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“He doesn’t deserve you, Hazel.”
I opened my mouth to protest and quickly snapped it shut when she waved a hand at me.
“Jareth and I have a complicated history.” She paused.
I almost snorted in laughter. Complicated was a mild way of putting it. Her parents had been insistent in their desire to arrange a marriage between Jareth and Jess. After Jess learned how corrupt her parents were, she teamed up with Jareth to take them down. Now, he was helping her rebuild the company her parents had just about ruined. One he’d initially sworn to destroy as revenge for his father’s death, which he attributed to the elder Sultons.
“He’s really not the total prick he tries and usually succeeds in being.” She tapped her finger against her chin.
“No, he’s not.” I’d figured this out a long time ago. Beneath the hardened exterior was someone who deserved to have the love he denied himself. I just didn’t know how to make him believe it.
“I don’t know why he has to be such an ass. Listen, between the two of us, we can make him see the error of his ways.”
I waved my hands around as though that could stop Jess. “No, please don’t. I just need a little time.”
“Are you giving up?”
“I’m not giving up, but he broke my heart last night.” I rubbed at my aching chest. “I know I have to see him tomorrow at work, but I’m not mentally ready for that yet.”
“Hazel, about that… ” A guilty look stole across Jess’s face.
My hand dropped from my chest to clutch the edge of the table. “What did you do?”
Her eyes darted to the door as it opened and the bells jangled.
“I need you to know I was only trying to help.”
I faintly heard her words as my vision tunneled.
Jareth.
His muscled arm held the door open. He didn’t have to announce his presence. The air around us shifted. A sense of power permeated the space. I had to force myself to swallow past my dry throat. Nerves flip-flopped in my stomach and my bruised heart clenched painfully in my chest.
He hadn’t noticed me yet.
His classically chiseled face and jaw tightened as his gaze swept across the small space. It was only a matter of time before he saw me. I drank in not just the beauty of this man because he was stupidly beautiful, but also the figurative armor he always kept in place out in public. I wanted to run my hand through his perfectly cut and styled dark hair, down his broad shoulders that filled the doorway, and soothe the darkness that he thought would taint me.
Jareth’s jaw rippled, and his dark brown, almost black eyes narrowed as they fixated on me. My breath caught in my throat as I struggled to find words to say to him. He froze, and in a move completely uncharacteristic of him, spun on his heel and exited the bakery.
My jaw dropped.
Jareth didn’t run from anything.
But he was clearly running now… from me.
.
CHAPTER 2
Jareth
Today was a total fuck-up of epic proportions.
I clenched my hands, relishing the bite of pain as my nails dug into my palm. I was a fucking monster. The way Hazel’s face paled when we locked eyes almost destroyed me. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her.
Hurting her was the only way to keep her safe.
There was no way I missed the bruised smudges beneath her dark green eyes. She watched TV in the living room, curled up on the couch, while I sat in her armchair working from my phone. She didn’t fall asleep until close to 3:00 a.m. When her breath evened out, I lifted her curvy form into my arms and put her to bed.
