Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
He's a wounded NHL star stuck in the home town he's fought to escape.
She needs a babysitter.
He needs a safe place to heal away from his overbearing family.
The problem?
They hate each other (and lust after each other) in equal measure.
Being roomies is going to be…interesting.
AARON and MELISSA'S story arrives winter 2024!
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
Melissa Marie McGuire
A woman who doesn’t have
time for your bullshit.
(Sorry, not sorry.)
* * *
Two and a half months ago…
* * *
There are bad days, and then there are days like this.
So far, today—the first Thanksgiving since my divorce and my first holiday without my two-year-old son—I’ve endured the following without losing my cool or my temper.
My mother calling at the crack of dawn to remind me to defrost the “extra” turkey I’d defrosted three days prior and marinated the night before. This despite the fact that I am a professional chef and have never forgotten to defrost the “extra” turkey that is actually a necessary turkey, considering the size of our family. You can’t feed upwards of fifty people on the two turkeys Mom squeezes into her twin ovens. We need the turkey I deep fry outside and the one my brother Wesley cooks in his smoke shack to fully satisfy the hungry masses.
My father calling just as I was falling back asleep to ask me what kind of coffee I wanted with pie in the afternoon. He had enough coffee at the house for a pot of plain and two pots of hazelnut, he said, but he wasn’t sure how I felt about hazelnut. So, he wanted to ask before he drank the plain with his oatmeal and condemned everyone to flavored coffee with their pie—especially me, since he knows I’m fussy about coffee. (I’m fussy about all food—again, professional chef—but I’ve also told my father that I hate flavored coffee at least ten thousand, seven hundred, and twelve times. I would worry about dementia, but he’s always been this way. He can remember every item of inventory in his three hardware stores down to the last screw but ask him the birthday of one of his eight children and he’ll fake a coughing fit and hide in the bathroom for hours.) I gently told Dad to follow his bliss and that I would bring extra coffee for everyone, but by the time we hung up, it was too late. I was awake. Cruelly, miserably awake, only four hours after I’d cried myself to sleep and still several hours before I was due at my parents’ house to start helping with food prep.
Lonely morning coffee in my too-quiet house, surrounded by toddler toys I didn’t have the heart to clean off the living room floor. The sight of the blocks and trains and Chase’s kid-sized kitchen made me feel like my son was going to call out from his bedroom any minute, lisping, “Mama, I wuv you. Good mowning. Wus for breffest?” My son is also a foodie. A lover and a foodie and I miss him like a piece of my heart has been carved out of my chest.
A too-crowded Thanksgiving celebration surrounded by loving couples who are still living happily ever after with their shiny, happy children, who they never have to send away for the weekend, let alone a full-blown holiday.
Overhearing my aunt Gina talking about how she “always knew that Benji was as gay as a three-dollar-bill, not sure why Mel didn’t get the memo,” while I was pulling the turkey from the frier by the garage. I wanted to shout that my ex-husband’s name is Ben, just Ben—he hated it when she called him Benji—and that maybe it would have been harder for her to guess his sexual orientation if he’d been fucking her every other night. Instead, I bit my lip and took care of the food. Of my family. Because that’s what I do. I dig in and I get the job done, no matter how much I want to punch things or curl up in a ball and give up.
Returning home to my still lonely and too-quiet house to find that weird squirrel who’s been hanging around the house in the bird feeder again, humping the edge of the small box, successfully preventing the birds from taking shelter from the pouring rain. I try not to take it as a sign that perverted bullies always win, but it’s hard. Really hard.
Getting an emergency call from my twin brother, Matty, and rushing to meet him at my catering office, only to learn he wants me to babysit Nora Boudreaux, sister of Aaron Boudreaux, my high school bully and nemesis. This brings back memories of being mercilessly teased for being a klutz and a fashion victim by the endlessly popular, aspiring NHL player, but I swallow them and do my best to make Nora feel welcome. She’s a sweetheart. She can’t help it that her brother is a stinky, microbe-infected douchebag in hockey star clothing. She also can’t help it that she’s falling in love with my brother, who makes it his mission in life to be frustratingly secretive.
Being attacked by criminals in my place of business and barely escaping with Nora, the cat she had with her, and our lives.