With Hearts Aflame: Valentine's Day Box Set Read online

  She obeyed, shutting and locking the door—her store, Maybe’s Candy, her dream—and went to him. The heat of his hand passed across the small of her back as he helped her into the car and shut the door after her. She didn’t see why he’d come back at all until after they’d pulled back out again. He tried to do a three-point turn to go back the way they’d come, but she still saw into the side parking lot where she’d left her car overnight. The tires had been cut and the car thoroughly keyed. Giant gushing penises and the word “Slut” had been scrawled all over it in bright red, dripping paint. Sinclair stared at that until she couldn’t see her car anymore. After that, she stared fixedly at the dash, her face as hot as a furnace and her stomach rolling.

  Two miles out of town, Parker got his car yanked over onto the soft shoulder barely in time for her to stumble out far enough to throw up. She fell apart—waving her hands and sobbing, spitting to clear the taste of coffee and bile from her mouth, with absolutely no idea of what the hell she was supposed to do now. She didn’t know Parker had even got out of his car until his arms were around her and she was being crushed against his chest.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said. “I promise it’ll be okay.”

  But it wouldn’t; how could it be? She had just lost everything—her store, her dream, her livelihood. No, it was not going to be okay. Nothing ever would again.

  * * * * *

  Maybe’s Candy’s first—and last—candy catering party was, if the response of the guests was anything by which to judge, a raging success. Over the course of nine hours and in three distinctive, well-organized waves, nine hundred people in full period costume—be it Victorian, Roman, Gorean, Little and even super heroes (not to mention one or two villains)—came and went. There was lots of laughter, bright music and rambunctious dancing in the middle ballroom, a great deal more laughter and games played in the far ballroom, and enough constant traffic drifting towards her candy buffet to keep Sinclair busy all night long. Even with Parker there to help her, she was moving constantly, keeping the candy tables fully stocked and clean.

  The chocolate fountain was a big hit. They almost ran out of skewers, but Parker sent a runner to the nearest Walmart and they returned with every box the store had in stock. It was just enough to get them through.

  “Oh my God, this is so good!” declared one woman with her mouth full of truffle. “Where can I get more of these? I want to take a whole box home with me!”

  “I want to swim naked in a vat full of this filling,” her companion agreed. “What is this? Raspberry?”

  “Mine tastes like champagne.”

  “That’s it,” the companion said, and began looking around. “I’m making me a sign: Will give head for truffles. I’ll set up business by the door and grab everyone’s chocolates as they walk in.”

  “Look at the cookies!” someone else laughed, pointing. “They look like spanked bottoms! Aw, can you get me one?”

  “The cookie,” the gentleman beside her asked, “or the spanked bottom? Either way, I assure you the answer is yes.”

  And the s’mores buffet brought out the kid in everyone, even those who weren’t dressed as Littles.

  Almost every time he walked past her throughout the day, Parker paused to give her a kiss on the forehead, and Sinclair smiled until it felt as if her face would crack from the strain. She served that seemingly endless stream of hungry guests, laughing and chatting, offering up napkins and small dishes of taste after taste after cookie after snack, until her feet were screaming by the end of it, her arms felt like lead weights, and the small of her back ached in ways two all-day Aleve couldn’t even begin to touch.

  At some point just before the doors closed behind the very last guest, Master Marshall drifted past her table with a smiling noblewoman hanging on his arm. “Well done,” he complimented her. “I am very glad we were able to do business together.”

  And Sinclair thanked him, holding onto her smile with all stubbornness she possessed, because it simply wasn’t done for candy caterers to crawl off in the midst of their own events to cry in corners. That would come later, after the party wound down and what little candy remained was packed back up again.

  “Don’t worry about this,” Parker told her, waving off the mess. Little Maids with big garbage bags were already circling the tables to help clean up. “Come on.” He wrapped his arm around her, tucking her safely up against his side. “How long has it been since you’ve had a good night’s sleep?”

  Not since this whole thing had started, and yet…

  “I don’t want to go home.” If it were possible to finish out her life without ever returning to Granger, Sinclair would have been perfectly happy never seeing any of them again. Not Casey or Charlie or any of the hundreds of people she’d grown up with who she’d thought were so friendly.

  “Unless it’s what you wanted, I wasn’t going to take you to your home.”

  The look she gave him must have been truly pathetic; he kissed her forehead again, before he led her out of the ballrooms. He took her upstairs. Under any other circumstance, it would have tickled her to pieces to see so many of her gift bags still in people’s hands, being passed around, traded and enjoyed.

  “I’m glad they liked my candies.”

  “I don’t think ‘like’ is strong enough for how much they enjoyed your chocolates.” When they reached his door, Parker held it open for her. “Are you hungry? Do you want something to drink?”

  “Yes, to both.” She gravitated immediately to the nearest kitchen chair. He had a bar that separated his kitchen from his living space and stools set up along one side. She slid onto one, bracing her elbows on the table so she could watch while he opened his fridge.

  “We have our choice of… peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or… grilled cheese. Don’t laugh. I make a mean PB and J.”

  “Peanut butter and jelly sounds wonderful.” She bent down under the lip of the counter long enough to slip out of her shoes, rub the soles of both feet and when she came up again, he was just setting a glass of milk on the counter in front of her.

  He was smiling, but his eyes were serious. She didn’t for a second try to pretend she didn’t know where the conversation was about to go. Her stomach tightened, and all the misery she had worked so hard to swallow throughout the party came flooding right to the surface of her. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know,” he said, pulling out what he needed for the sandwiches. “We’re going to anyway. What’s your next plan of attack?”

  Cupping the glass just so she’d have something with which to occupy her, she offered a one shoulder shrug. “I don’t know. At the moment, moving someplace really remote and hiding out for a few years sounds very good. But financially, I’ve sunk everything I had into my store. The check for the party will cover moving costs and, you know, maybe I can set up shop somewhere else. This… this might be a good thing for me.”

  Except that moving meant leaving Parker, and when that realization hit her, it felt like a full-force punch to the chest. But there was no help for it. This wasn’t something that could be fixed by moving one town over. Gossip had a way of following one and starting all the bad stuff over again. If she dared to stay in the area, she would never be able to start over because she could never escape her ruined reputation.

  “Do you need help packing?” Parker pretended to be engrossed in the sandwiches he was making so he didn’t have to look at her.

  “No.” Sinclair shook her head. “The last few days were… nothing like what I thought dating you would be like.” When he smiled, so did she, and for the first time all night, it didn’t feel quite so brittle, even when she had to follow that admission up with, “But I don’t want to make you responsible for my mess.”

  He paused a moment before placing each sandwich on a plate and passing one across the counter to her. “The past few days have been really good for me too. Sweetness, I’m not ready to let you go. So, burden me. Let me be responsible, at l
east for some of it. We’ll put our heads together and maybe between the two of us, we’ll come up with a solution that won’t involve my having to chase you from state to state like some lovelorn psychopath. Either way, I don’t think we should settle on any firm plans until we’ve had at least one good night’s sleep. Eat your sandwich. Let’s go to bed before we both pass out.”

  He was right, and she knew it, but one good night’s sleep wasn’t going to fix today.

  Taking a bite of her sandwich, she stared at her plate and chewed. He was right about something else too. He did make a mean PB and J.

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  The first time Sinclair awoke, the sun wasn’t yet up, a hot mouth was brushing soft kisses up the back of her shoulder, and Parker’s heavy arm around her waist was pulling her in to snuggle against him. He’d already worked one hand down between her legs, gently awaking all her tender nerve endings one scintillating stroke at a time. Finally, he rolled her onto her back and rose above her, his erection brushing at her belly and then lower down as he settled between her thighs.

  “Good morning, sweetness,” he murmured, sliding into her slow and deep.

  “Good morning, handsome.” Sinclair wrapped her arms and legs around him so she could hold him just as close as he could come.

  The second time she awoke, the sun was high, the day was well on its way and she was the only occupant in Parker’s massive four-poster bed. Indeed, she was the only occupant in the whole of his apartment, but as she wandered it, she found two things: on a plate on the kitchen counter, in front of the stool where she had eaten the night before, Sinclair found the collar Parker had given her—heavy and black, the thick austerity of the leather at complete odds with the soft padding inside, and that pretty golden locket with its fond inscription.

  Next to it was a folded note card. It read: Leave the collar here. The next time you wear it, I want to put it on you and I don’t ever want you to take it off. If you aren’t ready to make this commitment, I’ll understand. Either way, look out the window behind you.

  Making her way across the living room, Sinclair parted the drapes far enough to peek outside. Directly below her, the cement patio was a flutter of busy activity. Three rows of nine kitchen staff were throwing themselves into energetic jumping jacks while Cook Connie strolled up and down between them, a very lethal-looking cane held behind her back. She was barking out a rhythmic, “Hup! Hup! Hup!” to help them keep in time.

  Beyond them, down the winding gravel path that led back to the employee’s parking lot, amidst a wholly different flutter of activity, she saw Parker, supervising as her car was unloaded from the flatbed off a city tow truck.

  “Get on up, you lazy bitches!” Cook Connie bellowed. “Put some bounce in it! Two demerits, Martin! Don’t think for a second, I haven’t noticed you half-assing it! Dana! You keep your eyes straight ahead or you’ll finish this routine with my boot up your butt! I’ve half a mind to cane the whole lot of you and start over from scratch! Hup! Hup! Hup, God damn it!”

  Her car was resting on all four flat tires on the pavement now, and there was more than just Parker out there surrounding it. Two men were making slow circles from bumper to bumper, taking in the damage that had been done. One was Marshall, even from here he was easy to recognize; she had no idea who the other was, but when he squatted down to get a better look at the keying damage, Sinclair raced from the window. She ran back to the bedroom, throwing herself into her clothes in record time.

  Back through the Castle, she ran, ducking other guests until she found the ballrooms. From there, she managed to trace her way back to the kitchen where Cook Connie had allowed some of her bitches back inside to start on the lunch menu. An unlucky four—two men and two women—remained out on the patio with the irritable Castle chef. Bent over with their hands gripping their own ankles, not one of them so much as glanced her way when Sinclair dashed outside.

  Taking up her position behind them and running that lethal cane through her fingers, Cook Connie paused long enough to give her a look. “You left my kitchen a mess.”

  “I’m very sorry.” Sinclair edged past her. “We were just so tired last night.”

  “A mess,” Cook Connie repeated, unmoved.

  “I’ll clean it up today, I promise.” With nothing between her and the path now, Sinclair backed rapidly down it. “I’ll do it on my hands and knees. With a toothbrush!”

  “You’d better!” the Castle chef shouted after her, and the first whippy ‘thh-whhup’ of the cane and the masculine grunt it inspired—growled out through gritted teeth, with five more just like it following in swift succession—pursued Sinclair at a dead run all the way to the parking lot.

  The group around her car had grown to include a woman in a tightly-cinched black corset and gauzy skirt so transparent that it amplified rather than hid her bikini thong and thigh-high leather boots. With her, was an entourage of bucket and sponge-wielding boy toys—some were trim, some heavy, one was eighty if he was a day, another looked as if he might be a professional body builder; but all were dressed in identical pairs of the skimpiest bright orange shorts ever to be seen outside of a Hooters… and on men.

  “I want every last speck of spray paint gone off this car,” Parker told the woman.

  “You heard the man,” she told her entourage, and while some quickly set her up in day-spa comfort on a supervisory lawn chair, administering mani - and pedicures, cold drinks and a temple massage, the rest wasted no time at all getting wet and dirty by soaping down her car.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, breathless from her run.

  Holding out his arm, Parker beckoned her to tuck herself into his side. “Nothing, really. At the Saturday morning meeting, someone mentioned setting up a car wash, and I said I knew the perfect one to start with. Next thing any of us knew—” He gestured to her car. “—here we were.”

  Her car was thoroughly buried in suds and busily scrubbing boy toys, some of whom were tackling the dirt, while others went after the paint specifically with little cans of Goof Off. Already the word “slut” and most of the spouting penises had come off, turning the soap and the water spilling down onto the pavement around her car a dull shade of red.

  Touched, Sinclair wrapped her arms around Parker’s waist. “Thank you.” It didn’t make anything better, but for the moment, she felt like it did.

  “Thank Master Marshall,” he corrected. “He’s the one who paid for your towing. And later on, after you’ve thought about it and if it’s something you want to agree to, we have a whole busload of people ready to descend upon your shop and help you move.”

  Sinclair turned to Master Marshall. “I-I don’t have a place to go yet. I haven’t even looked at what’s available, but I don’t think I can stay here.”

  “Here as in, here?” Master Marshall pointedly asked. “Or here as in, Granger?”

  Sinclair looked up at Parker again. He was looking down at her, his eyes shuttered and his smile understanding. He felt tense against her. Blushing, she glanced away only to find herself staring at the car-washing boy toys. “I confess, I’ve never been anyplace even remotely like your Castle before. But,” she turned shyly back to Parker, “I don’t have a problem with anything I’ve seen or done here.”

  Pulling her closer, Parker’s smile and eyes both warmed.

  “In that case…” Master Marshall turned around. “In light of yesterday’s success and the fact that you are now searching out new venues for your business, perhaps you’d consider moving Maybe’s Candy to the Castle. Your clientele would be strictly limited to guests only and online sales, but Cook Connie has agreed to give you access to her third kitchen, and if you need helpers, I am willing to allocate a helper or two until you are in a position to pay their salaries. I’m thinking we can turn that storage room just off the kitchens into your new shop. Master Parker will give you the full tour. When you’ve decided, either way, come to my office. I’ll have your check ready and we can go over any questions
you might have after you attend orientation.”

  “Thank you,” she said honestly. She almost wanted to cry. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything until Master Parker has given you the full tour and a rundown of the rules. You might find this all more than you want to tackle, although I hope not. All everyone is talking about this morning is where can they get more of those truffles. Half the nursery is in high-sugar meltdown, and most of the nobility are weighing the cause of continuing to eat their candy against the consequence of having to loosen their corset stays.” A ghost of a smile curving his lips, Master Marshall shook his head. “Let me know what you decide.”

  When he started back to the Castle, the other Master stepped in long enough to tell Parker, “I can fix those scratches. It’ll take time and the whole thing will have to be repainted afterwards, but it’s not that complicated. Put a naked girl on each hood and I’m sure I’ll have all the help I could ever need, and then some.”

  “Thanks, Alan.” Parker shook his hand, and the olive-skinned Master tossed her a wink before following Master Marshall back down the path toward the Castle.

  Standing side by side, Parker and Sinclair watched as her car was washed, rinsed, soaped up and washed all over again.

  “Are… are you sure about this?” she finally asked. “Don’t you think this is moving a little fast?”

  “You’re right,” he deadpanned. “It’s only been a year. We really should slow down.”

  She smacked his stomach with the backs of her fingers, laughing. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “I know I don’t want to let you go,” he replied. “That’s what I know. So, to me this is a solution worth talking about.” He slipped his hand into hers, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. “Come on.”