The Barista's Beloved (The River Hill Series Book 4)

by Rebecca Norinne

“It’s fine.” Ben shoved his hands down into the pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels, embarrassment washing over him.

  He wasn’t used to failure. Well, not until recently anyway.

  All his life, Ben had been an overachiever, excelling at whatever he set his mind to. First, he’d been captain of the football team and high school valedictorian, before going on to graduate from both college and law school Magna Cum Laude. At the tender age of thirty-five, he’d been well on his way to making partner at one of the most prestigious law firms in San Francisco.

  But then something had changed.

  The problem was, while Ben understood what had gone wrong, he had no clue why. He hadn’t suffered some terrible trauma that had brought on a deep, dark depression he’d been unable to overcome. No, he’d just woken up one day utterly numb to the whole world. Burned out, his therapist had explained. Apparently, she’d seen it a lot with guys like him. Unfortunately, that burnout had culminated in him offending the firm’s most important client. As it turned out, telling an entitled old man with more money than sense to go fuck himself was a bonafide career killer.

  So here he was, working as a barista in a town where no one knew him or how he’d gone down in an epic blaze of glory. When Max had offered him the use of the apartment over his garage, River Hill had seemed like the perfect place to lay low until he figured out his next move. Now, he wondered if that wasn’t a bad idea, too. Max had assured him that his friends wouldn’t give two shits about what he did for a living, but that was easy for a James Beard award winner to say. Based on Maeve’s outburst, he was beginning to have his doubts.

  “No, it’s not fine,” Maeve said, pulling his thoughts back to the conversation. “I was rude, and that was uncalled for. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s cool. Don’t worry about it, okay?” The sooner they could move on from this conversation, the better. Ben knew he wasn’t going to win any awards for handing out coffee, and it wasn’t like working as a barista was his life’s ambition. Still, the idea that he couldn’t do even that right stung.

  “Ignore them,” a voice belonging to a blonde guy sitting directly across from where Ben stood chimed in. “I can’t make a decent cup of coffee to save my life, and I practically live on the stuff. I’m Sean, by the way.”

  A beautiful brunette dropped down into Sean’s lap and twined her arms around his neck. “I knew you only married me for my Nespresso maker.” She looked vaguely familiar. Max had said something about her having a new local TV show.

  “Nah, Jess,” he said, before kissing her soundly. “I married you for your abuelita’s molé recipe.”

  Jess laughed and pushed his face away, pretending to be offended.

  At the end of the row, Maeve rolled her eyes and groaned before raising a bottle of beer to her lips and swallowing down a deep swig.

  Hmm, Ben thought. She had seemed so nice when they’d met, but now he wondered if his initial impression had been wrong. Shouldn’t she be happy for the newlyweds? Unless, of course, there’d been something between her and Sean. Ben didn’t remember Max mentioning anything like that when he’d quickly brought him up to speed on who’d be hanging out tonight.

  Jess didn’t seem to mind Maeve’s reaction though. “Oh, hush. You’re just mad that I can’t be your wingwoman anymore.”

  Maeve leveled her with a slitted-eyed glare. “Yes, exactly. You’ve abandoned me.” Her face said she was pouting, but the laughter in her voice gave away her real feelings. Ben thought she might not love the idea of having to share her friend with her new husband, but she wasn’t unhappy for them.

  “We need to get her laid,” said a tall, thin woman carrying a tray of chips and salsa as she exited the house and came onto the paved patio.

  “She totally needs to get laid,” echoed the voluptuous blonde who followed behind carrying a pitcher of what looked like margaritas.

  Ben did a double take. “Wait, are you—”

  The woman handed Noah the pitcher and wiped her hands on the front of her jeans. She circled the fire pit with her hand extended toward him. “Angelica Travis. Max said he was bringing an old friend by tonight. You must be Ben.”

  Holy shit. Max hadn’t mentioned he was friends with the Angelica Travis. Nope, he’d described her as “my buddy Noah’s fiancée.” If he remembered correctly, this woman owned the patio they were standing on and the bed and breakfast that went with it.

  “Hi, yeah. Good to meet you.” Ben hoped his voice hadn’t cracked too badly. He didn’t often get starstruck, but then he also hadn’t met a bonafide celebrity before either.

  A couple of years ago, a woman he’d been casually dating had dragged him to one of Angelica’s movies—some re-telling of a Jane Austen book. Afterward, she’d complained endlessly about how fat Angelica had looked and how she’d been totally miscast in the role. Meanwhile, Ben had spent the entire movie with his eyes glued to her cleavage. While he’d admired the way she’d looked in her costume, he’d also thought the film was mediocre at best, and Angelica had done more with the material than her co-stars had. Needless to say, he and his date had parted ways without so much as a goodnight kiss. Since then, he’d occasionally caught an episode of Angelica’s TV show, which featured large-scale renovations like the one she’d done here. He’d never expected to meet her, much less over drinks around a fire pit.

  Angelica pumped his hand a few times and then stepped back, her eyes darting between him and Maeve. She turned to the willowy brunette. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Ben blinked at the three-sixty the conversation had taken. Max had ruefully warned him that Noah’s fiancée was a bit of a busy-body, and that she might try to set him up with one of her friends. He just hadn’t expected it to happen within seconds of being introduced. And he certainly hadn’t expected her to be quite so blunt about it. Most of the women Ben had interacted with the last few years were uptight ice queens who wouldn’t be caught dead discussing sex in mixed company. He thought their Botox-ed foreheads might crack if they laughed too loud—let alone guffawed the way Angelica was currently doing.

  “Yes,” Angelica’s friend hummed, her lips lifting in a sly smile. “It’s perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it first.”

  Ben’s eyes flicked surreptitiously to Maeve, who was burrowing down in her seat, trying to pretend she was invisible as the two other women carried on about her needing a good dicking— their words, not his. Without conscious thought, Ben’s cock swelled, and he shifted on his feet to try and hide his growing arousal. Damn. He’d just met these people; they did not need to see him getting hard at the idea of having sex with one of them.

  And what was that about, anyway? He wasn’t even sure he liked Maeve.

  Liar, the devil on his shoulder taunted.

  Inwardly, he sighed. Okay, he was lying.

  While the jury was still out on Maeve’s personality, he couldn’t deny that he really liked the way she looked. And he’d fucked plenty of women he didn’t particularly like. As far as he was concerned, having sex with a beautiful woman was no hardship. Hell, hate sex could be downright hot. Briefly, he imagined ripping Maeve’s clothes off, their lips locked together in battle as he backed her up against the wall of his temporary apartment over Max’s garage.

  The fantasy was interrupted by Maeve jumping to her feet. “Oh, no you don’t!” She pointed angrily at Angelica. “Just because your meddling in Iain’s love life worked out reasonably well doesn’t mean I want you doing that to me.” Turning to the other woman, she added, “And you! Don’t make me tell my brother on you, Naomi.”

  The woman—Naomi—waved her hand in front of her face. “Please, like he’s one to talk. We had sex within hours of meeting each other.”

  Max choked on his beer and Noah groaned. “You have zero filter, you know that?”

  Naomi threw her head back and laughed. “That’s why you all love me.”

  Noah muttered something under his breath that Ben couldn’t
make out from where he was standing. Not that he had much time to try. Maeve was calling his name.

  He turned to her, careful to keep his face blank. It was obvious she was unhappy with the direction the conversation had turned, and he didn’t want to add to her discomfort. He might not hate the idea of having sex with her, but he wouldn’t push if she didn’t feel the same. That was just basic fucking courtesy. “Ignore them,” she pleaded, her eyes bright with the reflection of the fire. “They’re horrible people who hate me.”

  Angelica dragged a chair next to Noah and settled into it. “Pshh. We love you and want you to be happy.”

  “And you think sex with a virtual stranger is going to make me happy?” Maeve stood facing Angelica, her hands on her hips and her feet planted shoulder-width apart.

  In that moment, Ben thought she looked like an avenging fairy, her long hair flowing down her back in a cascade of fiery curls. He could practically see the steam coming out of her ears.

  Fuck, he thought, this is getting out of control.

  It was one thing to joke about sex among friends, but it was an entirely other thing to make one of them the butt of said jokes. The fact that they seemed not to notice that Maeve was near tears had him jumping to her defense. “Okay, that’s enough. There’ll be no sex between strangers tonight.”

  “Thank you!” Maeve exclaimed, moving to his side as if to present a united front. “I don’t know why you guys can’t accept that I don’t need a man in my life to be happy.”

  Jess looked at Maeve with something that looked a lot like sympathy. “We know you don’t need a man to be happy, Maeve. But you told me yourself you miss being part of a couple. Don’t be mad at Naomi and Angelica. They just—”

  Next to him, Maeve took a deep breath and straightened her spine, rising to her full height—all five foot two inches of it. “You want me to have sex with the hot barista? Fine.” She turned to him. “Come on, Ben.”

  Ben tried to keep the shock from registering on his face. This was not where he’d seen this going. He looked at Max, whose bottle of beer was frozen midway to his mouth, his eyebrows raised in surprise. Ben’s gaze skated across the group to see that he and Max weren’t the only ones who hadn’t expected Maeve’s outburst. Noah’s palm was slapped over his eyes, and he was shaking his head. Jess and Sean wore identical looks: their eyes were bugging out, and their jaws were somewhere down around the floor. Not surprisingly, Angelica and Naomi were smiling, although he wasn’t sure they believed Maeve meant what she was saying. He wasn’t sure he believed it either.

  Maeve took hold of his hand. “You coming?”

  He looked down at the beautiful woman asking him to go home with her, and the earlier image of him kissing her like their lives depended on it flashed through his mind again. He shrugged.“Yeah, let’s go.”

  3

  She’d dragged him halfway down the long driveway of The Oakwell Inn before she came to her senses. Maeve stopped so abruptly that Ben bumped into her. “Oh, my god.” She let go of him and brought her hands to her face, feeling heat rising from her skin. “I’m not … I didn’t—”

  He looped his fingers around her wrist and gently pried her hands down, though he didn’t let go once her face was revealed. “It’s okay. Me neither.”

  She blew out a breath. “I just had to get out of there.”

  “You’re not going to see me complaining.” He finally let go of her wrist and scrubbed his hand across his face. “That was…”

  “Humiliating?” She loved her friends, but Angelica’s tendency to meddle was like some kind of virulent disease these days.

  “Like they threw a party just to embarrass us,” he agreed.

  She groaned. “I doubt my little outburst helped.”

  He chuckled. “I enjoyed it.”

  Would she ever stop blushing? “I hope you don’t think that I—”

  “No, I get it. As excuses to get out of an embarrassing situation go, you could do worse.”

  She laughed. “You’ve got a high opinion of yourself.”

  He grinned at her. “I’m worth it.” He tucked her arm into his elbow. “You park down at the end of the drive?” She nodded, though he probably couldn’t see it in the deepening shadows of evening. “Me too. I’ll walk you to your car.”

  They chatted amiably as they strolled down the path, and Maeve exhaled waves of relief that he wasn’t going to press the issue. He talked about being new in town, and then shared a few childhood stories about Max that she filed away for blackmail purposes later on. She filled him in on the people who’d been teasing her, and why—she even told him about the romance novel book club that Angelica had started.

  And if that didn’t put him solidly in friend territory, she thought, nothing else could.

  “I’m glad I got to meet you again,” she said as she unlocked her car.

  “Me too.”

  “Even if it wasn’t under the best of circumstances.” She rolled her eyes. “I still can’t believe they did that. Or that I reacted that way.”

  He nudged her shoulder with his. “You did good. Did you see their faces?”

  She giggled, remembering the way Sean’s eyes had nearly popped out of his head. And for all that Angelica and Naomi had been grinning, she’d seen them exchange swift glances as she dragged Ben out of the courtyard. “Surprised them, didn't I?”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen Max look so shocked since his sister told him she’d lost her virginity.”

  “To you?” Maeve dared to ask.

  He looked horrified. “Good lord, no. I might be a d-bag, but I’m not that kind of jerk.”

  “A d-bag, huh?”

  He laid his hand over his heart and looked at her wide-eyed. “In the flesh.”

  She laughed. “Well, maybe it’ll be good to have a d-bag in my corner. My friends always say I’m too nice.”

  “I’ll give you jerk lessons anytime.”

  After they said goodbye, Maeve slipped into her car and watched him walk down the street to his own. The view was very nice. Still, handsome as Ben might be, she was thankful that he’d understood that she’d been speaking out of pure rage and embarrassment back there. No matter what her rebellious body thought about his forearms or his butt, she suspected he was much better as a friend than as a boyfriend.

  Especially given that he readily self-identified as a jerk.

  That was enough to throw cold water on the smoldering image she’d had in the back of her mind of the two of them naked and writhing against each other. No matter how much the ache low in her belly contradicted her, she knew she was better off not following through on her reckless words by the fire.

  She smiled briefly as she started up the car. He’d been almost as embarrassed as she was. At the very least, maybe she’d come out of this humiliating incident with a friend who wouldn’t try to set her up with everyone she met.

  Home at last, she changed into soft pajama pants and a tank top but was still too wired to sleep. The adrenaline rush from blurting out that she was going to go have sex with a stranger in front of her closest friends was taking a long time to wear off, apparently.

  She pulled out her laptop and checked her email. At another friend’s request, Jess had sent their group of friends a close-up of her wedding ring—something that had been in Sean’s family for generations. The Amorys had run River Hill’s finest bakery since the town had been founded. Sean was a fairly big deal in town, and Jess was madly in love with him even though her own family, also local, were a little dubious. Maeve was pretty sure they’d come around soon. Sean adored Jess with an intensity that sometimes shocked Maeve. Noah and Angelica, and her brother Iain and Naomi, were certainly in love, but Sean needed Jess.

  What would it be like to be needed that way? she wondered, feeling a strange ache in her breastbone.

  She shook her head. It would probably be exhausting. She didn’t have time to take care of somebody else like that. She wanted to be with a man who could stand on his o
wn, and who would appreciate that she could do the same. She’d moved to an entirely new country and started up a successful business in a field that women often didn’t earn any recognition in. She was damned successful, and she knew, in time, somebody out there would appreciate that.

  In the meantime…she flicked open a new browser tab and typed in ‘volunteer opportunities in River Hill.’ She didn’t need to get laid. She needed to stay busy.

  The next day, Maeve went to lunch at Frankie’s. It was a standing date, as she and Max were still trying to work out the details of the wedding present they were jointly getting Sean and Jess. She braced herself for Max’s judgement about what had happened last night, but he just gave her a worried glance and moved swiftly to presenting the information he’d gathered.

  They were creating a joint family tree for the Amorys and the Casillas-Moores that would be brought to life by an artist Max knew on a huge piece of reclaimed wood that would fit beautifully on the wall above the sofa in the couple’s living room. He was researching the Amorys, while Maeve was conspiring with Jess’s grandmother to obtain more information about her family. All told, the gift would take several months to complete, but they knew Sean and Jess would love it once it was done. Currently, they’d made it through the information they’d each collected, and Maeve was halfway through her salad before Max cleared his throat.

  “Nothing happened,” she said without looking up from the cucumber she was chasing across her plate.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I’m serious.” She met his eyes. “He walked me to my car, and we chatted about how extremely awful you all are, and then I went home.”

  Max blew out a breath. “Okay.”

  She was obscurely offended at this easy acquiescence, even though she’d been grateful to have the whole embarrassing affair over with before it began. “What, I’m not good enough for your friend?”

  “More the opposite, actually.” He smiled wryly. “I’ve known Ben since we were kids. He’s… probably not what you’re looking for.”