Sweetest Obsessions - Anthology

by Anthony, Jane

  “I’m freezing and I’m sure you are too.” He took out his phone and grinned. “Why don’t you find us a couple of lattes?”

  Epilogue

  Lacey stretched in the sun like a cat. She was so happy and relaxed, she could’ve purred. The last few weeks were like a dream come true. They’d flown to one private island getaway after another with brief stops in a few major cities for shopping, great food, and entertainment. She was no stranger to flying all over the world and being in the most incredible locations, but she was never the one who got to enjoy them.

  Rex had completely ruined her chance of ever returning to her old life. He spoiled her completely while asking for nothing in return but her happiness. And she was happier than ever.

  It wasn’t because of the amazing places he’d taken her either. Those were just the perks of being with Rex Randall. The stuff she loved the most were the things that couldn’t be bought—simply being in Rex’s company, the way he looked at her, joked with her, made love to her—every second of it was better than she’d imagined possible.

  But all of this was quickly coming to an end. Tomorrow they were headed back to California. Rex had meetings with various studios to discuss making the movie about his brother and the events leading to the night he died. His goal was finally on the edge of being reached, but they had to go back to the real world to actually make it happen.

  “What time are we leaving tomorrow?” she asked. She closed her eyes against the bright light and tried to soak up every last ounce of tropical sunshine she could. It wasn’t as if she was returning home to a wintery climate, but the sunshine in California wouldn’t feel the same either.

  Home?

  Funny how that word came to mind when she thought about Rex’s house. She hadn’t been back there since she’d left after the movie premiere, and it was one of the shortest durations she’d ever lived anywhere. Yet when she thought of his house, it felt like home.

  “I thought we’d head home around noon so we’re not back too late.”

  “Got plans tomorrow night I don’t know about?” she asked.

  “I plan on taking you to my bed for the first time. I’ll need lots of hours and energy for that, sugar.”

  “It’s hardly the first time.”

  “As I recall, the only time you were in my room, you were barefoot in your little pajamas and managed to take me down. This time, I plan to get you naked and in my bed.” He paused and pulled her close to kiss her. “Our bed.”

  “Sounds like a challenge I’m willing to take.” She giggled against his lips. “But I might not make it easy for you.”

  “I’d expect nothing less.” Rex kissed her for another minute before pulling away and kneeling by her side instead. “When we get home, I want you to stay with me. Not only in my room, but in my life.”

  “I don’t exactly fit the description for a trophy girlfriend,” she said, teasing even though her heart pounded in her chest at the thought of a real life with Rex.

  “True. I think wife fits you much better.” He reached into a pocket in the beach bag and pulled out the biggest diamond she’d ever seen. “I want you as my partner, not as my trophy.”

  “Are you asking me for real or because you’re afraid I’ll leave in the night again?” Rex Randall wasn’t actually asking her to settle down with him, permanently, was he?

  “I’m asking you because I love you, Lacey, and I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone but you.” He took the ring out of the little velvet box and held it between his fingers. “Now, stop evading my question and answer it. Lacey, will you marry me? Will you spend the rest of your days dodging whatever bullets life throws at us?”

  “Who wrote that cheesy line? You should fire them. They’re clearly not up to your standard. Oh wait, I’ve seen your movies.” She bit her lip and giggled, loving the look of annoyance that made his beautiful face scrunch up.

  “I write my own stuff once in a while.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  She shrieked as he pulled her off the sunbed and onto the sand. He pressed against her in all the right places. Grabbing her hand, he slid the ring onto her finger.

  “You’re marrying me.” It wasn’t a question anymore, exactly the type of proposal she’d been waiting for.

  “Yes, I am. I thought you’d never tell me so.” She smiled as he clenched his jaw then relaxed it, his annoyance quickly turning to happiness.

  “You like to push my buttons, don’t you?”

  “I love it actually. And I love you too, Rex. I have for longer than I want to admit.”

  He pressed her back into the hot sand and kissed her like it was the last time their lips would ever meet. “We’re going to make a great team. We’ll be unstoppable in Hollywood.”

  “You know I can’t stay on as your security, right? I’ll have to get a new job as someone else’s. I can’t sit around all day trying to look pretty.” The thought of putting her life on the line for anyone else didn’t fill her with pride like it used to. It filled her with the fear that something would happen, stopping her from coming home to Rex at the end of the day.

  “You could, but I don’t want you getting anywhere near anyone else’s body ever again. Be my wife. And be the head of my security—our security team. Be my partner, not my employee. Run things for us but let someone else carry the gun from now on. What do you say?”

  “I thought you didn’t need security normally? I was only hired because of a specific threat. Now you want me to run a whole team of security people?” she questioned. Lacey had always been the protector, not the protected. She wasn’t used to this new role, but maybe she could be both—if it meant a life with Rex. “What changed?”

  Rex pulled Lacey to her feet and wrapped her in a tight embrace. “Now I have someone worth protecting.”

  * * *

  The End

  About the Author

  Heather Thurmeier is a lover of martinis and a hater of spiders. Born and raised in the Canadian prairies, she now lives in New York with her husband and kids where she’s become some kind of odd Canuck-Yankee hybrid. When she's not busy taking care of the kids and pets, Heather’s writing her next romance novel, which will probably be filled with sassy heroines, sexy heroes who make your heart pound, laugh out loud moments, and always a happily ever after. She loves to hear from readers on social media and her website.

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  Escaping Purgatory

  Kristi Adams

  Escaping Purgatory © copyright 2018 Kristi Adams

  * * *

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Created with Vellum

  For Andy, who knew I could.

  D.M.B.

  Escaping Purgatory

  “Buy a farm,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they said.

  * * *

  Weren’t those some famous last words. Now, Molly McGill is so busy she doesn’t know whether she’s found a rope, or lost a horse.

  * * *

  At first, Molly thought being a proud co-owner of the most popular farm-to-table
restaurant in small-town Purgatory, Tennessee would be fun. At least, it used to be until her brother James wrote a book about the experience that instantly catapulted him, in to celebrity chef-world stardom and out of his mind.

  * * *

  With tourists (and locals) hot on the heels of Purgatory’s most eligible bachelor, Molly is left to pick up the pieces of actually running their restaurant and country store.

  * * *

  Ready to drop from exhaustion, Molly accidentally intercepts a secret set of new restaurant sketches, and is horrified when she realizes James intends to mortgage their farm to further his empire. One guess who he thinks is going to be running the show, while he flits around signing books … and anything else starry-eyed tourists toss his way.

  * * *

  She’s ready to torch the place and claim the insurance money when the last straw arrives on her doorstep – in a luxury food truck no less. Jake Hall isn’t your typical last straw, but he is determined to cash in on opportunity and sell his truck to James.

  * * *

  Furious, she impulse-buys the truck herself and flees Purgatory with the truck’s handsome proprietor in tow. But, never in her wildest dreams could Molly imagine this unannounced stranger might also hold the keys to her heart.

  1

  The antiquated calculator chirped in protest as I punched ‘enter’ again. The number had not changed. Even with the added cash from the tourist influx, at the rate James was spending money – we wouldn’t make it to the holiday season, just a few short months away.

  Rain hammered the corrugated green steel roof of our East Tennessee farmhouse, roaring down metal gutters and splashing to the ground in an angry torrent. I sighed and stared out the window. From our dining room table, I could hardly see our barn or restaurant beyond, cloaked as it was in the heavy gray morning fog.

  The storm rolled across the valley, but I finally caught it, another sound blended with the thunder and rain: the unmistakable thumping as boxes of books hit the floor upstairs. Which could only mean one thing. My respite was over and my brother would start yelling any minute. He didn’t disappoint.

  “Molly! Is my breakfast ready yet? It’s gonna take me nearly four hours to get to Nashville and I need to get going,” James hollered from upstairs.

  I stared a hundred daggers at him through our pressed-tin ceiling tiles before trudging into our commercial-grade kitchen and poured myself the first of what would be many cups of coffee. One morning, I swore under my breath, I would make good on my promise to tell him if he wanted a hot breakfast so badly – he could light his freaking Cheerios on fire.

  “James, when you get down here we really need to talk.”

  “Yea, yea, just help me get ready ok?” he growled down the stairwell.

  I may as well have been talking to the wind and I knew it.

  But I had to at least try.

  Our restaurant’s GM position was still vacant, three weeks after James had driven the last one to quit in spectacular fashion. The base salary was great, but word travels fast in a small town and no one would touch that vacancy now with a ten-foot pole. At this point, I was seriously entertaining going to the local hardware store to solicit one of the enterprising un-documented, because I was about ready to drop.

  What neither of us knew that fateful late-September morning, was that a storm of a different variety was headed our way. A confluence of events brewed just beyond the horizon that would set tensions off like a powder keg and leave our restaurant in shambles – the story splashed across the headlines and a pending lawsuit. And that it would be a small miracle if no one was killed at the end of it all.

  Had James known that, maybe he would’ve listened to me.

  Maybe I would’ve listened to him.

  I yanked two skillets onto our 8-burner Viking cooktop, doused one with cooking spray and minutes later the air was fragrant with the smell of frying eggs and Benton’s bacon. The eggs were just ready to flip when our old farmhouse stairs creaked and James huffed into the kitchen, struggling to see over a box of books.

  “Are you going to help me load these in the truck or not?”

  “Do you want a hot breakfast or not?”

  He groaned theatrically as he walked past, as if he were carrying the world’s heaviest sack of concrete. It took him three more trips to get everything downstairs and loaded, and he made sure to emit a prehistoric groan each time he came through the kitchen.

  “Do you have to do this book signing? Today?” I said, and slid a plate of bacon and eggs down the stainless steel counter to him. “We need to have a serious talk. About money. Again.”

  “That’s exactly why I should do the signing today,” he said, and began wolfing down his food. “More signings equal more book sales and more money,” he mumbled with a mouthful of food.

  I pointed at ten neatly stacked wooden crates behind him, each stamped in green lettering, ‘Honeycrisp’. “We just got a shipment of four hundred pounds of apples yesterday for our preserve line. And that’s just one batch!”

  “What do you expect me to do? Just cancel on the morning of an event? A no-show doesn’t bode well in the press you know.”

  “Might I remind you, that you were supposed to help me this week?”

  He looked at his watch and gulped down the rest of his orange juice. “We’ll talk tonight when I get back. Promise.”

  And without so much as a thank you, rocketed out the door.

  A powerful muscle cramp worked its way across my shoulders before spreading down my spine and knocking hard on my lower back. I drained the rest of my coffee, pulled on an apron, donned my work gloves and cracked open the first crate.

  My sous-chef, Tropical Storm Tina, blew in thirty minutes later tracking a swirl of damp September leaves in with her.

  “Molly!” she said breathlessly, giving me a half-hug as she slung her bag on a barstool and aproned up. “I am so sorry I’m late. Himself was having a proper fit this morning about Mam coming to visit.”

  Instantly, my bad mood started melting away, like the sun breaking through the morning clouds. I’d loved Tina the minute we met. Her bubbling personality and Irish accent was half the reason I’d hired her. Getting to hear the daily sagas of Himself – her husband, was an added bonus.

  I was just about to pry her for details when my phone buzzed across the countertop like an angry hornet, cutting our hoots of laughter short. I wiped apple slush from my hands on a dishtowel and jabbed the screen with my finger to answer it.

  “Oh great! You’re there.”

  Where else would I be? I thought, and rolled my eyes at the disembodied voice warbling through the Bluetooth speaker of James’s truck.

  “What do you need James?”

  “Uh, I forgot to tell you, I was supposed to have an interview with a lifestyle reporter from The Tennessee Sun today.”

  “Oh no. You are NOT dumping another reporter on me!”

  “Well …” Five seconds of dead silence passed.

  Son of a bitch! My insides churned. “They’re already on their way aren’t they?”

  “Probably.”

  Tina took one look at the crates of Honeycrisps, her shocked expression matching my own.

  “Tina! Lock the doors – we have a reporter coming,” I said, then hung up on James.

  2

  But it was too late. Headlights gleamed across our waist-to-ceiling white-paned kitchen windows, tracing patterns of light across the cabinets and angling toward the living room – in the definitive pattern that meant someone had just pulled into the circular drive in front of our farmhouse. A set of car doors clunked shut, and within seconds the doorbell rang. And rang. And rang again.

  Tina and I locked eyes across the small mountain of apples we had just started to work on, shaking our heads in disbelief. Contempt radiated off us like heat shimmering above a summer sidewalk. The crates of apples loomed large against the wall.

  “Does the eejit think we’re deaf, I wonder?” Tina snapped
. “Reporter indeed.”

  She was right. There was so much to do this week, we didn’t have time for this. Over James’s protests, I made the decision to close the restaurant for the last half of September. Not only would it give the staff a few days of much needed rest, the closure should have given us time to switch from our summer menu and fully into fall. If we still had a GM, the closure may not have been necessary, but it was the best I could do short-staffed.

  I did keep the store open, with limited hours, to help move the last of our seasonal inventory. Understandably, the tourists had grumbled upon discovering the restaurant would be closed for a few weeks. But they did seem to take some solace in the fact the store was still open – allowing them to purchase signed copies of James’s latest book, along with other trinkets.

  Until five minutes ago, I’d been looking forward to precisely three things during our brief closure.

  Getting away from the circus that descended upon us virtually overnight.

  Working with Tina as we tested recipes in the kitchen for a new fall menu.

  And apples.

  Out of all it, I had looked forward to apple prep the most. To listening to Tina’s never-ending supply of stories. To hearing what Himself had gotten up to now. To the freedom of letting my mind wander as muscle memory took over and set my hands to autopilot.

  During apple prep, there were no pressing decisions to be made. No dealing with the fall-out from a server who didn’t show up for a shift. No apologizing to diners when a dish was eighty-sixed. Just stories and laughter as mornings melted into warm fall afternoons, and apples transformed from crate, to cooking, to neat little jars of copper-colored preserves and specialty-blended butters.