Sweet Like Candy
Evie Harrison
Contents
The Erotic Intentions Books
Sweet Like Candy
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
Thank You
About the Author
Also by Evie Harrison
Sweet Like Candy
An Erotic Intentions Book
© 2016 Evie Harrison
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2016 by Evie Harrison
Cover Design: Perfect Pear Creative Covers
Editing: Linda Ellen Edits
The Erotic Intentions Books
Each Erotic Intentions book will be a standalone story full of page-melting, panty-wetting heat courtesy of alpha men claiming their women. No cheating. No lying. No deceit. Just true love.
Short, sweet & sexy.
Sweet Like Candy
Julia Kaye spends her days decorating cakes and daydreaming about finding Mr. Right. She’s tried it all—fix ups, speed dating, online profiles and even a popular phone app, all with no success. She’s sure her dream man is out there, but she’s done trying to find him herself. She figure's when it’s meant to be; fate will find a way.
Ryan Walters is a workaholic who’s not looking for Mrs. Right. He’s not even looking for Mrs. Right Now. Instead, he spends his days focused on what he cares about most— amassing a fortune. Aside from his sister and her children, Ryan has no time for entanglements of any kind.
What happens when one confirmed bachelor meets the sweetest girl in the world?
Happily ever after, of course!
1
The Friday before my nephew’s fourth birthday, I was recruited to run errands for my sister. I admit to being pretty put-out about having to leave the office, drive out to my sister’s to get my nephew, only to then drive all the way back to a shop located just two blocks from my office. My sister raved about their stuff, but I’d never ventured in even though she’d been bugging me about it for months.
I agreed to go that night because Emmett, as my only nephew, was my special dude. Also, my sister would’ve given me a purple nurple if I hadn’t. Jamie might’ve been a married mother of three with a fourth on the way, but she would always be my zany older sister. The two of us were best friends, our bond unbreakable after we lost our parents and our little brother Steven in a car accident. I’d been sixteen and Jamie was eighteen when it happened.
Jamie fought for guardianship of me, never once wavering in her decision, not even when I begged her to leave me behind. It had killed me to watch my sister giving up her college scholarship in order to get a job waitressing to support us both. Our parents hadn’t been rich—far from it—so they hadn’t had life insurance or anything left behind to keep us going. The remaining car was repossessed and the lease on the townhome we rented hadn’t been something Jamie could afford to keep up with.
I’d gotten a job as a cashier at the local Walmart in order to help, but it hadn’t made much of a difference since I wasn’t allowed to work near as much as I needed to. My sister had been a machine, her one and only focus being my ability to get a college scholarship. Because of her focus and guidance I had. I was very aware I owed it all to her. It was a large part of the reason I worked like a fucking madman, always anxious to increase my bottom line. Just in case. I was extremely well off, but it never felt like enough. Even after Jamie married a man who was more than able to take care of her, I kept right on working like a fiend. By then it was just habit. I liked the stability of money.
“Guess what?” Jamie asked excitedly.
I knew my sister, which meant I had a good idea of what was coming. Therefore, I said nothing.
“Harrison’s friend Mike’s new secretary is coming tomorrow,” she announced as I belted Emmett into his car seat. “She’s adorable and super single.”
Ding, ding, ding. My sister was like old reliable.
I smirked as I glanced over my shoulder at her. “You’re about as subtle as a wrecking crew, JJ.”
“I’m worried about you,” she replied sternly. “It’s insane to me that you don’t date. I don’t want you to end up alone, Ry.”
“But I like being alone,” I reminded her.
“Come on, Ry, it’s been years,” she huffed. “You have to miss…”
Little ears were listening, so JJ had to spell out the word S-E-X. I straightened up from belting Emmett in and set my arm on the hood of the car as I rolled my eyes at my sister.
“And yet I really don’t,” I shrugged.
“That’s just wrong,” she argued. “You’re twenty-eight but you act ninety. No red-blooded male just forgets about S-E-X.”
“I haven’t forgotten about it, (actually, I thought maybe I had, for all intents and purposes). I just don’t care. It’s only been like…” I trailed off, frowning as I tried to remember how long it had been. Yep. I had forgotten. My career was my life and I put it ahead of everything but my sister and her family. Otherwise, I lived to work and worked to live. There was no room for anything else.
“Four years,” she provided in exasperation.
I tapped my fingers against the roof of the car and shrugged. “It’s not right to date and give people an idea of things that are never going to happen. I’m never getting married or having kids and meaningless S-E-X is gross. I don’t like it. It gave me the creeps.”
It really did, too. I’d never had time for a girlfriend, which meant I’d never had sex with anyone I felt connected to. I lost my virginity my senior year in college. Since then, I’d had a grand total of three partners. There was nothing worse than being skin to skin with someone you didn’t have feelings for. I always found it uncomfortable and depressing, to be honest. I kept my heart protected because it was easier. The worst thing would’ve been to develop feelings for someone who wanted children. I had never once felt the desire to be a father, which was a big deal to me. I believed being a parent was something you should want with your whole heart. If you didn’t feel it, having children was downright cruel.
“You’re too firm about that meaningless thing,” Jamie argued. “At least it was female contact. Dating your fist isn’t normal.”
“I don’t date my fist,” I answered stiffly.
I didn’t. In fact, I hadn’t taken myself in hand for months, maybe even as long as a year. Not that I gave a damn since my focus was money. I wrote it all off as having a low sex drive. In my opinion, there were worse things in life than not banging my way through the town or jerking it incessantly.
“What’s that mean?” Emmett questioned. “Unca Ry dates his fist?”
I pursed my lips to keep from laughing out loud as my sister gaped at her son.
“Emmett!” She scolded. “That’s not what I said. Don’t listen to adult conversations.”
“Yeah it is. The door’s open,
Mommy,” he pointed out with a giggle. “I has good ears.” “Well, I mean, well,” Jamie sputtered and glared at me before looking back to Emmett, “your ears heard wrong. That’s not what I said.”
“Okay Mommy,” Emmett said cheerfully. “Can me go get my bots cake now? Your talkin’ is boring.”
I wanted to high-five my nephew right then. If he hadn’t put the kibosh on it, my sister would’ve talked my ear off for an hour about potential fix-ups. Jamie was a machine where I was concerned. She considered it an absolute abomination that I wasn’t at least engaged.
Emmett chattered the whole way to the bakery about his party and his friends at school, and I laughed a lot at his funny stories. I’d never have any of my own, but I adored my sister’s children. They were all amazing, hilarious and so damn smart.
I held onto Emmett’s hand as we walked from my car—a formerly pristine Mercedes that my nephew had just spilled red juice in—toward the bakery. I loved the kid like crazy but damn was I sad about that juice, especially since the car was only nine days old. Fortunately the interior was black, so the juice stain wouldn’t be obvious. I made a mental note to make an appointment to have the car detailed.
As we approached the store I looked through the window and everything just stopped, including my steps. All thoughts of juice and car cleaning appointments went right out the window.
This was because of the sight before me. There on the other side of the window was a woman wiggling her sexy ass along to a beat as she wiped down the front of a glass case. Her curvaceous rear view was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. I wondered if she was one of those girls who thought they were fat. I found that mindset horrifically unattractive. In my opinion women weren’t meant to be stick figures. As I continued watching her, I discounted the idea that she would be that type of woman, since she seemed quite comfortable in her body. I found that sexy as hell.
I watched as her ponytail moved back and forth while she cleaned. I had an tremendous urge to walk up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist, to set my chin on her shoulder and listen to her talk. It was insane, considering I hadn’t even seen her face. As I got closer to the door I studied her hands as she cleaned, smiling when I saw no rings. It was ridiculous the amount of anxiety I felt even thinking that this woman I hadn’t even met might be involved with someone else.
“Is we goin’ in or what?” Emmett asked as he tugged at my hand.
I nodded, my eyes never leaving the vision in front of me.
“Yeah. We’re definitely going in,” I said as I surreptitiously adjusted myself in my pants.
The low sex drive I was so sure about? It was instantly a thing of the past. I was as aroused as I’d ever been and the only thing I could think about was marking my territory in the most sexual of ways.
A part of me realized that shit was getting real and that I was absolutely out of my depth, but I didn’t care. All I could think about was her.
She was all that mattered.
2
I was starving and exhausted, which was to be expected after almost a dozen hours at work with only three hurried bathroom breaks and one miniscule slice of pizza I’d eaten hours before. I was counting down the minutes until I could lock the door and leave for the night. Less than thirty minutes separated me from turning the closed sign to face out and I couldn’t wait.
I worked at Sweet Like Candy, a bakery and candy emporium. The shop was one of my happy places, which meant work was a joy and not a burden. My schedule normally allowed for an hour-long lunch break and all the delicious treats I could eat, but not that day. This was due to it being a Friday, and one where we’d had a ton of orders to fill. The shop had been slammed with non-stop customers picking up orders, calling in with requests and, of course, there were also deliveries.
We’d normally have been just as busy but the day had gone completely off the rails the moment both our delivery crew called out with food poisoning. Never had I been so glad to have skipped all-you-can-eat wing night at the pub they went to after work on Thursdays. With them both out my boss, Gina, had to drive the van to deliver the most elaborate wedding cake of the day since it was her creation, and she had to take two shop assistants with her since the cake was so heavy. One of us always went with the event cakes in case there was on-site work that needed to be done. Normally it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but the cake was going to a venue that was two hours away. But taking the two additional assistants away hurt. It hurt more when the afternoon manager, Mac, called out with food poisoning, too. By that point I’d been cursing the stupid pub in my head a million times over.
With Gina doing delivery duty and Mac out, I was left manning the store on our busiest day of the week with only two high school girls to help at the counter and our elderly secretary manning the phones. The day had been long and stressful, but I still found the joy in it. I was lucky to be starting a week-long vacation after one more day of work, which meant I had something to look forward to. Although I’d resisted when Gina ordered me to take time off, I found myself more excited for it than I’d originally anticipated. I’d even gone ahead and booked myself a day at the spa.
Since it was the end of the day and there had only been one order left for pick up, I’d let the rest of the staff go home at five o’clock. I hummed along with the song on the radio as I finished cleaning the inside of the display cases before working my way around the counter to wipe the exterior. Toni Basil’s Mickey began playing over the speaker as I sprayed the glass. The song gave me a little extra pep in my step and I found myself bobbing along to the beat as I wiped away the handprints that had been left throughout the day. I was shaking my rear end as I worked a particular sticky set of handprints when the chime sounded announcing a customer.
“Just one second,” I called over my shoulder. “I’m almost finished.”
After one last good swipe of the glass, I turned to face the customer with a smile.
“Welcome to Sweet Like…”
My sentence trailed off when I came face-to-face with a man who I was drawn to in the most elemental of ways. He was tall, maybe six foot two or so. He had a short beard and dulce de leche colored hair. When I looked into his eyes, I found they were focused on me intently. His lips moved as he mouthed the word wow, but he didn’t say it out loud. He was wearing a pair of navy blue dress pants and a white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Never had a set of forearms looked so sexy. We stared at each other for countless seconds before the sound of a little boy talking broke it up.
I’d been so caught up in staring at him I hadn’t realized he had a little boy with him until that moment. Looking down, I saw a blonde haired child with a giant smile and two perfect dimples holding the man’s hand. My shoulders sagged with disappointment as my cheeks flushed. I was unreasonably devastated that the man was clearly married, with a young child. If only I’d met him before, I thought.
“You’re here for the robot cake, right?” I asked with forced enthusiasm.
The man’s eyes never left me as he nodded. “Uh-huh… robots.”
He seemed dazed, but his voice was sexy and deep. Something about it set off butterflies inside of me. It was like I’d been waiting to hear it my whole life. I mentally chided myself for thinking such thoughts about a married man with a child. Forcing myself into action, I turned and walked behind the counter. I’d gotten the cake out before I’d started cleaning, so it was right next to the register.
The little boy lit up when I lifted the lid to show him the cake. He tugged at his father’s pant leg and shouted, “Up! Up! Pick up!”
I grinned at his enthusiasm. The cake was quite something, decorated with robots and gears. Definitely a little boy’s paradise. I had worked for hours to get the fondant figures to look just so, and I was proud of the cake. Right at the top it read Happy Birthday Emmett.
I smiled across the counter at the sweet little boy who was on his father’s hip as he clapped excitedly. “Look! Thems is my ‘bots!”
The man was staring at me like there was going to be a test later. He blinked down at his son, almost like he’d forgotten he was even there.
“That’s right, Emmett. Those are your robots, just like you wanted. They’re awesome,” he said. “You think I can eat the blue one after you blow out the candles tomorrow?”
The boy’s brow furrowed in concentration. “How many ‘bots is there?”
The man looked back down at the cake. “There’s yellow, blue, green, gray, and white,” he noted. “When I point to the robot, you count.”
Emmett nodded his head and clapped. “I good at countin’!”
The man pointed to them one at a time and the little boy counted up to five. “You can has a leg,” he announced after he finished. “I share one leg with you.”
As they talked about which leg the man would eat I pulled the order slip off the box and entered in the time of pick-up on the counter computer. With it right in my face I saw in the notes from when the order was placed that although his wife, Jamie Brewster, had chosen the cake, her husband Harrison would be picking it up. I wrinkled my nose as I stared at the screen. He didn’t look like a Harrison to me.
Sweet Like Candy: An Erotic Intentions Book Page 1