by Anna Martin
He’d done a stock count before leaving the garage that morning, so he was satisfied he had everything he needed for a good day today. As was his habit, he turned on the radio and pulled open the window to let in the warm, salty sea breeze.
Within a few minutes, a family with two young kids sidled up to the truck, and Cooper prepared to do his usual sales pitch.
“Hey!” the mom said. “You sell lactose-free ice cream?”
“Yep. I make it myself. It’s totally organic and I use local ingredients wherever possible.”
She seemed like an organic mom.
“Do you sell in stores anywhere? It’s so difficult to find good organic lactose-free products.”
In California? Seriously?
“Not yet,” he said. “I’m working on it. I also make a line called Mother’s Treat. They’re alcohol-laced sorbets and gelato.”
The dad laughed. “It’s like he knows you, honey.”
The idea had been Alana’s, after Cooper had made her a cosmopolitan ice cream with real vodka in it for her birthday. Now, the line included a mojito, mint julep, gin fizz, margarita, and mai tai, alongside the original cosmopolitan. He regularly sold out of those flavors when he took the truck along to sorority parties and wedding receptions.
In the past year, the truck had gone from being a part-time, speculative thing, to Cooper’s main focus. With some help, he’d set up a business plan and worked his ass off to secure a loan to be able to buy the vintage ice cream truck. He wasn’t going to call it a dream come true… not out loud, anyway.
He served the smiling family two organic, lactose-free, nut-free strawberry cones, a dark chocolate salted caramel cup, and a gin fizz on a stick, to the dad, who seemed endlessly amused by the entire transaction.
Cooper still wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to do when winter rolled around. Though it didn’t get horrendously cold in LA, he wasn’t sure there was going to be a huge demand for ice cream in December. The Dreamy Creamery had always managed to sustain a business year-round; Cooper was just going to have to get creative.
He stayed on the beach until just after sunset, watching the evening settle in and the people change. Fewer families and groups of friends, more couples enjoying the sand and the summer. Some nights at this time he drove over to a local park where they showed movies outdoors on a huge screen. Food trucks generally did well in that environment, and Cooper’s only real competition for dessert was a donut vendor.
Those nights he ended up working ten, maybe twelve hours in a day, though time seemed to fly when he was working for himself. It was a whole other deal, one he’d found difficult to explain.
He’d just finished cleaning up and disinfecting his workspace when there was a knock on the window.
“I’m closed,” he yelled, turning and rolling his eyes at the group of people who were gathered there.
Alana and Dan, and Drew, grinning.
Cooper opened the window and leaned forward on his elbows. “Hey.”
“What does a guy need to do to get a cone around here?” Drew teased. He leaned up, tall enough to be able to angle himself into the window for a kiss. Cooper nudged their noses together and kissed him loudly.
“Turn up during opening hours?”
Alana laughed. Dan threw his arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple.
“I’ll take a cosmopolitan in a cup,” she said.
“Chocolate whatever,” Dan said. “Double scoop of chocolate whatever.”
“Pistachio and ginger,” Drew added. “In a cup. With—”
“I know, I know,” Cooper grouched good-naturedly, turning back to the freezer to hide his smile. “Rainbow sprinkles.”
More from Anna Martin
Joe Fitzgerald hates New Orleans, but he’s stuck there until he convinces one stubborn local family to sell Lumière, the crumbling French Quarter restaurant they’ve owned for generations. The place is a wreck, and it’s hemorrhaging money. Joe figures he’s their best chance for survival.
Remy Babineaux despises Pineapple Joe’s and everything the chain stands for. He refuses to let Lumière become some tacky corporate tourist trap. Theme drinks and plastic beads in his restaurant? Yeah, right. Over his dead, rotting corpse. The last thing Remy wants is a meeting with the restaurant chain’s representative, but his father agreed to at least listen to the proposal. There’s nothing Remy can do about it.
Remy figures an anonymous hookup is exactly what he needs to decompress. When he ends up across the table from his fling the next morning, real sparks fly. Joe refuses to give up his prime location; Remy refuses to give up his legacy. It’s war, and they’re both determined to win at any cost. Neither of them counted on falling in love.
When you realize you want to marry your best friend at age six, life should follow a pretty predictable path, right? Maybe not.
As a kid, Evan King thought Scott Sparrow was the most amazing person he’d ever met. At seventeen, his crush runs a little deeper, and nothing seems simple anymore. Scott is more interested in football and girls than playing superheroes, and Evan’s attention is focused on getting into art school. A late-night drunken kiss is something to be forgotten, not obsessed over for the next ten years.
When life suddenly brings them back together, it doesn’t take much for the flame Evan carried for Scott nearly all his life to come roaring back, and Evan discovers that life sometimes has a strange way of coming full circle.
This is not your average love story.
Ben Easton is not your average romantic hero. He’s a tattooed, badass, wannabe rock star, working in a perfectly horrible dive bar in Camden Town. His life is good, and he’s totally unprepared for how one man will turn it upside down.
Stan isn’t your average heroine. As a gender-fluid man, he proudly wears his blond hair long, his heels sky-high, and his makeup perfectly executed. A fashion industry prodigy, Stan is in London after stints working in Italy and New York City, and he quickly falls for Ben’s devil-may-care attitude and the warm, soft heart Ben hides behind it.
Beneath the perfect, elegant exterior, Stan has plenty of scars from teenage battles with anorexia. And it only takes the slightest slip for his demons to rush back in while Ben is away touring with his band. With the band on the brink of a breakthrough, Ben is forced to find a way to balance the opportunity of a lifetime with caring for his beautiful boyfriend.
After growing up in a rough part of town, George Maguire worked his way out of Manchester and to a career as a design engineer. Alexander van Amsberg, an architecture student at the University of Edinburgh, wasn’t the sort of guy he normally had explosive, hotel-room one-night-stands with. Alex was charming, classy, and, as George later learns, Prince of the Netherlands.
Fate brings them together again, and Alex makes sure to get his sexy stranger’s phone number this time. Despite all the reasons why they shouldn’t work, something clicks, and Alex thinks that this time, he might have found the right guy. But Alex’s aristocratic ex stirs up trouble in the press for George and his humble family, and Alex realizes he has to get real about having a boyfriend from the wrong side of town.
While George acknowledges his modest upbringing, he doesn’t let anyone insult his family. Life’s no fairy tale, and regardless of his royal title, Alex might destroy his one chance for happily ever after.
After spending most of his life in special schools, Caleb Stone now faces public high school in his senior year, a prospect that both excites him and threatens to overwhelm his social anxiety. As a deaf teenager, he’s closed himself off to the world. He speaks a shorthand with his parents and even finds it hard to use American Sign Language with people in his local deaf community. But Caleb finds comfort in his love of photography. Everything he can’t express in real life, he posts on his Tumblr.
Struggling to reconcile his resentment for his father’s cruelty with the grief of losing a parent, Luc Le Bautillier scrolls through Tumblr searching for someone who might understand his got
h look and effeminate nature. When Luc reblogs a photo by Caleb, sparking a conversation, they both find it easier to make friends online than in person.
Luc and Caleb confront their fears about the opinions of the outside world to meet in New York City. Despite Caleb’s increasing confidence, his parents worry he’s not ready for the trials ahead. But communication comes in many forms—when you learn the signs.
ANNA MARTIN is from a picturesque seaside village in the southwest of England and now lives in the slightly arty, slightly quirky city of Bristol. After spending most of her childhood making up stories, she studied English literature at university before attempting to turn her hand as a professional writer.
Apart from being physically dependent on her laptop, Anna is enthusiastic about writing and producing local grassroots theater (especially at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she can be found every summer), going to visit friends in other countries, baking weird and wonderful sweets, learning to play the ukulele, and Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.
Anna claims her entire career is due to the love, support, prereading, and creative ass kicking provided by her best friend Jennifer. Jennifer refuses to accept responsibility for anything Anna has written.
Second place winner of the 2012 Goodreads M/M Romance Member’s Choice Award “Best Musician/Rockstars” for Tattoos & Teacups.
Website: annamartin-fiction.com
Twitter: @missannamartin
Tumblr: annamartinwrites.tumblr.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/annamartinfiction
Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/5251288.Anna_Martin
By Anna Martin
Cricket
Cuddling (Dreamspinner Anthology)
Dr. Feelgood (Dreamspinner Anthology)
Five Times My Best Friend Kissed Me
The Impossible Boy
Jurassic Heart
Kid Gloves
Les faits accomplis
My Prince
Rainbow Sprinkles
Signs
With Tia Fielding: Solitude
Summer Son
Tattoos & Teacups
Two Tickets to Paradise (Dreamspinner Anthology)
ANOTHER WAY
Another Way
Of Being Yours
To Say I Love You
With M.J. O’Shea
JUST DESSERTS
Macarons at Midnight
Soufflés at Sunrise
Devil’s Food at Dusk
Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Published by
DREAMSPINNER PRESS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Rainbow Sprinkles
© 2017 Anna Martin.
Cover Art
© 2017 Garrett Leigh.
http://blackjazzpress.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. 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 the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dreamspinnerpress.com.
Digital ISBN: 978-1-63477-862-6
Published March 2017
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America
