Crazy in Love (Contemporary Romance) (Blue Lake Series)

by Kristin Miller

  Cole erupted with laughter, and covered his hands over his middle.

  “What?” She looked like she was going to slug him. “Why are you laughing?”

  “You want me to have a passionate moment with a musical instrument, in front of hundreds of screaming fans?”

  She shrugged. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

  His show wasn’t personal. Not really. He didn’t play acoustic or talk to the crowd much, but people had fun at his concerts, they truly did, and that was a personal experience on some level. They smiled and laughed and sang along to really catchy songs.

  Rachael didn’t know what she was missing.

  “Come to my show tomorrow night,” he pleaded, and damn it, the tone didn’t fit him well. “Or the show Saturday night, if you have plans. You’ll see that I don’t need to get kinky with my guitar to throw one hell of a party.”

  She strode past him and continued to descend to the stage. A few of his crewmembers had spotted him, and pointed him out to Rita. Frowning, she tapped her watch. The woman needed a Xanax.

  “Tempting offer, but I don’t think so.” Rachael craned her neck around as she continued a few steps ahead. “I went to Prince’s concert in 2003 and partied like it was 1999. That’s partying in the present and past all at the same time—it was really overwhelming, as you can imagine.” She sped her pace, her ponytail swinging behind her like a silky golden pendulum. “I’m interested in seeing a concert that’s going to strike me as private. Like I’m witnessing something I wasn’t meant to see, you know? I want to see something real.”

  “Well you’re in luck. My concert is as real as you’re going to get it.”

  As if on cue, fireworks went off from each end of the stage. The explosions were overwhelming, popping and booming as cannons shot one round after another. Either something went wrong, or the people in the front rows were going to be deaf from the racket. Gasping, Rachael covered her ears and ducked.

  Out of instinct, he covered his hands over her head and hollered at Bronx. “Shut ‘em off!”

  Gold fireworks continued to spew from the cannons. The sound was deafening, crackling and shooting, howling into the cold morning air.

  “Bronx! Kill it!”

  Finally, a few ear-piercing seconds later, the fireworks ended and the thundering quieted.

  Rachael straightened, eyeing Cole’s hands that hovered protectively over her shoulders. Her eyes went wide, as if she hadn’t expected him to shield her, to protect her. Hell, he didn’t expect it either. Over something as stupid as fireworks? Lame with another helping of numbskull, please!

  “Fireworks?” She winced. “Let me guess…you’re going to have a smoke machine, too.”

  “Fog machine,” Rita interrupted before Cole could argue. “It’s not legal to have smoke on the stage anymore, though we would have it if we could get away with it.”

  “Excellent.” Rachael smiled, her lips forming a tight line. “Can’t wait for the show!”

  As she walked down the final stairs and in front of the stage, Rita said, “Great, see you then!”

  “She was being sarcastic.” Cole couldn’t take his eyes off Rachael as she talked to a group of winery staff. “Even if she had no other plans and we gave her free tickets, that woman still wouldn’t come.”

  It bothered him to hell and back.

  “Who? Oh.” Rita squinted, and then waved in Rachael’s direction. “Don’t let the innkeeper tie you up. You need to focus so you don’t have a repeat of Houston.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  How could he move on and forget about that disaster if Rita kept bringing it up? She wanted him to stay in Blue Lake for a few days to recoup, to rest up, to recharge and regain focus before heading to Lake Tahoe. To do that, he had to forget the Houston tour stop ever happened.

  “Cole Turner?” someone said from behind him.

  He spun around. The woman who’d approached him was petite, with short, curly red hair and green eyes. Her skin was pale, and freckles dotted her cheeks. She was Lucille Ball and Shirley Temple’s love child…if they could’ve had one.

  “I’m Lucy Stone, owner of StoneMill Winery,” she said, smiling. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She put her hand over her heart, and blushed. “I’m a huge fan. I mean, huge. I think I have a 6’0’’ cardboard cutout of you at home. What am I talking about, I don’t think I do, I know so.” She shook her head. “I’m not a stalker, don’t worry; I won it as a gift at a bachelorette party. I don’t know why I’m rambling, this isn’t normally like me. I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

  Now this was the reaction he’d been wanting from his sexy innkeeper.

  “Nice to meet you, Lucy.” He took her hand in his. It was cold and starting to tremble. “Thanks for allowing me to play here.”

  “Are you kidding?” She giggled. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

  “Now Lucy,” Rita said, using her business voice, “the grass over here will be for the higher-priced tickets, is that correct? I’d like you to show me where the heaters are going to be placed around the venue.”

  As the two ladies droned about business, Cole remembered Rachael had said that she and the owner of this place were friends.

  “You know Rachael McCoy, is that right?”

  Lucy paused mid-sentence and turned her full attention to Cole. “She’s one of my best friends. Is she treating you well at the inn?”

  “Actually, I was wanting to get her a little something for being so cordial to me last night, letting me check in early and all.” Oh, the plan was forming perfectly. “If I gave you two VIP, backstage tickets to my show tomorrow night, would you bring her?”

  “Absolutely!” Lucy’s green eyes lit up. “I’d love to take you up on that, but I don’t think it’d be right for me to take the ticket, seeing as I own the place. Maybe you could—”

  “The tickets come with a private dinner with me before the show,” he added at the last second. Lucy started to say something, but he grabbed her arm and squeezed gently, silencing her. “Say yes.” He winked to seal the deal.

  Lucy bounced up and down on her toes. “Okay, but if I take the invitation to dinner, can I auction off my VIP pass to a member of our wine club?”

  “Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he said, nodding.

  Lucy screamed, and threw her arms around his neck. As soon as she touched him, she checked herself. “Rachael and I would be honored to be your dinner dates tomorrow.”

  Chapter Five

  “I’d rather not,” Rachael mumbled, as she ripped the sheets off her bed. “Why’d you tell him that?”

  Lucy stood in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest. “Because he’s Cole Freaking-Gorgeous Turner! What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.” She tossed the bedding into the hallway and then stormed past Lucy. “He’s a guest. That’s all.”

  Okay, so there were a few moments when they were alone yesterday when she’d wished he was more than a guest. He was amazingly good-looking with a hard body and smoldering eyes. Looks aside, the man was hilarious with a dry sense of humor that tickled her bones. And although the fireworks at StoneMill weren’t going to harm her, he’d practically shielded her with his body, proving there might’ve been hints of chivalry hidden beneath his ego.

  “No, he’s more than a guest,” Lucy countered. “Cole Freaking-Gorgeous Turner! Do you have a pulse, Rach? If you don’t think he’s the hottest thing to stroll into Blue Lake in the last hundred years, I’m worried about you.”

  As Rachael charged into Cole’s room, Lucy followed closely behind. And when she tore the blanket off his bed, Lucy whimpered. Rachael spun, the sheets crumpled in her hand.

  “What?” Rachael said. Her friend was pale, licking her lips with crazed look in her eye. “What’s the matter?”

  “He slept in those sheets. Good God!” Lucy reached out for them, a silly smile on her face. “I know half-a-dozen ladies, myself included, who’d pay a month’s wage to have tho
se as a keepsake. Okay, that was a little far.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “I’d pay a month’s wage to sleep in those sheets, just once.”

  “You’re ridiculous.” Laughing, Rachael tossed the sheets into the hallway, but as they ballooned into the air, Cole’s scent hit her hard. The room and everything in it smelled like him. And God, did he smell good. She wavered slightly, her knees wobbling.

  “A-ha!” Lucy said, pointing. “You do have a pulse!”

  “Shut it, Lucy.” Rachael strode into the hall, scooped up the bedding and went downstairs. “I told you, he’s a guest…a guest who happens to be really hot.”

  They laughed all the way to the laundry room at the back of the inn. After Rachael tossed the bedding into the wash, she grabbed a broom, dustpan, and a handful of dusting rags. Lucy stole the broom from Rachael’s hand and followed her back upstairs.

  “Where you joking before?” Lucy said, sweeping down the hall as Rachael dusted pictures. “About skipping out on the concert?”

  “It’s not my thing. I don’t even like his kind of music.”

  “It’s a free dinner, Rachael, a night you don’t have to cook. To top it off, you don’t even have an excuse since you don’t have any other guests to cook for.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Rachael’s stomach turned. “I don’t have a single excuse.”

  She hadn’t thought about it, but this might’ve been the first Friday night in the last year that she didn’t have to be home by five o’clock to start cooking dinner. The thought of getting out of the house was enticing.

  Rachael pulled an extra set of sheets out of the hall closet and went into Cole’s room to remake his bed. She tightened the sheets down, and spread a quilt over the top. When that was finished, she started dusting the tops of the dressers and the posts on the bed. Lucy moved into Cole’s room, sweeping the hardwood for dust bunnies.

  “Exactly what did he say about dinner?” Rachael wondered aloud.

  “He said he wanted to show you his appreciation for letting him check in early last night.”

  As Rachael’s thoughts whirled, her movements slowed.

  “Do you think you’ll still go?” Rachael asked, hesitating.

  Why did it matter? Why did the idea of leaving Cole and Lucy alone rub her the wrong way?

  “Hell yes I’m going!” Lucy squealed. “You think I’d miss a chance like this? If you really don’t want to go, I’m going to ask if I can bring Rhonda instead.”

  “Rhonda?”

  She was a friend of theirs, sweet as pie, and more beautiful than the models who graced the covers of magazines on the grocery store shelves. Rachael imagined Rhonda, Lucy, and Cole together at a private dinner, just the three of them. He’d probably serenade them with some stupid rock song and wink at each of them the way he winked at her. They’d fall for it, obviously, because he was hot and rich and come on, who wouldn’t?

  “Wait a second,” Lucy said, whacking Rachael in the backside with the broom. “Is this about Joey? Do you guys still have a date this weekend?”

  “Damn it!” Smacking her head on the bedpost, Rachael flopped onto the bed. “I totally forgot. I told him I’d let him know which day this weekend worked best.”

  Joey Brackett had lived in town his whole life as Rachael had. He worked at the Blue Lake Fire Department and was drop-dead gorgeous. He had a broad chest, humongous biceps and big, rough hands. He had the kind of body that made a woman want to burn down her house simply so he’d carry her out. Each time one of them was single, the other was taken. It’d gone round and round like that since high school. When they reunited at the old movie theatre on Main Street last weekend, they realized they were both single. Completely unattached.

  “If you haven’t told Joey a day, you can still go to dinner with us!” Lucy smacked Rachael with the floppy part of the broom again, this time across the knees. “Go out with Joey tonight and you can go out with us tomorrow!”

  Us.

  Lucy had met Cole Turner one time and they were already an “us”. He was definitely a charmer. Able to make every girl at his side feel uniquely beautiful. He was only in town for three more nights. Four days. There was no way she was falling for his games—or him—in that amount of time.

  Why, then, was she so tied up about the idea of Lucy and Rhonda going out to dinner with him?

  Because jealousy doesn’t listen to reason.

  If she didn’t want to wind up heartbroken Sunday morning when Cole Turner left town like the rest of the men in her life, she’d have to keep her eyes on what was practical, her gaze trained on the attainable.

  She fished her cell out of her pocket. “I’m going to text Joey now and tell him tonight will work.”

  “You and Joey will be great together, you really will. He’s always looked at you that way.” Lucy swirled round and round, using the broom as a makeshift dance partner.

  “What way?”

  “Like he wants to lick you up and down.”

  Rachael squealed, burying her head in her hands.

  “Don’t try to tell me you couldn’t use some of that!” Lucy dipped the broom, stroked the bristles as if they were her lover’s hair, and pretended to lick the handle. “Does this mean you’ll come with us to dinner?”

  Did she really want to let Cole get closer to her than he already was? If Lucy thought Joey glanced at her like he wanted to lick her, wait until she saw the way Cole looked her up and down. Rachael’s cheeks heated merely thinking about his hungry gaze.

  Lucy swung at her with the broom. This time, Rachael caught it.

  “If you stop using my broom as a weapon, yes.” Her heart sped. “I’ll go to dinner with Cole.”

  “And me.”

  Her eyebrows pinched. “What?”

  “You’ll go to dinner with Cole and me,” Lucy corrected. “Don’t think you’re leaving me out of this, just because you two are shacking up.”

  “Excuse me?” a gravelly voice said from the doorway. “Who am I shacking up with?”

  Jolting off the bed, Rachael snatched the dust rag and pretended to be dusting the headboard.

  “I was just say—saying,” Lucy stuttered. “That you two are sleeping under one roof. When you drop us off tomorrow night, it’ll be convenient since you’re staying here.”

  “That will be convenient.” He strode across the room and checked the lids of the boxes in the corner. He stood over each of them, as if he was counting. “You didn’t go through these, did you?”

  Rachael wasn’t curious about the boxes before, but she was now. What would he keep in them that made him so paranoid? He probably earned a couple million dollars last year. Surely he could replace whatever was in the boxes if the items were damaged or lost.

  “We were cleaning,” Lucy blurted. “I may have accidently smacked the box with the back of my broom handle when I was beating Rachael with it.”

  Cole smirked, the stress lines around his eyes vanishing. “I want to ask, but something says I shouldn’t.”

  “Good call.” Rachael backed out of the room and motioned for Lucy to sneak out behind her. “We’ll leave you now. You probably want to rest.”

  It was nearly two in the afternoon. Before meeting Cole and “his crew”, she would’ve thought musicians simply showed up before the show, played their numbers and went back to their hotels. Cole, however, seemed involved in the process.

  He took off his coat and slung it over the chair in the corner. “What’s for dinner tonight?”

  “Umm…” She glanced at her phone as it buzzed. It was Joey, confirming they were on for dinner and a movie. He wanted to meet at Angie’s at six thirty. “…I’m cooking something simple. Spaghetti and Caesar Salad. Is that all right?”

  “If it’s edible, it’s perfect.” He flopped on the bed.

  Lucy leaned around Rachael to peek in the room. She elbowed her friend, forcing her back.

  “Dinner will be early tonight. Five o’clock. And I won’t be e
ating with you.”

  He threw his hand over his forehead and turned to glance at her. “Why not?”

  “I have a date.”

  She started to close the door. He sat up, propping himself on his elbow as if he was posing for a GQ ad. “A date?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse. “I’ll make sure everything is taken care of before I leave. I won’t leave a stone unturned. And if you need me, I’ll take my cell.”

  As she closed the door further, he put up a hand to stop her.

  “If I need you?” His voice was deep, a sexy husk. “What if I need you now?”

  “Good God,” Lucy whispered from behind her. “My ovaries just moaned.”

  Rachael gave her an elbow. “What do you need, Cole?”

  He licked his lips, unhurried and ruthless. Her heart panged against her chest and wet heat pooled between her legs. Lucy whimpered over Rachael’s shoulder.

  “I need my pillow back,” he said simply. “You must’ve taken it with the wash.”

  Rachael nodded once. Twice. Three more times. It wasn’t until Lucy pulled her back by the sweater, did she realize she’d been in some kind of trance. She shut the door and ran down the hall with her best friend, giggling like a teenager.

  Chapter Six

  The fact that Rachael was going on a date with some backwoods mountain man—at least that was the image he’d drawn up in his head—didn’t bother him. Not at all. It was the fact that Rachael hardly responded to any of his advances…

  Cole had made up his mind that she wasn’t interested in men for the time being or dating in general. She’d probably been burned before and was taking a dating hiatus.

  He could’ve swallowed that truth and moved on.

  But she was going on a date.

  She was looking for someone.

  How could she go out with someone else when he slept down the hall? He thought about asking her, but he’d sound desperate. Needy and shallow.

  He wasn’t any of those things, so he kept his trap shut.