Taming Sugar

by Rebecca Grace Allen

  Maybe she was the spoiled brat her director had said she was, after all.

  “That should’ve gotten them all,” Finn said.

  Roxy glanced up. She hadn’t realized she’d been staring into space until he spoke, and by then he was already back on the ground. It caught her off guard, but Roxy was never one to show weakness—another Russell Cavanaugh rule. She raised her chin and looked Hunter Finn square in the eye.

  “Good. I assume you have bulbs to change out the light in the bathroom?”

  He came closer, and as he neared her, he seemed not taller but just…more. Thicker shoulders. Bigger thighs. God, even his elbows were sexy.

  “Yeah, sugar. I do.”

  Her limited patience snapped. “Sugar?”

  The corner of his lips tugged up into a smirk. “I figured it must be what people call you. Since you’re so sweet and all.”

  Roxy had been called many things—princess, wildcat, hell-on-wheels—but never sweet, not even by her father. She didn’t want to be sweet. She’d staked her reputation on being tough as nails. But the amused, sarcastic sneer spreading across Finn’s face suggested he wasn’t really calling her sweet either.

  She leveled him with her best don’t-fuck-with-me stare.

  “Even if people did call me that, I wouldn’t allow someone like you to say it.”

  “Someone like me,” he mused, taking a step closer and crossing his arms. “You’re almost as angry as those bees back there.”

  Roxy put a hand on her hip and cocked it to the side. “Guess I am. But I’m not docile, so you’d better watch out for my sting.”

  “Sounds like you sting more with your tongue than anything else.”

  He grinned, eyes glittering, and Roxy began to picture all the things she could do to him with her tongue. Why did this seem less like an argument and more like foreplay?

  “Maybe I do,” she said, prepared for the challenge. “What are you gonna do about it?”

  He took another step toward her, hands still wrapped around his burly forearms. His nails were buffed—clean and round. Roxy hadn’t expected that. She’d imagined half-moons of filth caked under them, imagined him smeared in earth and grime.

  Dirty.

  Despite her more than obvious dislike of him, Roxy suddenly found herself all too ready for whatever Hunter Finn might want to do to her.

  One more step and he closed the distance between them.

  “I’m not going to do anything about it at all, sugar. Except change your light bulb.”

  He brushed past her. Roxy’s mouth dropped open as she whirled around. “You do that!”

  He didn’t respond. God, she could’ve smacked him.

  He went into the house, and Roxy waited, pacing around all that nature Gio had insisted would be so damn relaxing. Finn reappeared several minutes later. He held her stare, then dropped his gaze down to her feet. His eyes trailed slowly up her body in one long glance Roxy could feel in her bones.

  “You’re all set,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed as they stood facing one another. Actors knew body language—Roxy had spent years studying it, learning how to read other people so she could emulate their emotions. And she could sense the hunger rolling off Hunter Finn in waves. But it was as if he were teaching her a lesson, holding back and mocking her at the same time.

  She’d had enough of people telling her how to behave.

  “I hope I don’t have to see you a second time while I’m here, Mr. Finn.”

  He grinned again. “Let’s hope not.”

  She went into the house, shut the door, and ignored the sound of him driving off.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, after Roxy had gobbled down some Chobani and a cup of coffee from the kitchen’s mini Keurig—thank God this place at least had that—she pulled up Gio’s list. It wasn’t long, just five bulleted items. She’d always been a bit of an over achiever. Maybe she could get through them all today and spend the rest of the week scouring the internet for auditions.

  She wasn’t despondent about her next gig, not yet anyway. Her agent would get her back on track. Nothing to worry about.

  Number one on the list was going for a long walk in the woods. Roxy glanced out the window. Yeah, that didn’t seem so appealing. Woods meant trees. Trees meant the possibility of more carpenter bees, and probably a whole crapload of other wildlife. Whether they had stingers or not, she wasn’t going to purposely try for another interaction with them. As it was, she hadn’t even reopened the blinds in the bedroom.

  Next.

  Meditate. All right. How hard could that be? Finding a relaxation app on her iPad, she propped it up on the couch next to her, crossed her legs and closed her eyes.

  “Focus on your breath,” the calming male voice on the app told her.

  Roxy frowned. She’d been taught plenty of deep breathing exercises in preparation for going on stage, but she’d never been good at them. Sure she’d had jitters behind the curtain, but it was the waiting had been the problem. All her nerves dissipated the moment the drapes lifted and the show began.

  Shows that weren’t beginning for her anytime soon. Ignoring the flash anxiety that sparked, Roxy shifted, sat up taller and concentrated on the voice.

  “Become aware of the sensation of your breathing,” he said. “Appreciate the inner stillness and peace your breath can bring.”

  Music played for a while. The dude stopped talking.

  Yeah, this was bullshit. She lasted another minute before shutting the app off.

  Read a book was the following bullet point on Gio’s list. It had been ages since Roxy had read anything that wasn’t Backstage. She always meant to—she’d downloaded a few self-help books, mysteries, a Stephen King novel and that sexy series everyone had been raving about, all the while admitting it was truly shitty writing.

  Might as well start with that one.

  She got through about a chapter and a half before rolling her eyes and skipping to the end. Anti-climactic and predictable, and reading about sex wasn’t going to help her patience any. Especially not the kind of sex that involved handcuffs and spankings.

  It wasn’t that Roxy had never tried kinky shit before. She had, but every guy who’d wanted to tie her up or blindfold her had only made her laugh. She was into it in theory, but in practice none of it had ever felt real. It had always seemed like another show to her, another performance she was putting on. She’d had tons of roles, but submissive was a part she’d never been able to play (and fem-domme didn’t appeal to her either. Way too much work). Maybe she was just too headstrong to give up control like that.

  Or maybe she’d never met any man strong enough to take her.

  Roxy knew she was a bit too willful and determined to take anyone’s orders, but that was only half the issue. Those kinds of relationships required trust, and that wasn’t something she had to spare. She’d never liked relying on people, not even in those stupid trust exercises she did in her first acting classes where you fall back into your partner’s arms. One couldn’t allow themselves be vulnerable in a field chock full of rejection, so Roxy learned young to thicken her skin.

  Now as an adult, letting people in wasn’t easy. She was too closed off, and no man had ever tried to scale her walls, even when she’d hoped one would put in the effort and Rapunzel the hell up them.

  Honestly she’d felt more like Goldilocks than any other fairy tale character when it came to her opinions on her lovers. None were just right, and she ended up dismissing them quickly when they failed to live up to her expectations.

  Sex. One more place she had no patience. Thank God Gio didn’t know about that.

  All that remained on his list were the nature walk and cooking something. She kind of hated Gio for putting that last one on there. He knew the only thing she made well was reservations. But cooks needed to be patient, right? They had to wait for water to boil and dough to rise. Maybe she’d learn a thing or two putting a meal together, and go home a new
woman.

  She Googled recipes until she found one for chicken piccatta. It didn’t look too complicated—it was definitely something she could handle. But she hadn’t requested any of the stuff the recipe called for in advance when Rog had set things up for her here, and that meant making a trip out for food.

  After looking up grocery stores and finding nothing within walking distance, she honed in on a little market in the center of town. It wasn’t far, and there was even a path she could take through the edge of the forest behind her to get there.

  Make a meal and take a nature walk. Two birds killed with one stone.

  She made herself a list, then donned the only outfit that seemed ‘nature appropriate’: cargo shorts, a white tank top and a faux-grunge button down. Slicking her favorite red lipstick over her lips, she wondered for a moment, if going into town would mean running into Hunter Finn.

  She’d meant it when she said she hoped she wouldn’t see him again, but here he was, creeping back into her thoughts without her permission. Quiet and unfailingly sure of himself, he was unlike any man she’d ever met. She’d both hated and loved the way he’d called her sugar. There was something so flippant about it, something that dug inside her and made her want to snarl and bite and get back at him, then knock him flat on his back with pleasure.

  She should’ve snapped at him. Corrected him with her real name. But for some reason, she hadn’t.

  No, for some reason, she wanted him to say sugar again. Wanted the gruff whisper of it in her ear, wanted him growling it. To feel the rough scrape of his stubble on her neck as he grabbed her by her hips, trapped her against him and told her all the nasty things he wanted to do her.

  Roxy’s body responded, heat pooling in her belly. Her hand slowed, the tube of red rouge hovering over her bottom lip. She didn’t know what it was about Hunter Finn’s voice that had her so worked up, but it was as if the sound resonated deep inside her.

  She shook her head, trying to cast off the thought. He wasn’t getting anywhere close to inside her. He didn’t even seem to like her yesterday. And she certainly didn’t like him.

  She slung a messenger bag over her shoulder and went out into the day. She could get back to nature. And if not, she was an actress. She could act the part.

  Out back, there was a small patio with two Adirondack chairs that faced into the woods. Roxy tilted her head upward to take in the world around her. She’d always worked hard to imagine an entire environment even when she was on a bare stage, but she didn’t have to imagine anything here. All those trees rustled quietly in the breeze overhead. She inhaled a deep breath, and there was no exhaust from the ever-present city traffic, no fumes coming out of grates buried in the cement or the scent of greasy food made by street-side vendors. Just clean mountain air. It was actually kind of…nice.

  Weird and way too quiet, but, nice.

  Picking her way along the dirt path, Roxy forged her way deeper into the woods. Maybe Gio was right, suggesting this for her. Her version of relaxation had been a spa day or a weekend where she didn’t get to bed at four in the morning, too wired to sleep after a show. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a walk for enjoyment, not one where she was racing from a rehearsal to an appointment with her vocal coach to a meeting with her agent. She was actually enjoying herself, and was suddenly looking forward to wandering into the little town. There might be people there she could talk to, ones she could do character studies on, filing their mannerisms away to use in future roles.

  Her mood elevated, Roxy starting singing as she walked—a song about her name being on everybody’s lips and the celebrity status she was going to achieve.

  It was a thing of hers, always having show lyrics on the brain. She and Gio sometimes had full-on conversations consisting completely of lines from musicals, even competing to see who could come up with the most obscure ones.

  This song wasn’t actually about her though. It was from Chicago—her father’s favorite show. He’d sworn he hadn’t named her for the infamous character of Roxie Hart, but she’d learned every word anyway, hoping one day he’d see her in the starring role. She’d wanted her name in lights at Times Square for herself, too—lord knew Roxy loved the stage—but for most of her life, Roxy’s theatrical accomplishments had been the only way she could get her father’s attention.

  Russell Cavanaugh was a busy man, but the one thing he’d made time for was to see each one of her shows.

  A sleek town car was always ready by the stage door afterward, waiting to take them to ice cream after her silly grade school performances. It was there after the decent ones she’d done at Julliard too. Dad was especially happy to make appearances at her performances at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and would whisk her off for drinks at one of the many bars he owned after the last curtain call. He’d read her playbill bio out loud as they sipped champagne, smiling over how long each successive one had gotten.

  Her mom hadn’t lived long enough to see any of her performances.

  Russell was gone now too, his kidneys having finally given out. His death left her with an inheritance and an empire managed by a team of strangers who never came to see her shows. Roxy had money to spare, enough that she could’ve bought her own damn theater, but she wanted to get there on her own two feet and talent.

  Even though, once she got there, she was going to be alone.

  ‘Poor little rich girl. Doesn’t have a care in the world, and yet she treats everyone around her like shit.’

  Roxy’s footsteps faltered and she cringed. Her director’s words had been seared into her brain. He’d been wrong though, plain and simple. She’d had every right to yell at the accompanist. The woman was playing in the wrong key, for fuck’s sake. And insulting the dumbass playing opposite her for messing up his lines had just been Roxy’s exasperation at other people not following the rules. When she was supposed to have a script memorized, she got it done. End of story. Waiting for other people to do the same pissed her off. If she held herself to such high expectations, why shouldn’t she do the same for others? She wasn’t treating everyone like shit. She was doing what her father had taught her to do in order to be successful—refusing to wait for things, and going after what she wanted. What was so bad about that?

  She wondered momentarily what her father would have thought of her getting booted from her first real lead in a musical. ‘Proud’ probably wouldn’t have been the first word on his mind.

  Roxy huffed out a breath. How much longer was this stupid walk supposed to take? Fishing her phone from her bag, she pulled up a map. The little blue dot that approximated her location showed she was decently close to town. Thank God. This nature walk had ceased to be enjoyable.

  She dumped her phone in her bag and continued to walk along the trail until she heard the sound of traffic. A clearing appeared up ahead, and she was finally back in civilization. Or, something close to civilization anyway.

  While Tannersville was too off the map for even Dunkin Donuts to bother with, a mix of locally-owned shops and restaurants had evolved instead. Roxy’s stomach growled as she passed a little eatery. The Chobani apparently hadn’t been enough to hold her, and eating something before getting groceries seemed like a good plan.

  She stopped outside a place that boasted itself as the ‘best restaurant in Tannersville’, apparently famous for its cheeses. A life-sized bear statue out front was holding a menu that didn’t look half bad.

  Cheese it was, then.

  Inside, the place seemed like half restaurant, half antique shop, and was nearly empty. The only people present were a few overall-clad bearded dudes hovering over drinks at the bar area—hello, it was eleven thirty on a Monday. Alcoholics, much?—and what she guessed was a repairman, his body bowed next to a fridge beyond the countertop.

  When a refreshingly pleasant waitress came to her table, Roxy ordered a local cheese platter to start, and a mac and cheese for her main. She was on vacation, after all, and not currently pre
paring for a role. Might as well spoil herself while she could. She began to entertain herself with scrolling through Twitter when she felt eyes on her. And not in the good kind of way. In the hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-standing-up kind of way.

  Roxy glanced up. Drunkard number one was all out staring at her.

  Ugh.

  Her cheese plate arrived, so Roxy focused on it and tried to act like she hadn’t noticed him. A cautious glance his way a few minutes later, however, showed that not only had he not stopped staring, but was now regarding her with a smile. One that had a few teeth missing.

  Roxy shuddered in disgust. That must have seemed like some kind of signal to Drunken Bearded Redneck, however, because he hopped off his bar stool and made his way over to her.

  “You look like you need some company,” he said.

  There was a toothpick in his mouth. An actual toothpick. Roxy was relieved it wasn’t a piece of straw.

  “I don’t. But thanks.”

  “Aw, come on. You don’t want to sit here all alone.”

  “Yeah, I really do.”

  She popped a piece of cheese in her mouth, feigning indifference. The tiny cube had no taste. Roxy was no stranger to brushing off the unwanted attentions of men, but most of the guys she came across in bars and coffee shops in the city managed to take the cues from her icy exterior and leave her alone.

  This guy? Not so much.

  He sat down across from her, and Roxy’s mouth dropped open. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Oh, you’ve got a mouth on you.” He grinned. She could smell the beer on him. “I’m surprised, a sweet little thing like you.”

  Roxy’s teeth started to grind. What was it with men up here calling her sweet? Except, unlike Hunter Finn, there was nothing remotely sexy about this guy at all.

  She leaned across the table. “You need. To get up. Now.”

  Roxy hissed the last word. It did nothing, however, except bring the guy’s attention to her breasts.