MONDAY: Tall, Dark & Aromatic (Hookup Café #1)

by Fifi Flowers

  “Wow! Such a proper gentleman; asking for my father’s permission.”

  He smiled and continued proudly. “I love your grandparents, too. Your grandfather was happy to have me ask him too if he was okay with me marrying his granddaughter. He told me about trying to find you and Marzi boys at a teen center. Then he offered to take us on the road with them for a honeymoon.”

  “I pray you said no. They are wild, not your typical grandparents.” That was a very big… super large understatement. I loved them dearly, but I could think of several far better places to consummate our marriage. Like maybe a romantic cruise on an old-time sailboat like the Star of India—that we had passed on our stroll—with its billowy white sails.

  “I was thinking a European trip where I could show you all of my favorite gardens while touring cafés sampling their offerings… and, of course, poetic pollination in wonderful feather beds.” That sounded like a perfect honeymoon, rolling our two passions into one and always ending in a cozy, snuggle spot with my poet. “We will need to make one non-romantic stop to pop in on my parents, but I promise after that, strictly about us and romance.”

  “That sounds lovely too. I’m amazed that you got them to come all the way from London… You never let on about anything, even closing the café for a private poetry night. I was truly shocked.”

  “I hope you didn’t mind the public proposal… that I used your place.” Basil stopped walking and pulled me into his arms, looking down into my eyes. “I just wanted to have everyone who loves you and me there. I can do it all over again if you want.”

  I reached up with my fingers and covered his lips lightly. “It was perfect. It was so you. I couldn’t imagine it any other way. I’m sorry that I made you wait for an answer. I was confused. I was thinking is this what I think it is? But I absolutely loved it and I love you.”

  Removing my fingers from his lips, he kissed them and then twisted my body and dipped me like we were finishing a dance. Surprised, I giggled and his mouth captured mine in a passionate, panty-dropping, toe-curling kiss that had me seeing fireworks behind my closed lids. The only thing was… they were not in my head… my imagination. Fireworks were going off, and behind us was a statue depicting a famous wartime scene where a sailor was dipping a nurse for a kiss. And here I thought Basil was being witty and original in his movements like his poetry. But either way, I loved every silly, romantic moment with him.

  I love my tall, dark and aromatic man.

  THE END

  Well, not really… find out what Marzi is doing at Cafélicious…

  Tuesday: A Double Shot (Hookup Café, book 2)

  Novella – Standalone – 6-Book Series

  Tuesday was by far the best day of the week—Delivery Day! Early mornings before anyone arrived I got my supplies and then some… Giving a whole lot of meanings to the words customer service and A Double Shot… meet Avery!

  Tuesday: A Double Shot

  April 11th release – pre-order available

  Excerpt from

  Tuesday: A Double Shot

  (Hookup Cafe, book 2)

  Chapter One…

  Driving the dark streets to the café, I was always a bit freaked out passing over the Coronado Bridge from my little beachy shack, I called home. It was probably one of the tiniest cottages on the island and my neighbors probably wished that I would sell the property to a developer so that my house fit in with their beautiful remodels or already bigger homes. I had inherited the house from my aunt who was rumored to be the mistress of the man that owned the property that hers backed up to.

  When he passed away the lady of the house found out that he had left the possible love shack to my aunt and that the property was to be divided down the middle. When the new dividing fence went up she had to flip the layout of the house a bit as the back of her house became the front. Along with the guesthouse becoming a house on its own, came a new address; switched from the original avenue to the avenue that was behind it. Being creative, she flipped her bedroom to what had once been the front living-room. The back of the house once the original back of the cottage became the front and her bedroom became the new living-room. It sounds a bit confusing but it worked with a new front porch and new set of French doors added for the new entrance.

  My aunt was happy to still have a place to live and stayed even though the widow of the property gave her nothing but shit, asking for the land back. Refusing, they ended up selling their new assessed portion of the land. She was in the beginning stage of her illness at that time and not in the position to worry about relocating. And when the new owner started with his offers to buy her out, she ignored them too. Besides she really loved the house—it was filled with great memories she always said. I knew that I had so many stories to tell about the summers there with my cousin Pansie and me staying with her since we were pre-teens and beyond.

  Pansie and I are still very close, we even work together in her café, a coffee, pastry, and comfort food place called Cafélicious in downtown San Diego. She was able to start the place thanks to inheriting a large sum from our aunt who never had any children of her own. I have ownership of the pastry part and it works out perfectly for both of us. She paid for the kitchen equipment that I use initially which I promised to pay back once I received royalties that were part of my portion of the inheritance tied up in litigation. Pansie told me that I didn’t have to pay for the equipment since she needed it for more than pastry.

  When we first opened we only served coffee and pastry until lunch requests came in from the after-breakfast crowd. In the beginning, I had made a few soups here and there along with some breakfast and lunch sandwiches on request, but I could only do so much. Adding Vin, a recently graduated culinary student, into the mix was fucking fantastic! And it worked out perfect with him in the kitchen in the late mornings and beyond since I was only in there rolling out dough, wrapping and refrigerating it for easy baking the next day until I left by three-ish p.m. We got along perfectly well, as he stayed to his side of the middle worktable, and cooked on my stovetop with his items stored underneath… and he was funny and fun. He now heads up an open-kitchen in the café that was part of an expansion two years after we opened the doors. Pansie no longer uses my kitchen for anything, so it is only logical that I own everything in it outright for my baking business.

  The other improvement or necessity we made was to bring an intern in for my afternoon work and to get extra baristas for Pansie. I don’t know what we were thinking when we opened the doors with only the two of us working everything. With a bit of help to our day it was a joy to work in the café doing what makes me happy.

  I have always loved to bake since I was a kid. My mother and her sister, Pansie’s mother, were forever creating something and teaching us girls. I was the only one that took our early training a step further by going to culinary school to learn the art of making pastry while Flower, my nickname for my cousin, went off to study for a business degree.

  Okay, maybe I should confess to originally going for a different reason besides my love of turning flour and sugar into delicious treats. There was a man involved—more like a beautiful boy—that talked me into school and rooming with him. Turned out there was only one bedroom which was fine with me seeing as I wanted more with him. However, once he became popular with our fellow female students, I found myself sleeping on the couch wearing headphones to drown out the moans that had been mine in the beginning. Young and dumb, I allowed him to call the shots between us, taking whatever attention he gave me. Then we worked several star-studded catering gigs for the Hollywood award season and I lost my roomy altogether as he got offered a full-time internship with a famous chef.

  Truly, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. With him out of the picture, I had the apartment to myself and was able to focus more on me. Finally taking the whole baking and pastry program seriously, I really excelled at honing my skills, and two years later I had an associate’s degree. Fresh out of school, I w
as ready to put my training to good use working in a few different bakeries on a part-time basis. The other time I helped my mother with her cake decorating business until Pansie came and took me away from all of them.

  Together she and I outlined everything we needed for the kitchen along with the best layout for the café taking into account that she planned to expand when she took over the shop next door. She didn’t want to have to remodel everything and she wanted to stay open during construction on the other half. Once we had it all to both of our satisfaction, she hired a contractor to bring the dream to life. Starting a kitchen from scratch I have to say is amazing; having everything placed according to how you like to work—there are no real words to describe the exhilaration.

  Shopping for the equipment, I was like a kid in a candy store—moaning over stainless steel items; refrigeration, large deep sinks, shelves, a moveable table with a shelf below, mixing bowls, utensils and the heavenly side-by-side, glass front ovens with multiple racks. I swear angels could be heard singing as I drooled, gazing at it installed in my very own pastry kitchen. Let’s not even go over my reaction when I first used it… just imagine a grown woman squealing and jumping up and down. I never took my eyes away from the glass double doors of the ovens for a full twenty minutes while six trays of different cookies turned from dough to round beauties. I nearly cried when the timer went off and I still had another timer yet to ding on the full length oven to the left of the double stacked ovens filled with muffin trays. What a sight to behold!

  Fully in control, I learned how long it took to get the bakery cases filled for the first customers of the day beating on the door for caffeine and sugar fixes. I knew after a few run-throughs that I needed to be in the kitchen no later than three a.m. since our doors opened at five-thirty a.m. sharp. In the beginning, Pansie came in to help but it was too much for her to stay all the way to ten p.m. after I left around three or four p.m. to get enough sleep to get up the next day and bake all over again. So once I had timed and planned what to bake when and what were our hot ticket items, I made coffee and ran the front counter until Pansie rolled in around eight a.m.

  And to be able to create my sweets and Pansie her specialty coffees we needed a restaurant delivery service to bring supplies to us. We had tried to do the buy-it-ourselves method of going to a large quantity warehouse shopping, filling both of our cars up and then lugging it all back to the café. Too much work! We also found that we worked better with a company that supplied restaurants regularly and had itemized lists online—even checklists. We were sold immediately on one that had an open delivery slot on Tuesdays at three-thirty a.m. and made sure we had our order all figured the day before.

  Going over last minute stuff to be delivered the next morning, I glimpsed a hot specimen of a man sitting at table a few big steps away, and instantly my naughty mind raced to having him make a special delivery. If I wasn’t so tired and was more fixed up I might have walked over introduced myself and asked him to come home with me to be my fuck-buddy for life. He looked like he knew all of the right moves and could provide me with much desired attention, as he was focusing on me at that moment too. I wasn’t seeing or imagining things, there was an instant raw connection going on between us that could be felt clear across the room. My panties and nipples let me know too that they were interested in him as well.

  “Looks good, Marzi,” I heard two different voices say.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I replied, but we were all talking about completely different things. “Great… see you tomorrow,” I managed not taking my eyes off of him until I turned to walk through my kitchen door.

  Damn! I fanned myself with the printed invoice before confirming that the supply list was correct and that we were good to go, then I said my goodbyes. Once I removed my apron, I hung it on a hook, grabbed my purse from a cabinet, and walked out the café’s front door turning briefly to see his table empty. Another damn escaped my mouth, there was no chance of him following me back to my lovable little shack for a good no-strings-attached romp.

  Other Books by Fifi Flowers

  -Windows Series-

  A Window to Love

  -Awakening to You Trilogy-

  Awakening to You in Boston

  Awakening to You in LA

  Awakening to You

  -Downtown Series-

  Just A Number

  -Brother Duet Series-

  Drawn to a Cowboy

  -Encounter Series-

  Reclining Nude in Chicago

  Taming the Curator

  Falling in Paris

  -Encounters Holiday Series-

  Love Me Now

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to Ma Maman for always being behind me, cheering me on through all of my highs and lows. I thought of you when I was writing about the San Diego area for this series. Love you! Thank you to Susan for creating these bold and sexy man covers, your friendship is invaluable! Another big thank you goes to Sheryl for the hours she spends listening to me and helping me make sense of the madness in my head writing so many books at once, you are truly appreciated. Thank you also to Roxanne for checking over everything before I hit publish. And thank you to Paul for making everything fit together perfectly.

  Thank you to Beth for allowing me to write while she takes care of my social media and thank you to her team of readers and bloggers who have helped to expand my reach through your kind words and promotions. Thank you to all of my girls in my Café de Fifi Flowers Reader Group and my Ooh La La Fifi Books Group, love your support.

  And, most of all thank you to ALL OF YOU READERS, I write for you!

  About the Author

  Fifi Flowers, an internationally known artist turn author from the Los Angeles area of California, writes romance novels and paints fantasies with a Parisian flair while daydreaming of her time spent sipping café crème in the cafés of Paris.

  She penned her love of Paris and romance to the pages of her first novel, A Window to Love, published in 2013, when she sat down, and instead of putting paint to paper, put her pen to paper and began her first novel. Since that first novel, Fifi has self-published several steamy contemporary romances and has many more in the works.

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