Free Hope Breaks: A New Adult Romantic Comedy by Alice Bello, Stephanie T. Lott

daintily took it, and placed it on my plate.
    Jake reached back into the bag and grabbed himself one, and licked his thumb and fingers after plopping it down on his plate.
    I just sat there and stared, slack-jawed and googly-eyed as he cleaned his fingers with that lovely mouth of his.
    Oh… my…
    I had a hot, hard flash of our kiss, of dancing with him in the parking lot of the ice cream parlor, and then of us in a bathtub, naked and warm and wet.
    I shook my head, tucking into my breakfast, hoping to god I wasn’t as red faced as I felt.  My cheeks were burning, and my entire face felt hot.
    “So…” Jake said and then bit into his donut.  He made a blissful expression as he chewed nice and slow.  The muscles in his jaw worked over the bite of fried dough, and I swear, I’ve never seen something so freaking sensuous. 
    “You were saying,” I prompted.  “Before you had a pastry-gasm.”
    “Oh, yeah… Are you free tomorrow night?  I’ve got tickets to see Jimmy Buffet.”
    Okay, I tried to keep my excitement to myself… but Jimmy Buffet!  I loved Jimmy Buffet.  I grew up listening to Jimmy Buffet.  And I had never gone to see him live before.
    There was almost nothing in this world I’d rather do than go to a Jimmy Buffet concert…
    “Ah, let me see…” I tried to play coy, but goddamn!  “I’m free!”
    Jake smiled wide and drank some coffee.  “Good, so I’ll pick you up at six, and we’ll be on the lawn at Tower Amphitheater by seven.  Me and some friends always go when he’s in town.”
    Lawn seats.  I loved lawn seats.  You could lie down and stare at the stars if you wanted to… that was if you could see them.  And I was going to meet some of his friends.  That could be fun.
    Jake wolfed down the rest of his breakfast, gulped his coffee, stood and started for the front door.  I was about to say something…not really sure what, but I’d taken a breath to do it.  And that was when he turned around and headed back to me.  He stood over me at the kitchen table, leaned down real close… close enough I could smell the shampoo he’d used, and then he reached up and ran his thumb over my lip.
    “Until tomorrow,” he said, turned and sauntered his sexy ass out of my kitchen. 
    I licked my lips and tasted the salt from his skin. 
    Bastard…
    I thought about Drew and his lady coming by any minute to do a photo shoot, and just couldn’t fathom how I was ever going to get through it.  All I wanted was…
    I took a deep breath, then another, and pushed with everything I was worth at the thoughts that populated my head. 
    This was my career. 
    This was my mortgage payment. 
    I needed to focus and get the goods on film… or more precisely, digital media, and then transform that into a rocking cover image so that Olivia Lovelace was happy, Janine got to keep her top selling author, and I got to keep clicking pictures for a living.
    J ust as I was pushing the last stray thought of Jake and his soft, soft lips out of my head, there was a knock at the door.  I peered up at the clock on the wall and saw that it was exactly ten a.m.
    Drew and his lady were exactly on time.
    Drat!
     

Chapter 10
     
     
    DREW’S GIRLFRIEND’S NAME WAS Darla.  And she was just the most darlin’ thing you could imagine.  The pictures in Drew’s phone didn’t do her justice, not at all.  Her skin was peach colored and she had wisely shunned tanning.  She would reap the rewards for that later on when her face didn’t look like a roadmap of the Adirondacks.
    She was a little shy right off, but as I talked to them both and showed them to my studio, she started to relax.  And as soon as I offered her a Diet Pepsi she just bloomed into a real chatterbox.
    Drew rolled his eyes as Darla’s yak motor revved up.  He leaned in and took the can of cola out of her hands.
    She looked up at him haughtily and stamped her foot.
    He just gave her a level look and handed the cola back to me.  “Darla