Loe raamatut: «A SEAL's Temptation»

Prologue

Last Month

“HEY, LARK. WE need two double-whipped, triple-caramel mocha lattes.”

“And one of those passionflower tarts.” The woman leaned so close she was bent over the counter, then said in a faux whisper, “You know, the ones Heather makes. She told me the ingredients in one of those is enough to make a girl irresistible to any man.”

“Heather said what?” Lark Sommers stopped in the act of ringing up their order to stare.

“You know, that the baked goods here are aphrodisiacs,” Cassia said with a wide grin.

“Hey,” Sara O’Brian whispered at the same time, smacking her cousin on the shoulder. “I thought you said that was a secret.”

“Right, like Lark doesn’t know that Heather’s making her aphrodisiacs for the coffeehouse,” Cassia said, rolling her eyes.

Lark frowned at two of her favorite customers turned good friends, then blinked. First at the curvaceous redhead, then at the kewpie doll blonde. The cousins looked nothing alike. Cassia was as sassy as Sara was sweet. And both were usually pretty perceptive.

Sure, Heather baked for the coffeehouse. Lark’s aunt also baked for the market, for the high school and for three local restaurants. She provided everything from cupcakes to croissants to half the town. So why would Cassia think the tarts were a turn-on?

Before Lark could ask, Cassia continued.

“Look, I haven’t had sex in eight days. That’s more than a week. At this rate, I might forget my best moves.” The busty redhead sounded as if she was about to cry.

And knowing Cassia, Lark Sommers figured she probably was. The only thing Cassia Moore loved more than herself was sex.

Still...

“C’mon, Cassia, you know better than to listen to Heather’s crazy talk,” Lark chided, not caring that she’d just thrown her aunt under the bus. That’s what Heather got for trying to stir everyone’s imagination.

“Then they aren’t real?” Cassia huffed, slamming her hands on her hips so hard her bracelets jangled like bells. “But I need sex. Soon. Today. Now. Otherwise, I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Oh my God, hush,” Sara hissed, hunching her shoulders before looking right, then left to see if any of their fellow caffeine addicts had overheard. Color washed her sweet face from her dimpled chin to her pale blond roots. “Do you think everyone in The Magic Beans wants to know that you’re desperate?”

“Desperate? You go a week without sex and see how you feel.”

It only hurt for the first thirty weeks. But Lark didn’t figure sharing that little tidbit of knowledge would help, so she kept it to herself. As the cousins bickered, she tried to remember what went into a double-whipped, triple-caramel mocha latte—and what was up with multiples? And why wasn’t regular coffee good enough for people?

She slid a quick glance toward the counter, with its old-fashioned cash register, antique metal tin of honey sticks and vintage cake servers, one piled high with tiny yam scones under the domed glass, the other with a variety of muffins.

Lark bit her lip, and as soon as she was sure that the two women were totally engrossed with their debate, she slid her laminated cheat sheet out from its hiding place tucked between a commercial coffee machine that looked as if it should be on a spaceship and the midnight-blue wall.

After a quick glance at the ingredients and steps, she began measuring, whipping, mixing and stirring. While she did, her friends debated the reality of magical tarts and if it was fair to use them to get a guy into bed. As she so often did over the past year, Lark felt as if she’d fallen down a very dark rabbit hole.

She pursed her lips, studying the only part of the café that felt like her—a half wall of shelves holding ceramic cups, bowls, mugs and dishes. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d made them for her mom when the older woman had decided to open a coffeehouse. Scattered around the place on high shelves and display cabinets were a few bigger pieces that she’d shipped from her studio in San Francisco. Guilt pieces, she called them, because she’d sent them instead of taking time out of her busy life and dream career to visit her mom’s new home in Idaho. And now they were all that was left of Lark’s dream life. Just like the coffeehouse was all that was left of her mom.

Knowing if she thought about it too long, she’d sink into a funk that would inevitably have her drinking chocolate syrup from the bottle, she blocked the thoughts. Instead, she carefully chose two of her favorite style, the tall fluted ceramic cups a rich blue glaze dripping over teal.

“Lark, if you did believe in magic, would you think it was okay to use it to get a guy naked?” Sara asked as Lark filled the mugs with the mocha-caramel-caffeine mixture.

Once upon a time, Lark had believed in all sorts of magic. In positive energy and thinking good thoughts and wishing on stars. But that was then—she frowned—and this was now.

“Nope. I’m not getting between the two of you.” Grabbing the whipped cream dispenser, Lark shook her head. When a single strand of hair, black and silky, slid out of her French braid, she blew it out of her way. She’d missed her last two hair appointments because she was too busy to leave the café. And maybe, just maybe, because she couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for her haircut at a place called Budget Cuts—the only salon in Little Lake, Idaho—population ten thousand—that didn’t sport a barber pole.

“Okay, fine,” Sara said, shooting her cousin a sideways look. “How about this question. Do you think it’s okay to talk about your lack of sex in public?”

Lark held up a shaker bottle of mocha magic, a chocolate dust her aunt made for the drinks. When both women nodded, she shook a dusting over each mountain of whipped cream and considered the question.

“I think it depends,” she said with a shrug, relaxing now that they were served. She leaned one hip against the counter, trying not to yawn. This getting up at five in the morning thing was for the birds.

“Depends on what?”

“On whether the discussion is between good friends or virtual strangers. On if it’s held in quiet, considerate tones or put out there loud enough for the guy in the corner to hear.”

The three women glanced across The Magic Beans. The café was on the small size so they didn’t have to strain their eyes. Seated in the corner at a table made of a tree stump was a man who looked older than the dirt the tree had grown in. Grizzled and Grumpy, Lark had nicknamed the café’s regular. But he wasn’t paying any attention to them, so obviously the sex talk hadn’t reached his hairy ears.

“But most of all,” Lark added when the other two women turned to face her again, “it depends on if one of the friends is getting sex and the other isn’t.”

“Ha, there you go.” Cassia did a little happy dance boogie that did get Old Joe’s attention. He sent them a scowl and a growl from his corner before snapping his newspaper. Cassia gave one last defiant hip wiggle, then she poked Sara in the shoulder. “See, it’s okay to talk about how devastating it is that I haven’t had sex in over a week.”

“Devastating?” Sara rolled her eyes. “I haven’t had a date, let alone sex, in three months.”

“Boo-hoo to both of you,” Lark said with a laugh, taking her bottle of iced lemon water from under the counter to sip. “I’ve been in dry dock for seventeen months, eleven days and—” she glanced at her watch “—nine hours.”

“And you’re not stark raving crazy?” Cassia shook her head and eyed Lark as if expecting her to burst into maniacal laughter or run around the cozy café, screaming her head off.

Or worse, curl up behind the counter and cry. Which, Lark acknowledged with a sigh, was a possibility that grew stronger every day.

But not over sex.

Before she had to admit that, or react to the pitying look on her friends’ faces, the door chimed.

“Well, well, what have we here? Three lovely ladies and coffee. What more could a man want?”

“Eww,” muttered Cassia.

Sara pulled a face.

Lark barely managed to keep her smile in place as Paul Devarue approached the counter. The banker’s pale gray suit did nothing to disguise his bulk, nor did his carefully styled hair hide the fact that he was balding.

Lark told herself not to hold any of that against him. Nor should she blame him for his ongoing campaign to convince her to sell her mother’s coffeehouse so he could demolish Raine Sommers’s legacy to put in a minimall. As he so often said, that was only business.

Yet, no matter now often she told herself all of that, she simply couldn’t stand the guy.

“Good morning, Paul,” she said, grimacing when he subtly nudged Sara and Cassia aside. Before Cassia could nudge him back, Sara grabbed their mugs by the thick handles, shoved one at her cousin and gave Lark a little finger wave.

“What can I get for you?” she asked. “Your regular? Black coffee, large, and a banana hazelnut bran muffin?”

The kind that came from the bakery. Not from Heather’s creative kitchen. Not that aphrodisiac-laced treats would work on a guy like Paul. Lark’s mom had always said that the first tenet of magic was imagination.

“Coffee and a muffin sounds just right. The perfect start to the day.”

Lark glanced at the funky clock on the wall, a mosaic of coffee beans with spoons for hands, and gave a fond thought to the time in her life that she’d called 10:00 a.m. the start of the morning.

“Did you want it to go?” she asked, lifting the lid of the domed dessert dish and, remembering to use a napkin, grabbed the largest muffin.

“Here is fine. With business so slow, I’m sure you can keep me company for a while.”

Oh, goody. Lark filled a rich purple mug etched with stars with coffee and tried not to grimace. That sounded about as fun as being kicked in the gut by a scary clown during a tax audit.

Or barring that, having a pity party over her nonexistent sex life.

* * *

“I HATE THAT GUY. He’s such a jerk.” Her eyes narrow with suspicion, Sara watched the smarmy banker lean forward, damn near climbing over the counter to shove his capped-tooth smile in Lark’s face. “Look at how he’s getting in her space. That can’t be good. A guy like that, he’ll smudge her aura.”

“You’re a goofball,” Cassia said, shaking her head. But she twisted in her chair to check it out. “Quit worrying. It’s not like he’s hitting on her.”

“Worse. He’s nagging at her. And if he keeps at it long enough, she’ll cave and sell him The Magic Beans. If she does, she’ll move away and then we’ll lose a good friend. A good friend with a great wardrobe that she lets you borrow. Then what?”

Misery was what.

Misery for Sara, that was.

She’d lose her best friend. The coolest person she’d ever met. Lark was everything Sara wanted to be. Sophisticated yet bohemian. Clever yet sweet. She had a degree in Fine Arts, she’d owned a chic apartment in San Francisco and worked in a fancy art gallery and attended fancy art shows there featuring her own pottery. She’d had it all.

And she’d given it up for family. Lark had come to Little Lake, Idaho, a year and a half ago because her mom was sick. When Raine Sommers’s flu had turned out to be cancer, Lark had stayed. First to take care of her mother, then after Raine passed, to take over running The Magic Beans.

Sara thought Lark was the strongest woman she knew.

“Well, she’s not happy,” Cassia pointed out. “She puts on a good face and all. But she’s working her tail off to keep this place going like if she doesn’t her mom’s gonna come back and kick her ass.”

Sara winced and resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. If ghosts where real—and she was sure they were—talk like that would earn a good haunting.

“She promised Raine that she’d keep it going.”

“Lark shouldn’t be miserable just because she made a deathbed promise.” Cassia shook her head. “That’s, like, medieval.”

Sara hummed instead of answering. She knew Lark was sticking around for more than her mom’s legacy. Raine’s insurance hadn’t gone very far, so Lark had sold her San Francisco apartment and taken out a second mortgage on the coffeehouse in the hopes that something—anything—would change the prognosis.

The bottom line was that Lark couldn’t afford to leave. But Sara wasn’t telling Cassia that.

“And speaking of medieval, can you believe she hasn’t had sex in eighteen months?”

“Seventeen months, eleven days and nine hours,” Sara corrected. Then, frowning, she added, “Maybe ten by now.”

“No wonder she’s unhappy. I mean, can you imagine going that long?” Cassia gave an exaggerated shudder, but the horror in her eyes was real.

“Well, her heart was broken,” Sara pointed out. “Between her mom and that jerk, Eric, she’s had a lot to deal with.”

Eric had been Lark’s sexy San Francisco guy. They’d been practically engaged, and he’d cheated on her the first week she’d been in Idaho. Worse, Lark had found out when a friend posted New Year’s pictures on Facebook—one of which was her true love with his lips plastered on a busty blonde’s mouth and his hands on her butt.

“That’s the answer,” Cassia exclaimed, slapping her hand on the table. Sara hissed when everyone, including the woman whose sex life they were whispering about, looked over.

“What’s the answer?” she asked when they all turned back to their own business.

“Sex.”

Sara blinked.

“Sex?”

“Yeah. You know, the horizontal boogie? The mattress mambo? Riding the—”

“Stop!” In defense against the onslaught of euphemisms, of which she knew Cassia had legion, Sara threw up a hand. “We’ve already established that I know what sex is. What I don’t know is why you think it would help Lark right now.”

“Sex helps anything, anyone, anytime,” was Cassia’s sage response.

“How is sex going to help Lark’s situation?” She didn’t ask how it’d help Lark personally. She knew what Cassia would say to that.

“Sex will keep Lark from seizing her engine.”

“What do you mean?”

Her cousin grinned. “Remember that mechanic I went out with for a while?”

“The one who liked to, um, do you on the hood of his Camaro,” she asked. At Cassia’s nod, Sara shrugged. “So?”

“While we were doing the hood hop, he rebuilt my engine.” Smirking at Sara’s arch look, Cassia shook her head. “That way, too, but I mean he literally rebuilt the engine of my ’Vette. Chewed me out for not taking care of it properly, too. Said that an engine has to stay lubricated if it’s going to run right.”

Confused, Sara lifted her mug to lick the last of the whipped cream from the side. Maybe if the sugar high kicked in, she’d understand.

“Lark needs sex,” Cassia explained patiently, pushing aside her coffee mug, only half-empty. “It’ll give her a boost. If she’s boosted enough, she’ll be able to figure out what she wants to do with her life, she’ll know how to handle the coffeehouse and, let’s face it, she’ll feel damned good.”

Sara pursed her lips and thought over Cassia’s words. Sara was a smart woman when it came to most things, but in the matter of sex, she always bowed to Cassia’s greater knowledge. Everyone did. She wanted to suggest Heather’s aphrodisiac tarts, but knew better.

“So you’re saying if we get Lark some sort of date that she’ll stick around? I mean, that she’ll be happy,” Sara corrected, not wanting to sound selfish.

“It can’t hurt,” Cassia said with a wicked smile. “Now, let’s figure out who to hook her up with.”

“He has to be good-looking.”

“Better if he’s got a rockin’ bod. The kind that will make her mouth water and her hormones stand up and dance.”

“Someone with a good sense of humor,” Sara decided as she nibbled her bottom lip. “Lark’s had it rough the last couple of years, so someone who makes her laugh would be nice.”

“We want someone with stamina. A guy who can give her a dozen orgasms in one night, and still greet her the next morning with a breakfast boner.”

“A breakfast...” Knowing her cheeks were turning pink, Sara shook her head. Just when she thought Cassia couldn’t shock her any more.

“Yeah. Every woman deserves a once-in-a-lifetime guy. He needs to be temp, though. You know, transient. Otherwise Lark will get all emotionally involved and it could mess with her mind. That’d just put her right back where she is now.”

“I was thinking a local guy, someone who’d make Lark want to stay.” Sara frowned.

“Nah. Lark’s been here a year and a half—if there was a guy who appealed to her, she’d have already met him. We need a temporary guy to pop her cork, then once he’s gone, she’ll be more amenable to looking at the locals.”

“Good point,” Sara agreed.

Lark’s perfect guy, but temporary.

He’d have to be good-looking, fun and nice. Cassia would toss in sexy, so Sara figured that probably mattered, too. Someone who wouldn’t screw Lark over like Eric had.

Sara quit nibbling her lip and started sucking on it instead, her mind racing. It could be one of those two birds with one stone deals. She’d help Lark, keep her best friend and fix a few family issues all at the same time. It was a crazy idea, but maybe...

“You thinking one of those online dating services? Because I tried that a couple of times and those guys lie. They tell you they’re sporting ten inches and they really got three.” Cassia shook her head. “Why don’t I check my history book, see if there’s anyone in there who’d tempt her.”

“Nope.” Sara waved a dismissive hand before the sleek redhead had her little black book cleared from her purse. “I’ve got the perfect guy for Lark. Absolutely perfect.”