The Sweet Spot

by Ariel Ellman

  The Sweet Spot

  Ani and Sebastian’s Story

  Book I of the Boston Harbor Romance Series

  By Ariel Ellman

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  The Sweet Spot

  © Copyright 2013 by Ariel Ellman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: arielellman.com

  Cover Art by Victoria Ellman

  Publishing History: First Edition

  Kindle Edition

  Published by Ariel Ellman

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my best friend and other half – another true lover of romance books – Jennifer Zairi.

  Gawd Sugah…….

  Acknowledgements

  I would never have been able to write this book without the help, understanding, love and support of the following people…

  My husband Damon, who took over the housework and childcare on the weekends, and edited and published this book. This journey was a true test for our marriage! Thank you for working to help my dreams come true.

  Our five incredible children, Elijah, Jonah, Gavi, Chava Miriam, and Zahara (ZZ), who allowed me to put my iPod earphones in and disappear into myself for the last four months.

  My little sister Victoria, who is my Sawyer. This book never would have happened without your amazing book cover design, photography and website creation. I will never forget our late nights doubled over our coffee, laughing hysterically as we screamed over the cave crickets that jumped out at us as we labored over your laptop screen. You are my greatest supporter and you always have my back! I love you!

  Frank Lugo, the brother of my heart who has always pushed me to go after my dreams. I know you would go to the ends of the earth for me.

  My amazing friend and tireless test reader, Dina Sweifach, whose opinion as a reader means everything to me, and whose love as my friend heals my soul.

  My Irish consultants, Glen and Rose. Thank you so much for checking over my Irish for me!

  Hana F., thank you for always offering your support and encouragement. You’re a great friend!

  Little Hazel, who isn’t so little anymore, thank you for mother’s helping during my final editing phase!

  My cousin Rob for initial edits and always believing in me.

  Linda W., who has always believed in me and pushed me to write.

  My brother-in-law Jeff and the boys of N. Wilton Place. Thank you so much for letting me crash at your place. I wrote some great scenes curled up on Rene’s futon and drinking coffee among the zombie body parts and gay porn in your fabulous LA bungalow.

  And of course, my other half, Jen Z., who knows what I’m thinking before I say it, and loves all the complicated parts of me that no one else wants. You’re my one phone call if I ever get sent away baby…

  Chapter One

  Ani tucked a stray strand of pale blond hair behind her ear and slid the glass door to the pastry case closed with a sigh. She loved her little bakery; it was tiny, standing room only, a storefront in an ancient brick building tucked into the corner of a cobblestone street in Boston, but it was hers. She didn’t make anything elaborate, despite the requests that she had received over the years for fancy custom wedding cakes or designer birthday cakes with decorative fondant. She often laughed at the line that wound out her bakery door and around the corner on Saturday mornings as people waited eagerly for her warm fresh cinnamon rolls, soft crumbly scones, and raspberry almond cream cheese coffee cake. To her, The Sweet Spot was really just a glorified lemonade stand, an expanded version of the stand that she ran outside her house when she was a girl baking with her mother and later on as a teenager trying to make money to buy a car.

  Ani baked everything fresh each day, starting at three a.m., and only sold a limited selection of what she considered to be her specialties: rich chocolate brownies with brown sugar cream cheese frosting, her mother’s Irish bread and butter pudding, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chip cookies, a small assortment of scones, rich spicy pumpkin muffins, Guinness cake, and a special cake of the day. But somehow, even with her limited selection and refusal to take custom cake orders, her reputation as a divine little bakery had spread and grown, and in the last four years since she had opened, she rarely had a cookie left in her case at the end of the day.

  Ani was just pulling her long blond hair free from its bun when she heard the bell on her bakery door tinkle.

  “Oh I’m sorry, we’re closed,” she called from behind the curtain that separated her tiny kitchen from the front counter. It wasn’t quite time for her daughter to arrive yet, so she figured it must be a last-minute customer. “I’m closed,” she apologized again, ducking her head out from behind the curtain as she pulled her apron off.

  “Not even a lemon bar left?” a soft husky voice asked. Ani froze halfway out from behind the curtain, letting her apron fall to the floor unnoticed as she stood silently and stared at the tall emerald-eyed man standing before her.

  He was the same and yet he was different. He was taller, his youthful teenage body replaced with the broad shoulders of a grown man, and his arms were hard with tightly defined ink-covered muscles. The mop of unruly blond curls that Ani used to love running her fingers through as a girl was gone, replaced with a buzz-cut that accentuated the angles of his face, the sharpness of his jaw and the brilliance of his startling emerald green eyes. Two teardrop tattoos rested under his right eye, and a single white rose climbed up his neck. But it was the tattoo on his throat that mesmerized Ani. She stared, transfixed by the sight of the Irish Claddagh symbol inked onto Sebastian’s throat in the tangle of rose thorns that climbed up his neck. The Irish version of her name, Áine, stared back at her from the center of the Claddagh heart where it was written in dark ink.

  “The Sweet Spot huh?” He stepped closer until the space between them disappeared and suddenly Ani was sixteen again, lost in the memories of their bodies tangled together on his sweaty sheets.

  “I think I’ve found the sweet spot baby…..” he used to tease as Ani writhed and moaned beneath his probing fingers. She was drunk on lust in those days, intoxicated by love. She was in heaven and thought it would last forever. She had no idea it would all be taken away.

  “Oh Bast,” Ani stared back at him in shock. She reached out a hand hesitantly to touch his face, to see if he was really there.

  “Easy,” Sebastian murmured back as Ani’s eyes filled with tears and she swayed unsteadily on her feet. “Easy there.” He reached for her hands and pulled her into his arms and against his chest.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” Ani whispered as she buried her face in Sebastian’s chest, inhaling deeply. “It’s been almost sixteen years since you’ve teased me about my sweet spot.”

  Almost sixteen years had passed since the day the police had pulled Sebastian’s arms off of Ani. Almost sixteen years had passed since he’d been sent to prison for vehicular manslaughter, for driving drunk and accidentally killing a mother and her three-year old daughter.

  “Shhh…..”Sebastian soothed in a deep husky voice that was familiar but changed, “Shhh.” He rubbed circles up and down Ani’s back as she sobbed huge wracking sobs into his chest.

  “Mommy?” a hesitant voice interrupted from behind them, and Sebastian dropped his arms as if he’d been scorched. Ani lifted her tear-stained face away from Sebastian’s c
hest in a daze and stared at her nine-year-old daughter who was standing in the doorway of the bakery clutching her lunchbox and backpack uncertainly. “Are you okay?” Ani’s daughter asked, her big beautiful blue eyes darting back and forth between Ani and Sebastian’s faces.

  “Raffi!” Ani gasped, finally shaking herself out of her daze and walking over to her daughter. “Mommy’s fine. I’m just happy to see an old friend.” She gathered her daughter into her arms and hugged her close. “Raffi, this is Sebastian. Sebastian, this is my daughter Raphael.” Ani locked eyes with Sebastian. The pain in Sebastian’s eyes was searing, and he closed them momentarily before taking a deep shuddering breath and kneeling down before the beautiful dark-haired blue-eyed girl standing before him.

  “You have your mother’s eyes,” Sebastian said huskily, his own emerald eyes bloodshot and wet with hot unshed tears.

  Raffi shifted her feet uncomfortably, still clutching her lunchbox and backpack as she tried to decipher the meaning in the silence that stretched between her mother and the tall blond man with her mother’s Irish name tattooed on his neck.

  Both Ani and Sebastian were at a loss for words after Ani introduced Sebastian to her daughter and they stood silently, staring over Raffi’s head and into each other’s eyes. They were lost in the memories of that life-changing night so long ago, and the days that followed it. Images of the dead bodies of the mother and child that Sebastian had hit on the rain-soaked pavement blurred together with images of Ani in the hospital, blood flowing between her legs. The memories of the daughter that they never had a chance to have - the daughter that they lost that night - swam before Sebastian and Ani’s eyes as they continued to stare at each other in anguish.

  “Mom,” Raffi whispered, tugging on her mother’s hand as she stared at the tears that were sliding down her cheeks. Ani squeezed her eyes shut, unable to answer her daughter. “I’m calling Aunt Sawyer,” Raffi finally said, dropping her backpack and lunchbox and reaching into her pocket for her cell phone.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t-” Ani’s voice broke as she tried to finish her sentence, tried to offer some explanation to her daughter as she sank down to the floor instead. Sebastian walked back to the kitchen to get Ani a glass of water as he heard the soft murmur of her daughter talking into the phone.

  Nothing could have prepared him for this moment. He had waited over fifteen years to see Ani and she was just as breathtakingly beautiful as he remembered her at sixteen. She was still slender and willowy, even after having a child. Her form-fitting jeans accentuated her long legs and narrow waist, and her deep blue camisole hugged her breasts and deepened the ocean blue of her eyes. Her hair was long and swinging free and Sebastian yearned to bury his face in the silky golden strands.

  “Aunt Sawyer said she’ll be here in five minutes,” Raffi told her mother, clutching her phone tightly in her hand. “Mom, are you okay?” she asked again, her voice trembling slightly as she tried to keep her fear in check.

  In the nine years of her life, Raffi had never seen her mother lose her composure before. She was her rock, loving and gentle, strong and always responsible. Ani had waited until Raffi started first grade before she opened the bakery because she wanted to be home with her daughter, and she closed the bakery at two-thirty so she was done when the bus dropped Raffi off in front of the bakery after school. Raffi sank down on the floor beside her mother and took her hand.

  “Did someone you know die?” She gazed at her mother with deep soulful eyes. Raffi had always been an old soul, wise and insightful beyond her years.

  Ani blinked back another flood of tears that threatened and squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Kind of.” She searched for the words to explain the memories that were flooding over her.

  “Is that why your friend Sebastian is here? To bring you the news?”

  Sebastian dropped down on the floor beside Ani and Raffi and handed Ani a glass of water as she continued to squeeze her daughter’s hand at a loss for words.

  “Ani? Raffi? Are you okay?” A loud voice suddenly called out, and Ani’s sister Sawyer burst through the bakery door in an obvious panic. Sebastian didn’t know what Ani’s daughter had said to her aunt, but whatever it was, it had clearly alarmed her.

  Sebastian gazed at Sawyer with interest. She had only been twelve years old the last time he had seen her, just starting to blossom with the beginnings of what her breasts would become. She was all freckles, strawberry blond pigtails and sass. She trailed after Ani mercilessly, and was always in the way when Sebastian and Ani wanted to be alone. Sebastian almost laughed when he stared at her now. The pig-tailed Half Pint look-alike from Little House on the Prairie was gone, replaced by the gorgeous twenty-eight year old woman standing before him.

  Sawyer was still a tiny little thing, but her fitted cropped yoga pants and miniscule tank-top showed off a body with perfect abs, soft curves in all the right places and strong arms with well-defined muscles. Her once strawberry blond hair was dyed a sassy deep pink and cut in a funky, layered style that accentuated her beautiful pixie face and deep blue eyes. She looked like a sexy comic book super girl, Sebastian decided with a small grin.

  “Oh my God! Sebastian?” Sawyer gasped, taking a step closer and staring down at him in shock.

  “Can you take Raffi home for me and stay with her?” Ani asked her sister when she finally found her voice. Ani couldn’t bear to let Sebastian out of her sight yet and she knew her sister would understand. Sawyer had lived through all the years with Ani after that devastating night. It was Sawyer who had fed Ani like a baby when she’d refused to eat, and held Ani while she sobbed herself to sleep night after night. But she couldn’t say those things in front of her daughter, the daughter who worshipped her father, Ani’s husband, who knew nothing of her years before him with Sebastian.

  “Of course,” Sawyer replied, reaching a hand down to Raffi and pulling her up off of the bakery floor. “Want to go hang out with your favorite aunt?” She slipped an arm around her niece and tickled her. Raffi giggled, starting to relax now that her aunt was with them and her mother was starting to talk again.

  “Don’t let Sawyer dye your hair!” Ani warned her daughter with a smile and a fierce hug.

  “How about piercings? Are they ok?” Sawyer teased, wiggling her nose ring at her sister.

  “I like the pink hair,” Sebastian commented, leaning forward and ruffling Sawyer’s pink hair affectionately.

  Sawyer stuck out her tongue at Sebastian, revealing another piercing, and he swatted her head playfully.

  “I see you’re as sassy as ever,” he observed with a smile.

  “Oh you have no idea…” Sawyer teased back, and then suddenly she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around Sebastian, hugging him tightly. “Oh Bast,” she choked, blinking back tears as she looked him over in wonder.

  “I know,” he murmured, hugging her back.

  Chapter Two

  The bakery suddenly seemed overwhelmingly quiet after Sawyer and Raffi left, and Sebastian and Ani stood staring at one another, drinking each other in in the silence.

  “You look beautiful,” Sebastian finally said softly.

  “I’m older,” Ani laughed, ducking her head shyly.

  “Yes, ancient,” Sebastian agreed with a teasing grin. “But the grey hair and wrinkles are kind of sexy. You’re like one of those hot grandmas…”

  “Bite you’re tongue!” Ani exclaimed, swatting Sebastian in horror. “Grey haired, wrinkled grandma my ass!” she gasped. “I just turned thirty-two last week!”

  “Thirty-two,” Sebastian murmured wonderingly as he reached out and wrapped a finger around a strand of Ani’s golden blond hair. “You still look sixteen to me.” He let Ani’s hair drop from his fingers as he gazed at her thoughtfully.

  “You smell different,” Ani confided, leaning forward and inhaling the air around Sebastian deeply.

  “Like prison?” Sebastian joked, raising an eyebrow at Ani.

  “I don’t know,” Ani
admitted, trying to put her finger on the difference as she inhaled the air between them again. “You smell the same but different. I think you smell like a man now,” she finally decided with a wistful smile.

  “Hmmm,” Sebastian chuckled. “Well, horny seventeen year old boy probably did have a distinct scent,” he agreed, his brilliant green eyes holding Ani’s gaze intently as they stood only inches apart from one another.

  “You still smell like the sea,” Ani murmured in sudden realization. “How is that possible?” She stepped back slightly, searching Sebastian’s face with her eyes.

  “I’ve been out for almost nine months now,” Sebastian admitted softly.

  “Nine months,” Ani repeated, staring at Sebastian with an unreadable expression. “Where are you living?”

  “I’m living here in Boston, down by the wharf,” Sebastian answered quietly, stepping forward to close the distance between them again. “I’ve got an apartment over my cousin Sean’s bar and I’m trawling for lobster with my dad.” Sebastian reached out a hand and trailed his fingers lightly over Ani’s face.

  “You’re hauling lobster with your dad?” Ani whispered in reply, suddenly flooded by the memories of Sebastian’s passionate speeches about getting away, how he’d never be a lobsterman like his father and uncles. He was a beautiful artist and he wanted to be an architect and designer.

  “Don’t Ani-” Sebastian held up his hand at Ani’s mournful tone to stop her from saying anything further. “I’m not the kid you remember from fifteen years ago A. I’ve spent half my life in prison,” he reminded Ani softly. “You have no idea how I feel about anything anymore, so just don’t-.” He ran his fingers across his buzzed head.

  The gesture reminded Ani so much of the boy who used to run his fingers through his thick mane of curls when he was frustrated, and she bit down on her lip to stifle her cry at the memory.