by Frost, Sosie
Roughneck
A Payne Brothers Romance
Sosie Frost
Roughneck
Copyright © 2019 by Sosie Frost
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you’d like to share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Cover Design: Pink Ink Designs
Photographer: Wander Aguliar
Created with Vellum
To L.G.
Does Tidus remind you of Keep…?
About the Author
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Also by Sosie Frost
Payne Brothers Romance
Babyjacked
Boyfrenemy
Wargasm
Sixty-Nine
Roughneck
Romeo (Coming Soon!)
Free Romances!
Fall in love with a new series today!
Beauty And The Blitz
(Book 1 of Touchdowns and Tiaras)
Unforgettable
(A Stand Alone Amnesia Romance)
Babyjacked
(Book 1 of The Payne Brothers Romances)
Touchdowns and Tiaras Series
Beauty And The Blitz
Love At First Down
Once Upon A Half-Time
Standalone Romances
Sweetest Sin - A Forbidden Priest Romance
Hard - A Step-Brother Romance
Unforgettable - An Amnesia Romance
Bad Boy’s Redemption (Previously Bad Boy’s Revenge)
Bad Boy’s Bridesmaid
Contents
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Coming Soon - Romeo
Now Available - Babyjacked!
Now Available - Boyfrenemy!
Now Available- Wargasm!
Now Available - Sixty Nine!
About the Author
Also by Sosie Frost
1
Honey
Falling in love was a lot like a car crash.
First, the initial crush. That was the hardest part. Usually it led to a lot of grinding, groaning, and gyrating.
Sometimes whiplash.
Sometimes just the whip or the lash, if that was a girl’s sort of thing.
If all went well, after the heart-stopping, pulse-pounding, breath-stealing bump, the rear-endee and the rear-ender exchanged numbers. In bad cases—well, everyone was quick to point fingers and blame the other person. Who saw the other first? Why didn’t they try to stop?
Then came the inevitable…at least no one got hurt.
But, see, that was the secret. In car crashes and in love, inevitably, someone got hurt. Everything crumpled—bumper to bumper, head to toes.
I had one rule on my quest to serve the best barbeque this side of the Mississippi—don’t get distracted. Probably should have added a second rule—Don’t crash the vehicle housing all the equipment to marinate, smoke, and serve the best barbeque this side of the Mississippi.
At least I realized what had gone wrong just before the crash.
In one hand, I’d held the chocolatiest of all chocolate cupcakes.
In the other, a scalding hot cup of coffee.
All was well…until I accidentally dropped my truck into a chasm to Hell masquerading as a pothole outside of the local church. The wheels went down, the coffee lid up, and with all the ceremony of a college wet T-shirt contest, the scalding hot contents of my cup soaked my chest.
The pothole, grinding tires, and second-degree burns might have been manageable had I not frantically stripped off the coffee-soaked t-shirt melting into my chest.
Sure, I’d saved my own skin. But I missed the stop sign and the pickup truck slowing before the intersection.
In my defense, I came to a complete stop. …It just so happened that I’d stopped courtesy of the pick-up tailgate.
The cupcake? Lost behind an unused brake pedal.
My shirt? Pitched away as I desperately fanned my aching chest.
My food truck? I wasn’t a mechanic, but I didn’t think the engine was supposed to crack away from the frame and clatter onto the road.
I didn’t just crash.
My truck died.
In the time it took to spill one cup of coffee, my brand-newish, kinda renovated, quasi-passable barbeque food truck crumpled like a crinkle-cut French fry.
Not many barbeque greats began their fledgling businesses with a car crash, covered head-to-toe with chocolate and coffee. But a girl had to start somewhere, right? Even if that meant I was dripping wet, scalded in a few uncomfortable places, and had just stained my brand-new I’m-a-working-girl-and-deserve-an-actual-push-up-bra bra.
Sure, I’d been battered worse than a hushpuppy, but one setback wouldn’t ruin my future.
I hoped.
“Oh, Honey!” Mom’s voice carried from a cell phone that had miraculously survived careening from the passenger seat into the windshield. Fortunately, the call stayed on mute. “I just found the cutest picture of you from the restaurant!”
I banged my head against the steering wheel. Oh, this wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.
Hey, Mom, Dad? Know how I literally just left home a week ago to start my own barbeque business? About that truck that you warned was a risky purchase…
Even worse, the owner of the pickup truck adjusted his rear-view mirror and scowled at me.
Damn, his were some intense eyes. Green was usually the col
or of envy, of soft grass, of lots and lots of money that a girl needed to repair her food truck.
But his were green like impatience.
Frustration.
Irritation.
At least he hadn’t been hurt.
Couldn’t say the same for me as his driver’s side door burst open with a particularly violent kick of his boot.
I unmuted my phone and tried to keep my voice chipper. “Hey, Momma…let me call you right back—”
“This picture is too cute—it’s when you were just a toddler, and you crawled under the grease trap—”
“Momma—”
“We had to hose you down in the big sink with all the scraps from dinner—”
I groaned. “Momma, real quick, let me call you—”
“And we had to strip you all the way down to your bare little tushy!”
If I could get through one phone call without my mother waxing poetic about my bum, I’d be a happy and functional adult woman. “Momma, listen—”
“Oh, gosh, and then you put a steak on your head and sang your daddy that song. Now what was that song? Martin, what was that song?”
I sighed. “I’m a little t-bone.”
Her laugh was contagious. She hooted, calling to Daddy. “Oh, Marty. Remember that song…now where are you going, Martin Hudson? You stay out of that kitchen, so help me…”
Momma could take the restaurant away from the chef, but she couldn’t take the kitchen, try as she might. Daddy shushed her, jerking open the refrigerator. The glass jars on the door jingled.
“Honey, you know what I was thinking?” Daddy insisted on joining the conversation by using the kitchen phone instead of letting Momma put the call on speakerphone. According to him, speakerphones made people lazy. Anything worth doing was worth using hands, even when he rooted through the spice cabinet with the phone cradled against his shoulder. “We need more salt in the barbeque sauce.”
Momma snorted. “Don’t you even think about touching that shaker, or I will call on Jehovah himself to turn you into a pillar of salt!”
“It’s for the sauce, Tia,” Daddy said.
“And retirement was for your arteries, Marty. Get your butt back on this couch before I tie you down with your own apron!”
Daddy chuckled. “Haven’t done that since our Honeymoon.”
I wiped my cheek, smudging a wayward streak of barbeque sauce off my skin. I’d need a washcloth and a mop to get the rest. A crimson stain of thick sauce dripped from the roof of the truck, coating my counters, fridge, ceiling, windshield, dashboard…
And me.
I licked a splotch of coffee soaked, chocolate covered barbeque sauce from my hand.
It wasn’t too bad.
I grabbed the phone. “Hey, Daddy—what if we skip the extra salt and add a little espresso and cocoa powder to a batch, just to try?”
I should have known better. Daddy’s Super-Duper-Bad-Ass-Barbeque sauce was one-part family secret, one-part viciously guarded formula, and one-part whiskey. The only time I’d ever suggested a change—even a single extra garlic clove—had resulted in weeks of extensive delegation culminating with the threat of family counseling. However, since Daddy trusted no one outside of the family with the restaurant, therapy might as well have been corporate espionage.
Asking to experiment with two brand-new, completely unorthodox ingredients?
He’d blow out his new stint.
“Lord have mercy,” Daddy said. “Been in business for thirty years, never once did anyone ask for a mocha latte with their pulled pork. Tia, you hear this?”
“Marty, look at this picture! This was from the Halloween party at the restaurant when she was five!” Momma was always good at ignoring Daddy, though I’d suspected a bit of hearing loss helped matters. “Oh, Honeybee. You wanted to go as a sunflower, but you grabbed poison ivy leaves and pinned them all over your tights. You were miserable for weeks.”
Daddy hadn’t handled the recipe suggestion well. He sputtered, laughed, and then reassured himself that surely I was joking. “Honey, what have I always told you? You know why we don’t upset the applecart, right?”
I groaned. “Because we’re not making applesauce, we’re making barbeque. Daddy, I gotta go—”
Too late.
Smoke plumed from under my hood. While Daddy and I prided ourselves on our smoked meats, the stench of scorched oil didn’t compare to a sharp, savory mesquite.
Daddy was often strict on his sauces, but his voice always gentled for me. “Don’t you worry about reinventing the wheel, Honey.”
Oh, I wasn’t. Right now, I fretted about the three precariously clinging to the truck and the one lodged in the pothole half a block back.
Momma’s laugh squealed over Daddy. “Oh, oh, oh. Look at this picture, Marty. Come here, look at this one. This one was Honey’s first day with braces when she got a corn cob stuck in her wire!”
Daddy sighed. “All these new flavors. Everyone tryin’ to out-crazy everyone else. Mangos all over their pork. Oranges in the smokers. Pineapple salsas comin’ out their ears. All these young modern chefs—I’ll tell you what, as long as you said it came from the rainforest, they’d be smothering monkey dung with soy sauce and tossing it on the grill.”
“Remember we had to call the orthodontist and rush her in? Oh, sweet Lord above, she was crying like her mouth got glued shut…guess it did, actually!”
The smoke obscured my view of the pickup truck, and with it, the broad-shouldered man stalking me from the accident.
Oh, I was not decent enough for this apology.
I peeked down, mourning the stains on my bra that tinted the brand-new lace a shade lighter than my ebony skin. My tender, aching skin.
Didn’t coffee stunt growth?
Just my luck. My girls needed the push-up bra to have a fighting chance in a world of competitive barbeque, where pit masters hired models to stand near their smokers and look interested in every type of meat that crossed their path, anything from pork to middle-aged executive.
I hopped out of the seat, ducking into the truck for a handful of ice. The baggies had careened off their shelf, along with hundreds of plastic forks, spoons, and straws. Sauce dripped from the ceiling. One jostled bump against the fridge, and a dozen cans of pop spazzed out, completely dousing the interior of the truck in a fine, sticky mist.
I gave it one last shot. “Guys, I gotta call you later.”
“Marty, are you cooking again?” Momma sighed. “Retirement means putting down the spatula!”
Dad chuckled. “Would rather work with a spatula than a scrap book.”
Momma sassed him. “You spent the last thirty years in that restaurant—you’re gonna need some pictures to remind you what your family looks like!”
“You’re sure to remind me, Tia.”
“Only when I find a picture of you from twenty years ago…look at this one!” Momma whooped. “Remember when the chef was as tough as the meat?”
“Yeah, before someone handed you the tenderizer.”
Pretty sure they forgot I was on the phone. It worked out. Muting the conversation was a lot easier than explaining how I wrecked my week-old food truck.
I wrapped a fistful of ice in my stained shirt and pressed it against my chest. At least I didn’t have much to cover up. I seized a breath and squeezed out of the driver’s side.
The door clattered to the ground, balanced on its side for a long second, then plummeted onto the asphalt.
Fantastic.
The wind shifted, and the engine smoke swirled over me. I gagged, retreating towards the rear of the truck to ensure the most precious cargo had survived the crash—the trailer hauling my sixty-inch commercial barbeque smoker.
His boots crunched the gravel and debris scattered over the side of the road. I counted the steps. Two. Three. A pause.
Probably scoping out the outside of my truck. I didn’t blame him.
Yes. I was driving an ice cream truck.
Yes.
It looked utterly ridiculous selling meat from an ice cream truck.
Yes. I had disappointed countless children and pregnant ladies by not selling any frozen treats on my week-long adventure to Ironfield in my ice cream truck.
But everyone started somewhere. Just so happened that I was starting in debt and would need to sell an awful lot of ribs to pay for the repairs…
Maybe stocking a bit of ice cream for a quick buck wasn’t such a bad idea.
I tucked my muted phone in my pocket before turning to face the other driver.
My goodness. Did my heart get pinned between my truck and his bumper?
Despite the destroyed truck, the utter annihilation of my business, and a rather unfortunate scald over a very delicate area, my day had…
Improved.
This man was gorgeous. That unbelievable, gotta-pinch-his-ass-to-check-if-he’s-real type of attractive that encouraged birds to break into song, the sun to part the clouds, and burning motor oil to caramelize instead of scorch.
He was a titan of muscle, clad in leather and looking for a reason to use his strength.
Dangerous? Maybe. Handsome? Not traditionally. Desirable?
Oh, my yes.
This mystery man was worth one of my few business cards. He could order catering from me anytime…preferably at night.
