Evernight Publishing ®
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Copyright© 2014 London Saint James
ISBN: 978-1-77130-974-5
Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor: Brieanna Robertson
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To my loyal readers, lovers of romance, and my fellow aficionados of all things chocolate, this one’s for you.
CONFESSIONS OF A CHOCOHOLIC
Romance on the Go TM
London Saint James
Copyright © 2014
My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.
—Dave Barry
Chapter One
“Hey, Lexi,” Jessie, my bestie since grade school greeted as I lumbered through the doors of Fitness World. Of course she looked fabulous in her hot pink spandex pants and matching zip-front, form-fitting top. I, on the other hand, looked like the national spokeswoman for frump-gal in my dull grey cotton sweats and oversized T-shirt. You see, I don’t do mornings, but after taking my daughter to kindergarten, I went to work out with Jess, a wannabe Jillian Michaels, who was far too perky for a person who didn’t eat meat, avoided coffee like the plague, and had less than 8% body fat. “Hurry up, pokey. Time is a-wasting.”
“Grrr…” was my monosyllabic, non-caffeinated response. “I’d much rather be home, still curled up in my warm bed, experiencing the effects of the coma-inducing slumber that eating my weight in white chocolate raspberry truffle Haagen-Dazs last night afforded me, but no. Instead I’ve dragged my backside to the gym where you’ll have me flirting with the stair climber, or tickling my tootsies with the damn treadmill.”
“You’re a ray of morning sunshine,” she said.
“Yeah, well, I’ve decided you’re a closet sadist,” was my retort as I headed over to throw my purse and car keys into my little locker.
“Ha-fuckidie-ha.” She went all arms akimbo on me. “Are you taking a trip?”
I frowned. “No. If I were, you’d know about it, so why are you asking that?”
“Because it looks like you’ve packed enough bags under your eyes to go on a month’s excursion.”
Jess was nothing if not brutally honest.
“The bags are compliments of deadlines,” I said, closing the gunmetal grey locker door. “Stress adds years to my life.”
Jessie and I made the trek to the designated warm up area to stretch our limbs for our fervent marathon to come.
“Are you still working on that photo spread for Garden Thyme magazine?”
“Yes. They want the photographs sent to them on Monday.”
“I thought you finished those pictures.”
“I did, but not all of them turned out the way I hoped, so I’ve been scrambling to re-shoot some.”
“Can’t you just pull something from your vast portfolio?”
I twisted my torso to the right, then left, listening to the audible snap, crackle, pop of morning stiffness let loose and ripple up my spine. “Nope.”
“You’re too much of a perfectionist when it comes to work.” She eyed me in that disapproving way she had. “But obviously not when it comes to personal grooming. What’s up with that hair?”
“God. No one could ever accuse you of being subtle, Jess.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Subtle-schmuttle. If I can’t tell you it’s far past time for a little pampering and a salon day, then who can?”
I stuck my tongue out at her.
She blew me a kiss. “Love ya too.”
“I know I should have tamed the auburn beasts that are my curls this morning, but what can I say? It’s been a rough week.”
Jess, being Jess, adjusted my stance while I stretched. “Extend more,” she instructed, then slapped my ass. “Firm. That’s good. We need to keep it that way.” She smiled at me. “So, besides the stress of a deadline, this pale, unkempt look you have going on wouldn’t be due to Price taking Busy Bee for the weekend, would it?”
“Possibly.”
Her impeccably shaped eyebrow arched high over her right eye. “Possibly?”
“Well, as if it isn’t bad enough to watch my baby leave with that sperm donor who I’m forced to admit is her biological father, I also have to endure that smug grin on his face when he takes her, and you know how much that particular expression of his irks me.” I did a neck roll along my tense shoulders. “Of course he’ll be late picking her up.” I bent to touch my toes. “Heaven forbid he actually shows up at our arranged time. The shit-heel is always late,” I muttered as I straightened.
Jessie yanked the scrunchie out of her hair, releasing her brown, ginger-streaked ponytail, and handed it over. “Here. You need this more than I do.”
“Thanks,” I said, and scooped up my unruly spirals, tying off the puff on top my head with the borrowed accessory.
“Don’t let the asshole get under your skin,” said Jess.
“He doesn’t get under my skin like he used to.”
She gave me a chiding look that I recognized all too well, because Jess had firsthand knowledge of my stormy relationship with Price. Over the years, he’d become an expert at pushing my buttons. And I had become proficient at letting him.
I held up my hands in surrender. “All right, maybe he still does.”
“Do you ever wonder what might have been if you hadn’t—”
“Don’t.”
I knew where that question was going, and of course I wondered sometimes about how different my life would have been if I hadn’t turned into a brain dead Price Shelton groupie, but in my defense, I had been nineteen, and suffered from a bad case of naiveté. And Price, the lead singer for Clash Nation and apex predator, knew that. Heck, he’d been on stage performing when he motioned to one of the security crew, who promptly came and separated me from the herd of screaming fan-girls and plucked me out of the audience. After the concert, I hooked up with Price and expanded my sexual horizons.
For a while, I thought I was living a fairy tale, although in retrospect, that was only due to my tendency to overlook the fact his love turned into wounds. I think Anais Nin explained things the best when she said, “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
Having your heart torn out forces you to grow up, but I learned a thing or two, even if the knowledge came the hard way. That whole “love is blind” thing isn’t due to being in love. It’s due to our choice to keep blinders on.
Those blinders came off when I caught Price with his pants around his ankles with some spiky-haired chick on her knees polishing his dick with her tongue-stud. And even with the horror of seeing that, the real defining moment came when he glanced up at me and smiled, as if it was completely okay to be standing in that dingy venue restroom getting sucked off by someone other than me, the one he’d been living with for over a year. That world-famous, shit-eating grin of his gave me the courage to decide I was finished being something to scrape his wandering boots on, and I left.
A few weeks
after moving out of his apartment, I found out I was pregnant. Suddenly, the man who I desperately hoped to forget and thought would be out of my life forever wasn’t. Our tumultuous relationship continued in a different way, nonetheless, something wonderful did come out of the mess—my beautiful, inquisitive little girl. Bailey has always been the one bright spot in my life that I would never regret.
With much in the way of great effort, I finally made it through the warm-up and thirty minutes on the stair climber. I was disembarking the high-tech torture device when I thought I saw someone familiar, in a non-gym related way, within the reflection of the mirrored wall. I froze as soon as I knew for sure. I didn’t know his name, but we did have something in common besides what now seemed to be Fitness World—our choice in restaurants. We both frequented The Santa Clarita Bistro for lunch quite often.
He always sauntered in a few minutes after noon, always after I’d been seated, and sat at a table directly across from mine. I would pretend to read something on my iPad while I sipped on my ice tea and nonchalantly glanced up at him, and he, not so inconspicuously, looked back at me with those umber eyes of his in a way that made me shiver. There was something secret and lurid happening between us, although we never spoke.
That whole silent eye exchange had been our modus operandi for the last two months, until two weeks ago when I went to pay the cashier for my chipotle turkey wrap.
“That will be eight-forty-eight,” she’d said, and handed me a small gold box.
I studied the container as if it were an artifact from an alien planet, but what I held was neither a relic nor extraterrestrial in nature. It was gourmet chocolate from The Chocolate Cottage, a hoity-toity place to buy high-end confections located a few buildings down from the bistro.
“Compliments of him.” She pointed toward the window. I stared out at my chocolate benefactor as he walked down the sidewalk. I was taken aback to say the least.
I hadn’t seen him since that day, and I was surprised to see him now, devoid of his designer label clothing. Obviously, he wouldn’t be wearing a suit and tie to the gym, yet seeing him sport a dark green shirt riddled with holes, and long black basketball shorts instead of Versace, seemed almost surreal.
“Where are you going?” Jessie asked.
“I don’t feel like the treadmill. I’m going to skip it and just work out on the weight machine.” I took a side trip to the juice bar, working up the courage to go over and speak with him. At the very least, I should thank him for the delicious gift.
“Lex,” Jess called out, coming to my side. “Don’t look now, but there is a gorgeous man in a horrible green shirt standing by the free weights who’s looking at you like he wants to lick chocolate sauce from your nipples.”
I laughed. “That’s the kind of kink that might happen in your world, but not mine.”
“Hey, if you ever let your freak-flag fly it could happen to you too.”
“I seriously doubt it.”
“He’s occupied now,” she whispered. “It’s safe to ogle him.” She cast her gaze in his direction.
Apparently, I didn’t look fast enough. She elbowed my rib.
“Ouch,” I complained, rubbing my side. “That bony thing should be classified as a lethal weapon.”
“Don’t be a big baby.”
I frowned. “I’m not.”
“Shhh…look.”
“I already know what he looks like.”
“Did you see him come in?”
I nodded.
“You should have pointed him out.” She did a little growl in her throat. “Whoa. The guy has some guns on him.”
“I’ve seen him before, you know.”
“Not in here you haven’t. I would have noticed him.”
“No, not here. He’s the one from the bistro.”
“O.M.G. He’s the chocolate guy?”
“Yep.”
Jess did this fancy snap of her fingers. “He’s h-a-w-t.”
“I told you he was.”
“No. You said he was handsome. There’s a difference between a man being handsome and one being the four-alarm-fire kind of hot.”
I tucked an escapee curl that had fallen down my cheek behind my ear. “Uh…thanks for explaining that.”
“Don’t you want to run your fingers through that silky chestnut hair while his head is nestled between your thighs?”
“God, Jessie!”
She grabbed my shoulders and stared into my eyes with the intensity of a woman preaching the gospel. “It’s time to stop living like a nun.”
“I’m far from a nun, Jess.”
She made a derisive noise. “When’s the last time someone got you hot and bothered?”
“Things might not be ‘hot,’ but me and Blue B.O.B. are doing well, thank you very much.”
Jessie rolled her honey-brown eyes at me. “Battery operated boyfriends are good in a pinch, but a woman cannot live on batteries alone.”
“I do all right with old B.O.B.”
“Listen. A good screaming orgasm with a warm-blooded man is an excellent way to work out some of those tight knots in your muscles, and, I dare say, shake that cob out of your ass.”
I snorted. “Is that your professional advice, Dr. Ruth?”
Jessie laughed. “Absolutely.”
Chapter Two
Nobody likes Mondays. The day the rat-race for the week begins, but even though the sky outside my kitchen window was rather gloomy, this particular Monday morning I was in a good mood. Not only would I be picking my daughter up today, but the pictures for Garden Thyme magazine were done, and I’d emailed them into the art department for their approval.
Feeling rather pleased with myself, I took my plastic, daisy-printed plate of jelly-covered toast into the living room, sat on my couch, bit into the gooey grape goodness, and stared at the family photos hanging on my wall. The smiling vacation faces of Mom and Dad with their arms around each other, posing in front of the Grand Ole Opry, stared back at me. A picture of my baby sister Lacey. Bailey perched on Santa’s lap, tugging at his beard. Jess and Bailey’s water balloon fight in the park.
All those captured moments often made me ponder the idea of taking the financial plunge and opening up an actual photography studio. My granddad had one back in the day, and that’s where I’d gotten my start, helping Pops Collins take wedding pictures and family portraits. The idea of returning to my roots, taking pics of happy couples, newborn babies, and the occasional Bar Mitzvah, while appealing, wouldn’t cover the bills.
Sadly, being a freelance photographer didn’t exactly pay all the bills either, and I refused to take money from Price. No way would I be beholden to him. That’s why I’d ventured into doing graphic design, along with photography for corporate events. Those jobs did pay well, and I wasn’t going to complain about the perks of spending quality time with my daughter and being able to do a lot of work from home while wearing things like comfortable night-shirts and slouching socks.
The phone rang. I reached over to the side table and grabbed the handset from my cordless. “Hello.”
“Mommy?”
“Hi, sweet girl. Is everything okay?”
“Uh huh. I’m having Cocoa Puffs.” The unmistakable sound of chewing echoed over the line.
“Did you remember to put milk on your cereal?”
“Keekee put the milk for me.”
My protective mothering instinct kicked in and my brow crinkled. “Who’s Keekee?”
“Daddy’s new housekeeper,” she said.
“Is Keekee young or old?”
“I dunno.”
“Does she look younger like Auntie Lacey or older like Nana?”
Bailey giggled. “Not like Nana.”
Trying to gain a clear picture from a six-year-old as to who Price was bringing around my child could be almost impossible at times.
“So like Auntie Lacey then?”
“Sorta. But she doesn’t have blue hair.”
My eighteen-year-ol
d sister marched to the beat of her own drummer, and loved those neon blue hair extensions. They complemented her blue nail polish and the shiny silver hoop piercing her eyebrow.
“Is Keekee nice to you?”
“Uh huh.” Another crunch/chew resonated.
“Does she live in the house with Daddy?”
“She lives outside,” said Bailey.
“You mean in the guest house behind the pool?”
“Yup.”
I seriously doubted this Keekee person was the housekeeper. She was more than likely playing house. I really didn’t care who breezed in and out of Price’s life, or his bed. The jealousy ship that was the S.S. Lexi Collins had sailed long ago, but when it came to my daughter, the people she knew by name that I didn’t know became of interest to me for sure.
“Guess what, Mommy?”
“What, baby?”
“Daddy bought me a fish from the fish store yesterday.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. But he said I can’t bring SpongeBob to school with me. He’s gotta stay here with Daddy.”
“You named your fish SpongeBob?” I asked, trying not to chuckle.
A slurp echoed, followed by the clank of what sounded like a spoon in a bowl. “Uh huh,” Bailey said.
“Well, sweetie, I think that’s a great name for your fish.”
“He’s orange with bubble eyes and swims in a bowl.”
“Did you get to pick him out?”
“Yep. Keekee put SpongeBob in my room.”
“That was nice of her.”
“His bowl is by my bed, but I can’t feed him peanuts or crackers. Only fishy food.”
“Did Daddy show you how much food to give SpongeBob?”
“Uh huh.”
“That’s good, honey,” I said. “Listen, it might rain today. So put on the new jeans Nana brought you?”
Bailey giggled. “They have sparklies on the pockets. I like ‘em.”
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