Eaves needed some hell. Either he was going to regret partnering up with them, or he’d die knowing Guilty Pleasures was the abso-fucking-lutely best decision of his life.
Allowing himself a few more minutes to observe, he eventually set his drink aside, shook Tariq’s hand, and started walking. The racket ushered him out the door and up the steep steps to the sweltering summer evening.
His chopper gleamed as stubborn tails of sunlight pinged off the chrome. Reunited with it, he threw his leg over the bike and put on his sunglasses.
“Bautista, hold up!” Sofia, with Joss and Caro sticking close, pranced up to him holding something. A tiny gift box. “It’s time you got this back.”
Wordlessly he opened it. Inside was a ring. Luz’s ring—and a pink sticky note dressed in Sofia’s handwriting.
Don’t ever forget you loved her.
He crushed the note in his fist. He couldn’t forget his love for Luz if he tried. Nor would he ever forget that behind his back she’d schemed to join his motorcycle club and had been ready to cut him to the quick to do it.
All for the semblance of a family, because unlike him she couldn’t tolerate solitude. And his love, this ring, hadn’t been enough for her.
Sofia didn’t know that. She wouldn’t.
Bright, so beautiful, she’d come into the bar flushed and sated-looking, with Burke Wolf close behind wearing the rumpled look of a man who’d just fucked with nasty abandon—each of them marking what’s theirs.
Yeah, he’d seen that coming.
“When are you coming back?” Caro asked him, and the others edged closer to absorb his answer.
Tonight he was riding out with his club brothers, but he’d make no promises as to when he would put Eaves’s sand and gravel under his wheels again. “When I need to.”
Caro sighed her frustration, but he was watching Joss, who remained silent, hugging herself. Then she took a step back, tapped Caro’s arm, and they both sought the stairwell.
Sofia touched the motorcycle’s handlebars, smudging them, but he had no complaint. It was a damn shame the way cards were dealt for some people. What kind of fucked-up déjà vu was it that he’d care about someone only to lose her?
But Sofia was resilient. Her spirit was tough and he had nothing but faith in her.
She hugged him and he was surprised the force didn’t tumble the chopper. “What if I start missing you?”
“If you need me, Sofia, I’ll come back. Dios te bendiga, querida.” Finally he patted her back, then urged her safely away so he could crank and ride. “Hold it down, okay?”
“Bye, Bautista.”
*
The first sign of autumn in Eaves was room to stretch your arms on the downtown sidewalks. Tourists departed and the town began to settle. As Sofia pedaled her great-aunt’s bicycle, she took her hands off the handlebars and let the September breeze flap against her sweater and play with her hair.
She had miles to go before she reached Gingham Road, but the Pruitts weren’t expecting her at the cottage for a while and she could tour the scenic streets. The trees edging the sidewalks were still full and flower bushes maintained their bloom—Eaves had always been loath to let go of its summer-peak luster.
Stopping at the closet-size wine shop, she chose a bottle of bold zinfandel to pair with the catch-of-the-day lobster from Richard’s boat. When Gretchen had called to invite Sofia over for dinner, she’d said it wasn’t necessary to bring anything, but considering that the Pruitts had brought her sweats when she was in the hospital, she reasoned a bottle of booze dressed in an elegant red bow should make them even.
Gingham sat on one of the highest peaks in the area, and Sofia rose off the bicycle seat, taking on the incline as she headed for the old metal mailbox and half-rotted birdhouse on the curb. Past rows of tall, thick shrubbery she would find a derelict but inhabitable little cottage and some of the best views in Barnstable County. Though the place was rarely occupied, the Pruitts should get around to sprucing it up. She’d volunteer to help.
As she approached, she stopped abruptly and gravity began to pull the bicycle backward. Catching herself, she turned onto the wide drive and stared with her mouth open at a sight that was both simple and spectacular.
The trees were golden. The hedges, too. And the flowerpots and bushes. Tiny dots of winking light tangled and crisscrossed and danced together from one high tree to the other, creating a whimsical cave.
Grabbing her purse and the zinfandel, she dismounted. She missed the kickstand but was only vaguely aware of the bike collapsing onto grass. Wandering forward, she found a candle burning on a scratched white table underneath the twinkling ceiling.
Luz’s table.
“Oh my God.” As much worse for wear as the table was, she couldn’t imagine the Pruitts buying it and setting it outside like this.
She turned to race to the cottage for an explanation, but the answer was a Ford with the tailgate down and a man reaching inside for a pair of chairs.
“Luz’s table,” she hollered across. “It’s here.”
Burke turned and winced as he nodded. “It was supposed to be a surprise. Gretchen said you’d get here at eight.”
“Gretchen and Richard aren’t here, are they?”
“Nope.” He brought the chairs over, setting them opposite each other, with the candle-topped table between.
“Then there’s no lobster.”
He laughed. “Nope, but we’ll go anywhere you want for dinner. In the meantime, there’re pears on some of the trees and you’re welcome to whatever’s in that bottle you’re holding.” He took the zinfandel and guided her to the golden canopy.
“What’s going on, Burke?”
“I was thinking of putting up a gazebo right here—you could sit and look out over the cranberry bog. The house should have an upstairs balcony, so you could walk out with your taffy and look at the lighthouse.”
What? “The Pruitts’ cottage doesn’t have an upstairs, and…What are you saying anyway?”
“This isn’t the Pruitts’ cottage anymore. I came into some money recently—sold a building to a couple of women who want to open a naughty bakery”—he winked—“so I made an investment in something permanent here.” Burke sat on one of the chairs and she numbly claimed the other, the candle burning between them. “Eaves looks good from up here. There’s plenty of room for Tish to run around. The new house can be anything we want it to be.”
“You bought this property for us?” Tears surfaced, blurring Sofia’s vision. Permanent, he’d said. In the face of her diagnosis, he wasn’t running. He was stepping closer, holding her tighter. “You’re making plans?”
“Yeah, Sofia. It doesn’t mean giving up your apartment or my boat tomorrow. But our future can happen here.”
A house. A home with Burke Wolf. Pictures on the walls, a cozy quilt on the bed, maybe a fireplace for the wintertime and a sofa in front of towering windows where she’d sit with him and watch the lighthouse guard the water. It’d be a damn strong house, equipped to handle the ebb and flow of their life together.
Make plans. Live this life. Love him.
“I want this,” she said, reaching across the table, and he met her halfway, taking her hand. “We’re going to laugh and fight here. We’re going to have sex here.”
“Crazy-hot sex. You know, we don’t have to wait for the house to go up.” Burke came around the table, pulled her chair out, and straddled her lap. “Choose, the laughing or fighting or crazy-hot sex.”
“Crazy-hot sex,” she said automatically, sliding her gaze from the heat in his gray eyes to the belt buckle that was front and center and such easy access. She pushed his shirt up, too impatient to bother with buttons, and then unfastened the belt. Stroking him, kissing him, she whispered, “No one will love you better than I do, Burke. No one can outdo me there.”
“Damn right.” Stepping back, he pulled her upright and began to strip her for their audience of pear trees and golden lights. “When I put
my name on you, you put yours on me.”
Finally, he held her face and she knew as he studied her that he was storing this memory in a safe place where he’d be able to call it up to get him through someday. And then he kissed her mouth, and as giddy as she was for a future with him, the here and now was pretty freaking great, too.
Whipping off his shirt, Burke took the candle from the table and handed it to her. “C’mere, Sofia…” He led her deeper into the sparkling cave and she realized he’d spread a comforter there. “That candle’s pure paraffin. I know a dirty little shop on Society Street that carries them.”
Her eyes widened, fastening on the flickering candle and the liquid wax pooling in its jar. He’d bought a candle from Blush.
And that made him hotter than the molten wax she held in her hand.
“You sure, Burke?” she asked, watching him lie on the blanket and roll to offer her his naked back. God, she loved his back.
“I trust you. You trust me?”
“So much.” Turned on beyond reason, Sofia tested the heat, then sank to her knees and sat astride him. As she raised the jar high, she whispered, “I’m so glad I love you,” before the first shimmering drop dripped.
Joss Vail knows how to play by the rules and how to break them. But when her erotic bakery lands her in serious trouble, she must depend on her sinfully delicious handyman…who’s not exactly the angel he seems.
A preview of Yours to Take follows.
CHAPTER 1
Starting over sure hurt like hell.
Joss Vail managed to dump the hammer a safe distance from her fuzzy-socked feet before squeezing her thumb and screaming like a vulgar-mouthed banshee. Pain throbbed in time with her pulse, and when she scraped together enough courage to investigate the damage, she was surprised that one, the digit was still attached to her hand, and two, it wasn’t a mass of bloodied flesh and crushed bone. After all, she’d been picturing her exes while swinging the hammer—so many men that no one would blame her if she forgot a name or a face here and there, even though each had left behind a scar that she’d remember forever—and she hadn’t exactly been gentle.
Some ice, an aspirin, and she’d be fine. Nope, make that a pint of whiskey. There was a bottle of JD in the pantry and she wasn’t driving tonight. A short back-alley trek to the sex shop next door and a flight of stairs to the apartment above it and she’d be home. She would be more than ready to dilute frustration and jar loose some stress after she put the bakery to bed tonight.
Dine-in hours were seven a.m. to four p.m., Monday through Saturday, yet Joss couldn’t remember coming in later than five in the morning or leaving before midnight since Lust Desserts’ grand opening last month. The sit-down bakery, specializing in erotic treats—or what her mother’s most recent ranty email had christened “perverted pastries”—was her baby. At less than a month old, the bakery was still merely an infant and she had every right to be a cautious parent.
A step from crazy it might seem, but she would give this place the care, protection, and love she’d been denied all her twenty-nine years.
Thirty, she amended the thought. Thirty years ago today she’d been scooped right out of Matisse Vail’s porcelain belly and set loose on the world. From that first cesarean section incision, her mother had known Joss would be trouble.
She’d tried to forget today was her birthday. Everyone who knew her apparently had. She was still getting her bearings here in Eaves, Massachusetts—Cape Cod was day to New York City’s night—but Sofia, her best friend and the owner of the erotic boutique on her left, and Caro, who owned the boudoir photography studio on her right, probably should’ve remembered. Each had popped in earlier for treats, but neither had uttered the word birthday even though today’s special was the Birthday Suit, a nude caramel cake dessert. The caterers, clients, and colleagues Joss had known in New York, where she’d worked for eternity and a day as a chef’s assistant, had for all intents and purposes severed acquaintance with her when she’d moved to the Cape this past summer. No one in Stamp, New Jersey, had forgotten the scandal that had compelled her parents to send her off with a one-way ticket anywhere but home.
The last correspondence from her parents’ joint email account had been her mother’s all-caps message: YOUR FATHER AND I CAN’T LOOK OUR CLIENTS IN THE EYE…WE’RE FORCED TO EXPLAIN THAT OUR KID IS SELLING EDIBLE PORN…WHEN YOUR LITTLE BAKERY FAILS—AND IT WILL—WE’RE NOT BAILING YOU OUT. WE MADE THAT MISTAKE ONCE AND WON’T DO IT AGAIN!
Joss had deleted that one promptly, then restored it to draft an all-caps reply: FUCK YOU, TOO, MOM. Then she deleted it, along with Matisse’s email, and tried to ignore the fresh hurt cloaking her like new-fallen snow.
There’d be plenty to follow once Let There Be Light electricians Hendrix and Matisse Vail found out about Guilty Pleasures. Joss hoped the news of her coownership of a nightclub—or an underground sinners’ playground, depending on who you talked to—wouldn’t reach her family for another couple of weeks yet. That way the Vails could have something significant to bemoan at the Thanksgiving dinner table or the Stamp Baptist Church winter social.
Not that Joss would overexert herself trying to gather any give-a-damns. Guilty Pleasures was a place to belong, and it belonged to her, just as it belonged to her friends.
Just as it still belonged to the man who’d owned it when it had been a claustrophobic dive bar called Bottoms Up.
Can’t forget that nugget of reality…
“Guess it doesn’t matter how far you’ve come when you screw up everywhere you go,” she murmured, trying to pry loose the smashed wall anchor with a festive ginger-polished fingernail.
Joss Vail, who’d once had potential to be her parents’ prayers come true, was committed to proving herself the hell neither Hendrix nor Matisse had expected to come from the sperm of an honest hardworking man and the egg of his by-the-Good-Book wife.
When they wanted to scale social ladders with every high-profile client and commercial account they won, all she did was pull them down with her scandals and errors and scrapes. Even after they’d flicked her away as one would a gnat, she managed to disappoint them from afar.
And they always managed to make sure she knew.
Thinking about her parents only intensified the pain radiating from her thumb, and she found herself glaring at the hammer she’d tossed into the toolbox on the floor. Wasn’t this how it tended to play out? Concentrating on people who hurt her, whether picturing their faces attached to a wall anchor or recalling a shitty email, only led her to hurt herself.
The pattern ended here, in this bakery. It wasn’t a glamorous Manhattan hot spot, didn’t boast the highest-grade equipment, and wouldn’t likely ever serve celebrity clientele, but she’d utilized her limited start-up funds creatively, secured a reasonable bank loan, and now she was a culinary artist who had something to be proud of.
For the first time in her life she was okay with herself. She’d survived worse than a sore thumb to get to this point.
Damn her if it all hadn’t been worth it.
Joss crept back to study the wall. She’d intended to hang a series of erotic paintings, from her dirty mind straight to the canvas. And okay, she was proud of that, too—her penchant for naughty art.
The wall anchor was cracked, but the worse damage was the numerous ugly cavities where the hammer’s face had busted the drywall. The brand-new, expensively finished and painted drywall.
“Fuck. Me.” DIY-ing the menu board with photo-framed chalkboards affixed to a rustic ladder and adding her paintings to the sensual violet accent wall behind the counter had been last-minute, off-design decisions. The carpenters, already visibly annoyed with her previous last-minute, off-design changes, had provided a hefty quote with their offer to put her on the calendar for art hanging, but she’d insisted she could handle wall mounts and a T-square just fine. Holes in the wall and cracked anchors weren’t testimonials to just fine.
She was tired. Overly tired. It was taking
its toll. She couldn’t allow it to affect the quality of her baking, the training of her already time-strapped part-time assistant, or the management of her business.
Nor could she let customers find the place filthy with marred walls and chalky dust on the wood floors.
Turning her wrist to gauge her watch, she noted it was approaching nine p.m. She figured she could go home now, put an early end to this day, and come in at two or three in the morning to patch holes and scrub floors before diving into food prep. She wouldn’t be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed—more like sluggish and cranky—but all would be taken care of without the added expense of paying a professional to swing a hammer.
Joss’s purse and the high heels she’d traded for comfy socks after locking up for the evening were in the back, so she started shutting things down in the eatery, cutting the music and turning off some of the lights.
When she stepped outside to bring in the Word of the Day dry-erase easel—the word nerd in her couldn’t resist, and today’s word was one of her favorites: partake—a snap of cold sneaked through her clothes. Black leggings and a pale gold dress that shimmered like champagne might look great on a crowded New York street where there was body heat aplenty to warm her, but this was November in a small Cape Cod town that was next-door neighbor to the Atlantic Ocean.
The easel was heavy. The antiques dealer who’d sold her the piece had to have been mistaken when he claimed it was made of bronze. The thing had to be a hundred percent cast iron. It scraped on the sidewalk as she struggled to drag it toward the door. Not that she was too fragile to manage—her sore thumb complicated things. Around her, people walked briskly, carrying on their conversations and journeys as their scarves flapped in the wind.
“Thought y’all were closed,” someone said from inside a car on the street.
The words—that voice, actually, like the murmur of thunder stirring up havoc on a calm night, was meant for her. It could be a threat or a comfort, and it was up to her to decide which she wanted it to be.
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