Meet Cute Club (Sweet Rose Book 1)

by Jack Harbon

  Meet

  Cute

  Club

  Jack Harbon

  Copyright © 2020 by Jack Harbon

  Cover by Jack Harbon

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781700174567

  Edited by A.K Edits / @AdotKEdits

  To anyone turning to romance for an escape. We’ll get through this, I promise.

  And to Barbara. It still doesn’t feel like you’re really gone. You told me to write something for you, so this one’s for you, Grandma. I hope you like it as much as you liked reading all my awful, terrible manuscripts in the past.

  Content Warning

  I think it’s super important to be aware of what you’re consuming, and it’s never my goal to trade my readers’ safety for an unexpected twist or shocking moment. Because of that, I feel it’s necessary to include a list of possible triggering content that could potentially upset readers. If you want to go into this story without any warnings, you’re more than welcome to skip this page. ♡

  Meet Cute Club contains the following:

  Alcohol and/or drug use/abuse

  Mentions of child neglect

  Mentions of homophobia

  On-page sex scenes

  Meet

  Cute

  Club

  One

  Claudia’s entire body was aflame, the fire deep within her only stoked further by Darren’s rugged hands on her hips, travelling higher and higher over the curves of her body. He cupped her face and stroked her smooth ebony skin with his weathered thumbs, careful not to cause any harm. He was still learning his strength, after all.

  It required all he had not to let his monstrous instincts take over.

  Had this been anyone but Claudia, his Claudia, he might not have fought so hard to protect her. In another scenario, his fangs would spring free, and he’d rear his head back before going in for the kill. But this was no ordinary woman. This was the woman he’d spent his childhood with. The woman he’d loved for years. He couldn’t possibly imagine hurting her.

  Not unless she asked for it. Begged for it. And with how her body practically vibrated with anticipation, Darren could infer that she wasn’t far from doing exactly that.

  “Please,” she whispered, her bare breasts rising and falling as her breathing grew quicker—shallower. Her desperation was palpable, a kind of ache comparable to none. There was no logical explanation for her lust.

  She knew the man Darren was. The horrible things he’d done. The trail of bodies he’d left in his wake. None of it mattered. The last thought in her mind was how similar Darren was to a loaded gun with no safety. His imposing presence overtook her senses, and she found herself dizzy, falling for him like she was fifteen all over again.

  “Tell me you want me,” he murmured against the side of her neck. God, what he wouldn’t have given for just a taste. The thudding, throbbing pulse a­­­­­gainst her throat made his cock harden and his jaw clench with unimaginable desire.

  “I need you.”

  Three words. Three simple, delicious words, her longing fully realized. They sounded even more erotic falling from those plush, pouting lips. Darren slipped one hand around the back of Claudia’s head and threaded his fingers through her silken hair. In a low, animalistic rumble, he ordered,

  “On your knees for me.”

  She obeyed, just as she always had. Claudia eased herself onto the carpet, hazel eyes trained upwards in complete submission. Darren ached in his trousers, but not for long. In a matter of moments, he undid the belt and button, unzipping and stepping out of the only thing keeping him moderately decent. Impossibly enough, he didn’t feel vulnerable completely naked. Claudia struggled to understand it. He seemed even more confident, more assured in his power.

  “Now,” he said, gripping the base of his length. “Open your mouth for me, Claudia. I need you to—”

  “Next!”

  Jordan’s head snapped up at lightning speed, reeling as reality came rushing back to him. He stood in the deli line inside McDaniel’s Grocery, his nose buried in the latest Patricia Hayes novel he’d picked up last weekend. For just a moment, he’d forgotten where he was, but as he was pulled from the intensity of Claudia and Darren’s scene together, it all came back to him.

  The slightly fishy smell of the lobster tank a few feet away. The humming buzz of the LED lights overhead. His cart with one cockeyed wheel spinning in whatever direction it wanted rather than the one he needed to go.

  Behind the counter, a red-faced Tony stood with his hands on his hips, judgment etched into the deep wrinkles on his forehead. “I swear to God, Jordan,” he muttered.

  “What?” It was an innocent enough question, but Tony only glared at him as they’d had this discussion countless times before.

  “I called your name about five times. You had your nose buried up that book’s ass like you always do. Next time you do it, I’m just gonna start throwing salami slices at you. Maybe then you’ll start living in the real world with the rest of us.”

  Tony meant well, as most people who’d repeated the same obnoxious advice always did, which was why Jordan was able to keep his eyes from rolling or his breath escaping in an irritated puff of air.

  There was nothing wrong with him. In fact, he often wondered why it was that more people weren’t as obsessed with these stories as he was. Angsty romances involving lifelong friends, vampires that were portrayed as the monsters they were, and countless bloody murders? Every box of his was checked. He just needed more people to get up to speed.

  “Why live in the real world when I can be around much more interesting people in these books?” Jordan asked as he approached the counter. He leaned in to examine the various meats and cheeses they’d added to the menu.

  “You miss out on life when you have a book in your face,” Tony replied.

  “Maybe. But I work all day, and then I go home to my fish, Tony. I eat honey-baked ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner every other night. I do my laundry for fun. Let me just have this one exciting thing in my life,” Jordan said, grinning.

  Tony put his hands up, palms out. “Fine, fine. I’m just saying. You put that book down, and you’ll start seeing that there’s exciting things out here in the real world, too. You just have to know where to look for them.”

  Jordan pointed to the meat and cheese that he wanted two pounds of, and Tony got to work, slicing and packaging them for him. Jordan leaned against the counter, slipping his bookmark between the pages of his book and carefully placing it in his cart. Nothing ruffled his feathers more than bent corners and crinkled pages.

  “Here you go, buddy,” Tony said, handing his order over the counter.

  “Thanks. Same time next week?” Jordan asked, the corner of his mouth tugging up into a wry smile.

  “Get outta here.”

  Laughing to himself, Jordan made his way to the register to pay for the groceries he’d picked up. It took everything in his power not to stop by the pharmacy section and peruse the newest books that had been added. He knew from experience that McDaniel’s restocked the shelves every Tuesday, and the last time he’d been to the store was the previous Friday. Still, Jordan kept his resolve and pushed forward, swiping his card and thanking
the cashier on his way out.

  He couldn’t blow all his money on more books when he had an ever-growing stack sitting on his nightstand and the book club to worry about.

  “Shit, the book club,” he said to himself. He nearly ran over a small child with his cart as he hurried outside to his car.

  As he climbed into the driver’s seat, he scolded himself for being so airheaded. This wasn’t like him. In any other given event, Jordan would have been more organized than this. He kept an agenda in his back pocket and religiously scribbled down any date or fact he wanted to remember, no matter how inconsequential or menial. He had nightmares about showing up somewhere unprepared, and when he was younger, his parents had always scolded him for rearranging the kitchen cabinets in alphabetic order.

  Jordan Collins didn’t forget things, and certainly not something as monumental as Meet Cute Club.

  Still, he kept his foot steady on the pedal, taking all the shortcuts he could to get to Millerstone, a small bookstore that he frequented more often than most people thought healthy. He blamed Patricia Hayes for his lapse in memory. Her latest release, Kiss at Sundown, had consumed the past few days of his life. Unlike anyone normal, Jordan had opted to reread the entire eight-book series again, that way he wouldn’t forget a single detail when he finally got his hands on her latest release.

  Before climbing out and hurrying inside, he stopped and angled the rear-view mirror at himself. Jordan reached into his center console and removed his car lip balm—and yes, there was a difference between the bathroom lip balm and this one—to quickly coat his full lips. It had been a few weeks since his last trip to the barber, and his hair was slowly curling. Soon, he’d have a head full of kinky black spirals again. Jordan tried not to pay much mind to how dull his typically golden-brown skin looked. The call center he worked at was a life-draining nightmare, but the pay was great.

  That’s capitalism, baby!

  As Jordan stepped through the all-too-familiar doors of Millerstone, he made a beeline for the section he knew like the back of his hand. There, an overwhelming sense of home found him. For so long, he’d felt out of his element, like he was missing something, and this section, with all the shirtless men and couples embracing passionately, rejuvenated him in a way.

  Okay, so maybe he was being dramatic.

  Was it illegal? No? Exactly.

  Jordan put on his blinders and only went after books that he knew he’d need for the club. He found one particular book with the rest of the Christian romances, and he grabbed six copies of those. For the past few months, he’d been covering the expenses for the members of Meet Cute Club. Times were hard for a lot of his friends, and he had disposable income. It was nothing to buy these for them. He liked having their company.

  He also grabbed the latest regency romance that they’d agreed to read, followed by a romantic suspense that he’d been most excited for. By the time he was done, he had eighteen books in his hands, and while they weren’t all that thick in size, stacked on top of each other, they were two towers in his arms. Carefully, he headed to the register.

  This was the part when Carla, the woman who ran the store, would come out from behind the counter and gloat about how right she was when she’d suggested he sign up for a rewards card. He frequented the store so often that Carla joked that he kept them afloat. It was always embarrassing, but unlike Tony, she had a way of making even her critical comments sound sweet.

  Instead of the larger-than-life bookstore owner he expected to see, someone else stepped out from the back room. Someone that made Jordan avert his eyes almost immediately. His dark brown hair jutted out purposefully, like he’d just recently visited a salon, and his beard was survivalist chic, the kind of lazy facial hair that only a few men could pull off and still make sexy. His thin, straight nose was dotted with the faintest of freckles, and his lips were pulled flat into an expressionless line.

  The man’s intense stare and rugged features made him almost intimidatingly attractive, and Jordan was terrible at hiding his feelings when he became flustered.

  “Wow,” was all the man said. Jordan glanced at his nametag. Rex. His piercing green eyes bore into Jordan’s brown, and he reached for the first stack, pulling it close to him. “You making deliveries to some old ladies?”

  Rex was immediately amused by the look of offense that crossed his customer’s face. He hadn’t been working here long, only about a week and a half, but he had a feeling whoever this man was, he was going to be a regular. Everyone had their own addictions, and judging from what the guy had placed down on the counter, his addiction was starting his own miniature library.

  “No,” he said, adjusting the buttons on his shirt. “Not just old ladies read these books.”

  Rex cocked an eyebrow toward the ceiling. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “I dunno. I just always thought guys like you read good books.”

  There the offense was. The scowl, the lip quiver as he tried to hide his irritation. If Rex hadn’t been intentionally trying to get under his skin, he would’ve laughed. But he had an act to keep up. Something about the way Jordan held himself made Rex want to tease him, to make him upset and get him riled up. It was an innate response, one that had gotten him into plenty of fights with his younger sister time and time again.

  Being a bit of a troll was his thing. The only difference now was that poor Jordan didn’t seem to know that he was only screwing with him.

  “First, guys like me? What does that mean?”

  “C’mon,” Rex sighed, looking him up and down. Everything about him screamed Type-A, anal-retentive stick in the mud. The way he constantly adjusted his shirt so that it hung perfectly. How he’d straightened out the stacks of books before sliding them across the counter. Even how he stood, back perfectly straight, head up in attention. He might as well have walked up to the counter with a red dot on his forehead. He was an immediate target.

  “Whatever. Second,” Jordan continued, “what makes you think that these books aren’t good? Or are you one of the people that judges books by their covers and only reads ‘literature’?”

  Fuck, his indignation was adorable. The way he practically stomped his foot in frustration, mortally wounded by Rex’s jests. How his eyes narrowed as he tossed critiques back. Rex cracked a smile and continued to scan each book. “I don’t like predictable books, that’s all. You always know how these are going to end.”

  “No, you actually don’t.”

  “Oh, so they don’t all end in marriage and happily-ever-afters? They don’t ride off into the sunset together? They don’t give readers way too high expectations?” Rex paused to bag the books, making sure to mix and match them. Something told him not putting all the copies of the same title in one bag would bug Jordan.

  “No. There are plenty of books that end with the couples not having any kids or even getting married.”

  “But they all end up together, no?”

  Jordan rolled his eyes. “All whodunnit books end with a murderer being revealed. All sci-fi books have some sort of alien or robot or whatever. Why are these books the only ones that people like you throw a fit about? Every genre has its rules and norms.”

  “People like me?” Oh, Rex definitely wanted to hear where this was going.

  “Yeah, people like you. You think you’re better than everyone else because you don’t read those ‘dumb old lady books,’ but little do you know? These are great, and you’re missing out. These books are for everyone. But I wouldn’t expect you to think so. You’re too pretentious to enjoy them.”

  Both of Rex’s eyebrows went up, and he genuinely laughed. Never before had he gotten a rise out of someone with so little effort. Clearly, this was a sore subject for the guy. Had he been teased before this? Were these books his safe place? Rex had no idea. All he could decipher was the amount of passion—and now, anger—that seemed to roil inside of Jordan.

  “Are you new here?” Jordan asked suddenly.

/>   “Just started last week.”

  “Makes sense.” He paused to swipe his credit card and put in his PIN. “Just a little bit of advice, Rex. You’re not going to get very many sales if you make fun of everything that your customers read. You should consider finding a different job if it’s so impossible not to give your useless opinions about what people spend their hard-earned money on.”

  Rex leaned forward and placed his elbows on the counter. The corner of his mouth curled upward before he bit down on his bottom lip. “Mm. Any other tips you’d like to give me? I wouldn’t want to be pretentious with any of my other customers.”

  Jordan narrowed his eyes and snatched his receipt from Rex’s hand. For the briefest moment, their fingers dragged across one another. Rex could feel the softness of Jordan’s, even from such a hasty gesture. He considered holding onto the receipt, keeping Jordan close for a second longer, but he relented.

  “I have nothing else to say to you, other than I hope Carla knows how rude you’ve been to me.”

  “If you’d like, you can leave a note for her,” Rex smirked. The suggestion received the most dramatic of eye rolls. Jordan grabbed his bags from the counter and began marching to the door. Before he could get too far, Rex called out to him.

  “I hope you enjoy reading all your grandma books, handsome,” he said.

  Jordan stopped dead in his tracks. Rex watched as he bristled and turned around. There seemed to be a slow, warm flush crawling up his cheeks, and though he said nothing, Rex could tell that he was flustered beyond comprehension.

  There was something about this uptight man that made Rex want to pester him more than he had anyone else before. Was it the passion behind his words, the way he was willing to defend his reading material with his life? The biting remarks that, deep down, lacked any kind of bite for a guy like Rex? Or was it the way his hot blush made his nose and cheeks a soft shade of crimson brown? How he was left wordless, hurrying out of the store without another look back?