A Fine Romance

by Christi Barth

  “Here we are.” The pathway opened up onto a terrace that jutted out into the lake. A weeping willow provided ample shade over the heart-shaped blanket. Plates and glasses sat next to an old-fashioned wicker picnic basket.

  “Sam, this is wonderful. Although the kiss at the fountain alone would’ve been enough to catapult this onto my top ten first dates list.” Mira beamed at him, an over-the-top smile that warmed him to his toes. “Wait a minute. Isn’t that one of my blankets? From the store?”

  “Yep. We’re conducting a quality control experiment on it tonight. Before you start selling it to the general public.”

  “But how did you get it?”

  “Your new cook, Helen, stopped by for some éclairs on her way home. She’s great, by the way. Hit it off instantly with my mom.”

  “Wait a minute. Helen’s already met your mom, but I still haven’t? I’m in the store every day.”

  “Mom’s been pulling the pre-dawn shift to do the heavy baking the last couple of weeks. We swap it off. She sometimes leaves before you even get in.” Yet another pressure weighing him down. She’d scaled back her hours without any explanation. It left him frustrated. More than that, it significantly tipped the scales—the wrong way—on his looming, potentially life-changing decision about the bakery.

  “Anyway, I mentioned the picnic, and Helen insisted I use the blanket.” Sam thought, after that whopper of a kiss, they were finally on the same page. But he was so used to Mira being prickly, he worried at her continued silence. Could she be mad? “Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it. Your bottom line won’t be negatively impacted by our date.”

  Mira sat down on the blanket. Curling her legs beneath her, she patted the other half of the heart in invitation. He sank down and pulled his legs into a pretzel. “At our first couple of meetings, if you told me the earth was round, I would’ve picked a fight and argued that it’s a flat plane in a curve. We let our tempers bring out the worst in each other.”

  “Agreed,” he said cautiously. Where was she going with this?

  “I’m not mad you brought the blanket. I’m touched by the detail, by your thoughtfulness in setting up this entire date. You can’t spend the night worrying about pissing me off, and I can’t worry about biting my tongue. We like each other. We want each other.”

  “Hell, yes.” In that position, her skirt rode up high on her thigh. If she took a deep breath, he might be able to tell what color panties she wore. The tantalizing possibility made Sam scoot closer until their knees touched. Those few square inches of skin-to-skin contact would have to tide him over. Now he could meet her eyes, the same shimmery blue as the placid water behind her.

  “So this is truly a first date, starting fresh. Let’s make a pact. No more knee-jerk reflexes. All our preconceived notions about each other go out the window.” She stuck out her hand, and they shook.

  “What treats did you bring?” Mira asked, pointing at the basket.

  “It’s a surprise. To both of us,” he admitted. “Gib had the head chef at the Cavendish throw it together for me.”

  She whistled, long and low. “The Cavendish Grand is a five-star hotel. They cook for heads of state and celebrities over there. Doesn’t their chef have better things to do than put cheese and crackers in a basket?”

  “Probably. But Gib owes me, and I was desperate.” How much should he tell her? After all, the whole point of tonight was to get to know each other. Why not vent a little and see how it goes? “At the last minute, my mother took the afternoon off to go see some weep-fest movie with her friends.” Again. With no warning. “Busy afternoon, steady stream of customers, so I got behind in my baking and prep for tomorrow. I ran out of time.” Sam realized he’d clenched both of his hands, and made a conscious effort to spread his fingers flat. Also a good opportunity to slide a palm onto Mira’s soft, smooth calf.

  “Hmm. While it’s probably good for your mom to have some girl time, it sounds like she knocked you for a loop.”

  “Not just today.” Now that he’d begun, he didn’t want to stop. It felt so good to unburden himself to someone objective. Someone who hadn’t been a spectator on the last few, gut-wrenching years. “She’s doing that more and more. Coming in late after yoga class. Taking off early a couple of times a week for wine night, or bunko night, or whatever other excuse her friends make to get together and drink wine.”

  “Doesn’t it indicate she’s back to normal?”

  “Sure. And a big-ass sign that she’s ready to retire. Plus, she flat-out told me.” Hadn’t that been one hell of a conversation. Thanks for busting your butt to keep the family business open for me, but hoping to walk away soon. Sam got that his mom had to figure out how to live life without her husband. But did it have to be without their bakery, too?

  Mira brushed her hands against the fleecy softness of the blanket in a fan motion. “When she retires, would she close the bakery?”

  “No.” The word exploded from his mouth, loud enough to startle the swans floating by into taking flight. “It’s my dad’s legacy. Something to pass down from generation to generation. Closing isn’t an option. The family business survives, no matter how few Lyons are manning the ovens. But I’m working on that.”

  “Really?” Mira quirked an eyebrow. “Am I part of your master plan? Because even if you get super lucky tonight, a baby won’t pop out for at least nine months. I doubt it’d be ready to man the ovens until it mastered, oh, walking, for instance.”

  “Very funny.” And it was. He and his mom always had long, serious conversations about the bakery. Mira’s humor was a nice change of pace. “I’ve got a sister, Diana. We’ll say she’s on the reserve list. She’s in Europe right now.”

  “Quite the commute to bake a couple dozen trays of scones.”

  “She’ll come back when Mom finally steps down.” At least, he hoped so. She’d been AWOL for a few months. If he didn’t follow her Twitter account, they wouldn’t know which country she’d flitted to each week. When he thought about Diana’s open-ended return, it threw him into a cold sweat. Sam tried not to think about it too often. Easy during the day, but too often he’d fly awake in the middle of the night in a head-pounding panic.

  With the grace of a daddy longlegs, Mira trailed slender, pink-tipped fingers across the top of the basket. “Are you ready to peek?”

  Did his face show his growing discomfort? Or had she just sensed that, while grateful to air some of his dirty laundry, he was ready to talk about, well, anything else? “Not yet. See those swans?” They floated placidly once more, in pairs, like wedding cake toppers. “If we take any of the food out and walk away, they’ll be all over it. I have one more place to show you, and then we’ll come back and eat.” According to his master plan, they’d uncork the wine as the sun set. He’d just have to be sure not to get distracted by Mira’s many charms and make it back in time.

  “Are you sure you want to get up? I can’t imagine anything more beautiful than this.”

  Sam ran his hand over her shiny hair, enjoying the slide of it through his fingers all the way down to her shoulder blades. Thinking about the silken torture it would be against his bare skin. Then he cupped her face between her palms. Bending down close enough to see the minuscule flecks of gray and violet in her eyes, he said, “Neither can I.”

  “Oh.” She sucked in a ragged breath. “Oh my.”

  The growing pressure from the zipper of his shorts reminded him to stick to the plan. As tempting as it might be to push her back onto the blanket and kiss her senseless, Mira deserved more. Tonight was dedicated to romance. Sam intended to make one hell of a first-date impression, to offset the disastrous actual first impression he’d made on her. “Let’s go.”

  They strolled past tall marsh grasses hugging the water, and watched a blue heron swoop down and grab a snack. Random rocks gave the illusion of a secondary path acros
s the water, interspersed with clumps of lily pads. The ever-present buzz of cicadas warred with the throaty call of mockingbirds. “This is so peaceful,” Mira said in a hushed tone.

  Now was his chance. Relaxed, quiet and her guard dropped, he couldn’t imagine a better time to tease an answer out of her. “I can’t be at peace until you answer one question. One question that’s driving me crazy.”

  “Here it comes. The typical first-date question out of every guy’s mouth. Let me save you the trouble. Yes, I can do the splits. Front and sideways. I’m very bendy.”

  Sam stumbled over the lip of the wooden serpentine bridge. Only a quick arm cartwheel kept him from plunging into the water. “Are you trying to kill me? I can’t be expected to walk a straight line with that kind of visual.”

  She grabbed his wrist and pulled him back upright. From there, it was only natural to curve his arm to rest against her waist, palm firmly anchored on her hip. “Sorry,” Mira said with a giggle. “What’s your question?”

  “Why don’t you like chocolate?”

  They made it halfway across the bridge before she answered. “I used to be chubby.”

  If Mira was soaking wet, he could still probably bench press her with one hand. She had a dancer’s build, long and lean. Now that he’d pressed up against all that toned muscle, he knew there wasn’t a single extra ounce on her. In fact, she should probably add a couple meals’ worth of burgers and fries to her weekly routine. A few helpings of his famous triple-cream cheesecake wouldn’t hurt, either. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I wasn’t the huge girl in Hairspray, just a little roly poly. Like a lot of preteen girls before they hit a growth spurt. My parents picked me up from boarding school and were shocked. Or, to be more precise, embarrassed at the thought of their friends seeing their less than perfect daughter. So instead us enjoying a family summer vacation, they packed me off to a fat camp.”

  “Seems drastic.” Cruel was more like it.

  “No, the drastic part was feeding me chocolate for the entire weekend before I left. Nothing else. Just chocolate bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Oh, and snacks several times a day. By Monday morning even the smell of chocolate made me queasy. I’ve never touched it since.”

  Birdsong grew louder as they stepped onto Evening Island. The carillon with its multiple tiers of huge bells towered over them. Bushes, some flowering pastels and some a vibrant green, formed a sweeping carpet away from the water. Tall, wispy, white-frothed stalks speared into a living wall. Sam didn’t see any of the natural beauty.

  All he could see was a distraught girl with long brown hair choking down chocolate until it made her sick. He wanted to punch something, curse a blue streak into the growing twilight. Most of all, he wanted to scream at the Parrishes. Tell them to their face what horrible parents they were, and how they’d scarred their precious little girl.

  “I...God...I don’t know what to say. I’m floored.” Sam thought of and immediately discarded at least half a dozen responses. None of them fit the enormity of his feelings. “I’m sorry, Mira.”

  She flashed a quick smile, then just as fast, glanced away again. “Don’t be. That summer turned out to be amazing. It nipped in the bud any issues I might have had, and taught me healthy eating. Most of all, it taught me to respect myself. To know that I control my choices, my life. I’ve never forgotten what a difference Camp Ticonderoga made in my life. It’s why I go back every summer for six weeks to be a counselor. So I can teach other little girls how to grow up into strong women.”

  Strong? Mira was a true heavyweight. She put those guys who pulled semis with their teeth to shame. “I can’t think of a better role model. They’re lucky to have you.”

  “Oh, I’m no hero. It goes both ways. Being an only child, especially with parents who barely noticed me most of the time, well, it sucked. I always wanted a sister. When I’m at camp, sharing that cabin with a dozen girls, I get to live out my childhood fantasy. Late-night talks, sharing secrets, braiding each other’s hair—fun stuff.”

  “Pillow fights?” he teased.

  “Maybe one or two. Honestly, with synthetic pillows it isn’t like in the movies. You need a good down pillow that might explode into a flurry of feathers to have a real pillow fight.”

  Suddenly her heart-wrenching story floated straight out of his head. Same with the heartwarming story of her summertime pseudo-sisters. All he could think of was Mira, in just panties and a bra, wielding a pillow through the air thick with feathers. As though using Photoshop, he turned the matching underwear into a lacy, pale blue set. Then he pasted himself into the picture. “I’ve got down pillows.”

  “Really?”

  “Five of them.” Sam drew her off the path to the edge of a swath of something tall and purple and spiky. It smelled amazing. Two steps in and they were against a tree trunk. Sam twisted to put his back against the rough bark. Widening his stance, he pulled her in between his legs. Mira tucked her lower body against his, but placed her palms on his chest. She angled her head to the side and flashed him a knowing look, full of feminine wiles and guile.

  “Is that an invitation?”

  Did she want one of those thick, gold-edged invites Ivy liked to charge the sun and the moon for? God, she was toying with him. Could she see the base, animalistic need in his eyes? Or did she just feel it pressing against her thigh? She knew, all right. The hardworking, nose-to-the-grindstone, overachieving Mira had finally clocked out for the night. Now he was left with an armful of warm, willing, wanton Mira the seductress.

  “You bet.”

  “If I win the pillow fight, would you promise to stay up all night, talking to me?”

  “Sweetness, I’ll stay up all night, no problem. But we won’t be talking.” A man could only withstand so much. Sam crushed her against his chest and took her mouth. He laid claim to her, using his tongue to learn every soft and sensitive crevice. Mira moaned, a low sound that vibrated through every hair on his body. Dark, spiky lashes fanned out over her pale cheeks. His hands moved over her slender back, hugging her close. Didn’t matter—he wouldn’t be close enough until he was inside of her.

  Mira moved her palms up, over his shoulders to twine around his neck. Added bonus? She rubbed her firm, tempting breasts back and forth with every breath, every movement. He couldn’t wait to get his mouth on them. Literally.

  Grabbing her ass with both hands, he stepped away from the tree and urged her legs around his waist. It didn’t seem to take much urging. Mira clamped on like a rodeo star. Sam looked around the garden, desperate to find something more solid than flowers. His gaze landed on a large boulder, artistically encircled with—well—something delicate and blooming. He’d follow the Garden’s rules and not pick any of the flowers. But there were a few that would be the worse for wear in a few minutes.

  Dropping to his knees, Sam leaned Mira back onto the boulder. To make sure her legs stayed around him, he kept his fingers kneading her ass. “I had a whole plan. Sunset. Wine. A civilized picnic.”

  Mira opened one eye to squint at the sky. “Sunset’s still at least five minutes away. A man with your considerable talent should be able to show me a very good time in five minutes.”

  “Are you double dog daring me?”

  “Well, since we’re work neighbors, and need to maintain some element of professionalism, let’s call it a request for services.”

  Sam almost choked on his chuckle. Good to know she still managed to find ways to parade her MBA. “Looks like we’re two peas in a pod. I don’t back down from a challenge, either.”

  He lowered his head to the side of her neck with all the fervor of a blood-starved Dracula. Pale skin as translucent as phyllo dough made it possible for him to watch her pulse beat faster and faster just beneath the surface. Using the flat of his tongue, Sam took a long, slow, meandering lick. Then he latched on, trying to
suck that pulse even faster. Once the rhythm beating against his taste buds increased, he moved down.

  With her wriggling nonstop, it was difficult to keep a hold on Mira. He angled nearer to the boulder, pinning her in place at her hips with his more-than-willing dick. It surged into the notch between her legs, almost bursting through his shorts. Sam tried with all his might not to process any of the sensations his nerves were processing. He ignored how fan-fucking-tastic she felt, how they fit together more snugly than puzzle pieces. Above all else, Sam refused to acknowledge how much he wanted this beautiful bundle, currently writhing in his hands. If he reveled in it for even a second, he’d give in to those base instincts, rip her clothes off with his teeth and plow into her.

  Instead, he concentrated on pleasing Mira. She made it so easy, moaning and smiling and lifting to his touch like a flower to the sun. Licking across her collarbone, he nudged aside the open collar of her shirt. In this position her breasts strained the fabric to its limits. It was easy to pop the top button open with his teeth. Then one more, for good measure. Now her beautiful breasts were laid out for his enjoyment. They were as white and perfectly round as a cup of powdered sugar, framed by the pale blue satin of her bra. Sam absolutely loved it when women matched their underwear to their clothes. It was a little thing, but it drove him crazy in a very good way.

  With absolute concentration, he licked across one creamy mound, then over to the other. Sam could’ve died a happy man doing that all day. Mira, though, apparently had other ideas. She grabbed his head with both hands and maneuvered it into position straight over her nipple.

  “Want something?” he asked, his breath feathering over the satin.

  “Yes. You,” she panted. “Now.”

  “Glad we’re on the same page.” Sam lowered his head a quarter of an inch and just exhaled. Her nipple immediately reacted, poking through the fabric. Target acquired. He laved back and forth across the pronounced tip, the pale blue darkening from the trail of dampness he created. A few more passes, and then he sucked in, biting down with a gentle nip.