Naughty Secrets
A Naughty Shorts Novella
Sarah Castille
Contents
Introduction
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
Naughty Cravings
About the Author
Also by Sarah Castille
I'm not going anywhere...
Natalie
Hot sexy teacher. Best friend. Wife.
I loved her from the moment I saw her.
My world.
Sam.
Rock star. Farmer. Husband. Hero.
He was my heart, my soul, my future.
My everything.
Ten years ago tragedy destroyed us. I threw myself into my farm, hoping time would heal the wound. Instead, I lost myself in my work and drifted away from my beautiful wife.
I thought nothing could bring Natalie back to me. Until I find out that she's in the local bar with the town's most eligible bachelor.
It’s now or never. My second chance.
I’ll fight to win her back. She may try to push me away but I'm not going anywhere.
I'll do whatever it takes to remind Natalie that what we once had is only the beginning of what we can be.
And that this is forever.
Naughty Shorts from New York Times bestselling author, Sarah Castille, are quick delicious bites of dirty and sweet romance that will give you all the feels. Set in a small town, and inspired by stories about everyday couples, these sexy second chance novellas contain a little naughty, a lot of heart, and a happily after.
Naughty Shorts series:
Naughty Desires
Naughty Wishes
Naughty Secrets
Naughty Cravings
A little naughty, a lot of heart, and a happily ever after.
Naughty Secrets
Published by Whiskey Jack Press
Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Castille
Digital ISBN: 978-1-7753272-1-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover Design by: Croco Designs
Editing by: Christa Desir
Editing by: Blue Otter Editing
For more information about the series and the author visit: http://www.sarahcastille.com
Subscribe to Sarah’s newsletter for new releases, excerpts, cover reveals, giveaways and more at http://bit.ly/SC1News
Praise for Sarah Castille
“Castille [gives] readers the compelling romance they crave.” —RT Book Reviews on Beyond the Cut
"With sizzling love scenes, taut plotting, and a hair-raising finish, Castille's romantic thriller will appeal to her existing fans and win her new ones." - Publishers Weekly Starred Review on Luca
“A sexy and dangerous ride! If you like your bad boys bad and your heroines kicking butt, Rough Justice will rev your engine.”—Roni Loren, New York Times bestselling author on Rough Justice
"This fast paced, gritty mystery with its number of twists and turns will leave the reader breathless." - Fresh Fiction on Legal Heat
"Powerful. Gritty. And sexy beyond belief. Sarah is a true master!"-Opal Carew, New York Times bestselling author of His to Claim on Full Contact
“Awesome! Sarah Castille ripped my heart out with this book. It is a vivid and powerful story of love, loyalty, lust,
and redemption.”—Night Owl Romance (A Top Pick) on Sinner’s Steel
To everyone who has loved and lost and loved again
Chapter One
NATALIE
“Got a present for you.” Sam tosses a bunch of freshly picked carrots in the kitchen sink.
I force a smile, while inside I scream.
I hate carrots.
I also hate beets, cucumbers, radishes, broccoli, potatoes, corn, and all the other fruits and vegetables that have to be picked, washed, prepared, and canned during harvest. I hate the early mornings and the late nights, the loaves of bread I have to bake, the roasts I have to cook, and the pails of sandwiches I have to make and take out to the fields for Sam and his hired men. I hate that Sam sleeps in a different room from August until October, and then again during seeding from April until June because he gets up before dawn and goes to bed after midnight, and he doesn’t want to disturb me.
But most of all, I hate that it doesn’t matter. After ten years as a farm wife, I’ve gotten used to sleeping alone.
Today is a hating day, and the damn carrots are going to suffer.
“I’ll make a carrot cake.” I imagine the satisfaction of grating the wretched carrots into a pulp. “You like carrot cake.”
Sam has to be reminded of what he likes. He eats, not because he enjoys the food I prepare, but because he needs fuel, and if something appeals to his palate, I only know if he asks for more.
He grunts his assent and washes his hands in the kitchen sink. Sam’s hands were the first things I noticed about him when he moved to town. He was sixteen, the only son of a banker who had given up a lucrative city career to move to our very own Revival, Montana after he inherited a farm from a distant uncle.
When Sam showed up in our tenth-grade English class wearing a black leather jacket covered in studs, his long, dark hair cut short at the back, and so long in the front that it partially covered his face—much to our teacher’s irritation—and carrying a guitar over one shoulder, he became an instant hero among the predominately rural conservative student population. A rebel after my own heart.
Even now, I still remember how his Evanescence T-shirt fitted tight around his lean, muscular frame. He was tall and just starting to fill out, although his broad shoulders and rippled muscles hinted at what was to come. His gray eyes seemed to flash and glitter like a summer storm, and when he first turned his electric gaze on me, I melted inside.
“I’m looking for the chemistry lab,” he said to me after the bell rang. I don’t know why he picked me out of the twenty girls and fifteen boys who were all curious about the newest member of our school, but his voice, deep and smooth, curled around me, holding me in place.
“I’m going that way. I’ll take you, if you want.”
He smiled slightly, and that quirk of his lips made me smile too, although I’d never been a big one for smiling. I wasn’t shy, but I wasn’t the most outgoing girl in class. I preferred the library, where I could read to my heart’s content, to the sports field, where I was solid “B” team material. My family wasn’t poor, but I had two older brothers and an older sister, and why buy new books for me when I could read the books we had, even if I wasn’t interested in princesses and ponies, dinosaurs and dragsters. Why waste money on clothes or toys, or anything at all?
“Thanks.” He offered me his schedule, and that’s when I noticed his hands. Big hands. Strong hands. Steady, solid, work hands. They didn’t fit his clothes, or the smooth way he walked, or the musician persona he wore like a shield.
I’d never been with a boy in any wa
y—not even a kiss—but I had a part-time job in the local library, and I’d read about the things a boy could do with his hands when they slipped beneath your clothes. For some reason the idea of Sam’s hands on my body made me hot inside.
“What’s for lunch?” Sam now pushes away the memories of Sam then, and he takes his seat at the dining room table we received as a wedding gift from my sisters when we moved back to Revival to start our family. A life as a farmer’s wife wasn’t how I ever imagined my future, but once he got those beautiful hands on me, I would have followed him anywhere.
“Meatloaf and potatoes.” I put the plate in front of him. “Green beans. Do you want gravy?”
He looks around the kitchen, as if the gravy would be anywhere other than on the stove. “Do you have some?”
“Yes, of course.”
A sunbeam breaks through the clouds, lighting Sam’s face, and I catch a glimpse of the boy I fell in love with beneath the weathered, sun-kissed skin. He is stronger now, heavier and thickly muscled. But unlike many of the local farmers who enjoy their biscuits and gravy, he is still lean, his belly flat and rippled from years of hard labor.
I stare at him, remembering the early days when my heart would have jumped at the thought of touching those rippling muscles, or feeling those strong hands on my body. After high school, we left Revival behind and moved to Billings together, he to pursue his dream of playing in a band, and me to study at college to be an elementary school teacher. An unexpected and late addition to the family—my father was fifty-five when I was born and my mother was forty-eight—I had grown up hyperaware of kids who were unwanted, whether they were in foster care, or neglected, abandoned or alone. Inspired by an English teacher who had taken me under her wing, I had decided to pursue a profession where I could make a difference to kids who needed a little extra love.
If I’d known those would be the best ten years of my life, I would have tried to capture them—from the smell of fresh bread that drifted into our tiny apartment from the bakery below, to the soft strum of Sam’s guitar when he was composing, and from the crazy, wild sex that had consumed our nights to the long, lazy mornings we spent twined around each other in bed. Although we didn’t have a lot of money, we had each other, and that was all I needed.
“I’ll have gravy,” Sam says, pulling me out of the past.
I pour a splash of gravy over his meat and potatoes, but not on his vegetables. Sam likes his vegetables plain.
“I took the day off and I’ve some errands to run, so I’d better get going.” I put the gravy boat on the table. “I made an apple pie. It’s on the counter. Vanilla ice cream is in the freezer on the left-hand side.”
I never eat the apple pies I bake. We planted the apple tree after our son, Ethan, was born, six months to the day after we married in a shotgun wedding that my parents refused to attend. Why would I get married when Sam didn’t have a steady job? And why would I have a baby when I wasn’t even finished with college? They were already busy looking after their six grandchildren from my siblings, and they weren’t keen on any more.
But I didn’t expect them to understand that all my life I’d just wanted something that was mine. Something new and perfect and made for me. My baby might have been unplanned and unexpected, but he would never be unwanted, a burden that slowed the family down.
Maybe I wanted too much for him. Maybe after three months he realized he could never bear the burden of my hopes and dreams.
“Jeff has a new hose waiting for me at the dealership.” Sam cuts his meat, the knife scraping over the plate in a high-pitched, teeth-clenching scream. “Can you pick it up on your way home?”
“Sure.” Sam doesn’t like to go into town, and he rarely goes to the city unless he needs to buy a new piece of equipment. I’ve tried over the years to get him to take a weekend away, maybe stay a hotel, eat in a fancy restaurant, take in a show, see a band, or talk like we used to do, but he is always too busy, too tired, or has too much to do.
Why eat in a restaurant when we have good food at home? Or see a show when we have a TV? We see each other every day. What would we talk about anyway? Not work because farm work is all we do, and I gave up my dream of becoming a teacher after we lost Ethan. I couldn’t be around children without thinking of him. Would he have been friends with the little first grader who ran into me on his bike? Would my life have been filled with play dates and puppet shows instead of potatoes and peas?
“And I need some checks for the men,” he continues. “You can pick them up at the bank.”
“I’m getting my hair done, and I have to go to the florist and the bookstore before I visit the cemetery. And then I have to see the dentist. The bank closes at three. I might not have time.”
Today is Ethan’s birthday, and I have a ritual that I follow every year. I buy him flowers—exotic flowers from the faraway places he will never get to see—and a children’s book that I donate to the library in his name after I read it to him at the cemetery.
Sam freezes, the meatloaf dangling precariously on the edge of his fork. “The men need to be paid tomorrow. If I don’t pay them, they won’t show up the next day.” Sam doesn’t ask about the dentist. He probably didn’t even notice I’ve been unable to eat anything but soup and a little porridge for the last two days, and I don’t mention it because I know he has a lot on his mind. Harvest is all consuming. And, of course, we don’t talk about Ethan. Sam made it clear, on what would have been Ethan’s first birthday, that he wasn’t interested in doing anything to remember our son, so for the last ten years I’ve remembered Ethan alone.
I fist my hands by my side, forcing myself to take slow, even breaths as the cream-colored walls of a traditional country kitchen close in around me. “I’ll fit it in.”
He grunts his approval. “Why are you getting your hair done anyway? You look fine.”
Fine.
My hand flies to my thick dark hair, tied back in its usual ponytail. At thirty-five years’ old, I don’t want to be told by the love of my life who used to write songs about me that I look fine.
Fine means you look okay. Not bad enough to embarrass the person you are with, but not good enough to bring the life back to your husband’s eyes.
Fine means barely adequate, and that’s what our life has become.
I’m not beautiful in any sense of the word, but the constant demands of the farm have kept me in shape, and although my skin isn’t quite as smooth, and my eyes aren’t quite as bright, I think I am still pretty. I am pure Italian on both sides, three generations back, with my mother’s high cheekbones, thick straight hair, dark eyes, and long lashes, and my father’s oval face and deeply olive skin. Exotic, is how my school friend Alexis Morales describes me. She was always convinced my looks would take me far. I don’t think by far she meant a lonely acreage twenty-five miles from town.
“What about dinner?” Sam calls out when I grab my handbag from the counter.
“I’ll be home.”
I always come home.
There is nowhere else to go.
Chapter Two
NATALIE
“I’m here to see Dr. Steadman. My name is Natalie White.”
Usually I go straight home after visiting Ethan at the cemetery, but one of my fillings fell out and the pain in my tooth has kept me up for the last two nights. Dr. Steadman was kind enough to squeeze me in as his last patient of the day even though I wasn’t registered with his office.
“Nice to meet you, Natalie. I’m Gina. I’ve got some forms for you.” She hands me a clipboard with a few papers attached, and a pen. “We ask all our new patients to fill them out.”
“I didn’t even know the former Dr. Steadman’s office had reopened until my friend mentioned there was a new dentist in town. She said the new dentist is the former Dr. Steadman’s grandson.”
“That’s right.” A smile spreads across Gina’s face. “So you haven’t met the new Dr. Steadman?”
“I’ve heard about him,” I sa
y vaguely, although thanks to my single friends, there is little about him I don’t know. According to my bestie, Alexis, he is in his early to mid-thirties, with brown hair, a chiselled jaw, piercing blue eyes, and a body to die for. Revival’s own Chris Pine, she called him.
“He’s lovely.” Gina sighs, and her cheeks flush. I make a mental note to tell Alexis her competition is a beautiful twenty-something Latina receptionist with a sweet smile. Now single after a string of bad relationships, Alexis wasted no time when an eligible bachelor rolled into town. However, despite her best efforts, she has never managed to get anything more from Dr. Steadman than a cleaning, a toothbrush, and a tube of fresh mint toothpaste.
I fill in the forms and tie my hair back into its usual ponytail. My visit with Ethan is done, and it’s time to get back to the real world of practical living in which hair doesn’t belong near the face. A dental hygienist takes me to the treatment room and settles me in the dental chair. The room is painted a soothing sea green that complements the cream décor, and the bright photographs of the local forest trails on the walls.
The dental hygienist introduces herself as Mariko. She is an intern, also very young, very pretty, and looks like she works out four hours a day. Her nails are painted rose-petal pink to match her perfectly glossed lips, and her hair is so shiny it shimmers ebony under the bright lights. I am suddenly, painfully aware of my callused hands and broken nails, the lines around my eyes from squinting in the sun, and the extra pounds I can’t seem to lose, no matter how many hours I spend working outdoors. Although I dressed up for my visit to Ethan today, I feel every inch a woman who no longer truly cares for herself.
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