by Em Petrova
“I think you gotta hit hard with your opening so people know you’re serious about giving customers what Mortimer did for years.”
“But I’m giving more than Mortimer with my expanded menu.”
“Yes, and your brisket could make the angels sing.”
She glared out at Savage’s. “I’d like to know what his brisket tastes like.”
Carolee gave her the side-eye. “I’ve been thinking about that too, and I hope you aren’t against this idea, because I think it’s a good one.”
“Oooh, tell me.”
“Well”—she placed her palms on the table—“I asked my husband if he might be willing to go over and buy some and then bring it back here for us all to sample.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said being a spy’s a tough job, but he was more than willing to sacrifice his taste buds for our cause.”
She giggled and then shot another look at Savage’s and groaned. “I don’t understand why he’s doing this. He’s never cooked as far as I know, let alone brisket!”
Carolee’s eyes widened. “You know Savage personally?”
Oh no. She’d locked herself into a corner.
“I figured everyone in Crossroads knows him.”
Carolee was shaking her head. “I sense there’s more to this story.”
Maybe it was the idea of having an older, wiser girlfriend to confide in, but Jada held back all of thirty seconds before she burst.
“We dated for a couple months. That’s all!”
The woman sat back. “Do you think he’s seeking revenge?”
“No, nothing like that.” Was it? She shook her head. Definitely not Dom’s style. He was more of a leave-a-trail-of-broken-hearts guy.
She continued, “Anyway, do you think sending your husband over to buy brisket and bringing it back here to share is unethical? As a business owner, it’s not very grown-up, is it?”
Thankfully, Carolee let the subject of exes drop. “Nonsense. You can’t tell me that big fast food franchises don’t sample the competition’s food all the time. All is fair in barbecue.”
“You’re right. We’ll send your husband in to buy the brisket first thing when Savage’s opens its doors. Meanwhile…we are going to hit big with our Friday date night deal tomorrow.”
Carolee pattered her fingers on the tabletop and let out a squeal. “We are! I’m so excited for you. And for myself. Working for Mortimer since I was sixteen has been amazing, but I’m happy to have you here, Jada.”
“I couldn’t do it without your help and knowledge.” She slid out of her seat to scoot around the table and squeeze her new friend and employee.
After the happy moment passed, Jada drifted to the windows to look out. She had to admit Dom had fixed the place up a lot. The building had a modern vibe hers didn’t. But that didn’t matter—she had the Mortimer’s legendary barbecue recipe backing her, as well as her own brisket rub and a new secret sauce.
Come lunchtime tomorrow, she expected to see her parking lot clear full of customers. For her opening day, she had big bunches of balloons for every table outside. And she took instruction from Joss by demanding good weather for her event. While her awesome employees served her delicious food, she would visit with customers, introduce herself as the new owner, and make sure all felt welcome and had everything they needed. Including five new dipping sauces for the potato wedges.
She tore her attention from Savage’s and hurried off to the kitchen to check on things one more time before she and Carolee went home for the evening.
After she locked the doors and waved goodbye to Carolee, she headed to her truck. She slowed her pace until she came to a dead stop in the middle of the parking lot to stare at the view.
From two hundred paces, a person shouldn’t be able to see muscle ripple like that.
She blinked. Surely the fading sun was playing trick with her eyes. Dom had to be clothed.
But no—he was definitely not. Naked flanks of muscle rippled as he dragged a rake over the fresh gravel in his parking lot. As she looked on, he raised the rake overhead, showcasing that exquisitely chiseled back, and then set the teeth into the gravel again, only to drag it backward. Muscles bulged in places she felt sure they weren’t supposed to bulge.
He paused to swipe the back of his glove over his forehead, dashing perspiration out of his eyes.
She shivered, also in places she was sure weren’t supposed to shiver.
Dang, why did her competition have to look so good? The female halves of her Friday date-night specials would be staring across the road, which would wreck her business.
She twisted her lips and jumped behind the wheel of her truck. No more gaping at her competition. She didn’t give a fried okra what Dominick “Savage” Cole did over there with or without a shirt. Tomorrow she would stomp the man into dust and send him back to whatever corner of the world would have him.
That certainly wouldn’t be her. No, she wouldn’t be wrapping her legs around those strong hips or raking her nails over his muscled back.
Her insides wobbled as she bumped out of her own parking lot that could use a few scoops of his gravel. He paused in his work, straightening to watch her drive away. She found herself staring in the side mirror at his gorgeous naked torso until she had to swerve to avoid hitting an oncoming vehicle.
“Savage’s Barbecue,” she muttered under her breath. She wondered what his grandpa thought of it all and considered swinging by the nursing home in order to have a short chat with the man and find out. She hadn’t seen the man who insisted she also call him Grandpa in too many weeks. In fact, she missed all her patients. Saying goodbye had wrenched her heart out, but it boiled down to the fact that she couldn’t continue this way for much longer.
Her family all supported her. Friends too.
Did Dom?
He wore a look of utter shock on his face when she declared herself the new owner of Mortimer’s.
Who cared what the man thought or didn’t think? She’d be surprised to find he had any coherent thoughts in his entire skull.
Okay, maybe she was being a little harsh and unkind, but he’d left her and now had no importance in her life.
Come tomorrow, she’d show up Mr. Savage’s Barbecue with her buy-one-get-one special and they’d find out who will come out on top.
And no—it would not be her, straddling those strong hips, hands planted on his tanned, muscled chest…
* * * * *
Maybe he deserved what he got. Jada’s parking lot was full of customers partaking of the buy one get one free Friday night grand reopening special, while his own parking lot had the rare straggler.
“Hey, are you Savage?” The young boy popped up out of nowhere in front of him.
Dom smiled. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“You’re my favorite bull rider! Can I get a photo with you?” He held up his cell phone that was more advanced than Dom’s.
While he held his broad smile in place, he almost groaned out loud. This was the third person to want a photo op with him, and it was increasingly difficult not to wonder if he’d thrown his investment—and Grandpa’s too—down the toilet.
He posed with the kid for a selfie, and then his parents wanted to shake his hand. Maybe putting his name on the restaurant had been a bad choice. Clearly Jada had a better head for business—keeping Mortimer’s name meant she kept his customers too.
“You try my brisket yet?” he asked the kid’s parents. They shook their heads. “Try the brisket.”
As soon as they nodded and moved toward the window to place their order, Dom dropped his smile. A glance across the street showed more cars pulling into Jada’s place. She’d strung a big banner sign between trees announcing her buy one get one free special that happened to coincide with his opening night.
Maybe two could play that game.
He walked into the middle of his parking lot, cupped his hands to his mouth and called out, “Everyone, two for one brisket ov
er here at Savage’s! Two for one!”
His voice carried, and a couple people getting out of their cars at Jada’s looked at each other and then walked over to Dom’s.
Hot damn! It was working. Stealing customers wasn’t so hard if he offered them a deal. Sure, he’d earn pennies on his brisket tonight, but he’d hook the customers on the taste and they’d run back for more.
When the customers reached his property, he offered them a smile and a warm welcome. Before they were served, he ran inside to tell his workers that he’d changed the price for tonight.
After that, it seemed that customers seeing more people in front of his restaurant urged more people into the lot, and he got a flood of business. After a couple hours of serving people, talking with them and welcoming them back again soon, he stole a glance at Jada’s.
She was outside wiping down tables again. He hadn’t set eyes on the woman all day, but now he couldn’t look away. She wore cutoff denim shorts, the kind that rode ever so slightly up her backside when she bent over and enticed with thoughts of a thin strip of denim covering her pussy.
He groaned, this time definitely out loud. He watched her finish one table, straighten, strut to the next and bend over it.
“Jesus Christ,” he ground out. His dick was hardening from a peek from this distance—he couldn’t even imagine what glimpsing those tight, round buns up close would do to him.
After cleaning several tables, she wiggled her hips all the way back inside. Damn, it was bound to be a long night until closing time. He tried to shake off the memory of her ass, the shadow between her delectable thighs… Why hadn’t he made his move when he had a chance?
Because he wasn’t an asshole. Damn his morals. Grandpa had a hand in this too—he should be cursing him for teaching him to be a nice guy and not sleep with women right out of the gate.
Except he had, and Dom would never experience the heaven of slipping between Jada’s soft thighs and burrowing inside her while he kissed her dizzy.
His opening night seemed to offer no prediction of his business’s viability either. Savage’s Barbecue parking lot either resembled a party or ghost town. One time, a car parked, the passengers didn’t get out, and then they drove over to Mortimer’s.
He could almost hear her whoop of glee that she bested him.
He sighed. He hadn’t meant to make this into a competition, but both of them had a lot on the line and too much to lose, pride excluded.
When she exited her front doors with cloth and spray cleaner in hand again, he stood transfixed, watching her progress to every table. Lord have mercy. The way her little ass shook as she scrubbed in a circular motion just about made him lose it.
He forced himself into his own kitchen in order to close it down for the night, but he needed to stop thinking about Jada too. Did she know what she did to him? How hot and bothered she made him? Or that her beating him out of most of the business for a Friday night both turned him on and ticked him off?
He wanted to best her. He needed to prove to himself, Jackson’s wife—and his grandpa too—that he could win at this new venture.
While his employees cleaned up the kitchen and stowed away food into the brand-new walk in coolers, he directed their progress, but his mind was across the street.
As they put away unsold product, he wondered if Jada’s kitchen staff was celebrating having no leftovers. While he stood here burning for a woman he’d given up too soon, he questioned if he’d been a passing thought in her mind.
He counted his tills and declared they’d made just over five hundred dollars tonight.
“Is that good?” his kitchen manager asked.
Dom met his gaze. “To be honest, I didn’t have much idea what to expect.” Which was partly true. If he hadn’t given away a meal with every purchase, how much money would he have?
Closing the restaurant took a bit longer for a first night. But soon he saw the workers off with smiles and thank-yous. When he stood alone, he issued a sigh of relief. He expected to work hard and thought he’d be more exhausted than he was.
He also anticipated some of his desire for Jada to trickle away by now—it’d been hours since he’d set eyes on those tight denim-clad globes bent over a picnic table.
Before he knew his own intentions, he walked out, letting the door close behind him. His long strides carried him across the parking lot, to the edge of the road where he stopped to find no traffic. When he set foot on Jada’s property, his cock hardened more, the head pulsating behind his fly.
He opened the front door, passed through the empty, barbecue-scented dining area and swung into the kitchen. Everything looked clean but older than his equipment. But she wasn’t here.
He continued through the kitchen, following the yellow glow of a light. Through the cracked door, he spotted the front of a desk. Placing a hand on the door, he pushed it inward.
Jada gasped and jerked to her feet. “What are you doing here?”
“You should lock your front door after hours. I walked right in.”
She narrowed her eyes on him, dropped her gaze and then directed it to his eyes again. “An error I plan to remedy right after I throw you out.”
God, she drove him crazy. He stepped into the office consisting of a single desk, a chair on either side of it, a tall filing cabinet and a sexy-as-hell woman in cutoff shorts. Her chest heaved as she rounded on him.
“Get out, Dom.”
“I have something to say to you, Jada.” He leaned over her, causing her to crane her neck back to see him.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“That your buy one get one free special is killing my business.”
Her cheeks bloomed with red splotches and she leaned closer to him as if her diminutive size could intimidate him. “Your two for one special is exactly the same deal!”
He locked his stare onto her mouth. Fuck, the bow of her lips could drive a man to coming up with even deeper discounts on his menu. What was he thinking? He was losing his ever-lovin’ mind. Whatever brain cells he hadn’t knocked out slamming his head off the dirt floor of an arena floated out his ear at the scent of her.
“Vanilla bean,” he said.
She blinked rapidly. “What?”
“Your perfume. And I smell the spices of your rub.” He drawled out the last word as if he was drawing his hands slowly over her sleek curves.
Her breasts lifted and fell with her big intake of air. “I developed that rub myself.”
“Oh yeah?” He cocked a brow.
“Yeah.” She lifted her chin in a defiant manner.
“We’ll find out who has the best brisket.”
“Ha!” She stepped close enough that he only needed to lean in to claim her mouth for his own.
They glared at each other for an eternal heartbeat.
“All’s fair in love and barbecue joints.” The words tripped out of his mouth as he grabbed her and slammed his lips over hers.
For a moment, he thought she’d cuff him alongside the head or bite his lip. She didn’t—she threw her arms around his neck and climbed up his body to settle her thighs around his hips.
His libido hit rocket boosters mode and he ground his erection into her pussy as he plundered her sweet lips. God, he’d missed kissin’ her.
He dumped her onto the desk and pressed her back. She splayed her legs and he caught the scent of her arousal. Had she been burning for him all night long too? The thought was too much to hold onto—he’d blow.
She knocked his hat off and raked her fingers through his hair, dragging him in. He deepened the kiss, swiping his tongue through her hot mouth. She trailed after it with her own, darting hers in and out until he thought he’d die from the pressure burning up the front of his thighs to capture his groin.
Working his hips against hers, he closed his palm around her breast. She moaned into his mouth and wiggled under him, scraping the hardened point of her nipple against his hand.
With his other hand, he grabbed her
by the hip and hauled her flush against him.
She tore her lips away. “I really wish you hadn’t come over here, Dom.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He fed her his tongue for so many seconds he forgot to breathe. When he pulled free and gazed down at her with his heart hammering, his cock about to explode and too much desire to put into words, he cocked a brow in challenge.
At the same moment she went for his shirt buttons, he tore her top overhead. Her nimble fingers slipped into the buttons against his bare chest, and he pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She sucked in a sharp breath and then cried out as he rolled it.
“You shoulda stayed away from Crossroads.”
“You shouldn’t have worn these shorts. They’ve been driving me crazy all night.” He dumped her on the desk.
“If you’d moved your business down the road, you wouldn’t have to look at them!” She yanked his shirt off his shoulders, and he shifted his weight from one arm to the other to help her shed it.
She did a sit up on the desk and swished her tongue across the disc of his nipple. A growl ripped from his lips, and he went for her mouth again, claiming her as he spread her out fully on the desk and teased both her nipples into sharp peaks. Rough little gasps escaped her, shooting his need up a hundred more miles into the sky.
He trailed his mouth over her small chin to her throat, sucking a path straight to the treasure. When he closed his mouth around one nipple, she latched onto his shoulders and arched off the surface.
He teased her, grazing her with his teeth and then sucking until she came off the desk.
“Dom!”
“I don’t know why I never took you to bed before, Jada, but I’m not going to let the chance pass me by a second time.”
“It’ll be your only chance, you jerk.” Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she shuddered under the ministrations of his fingers, lips and tongue as he worshipped her breasts.
An inferno of need blasted through his lower spine and ached in his balls. His breaths came out as rough gasps. When he latched onto the button of her shorts and popped it, he froze at the thought of actually taking her.