Free GRUDGE MATCH (Love Challenge) by Pamela Bouvier

               
     
     
    Chapter One
     
    Slipping through the opening weeks of Holly’s Pizzeria without catching sight of Mason Morrison qualified as a genuine miracle, and Holly Franklin knew she was just about out of grace.  Inevitably, as though the thought conjured Mason’s delicious form, he strode through the front doors and into her life as if he had done so regularly instead of for the first time in ten years.
    Ten years had made his tight, lean body harder.  Dark auburn hair once shoulder length now buzzed an inch except for the top, a little longer, making his stunning hazel eyes stand out of his tanned features.
    Holly scowled , heart beating faster.  Stupid emotions.  Growling, she forced herself to look away.  She was a grown woman now, twenty-eight, and business owner.  Why would she still lust for him?  Breathing deep a number of times, then a few more times, she struggled to calm down.  Why would it be him to make her heart flutter?  Sex with him had been adequate at the time, she was barely eighteen.  Looking over their brief interludes, nothing beyond her deep love for him stuck out.  The sex wasn’t about her or seeing she reached orgasm.  Ever.  So why would he not leave her mind or heart?
    Three years passed since her last lover, who wasn’t terribly satisfying either.  Tired of the game, she quit the sating scene altogether.  The depressing lack of satisfaction made her ache.  What was the point?  Where were the mind-shattering, full bodied, star-destroying orgasms she’d read about?  Her friends told her about how earth shaking they were.  Yeah, right.  Memories of Mason rose up embarrass her.  Those times were nothing to write home about.  So she was best served to keep her emotions to herself.  Maybe someday she’d be lucky enough to find a man who could satisfy her.
    She busied herself behind the counter, helping her brother and business partner, Sunn y with orders.  Unable to help herself, her gaze kept sneaking out to table four.  This was not high school.  Why did she feel like a girl crushing on her teacher?  God, she hated that feeling.  The one where she was inadequate and never enough, no matter how accomplished she may be.
                  Watching Mason clap hands with Justin Travis, Mason’s long-time friend, she admired both men’s muscular arms as they flexed.  Gossip said they had shared women in the past.  Holly wasn’t the sharing kind, though many women she knew thought about it, she wasn’t one of them.  She’d probably run screaming. 
                  “You thinking of me, Darlin’?” Mason’s voice pulled a shiver from her toes, up to her nipples and out the back of her neck.  He caught her daydreaming about him.  Instantly pissed at her body’s reaction to him and that he snuck up on her while she was thinking of him added to the knowledge of the women he’d been known to service, she bit back a scathing comment to settle for general insults. 
    “With you?  About You?  Not hardly,” she snorted, not terribly attractive, but she wasn’t concerned with Mason’s opinion.  Hating Mason caught her day dreaming about sex with him, she worked to keep her face bland.  She despised being embarrassed and felt the telling flush despite her mental screams to stay calm.  When would the awful blushes end?
                  “All business today, Holly?”  He reached out one large hand and smoothed his index finger over hers where she had an unconscious death grip over the Alaskan Blue keg pull.
                  Yanking her hand back, she glared at him again.  “What are you drinking?” her voice almost firm.
                  Faint lines around his eyes deepened in amusement as he leaned closer into the counter.  His breath reached out to her, warm and spicy like she remembered.  Her heart thudded, ticking at the juncture of her thighs making her want nothing