“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 fiancée 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?”