Love Ever After: Eleven All-New Romances!

by Nina Lane

  My other contemporary romance series is the Indigo Island Series featuring the wealthy Putnam family. I’ve included an excerpt from book one, Weekend with the Tycoon. I hope you enjoy it! Thank you so much for reading Laguna Heights. And please remember, if you liked it, a review really helps other people find it, and means a lot to me, too. I read every one of them! I’d love to stay in touch! Join my newsletter list for fun extras and notices of new releases. I’m active on Facebook and Twitter, too! Keep in touch!

  Xo

  Kaira

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kaira Rouda is a bestselling, multiple award-winning author of contemporary fiction that sparkles with humor and heart. She has won the Indie Excellence Award, USA Book Awards, the Reader’s Choice Awards and honorable mention in the Writer’s Digest International Book Awards. Her books have been widely reviewed and featured in leading magazines. Her nonfiction series includes REAL YOU INCORPORATED, for women entrepreneurs and REAL YOU for AUTHORS, for women writers, continue to inspire. She lives in Southern California with her husband and four almost-grown kids, and is at work on her next novel. Connect with her on Twitter, @KairaRouda, and on Facebook at Kaira Rouda Books.

  For more about Kaira and her books, please visit www.KairaRouda.com and sign up for her newsletter!

  Copyright © 2015 by Kaira Rouda

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover Design by Okay Creations

  Cover photo by Trace Rouda Photography.

  PEPPERMINT STICK

  A Sugar Daddy Story

  by

  Nina Lane

  © 2015 Snow Queen Publishing

  www.ninalane.com

  *

  CHAPTER ONE

  RYAN

  She was cute. Plain, but cute because she was a young woman who dressed like she was seventy years old. Straight brown hair scraped away from her face and tied at the back of her neck. Black or gray suits, skirts past her knees, sensible shoes. Like a little librarian with her clipboard clasped against her chest, a pencil between her fingers.

  I didn’t really notice her at first. She was easy to miss. My brother Luke, CEO of the Sugar Daddy Candy empire, hired her after his previous secretary retired. One day gray-haired, maternal Helen was gone, and at her desk sat this serious, conservative young woman who barely glanced at me when I walked past.

  I only started paying attention to her once I saw her legs. She was standing at the copy machine when I went into the room one day, and I let myself look her over from head to toe. She had great legs—long and slim with heart-shaped calves.

  Worth a second or third glance. Not even her wool skirt could hide them. Made me wonder what the rest of her body looked like under her boxy jackets. It seemed a shame she hid under such ugly clothes.

  Aside from my brothers, who wore suits every day, most of the Sugar Daddy employees dressed casually, which was dictated by the atmosphere. The executive offices were located a few floors above the manufacturing plant, and all the walls and offices were splashed with brightly colored kinetic art and sculptures, neon signs, and custom-made furniture. Willy Wonka had nothing on Sugar Daddy when it came to a fun, fantastical environment, which extended to the public viewing areas and gift shop downstairs.

  But CEO Luke ran the company with an iron fist, which was likely why he’d hired a plain but highly competent secretary. No distractions with this one; just get the work done.

  Like the rest of the Sugar Daddy employees, the secretary had a jar of candy on her desk though I never saw her actually eating one. I, on the other hand, was rarely without a candy in my pocket or my mouth.

  As one of the heirs to the Sugar Daddy Candy company, I’d grown up on the manufacturing floor, learning the formulas for mixing sugar, water, and flavored syrups before heating and molding it to form lollipops, hard candy suckers and sticks, taffy, caramels, jawbreakers, and chocolates. Even now, I still liked visiting the factory floor, where I’d first developed my addiction to peppermint candy.

  I unwrapped a peppermint and stuck it in my mouth, hitching my feet onto my desk. It was only ten in the morning, and I had nothing to do. I twisted a Rubik’s Cube around, getting the red and green squares lined up. If nothing else, the task eased the prickles of boredom.

  “Mr. Stone?”

  I looked up to find Luke’s secretary standing at the open door. She tapped on her watch.

  “Your meeting with Mr. Stone is in five minutes,” she said.

  “Oh.” I slid my feet off the desk and glanced at the clock, as if I’d remembered the meeting. “Right. Tell him I’m on my way.”

  She nodded and left. I let my gaze linger on her legs for a second before grabbing a pile of papers from my desk. I pulled a hand through my overlong hair in an effort to smooth it into place and straightened my crooked tie.

  I headed down the corridor to Luke’s office to deliver the quarterly sales reports—or at least, my version of the quarterly sales reports. I always put off meetings with my brother for as long as I could since they were often followed by a lecture about how I needed to take work more seriously.

  Luke’s secretary was at her desk, a pencil stuck behind her ear (really), her fingers moving briskly over the computer keyboard.

  I glanced at the nameplate on her desk. Jane Smith.

  Of course.

  “Thanks for the reminder, Jane.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Stone.” She continued typing. “Mr. Stone is waiting for you.”

  “Call me Ryan,” I suggested. “Or you’ll get confused with all the Mr. Stones around here. Though I’m the only one who holds the title Vice President of Miscellaneous Stuff.”

  She threw me a faintly derisive look. “I’ve heard about you, Mr. Stone. More accurately, I’ve been warned about you.”

  I might have been flattered by that if I thought she’d been “warned” about my devastating charm by the female Sugar Daddy employees. But since she was Luke’s new secretary, and given his hardcore CEO-ness, I knew he’d been the one to “warn” Miss Jane Smith about my haphazard attitude to work.

  “Do you always heed warnings, Miss Smith?” I asked, already knowing she was a rule follower.

  “Of course,” she replied. “Stop Ahead. Watch for Falling Rocks.”

  “Slippery When Wet?” I asked.

  “Funny.” She sent me a cool glance. “I don’t play games, Mr. Stone.”

  “I’m not playing games, Miss Smith. I’m just wondering what your warning sign is.”

  “Keep Out,” she replied curtly.

  “Pity,” I said. “Mine is Danger Zone.”

  “Huh.” She turned back to her computer. “I’d have thought yours might be Gusty Winds.”

  I laughed. A smile quirked her mouth, though she didn’t take her eyes from the computer screen. Her fingers moved faster over the keyboard. She was an efficient little thing. I wondered if she masturbated the same way—quick and to the point, just to get it done.

  Ah, yeah. There it was.

  Now my mind had gone in that direction, it would be tough not to picture Miss Jane Smith in all sorts of filthy scenarios. Hiking her skirt up to her waist, putting her hand between her legs, sticking her finger into her slit…

  Was she a virgin? I wouldn’t be surprised, given her don’t-touch-me appearance.

  I shifted, feeling my cock twitch against my thigh. I hadn’t had a good fuck in a while, not since my last girlfriend got too finicky for me to tolerate. I could put up with her complaints about
my “poor listening skills” and habitual lateness, but when she whined about needing to clean the sheets while I was shooting off, I was done with her.

  Jane Smith might be that type, though. Worried about making a mess.

  She paused in her typing and looked at me again. I realized I’d been standing there for a few minutes, just staring at her.

  “Will you require anything else, Mr. Stone?” she asked.

  Hell, yeah. I require you to strip off your clothes.

  I did want to know what she looked like naked. Then again, I wanted to know what most attractive women looked like naked. Bit of a bad habit, but since college it had kept my brain occupied when I wanted to crawl out of my skin with boredom. Sitting in lecture halls, counselors’ offices, company meetings, I’d pick out the prettiest woman in the room and strip her down in my head, picturing round breasts, long legs, tight nipples…

  “Anything else, Mr. Stone?” Jane’s voice broke into my thoughts.

  My gaze skimmed down to her chest. I could just make out the curve of her breasts under her white shirt, but they were partially hidden by her square jacket and I couldn’t get an idea of how big they were. Kind of fun, though, imagining what she kept hidden away.

  And why.

  That question burrowed into my mind like a seed. Keep Out, indeed. Too bad I‘d always been lousy at paying attention to warning signs.

  I set down the folders I was carrying and reached over to pull the pencil out from behind Miss Smith’s ear. She blinked her brown eyes at me. I took a peppermint stick out of the bowl on her desk and put it behind her ear in place of the pencil.

  “Required office attire,” I said. “And I know you’re not the kind of girl who would break an office rule.”

  “That’s certainly true,” she said pointedly, taking the candy stick out from behind her ear.

  “Well, there’s no rule about fraternizing with coworkers,” I remarked. “So you can say yes to going out with me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, Mr. Stone.”

  I frowned. Not the response I was used to receiving. “Why not?”

  “I don’t date.”

  “At all?” I reached for a butterscotch candy from the jar on her desk. “Ever?”

  She shook her head. Though I guessed her response fit her appearance, it still didn’t make sense.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “I just don’t.” Something in her tense expression told me I was pushing this too far.

  And despite my curiosity, I bit back a host of other questions. I unwrapped the candy and popped it into my mouth.

  “You tried the Sugar Daddy candy yet?” I asked.

  “I don’t eat sugar.”

  Of course she didn’t. I wondered if she was part of a conservative religious cult or something.

  “And Luke still hired you?” I asked.

  “I’m very efficient and well organized,” she replied.

  “I can see that.” I nodded toward the peppermint stick she was still holding. “Try it.”

  “Mr. Stone, I really don’t…”

  “Come on.” I took the stick from her and peeled off the plastic. “Try it or I’ll tell Luke you’re wrong for the job.”

  Though she rolled her eyes again, she accepted the stick and brought it to her mouth. She had nice lips, round and soft looking. I watched her pink tongue dart out for a quick lick of the stick. Damn. My cock twitched again.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Twenty.”

  “What twenty-year-old doesn’t like sugar?”

  And doesn’t date?

  “This one.” She pointed to herself with the stick. “How old are you, Mr. Stone?”

  “Twenty-six. I’ve loved sugar since I was a baby.”

  “Well, considering your gene pool, you were clearly born with a sweet tooth,” she replied.

  “Sweet tooths…teeth…can be developed, I promise.” I gestured to the stick. “You hardly tasted it. I want to see you really give it a good suck.”

  A faint flush colored her cheeks. Intriguing. She parted her lips and stuck the red-and-white candy in her mouth, sucking on it with an actual slurping noise.

  My cock jerked into half-hardness. Ah, fuck, to see her lips wrapped around my dick like that. Then she started sliding the stick back and forth, back and forth, her lips getting pink and glossy, her tongue stroking over the candy…

  I was about to come. I stepped away from the desk and cleared my throat, willing my erection to subside. This was turning into more than a mere distraction from boredom.

  “Is it good?” I asked.

  “Mmm.” She slid the stick in and out of her mouth again. “If you like sugar, I suppose.”

  “You could learn to love sugar,” I remarked. “Peppermint is well-known to be an aphrodisiac too.”

  She gave me a startled look, her breath hitching a little. “That’s not an appropriate comment, Mr. Stone.”

  I smiled. “I can do a lot worse.”

  With a huff, Miss Smith turned her attention back to the computer screen, the candy still stuck in her mouth.

  “Mr. Stone is waiting, Mr. Stone,” she said.

  The peppermint stick bobbed as she spoke. She was killing me, and she didn’t even know it. I had no idea why such a hot little thing wanted to downplay her looks and figure, but it was a damned shame.

  I managed to get myself under control before starting down the corridor to Luke’s office.

  “Mr. Stone,” Miss Smith called.

  I stopped and turned to her. She pointed the peppermint stick toward the pile of spreadsheets and folders I’d left on her desk.

  “Did you need these?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah.” I went back to retrieve the papers. “Quarterly sales reports.”

  She looked at the messy stack of crumpled papers, all haphazardly stuffed into manila folders.

  “You’re bringing those into a meeting with Luke Stone?” she asked, arching a brow.

  I nodded, not bothering to tell her that Luke had blessedly low expectations of me. I’d helped him out by not raising the bar.

  Miss Smith shook her head and stood, reaching for the papers. She set them on her desk and started flicking through the reports one by one, smoothing out the wrinkled pages and placing them on one of four neat stacks on her desk. Then she took several new, colored folders from her desk drawer, wrote the contents on the tabs, and put the papers back in each one.

  “Blue is quarter one, green is quarter two, yellow is quarter three, red is quarter four,” she said, handing me the folders. “I noticed that Sugar Daddy’s first quarter this year was particularly robust, with 2.7% net sales growth. I’d say that’s attributable to the overhaul of the classic candy line and company expansion into China.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, taking the folders and backing away from her. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  She pursed her lips around the candy stick and returned to typing. I went into Luke’s monochromatic office and closed the door. He was sitting behind his ocean-liner glass desk, looking like he just stepped out of a Forbes magazine spread on anal-retentive corporate CEOs. Perfectly tailored suit, red power tie with a noose-like knot, a face set with concentration as he studied a P&L spreadsheet or whatever.

  “Color-coded quarterly sales reports,” I announced, dropping the folders onto his desk.

  He didn’t look up. I repeated exactly what Jane had said about the classic candy line and expansion into China. Luke finally glanced at the folders, faint surprise flashing across his features.

  “I’ll look them over,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Sure.” I backed away, thinking this was probably the first time I’d escaped my older brother’s office without a lecture.

  “Ryan, sit down.” Luke gestured to a chair in front of his desk. “I want to talk to you.”

  I cursed under my breath. “About what?”

  “As you know, we’re looking to innovate a few of ou
r product lines,” Luke said.

  I didn’t know that, but I nodded and sank into the chair. I pulled a wooden pyramid puzzle out of my pocket and twisted it around, making an effort to focus on Luke’s ramblings about Sugar Daddy products.

  “I want you to do some market analysis and research, write up a report, and consult with R&D about ways to revitalize the hard candy line,” he continued. “I’d also like some ideas from you about possible future products. Your deadline is Friday.”

  I groaned inwardly. No fucking way could I do all that in a month, let alone by Friday. I could feel my brother looking at me, clearly having issued an order rather than a request.

  “Uh, I’ll see what I can do,” I said, shoving the puzzle back into my pocket.

  “You need to take more initiative with this company, Ryan,” Luke said. “You may think it’s tough, but if you’d take the time and put in the effort, I know you can come up with some great, creative ideas.”

  It was a speech I’d heard before. I nodded and mumbled something else about “working on it” before starting out of the office.

  “I’m going to assign my secretary to help you with this project,” Luke said.

  I came to a halt and turned back to look at him. “Jane Smith?”

  “Yes.” He turned to his computer and began typing. “She’s very resourceful and efficient.”

  She was also hot as hell and, for some reason, repressed. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her being assigned to help me, not when all I wanted to do was figure her out.

  But maybe this wasn’t a bad thing. Sex and puzzles were the two things I didn’t have any trouble focusing on. And Miss Jane Smith was a sexual puzzle through and through.

  Maybe being her boss was just the solution we both needed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JANE

  His office was a mess, but he was cute. Really cute. Sun-streaked brown hair flopping over his forehead, his tie always crooked, his blue eyes bright with mischievousness and warmth. I might have thought Mr. Ryan Stone was the flippant, devil-may-care kid brother of the Stone family if I hadn’t overheard people talking about him as if he were defective.

  He’ll never get his shit together.