Prologue
MAX
THEN…
She was beautiful—and I really needed to stop staring.
I checked my watch again. Now, fifteen minutes past the hour. Todd was late, and I wasn’t surprised. Punctuality wasn’t a suit, let alone a strong suit, in my best friend and business partner’s deck of personality traits. From the time we were kids, he’d always been the one sprinting to my house in the morning because he missed the pick-up at his. The one knocking at the classroom door five minutes after the exam started, begging to be let in.
“Max?”
The call caught my attention, and I went to the counter for my coffee. “Thanks.”
The Brew Bar barista smiled back at me as I picked up the mug. “You’re welcome,” I heard her say, but I was already looking away and taking a sip, my attention drawn to the woman sitting at the table by the window again, the light catching her profile and setting her hair into golden fire.
She had me in a daze. I stiffened at the thought, the scribbled note like a weight in my pocket from earlier, but I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop staring. Describing her as beautiful was like calling the sun bright—true, but entirely lacking.
Whoever she was, she wasn’t from around here. I was born and raised in Stonebar Harbor. I’d grown up working at my aunt’s jam business, Stonebar Farms, alongside my dad almost every summer until I was old enough to work full time. If I hadn’t sold or delivered jam to every local in the area, I was now delivering fresh flowers to them. Or would be soon, as soon as MaineStems took off.As soon as my best friend and business partner started pulling some of his weight.
Forcing my eyes back to my phone, I took another draw from my Americano and checked Todd’s text again.
Meet me at the Brew Bar at nine. I’ve got news!
He was now twenty minutes late, but if “news” wasthenews on the one task I’d given Todd to handle on his own—investor funding—then I’d let him slide.
While I’d grown up picking fresh berries and watching the ins and outs of growing a business unfold at Stonebar Farms, Todd had grown up rubbing blazered elbows with vacationing senators, congressmen, and businessmen. Todd McCormickSeniorwas a senator for most of Todd McCormickJunior’s formative years. So while I’d learned the value of hard work, my best friend had been taught how to “play the game,” and I’d lost count of how many times I’d had to walk him back from “breaking the rules.” How many times I’d stopped him from doing reckless things just because he wanted to “get away with it.”How many times he was let in late to those exams, not because he was remorseful, but because every teacher knew who his family was.
I saw it for what it was. A cry for attention from Todd and Mary McCormick, who were born to be politicians, not parents. It was only their pronounced absence that let any of my guidance sink in, filling some of the voids and course-correcting Todd’s trajectory from becoming a total thoughtless prick.
The coffee shop door opened, but it was only Ella who came rushing inside. Ella owned The Pastry Queena few doors down. Ukrainian by heritage, she specialized in all kinds of international pastry delights, and I assumed she was here to refuel after the morning breakfast rush.
I tracked her toward the counter…but only so I could take another look at the golden goddess by the window.
The petite blonde looked like a vintage pin-up in her ripped jean shorts and strawberry-patterned blouse that cinched at her waist and ruffled over her breasts. Her hair fell in loose waves down her back as she sat at one of the backless stools, her sandaled feet resting on the top rung because she was too short for them to reach the floor. She tipped forward, her eyes drifting shut as she put her nose to the bright pink peonies in the vase by the window.Peonies proudly provided by local florist, MaineStems.
Her lips parted as she inhaled, and the look of pleasure on her face—dammit.
I pushed away from the counter and adjusted my cock in my slacks.Twenty-five minutes.Todd was twenty-five minutes late, and I…I wasn’t going to miss my shot.
I needed to meet her. Needed to know who she was. What she was doing here.How long she’d be in my orbit.
I reached her side in a couple of strides, but she didn’t notice. Her eyes were still shut, one hand cupped around the bloom as she let out a soft sigh, the sweet sound burrowing straight to my cock.Damn, what I wouldn’t give to be the man to harvest each and every one of those exquisite sighs.
When I cleared my throat, her eyes fluttered open, big brown orbs taking a second to focus on me.
“Most beautiful,” I said, shoving my hand in my pocket to obscure the stretch across the front of my pants. Between that and my jacket, it should hopefully keep my attraction to her from making this awkward.
Pink colored her cheeks, a lighter version of the shade of the peony petals. “Excuse me?”
“Peonies were originally cultivated in China, and the Chinese word for them means ‘most beautiful.’”
Her bright smile blossomed between full red lips. It was stunning. A welcome punch to the gut.
If the Chinese had been witness to this woman’s smile all those thousands of years ago, they certainly would’ve reconsidered giving the accolade to a flower.
“They’re my favorite,” she said and looked back to the bouquet. “I love how there’s just so much flower inside the bulb…”
“They open up to three times their original size.”Not unlike my dick at the moment,I thought as the pink tip of her tongue slid across her lips.
