Little Love Bites: A Short, Sweet, Curvy Girl/Hero Small-Town Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Dogwood Falls Book 1)

by Carly Keene

  Little Love Bites

  Dogwood Falls Book 1

  Carly Keene

  Thistle Knoll Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 Carly Keene

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Carly Keene

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  EPILOGUE

  WANT MORE DOGWOOD FALLS?

  About The Author

  LITTLE LOVE BITES

  CARLY KEENE

  THISTLE KNOLL PUBLISHING

  Copyright © 2020 Carly Keene. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author. The only exception is that short excerpts may be quoted in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  If you read an earlier edition of this ebook, you may notice that the town name has changed from “Galax Ridge” to “Dogwood Falls.” Galax (Galax urceolata) is a native plant growing in many locations on the Eastern side of the United States, but it is common to the Appalachians, where it is frequently harvested from the wild for floral arrangements. However, to some readers it looked like I had mistakenly left the Y off the word Galaxy, so that’s the reason for the change.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Drew

  “Thanks, it’s nice to be home,” I say again. I’d forgotten exactly how small my small hometown is. I haven’t even been to the grocery store yet, and already I’ve been accosted by six different people telling me it’s great I’m back. Also, it’s only Sunday afternoon, a pretty dead time in this town.

  I notice, however, that none of those six were former teachers of mine. Or Principal Davis, whose office I was constantly summoned to. Or Mr. Blair, who ran the drugstore and got fed up with telling me to leave the comics alone if I wasn’t going to buy them. Or Mr. Hooper, who was constantly keeping an eye on me, lest I swipe all the candy out of the display case.

  Because, yeah, I did read the comics without buying them, and yeah, I did occasionally swipe a lollipop out of the Sweet Shoppe’s display case. It’s not like they didn’t have cause to suspect me.

  Eight years in the Army, fixing vehicles in the motor pool, can knock a lot of the mischief out of a guy.

  Another couple of years working in auto repair shops in San Diego and Daytona Beach, too busy making enough to cover city rent to enjoy city life, can knock a lot of the distaste for that small hometown out of a guy, too. Back in high school, every day in this town felt to me like wearing an itchy sweater a couple of sizes too small. I hit the road for Basic training six days after graduation, and I never looked back.

  Then six weeks ago, Mom called. “It’s happened,” she said. “We need you to come home, Andrew.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “The doctor has refused to do a third carpal tunnel surgery on your father’s hands. He can barely pick up a sandwich, let alone a wrench. We’re going to have to close the shop.” Her voice shook.

  I was dumbfounded. Sure, I knew Dad’s hands were getting bad, but I figured he could just get them fixed again.

  “Unless you come home and run it,” Mom said, and I could hear the hope in her voice against everything her common sense was telling her. I’d been away for so long.

  I sighed, massaging my forehead. “You need me to come home and run the shop for Dad?”

  “Please, Andrew.” Mom had sniffled into the phone. “It would mean so—”

  “I’ll be there. Give me a little while to get everything wrapped up here, but I’ll come home.”

  I’d been disillusioned on cities for a while, but still hanging on by my fingernails, unwilling to just give up. I was always underpaid, overworked, unable to afford the cool urban life I’d always wanted. I just hated to go back with my tail between my legs.

  But going home to help Dad? That, I could do.

  So now I’m back, and the evidence that Dogwood Falls is still too small for me is everywhere. There are no restaurants other than Millie’s Homestyle Diner and the Waffle House. The ice cream place is still there, and so is the pharmacy, probably only still in business because there are no chains nearby. The hardware is now a TruValu. The Sweet Shoppe, where I snuck lollipops out from Mr. Hooper’s nose, is now called Andie’s Candies, and appears to be doing a roaring trade, by which I mean there are more than three cars with out-of-state plates parked in front of it.

  This is still a really small town.

  I unlock the door at Seaforth’s Auto Service with Dad’s key and step in to have a look around. It’s dusty. The magazines are three years old at minimum. The desk is piled up with parts invoices and Dad’s hand-written work orders. The computer is an ancient boxy beige desktop. The invoice forms feeding into the old-fashioned printer have those holes on the side for alignment. I curse under my breath, wiping my hand down my face. This is a disaster and Seaforth’s may not survive.

  It has to. It would break Dad’s heart if it went under.

  “Not on my watch,” I say out loud, and having said it, I feel better. I lock up again. Tomorrow begins a new week. I’m staying, and I’m going to make things better. To celebrate, I decide to stop in the candy store and see if I can get my mom some fudge.

  It’s busy in there, and someone’s obviously modernized the building. It still has its mellow wood floor and old-fashioned glass cases, but a fresh coat of aqua paint has the place looking clean and welcoming. I wait in line, watching the three women behind the counter smile and measure scoops of candy and box them up and smile again.

  One of them is too young for me and one’s too old. But the third one? Damn.

  I mean, damn. She’s got a 40’s style retro dress on, and it makes the most of her curves. I can see a tiny hint of cleavage in the neckline, and it’s more enticing than a lot of the bikinis I saw in Florida. Dark glossy hair in waves on her shoulders. Blue eyes, long lashes, red lips, and all of it really sexy. Also, really familiar. She’s handing a swirly heart-shape lollipop across the counter to a preschooler in a Paw Patrol backpack and smiling at him.

  I’m briefly jealous of the preschooler, and I have to shake it off while I’m telling my dick to calm down.

  Paw Patrol leaves with his sucker, and I step up. The high school girl calls, “Hey, Andie, can we do quarter-pounds of the marshmallows?” The hot chick turns her head to answer the question.

  So this must be Andie. If I could get her to go out with me, that’d make coming back home worth my while.

  She turns back to me and asks how she can h
elp me, her gaze traveling over my body. I reach over and grab one of the heart-shaped suckers, looking at it while I try to find a flirty expression. “How about half a pound of black-walnut fudge and this tempting little treat?” I say in my smoothest pickup-line tone. “And maybe your number?”

  Then she really looks at my face, and the smile falls off hers. Those piercing blue eyes narrow, and it’s with a shock that I realize I do know her. I know that Clint Eastwood squint. “Drew Seaforth,” she says with disgust, sneering.

  “Andie” is Andrea Schubert, and I am so screwed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Andie

  I finish up a batch of chocolate-peanut butter fudge and place it in the chiller to set, then start working on another batch of the swirled heart lollipops that Andie’s Candies has gotten famous for: ingredients in the big pot, candy thermometer on standby, molds prepared.

  While the mixture is coming to a boil, I pop my head into the storefront to see how we’re doing. My two associates are cutting fudge and weighing scoops of chocolate-covered peanuts into white cardboard boxes. This is a small town in the North Carolina mountains, but with several attractions nearby, including Tweetsie Railroad and Grandfather Mountain, we get tourists in the summer.

  And they buy candy.

  They buy lots of candy—and I’m grateful, because after college and two years of working as a staff accountant, I was flat desperate to get out of the tri-cities and back home. Back to my granddad’s candy store, which he was getting ready to sell so he could retire. Instead, I convinced him to sell it to me and teach me his recipes and procedures.

  We changed the store’s name, and I persuaded Pops to let me change the menu just a little. We still offer fun old-fashioned candies like Red Bird peppermint puffs and Liquorice Allsorts, which we buy wholesale. We also continue to make our own fudge and divinity, double-dipped chocolate peanuts and butter mints, but I convinced Pops to let me add homemade marshmallows and maple-leaf candies as well. We set up online ordering, and sales numbers shot up.

  We’re doing well.

  When the heart lollies are cooling in their silicone molds, I step back to the front to help fill orders. We’re busy for a Sunday afternoon in spring, and the shop is packed with people choosing candy. There’s an older couple choosing old-fashioned stuff like horehound sticks and creme drops, a couple of millennials in hiking gear asking if the homemade candy is organic, and a family with little ones. The mom lets the littlest kid pick his own treat, and he goes straight for the swirly heart lollipop. They’re eye-catching on purpose, but so big that I know he won’t be able to get the whole thing in his mouth, which makes me smile. And behind them is a Hot Guy.

  We get them in here occasionally, but usually they’re buying goodies for the girlfriend, so I can flirt just a little and hope for a tip in the jar. This one, though, looks oddly familiar. Dark hair waving off his forehead, dark eyes, chiseled jaw under some designer-looking stubble, and what looks like a genuine washboard stomach under that white tee and dark jeans. Yummy.

  The familiarity is bugging me, though. The only guy this good-looking to come through Dogwood Falls High School was that asshole Drew Seaforth, and he was so vocal about getting out of this “crap town,” as he called it, that I can’t imagine he’d ever come back. (And good riddance.)

  Hot Guy starts flirting with me, and he even asks for my number. The arrogance is so recognizable that I take a closer look.

  And holy shit, it is Drew Seaforth.

  It is totally Drew Seaforth, who absolutely ruined my junior prom and broke my heart, the jerk.

  I briefly wonder if I have a self-destructive urge or something, because I’m still attracted to him. To combat that, I make a big point of saying that I have to go check on a recipe in the back and can Norma take care of this customer, please?

  But in the back I place a palm flat on my chest, or as flat as I can get it across my boobs, and breathe deep, trying to shake the vision of Hot Drew Seaforth asking for my number. I can’t, though. I keep flashing on the softness of his mouth in that sexy beard stubble, the tautness of his abs, the heat in his eyes for me . . .

  Holy shit. I’m trembling and my panties are damp. I am so screwed.

  I shake my head hard, like a dog shaking off water, and I busy myself in the kitchen area, banging stuff around in an obvious I’m-very-busy display. I get the cleanup done, leaving Norma and Brittany to close out the retail counter, and only when I hear Norma lock the front door do I come out and start closing out the credit card machines.

  “What was all that about?” Norma demands. She’s one of my mom’s best friends, and sometimes she can get a little helicoptery. “The banging around?”

  I shrug. “I don’t like that guy.”

  “I thought he was cute,” Brittany says. She shrugs. “I gotta go, Matt’s taking me home.”

  At “cute,” my lips thin out automatically.

  “Uh-oh.” Brittany tilts her head at me. “Old boyfriend?”

  “No,” I spit out. “He was never my boyfriend.” Just the guy who asked me to prom and then stood me up. I slam the register drawer shut and zip up the deposit bag.

  We finish cleaning the customer area in silence. I catch Norma and Brit giving each other looks, and finally I say, “Shoo. We’re done for the day. Clock out.”

  “You sure you’re okay?” Brit asks.

  “I’m sure.” I flutter my fingers at them. “I’m ready to go home and collapse face-first into some leftover soup.”

  “Heat it up first,” Norma warns, wagging a mock-stern finger at me, which makes me laugh.

  I’m feeling a little bit better as I lock the employee door behind me and get my car keys out. Until I realize that Drew Asshole Seaforth is leaning on my car, and my heart starts pounding again.

  “Andie?” he says, looking wary.

  I can’t drive away with him leaning on my car. If I try walking, I’m wearing heels and he’s sure to catch me. If I go back inside, he’ll just wait me out. Drew Seaforth is nothing if not persistent.

  I cross my arms and wait.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Drew

  I drop the fudge off on Mom’s counter and tell her I’d be back later, after supper. There’s somebody I need to catch up with, and the sooner the better.

  Mom makes a face. “Your first evening back, too. All right, buster. Was it Kara or Ashley?”

  “Neither one.” I give her a kiss on the cheek. “But it is a girl, so you get points. I promise I’ll be back later. Don’t wait on me, just leave me a plate, okay?”

  Mom rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but she says okay.

  I walk the three blocks back to the Sweet Shoppe—I mean Andie’s Candies. Once again I have to palm myself through my pocket, thinking about Andie’s candy, and then I remember what her face looked like the Monday after prom, and my dick wilts on its own. She’d been pretty pissed off, and with good reason.

  It was what happened that day that set us on the path to Worst Enemies, and that hadn’t been entirely my fault. A lot of it, yeah, but not all, and some of it was just my being stupid. She wasn’t answering her phone, so I couldn’t tell her what had happened to make me skip prom. So I’d made that sign myself and duct-taped it to the wall outside the high school. The stupid part was putting it on the wall along the road where everybody could see it. I’d spray-painted ANDREA I’M SORRY in big black letters on the cardboard . . . but I’d left too much space at the bottom, and somebody else (I have my suspicions) added YOU’RE SUCH A FAT PIG there. They topped it off by sticking an M in front of Andrea so it looked like Mandrea, and by 8:20 a.m. on that Monday morning, people were already calling her Mandrea.

  Mandrea the Fat Pig. Who got stood up for prom.

  Ouch. I cringe, even now.

  She got her revenge, though. All the really good pranks I pulled our senior year? She reported me as the prank-puller every single time. Every time. With details on how it was done, and I have no idea how she figured
those out.

  The few pranks other people set up—Terry Woodyard let the air out of Mr. Davis’s tires in the faculty parking lot, for example—she left strictly alone. No reporting.

  It was just my ass she nailed to the wall. I set off the fire alarm, and she reported me. I borrowed the tuba from the band room and left it propped on a chair outside the boys’ locker room with a sign saying DON’T STEAL ME, and she reported me. I set up a great party at the lake on Senior Skip Day, and not only did Miss Priss Andrea not skip? You guessed it. She reported me, and the only reason I was allowed to graduate was that the older guy I’d paid to bring the beer got lost, and the police got there first.

  The list of pranks is long. I spent eight million hours in Principal Davis’s office that year, whereas she was salutatorian.

  Not that I hold a grudge or anything. I wasn’t going to be salutatorian anyway. But still. All I did was not show up, and I was suddenly her Most Hated Person Ever. She made sure I knew it, too. If I entered a room, she left it without speaking. She would not let me explain, or apologize. She’d narrow her eyes into Dirty Harry slits, and she’d walk away. By graduation, it was full-on hatred between us.

  Every time I’ve gotten a twinge of conscience about that cardboard sign since then, I’ve reminded myself that she never allowed me a chance to make it right.

  But now? The look on her face when she recognized me—it really hurt. It’s time I made her listen to the apology. Once she’s heard it and made her decision to forgive me or not, then I can finally let it go.

  This is why I am hanging around the rear parking lot of Andie’s Candies, waiting for Andrea who apparently prefers to go by Andie now, and with the taunting ghost sound of “Mandrea” ringing in my head, I understand why. When she comes out and sees me, she stops dead. “Andie?” I say.