Harlequin E Contemporary Romance Box Set Volume 2: Maid to CraveAll I HaveThe Last First DateLight My Fire

by Rebecca M. Avery

  “Yep, Caleb and I watched cartoons and ate some cereal just like every day,” he replied. “You better hurry up and get ready, ninety minutes isn’t very long.”

  Then Zach was off the bed and out of her room. She managed to shower and get ready for the day quicker than she thought. She feared that as heavy as her heart was, it might slow her down, but amazingly she found herself downstairs in record time. Entering the kitchen, she found Ian chopping up vegetables like a professional while Seth cut up chicken and steak that had marinated overnight. Caleb was making kabobs out of the vegetables and meat. Zach sat next to Caleb handing his “bro” wooden sticks that had been soaked in water.

  They all looked up, but only Seth did a double take upon seeing her standing there. When the doorbell rang, she was never so grateful for an escape in her life. His face told her that he knew something wasn’t right with her and she didn’t want him asking about it in front of the others. As she made it to the door, she was surprised to find Ian’s friend Jess and her college professor friend Courtney standing on her front step, each holding a side dish. Tori could only think of Courtney’s part in the video starring Seth the exotic dancer. Opening the door, she forced a smile, invited them in and then showed them to the kitchen.

  Upon entering the kitchen, Jess set the bowl of salad she carried on the counter. She smacked Seth on the arm gently, smiled at him and then looked at Ian and said, “You missed a good time last night.”

  “I can see that kind of good time in the comfort and privacy of my own bathroom mirror, but I appreciate the invite just the same,” Ian replied, rolling his eyes. Then he glanced at Courtney, a look of discomfort—or jealousy?—flared before he continued chopping the vegetables.

  Against her will, Tori felt tears burn and found herself leaving the kitchen, hoping they didn’t notice she was gone. She’d almost made it to the stairs when Seth stopped her by saying, “Are you okay, Tori?”

  Glancing back at him, she said, “I’m fine. Did you have a good time last night?”

  When Ian walked over to them, she didn’t wait for an answer or any more questions. “Excuse me,” she said, and then she climbed the stairs to her room, feeling their stares the entire trip up the steps.

  Closing her door, she leaned against it for a moment and forced the tears into submission. She felt like the only one who hadn’t been invited to the dance. It was apparent that Ian, Jess and obviously Courtney had known what Seth had been doing the night before. Even Caleb had known based on his snicker at Jess’s comment.

  Prying herself off the door, she walked across the room and sat on the edge of her bed. She knew they must be talking about her downstairs since things had quieted down considerably. Just as she was about to go into the bathroom and check to see if her face looked as bad as she felt, someone knocked on her door.

  “Go away, Seth. We will talk about this later,” she said.

  “Seth is a lover while I’m a fighter so I am not going away,” Ian said through the door. “I’m coming in there and you can punch me, kick me and even pull my hair, but you’re going to hear me out when you’re done whooping my ass.”

  Try as she might, she couldn’t keep the chuckle from escaping along with one lone tear, which she quickly brushed away just as the overgrown man opened her door and looked around as if waiting to be attacked from the side. He closed the door behind him and sat down next to her. When she glanced at him, he flinched back from her as though she’d thrown a punch at him.

  “Why do you do that? Is that supposed to be funny because I’m so much smaller than you?” she asked, rolling her eyes at him.

  “Nope, it’s the little ones you have to watch out for. Dynamite comes in small packages,” Ian replied. “I told you once before that I wouldn’t keep anything from you, so against the wishes of one of my best friends, I’m going to confess his sins for him, starting with the one where he’s been scoping you out since Mary Clark’s funeral.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What?” Tori asked.

  “You heard Seth’s comments at the wedding right? What you didn’t see was the way he was checking you out at the funeral a few months before that. I noticed it and made the mistake of mentioning it to him. When he realized that he’d been caught checking you out while you were completely ignoring him, he got embarrassed. So the next time we saw you, at the wedding, and you were once again ignoring him, he struck out against his feelings of inadequacy by saying mean things about you,” Ian explained.

  “He was not checking me out….” She laughed.

  “I’ve slept in ditches with that man and experienced things with him by my side that I’d rather not talk about. Not to mention I’ve known him longer than you have, so when I tell you that he was looking…then he was looking,” he replied. “Now would you like to hear the rest of his sins?”

  She could only nod as her mind went back to Mary Clark’s funeral. She had felt Seth looking at her that day so she knew Ian wasn’t lying. Seth was so different from her, though. Where she was studious and mostly quiet, he was outgoing and extremely good looking, so she had assumed he was staring because of her size or because she was having a bad hair day.

  Then at the wedding Seth had walked her down the aisle right behind Rusty and Addie and followed by Ian and Ronnie’s oldest sister, Elaine. Tori had wondered why he insisted on walking so close to her that he invaded every bit of personal space she had and when he’d gyrated his way over to her at the reception and asked if she wanted to dance…she’d turned him down because he was so out of her league. Was Ian right? Had Seth taken her rejection as a personal slight and lashed out in the only way he knew how?

  “You ready to listen now?” Ian cut in to her thoughts. She met his gaze and nodded again.

  “Then he starts working for you and you so articulately place him in the ‘just friends’ box, he was amazed that a woman could truly want to be friends with him rather than just wanting him for the evening based on the way he looks or the fact that he is good at shaking his ass,” Ian said, smiling at her. “He needed that, by the way, and the fact that it was you who did it just made him crazy. By the time you guys finally…got involved, he was already falling for you. Then he finds out you’re engaged a couple of days later and it hit him hard.”

  “But it wasn’t like that—” she interjected.

  “Wait for it,” Ian said, holding up a giant index finger. “By this time he’d already had Rusty checking out this boss of yours, Tim. When Rusty told Seth about Tim’s arrest record and the prostitute thing, he just lost it. From then on he was on a quest to show you he was right for you and to prove just how wrong for you Tim was.”

  “Wait, what are you talking about?” she asked. “What prostitute?”

  Ian’s face blanked for a second and then he said, “You know, maybe I should just shut up now, after all.”

  “Oh, no you don’t, Ian,” she scolded. “You can’t tell me part of something and then just stop talking.”

  “I thought Jess’s dad…your boss…I mean, Mr. Reynolds…told you about the prostitutes. You mean you don’t know?” Ian asked.

  “What prostitutes?” she nearly yelled.

  “Your former fiancé had a little fetish for picking up prostitutes and…” He stopped.

  “And?” she asked. Upon seeing the skepticism on his face, she said, “Tell me the truth, Ian. You’re not the liar up in here…remember?”

  “He was busted. Not once, but twice. He has a record for soliciting. Seth was worried that Tim would assure you that it was all a misunderstanding or somehow convince you to forgive him. That’s why Seth made that deal with Jess.”

  “Deal?” she asked.

  “Yeah, the deal,” Ian said. After seeing her expression, he sighed and threw his hands in the air. “Seth asked Jess to help him set up Tim in an effort to prove to you that the man was a scumbag so you would dump him. But with Mike Reynolds being Jess’s dad, she just told him what was going on and about Tim’s arrest
record. From what I understand, the company was trying to get rid of the dumbass anyway. The deal was that in exchange for Jess helping Seth get that douche out of the picture, he had to dance at Courtney’s baby shower in return.”

  “Why didn’t he just tell me about all of this?” she asked in disbelief.

  “I’d like you to know that I asked him the same question before we even made that deal,” Jess said from the other side of the door. Tori heard some scuffling and then Jess said, “See, you dipshit, I told you to just tell her the damn truth and admit how much she means to you, but did you listen to me? No! It’s not like I’m a woman or anything.”

  “Tori, can I come in there?” Seth asked through the door.

  Ian gave her a look as though their chat was over, then stood up and opened the door. On the other side, Jess had Seth in a headlock and was kicking at his foot, trying to flip him over. Ian placed his hands on his hips, frowned at her and said, “Is that how I taught you? Maybe you should stick with kicking the shit out of your opponent.”

  Jess released Seth. She looked through the doorway at Tori and said, “He didn’t tell you about dancing last night because it was something he agreed to at Ian’s last fight and he thought he would be able to get out of doing it because of a promise he made to you, after having already promised me.” Looking at Seth, she said, “Welcher.” With that, she punched him on the arm. Hard.

  “It’s something he should have refused to do regardless of giving his word or whatever,” Ian muttered. “The woman is pregnant for God’s sake! Don’t any of you have any principles at all?”

  Jess rolled her eyes and then grabbed Ian’s arm and dragged him through the doorway. “Well, that pregnant woman is downstairs cutting up your vegetables, so what now?”

  A look crossed Ian’s face that Tori couldn’t read. Then she was distracted when Seth stepped into her room and closed the door. He came over and knelt down in front of her. He looked at her and a grin broke out on his handsome face. As his grin grew, she could feel hers growing, as well. It was so hard to stay mad at him when he looked at her like that.

  “Do you hate me for last night? Because if you do, I know I won’t be able to sleep. I’ll just come up here and then before you know it, one of us will end up half naked just so we can talk,” he teased.

  She laughed and he got up and pulled her to her feet. Then he sat on the edge of her bed and put her on his lap. Reaching up, he pushed her hair back from her face and then kissed her.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on with Tim instead of going to such extremes to show me what a…What was it that Ian called him? What a douche he is?” she asked.

  Sighing, Seth wrapped one of her curls around his finger, pulled on it gently, then looked in her eyes. “As much as I wanted to keep Tim from convincing you to marry him, I wanted you to pick me over him even more. I was walking a tightrope, afraid that swaying one way might allow him just enough room to persuade you to forgive him. But if I swayed the other way…I would never know you chose me because I’m Seth, the man you wanted.”

  “You’re gorgeous, Seth, you know that. How could you possibly think I wouldn’t pick you over boring and not good looking, Tim?” she asked.

  “Because most women always end up going back to the safe, reliable, boring guys. They only come to see me the night before they get married. They want me for a dance or sex, but they don’t want me.” He looked away from her. “I was afraid you would end up doing the same thing. After the first time we were together, like this right here, you accepted his ring and I was so afraid I would lose more than a lover this time. This time I would lose a friend and it kind of made me desperate for you. Even more than craving your touch, I crave your friendship.”

  Catching his handsome face in her hands, she forced him to look at her. “We will always be friends, Seth. As long as you want me to be…and you can tell me anything, anything at all, even things like the fact that my fiancé is an ass and that a sexy stripper is actually the safe and reliable one in this case. Boring, though? Not a chance.”

  “I can tell you anything? Anything at all? How about if I tell you that I am so incredibly in love with you that I actually crave you? How about the fact that I would marry you this afternoon, if you would agree to be my friend for the rest of my life? Would it be okay to tell you that?” he asked against her mouth between hot open-mouthed kisses.

  “Yes,” she replied around his kisses.

  “Yes, I can tell you those things?” he asked, continuing his kisses down her neck.

  “Yes, you can tell me those things and yes, I will be your friend for the rest of your life and yes, I would marry you this afternoon, too,” she said, dipping her face so she could again feel his lips on hers.

  “Do you promise, Tori?” he whispered.

  “Yes, I promise,” she replied.

  “Good…because the woman I danced for last night, Courtney, she’s an ordained minister,” he replied.

  She gasped and pulled back from him. The look on his face told her he was serious. Then with one of his grins that made her stomach flutter, he said, “You’re not going to be a ‘welcher’ now, are you, Tori? You promised.…”

  “I keep my word,” she finally said with a smile.

  “Say about two-thirty, in the backyard, swimsuit attire?” He smiled against her mouth.

  “It’s a deal,” she replied, holding out her hand to shake his.

  Rebecca Avery is a software support professional by day and a romance author by night. She’s a pint-size mother of two and wife to the greatest man on earth. Born in the South, she now lives in a three-stoplight town in the Midwest surrounded by cornfields and a vindictive bullfrog. A lifelong member of multiple procrastinator clubs and organizations, she has somehow published several ebook romance novels and successfully turned a hobby into a dream come true.

  Also by Rebecca M. Avery

  Maid to Fit

  All I Have by Nicole Helm

  Dedication

  To my Grandpa Beck. You once said the farm was your heart, so I gave Mia and Dell your heart.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Elley for sending the article that inspired this story, and then encouraging me to write it.

  Many thanks to Alissa for the edits that made this story even better, and the positive comments that always seem to appear at the exact time I need them.

  Chapter One

  A few strange women had flitted in and out of Lang’s life in the past few months, but not one of them had a bizarre fixation on chewing gum like tonight’s winner. Squinting through the sleet-spattered windshield, he peered into the harsh glare spilling from the glass storefront of the T-N-T Mini Mart, hoping to catch sight of his date. The multitude of neon signs crowding the spotless expanse lit the puddles of slush in carnival colors. The store’s owner, Max Merida, believed in the laws of plenty. Plenty of light, plenty of cheesy merchandise crammed onto narrow counters, and plenty of markup built into every price.

  Apparently, his date believed in having plenty of gum.

  Five minutes had crept past since she bailed from his car, insisting he stay put. He could only figure choosing the right flavor was a deeply personal matter for Kristin…no, Kirsten.

  Kir-sten.

  No matter how many times he repeated it in his head, the name probably wouldn’t stick. Not that there was anything wrong with the girl. She seemed nice enough. Blonde and pretty in a slightly overly made-up way. Her dress was low-cut and her legs were long—two features he usually appreciated—but tonight the sparkly package just wasn’t doing it for him. Kir-sten would be his fifth first date this month. He was getting good enough at gauging them to know that this one was not off to an auspicious start.

  In the past six months alone, he’d chalked up a toll booth attendant who thought she was a shrink, a clinging-vine attorney who wanted to sue him for breach of contract when he broke a dinner date, a girl who ate whole cloves of garlic to keep vampires from suck
ing her blood, a nymphomaniac kindergarten teacher (not as fun as he expected), a woman whose man hands would have made Jerry Seinfeld jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, and a tattoo artist who wrote free-form poetry. On people’s skin.

  And those were just the headliners.

  Dating was a horror, pure and simple, but it was the only socially acceptable way to cure what ailed him. Gum fixation aside, he was willing to give this date a chance. Even if it was a blind date procured for him by his grandmother and one of her canasta buddies. On New Year’s Eve.

  Gripping the top of the steering wheel, Lang curled forward until his lips touched the backs of his hands, and purged the oxygen he’d been holding deep in his lungs. In his early twenties, playing the field had seemed to be the thing to do. His friends had begun pairing off as that decade ground to an end, yet he’d still thought he had all the time in the world. But his thirties proved to be a revelation. He used to snort every time he heard a woman complain that all the good ones were taken. On principle, he considered himself to be the exception to that rule. But the longer he dog-paddled his way around the dating pool, the closer he came to commiserating with them. Still, he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet. That was why he was spending the second biggest date night of the year parked outside the Tank ‘N Tummy waiting on a woman who had a slushball’s chance in Florida of being The One.

  He drummed his fingers on the wheel as he stared into the store again. There was a reason he refused to look too closely at the crap lining the counters when he stopped into the T-N-T for his morning coffee. If he did, he usually saw things he didn’t want to see. Like the hookahs in the display case or the heavy-duty paperweight that looked suspiciously like a set of brass knuckles. Aside from their questionable merchandising choices, the owner, Max, and his wife, Elena, believed small talk cut into their profit margin. Turnover was everything to the Meridas. For the life of him, Lang couldn’t imagine what could be taking Kir-sten so long.