by Amy Gregory
In his world, he knew the market, he knew his clients, and he knew the stakes. Joshua should have come to visit Bill the very first time his friend had asked. He could have gotten to know Lessy before now. Joshua had always put work first, and now he’d put himself on the opposing side simply because he’d been too busy to be a good friend. What a hard way to learn a lesson.
I really am an asshole.
His mother thought he needed to settle down. After today, he was rethinking his entire personality. There was no way he’d attract someone he’d want to be with for a lifetime.
“Can we go back to your house? And is there a liquor store in this town? I could use some whiskey,” Joshua said, looking from Bill to Lessy and back to Bill.
Lessy’s phone buzzed. She picked it up, and her face lit up with a genuine smile, then her fingers flew as she typed out a reply so long, it could have been a short story. He watched her eyes go wide, then a grin tipped her lips.
“Can I trust your wife? And…can I please go get a drink? Two things, man, please, Bill, two things I need to know.”
“One, yes, your love life is in good hands with my wife, and two, we don’t need to stop at the store. I have whiskey, beer, tequila, whatever your heart desires,” Bill replied.
“My say-what is in good hands with your wife?”
“You heard me.” Bill smiled a bit too wickedly for Joshua’s nerves to handle.
“I don’t have—and don’t want—a love life.”
“Too bad,” Lessy answered. “One, you’re a liar. Two, you’re not the only one in this ballgame now. Let’s go, boys.”
She was up and out of the booth before Joshua could ask what she was talking about, who else she was including in her conspiracy theory, and where they were going.
“Roll with it, man.” Bill clasped his shoulder. “I’ve learned with Less, you just have to roll with it. She’s made you her mission—and, well, just wait it out and see what happens.”
As had happened through the last half hour of his life, he was being told where to go, whom to trust. Giving up control and having patience were not two things Joshua was used to. He definitely didn’t like either. And getting out of Assjacket seemed to be the only way to get back to his regular life, even if he was bored with it.
Chapter 8
A chill drifted over Jenny’s bare arm, waking her. Pushing herself up onto her forearm, she felt a shooting pain in her neck that proved she’d fallen asleep in the wrong position and stayed that way for far too long. She rolled her head from side to side, but suddenly, age smacked her for a loop.
“Damn.” One glance at her wrist had her limbs flailing as she jumped out of bed. “Nine fifteen, shit.” A whore’s bath and a quick change of clothes later, she rushed into the diner, out of breath and overdue. “I’m so sorry, DeeDee. I, last night…”
She closed her eyes, remembering dragging out the suitcases, crawling onto her bed, and then, poof, it was morning and she was late for work.
The older woman rested her hand on her wrist. “Shh, dear. Lessy called me early this morning. She didn’t give me much information, but I have enough to draw some pretty straight lines between you and that young man you made a gourmet cup of coffee for, then refused to talk to again.”
“No! It wasn’t like that at all. No, no. No. Hell no. I just—I fell asleep before setting my alarm, and then, sorry… I have no excuse.” Jenny pressed the fingers of her free hand to her forehead. “And I am sorry, again. Yesterday? That was so unprofessional of me. It won’t happen again, DeeDee. I promise.”
“That’s not the response I’m looking for, young one. It’s time for you to open your heart. And I believe the Goddess and Fate might be taking things into their own hands—even if it is clearly against your will.” She chuckled.
Jenny faced her boss, reading anything she could in her gaze, the lines around her eyes, the smile gracing her face. “Shouldn’t they have bigger problems to deal with than my lack of a social life? I mean, seriously, the green goop, now that was a giant issue. That was where their help was needed. Definitely not dealing with my trivial crapola.”
“Trust me, they were in Zelda’s corner from day one. Who do you think brought her to this town?”
Wanda walked through the swinging kitchen doors, her eyes wide. “Thank the Goddess above you’re here.”
“I’m so—”
“No, no.” Her other boss brushed off her second apology of the morning. “I have a huge favor. I totally forgot to ask you days ago, but Bobo Baby Boy begged me for your chocolate cupcakes with chocolate chips in them with chocolate frosting on top. I meant to ask if you had time to whip up a batch, because he’s been working so hard at zapping his toys up after playing, I promised him some as a reward, and it completely slipped my mind. I’d just have you zap them, but that child, I swear, he’s the only one in this entire realm who can tell the difference between you snapping your fingers and actually stirring flour and sugar together by hand. I’m so sorry to be a pain in your patoot.” Wanda held Jenny’s upper arms.
There was desperation and panic in her voice, both of which would have been laughable if her boss weren’t so starkly serious. “Wanda, of course I’ll make that kiddo anything you give permission for. That’s never even an ask. You know I love him. When do you need them?” Wanda bit her lip without answering. “So, a couple of days ago?”
“More like…a week ago?” Wanda released Jenny’s arms and laid her palms over her heart. “I feel awful, and he didn’t even remind me, I just smelled your muffins as I was walking in, and the whiff sort of slapped me upside the head, jogging my memory.”
“Go. The breakfast rush wasn’t bad today.” DeeDee ushered her toward the door. “There’s nothing more important than bribing children with sweets for good deeds. Just maybe add in an extra baker’s dozen if you have enough ingredients. My mouth is definitely watering now. Please?”
Jenny grinned. “Yes, ma’am. It’d be my pleasure. Again, I’m so sorry I was late for my shift.”
“Late for work is nothing when it comes to a tidy bedroom, my dear. You’ll understand someday,” Wanda said as she nudged her toward the diner’s front door.
“You two, you make me laugh. I promise to add extras, and I’ll hurry back as soon as they’re cooled enough to frost and box up.”
A round of thanks in unison had Jenny smiling as the hands at her back kept her headed in the direction of fresh air.
* * *
“Lessy, don’t bother calling the diner, honey. Jenny just jogged by. She must have forgotten something at home. We can just go over there instead,” Bill said from their living room.
Joshua’s nerves started to tingle. “Are you both really sure I should go with you? I think maybe it sounds safer if I just stay here and keep my mouth shut.”
“If I didn’t know better—oh wait—I do. I think your woodie is involved in that train of thought.”
“Oh my Goddess, Bill,” Joshua pleaded. “We had a deal, never repeat that horrifically visual nickname ever again. It was bad enough in college, but we’re grown adults now.”
“One of us is. The other is begging to hide from a girl.”
Fuck a duck.
He was seriously hiding from a girl—a woman. In all his last few decades, Joshua couldn’t think back to when he’d lost all his bravado around the opposite sex. He was not a playboy, but he was normally cool under pressure, and playing hard to get was his specialty. The girl next door—literally—had turned him into a tongue-tied, bumbling buffoon of a lunatic. They were in this mess purely just to apologize on his behalf, and he wanted to transport home so bad, his fingers were itching to simply snap and make it so.
He clenched his hands into fists, preventing the quick snap his fingers were about to subconsciously do. His brain, nerves, body, and libido were all at war with each other, and he seriously was about to ask if he should see a doctor. He’d never had an out-of-body experience, and if this was what it was like, he was
going to scream. Joshua had never considered himself a control-freak, type A personality. However, having control over his own damn body was an absolute must, and right now, he felt completely off his rocker.
“Sit down.” Lessy pushed him backward, forcing him onto their living room sofa. “You are pale as all get-out and dripping with sweat. Bill, go get a wet cloth. Are you all right, Joshua? Should we call someone, Bill?”
“So I’m not crazy?” Joshua asked.
“About what?” Lessy asked.
“I just don’t feel, I don’t know—right. Is this what a panic attack feels like? Or maybe a heart attack?”
“Or maybe you just need to grow up and quit acting like a teenager. This is what it feels like to actually give two shits about someone. Not like your life back home.” Bill looked straight at him, his finger pointing at his chest. “You’re invested!”
Joshua could almost feel his friend’s touch like a jab to the heart. It was in his head, but Bill had nailed him.
“You like her. I’ve never seen you fall apart about a woman before. You are sunk—and over a woman you know almost nothing about except what Lessy’s filled you in on.” Bill shook his head as a smirk appeared, lining his face in absolute understanding.
“Why didn’t you just say so?” Lessy asked. “This is way more dirt on you than Vivian was able to give me, and a total game changer. Now I know, one, not to kick your fancy-shmancy East Coast, label-wearing, high-dollar-cologne-smelling ass all the way back to fucking Vermont. And two—I can help you.” She placed her hand on her hip, her brow rising slowly as she studied him. “Although, it has been very interesting getting some inside scoop as Vivian does her investigating for me.”
Joshua had never felt such scrutiny in his life. Not from even the most well-known celebrities or dignitaries who traveled with bodyguards with the ability to snap a neck without so much as breaking a sweat. Bill’s pint-sized wife was reducing him to the middle school kid he used to be, the one with money and no friends, the one with no confidence in his voice, himself, or his place in the mortal world. And he hated it. He’d struggled his entire high school career and into college to morph into the man he’d become.
He dropped his chin to his chest, unable to face her scrutiny a moment longer. “Yes,” he whispered. “I don’t understand it. I don’t know why. I don’t know her at all. But…yes. There, are you happy?”
“Very.”
Her cheerful voice made Joshua want to roll his eyes. His fingers started to twitch again, so he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Let’s go,” Bill said, opening their front door.
Chapter 9
“Knock-knock.”
“Come on in,” Jenny answered upon hearing Lessy’s voice. “I’m in the kitchen.” She cracked a second egg into the chocolate batter she was making. The recipe in her head was easy, and she’d made it a thousand times. She already had one batch of cupcakes baking, and with a few magical keystrokes on her laptop, she’d had enough ingredients appear on her counter to make at least six dozen more. Of course, with those, she’d simply tell the cupcakes to make themselves and hop their happy little frosted selves into her cardboard travel boxes once finished. But the ones in the oven from the batter in her bowl were special for Bo—and she didn’t cut corners for her favorite little man.
Male voices mixed with Lessy’s. Jenny turned with a start. As she did, the wooden spoon in her hand followed her momentum before she could stop it or the giant glob of batter it held—the chocolate hit Bill’s friend square in the chest with a splat. What didn’t fall to the floor or on his Italian loafers was left bleeding into the fabric of what she was sure was a very expensive tailored dress shirt.
“Oh my Goddess. I’m so sorry.” Jenny stared at the dark spot, a button poking through. “Maybe I can snap it clean. Goddess, I hope so. There is no way to wash that. It stains.” She’d had enough T-shirts and aprons ruined to know that for a fact. This was her living, and her clothes didn’t matter. This guy, though, there would be no way she could afford to replace whatever expensive labels he wore.
He ran his finger over what remained and licked it clean. Jenny watched in fascination. Her fear turned into something way more dangerous as his finger slid back over his lips, and a smile replaced the startled expression he first had. If she wasn’t frozen in place by the heat he was making her feel, she’d be laughing. Jenny had given a very literal definition to the term assault and battery, one that sounded with a splat as a second blob landed on her kitchen tile near the first pile of chocolate batter.
He chuckled first, then glanced down at himself. “What are you making?”
His voice was husky, quiet and oh so very sexy. Jenny attempted to swallow, her mouth suddenly dry. “Cupcakes, um, a special order.”
“They’ll be delicious, if what is on my shirt is anything to go by.”
He was joking—not rolling-on-the-floor laughing, but at least joking. She’d been prepared for an angry accusation and demand for replacing the ruined clothing. But Jenny was taken aback by the compliment.
“Everything Jenny makes is absolutely the best food you’ll ever eat in the entire realm—I can guarantee it,” Bill added.
The oven buzzed. Without thinking, she made the muffin pans remove themselves and the next batch quickly fill another two dozen slots in waiting pans and put themselves in to bake. It was the first time she’d not done every single step of Bo’s treats by hand. At least this part wouldn’t be noticeable, even by him.
Lessy slid next to her and put her arm around her shoulder, but glanced at Bill’s friend. “Joshua, officially meet Jenny Von Zuzle. Jenny, this is Joshua Englewoodie, one of Bill’s closest friends from back in Hollywood, Vermont.
“Joshua, I will tell you before you go and get all attached to her amazing skills in the kitchen, Jenny here has another guy who holds the key to her heart.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, there was a split second where his face fell, the lines at either side of his mouth disappearing and taking his dashing smile with them. He recovered quickly, but the light wasn’t the same in his eyes.
“Don’t worry, big guy,” Lessy joked. “He’s only four, so you don’t have any real competition.”
And within a breath’s time, there was heat back in his possessive stare and the smile broadened across his face. Jenny elbowed Lessy in the side. “What are you doing?” she asked quietly.
Lessy leaned in. “He has a huge crush on you.”
Assjacket was a small town. She had gone to school with anyone within a couple of decades of her age, and not once had she’d even considered them as possibilities on any dating front of any kind. Neither the fun-only kind, nor the walking-down-the-rose-petal-aisle kind.
Mr. Englewoodie, over six feet, muscular, with gorgeous Kelly-green eyes and professionally cut light-brown hair—was about to make her forget she was absolutely stupid when it came to being around the opposite sex. Almost. The air rushed from her lungs as she realized she’d been staring, and her face felt as hot as if she’d been holding her head inside her kitchen oven along with Bo’s treats.
Fuck a duck. Me? No possible way. I’m a no one, a T-shirt-wearing, messy-bun don’t-care-hair girl.
Then it hit her out of left field. A smirk she’d tried to clap her hand over to hide turned into a snort. Then all-out giggling she couldn’t pull the reins on overtook her . Putting her finger up, she escaped the kitchen and hurried down the short hallway to her bedroom, grabbed her pillow, buried her face in it and lost it.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Lessy asked.
Jenny peeked at her friend, and another horrendous pig sound came from her on its own. “Woodie? His last name is…like…saying pecker head.”
“Oh my Goddess, shhh. He’s pretty sensitive about that.” Lessy covered her lips with a finger, whispering her statement. “But of all people in this town, I’d never have guessed you would end up like a laughing hyena, and kinda cruelly, I might add, there
, girlfriend.”
“I know. First, I can’t talk around him at the diner. Then I might as well have aimed and ruined his shirt with chocolate, and now—I’m a total bitch. But I will say, I do not believe you on the whole crush thing, so if I hurt his feelings because his name is—oh my Goddess—too perverted to even think about—”
“Think about…his, his…woodie?” Lessy’s expression turned from a laugh-lined face to a jaw-dropped shock. “Goddess above. I didn’t see it right away. You are completely, one hundred percent turned on and attracted to him.”
Her entire body might as well have been doused by a bucket of ice-cold water. Her laughter died instantly as Jenny studied Lessy’s face. She replayed the statement in her own mind no fewer than three times, trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.
“No, I am not. Not even… Where did you, why would you—nuh-uh. No way.”
“Wow…your vocabulary was reduced to that of a schoolyard child. Nothing proves my theory correct more than that.” Lessy winked. “Besides, I heard all about how you made him his snooty-ass coffee without even asking how he liked it when he ordered. You two have a connection.”
“I have said maybe three actual words to that man. He’s a stranger. For all I know, he could be the worst black magic warlock in the entire realm, or…or…for Goddess’s sake—a vampire. Holy shitola granola.” She started pacing. “And…for another thing—he’s rich. Like rich, rich. Have you seen his clothes? I’m a dork, and I still know I can smell über-rich radiating off him. Like, rich as fuck.”
“Are you done?” Lessy put her hand on her hip.
Jenny stopped. Glancing at the window seat in her bedroom, she counted on her fingers. “Can’t talk to him, vampire here to murder me, too rich for his own damn good, and the murder thing. See? I don’t know him, and I can already name four things wrong with him.”
