Crush Read online

  Crush

  A Lakeside Vines Novella

  Jen Doyle

  his ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

  This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Crush

  Copyright © 2019 by Jen Doyle

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64197-122-5

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  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  * * *

  NYLA Publishing

  121 W 27th St., Suite 1201, New York, NY 10001

  http://www.nyliterary.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from CALLING IT

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Jen Doyle

  About the Author

  To Uncle Johnny.

  I never got to visit you at Lakeside Village Bookstore (and I’m sure that it was in much better condition than what I portray here!) but in my mind, you’ll always be sitting there behind the counter, encouraging us to follow our dreams.

  * * *

  To Tahiti and back…

  1

  Hi. My name is Maggie and I’m an Alejandro-a-holic.

  Every year she told herself she wasn’t going to do this again.

  Yet every year she found herself sitting in this very same corner at Lakeside Brewery, nursing the very same drink, and watching the very same man as he played pool with his friends across the crowded bar.

  “I think he’s gay,” Maggie heard from a woman to her left.

  She wasn’t sure who, to be honest. It was the kind of place the locals flocked to, even more so during Crush, the region’s harvest-time and heavy tourist season. There were about a billion women standing around her, many of whom looked pretty much the same as far as Maggie could tell. But there was no question as to whom the woman was talking about: Alejandro Garcia.

  Even from across a crowded bar full of strikingly attractive men, he stood out. He was…spectacular. That was the only word she could come up with. Truly spectacular, all inky hair and bronze skin and the kind of body that didn’t really exist. Except it did, the evidence of which was standing there, examining the pool table laid out in front of him, and then…

  A flurry of sighs went up around Maggie as he bent over the table to take his shot, his well-worn jeans molding an ass every single one of these women was envisioning herself holding onto for dear life as he drove into her.

  “Dear God. Please don’t let him be gay,” another woman answered.

  A man behind Maggie said, “Gay would work for me.”

  Another round of sighs rippled through the crowd as he celebrated the making of his shot with a quick grin and a swig of his beer, throat exposed as he swallowed.

  Oh, my, that grin.

  Everything else worked for Maggie, too, but it was the grin that truly got to her. If not for the grin, Maggie wouldn’t be here tonight, in fact. Nor would she have it on personal authority he wasn’t gay. Not for one long weekend per year, at least.

  Although he’d barely so much as glanced at her, she knew he was as aware of her as she was of him and it made her…fluttery. Just being near him again had her heart racing, her breath catching, and all her other parts tingling. She felt like a teenager about to move in for her very first kiss. It was humorous, almost. She was thirty-five years old, for heaven’s sake. As the CFO at a start-up in New York City—a start-up now worth millions upon millions—confidence was the name of her game. He had been her high school crush, though. He’d been so much more than that, truth be told. So none of this should have surprised her.

  But it did.

  She made small talk with some high school acquaintances while he finished up the game, and then she dug the cash out of her purse and paid up her tab. By now she was used to the moment of panic. Was this the year he would say no? Was he here only because he was too nice of a guy to just not show?

  Well, Maggie, if you don’t get your butt up off this barstool, you’re never going to find out.

  Making sure not to show even a wisp of uncertainty on her face, Maggie made her way to the restrooms in the back. Taking the extra room key out of her wallet, she came around the corner and…

  Oh, hell. There used to be a payphone back here. A payphone with a level top where she could very conveniently leave her extra key card.

  She nearly started crying. Yes, she’d come a long way since those awkward high school years. Yes, for three nights each year she shed her straitlaced, don’t-mess-with-me skin and let out the woman underneath, even if only to this one man. But it was a thin line between ‘mysterious’ and ‘crazy, emotional mess’—and she was dangerously close to crossing over it.

  And now the fluttery-ness had moved into jittery-ness and it reminded her of how she used to get when she would sit there in the library, telling herself it wasn’t like the world would end if he didn’t show. So she would turn her attention to making sure the textbook lined up with the table, and then her calculator with the textbook.

  What could she say? She liked order.

  Putting things in their places.

  Putting her key card on top of the payphone so that her secret lover could find it there, damn it.

  This wasn’t the end of the world, either, for heaven’s sake. And she was not about to have a panic attack over the lack of a stupid payphone.

  She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. Deep breath. Deep, cleansing breath. There was no need to stress herself out because smart phones had made landlines obsolete and now she had nowhere to leave her key.

  Seriously, she was a fully functional adult and capable of having an actual conversation with the man she’d been sleeping with—the man she’d been doing this with—for over a decade. It wasn’t like he was blinded by her lingerie the moment he stepped into her hotel room, or that he had no clue it was the brainiac math tutor from high school he’d been slipping away to meet for a few stolen nights during Crush for the last thirteen years.

  Maggie knocked her head back against the wall.

  So maybe, yes, there was a reason she just left her key sitting there on the phone each year. No matter how much she’d accomplished over the years, deep inside she was still that shy, teenage girl. The one who would calm herself down by reciting multiplication tables to herself. The one who was grateful she’d been the one picked to tutor Alejandro Garcia in math senior year because it meant she had a reason to talk to him. Who still couldn’t believe she’d been brazen enough to go up to him at a party later that summer and tell him she wanted him to be her first.

  And he’d said yes.

  “Mamacita.”

  Eyes still closed, she inhaled deeply and was instantly calmed by his scent. Not the earthiness of the fields—he hated wine as much as she did, an oddity in itself here in the Napa Valley. But rather the leather of the jacket he wore; the hint of beer still on his lips.

  She finally opened her eyes a
nd couldn’t help but smile up at him as she held the keycard up between them. “They took my payphone away.”

  “Thank goodness I came along then,” he said, stepping into her space, his hands going to the wall on either side of her head, caging her in. Then his mouth was on her neck, and…

  Maybe she shouldn’t have groaned in quite the way she did—they weren’t locked away in her hotel room, after all. But she couldn’t have helped it if her life depended on it. Oh, how she had missed this. Everything about this. The way Alejandro’s kiss teased at the corners of her mouth and the smile she felt form on his lips when she opened up and let him in. The strong, steady feel of his hands moving down to her hips. The ridges of muscle flush against her and the way they’d taste when she traced them with her tongue.

  She only barely managed to hold back her sigh as he pulled away. Everything went still for a second as he looked at her, clearly about to say something.

  Her heart pounded so hard it nearly jumped out of her chest.

  Was this it? The time he was going to say no?

  Except then he took the card from her hand, and smiled. “Tonight, querida. I can’t wait.” And then he walked away.

  2

  Alejandro Garcia had accomplished a lot of things to be proud of in his thirty-five years on Earth. Being the first in his family to go to college—Harvard, no less—was one. Going on to get a doctorate in Political Science and earning some major academic awards was another. Bucking the trend and returning home to teach at the local community college so he could get kids like him on the path to owning their own land rather than working someone else’s maybe the best of all.

  But being the booty call for a woman he saw once a year and who kept him hidden away from her family and her friends?

  Didn’t even come close to making the list.

  In his twenties, it had been fine; he craved her come Crush. Now, though, he was well into his thirties and he was too old for that shit.

  Granted, he had no interest in making small talk with her friends. He didn’t particularly like the women she hung out with and had no idea what she saw in them. He had no idea what kept her coming back to him year after year yet never taking it further, either. Or maybe he did—maybe it had something to do with his last name being Garcia and her last name being Barnes.

  He really didn’t want that to be the case—he wanted her enough to pretend it wasn’t, balking every time he got close to bringing this whole thing to an end. But he was tired of being her illicit little secret. He was even more tired of it this year after having spent four Friday nights in a row at the bar, playing pool until all hours of the night and waiting for her to show. After thirteen years of the same routine, he’d finally decided to do his thinking with his head instead of his dick and force the issue. No more waiting. No more wondering if she would show. No more hoping she’d be carrying an extra key again and that it would have his name on it.

  Then there she was tonight, her long, black hair framing her face and those big, blue eyes. She’d seemed so lost—so unlike the strong, confident woman he’d come to know. And instead of making his stand, he’d followed her into the back hall and realized he’d wanted her too much to push it tonight. He’d wanted her so much he’d come to the Buena Vista—the town’s five-star hotel, of course—straight from Lakeside Brewery, barely even making it through his last round of pool. So now here he was.

  Resting his forehead against the door, he counted to ten. Then he took the card out of his pocket, swiped it over the keypad, and went in.

  He came to a sudden stop just inside her room.

  Usually she was waiting for him in the bed, a mix of seductive and sweet, with silk and lace in abundance. Tonight, though, she was sitting in the leather chair by the window, her feet curled up beneath her and with her reading glasses on. She held a book in her hand and was nearly swallowed by a big white fluffy robe.

  It was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

  “You’re early,” she said, with a touch of surprise.

  Yes, and not just because of the craving. If he’d let himself dwell any longer on what they were doing—on what she did to him and what he let her do—he wouldn’t have come at all.

  Closing the door behind him, he crossed the room and pulled back the big leather ottoman at her feet and perched on its edge. “Is early okay?” he asked, even though he could already see the answer in her eyes. All the reservations he had faded away. He didn’t understand it; he had no idea how just one look from her drove all of the questions away. Questions he’d spent a year coming up with and yet couldn’t currently remember a damn one of them.

  He reached out and ran his hand across her collarbone, eased his fingertips down her smooth, creamy skin. “So soft.”

  She put her glasses to the side and rolled up to her knees, leaning forward just enough to brush his jaw. “Only for you.” Then she sat back on her heels, her hands going to her thighs. Something in the way she looked up at him through her lashes nearly had him on the floor. He went from half-mast to full salute in 0.2 seconds flat.

  He sat back and looked at her, doing everything he could to keep himself contained. “Untie your robe,” he said, an unaccustomed rasp to his voice. It turned raspier as her eyes flared, first with surprise, and then with arousal.

  The corner of her mouth twitched into a smile. Hell, she practically purred, “Yes, sir,” as her hands went to her belt. This wasn’t the kind of game they usually played, but he was behind it all the way. Especially as she rose up again on the chair, the tips of her breasts coming even with his chin.

  He pulled back enough to see her eyes go dark as he twisted a lock of her long black hair around his finger and pulled. Locked onto her gaze, he pushed her robe back over her shoulders, causing her to arch her back as the robe fell away. He muttered something—no fucking clue what—as he found himself inches away from a black, lacy slip of a dress. Running his hands up the backs of her thighs, he felt the tremor run through her even before he put his mouth to her breast. The lace was rough against his tongue; her nipple beaded instantly. With a groan, he gripped her hips and pulled her down against him. Her hands went to his shoulders, then his hair as she murmured his name.

  He stood up, taking her with him. Thank God the bed was only a few short steps away because he was already halfway gone. The feel of her underneath him as he lay her down—as her hands slipped to his shirt and she tugged it up over his head—almost set him off. When she ran her hands up his back and lifted her hips up into his, he actually saw stars. He raised himself up above her. If she so much as touched a hair on his head he’d explode. Given the smile on her face, he sensed she was well aware of that fact. Only through the act of seizing control—of bending down and dragging his teeth across her neck—did he manage to hold off.

  “Condom?” she gasped.

  “Back pocket,” he ground out, nearly dying as she slid her hand around and into his pocket.

  She took as much time extracting the condom as she did with unbuttoning his jeans and then sliding the zipper down. He jerked into her hands as she pushed down his jeans and boxer briefs. Clenched his jaw so hard he was afraid he’d break it when her chest began to rise and fall in staggered bursts as she very carefully positioned the condom and then rolled it over him. With the most evil smile on her face, she lay back on the bed and wrapped one arm around him, pulling him down to her, teasing his cock with her slippery heat but not quite letting him get to where he desperately wanted to go. Knowing it would drive him crazy, she ran her tongue along his shoulder, nipped at the base of his neck, trailed her hand down and over his hip and just let it sit there not so much as moving an inch.

  He let her play. Raised himself up on his hands and watched her move beneath him until he couldn’t take it any longer. Then he surged up into her in one hard thrust and she gasped. Her legs clamped around him and she threw her head back as she pulsed around him, coming almost instantaneously. Thank fucking God, because he couldn’t hold
back. A roar echoed through his head as he came.

  He only barely managed not to collapse fully on top of her as his arms gave way and he came down hard to the side of her instead.

  Still breathless, she turned to him, laying her hand on his chest. She looked searchingly into his eyes for a moment before resting her head on top of her hand.

  “Well,” she said, a statement if he’d ever heard one.

  A statement about what, however, he had no clue.

  But as long as she stayed draped over him like this, he couldn’t have cared less.

  3

  He was gone by sunrise. Maggie knew it before she even opened her eyes.

  That was fine. It was their thing. She hadn’t expected anything different. She just…

  No. Just because she was in a different place this time around didn’t mean they were.

  Sore in all the right places, Maggie rolled over and rested her head on her hands as she looked out the window. Her room looked out over City Hall, the park beyond it and the mountains beyond that. The view was breathtaking. It was why she couldn’t stay away from Santa Christa even when home was the last place she wanted to be. Even this year—especially this year—the feel and the smell and the look of the mountains and vineyards made everything seem manageable again. The job, her uncle’s death, being on the cusp of a major existential crisis…. None of it felt quite as consuming as it had before. The night with Alejandro was just the luscious cherry on top.