by Jill Shalvis
lesson—there was a huge difference between being able to cut up a carrot in two hundred different fancy ways and flipping pancakes fast enough to fulfill quick orders.
“Another short stack,” Greta yelled at her thirty minutes later.
When Quinn hadn’t been looking, the café had filled up. “It’s going to take a few,” she said. “I need to make more batter.”
“The sign out front says we serve FAST,” Greta said and clapped her hands. “Chop-chop. What the hell are you doing now?”
“Garnishing the plates,” Quinn said. She hadn’t found any fresh herbs but there’d been a bag of carrots, which she’d sliced up for a splash of color.
“She’s cute,” Trinee said. “Real cute. But she’s not especially quick.”
Quinn didn’t even have time to roll her eyes because Trinee was bringing in the orders with alarming speed, stringing them up by her face. Which is how Quinn ended up burning a big pan of eggs. The last of their eggs, in fact.
“I thought you said you knew how to cook,” Tilly said, sounding disappointed from her perch on the counter.
“I think that’s a health hazard,” Quinn said. “Get down.”
“I think that burnt pan is the health hazard,” Tilly said, waving a hand in front of her face.
“Tell us the truth, City Girl,” Trinee said, hands on hips. “You just watch cooking shows and think you’re a chef, right? Which one, Cutthroat Kitchen? Iron Chef?”
Lou poked his head into the kitchen. “You want me to take over? I cooked in the army for hundreds back in the day.”
Quinn gritted her teeth. “I’ve got this.” And she would get this. If it killed her.
“Great. But we’re out of eggs.” Greta shoved an empty basket in her hands. “Go get more.”
“From the store, right?”
“Honey, we ain’t got time for that,” Trinee called in from the other room.
“The henhouse,” Greta said. “Out back.”
The words struck terror in Quinn’s gut. “But . . .”
“The hens are just sitting in their laying boxes on their eggs,” Greta said. “All you’ve got to do is shoo them.”
Quinn looked at Tilly.
Tilly shrugged. “Don’t ask me. The chickens were Mom’s, not mine.”
Fine. Two minutes later, Quinn stood staring at the hens, who were flapping their wings and making threatening noises. “Hey,” she said. “This wasn’t my idea.”
A few of them ran right in her path and she nearly fell to her ass trying to get out of their way. “Stay cool,” she told herself and headed to the boxes where the majority of the hens sat. “I just need the eggs, ladies, that’s all.”
Not a single hen left her perch, all of them mutinously holding guard.
Quinn did as Greta had suggested. She waved her hands and said, “Shoo!”
No one shooed. All of them stared at her with beady black eyes.
“Great.” She drew in a breath and made eye contact with the hen closest to her. “Hi there. You’re pretty, very pretty.” She could see the smooth curve of an egg peeking out from beneath the bird. “And hey, I’m sure you’re used to this, right? So you won’t mind if I just . . .” She tried to pilfer the egg and the hen went batshit crazy, squawking and trying to peck Quinn’s hand off.
Staying cool went out the window. Quinn screamed and ran. She got to the back door of the café and put her hand to her chest to keep her pounding heart inside. By some miracle she still had the basket in her hand.
Greta let her in and looked down at the empty basket.
Quinn gasped for air. “I barely got out with my life.”
Greta rolled her eyes and pointed to Tilly. “Honey, you’re up.”
Tilly hopped off the counter.
“Wait a minute,” Quinn said. “You know how to get eggs?”
“Duh.”
“Why didn’t you just do it in the first place?”
Tilly flashed a smile. “’Cause this was more fun.”
A few minutes later she came back in, basket full of eggs. She handed them over. “Okay, so yeah. I gotta go now.”
“Where?” Quinn asked.
“I take AP English and history classes at the community college in San Luis Obispo on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I can’t get them at my high school.”
Damn. Impressive. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe we can meet up later?”
“I’ll be studying late. I guess I could wake up early if you want to do breakfast.”
Quinn hadn’t planned to stay another day. Her mother would threaten to send out the Coast Guard when she called to tell her. Brock . . . well, Brock was Brock. He’d get over it. But she wasn’t so sure Chef Wade would, or that she’d even have a job to go home to. All of which weighed heavily on her mind, and yet her mouth, clearly not catching onto the reality raining down on her shoulders, said, “That’d be great,” without permission or hesitation.
And then Tilly was gone and Quinn was back to work as a short-order cook. The demands were insane. She was trying to do four orders of eggs and two orders of French toast while simultaneously making up a new batch of pancakes when the toaster caught fire.
She unplugged it and put out the small flames before tipping her face up to the ceiling, speaking to whatever deity was listening. “Are you kidding me with today?”
That’s when the smoke set off the fire alarm.
“Uh-oh,” Not-Big-Hank said, poking his head into the kitchen, helpfully pointing to the fire alarm high on the wall.
“Shit!” Quinn climbed up on the counter and waved at the smoke alarm with her apron, trying to clear the smoke from it so it would shut up.
“That won’t work,” Greta said, hands on hips below her. “The firefighters will already be on their way.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Trinee said. “They’re all really cute. What,” she said to Greta’s eye roll. “I’m a lesbian, I’m not dead.”
The firefighters did indeed come.
So did the entire town, it seemed.
“It’s all good,” Trinee told a fretting Quinn. “Now everyone knows we’re open for business. A lot cheaper than an ad.”
Chapter 12
I’m just a girl, standing in front of a salad, asking it to be a doughnut.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
It was early evening when Quinn drove herself back to the B & B. Between yesterday’s ER trip, failing to impress Tilly into wanting to be sisters, missing Beth, nearly setting the café on fire while cooking, no less, not hearing from Chef Wade about her extra days off—which meant she had no idea on the status of her employment—she was done in.
“Beth?” she whispered to the empty room.
Nothing.
She sighed. “Look, I need to see you.”
More nothing.
Par for the course. She decided what she needed was a bath. She checked the tub carefully. No bugs. She started the water before realizing she had no bubble bath, so she dumped in some shampoo and called it good. She stripped and started to get into the tub and . . .
There was a big fat bug doing the doggie paddle in her fresh, bubbly water.
She shoved her clothes back on, missing a few key items like bra, undies, and socks, and ran out of her room, intending to go straight to the front desk to yell at someone. Halfway down the hallway she ran into a brick wall that turned out to have really great arms that surrounded her.
Mick.
“I like the blue,” he said.
She’d forgotten all about the blue streaks in her hair and let out a watery laugh with her face pressed against his chest.
“Hey,” he said and tipped her face up to his, his warm smile fading. “Tough day?”
“Yes. But that’s another story.” She pointed at her room. “It’s in the tub.”
He took her key and vanished inside.
Ever loyal, Coop went with him.
Quinn moved into the small courtyard, sat on a weathered Adirondack chair that gave her butt splinters, and stared up at the sky, looking for the answers to her universe.
None were forthcoming.
A few minutes later she felt Mick at her side. He was good, she hadn’t even heard him coming. All she heard was Coop dropping to the ground with an “oomph.”
“If you say the bug was small,” she said, “I’m going to have to hurt you.”
“I’m smarter than that.”
She nodded and kept studying the sky because looking at him standing there, tall, strong, ready for anything, made her want things she tried really hard not to want anymore.
He dragged a chair close and sat. Face to the sky like herself, he leaned back, relaxed. “What’s eating at you?”
“Oh. Well . . .” She closed her eyes. “Nothing.” Or you know, everything . . .
“If you don’t want to tell me, I get that, but you don’t have to pretend to be fine when you’re not.”
She opened her eyes and found his right on hers, warm and accepting. No one in her world had ever been able to tell when she was upset or unsettled, or even completely off her rocker.
But this man, whom she’d known all of what, three days, could tell. “I’m not sure where to start.”
“Does it have anything to do with setting the café on fire?”
“Hey, it was the toaster, not the café!” she exclaimed. “If you’re going to listen to the gossip, at least get it straight.”
His mouth quirked and he took her hand, his thumb stroking over her fingers. It was work roughened, with calluses, and gave her a full body shiver of the very best kind.
“It’s about more than the toaster fire,” he said.
She blew out a sigh. “I think Carolyn was hoping I’d stay and help Chuck take care of Tilly, a teenager who thinks I’m somehow responsible for every bad thing that’s ever happened to her.”
“I can sympathize,” he said. “My sister’s twenty-five going on fifteen. She and my mom have butted heads all their lives, so it’s been mostly up to me to keep her on the straight and narrow. It’s been hit or miss at best, which is not something I’m proud of.”
He said this like it really got to him, and she tried to imagine how it would feel to have been responsible for Beth. The truth was, she and Beth had been equals, cohorts, partners in crime, and confidantes. “Did you give it your best shot?” she asked.
“Always.”
“Then that’s all you can ask of yourself, right?”
“Right.” His mouth quirked again. “Are you listening to your own advice?”
She rolled her eyes, and because his nearness—not to mention the testosterone and pheromones coming off him in waves—was distracting her, she pulled her hand free. “I’m willing to do whatever needs to be done for Tilly. It’s . . .” She could still see Beth’s face as she’d looked sitting on the TV the other night. Carefree. Happy. At peace . . .
The opposite of how Quinn felt.
“I don’t know if staying would even help her,” she said. “I’m not sure I’m . . . enough.”
“Quinn, her father walked off into the sunset and her mom’s dead,” he said. “She’s got nothing. No ties, no blood looking out for her at all. Anything you do for her is far more than she has right now.”
She stood up and walked to the end of the courtyard, taking in the inky black lines of the rolling hills in the distance. She felt Mick come up behind her.
“You said you were in a rut,” he said softly, right at her backside, the heat of him warming her. “So why not try something new. Follow your heart and go for it.”
The words drifted over her and made more sense than anything she could remember hearing.
Try something new.
Follow your heart and go for it . . .
“You’re right,” she said softly. And then she did just that, she tried something new. She turned, went up on her tiptoes, and kissed him. Her life was upside down and sideways. More than that, she was feeling way too much, and some of that seemed to be tied to him. So she pressed close and tried to convey that with her mouth, her body. When she stroked her tongue against his, he let out a rough groan and the sound ignited something long dead inside her.
More.
That was her only thought. She needed more, now. So she pulled back and looked at him. She wasn’t the only one who was breathless, a fact that bolstered her courage. She took his hand and led him back to her room, where she nudged him inside and kicked the door closed. Once it was locked, she walked him straight to her bed.
“Quinn,” he said quietly, with reluctance. “You’ve had a rough few days. I’m just here to help.”
She kicked off her flip-flops. “Okay, so help. I need help having fun.”
“I’d be taking advantage of you.”
She pulled off her shirt and heard him suck in a breath at the realization that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Turning to face him, she said, “You’re not taking advantage. If Wildstone and everything in it is my storm cloud, you’re the silver lining. Please, Mick. Stay?”
He let out a short breath and stepped into her, banding his arms around her. “I’m not one to argue with a beautiful woman.”
“Glad to hear it. Consider it one of your best qualities. Even better than your ass.”
He laughed and then so did she, but the breath shuddered out of her lungs when those big work-roughened hands slid up her torso and cupped her bare, aching breasts. Her hands got busy too, sliding inside his shirt, her fingers spreading wide over the smooth, hard planes of his back. He felt big and strong and warm, and she quivered with pleasure, nearly drowning in the unfamiliar sensations, like she was waking up from a long, dreamless sleep.
He cupped the back of her head and held her to him, lengthening and deepening their connection, lazily stroking his tongue to hers until her knees wobbled. “Mick.”
“I know.” But he didn’t hurry, he just kept up the slow, teasing, taunting build, stroking those hands over her until she was whimpering and squirming against him for more.
When they finally broke apart to breathe, he pressed his forehead to hers. “Be sure, Quinn.”
“I am.” She tugged his shirt up, watching with hunger as he took over the task, pulling it over his head and letting it sail through the air behind him. “Now the rest,” she said.
She’d meant his jeans but his hands went to hers. In a blink he had them unbuttoned. He crouched low, easily balanced on the balls of his feet as he slid the denim over her thighs, giving him a front-row view of what he unveiled.
His heartfelt groan told her he liked the commando situation. “I was in a hurry,” she said breathlessly as his hands guided the jeans the rest of the way to the floor. His hands encircled her ankles and then slowly ran up her legs, past her knees, her thighs, not stopping until he ran out of leg. Not stopping then either, lingering to play.
“Mick—”
“Mmm,” he said and she could feel his warm breath brush over her heated flesh, making her tremble, her toes already curling. He just continued his gentle torment, causing an onslaught of erotic need that swept over her. Literally. It had been so long since she’d allowed herself this pleasure, this need . . .
“I can’t stand,” she gasped as she burst and shuddered. Mick rose to his full height and lifted her up against him, fusing their mouths together. Her hands wound their way into his hair, holding him to her as she tried to get as close to him as possible.
Then she was in free fall to the bed . . .
He followed her down, divesting himself of his jeans as he did.
