Caramel Crush

by Jenn McKinlay

  She began walking and Mel fell into step beside her.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe I just have a little post traumatic stress going because the bad when it’s bad is so very bad.”

  Angie nodded. “I’m sure that’s it, but since my wedding is coming up in a matter of days, why don’t we just hedge our bets and you just keep picturing happy things in that head of yours.”

  “Like puppies and kittens?”

  “Yeah, or go big with unicorns and glitter bombs,” Angie suggested.

  Mel laughed. Angie was right. She needed to chillax. Probably, she was just nervous about the wedding. She was maid of honor, after all, which carried a lot of responsibility. Not that she thought Angie would pull a runner, but it was Mel’s job to get her to the church on time, dressed appropriately, and to be prepared to crack some skulls if anyone interfered with her best friend’s wedding.

  “Okay, glittery unicorns it is,” Mel said.

  “That’s my girl.” Angie paused in front of the photographer’s studio, pulling out her phone to check the time. Mel glanced over her shoulder and noted that they were perfectly punctual. Excellent.

  Blaise Ione, the photographer, was a friend of Tate’s from his days in high school marching band. After graduation, Blaise had gone to art school and then lived in New York for several years. Right up until his aging mother needed him, then he had come home to Scottsdale to be nearby.

  Blaise was a hardcore hipster and wore his short hair bleached white and paired it with his over-large Andy Warhol glasses, striped skinny pants, a loud dress shirt, and pointytoed shoes. He was exuberant, enthusiastic, and always made Mel laugh. She knew the wedding pics were safe in Blaise’s hands.

  Although it was a small space, Blaise made the most of it with huge portraits decorating the black walls, and scattered modern furniture that made a statement as well as being a place to sit. Through the front window, Mel eyed one of the chairs that looked to be molded out of cement. The statement she got was this is uncomfortable so move along, which knowing Blaise was exactly what he wanted it to say.

  Angie pulled open the door and a gong sounded somewhere in the back of the space. Leave it to Blaise to have an unconventional doorbell.

  “Blaise? Hello?” Angie called out.

  Mel moved over to study the portraits. Blaise had done Tate and Angie’s engagement pictures and they were spectacular, managing to capture in a single frame the long-time friendship that had morphed into romantic love between the couple.

  Mel’s favorite shot had been taken in an old movie theater with Tate and Angie sharing a bucket of popcorn as they gazed at each other with all of the love in their hearts. It made Mel water up every time she saw it.

  Oh, and there it was on the wall! Blaise had added it to his display. Mel felt her throat get tight.

  “Oh, hey, I didn’t know he was going to put that up,” Angie said as she joined her. “That’s my favorite.”

  “Mine, too,” Mel said. “Wow, it keeps hitting me that in a few days, you’ll be married to Tate.”

  “I know, right?” Angie grinned. “Say it again, it makes me dizzy.”

  “In a few days, you’ll be married to Tate.” Mel laughed and hugged her friend close. “I am so happy for you both.”

  “Thanks,” Angie said. “Man, I can’t believe I spent all those years thinking he was in love with you.”

  “Idiot.” Mel’s voice was teasing when she said it, and Angie laughed and said, “Yep.”

  They sighed and then glanced around the studio. There was no sign of Blaise. They glanced at each other and Mel shrugged.

  “Blaise, hello?” Angie cried out. “It’s Angie, your favorite bride.”

  Silence greeted them. Mel felt the hair on the back of her neck begin to prickle. No, no, no! She wasn’t doing that again. She pictured a unicorn prancing through the studio. It didn’t really help.

  “Probably, he’s in the bathroom,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Angie agreed. “I’ll just poke my head in the back.”

  “Okay,” Mel said. Under her breath, she began to chant, “Unicorns and glitter, unicorns and glitter, come on, unicorns and glitter.”

  Angie got halfway to the back and turned around. “Come with me.”

  Mel nodded. She followed Angie to Blaise’s office in the back corner. It had no windows that looked into the studio, just a door painted black with chalkboard paint where people left messages for him. Several messages in different colored chalk were there now, including one in teal blue that listed Angie’s name, today’s date, and the time, so he had been expecting them.

  Angie knocked on the door. There was no answer. She rapped again. Still, nothing. She reached down and grasped the handle, turning it and pushing the door in.

  The office was a cluttered mess with papers and proof sheets and pop art tchotchkes littering every surface. A life-sized self portrait of Blaise was on the wall opposite and Mel almost greeted the picture instead of the man.

  “Blaise, hey, are you napping on the job or what?” Angie asked.

  Blaise was in his office chair, with his back to them as he faced his very large computer screen. The screen saver was on and the pattern was undulating all over the display. Mel followed it for a second but then realized that Blaise sitting in front of the computer while the screen saver was on was wrong.

  “Blaise!” she cried.

  She stepped around Angie into the room to get a look at the photographer. He was sitting upright, staring at the computer with vacant eyes, his lips tinged with a faint shade of blue. Mel reached out to touch his hand. It was icy cold.

  Blaise Ione was dead.

  Continue reading for a special preview of the first in Jenn McKinlay’s all-new contemporary romance series . . .

  ABOUT A DOG

  Coming June 2017 from Berkley Sensation!

  Mackenzie Harris lugged her suitcase, carry-on, and garment bag off the passenger car and onto the platform in Portland, Maine. The Downeaster train had brought her up from Boston, which had been her first stop after flying in from Chicago, as she’d had to do a final fitting before picking up her bridesmaid dress at the Boston bridal shop on her way to Maine for her best friend’s wedding. Now she just had to find Emma Tolliver, the bride, in the station and they would set out for Bluff Point, which was a half-hour drive up the coastline.

  The two-and-a-half-hour train ride had given Mac plenty of time to think about the next two weeks. Emma, being Emma, had planned a wedding that was not just the celebration of two people uniting their lives. Oh, no, it was more like a two-week hostage situation where there were daily itineraries of endless activities designed to milk every magical matrimonial moment out of the event. Just reading the five-page itinerary with detailed instructions that Emma had e-mailed the wedding party exhausted Mac.

  Despite the intensity of the agenda, Mac planned to participate fully. She understood that the over-the-top celebrating was a part of who Emma had become when her mother passed away so young. Emma was always the one who made every birthday, Christmas, or Valentine’s Day one to be remembered, since she had a deep-seated fear that each one might be the last.

  Since it was an Emma extravaganza, there were a million picky little details to nail down, and Mac had made a personal vow that she would be the perfect maid of honor for Emma. She would do whatever Emma asked of her and serve it up with a smile on the side. She hoped this would alleviate the guilt she felt since she had been such a no-show as a maid of honor thus far.

  Mac wheeled her suitcase beside her as she entered the station, narrowly missing a mom and her two sons who were on their way out. One of the boys gave her stink eye and Mac gave it right back. The boy’s eyes went wide with fright—Mac gave really good stink eye—and then she winked at him, letting him know all was forgiven. He grinned before he scampered off to catch up to his mom.<
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  Mac entered the station and scanned the large room, looking for Emma. Her friend’s long, straight blond hair usually gave away her location at a glance, but Mac did a quick visual sweep and didn’t see her. She searched again, thinking Emma might have her hair in a topknot or a ponytail, but no. There was no petite blonde anywhere to be seen.

  Mac shrugged and hauled her bags over to a seat. Maybe Emma was running late. She dug in her purse for her cell phone to see if there was a text she had missed, but as she moved her hand around the voluminous bag, she couldn’t find her phone. She sighed.

  She loved her big bag, she really did. It was one of the many reasons she’d let her gym membership lapse, besides the fact that she never actually went, as she figured carrying around twenty pounds of stuff kept her fit enough, but at times like this, which were frequent, she thought she really needed to downsize.

  A buzz sounded from her bag and Mac held it open wide, hoping the display screen would light up so she could see it. Ha! There was a blue glow coming from the bottom. She snatched up her phone and answered it without pausing to look at the number.

  “Emma, I’m here, where are you?” she asked.

  “I’m right behind you,” a man answered.

  Seven years. It had been seven years since Mac had heard his voice, which was much deeper than she remembered, but still she would know Gavin Tolliver’s voice in a crowded room loud with conversation and laughter. His was the sort of voice that wrapped around you like a hug. It was deep and masculine but full of warmth and kindness with a self-deprecating humor to it that Mac had always found charming even when Gav was a gawky teen just learning how to talk to girls.

  Mac closed her eyes and braced herself before slowly turning around, still holding the phone to her ear. Her heart was pumping hard in her chest and when she looked at the man walking toward her it stopped for a solid three beats before it resumed its rhythm with a thump to the chest that felt like a closed fist to the sternum. Oomph!

  “Hi, Mac,” Gavin said into his phone, bringing his voice intimately into her ear while she stared into his baby blues. A woman could drown in eyes that pretty. How had she forgotten? Mac yanked the phone from her ear and ended the call.

  “Gav,” she said on a shaky exhale. He stopped in front of her right on the periphery of her personal space. She forced herself to smile with teeth, which felt like more of a snarl. “I wasn’t expecting you. How are you?”

  “Better now that you’re here,” he said.

  Mac gave him a wary look. What the hell did that mean?

  “I’m pretty sure if I misplaced my sister’s maid of honor, I’d have to flee the state or possibly the country,” he teased. He smiled at her and Mac felt it all the way down to her toes.

  “Oh, yeah, huh,” Mac stammered. She resisted the urge to do a face palm. She sounded like a moron.

  “Come here,” Gavin said. He tucked his phone into his jeans pocket and held out his arms. “A proper greeting is required for the return of the prodigal Mac.”

  “Oh, right, of course,” she said.

  In her state of shock at seeing him, Mac’s legs were refusing to follow the basic one-foot-in-front-of-the-other protocol and she lurched forward into his arms, forcing him to catch her before she took them both down.

  It was a good bracing squeeze, the sort cousins shared at annual family reunions. But it was enough for Mac to catalog the fact that this was not the man-boy she had fumbled around in a pickup truck with all those years ago. Oh, no, this was a man who stood well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, a lean waist, and powerful arms. Gavin Tolliver had grown into a hottie when she wasn’t looking.

  Amazingly, his scent was the same and it struck Mac in the olfactory system like a lightning strike. The warm citrusy cedar smell that was uniquely Gavin blew open the locked door of her memories, and Mac was hit like a two-fingered poke to the eyeballs with a mental picture of the man in her arms, sans clothes, holding her close and going in for a bone-wilter of a kiss. Ack!

  She jumped out of his arms so fast, she tripped over her suitcase and landed in a heap on the bench seat behind her. She cracked her hip on the wooden edge and the pain rocketed up her back, but she refused to let it show. Instead, she quickly crossed her legs and threw her arm over the seat back, pretending that she meant to do that.

  Gavin looked surprised and then he grinned at her as if he found her adorable and not freaky, which she clearly was. Mac wondered how she could have forgotten the dimple that dented his right cheek when he smiled or the girlishly long, thick lashes that framed his eyes so becomingly. Then he winked at her and she felt as if everything she had ever known to be true had just hopped on the Downeaster train back to Boston.

  This was not the Gavin Tolliver she remembered in his grubby little league uniform who thought it was hilarious to stick whoopee cushions under her sleeping bag when she spent the night at Emma’s, for that was the only image of him she had ever allowed herself to recall after their one night together. It had worked like a charm to banish the memory of what had been the most amazing sexual encounter of her life. She had even convinced herself that their night together had only been spectacular because she had just been left at the altar and had been as emotionally charged as a hair dryer tossed into a bathtub.

  But now, this man standing in front of her in his well-worn jeans and work boots was making the past seven years of her carefully crafted revisionist history an utter mockery. This guy had charisma and sexual magnetism to the tenth power. When he smiled at her she actually felt her skin get hot and when he winked, well, her girl parts almost overheated. Dang, this guy could probably unhook her bra just by looking at it!

  There was no doubt about it, Mac was screwed. Or maybe, she just wanted to be. Gah! Mac shook her head, trying to dislodge that thought. No, no, no! This was Emma’s little brother! She tried to picture him in his little league uniform. Sadly, she could not shove the man body in the form-fitting gray T-shirt in front of her into a dirty eight-year-old’s baseball uniform. Damn it!

  “Mac, are you okay?” he asked. “You look mad.”

  “What?” She glared at him. Then she glanced away, trying to avoid his gaze. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

  “Long day of travel,” he said. His voice was kind and understanding, which Mac found unreasonably annoying. “I’m parked right outside. Come on, let’s get you home.”

  Without waiting for her answer, he took her hand and pulled her to her feet. Then he grabbed her bags as if they weighed nothing and wheeled them toward the door. Mac had no choice but to grab her purse and her garment bag and follow. She wished she had worn a better travel outfit than jeans and a T-shirt, then berated herself for even thinking about her outfit, and then she cursed Emma for not warning her that it was Gavin who would pick her up. Suddenly, the next two weeks looked more like an incarceration than a celebration, and Mac did not have a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  Gavin hefted Mac’s bags into the back of a big black pickup truck. So he still drove a truck—a different truck, but still a truck. She went to open the passenger door but he got there first, holding it open for her to climb in. Mac squeezed by him, trying not to brush up against him as she went. Healthy boundaries were going to be scrupulously maintained if a mere smell memory had her picturing him naked. Oh, horror!

  He shut the door and jogged around the front of the truck. She turned on her phone and toyed with the screen, pretending to be doing something other than avoiding looking at him, which was really what she was doing.

  Gav pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the road that would take them home. Mac glanced out her window, wondering if the silence felt as awkward to him as it did to her. She supposed she should say something, but she had no idea what.

  Why couldn’t she be like her friend Carly, who in her usual blunt fashion would just give his ass a squeeze, crack a bawdy joke about the
last time they saw each other, and move on? Or her other friend, Jillian, who would say something kind but distant, which would effectively put up a barrier as daunting as razor wire between them, letting him know they were not going there. Ever.

  Sadly, it was neither of those two who had slept with their best friend’s little brother. Oh, no, that was Mac, who as a corporate accountant who operated in numbers and facts and bottom lines had zero capacity to navigate life’s layers of innuendo. Damn it!

  “So . . .” Gavin said. He gave her a sideways glance when she turned to look at him. “Are you hungry?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Not at all. Not even a little. I’m good. Thanks.”

  She pressed her lips together to shut herself up and turned away from him. Ugh, she couldn’t even look at him. She could be half starved to death and desperate for a ham sandwich and she wouldn’t do anything that would prolong their time together for even a nanosecond. Seriously, if she had to go to the bathroom, she would risk peeing her pants before she’d extend this trip to include a pit stop. Thankfully, she did not have to go.

  “Okay,” Gavin said. Again, his voice was gentle, as if he were talking to an injured baby bird. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Will do,” Mac said. “Roger that, you betcha, by golly wow.”

  Okay, now the urge to punch herself in the temple and knock herself out was almost more than she could stand. Being unprepared to see him again had reduced her to a babbling idiot.

  He, on the other hand, did not seem to be suffering from any awkwardness. Obviously, Gavin either didn’t remember what had happened between them seven years ago or he was so completely over it that it didn’t occur to him that being thrown together after seven years of radio silence was weird. Now didn’t that just fluff up her ego?