“Tess –”

I cut him off this time by giving him a squeeze.

“She’s doing this to herself. Do you think they live in fear of whatever reaction she’ll have, whatever tantrum she’ll throw and they’ll not cotton on eventually?” I asked but didn’t wait for his answer, I shook my head and gave him another squeeze. “No way, Brock. Those are your boys and they are far from stupid.”

One of his arms left me so he could curl his fingers around my neck as he whispered,

“Baby.”

“It’s your duty to teach them to be good men. You learned because you had a good mother and despite a bad father. They’ve got the opposite. You’re obligated to do this anyway but in this situation you’re all they’ve got. There is no escaping it and it wouldn’t matter what they faced in their lives, you’d still have to do it. And part of being a good man is being a strong one, doing what you believe in, standing up for yourself and the ones you love and protecting them from harm and you’re doing that. Think about what happened when you were growing up. I’m sure Fern wanted to protect you but she couldn’t, that was your life. You can’t protect them from this because it’s a part of their life. What you can do is help them understand what’s happening around them and teach them how to cope. It sucks that you had to explain to your son that his mother scared him on purpose just to f**k with you but you were right to do it.”

His fingers dug hard into my neck and his eyes flared.

Then his fingers relaxed and his head dropped so he could touch his mouth to mine.

When he lifted his head, I told him softly, “We need to talk about your talk.”

He nodded but said, “That was only a little less painful than this shit tonight.”

Not good news.

I licked my lips then pressed them together.

Then I gave him a gentle tug toward the bed and whispered, “All right, come to bed and tell me.”

Brock studied me for a minute then his fingers left my neck to slide up into my hair then down through the back of it.

Then we went to bed and he told me.

Then he turned out the light, he held me and I held him back until he fell asleep in my arms but I lay awake in his.

And only then did I let the silent tears of frustration and powerlessness fall.

But luckily there were only a few.

Then I burrowed into my man and fell asleep.

Chapter Seventeen

The Nuggets Won

“Those look freaking fantastic!” I exclaimed and I was not lying.

Kellie was at a stainless steel table in the back of my bakery (where the magic happened) and she was adorning chocolate cupcakes with mountainous swirls of mocha frosting. She’d already finished a tray and they were lightly dusted with cocoa powder and showered with orange-flavored sugar and chocolate sprinkles.

They looked awesome.

Her eyes went from her pastry bag to me.

Then the tip of her tongue that had been poking out the side of her mouth disappeared and she asked, “Do you think?”

I looked at the cupcakes then back to her. “Uh… yeah. ”

She grinned at me.

We’d had a busy day and stocks were low by the time she got there after school so I set her to work alongside me seeing as business was picking up due to the after work crowd swinging by to get goodies for home. I’d just returned from refilling cookie jars (fat, yummy peanut butter with those criss cross fork indents in them and oatmeal with dried cranberries and white chocolate chips).

It was the first time Kellie had been let loose unsupervised and unaided. And by the looks of it, she’d done great.

I walked to her, gave her a sideways hug and kissed her temple before letting her go and telling her softly, “Honey, you’re a natural.”

“So, they’re Tessa’s Cakes Worthy?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I answered.

“Cool,” she whispered, eyes shining bright.

I smiled at her. Then I swiped a cupcake.

Then I started to walk away, peeling back the brown paper as I told her, “I’m off. When you’re done with those, take them out and unleash them on the world.”

“Okay, Tess, and tell Uncle Slim I said hello,” she called after me.

“Tell him yourself.” I stopped at the office door, turned and looked at her. “Now he’s blaming me that you’re never stopping around at his place.”

“Well, then tell him he doesn’t pay me to be around and he doesn’t have huge bowls of homemade frosting at his house,” she returned.

This was true.

I grinned at her and disappeared in my tiny office, taking a bite of her as delicious as it looked cupcake.

Totally Tessa’s Cakes.

Once I got over the orgasmic taste sensation of chocolate cake and whipped mocha frosting with a hint of orange, I took in my tiny office.

My life was a mess because of outside factions. My home was never a mess. And this now meant that Brock’s home was never a mess.

I had to admit to one drawback, having Brock meant having two houses to clean. Brock didn’t clean. In fact, Brock didn’t like it when I cleaned. In the past, Brock informed me when I asked, he kept his pad clean mostly by not living in it therefore it wasn’t really clean it was just that he wasn’t around to see the dust accumulating. Things occasionally got cleaned when his mother popped by, this, I’d realized, was something she did that was essentially taking care of a forty-five year old man that he didn’t mind but then again, he didn’t care if his place was clean and he also didn’t care if his mother spent her time with him cleaning. He did mind with me. He thought we had better things to do when we were together like eat, watch sports on television while cuddled together and have lots of sex. We’d had words, not heated, just words. Several of them. Unusually, I won. Then I wondered why I fought for the right to clean his house. This was not fun. But it had to be done because I was not able to live in unclean and not tidy and it had to be said, I was living with Brock it was just that we were doing it in two houses that both had to be cleaned.

But the one thing in my life that was not tidy was my office. In the beginning, when I was busting my hump to make a go of my bakery, it got out of hand and I never got it back into hand. Now, it was organized disarray. Although it looked like a cyclone hit it, I knew precisely where everything was.

I had few rules for my employees, those being excellent hygiene, smiling faces, not being afraid to show personality for personality was Tessa’s Cakes and there was never an excuse to be bored.