Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) (8 page)

I looked under my kitchen sink for a
paper bag…

But there were none. All I had was a
pile of the usual plastic bags you get from Wal-Mart and the Piggly
Wiggly.

What was I…

Mental head slap! It didn’t matter what
the bag was made out of!

I pulled one out and fluffed it open
and I brought it up to my mouth.

I huffed and puffed into it as I headed
for the front door. Just being out of the house—and away from the
blazing Dell computer screen with Janine’s email seemed to help.
The sun radiating down on my skin helped. And the sudden quiet the
street almost never boasted helped too.

I huffed and I puffed, in and out,
sitting on my porch steps, feeling the dizziness slowly go away. I
closed my eyes, trying not to think about what had just caused me
to hyperventilate in the first place.

How had my life gotten so screwed up
that I was now, for the first time in my life, hyperventilating?
What next? One of those anxiety attacks that feel like you’re
having a heart attack?

I cringed at the thought.

I needed to talk to someone…
someone who would figure all this out for me, come up with a way
for me to get out of it…
someone that had
coffee
.

Bette!

She’d shown in the last few weeks she
could fix nearly any situation, and I knew she had very good,
expensive coffee.

I looked over to her house and groaned.
Her Caddy was gone.

No Bette… no coffee…

And then I smelled something—something
delicious, something warm and right out of the oven; something all
together unfamiliar but utterly inviting.

I stood and started walking, slowly,
following the scent. About ten paces away from my front porch I
discerned the rich aroma of coffee too.

I sighed in relief and walked a little
faster. I walked straight toward the source, which turned out to be
the back of Raphael Morales’ house.

No warning bells or whistles went off
in my head. No inner voice screamed for me to flee the way I’d
come. There was only the want and need for coffee… and whatever the
hell smelled so freaking delicious.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I
realized the work crew was gone, though their tools and equipment,
and the ginormous backhoe was still there.

I ducked through the opening in the
sheet plastic and tiptoed through the detritus of the work site.
They’d pulled up half the back porch, and had dug a pretty big hole
there.

I didn’t give it a second thought, and
headed right for the back door. I knocked on the glass—a sheet of
slightly tinted transparency. It was tinted rose. I’d read in a
book once that every house needed a rose colored window in
it.

Maybe that’s what I needed; what I was
lacking?

With a newspaper in his hands, Raphael
came to the door, his eyes trained on what he was reading. When he
got to the door he looked up, and when he saw me his eyebrows shot
up. He laid the newspaper down and carefully reached for the knob
of his back door.

When he opened it, that delicious
smell, and the entrancing aroma of fresh coffee flooded
me.

“
You offered me some coffee
earlier,” I said, my voice cracking, sounding embarrassingly
pathetic.

“
That I did,” he said, his
voice even and careful.

Boy, I must look about around the bend
if this male chauvinist asshole was treating me with kid
gloves.

But my ire just floated off with the
next wave of desperation that flooded through me. I needed coffee,
and to talk… and whatever was making that amazingly scrumptious
smell.

Dear god let it not be him…

I tamped down on my pride, and all the
crazy that was welling up inside me, and looked up into his dark,
infuriatingly sexy eyes.

“
Well?” I said
impatiently.

His eyebrows lifted again
and he turned half a turn, extending his arm in a gesture of
welcome. “
Mi casa es su
casa
.”

I walked into his warm, great smelling
kitchen and followed my nose straight to his coffee maker. I stared
down at the black ambrosia. When I looked up again Raphael was
standing beside me, a spotless white coffee mug held out to me. I
took it and reached for the pot, pouring myself some.

“
Sugar, cream?” he
asked.

I shook my head and brought the mug up
to my lips, scenting the piping hot liquid like an old lover. It
smelled different, and when I took a tentative sip, it tasted
different too.

Actually, as I took another, not at all
tentative drink, I realized it was the best cup of coffee I’d ever
had.

Maybe it was the fact that I was going
through some short-term caffeine withdraw… but I’d gone through
that before. The next cup of coffee was always beyond delicious,
but this was mind-blowingly good coffee.

I shot him a hard look. “You doctor
your coffee?”

He shrugged a cotton clad shoulder and
gave me a sneaky smile, bringing his own perfectly white coffee mug
up to his lips.

“
That’s a mortal sin, you
know?”

He licked his lips and smiled even
wider. “So you won’t be having anymore?” He held out his hand to
accept my mug.

I shrank away from his hand like a
vampire from sunlight. “I didn’t say that.” I took another swallow,
warming, feeling my inner turmoil calm into a placid, glassy pond
of peace.

“
So what’s your
secret?”

Raphael’s faultlessly charming
expression cracked, just for a heartbeat, and then that
irritatingly smug smile returned. “Secret?”

Oh brother. I so didn’t want to start
down this road… and certainly not with him, Mr. Swaggering
Peacock.

“
The secret to your coffee,”
I said, irritation clear in my voice.

“
Oh, well… my mother taught
me this secret when I was but a little boy—”

“
So just a couple years ago,
huh?” I smiled at him. Come on, I couldn’t just let that one slide.
“I’m surprised you’re allowed to play with hot things.”

He didn’t move, and nothing about him
seemed to change…

But all of a sudden the look he was
leveling at me was scorching hot, hungry, and spine-tinglingly
predatory.

Slowly he took in a breath, and then
said, “I play with hot things all the time. You should try it
sometime.”

It felt as if the temperature of the
room had spiked to a hundred and ten, and even though he hadn’t
moved a muscle—any of his simply yummy looking muscles—it felt as
if he was too close, way too close…

And part of me didn’t seem to
mind.

My next breath came in a gasp, and I
broke eye contact with the bastard.

Not going to happen… I was not going to
go down that road.

I closed my eyes, searching for the
darkness it usually afforded me—but there he was, that predatory
look in his eyes. That look made him the biggest, baddest wolf on
the planet, blowing Billy’s glower right out of the
water.

It was like the difference between a
roaring fire in your fireplace, and a forest fire.

Oh boy, was I in the wrong damn place
with the wrong-est man alive.

“
So, what smells so good?” I
said, walking away from him and looking at a long loaf of some kind
of bread cooling on a shiny metal rack. The rack was suspended in
the air with four identical white coffee mugs.

Didn’t the man own a mug that didn’t
belong to a matching set?

My mind drifted on a fun thought, of
buying him a novelty mug, probably from Spencer’s, probably an
insulting one.

“
That’s zucchini
bread.”

My nose wrinkled up at the
thought.

“
It’s my mother’s recipe…
with a few, minor changes.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ll
bet.”

He pulled a perfectly white, perfectly
plain dish from his cupboard—the thing was filled with those bland,
boring dishes—and then pulled out an eight inch bread
knife.

I gulped seeing such a big, dangerous
looking thing in the man’s hand. It was just yesterday that he’d
been trying to chainsaw down my sycamore tree.

He caught my unease. “Nervous?” he
teased.

I shook my head and took another drink
of his amazing coffee. What the hell did he put in
there?

“
Just surprised you feel you
need to overcompensate on every front, whether it’s your car, your
hair,”—I glanced up at the semi Mohawk on top of his head—“or your
bread knife.”

“
That’s just style,
chica
…” he said, his tone
serious and even. “It has nothing to do with content.”

That… wasn’t the comeback I had
expected.

“
So,” he said as he sliced
off a thick piece of the delectable smelling, but gross to
contemplate zucchini bread, slid it on a plate and handed it to me.
“What upset you so much you forgot you hate me,”—he gave me a
knowing look—“and sent you over here to mooch coffee off
me?”

I glowered at him as he sliced off
another piece and pulled it apart with his long, strong
fingers…

What did he do for a living again? Did
it have something to do with those hands?

Well, duh! Almost every job on earth
involved the use of your hands.

I glared one more time and then took a
nibble of the bread.

Oh god it was good… it was
really,
really
good. I took another, much bigger bite, and chewed slowly,
savoring the warm, lovely explosion of taste on my
tongue.

I looked at him. He was waiting, that
infuriating smirk firmly fixed on his face.

Damn him. How could I hate
someone that could make such good coffee,
and
bread this yummy!

I rolled my eyes. “Work.”

He pursed his thick, soft looking
lips.

Bastard was so much prettier than I
was.

Wasn’t freaking fair.

“
Bette tells me you’re a
photographer.”

Bette? The traitor!

I closed my eyes and bit my lip. I so
wasn’t going to tell my woes to this… this…

“
You aren’t going to have a
stroke or anything?”

My eyes snapped open, and he was giving
me that look you give the mentally challenged.

“
No,” I said tartly. “I’m
just wondering why the hell I’m telling you anything.”

He did this shrug thing, which between
his subtle body movements and his placid expression, said nothing
and everything all at the same time.

Good god, this man was
maddening!

“
Out of nowhere my boss has
decided to hold a little party, in one of the Hilton’s big old
ballrooms, where I’m going to be on display—with my work—to try and
lure a bunch of bestselling authors to the publishing
house.”

“
And?” he said, cutting me
another piece of zucchini bread.

I bit my lip. Why was I telling him all
this?

I let out a long, slow breath. “I’m an
artist… a photographer.”

He nodded.

“
I’m not some kind of
performer. I can’t sing these people a song and charm them into
anything.”

He smiled wryly, “You’re right on that
count.”

Oh, screw you!

“
I… I just don’t know what
I’m supposed to do. Janine’s counting on me.”

“
Janine’s your
boss?”

“
Yes. And somehow she’s
gotten it into her head that I’m going to be able to get these
women to leave their rather successful self publishing careers and
sign with her.”

“
And you’re feeling some
performance anxiety?”

I glared at him. He and Bette could
make anything sound perverted.

“
You could say that.” I let
my head fall back as the other weight pressed down on my shoulders.
“Plus one of the authors is bringing her personal cover artist with
her. And… he’s famous, and successful, and utterly brilliant at
what he does. A real artist. And if I don’t wow the crowd more than
he does…”

I just couldn’t say it.

“
Then he might replace
you.”

My head fell so far forward that my
chin touched my collarbone.

“
Pretty much.” I took
another mouthwatering bite of zucchini bread, and mumbled, “I’ve
gotta find a sexy dress and a sexy date by next week for this party
too.”

He nodded.

Oh god this was hopeless.

But the zucchini bread was getting
better with every bite. “Can I take some of this home when I
leave?”

He nodded again. “Sure. I was saving
those bananas for tomorrow,” he pointed to a bowl that
held—ick!—some rotten bananas.