Roses & Champagne Kisses

by Stacy Eaton

  Man, I’d been looking forward to meeting this woman ever since Chris had first asked me to check on her background. Chris had concerns with how fast Robin had hired her, and he was afraid Finley might be trouble in the making.

  I’d dug into her and dug into her good only to find that she was clean as a whistle when it came to criminal activity. While she hadn’t made a lot of money in her previous jobs, she had really good credit and appeared to live within her means.

  I’d also done backgrounds on two men that I’d found associated with her. Both had been live-in relations, and I wasn’t sure if they had been boyfriends or roommates. I assumed boyfriends because both places in which she’d lived had been one-bedroom apartments.

  Neither of the men had been very impressive, and I wondered why she would settle for someone who didn’t seem to have any ambition. She had a degree in business management, graduated at the top of her class, and yet she worked as a hostess/waitress. It was almost as if she was either afraid to apply herself and her skills—or something else was holding her back.

  I was of a different mindset. I’d started working at the age of fourteen when I had become a model. By the time I’d turned eighteen, I’d traveled the world, had graduated early with the help of tutors, and had started college classes that I could take on the road. I was constantly pushing myself and going above and beyond what I’d initially set out to do.

  When I was twenty-eight, I retired from modeling, not because I couldn’t get jobs, but because my wife was fighting cancer and I wanted to be home with her and our son. For four years, I did everything I could for Sherry while finishing school and starting a business. Sadly, she passed away, and for the last six years, Wade and I had managed on our own.

  I had a good life, loved my job, and my son was my rock. We got along for the most part, and if it hadn’t been for him, I might have fallen off a cliff many years ago.

  Robin was seated at the counter and approached Finley. Not only was I meeting Chris here to talk over something he needed me to work on, but I was also meeting with Robin and Autumn about the upcoming wedding.

  I was looking forward to speaking with Chris but not making decisions about the food for the wedding. Why Autumn wanted me here, I had no idea.

  Robin and I sat down, and Finley set a mug in front of me and turned away quickly. I turned the brown and cream-colored mug, so I could read the words on it. As the words registered, a sudden image flashed in my mind of Finley and me cuddling on a couch in front of a fire while having coffee. The whole picture was funny because I didn’t do cozy or cuddling anymore. I hadn’t done that since Sherry had passed.

  Yeah, I had dated, but they had been random women. I’d thought about looking up some of the women that had been interested in me back when I was modeling, but then I’d remembered that I’d left that life far behind me. The local women oohed and aahed over me and wanted me to autograph parts of their bodies when they learned that I’d been a model. In fact, there was a tavern not far away that used to have an entire corner devoted to some of my magazine covers. I had no idea if it still did as I hadn’t visited that tavern in years. Sherry used to find it funny. I didn’t have it in me to revisit those memories.

  Finley appeared to be either flustered or irritated as she brushed off any conversation with us and disappeared into the kitchen. It was only a few moments later that we heard a scream and a crash, and Robin and I were both out of our seats.

  The protective man inside of me wanted to put Robin behind me, but she was already bursting through the kitchen door. A cloud of white powder filled the air in the rear of the kitchen, and Robin rushed farther into the room.

  I followed more slowly once I realized it wasn’t a life-threatening situation but an accident that had caused the ruckus. Robin squealed, and her arms pinwheeled as she went to the ground, and then she cried out as she gripped her ankle. If I wasn’t mistaken, the noise I’d heard had been a bone cracking and not something hitting the ground.

  “Robin? Are you okay?” Finley asked as I crouched beside the two women.

  Robin was breathless when she replied that she thought she’d broken her ankle, and I frowned as I contemplated the best way to deal with this.

  “Shit,” I muttered, and my eyes raked over Finley. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied quickly and called out to the man behind her, “Martin, get me ice!”

  Martin bustled away immediately.

  “What’s going on in here?” someone said from the kitchen door.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Chris holding Abigail. “Robin slipped. She might have broken her ankle.”

  “What?” He began to rush in, but I held my hand up. “Wait, we don’t need you slipping in here, too. Let me get her up, and I’ll bring her into the other room.”

  “What the hell happened in here?” he barked.

  I left it up to Finley to reply as I looked down at Robin’s distorted ankle. Damn, that had to hurt.

  “I was heading into the freezer, and Martin surprised me. I fell backward, and I didn’t want to land on the vegetable crate, so I leaned to the side at the last moment, but I hit the counter and took the powdered sugar down with me. I guess Robin heard me and came to see what was going on. When she saw me on the floor, she rushed over and slipped on the sugar.”

  Chris rolled his eyes. “Great, just what she needs,” he sighed as Abigail clapped her hands and wiggled in his arms as if she wanted to get down.

  “Finley, I’m going to need you to hold her leg as still as you can while I pick her up off the floor.”

  “Okay.”

  Robin cried out as Finley grasped her ankle above the injury and on the base of her foot while I cradled Robin in my arms.

  “On the count of three, let’s go slowly up.”

  Finley nodded, and I counted. When I finally got off the ground with her, Robin was whimpering, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. I carried her carefully into the other room and set her down in a chair.

  Chris inspected her ankle, and I held Abigail for him, so she wouldn’t try to touch her mother. Abby came to me quickly as Chris attended to his wife. “Ah, damn, Robin, I think you broke it.”

  She snorted around a sniff, “You think?”

  “Can you feel your toes?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Okay, we need to get this wrapped in ice and get you in the car, so you can go to the hospital,” Chris told her gently.

  “How far away is the hospital from here?” Finley asked.

  “Celebration Hospital is about fifty minutes,” I told her.

  “That’s the closest hospital?”

  “Sadly, yes,” Chris replied as he stood and took the bag of ice from Martin.

  Finley disappeared into the kitchen and then returned a few minutes later with dish towels and two pieces of wood that could have come from the vegetable crate. Chris said he was going to move the car closer and disappeared out the door.

  “We need to stabilize this a little bit.” Finley tore one of the white towels in a few strips and then began to tie the pieces of board to the sides of Robin’s leg to hold it straight. She wiggled the ice bag to lay it flat over the ankle and winced at Robin. “I’m so sorry, Robin.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Robin said quickly.

  “Yes, it was,” Finley spouted. “It was totally my fault.”

  As Abigail looked down at her mother, she began to fuss and try to go to her. “No, little bug, you need to stay with me. Mommy has an owie.”

  I glanced down when I finished and found Finley staring at me, her brows arched high in some unasked question.

  “What? You’ve never seen someone talk to a baby before?”

  She opened her mouth as if she were going to respond but thought better of it and shook her head, turning her attention back to Robin. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, you’re going to need to take care of the meeting today while Chris takes me to the hosp
ital.”

  “Don’t you want to reschedule it? I can call them and explain.”

  Robin was shaking her head. “No, you can take care of it. I have faith in you. Everything you need is on my laptop.”

  “But, Robin,” Finley began to protest, but Robin glared at her.

  “You can do this, Finley. I know you can, and you owe me for spilling all that powdered sugar.”

  Finley cringed. “Damn, I’m sorry, Robin.”

  Robin smiled, “I know you are.”

  Chris returned and lifted Robin while Finley supported her foot again. They got her into the car without too much of an issue, and then I kissed Abigail’s forehead and passed her off to Chris.

  “Give me a call later and let me know how she is. I can stop by once you guys get home, and we can discuss work then if you want to.”

  “Thanks, Roan,” Chris replied and hustled around to the driver’s seat.

  As they drove away, Finley sighed beside me, and I studied her profile. She was covered in powdered sugar, and I chuckled. She jumped as if she’d forgotten I was there and stared into my face. Her eyes were amazing at this close distance.

  “You have powdered sugar all over you. In fact, you have some right here.” I wiped a dusting from her cheek using my thumb. Her lips parted, and my gaze landed on her full bottom lip as my hand froze. For the first time in a very long time, I had the urge to kiss a woman—not just kiss a woman because the date was over or because I wanted to know if I could feel anything. No, this yearning was because somehow, I knew that once my lips touched hers, it would be incredible. I wanted incredible. I deserved incredible. I needed incredible.

  My thumb continued to brush the sugar away and then paused on the very corner of her mouth. Her eyes brightened, and her nose flared slightly as she turned her head ever so slowly toward my thumb. She opened her mouth wider, and the tip of her tongue peeked out and touched the pad of my thumb briefly.

  That single moment was enough to wake every sleeping nerve ending in my body and jumpstart my libido which had been dormant for a very long time. I pressed my thumb forward a little and she wrapped her lips around it, her tongue gently swirling over the pad of my thumb. I wanted to drop to my knees and wrap my arms around her waist as I begged her for more.

  Her dark-green eyes stayed locked on mine, and my breathing hitched in my chest as she let go of my thumb. I wrapped my fingertips around the back of her neck and brought her forward.

  Our lips were just about to touch when a car horn blared behind us and we jumped. I spun around to see Autumn pulling her car into a parking space. Aw, crap. I hoped she hadn’t seen what was going on. That was the last thing I needed right now.

  “Excuse me,” Finley said, and before I could speak, she raced toward the door and disappeared inside.

  Chapter 3

  Finley

  Well, hello there, crazy person! I stared into the mirror in the employee bathroom. I must have lost my ever-loving mind to have sucked his thumb into my mouth, and I’d been about to let him kiss me! I covered my face with my hands as I paced in a circle in the confining space. What was I thinking?

  There was a simple answer to that question: I wasn’t thinking. In fact, I had stopped thinking the minute he’d walked into the café—and the look on his face just now, as if he’d automatically regretted what he’d done—or had been about to do—as he’d turned to the car that was parking had been enough to make me run and hide.

  I was an idiot. I really needed to have that tattooed to my forehead, that way people would know before they even spoke to me that I wasn’t worth the trouble. I turned to the sink and put my hands on the sides as I leaned forward and made sure I had washed off all the powdered sugar.

  Please let him have left. Hopefully, since Chris was gone, he would leave, too. Please, please, please, please. I dusted off my clothing as well as I could and removed the small apron that now had sugar in the pockets.

  A knock sounded on the door. “Finley, Robin’s appointment is here. What should I tell them?” Martin called out.

  “Ask them to give me a moment, and I’ll be right out. I’m going to handle it for Robin.”

  He said he would, and I continued to make myself presentable. Poor Robin, what if her ankle was broken? What was that going to do to her business? Man, I felt horrible. I needed to make sure that this appointment went smoothly, and I knew it was going to be rough.

  Robin had told me that Autumn changed her mind ten times, and just when you thought you had a firm decision, she’d change it again. This was a hell of a customer to be starting with, but I didn’t have much of a choice, now did I?

  I stared into the mirror. “I can do this. I have a degree in business management and a minor in restaurant management, so I can march right out there, put a smile on my face, and help her plan her wedding fare.” I started to falter and then I growled at myself, “I can do this. I have to do this.”

  I burst out of the bathroom before I could chicken out, praying that no one was standing outside the bathroom door to get whacked. One accident was enough for today. Luckily, no one was there, and I ditched my apron in the dirty clothes and grabbed another in case I would need it in the café.

  This was our quiet time of the day, so the chances of anyone coming in were slim, but we never knew when someone was going to get hungry early.

  I stopped at the door of the kitchen and took a moment to prepare myself. Yes, I’d excelled in all my classes, but when it had come time to interview for a job, I’d frozen. I hadn’t been able to remember anything, and the little confidence I’d had in myself had quickly vanished. I’d walked away from a career in business to work a job in which I could slide into the background and where people practically never noticed me.

  Of course, people looked at me as they took something I offered, but the moment they had what they wanted, I was invisible again. I liked that. I didn’t like the spotlight—which was why I didn’t like dating extremely handsome men. I didn’t want to be on their arms and have people look at me and wonder why he was with me.

  Okay, so I had major self-esteem issues. Everyone had issues, but I couldn’t let that affect me, not now. Now, I had to march through that door, put a huge smile on my face, add extra change to my patience meter, and help this bride and her groom pick out incredible food that would wow their guests at their reception.

  I had this. I pushed open the door before I could debate it again and strolled right into the dining room area of the café. A beautiful woman with long, blond hair stood while she spoke to someone who was seated. She was gorgeous and elegant and screamed high-maintenance. I scanned the room and thought, Thank you, god—Roan’s gone.

  I stepped around the counter. “Autumn? I’m Finley Parker, unfortunately—”

  I stopped mid-sentence as the man stood and faced me. You’ve got to be kidding me. Roan Waterman was the groom? The man who had almost kissed me outside? The man whose thumb I had just sucked?

  Oh—my—god! Please let the floor open and suck me through. No! Not suck—there had been enough sucking! Crap! Kill me! Just kill me now.

  “I was just explaining to Autumn that Robin asked you to take over our meeting today,” he said quickly.

  “Right, you’re a Waterman,” I stated tightly as realization slammed into me like a baseball bat. The wedding was for the Truman/Waterman party.

  “Yes, I am.” He considered me, probably wondering if I was going to say anything about what had happened outside. He didn’t have to worry, I’d already forgotten about it. Yep. Gone.

  Holy crap! Panic clawed at my chest, how was I going to do this? How could I sit across the table from him and his future wife and pretend that what had just happened outside hadn’t happened?

  Just as suddenly as those thoughts went through my mind, Autumn sighed heavily, “Is there a problem? I doubt you’ll be able to deal with this.” She eyed the apron around my waist with distaste. “Maybe we should wait for Robin.”

  O
h, she was a piece of work. Her attitude fired me up. That jerk deserved a piece of work. My courage immediately returned, and I plastered a wide smile on my face that was as fake as her cotton candy pink nails. “Why don’t you two have a seat over there, and I’ll get the stuff we need.”

  Luckily, my voice came out smooth and not dripping with acid as I turned away to gain control. My body vibrated with anger, and yet I wanted to curl up on the other side of the counter and weep at the injustice of it all.

  “Are you okay?” Roan’s deep voice spoke softly from behind me, but I jumped as if he had shouted it.

  “Yes, I’m fine, Mr. Waterman. I’m sorry about earlier.” I didn’t look him in the eye, I couldn’t. Instead, I collected Robin’s things and carried them to the table with Roan right on my heel.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be able to help me?” Autumn asked snottily as I took a seat across from her.

  For a moment, I took in every perfect inch of her face. Not one spot, scar, extra hair, or—god forbid—line marred the surface. She was like a porcelain doll with tanner skin. My gaze flicked to Roan and his piercing, green eyes. I’d be damned if I was going to fall apart in front of this man—or his fiancée. Oh, hell no. This guy had brass balls, and he had just met his match. Here he was getting ready to choose the food for what should be the happiest day of his life, and he had been trying to make out with me.

  Pig.

  I gave Autumn my sweetest smile. “I absolutely know that I can assist you,” I reached over the table and patted her hand condescendingly, “and if there are any problems, I am sure you can speak with Robin about them as soon as tomorrow.”

  It didn’t take me long to completely understand why Robin said the woman was so difficult to work with. What should have taken thirty, maybe forty minutes tops, took almost ninety. By the time we were done, I wanted to bang my head on the table.

  Autumn’s inability to pick anything without discussing it forward, backward, and around in a circle with Roan was driving the last bits of sanity from my mind. I tried to keep my focus on Autumn, but occasionally, my gaze would stray to his hand, and I’d remember that it had touched me, that I had suckled that thumb, and then I would slam back to reality as Autumn would coo over something or bitch and change her mind again.