by Candi Heart
Walking Dick: BBW Sweet Romance
Book 2
Candi Heart
Copyright 2016 Candi Heart
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Walking Dick: BBW Sweet Romance (Curvy Hips and Sexy Lips Series, #2)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Love Handles – book 3 in the Curvy Hips and Sexy Lips Series is next!
Love Handles BLURB:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Racing Hearts - Book 1
Walking Dick - Book 2
Love Handles - Book 3
Big Escapes - Book 4
Sweet Treats - Book 5
NOTE: Books can be read in any order Each is a standalone HEA.
Cover artist: Book Cover By Design
Chapter 1
I REMEMBER IT LIKE it was yesterday. The door opened, and there he was, framed like a portrait and backlit with a halo of sunlight. A walking, talking postcard of the perfect man, a man who had—for some impossible reason—decided to walk up to my door.
I had always been a sucker for the cliché tall, dark, and handsome ones, and this was no exception. His hair was luscious, like waves of silky dark chocolate, a color beautifully offset by the sparkling golds and greens dancing in his hazel eyes. They were pure magic, those eyes.
He was long, lean, and tan; even through the tight fabric of his shirt, I could see the delicious framework of muscles, each sculpted to effortless perfection.
Truly, it was an out-of-body moment, something strange was happening. As I stood there gazing at him, deep in the back of my mind, I thought, I’m totally gonna mess this up... but who cares? I didn’t, because at that very moment, all I wanted to do was stare and drool. Yes, it was one of those moments.
For whatever reason, he was nervous. The second he saw me, his lips spread into a breathtaking smile. He dropped his eyes self-consciously to the doormat and shoved his hands deep in his pockets before he started to speak.
I have no idea what he said. Who the hell knows why such a beautiful man showed up in my cul-de-sac that day? I couldn’t fathom that he was even speaking to a peasant like me, and my brain slipped into catatonic autopilot the second he beamed that grin at me. From there, things only got a little more interesting.
My name is Alana Catson, and this is the story of how I fell in love with the guy next door.
Of course, he already had a girlfriend, a perfect job, and a perfect life—a perfect everything. He was so out of my league that we weren’t even playing the same game, totally unattainable for a person like me. Oh, and did I mention he didn’t even know I existed?
THE DAY STARTED OUT like any other. I woke up, refreshed with the potential of a new, unsullied morning, a new day in which anything was possible. I had my heart set on living the best possible version of my life, on grabbing hold of a fresh start and making the best of it.
Of course, that spirit only lasted for about five minutes, until I realized I was out of coffee.
“No flipping way!”
Well, I can get through my morning without it, right? I’ll just control my emotions like all the other adults. I’ll just rise above whatever comes my way. I don’t need to succumb to the slavery of caffeine. Surely I can—
Nope, not today, my friend!
Letting out a whimpering battle cry that could have rivaled that of a wounded bear cub, I thundered back down the hall to my bedroom, storming past all the encouraging Post-Its I’d slathered on the walls along the way and mumbling their fortune-cookie nonsense to myself as I went, punctuating each with a roll of the eyes: “You only fail when you stop trying.”
Yeah, well what if you never actually start?
“Nothing worth having comes easy.”
Tell that to the guy who invented delivery service.
“You are your own biggest obstacle.”
Okay, that last one’s just a little too ironic.
See, I wasn’t exactly the average damsel in distress. Perhaps more to the point, I was exactly the average damsel in distress—as in ordinary, medium, moderate, and mediocre, with nothing remarkable about me at all. I was just a typical 25-year-old girl, reluctantly resigned to the fact that I was never going to lose my freshman 30—or freshman 50, as it appeared to be in my case. I had no idea ramen and microwave popcorn could do that to a person. I was a far cry from the waif-thin rails that sashayed down the catwalks in Milan and Paris, even if I did enjoy watching their shows while I gobbled down that popcorn and drank far too many cans of diet soda.
“Just stop eating so much and get some exercise,” my skinny friends and family always said, as if it was that easy.
My love affair with morning lattés and cappuccinos of every variety was one huge culprit in my inability to achieve the title of supermodel. I knew they were chockful of calories, but I was in denial about the sugar I ate and drank by the scoopfuls. How do I break a lifetime of bad habits? Why is getting in shape so incredibly difficult? Why don’t I feel in control around food? I often wondered, knowing that was one relationship I desperately needed to change.
That, however, was easier said than done. I had to be held accountable and supported daily; I simply couldn’t fight the Battle of the Bulge alone, so I relied heavily on my online dieting club. I needed to make a game plan and stick to it, and those daily dietary charts and online tools helped me to succeed. Through careful analysis, I learned what worked and what didn’t, and I found it a relief to share my dieting woes with my dieting buddies. Commiserating and sharing the struggle helped to keep us all in check, and the healthy recipes on the site were more delicious than one would ever think anything flax seeds and spinach could be. I even joined the gym by my house and took up swimming, since running just about killed me.
Internet trolls called me chubby or worse, and polite society dismissed it as me being big-boned. My mother considered me perfect at any size, bless her dear heart. The truth was that like so many other people in the world, I was serial dieter, a carb queen, some would say. I was and always would be a junkie, an addict, totally addicted to sugar and carbs. How can I ev
er stay on a diet in a world where pizza and fries exist?
Did I mention how much I love chocolate too?
Hi. My name is Alana, and I’m a chocoholic...
My online dieting group didn’t have one of those boring, convicting, scientific or medical names like Fit This-or-That. Instead, it was something far catchier, Curvy Hips and Sexy Lips. I logged in, in need of support before I did even more damage. I was glad to see that some of the girls I knew were online.
“Did you remove all the bad foods from the house?” one asked.
“Yes,” I replied, “and it was delicious. In fact, I’m finishing off the last of the chocolate now.”
“Alana!”
“Don’t you want that six-pack you were telling us about?”
“Sure, but it’s just... Well, I love those abs so much that I’m protecting them with a few layers of fat.”
A few chuckled.
“Listen, I’m only kidding. I’ve been, uh... sober for three weeks now.”
“Great job, Alana.”
In reality, I was the normal iteration of a girl in her late twenties who loved things like ice cream and potato chips, one of those girls who’d never done a juice fest and didn’t break into hives when I gobbled up carb-laden yummies like bread. I was one hundred percent okay with that though. In fact, I was rather absurdly happy with who I was and where my life was going, until the day my best friend sat down to have a little chat with big ol’ me.
Like any good bestie would, he took my hand, looked me right in the eye, and told me, “You know, if something doesn’t change, you’re going to die alone.”
For the sake of disclaimer: Things weren’t exactly that bad, at such a breaking point, but the guy was a little high strung. In any case, that pivotal moment was when the two of us decided to Google around for help, and we happened upon the online club that encouraged us to go on one of those hate-yourself-until-you-love-yourself diets. It was all about strictness: in counting calories, in exercise requirements, and certainly in punishment for failure to comply. At the end of each week, users were encouraged to record their weight and cry together.
When our coworkers saw how miserable the two of us were, they were guilted into sacrificing for the greater good of their waistlines, and they decided to join us. Soon, there were five of us slogging it out together at Curvy Hips and Sexy Lips, a quintet trying desperately to hold ourselves accountable, all while taking vicious pride in spying on the others and ratting all cheating out our friends. By the third week, the whole thing began to feel like a chapter of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the inmates were getting restless...
Chapter 2
BY THE TIME I RETURNED to the bedroom, I had developed some sort of eye twitch. It started the moment I popped the lid on my jar of coffee beans and came up empty. I kept telling myself it was the placebo effect, that I couldn’t possibly be suffering from caffeine withdrawal within two minutes of realizing the problem. I wasn’t a doctor of any sort, but I was sure the odds were that I had very little time left to live.
I groped around blindly in my closet, with no real preference as to what I might pull out. I haphazardly yanked the garments on, and, with great determination, marched straight out the door, not even taking a glance behind me or bothering to ensure that I had shoes or at least slippers on my feet. I certainly didn’t waste any time glancing in the mirror, a fact that would come back to haunt me just a few minutes later. I didn’t even bother locking my front door before I paced down the driveway and stalked off toward Main Street to find a decent cuppajo; I hardly even bothered to slam it shut. Really, it was no big deal. After all, it wasn’t the kind of city where anyone felt the need to lock their doors, at least not in my neighborhood.
When I told people I grew up in New York City, their first thought was always that I was some kind of hardened city slicker. It seemed that everyone, especially those who weren’t born there, adhered to their own Golden Rule: Stay until you’re no longer soft but leave before you get too hard. I was sure there had to be something to it, because more than a few people recited it more than a few times. I knew, however, that one’s experience in New York depended one hundred percent on the sub-city or borough where one decided to reside.
The place I lived was as close to a small town as it could possibly be, right in the heart of the big city. Riverwood Heights was one of those close-knit, family communities. Everyone babysat, gossiped, and knew the maiden name of everyone else’s mother. Outdated notions like unconditional love still existed there, at least for the ones who’d lived there for at least four generations.
The community leaders made it their life mission to keep things as nostalgic and Norman Rockwell as possible. They took great pleasure in duking it out with City Council at every opportunity, ensuring that things stayed just so. Eventually, Riverwood Heights earned the coveted title of historic neighborhood, and the townies’ fight got much easier.
Those unfortunate infiltrators who tried to move in, thinking that they’d found a hidden gem in the middle of the city, were discreetly edged out by subtle rent hikes and selective application screening. Of course, all those changes inadvertently made Riverwood even more exclusive, but they were effective too.
In the end, all that was left was a string of mom-and-pop stores, a Starbucks, and a thriving band of locals who stubbornly refused to acknowledge the vast subway system that ran right below their feet.
That was why it was so odd for a pair of strangers to move in next door. They must have caught the rapidly aging members of the Housing Association on their only possible good day, I reasoned, as it was usually a cold day in hell before those crotchety, old, stubborn folks would open our doors to outsiders.
The story didn’t really start with people moving into the neighborhood, though; it actually started with the fact that I’d gone out on a desperate coffee run dressed like a far-sighted clown.
“Excuse me! Sorry,” I said as I pushed past the pedestrians strolling leisurely down the road, angling my entire body toward the smell of bubbling espresso. “Coffee emergency! Comin’ through!”
Starbucks was the only franchise in the town, and that was only because, like in every other town on Earth, everyone there suffered from the same perpetual caffeine cravings as I did. For that reason, Starbucks was invited to stay, and so were the baristas who worked there.
“Alana!” old Mrs. Etan called as I hurried past. “Dear, it seems your skirt’s on backwards. You’d better be careful. You don’t want the whole town seein’ your business!”
Skirt? Why the hell am I wearing a skirt anyway? And on that note... Since when do I own a skirt? Gosh, tell me I didn’t run out of the house with a bath towel wrapped around me.
It really wasn’t important; at any rate, the clothing conundrum was going to prove to be the least of my problems that day. I ignored the kindly woman and hurried inside to take my place at the back of the ever-growing queue of people I already knew would be there. The residents of Riverwood were so predictable and humdrum that they could be tracked to within a three-yard radius at all times, due to the complete lack of variation in their routines.
Mr. Munster was three people ahead of me, waiting for his “pipin’-hot latte to go.” He would sip it furiously in his car before heading back to watch reruns of Bonanza while chain-smoking clove cigarettes. Ms. Flenderson was two people ahead. She would inevitably pore over the entire menu at great, agonizing length before eventually selecting what she always did: a skinny vanilla mocha with extra cream.
The guy directly in front of me was Old Man Welps. To be honest, I’d never actually seen him order anything. I assumed he only showed up at the local Starbucks to enjoy the company and the ambiance as he waited in line.
Yes, Riverwood ran on a strict, unofficial schedule. Everyone did the same thing at the same time, day after day after day. As it stood, I was the only one out of place, the one who was not supposed to be there.
“Alana Catson.”
&
nbsp; I looked up and saw one of the baristas staring at me with a teasing smile. Jack Briggs always said my name like that, straining the A’s in my first name, as if we were long-lost acquaintances who hadn’t seen each other quite often over the last seven years.
“Jack, you’ve gotta help me.” I strained to stand on my tiptoes so I could speak over Mr. Welps’s head, all while trying to be as discreet as I could. “I’m late, I’m exhausted, and... Well, you’re not gonna believe this, but when I woke up this morning, the worst thing in the entire world happened.”
Jack rolled his eyes and flashed me another grin; he always found my little life tragedies a great source of amusement, and this was no different. “Let me guess,” he said. “You walked to your kitchen and realized you’re out of coffee.”
Gee, it doesn’t sound quite so tragic when he says it like that. I folded my arms stiffly across my chest, jutted my chin out a bit, and, in a useless attempt to save face, blurted, “And one of the lightbulbs was out... but yeah.”
He chuckled quietly and glanced back to make sure his supervisor wasn’t watching. “You want the usual, or are you still trying that ridiculous diet along with the rest of the calorie-obsessed around here?”
Hmm. That’s a good question, I thought, but when my mouth opened, I automatically regurgitated some useless, motivational blurb I recalled from one of the Post-Its on my wall back home. Then I closed it again, frozen helplessly between the two choices. “Why?” I stalled for time, glancing suspiciously around the room to make sure none of my coworkers were there to judge my hot beverage selection. “Are they all sticking to it?”
He laughed again and shook his head. “You know, if you people would spend even half that ratting-out energy on actually adhering to your program, I think you’d all be in fine shape.”
I narrowed my eyes sarcastically. “Says the guy who hasn’t gained a pound since seventh grade.”
“What can I say?” He lifted his shirt and grinned again as he revealed his washboard, albeit a bit boyishly skinny, truth be told. “I gotta give credit to genetics,” he said with a shrug.
