Just One Kiss Read online

  Tempted by taste…

  Nestled in the heart of Seattle, A Taste for All Pleasures is a warm hub of decadent baking delights. Sweet buttery cookies with melted chocolate, yummy cupcakes with creamy soft icing...and the owner, Angela Loukas, is about to meet a mouthwatering morsel of a man—one she can’t resist!

  Unfortunately, Daniel Flynn is officially celibate. No sex. No dating. It’s criminal, really. But once he steps into Angela’s shop, he remembers what temptation—in the form of chocolate icing and a mischievous set of chocolate-brown eyes—feels like.

  Now he wants to have his cupcakes...and Angela, too!

  “So the best part of being a baker is giving people pleasure?”

  Daniel’s grin made Angela catch her breath. His blue eyes had caught the late evening light. His white teeth were surrounded by golden, smoothly shaved skin that looked as if it smelled and tasted wonderful. Angela felt as if her body had stopped functioning. Certainly her brain had.

  Daniel knelt at her feet; his fingers landed softly on her bare knee, shooting Angela through with arousal as if he’d touched her…somewhere else.

  “I think you could give me a lot of pleasure.” His voice was low and slightly husky, his eyes didn’t leave hers, so blue and so serious, humor dancing at their edges.

  Angela’s cue. Her hands landed on the firm planes of Daniel’s pecs, her mouth lifted toward his. “I think I’d like to.”

  “But…”

  “No.” She put her finger to his lips, heart thudding. “We’re here, Daniel, you and I. We’re alive and we’re together. This is supposed to happen. For both of us.”

  “You’re okay with this?” Just to be sure.

  “Yes.” He murmured the word without hesitation; his hand cupped the back of her neck and he bent to her mouth, his lips sure and sweet.

  Dear Reader,

  When I visited a friend in Seattle a few summers ago, I knew I had to set a book there. After the idea came to me for a miniseries about friends whose businesses represent the five senses, I realized I could set three books there! It’s a great town, clean, green and close to one of my favorite things in the world: the ocean.

  Of course the five friends who own the Come to Your Senses building not only explore Seattle’s great food, coffee and hot spots, they also find love. In this first book, Just One Kiss, expert baker Angela struggles with wonderful and sometimes overwhelming feelings for the unexpectedly sexy Daniel, who, finally throwing off past grief, is ready to taste everything she has to offer.

  It’s very exciting starting a new series. I hope you enjoy all the books in Friends with Benefits!

  Cheers,

  Isabel Sharpe

  www.IsabelSharpe.com

  Isabel Sharpe

  Just One Kiss

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Isabel Sharpe was not born pen in hand like so many of her fellow writers. After she quit work to stay home with her firstborn son and nearly went out of her mind, she started writing. After more than twenty novels for Harlequin—along with another son—Isabel is more than happy with her choice these days. She loves hearing from readers. Write to her at www.IsabelSharpe.com.

  Books by Isabel Sharpe

  HARLEQUIN BLAZE

  11—THE WILD SIDE

  76—A TASTE OF FANTASY*

  126—TAKE ME TWICE*

  162—BEFORE I MELT AWAY

  186—THRILL ME†

  221—ALL I WANT…**

  244—WHAT HAVE I DONE FOR ME LATELY?

  292—SECRET SANTA

  “The Nights Before Christmas”

  376—MY WILDEST RIDE††

  393—INDULGE ME§

  444—NO HOLDING BACK

  553—WHILE SHE WAS SLEEPING…§§

  539—SURPRISE ME…§§

  595—TURN UP THE HEAT~

  606—LONG SLOW BURN~

  619—HOT TO THE TOUCH~

  *Men to Do

  †Do Not Disturb

  **The Wrong Bed

  ††The Martini Dares

  §Forbidden Fantasies

  §§The Wrong Bed: Again & Again

  ~Checking E-Males

  To Mark, who, among many other

  wonderful qualities, puts out a good bake.

  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

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  1

  “YOU ARE WELCOME.” Angela Loukas handed the plump waxed bag across her sparkling glass counter to her favorite customer, Marjorie. The seventy-something woman came daily to Angela’s bakery, A Taste for All Pleasures, between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. for her next-day’s breakfast—today a cinnamon-pecan roll. Given that Marjorie weighed about a hundred pounds, Angela worried the bakery items were all she was eating. “Would you like a black-pepper fruit tart for dessert tonight?”

  “Oh…” Marjorie glanced doubtfully at the tiny tarts—raspberries, blueberries, kiwi slices and mandarin sections glistening with currant jelly glaze and speckled with crushed black peppercorns.

  “On the house,” Angela said impulsively. “For a loyal customer.”

  “Oh, well. I can’t say no to that.” She reached to accept the tart, fragile hand bones extending from her flawlessly tailored coral linen suit. “I’ll eat it right away. It looks too good to wait.”

  “I hope you enjoy it.”

  Marjorie took a bite and chewed carefully. “Hmm. Yes. Very nice. But your muffins are exquisite. And those cinnamon rolls…my goodness. As if God had smiled on them.”

  Angela kept her expression warm, but her heart sank. God hadn’t smiled on the tarts? Maybe she needed to revise the recipe yet again. “Thank you, that’s very sweet.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll see you tomorrow, Angela, dear.”

  “See you then.” Angela waved the tiny woman out of the shop, still pondering the reaction. She’d added the new section of European pastries to her year-old bakery in the last few months. So far, in spite of low prices and occasional giveaways, and in spite of Seattle’s relatively sophisticated population, her customers still seemed to prefer the standard cookies, muffins, cupcakes, simple breads and other familiar baked goods she’d started with while she built confidence.

  Her dream was to turn A Taste for All Pleasures into a European-style bakery known city-wide for its selection, quality and aesthetics.

  Not there yet, but she wasn’t giving up.

  Her door chime began a phrase from one of Angela’s favorite songs, Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” Seth Blackstone, whose music studio was upstairs in the building, had rigged the notifier to play her favorites when customers came in.

  Angela’s welcoming smile got wider when she saw Bonnie Fortuna, gifted florist and owner of Bonnie Blooms, the shop opposite hers in the building she and four other entrepreneurial friends who’d graduated from Washington University together had bought a year before. Four businesses were arranged on the first floor, with individual apartments and Seth’s studio/apartment combination on the upper.

  “Hey, Bonnie. How’s things today?”

  “All good.” Bonnie stood in the center of the bakery, wearing her trademark hodgepodge of styles and colors, proffering a vase of burgundy and pink alstroemeria. “Thought you’d like these. Maybe over by the coffee?”

  “Ooh, those would look great, thanks.” She watched Bonnie rotate the black-and-silver vase on the high counter until the arrangement sat just
right against her faintly rose-colored walls. “Would you by any chance be hoping to trade for a cookie?”

  “A cookie. Well…” Bonnie gave the flowers one last look and nodded her satisfaction. “I could find uses for a cookie. Especially if it happens to be walnut-chocolate-chunk.”

  “It does.” Angela handed one over. “What’s new?”

  “Wait, let me concentrate.” Bonnie bit into her cookie and closed her green eyes rapturously, a smile curving her bright red lips. “Ohhh, these are so amazing. You are Seattle’s cookie queen.”

  “Thanks.” Angela leaned her elbows on the counter next to the register. Cookies. Yeah. Ordinary, everyday recipes she could make in her sleep. “So what’s going on? Did that guy you met dancing ever ask you out?”

  “Oh, him. Yeah, sort of.” Bonnie made a face.

  “And…?”

  Bonnie studied her alternating scarlet and black fingernails a little too carefully. “I wasn’t really feeling it.”

  “Why not? You don’t have to marry him, just go out.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Geez, Bonnie. You can’t sit around the rest of your life wait—” She stopped herself from blurting out her suspicion that Bonnie was still waiting five years later for their resident musician, Seth, whom she dated junior year until he freaked out over how serious the relationship was getting. Bonnie hadn’t come close to being serious about anyone else since. “You can’t avoid men forever.”

  “I’ve dated plenty. What about you? You’re not exactly pouncing on single guys, either.”

  “I’m not…ready.” Angela winced at how lame the excuse sounded. She’d been divorced for three years, after nine months of a dream-come-true marriage that turned nightmare when Tom was unfaithful with the exact type of woman his parents had wanted him to marry in the first place. Annabel, aka The Princess, was tall, WASPy and aristocratic, with strawberry-blond hair, flawless skin and an inheritance the size of her chilly conceit. While there sat half-Greek wallflower Angela Loukas—not tall, not blond, not rich, not chic, and worst of all, not perfect.

  “Tom was a dork.” Bonnie glanced longingly at the cookies, separated from her by a cold, uncaring pane of glass. “You can do sooo much better than him.”

  “Maybe. If I wanted to try.” She reached down and pulled out another walnut-chocolate-chunk. “It’s tough to recover from that much fun.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re telling me if the perfect man walked through that door tomorrow and asked you out you’d turn him down?”

  “Ha!” Angela handed the cookie over. “First of all, I matured out of the perfect-man fantasy when Tom came home late with hickeys all over him.”

  “Ew.” Bonnie grimace melted into bliss when she started in on the second cookie.

  “I was so naive I thought there was a grand plan written somewhere, ‘Tom and Angela, love at first sight until death parts them.’ Yeah, right.” She wiped her hands on her apron, creamy white with the A Taste for All Pleasures logo Bonnie designed in rich burgundy: various breads tumbling from a cornucopia. “Death didn’t part us, his dick did.”

  Bonnie gave a shout of laughter, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “I’m sorry.” Her fingers lifted to let the words out. “It’s not funny, except that it is.”

  “I know. It’s funny now. Sort of. Sometimes.” Angela wrinkled her nose. “I just don’t know how you ever trust that love-feeling again once you’ve been busted up like this.”

  “You want to know what I think?” Bonnie’s walnut-chunk was fast disappearing. “I think someday you’ll meet a guy who makes you realize how effed-up Tom was. You didn’t have anyone to compare him to since he was your first love.”

  Angela stared at her, wondering if she had any idea how that advice could be applied to herself about Seth. Probably not. Every time Angela gently broached the subject of Mr. Can’t-Commit, Bonnie turned bristly with denial and stopped listening. “You may be right. But forgive me if I am not holding my breath.”

  “Understandable. We all have to go through our bitter stage.” She started backing out, hand raised in a wave worthy of royalty. “I’ve gotta get back to the store. Thanks for the cookies.”

  “You’re welcome. Thanks for the bouquet.” Angela watched her scoot over to her shop, worrying that there hadn’t been enough flower-selling going on lately if Bonnie’s frequent drop-ins to the bakery were any indication. It wasn’t easy starting your own business; the five of them had some pretty rough times just getting the building bought and renovated. Close friendship was the miracle that helped them survive, but none were taking long-term success for granted.

  They’d passed the one-year anniversary of the building’s grand opening three months earlier, in January. They’d named the collection of businesses Come to Your Senses after one of them—Bonnie, Angela thought—realized that their five fields represented the five senses: taste—Angela’s bakery; sound—Seth’s music; smell—Bonnie’s flowers; sight—Jack’s photography; and touch—Caroline’s physical therapy studio, bought by a woman named Demi Anderson after their beloved friend got married and moved out of state. The building’s sign, painted in whimsical, colorful letters by Bonnie, hung over the front entrance to the ornate brick building on the corner of Broadway and Olive, a great location surrounded by other businesses, with Seattle Central Community College and Cal Anderson Park a few blocks down the street, and with nearby neighborhoods housing a population that wholeheartedly embraced the concept of anything goes.

  The door chimed—another customer, or in this case, a slew of them, teenagers ready for a pre-dinner appetite spoiler. Angela called Scott, her black-haired multipierced part-time student helper, out of the back where he was sweeping the kitchen, and together they got the crowd taken care of. Two tangerine scones, three pumpkin muffins, eight assorted cookies and four cupcakes. Nothing from France: mille-feuilles, croissants. Nothing from Greece: baklava, kourambiedes. Nothing from Italia: pignoli cookies, spumenti, each recipe made with her own special twist.

  Scott returned to his sweeping and Angela glared around the now-empty shop, the last coffee-drinker having vacated his table. She was not going to give up her dream of having a bakery like the ones she and Tom saw on their European honeymoon. Especially because Tom’s voice was still echoing in her head—stick with what you can manage—as if he’d never expected her to rise above a chocolate chip cookie. As if she’d always be plain old unsophisticated Angie…

  Stalking out into the store, armed with a rag and cleaner, she wiped down the four small and rather rickety tables. Someday her bakery would be the talk of the town. Not for bran and bland, but for elegant and exotic. She’d be—

  “Excuse me.”

  Angela turned abruptly. Customer. She hadn’t heard the chime? It meant a lot to her when people first entered the shop to be waiting attentively, welcoming smile in place. “Hi, there. May I help you?”

  Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Had they opened the gates to Olympus and shooed a demigod into her shop?

  Clear blue eyes. Strong chin. Sandy hair, kept short. Golden skin. Mouth with clean lines, slightly fuller lower lip—she must be staring like a crazy person to notice all that. And he was staring back. Expectantly. Had he answered her offer of help? Had she missed that, too? Had she gone suddenly deaf?

  She scooted to safety behind the counter to stash the cleaner and regain her composure, then tried again. “May I help you find something?”

  “Oh. Sorry. Yeah.” He laughed awkwardly, a surprising contrast to the masculine-warrior aura he gave off. “I guess I was in another world.”

  Whew. So she wasn’t the one who had taken that trip. “I understand. Sometimes this world is hard to take.”

  He looked wary, as if he thought she were about to recommend a specific alternative. “Very true.”

  Silence.

  She could not ask him again what he wanted. So she’d stand here gazing her fill while he scanned the cases until he figured it out. N
ow that she looked past the initial impression of “hot damn,” she saw his eyes were haunted, dark circles under them; a vertical line bisected his brows; the stunning lips were set tightly. Not a happy man.

  As usual, when she encountered someone in pain, Angela wanted to help. Stuffing a person with baked goods wasn’t always a healthy way to deal with grief, but sometimes short-term sweetness went a long way toward curing what ailed a person.

  “If you have any questions…”

  “I am here to buy something, not just to stand gawking.” He tore his eyes away from her bread shelf, mouth quirked in a self-deprecating smile that didn’t reach his eyes, but softened his features enough that Angela’s heart skipped a beat. Not so much the wounded warrior when he smiled. More like a man she’d like to get to know. As a friend. A very sexy friend…

  “All gawkers welcome.” She returned his smile, feeling as if some internal light fixture, which had been dark for ages, was sparking signs of life. “Did you have something in mind?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “Bread?” She gestured to the loaves he’d been ogling. “All made daily on the premises.”

  “No, actually.” His voice broke. “I’m here for cupcakes.”

  Cupcakes. So much emotion in that word. What was the significance? She was dying to ask, but gestured instead to the case on her right, where rows of them, somewhat depleted by the day’s purchases, were displayed. Angela decided impulsively that this particular demigod was a chocolate guy. Not devil’s food or German sweet, but dense, moist, bittersweet. Possibly with coffee frosting, or caramel, but more likely chocolate sour cream. “Flavor?”

  “White with white frosting.”

  No. No way. She was so sure, she found herself having to stop from shaking her head at him. White-on-white? He didn’t get that lean, muscular body by inhaling sugar. That lean muscular body, which she had noticed keenly, was displayed to advantage in a tight athletic shirt. Below the counter she could glimpse black biking shorts hugging powerful thighs. In large, strong-looking hands he held a biking helmet.