by Jayci Lee
“Hey, Seth,” the baker said with a welcoming smile.
“He’s here … that is … with me … so we could work on Landon’s website together,” Tara blurted, looking like her teacher caught her drawing a caricature of him. “I have a degree in graphic design.”
“Okay. Cool.” Justine smiled at Tara and turned back to Seth. He straightened his features to hide his amusement. “Don’t tell me you already finished all those goodies you picked up yesterday.”
“We did finish it all,” he said. Tara kicked him in the ankle. “I mean, I finished it all. You know I can’t get enough of Comfort Zone’s desserts.”
“I don’t know where you put it all, but I’m glad we have such a loyal customer.” Justine looked askance at Tara. “Are you sure this will be enough? I don’t think he’ll leave you any.”
“Don’t worry. I can hold my own,” Tara said, pretending to size him up. To better accommodate her perusal, he opened up his chest and flexed subtly. “Nobody messes with my dessert. Not even Cookie Monster here.”
“As she just made clear, those are her cookies.” Seth watched Tara tug the plate of cookies closer to her. He wanted to kiss the adorable woman right then and there. “I’ll take a half-dozen brownie cookies.”
When Justine walked back into the kitchen, he turned to face Tara. “What? No salted caramel brownie?”
To his satisfaction, Tara blushed to the top of her roots. And her eyes dropped to his lips and stayed there. Oh, she remembered the kiss all right. His heart pumped at his own memory, and his blood rushed south.
“It was a bit too sweet for my taste.” Tara paused and met his gaze. “I like a little more … bite.”
It was Seth’s turn to blush. He was so fucking turned on. If she wanted a bite, he could give her a bite. In fact, he wanted to bite her plush lips and earlobes and scrape his tongue across … He needed to get a grip. Jumping on her at Comfort Zone would be equivalent to making a town-wide announcement that the two of them were dating.
He cleared his throat and stared hard at the computer screen. “Where do you want to start?”
“The beginning, obviously.” Tara let him change the subject, probably putting a tally mark by her name on the scoreboard. “What were you picturing for the website? Do you have a theme for it?”
“It’ll be easier if I showed you some of the pictures I took.” Seth turned the laptop toward him and opened up the photo album for the restaurant. “This is one of the pictures I took today. I wanted to capture the warm, welcoming air of the restaurant without giving it a blurry, rounded-out look. It was important to keep the photo sharp and focused like life heightened. The website symbolizes Landon’s dream but shouldn’t have a dreamy affect. I want his dream to feel real and alive.”
“Wow. These are amazing, Seth. And the restaurant is coming along so beautifully. Oh, I love the new floors.” Tara continued scrolling through his pictures, and his chest puffed out with pride. It felt damn good to have her compliment his work. Why did everything she did feel so … extra? “I’m getting a feel for what you’re saying. You show the restaurant in its best light. It doesn’t have a sleepy feeling. Instead, it pops and feels edgy through your lens, and that’s what the website should look like.”
“You got it on the nose. We make a good team.” He reached over and took a sip of her coffee. “Mmm. I love Americano.”
“Hey, get your own.” When he set the mug down in front of her, she wrapped both her hands around it and gave him a sideways glare.
“I already had three cups of coffee today. I need to slow down a bit.”
“Fine, we can share,” she said with a calculating look. “But I get one of your brownie cookies.”
“I have no problem sharing.” He leaned in close and said, “You’re the one who hogged the desserts yesterday.”
“I didn’t hog anything,” she said haughtily. “I won fair and square.”
“You call that fair and square? You got a head start.”
“And your legs are longer.”
“I guess I shouldn’t complain,” he relented, and changed tactics. “You did give me one bite of the brownie.”
“Would you please stop talking about the brownie?” She looked around the bakery as though someone might be listening.
“Why are you so nervous? Who here would understand what that bite of brownie means?”
“What does it mean? Do explain.”
“For a start, it was the best damn first kiss I ever had,” he said earnestly. “Don’t you dare deny it.”
“Agreed. And?”
“I know I’m leaving the country soon, but this attraction between us is extraordinary. We can’t keep fighting it.”
“Can’t or won’t? Wouldn’t giving in to our attraction complicate things for us? With Aubrey and Landon in our lives, can you be certain that we’ll be able to see each other again without it being weird?”
“We’re adults, Tara. We both know what we’re going into, so there won’t be any hurt feelings. We’ll be able to remain friends. I won’t make it weird. I promise.”
Tara stared at him for a long moment before she shook her head. “Why are we even talking about this right now? We’re supposed to be working on this website.”
“Wait.” Seth sat up as a sudden thought occurred to him. “Does this count as a date? If you’re counting this as a date, I’m leaving right now. I never agreed to a working date.”
“Seriously?” Her wide eyes looked too innocent. “We’re sharing a cup of coffee and having dessert together. It sounds like a date to me.”
“This is not a date. Coffee and dessert aside. We need to have a meal together for it to be a date. That’s the rule.”
“You’re making that up.”
“It was my dare, so I get to make up the rules.” He didn’t mind one bit that he came across as supremely immature.
“Fine. This isn’t a date.” Tara rolled her eyes. “Keep your pants on.”
“Is that your rule?” he teased, lightly bumping her with his shoulder. “I have to keep my pants on when we’re not on a date?”
“You are so immature.” Fighting a smile, she turned her attention back to the photographs. “How can someone so childish create such beautiful things?”
His heart thundered in his chest. As a kid, he’d always worn his heart on his sleeve and put his everything into his art. He chose photography as his profession because it put a barrier between his art and what the world saw. Unlike his art, photographs filtered out most of his inner self. But something in Tara’s voice told him that she was seeing more than he meant for her to see.
“The setting itself is beautiful. All I did was capture it,” he said warily.
Tara kept scrolling through the photos and Seth belatedly remembered the photos he’d taken of the light—when the light and shadow danced to create a small window into another place. He’d been tempted to place them into a separate folder, but he hadn’t wanted to admit that they were special to him. Because they weren’t. They were just some pictures that he’d enjoyed taking as a photographer. Pictures of the restaurant, which belonged in the restaurant folder.
But now, as Tara drew closer to them, Seth had the urge to snatch the laptop away from her. Despite his effort to minimize their significance, he had to face the fact that they were more than just pictures to him. And he didn’t want to hear her laugh at his pictures of wood dust. Goddammit. He was overreacting. He’d just played with the light a bit. That was it. They were nothing.
A sharp gasp from Tara ripped him out of his anxious musings. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyes were wide with wonder. With trepidation, he lowered his gaze to the screen to find the first photo of the enchanted light he’d captured.
“Seth,” she whispered, her voice so soft that he could hardly hear her. “This is … What is this?”
“It’s nothing.” His heart plummeted as he prepared for her laughter. He reached for the laptop and tried to shut it closed,
but Tara pushed his hands aside and blocked the laptop with her shoulders.
“Hey, stop that,” she said, her eyes never leaving the screen.
As he sat beside her, the blood draining from his face, she scrolled through more of his photos from that day.
“Seth,” she said again, clutching at the front of her shirt. “These are … They’re alive.”
Something fierce burst into life inside of him. She didn’t laugh. Her surprise … her awe. It wasn’t because she thought his work was ridiculous. She liked it.
“It … I … sometimes … something comes over me,” he said in a low, halting voice. “It feels as though I’m transported to another place. Maybe a different dimension. Everything around me changes but is the same. It just becomes filled to the brim with life and beauty. My camera captures the other world, and that’s why those photos look … different.”
What the hell was he going on about? Even he could tell how odd that might sound to someone. His heart thundering, he slowly turned his gaze to Tara. She was staring at him with admiration and wonder in her eyes.
“I’ve seen your work. Your fashion magazine photos. They are so vibrant and full of life, and they always convey what you want to say through them. I’m no professional, but even I could tell that you have talent,” she said, not breaking eye contact. She was so close. Sometime during their struggle with the laptop, Tara had gotten closer to him, her leg and hip pressed against him. Her warmth and her scent assailed his senses, but he could only listen to her words. “But these … these are more than just pictures snapped by a talented photographer. They touch my soul and steal my breath. They’re works of art.”
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to taste those precious words, not just hear them. His veins pumped with an inexplicable emotion, too hot and sharp for his body to contain. Was it joy? Was it lust? Maybe a combination of both, but it intensified to the point where his nerves lit up. He clenched his fists until his knuckles turned pale, his bones pushing against his skin. He couldn’t kiss her now.
But it was too much. It was the first time since his one-and-only exhibit that he’d shared a part of his art with anyone. These photos were mere shadows of what he wanted to do with them. They were the barest outline. Still, he’d shown her a part of himself that he’d guarded with his very being.
“Come with me.” He hardly recognized his own voice. It was so low it rumbled in his chest.
“What? Where?” she said. He shifted to the edge of the booth and took ahold of Tara’s hand. “Wait. Our stuff—”
“Leave them. We won’t be long.”
Tara tugged her hand free but followed him closely. Once outside, Seth grasped her hand again, and moved quickly to the alleyway behind Comfort Zone. He stood close to her but shoved his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t grab her.
“Please. I need to kiss you,” he rasped. His whole body was on fire, and his mind screamed just one word. “Tara.”
She placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed herself up on her toes. That was all the answer he needed. He backed her against the wall and planted both his palms above her head, and crushed his mouth against hers. A sound between a moan and a groan tore from him.
She tasted so good—like cherries and coffee. He used his tongue to lick her softly parted lips, coaxing her to open wider. She tilted her head to give him full access. God. He delved into her, soaking up the wet warmth of her mouth and the sweet sound of her moans. He pressed his body against hers, letting her feel the extent of his arousal. She made a throaty sound of approval and ground her hips against him. He hissed against her mouth, rational thought a thing of the past.
When her hands snuck under his shirt to roam over his chest and stomach, he jerked helplessly against her touch. He smoothed his hand down her arm, then cupped the fullness of her breast. She pushed herself against his palm, asking for more. He brushed his thumb over her peak, and she mewled. She actually fucking mewled like a fucking kitten.
His hand slid down her thigh, and he brought her leg around his waist and pressed his hardness into her center. It was only when she cried out that he remembered they were hiding behind his sister-in-law’s bakery, and someone could lumber down the alleyway at any moment. Shit. He was so close to taking her against the wall after promising her that he would keep their relationship a secret.
“We need to stop,” he said, tearing his lips away from Tara.
She growled and pulled him back, and he kissed her helplessly for a few desperate seconds, then lifted his head again. When she finally opened her eyes to look at him in a haze of desire and confusion, it took all of his willpower to step back from her.
“If we’re still keeping our dates a secret, I shouldn’t take you against the wall in an alleyway,” he said as he fought for breath.
Tara’s eyes widened with something like alarm, but when she blinked, it was gone. It was with a measured albeit winded voice that she said, “Dammit. I can’t believe I forgot what happened the last time we kissed in the park. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“I kissed you. I dragged you out here with the single-minded intention to kiss you.”
“You think I didn’t know that?” Tara pressed the back of her hands against her flushed cheeks. “Fine. We both wanted to kiss, but we both should’ve known better than to kiss like this in public.”
“Now what?”
“What do you mean now what? We’re going to pretend like we had an important business discussion and go back inside Comfort Zone. We’ll finish our dessert like civilized people. Then I’ll leave and go back to the bar. You could stay a bit longer to work on the website, then leave as well.”
“You’re going back to the bar?” He couldn’t hide the disappointment and longing in his voice.
“I have to,” she said, placing her hand on his arm. He clasped his hand over hers. “I can’t play hooky to go to bed with you. Not when we’re trying to be discreet.”
“Of course not,” he said valiantly. “Let’s get back before too many people notice we’ve been gone.”
What he actually wanted to say was to hell with discreet. He wanted to throw her over his shoulder, run to Lola’s like Flash on a sugar high, and make love to her until neither of them could walk. At times like these, it would’ve been nice to really be a bad-boy player.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Last evening, Tara was blessed with a maximum-capacity bar so she didn’t have a minute to spare for her thoughts. Otherwise, she would’ve obsessed over her alleyway kiss with Seth all night. But this morning, there was nothing stopping her from obsessing while walking through the aisles of the drugstore.
Even though it had still smelled like cinnamon and vanilla from Comfort Zone, the narrow alley had felt far away and a little … dangerous. It was hot as hell. She’d forgotten everything but the feel of Seth’s lips against hers. Her body had cried for more, and if he hadn’t pulled back, she might’ve had him right then and there.
She had never felt this all-consuming, physical need for someone before. Not even with Jason. Her memory of sex with him felt like a watery silhouette compared to what happened when she and Seth kissed. But even the lukewarm desire she’d felt for Jason had given him too much control over her.
She wanted to run. This was precisely the kind of situation she’d been avoiding since she left Jason. Relationships were a trap, confining and stifling. She treasured having her space and a life of her own separate from anyone else. When she was with Jason, she couldn’t even study on her own or with her friends. He insisted she study in his room even when he wasn’t doing schoolwork himself. He acted as though he had the right to micromanage everything she did … everything she was. She was constantly watched and measured, but she always fell far short of expectations.
If she gave into her attraction for Seth, would he begin demanding more of her? More of her time? More of her affection? If she fell for him, she would do anything to make him happy. Nausea churned in her stomach. She would b
e lost. But what if she was so badly broken that she turned into the one to confine him within her expectations—the one to constantly demand more until he believed he wasn’t good enough. For a moment, terror swept through her. Then she remembered he was leaving in less than a month.
Seth moving away was the best thing about dating him. It was insurance against the relationship trap. She was safe with him. She could handle a playboy out for a fun time, especially since that was exactly what she wanted, too.
Tara tore her mind away from Seth. For something that was supposed to be uncomplicated, she sure thought about it a lot. She looked around the store where she’d come for a reason. What was it again? Oh, yes. Her favorite citrus-scented shampoo. How did she end up in the diaper section anyway?
She wound her way down the aisles until she reached the shampoo section and stopped short. Her mind’s constant companion was perusing the shelves. She was getting really good at conjuring him up. Her heart took off on a sprint, and she resisted the urge to fly into his arms. Was this how it was going to be every time she saw him?
As though sensing her presence, Seth lifted his head, and a slow, happy smile spread across his face. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Run out of your athlete’s foot medicine, did you?” She arched her eyebrow, stamping down her answering smile.
Seth burst out laughing. He genuinely seemed to enjoy her sharp tongue. Was he a glutton for insults or something? “Actually, I ran out of shaving cream a couple days ago.”
“I can tell. I thought you had a five o’clock shadow yesterday, but you have the beginnings of a beard now.” Without thinking, Tara reached out and ran her hand down his rough cheek. “I kind of like it.”
“You do?” His eyebrows shot up. “Do you want me to grow it out?”
“It’s your face.” She backtracked, chiding herself for acting way too familiar. It didn’t matter what she liked. “Do what you want. It doesn’t affect me.”
“Well, it actually does.” He stepped toward her and spoke close to her ear, “Think about how it would feel against your thighs when I taste you.”