Hope Breaks: A New Adult Romantic Comedy

by Alice Bello

  Jake-y?

  Boy, the woman could fit a lot of innuendo into a few words and a wicked smile.

  Moments later we both had our orders—Jake handed me both my ice cream and his float—taking the chance to pay for dessert.

  Slick little shit...

  It wasn’t a busy time of day, so we had a variety of seating options: back to Jake’s truck; under the umbrellas that topped the line of picnic tables; or one of the stone benches that sat under the shady pine trees that had grown beside the ice-cream shop since it opened fifty years ago.

  We opted for a bench under a grand old tree.

  Thank god the sun was starting to set, and the summer wind was just barely cooling off.

  Unfortunately, it was still hot enough that I had to work fast on my cone, or I’d be wearing it instead of eating it.

  I suddenly noticed that Jake was watching me with rapt interest. I cringed at what I imagined I looked like, licking and biting into the ice cream and waffle cone like a starved animal.

  Or like a porn star licking her way to the gooey center of…

  Oh, for god’s sake! What the hell was wrong with me?

  I looked longingly at my cone and decided I’d made enough of a spectacle of myself. Even though I wanted to demolish the rest of it, I didn’t think my pride would survive letting Jake—Jake-y!—watch my gastronomical display.

  Besides the pornographic theme, girls weren’t supposed to eat their own body weight. And between the Hot Dog Shop, the ribs, and now the ice-cream, I was well on my way to looking like an utter hog.

  Which was ridiculous, really. Jake had eaten as much if not more than I had, but I wasn’t thinking what a pig! No, I’d watched him take every lovely, amazing bite with blissful appreciation. I loved watching him eat.

  Okay, if that wasn’t the most pathetic thought that had ever crossed my mind, I didn’t know what was.

  I looked at my now melting waffle cone. “I’m full,” I lied.

  A chuckle rumbled up from Jake’s chest. “You sure? You looked pretty into that cone.”

  Bastard…

  I daintily stood up and strolled over to the closest trashcan… and plopped the remains of the cone into it.

  “I’m sure.” I brushed off my hands symbolically and tried not to look depressed about throwing away so much delicious ice-cream.

  Jake laughed and leaned back against the pine tree’s trunk. He had a great laugh—deep and rough and touchable. It made me shiver in the hot summer wind.

  Oh god I just wanted to rub myself all over him… all over him naked…

  I snapped my eyes shut and smacked down the feral instincts that wanted me to crawl up onto the man’s lap and lick his neck. “Ready to go?”

  I didn’t hear him get up and come toward me. He was just suddenly there beside me, and I could feel the heat and smell his scent. I opened my eyes and was eye-level with his chest—such a great chest—and had to look up to see his face.

  “Depends on where you want to go.”

  Chapter 7

  I’D WANTED TO TELL JAKE to take me back home… and to come in for some coffee… tea… me?

  But my practical side finally rose up and told me the facts. No matter how well I thought things were going, it was a fact that I was taking advantage of his kindness, and that I should let him go do whatever it was he was going to have done before I stumbled into his life.

  It was the polite, right thing to do.

  But it smelled like a butt-load of suck as soon as I thought it.

  He didn’t look like he was being put out. If anything he looked pretty damn happy.

  But…

  “I’ve monopolized your day enough. I think we better get you to your truck so you can get… wherever it is you need to be.”

  Yep, that sucked with every word that left my stupid mouth.

  Jake started walking towards me, and then right on past me. “First date guilt?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He turned as he rounded on his truck. “No big deal. You’re a lady, and you don’t want to overstep the first date rules. I get that.”

  I opened my mouth to interject, but he held up his hand to stop me.

  “And no, officially this wasn’t a first date… but technically it was. It wasn’t planned, but there was food and dessert, and drinks. All we needed was some dancing.”

  As if Tammy Faye had been leaning out the order window and eavesdropping on the conversation, the antique PA system clicked on and Shania Twain twanged her way through You’re Still the One.

  Perfect…

  Jake looked over to the ice-cream stand, then back to me and shrugged. “May I have this dance?”

  Oh cripes…

  But when he waltzed over and held out his big, rough hand, I didn’t even think about it—it put my hand in his and let him take me in his arms. His strong, hard arms.

  I felt his chest against mine, and my heart jumped. My body fell into rhythm with the music and the sway of his body against mine.

  Okay… this was a first date.

  I leaned into his shoulder and closed my eyes as I heard traffic from the intersecting roads pass by, trying to compete with Shania’s love song.

  I would have never thought that my day would have gone so well, and so utterly out of the expected when I’d woken up to find three messages and five irate emails from my boss.

  I breathed in the scent of pine trees, of the sun setting, and of Jake, and just melted into the moment.

  ***

  Jake’s truck came into sight in the small parking lot that shadowed the TLE garage of the Wal-Mart. I smiled. That truck fit Jake so well. Not quite what you expected, but more than you bargained for.

  I shook my head and blinked. Holy crap, I was waxing poetic about a man I’d known for only a few hours. Was I in high school again?

  That didn’t seem to matter when my car stopped and he got out from the driver’s side and opened my door for me. All that mattered was he was standing right in front of me, big and strong and gorgeous. Really, the best looking man I’d ever met… and by far the nicest.

  I cringed inwardly again. It was never a good thing to list “nice” as a good trait in a date. It meant he was boring… but he wasn’t. Jake was the most interesting man I’d met in years. Him being nice just seemed like a sweet extra—a bonus.

  You really think he’s a nice guy?

  Yes…

  This could all be just be an act. What if this is his usual modus operandi?

  I squished all those paranoid thoughts under the heel of my sandal as I took his hand and he helped me out of the passenger seat. We walked with a lazy gait around to the driver’s side of my car. We stopped as he opened the door for me.

  I stared up into those beautiful blue eyes of his, those thick luscious lips, the thin shadow of a beard that sharpened all the angles of his face. He licked his lips and leaned in just a little.

  And so did I.

  I licked my own lips and swallowed. “I know this is just our first date, but…”

  “Since we could say lunch was the first date, we could say this is the second date…”

  I smiled, staring at his delicious looking lips. “So we could…”

  Jake leaned in a little more. “Yeah… we could.”

  I put my hand on his chest and popped up on my tiptoes until our mouths were only an inch apart. I could feel his breath against my lips. I wanted to kiss him so damn badly…

  Then he took a step back, a wicked smile on his handsome face. “But I’m not that kind of boy.” He chuckled as he turned and walked away from me. I fell back on my heels and stared after him.

  He turned about halfway to his truck and I just wanted to throttle him for the sexy as all hell smile that he beamed back at me.

  “No PDA until our third date.”

  My eyes shot open wider and my mouth just blurted out, “I’ve gotta wait for two more dates?”

  He shook his head real slow. “This is date num
ber two, remember?”

  Oh…

  He turned back around and started toward his truck again.

  “So when’s the third date going to be?” I called out after him, my voice sounding a little pissy. I didn’t like being left in the lurch.

  He turned and spoke as he kept moving toward the truck. “I’ll have to get back to you.”

  And then he unlocked the door to his pickup truck, angled himself behind the wheel and cranked the engine over. He drove over to where I stood by my open car door and tugged at an imaginary hat in goodbye. Very Texas cowboy.

  “Miss Jones.” His truck gained speed and slipped through the parking lot and then out of sight.

  Well damn…

  Best date I’d ever had, with the hottest guy I’d ever met… and then it ends so damn irritatingly!

  WTF!?!?

  I slipped down into my car’s driver’s seat, sat there for a few minutes, pondering whether I should just go home or if I should go to a bar, and get a drink.

  I mean, after such a great wind up, and then there wasn’t a pitch to catch…

  Cripes, now I was using baseball terms to describe my almost love life.

  My eyes widened and my heart started to pound in my chest as those words shot through my beating heart and out into my blood stream, saturating my body with a giddy high.

  I had a love life… well, the start of one… and this late in the game…

  I shook my head, reminding myself that twenty-six wasn’t as old as I felt.

  I put the car in drive and pulled out of the Wal-Mart parking lot, and out into traffic. The sun was finally starting to disappear—sunset was so wonderfully slow in the summer. I pointed the Chevy home.

  ***

  Clive, my enormous adopted alley cat was waiting impatiently for me on the stoop of my porch. His thick coat of silky soft gray fur made the blazing yellow eyes that regarded me all the more startling.

  His eyes said, Where have you been? in a haughty baritone.

  Although he lived with me, he spent his days out in the field, hunting, fighting, and chasing females probably, since I hadn’t had the heart to have him neutered.

  He glided down the stairs from my porch and his thirty plus pounds collided with my shins. Mister isn’t your ordinary feline; I had a feeling from his size that he was part mountain lion as well.

  He rubbed against my legs for a few beats and then allowed me to open the front door to let us both in. He padded into the house as if he owned the place, and headed right for his food bowl in the kitchen.

  He found it empty, which was not in our usual routine, so he turned and regaled me with a shrill roar… well, a husky meow.

  Clive didn’t eat cat food. I always kept bags of precut grilled chicken and steak in my fridge. So I pulled his dinner out, filled a microwavable bowl with steak and chicken, and then warmed it up in the microwave until it was just right.

  I plopped it down in his bowl and he attacked it as if he hadn’t eaten all day—birds and rats didn’t count in Mister’s book. Then I went and got out the milk and filled the other side of his food dish.

  He was already almost done with his meal.

  Men…

  I warily checked my messages: two more from Janine.

  I decided to forego checking my emails. They would probably be from her as well and I just didn’t want to hear or read them. All I wanted was to change into my jammies and snuggle up with my recent dating memories… maybe even watch a sappy romantic comedy… or maybe Bull Durham. It was a romantic comedy too… but it was so much more: erotic, deep, even spiritual.

  So that’s what I did. I really couldn’t do any actual work until I shot more pictures at the shoot I’d scheduled with Drew and his ladylove. Then I could obsess about getting a cover shot that would blow Olivia Lovelace—and thus Janine’s—mind.

  I hoped…

  I went into my bedroom and pulled out my favorite Hello Kitty pajamas. Don’t look at me like that! A girl’s got to sleep comfortably…and Hello Kitty is the shit!

  My phone was ringing as I came back down stairs and headed to my DVD collection. I checked the caller ID as I snagged my video.

  It was Bette. “Surprise, surprise…,” I chided as I answered. “I can’t believe you didn’t see me the second I drove up.”

  Bette harrumphed. “I decided I’d give you a chance to put on those god awful pajamas of yours before I started the interrogation.”

  I smiled and popped the DVD into the player. “Whatever would you feel the need to interrogate me about?”

  “Oh, that’s low!” she groused. “You know damn well what I want to know!”

  “Not even if you waterboard me.”

  “What?” she shrilled as I told her, “I’m going to watch a movie and then go to bed. So I’ll talk to you sometime tomorrow.”

  “But…”

  “Bye, bye now.” And I hung up.

  Chapter 8

  SOME COFFEE AND A microwave bag of Orville Redenbacher’s best and I was ready to start the movie. For some reason I never seemed to remember the soulful wailing of the first few minutes of the movie. A voice pulled out of heaven praising the lord… or in this case baseball.

  Susan Sarandon started her monologue on faith, sex, and baseball. I munched on popcorn as rookie pitcher Tim Robbins hit everything and anything in sight with his ninety-five m.p.h fastballs. And just as the manager and his assistant were contemplating all Tim’s new records, good and bad—and I started to think that popcorn just wasn’t going to cut it, my stomach growling amazingly—Kevin Costner walked in and announced he was the player to be named later.

  And someone rang my doorbell.

  Well, damn!

  I hit pause and shuffled out of my living room to the front door. If Bette couldn’t wait until tomorrow to try and get me to spill about my pseudo date, she was going to get the door slammed in her pretty face.

  I pulled open the door and was ready to lay into Bette… but all I saw was a tall, broad back covered by a buttery soft black leather jacket. I looked up as Jake turned around so I could see him… and my mouth just went slack.

  I mean, could it be possible that the man looked even better now than he had just a couple hours ago? Had his eyes been this deep and dark, or his lips so luscious… and had he smelled so damn delicious?

  No, wait… He smelled like melted mozzarella, tomatoes, oregano and garlic—Calvin Klein didn’t have Pizza Wet Dream as one of their fragrances… did they?

  I tore my peepers from his face and looked down to see he had a large cardboard box of Mary’s Pizza in his hands.

  My mouth watered and my stomach growled.

  My heart was telling my brain I wanted the man, but my stomach was overriding all commands in favor of the pizza in said man’s hands.

  Such lovely, strong hands… but think of all that ooey-gooey melted cheese!

  Jake smiled, the cocky look on his handsome mug saying Yeah, how can you say no?

  “I thought if we hurry we could fit date number three in before midnight,” he said as he lifted an eyebrow and looked past me to the television in the living room. “Is that Bull Durham? I love that movie.”

  I smiled and shook my head. As much as my stomach and other things ached to let him in… I just knew this was a really bad idea.

  And then he pulled an ace out of the pocket of his leather jacket.

  Two plain milk chocolate Hershey bars… and a Caramello bar too.

  Hot damn! Pizza, chocolate and hot sexy man.

  I gulped and opened the door wider to let him in. He sauntered in and laid the pizza box on my coffee table, and shrugged off his leather jacket and tossed it on an armchair adjacent to the couch.

  Ooooooh… he’d showered and changed… and now had a clean shaven face that was just gorgeous, and was wearing a tight fitting black t-shirt with the Transformers logo shining in silver across his fine, broad chest.

  I looked up into his glittering eyes and decided to knock his
sexy ass off balance a little.

  “Transformers…really?” I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Are you seven years old?”

  That’s when Jake’s eyes swept down over my body, those blazing melted chocolate headlights taking me in, caressing my every curve from my toes all the way back up to my face.

  “Well hello kitty-kitty,” he growled, and I was about to tell him off… but then I remembered what I had on.

  Damn…

  “I think my niece has a set just like those…,” Jake taunted. “She’s five.”

  I shifted my weight self-consciously and then put my hands up for a time out. “Touché… truce?”

  He raised a wicked eyebrow. “Pizza?”

  Oh god. “Yes, please.”

  ***

  We sat on my couch, the pizza box open on my coffee table, the chocolate sitting in the upturned lid of the box. I hit play and sank my teeth into the divine pizza Mary made. Just enough sauce, the best cheese, spicy pepperoni, and a crust both soft and chewy, with a little crunch at the edges.

  I moaned with pleasure, closing my eyes and luxuriating in the taste. It was the best thing I’d put in my mouth all day; and that was saying something.

  When I opened my eyes again I found Jake staring raptly at me, his own slice of heaven in his hand, but not partaken of. His eyes were so intense, even in the dim of my living room, that I felt like I was under a spotlight.

  On the screen Kevin Costner was being told his fate: to babysit the rookie pitcher.

  I had a hard time drawing in my next breath. All I wanted to do was toss away my slice of mozzarella heaven and throw myself onto Jake, devouring his thick, luscious looking lips instead.

  Oh god, did I ever want to…

  But damn, I’d only met the guy… well, it seemed like weeks ago, but was really only a handful of hours ago. I was just being crazy to think this was a good idea… but it was what I wanted. Every molecule in my body wanted it.

  Except that wasn’t me.

  I didn’t do things like that… like this.