two of the only breasts on earth that were off-limits to him.
More inconvenient, considering they were about to spend the week in Chiang Mai in a very secluded and gorgeous honeymoon villa. Even more when you considered that she was leaving the company soon after.
