Trouble on Tap (8 page)

“Your world is not fucked-up,” Natalie declared. “It’s just Sweet-i-fied.”

“You’re home now and everything is going to work out.” Miranda rubbed her stomach and her gaze turned soft when she glanced at the framed photo of Logan on her desk. “I know it doesn’t seem like it but we Sweets seem to find our happy endings in Salvation. You’ll find yours too.”

“Tell that to Grumps Garcia,” Olivia said.

“Oh God, what did you do to offend Mateo now?” Natalie asked as she smoothed back a stray hair that had the gall to escape from her bun.

“Me?” Oh that was rich, considering his snarly attitude about everything. “What makes you think I did anything?”

Both sisters stared at her for a second, slack-jawed.

“You
are
the girl who told a certain short movie star with cultish leanings that you’d rather eat nothing but broccoli for the rest of your life than audition to play the part of his real-life wife.” Miranda laughed. “Face it, Olive Breath, you aren’t known for keeping your tongue.”

She shivered at the memory. That had been one of her better escapes. One of the benefits of growing up a Sweet was being able to spot the unhinged from ten-thousand paces. “True, but I mean come on. Mateo acts like he’s still pissed he bailed Luciana and I out of jail for egging the principal’s house.”

“He did bail you two out for that,” Natalie said.

She threw up her hands in the air. “A decade ago!”

Obviously unimpressed with her dramatics, her sisters just shrugged.

Okay maybe she deserved that, but Olivia knew she could do this. She could put together a fundraiser that would knock Salvation back on their heels, raise money for a good cause and help promote the brewery—no matter what Grumps Garcia said. “I’m not a unicorn-loving flake.”

Miranda squished up her face in confusion before letting out a deep breath. “No one said you were. You’re just…free-spirited.”

“Well, I come by it naturally. I am a Sweet, after all. The last in a long line of moonshiners, cattle thieves, and ne’er-do-wells.” The words didn’t come out as confident as she’d wanted. Her conversation with Mateo had obviously torn off the scab from a wound she thought was long healed.

She and her sisters had different defense mechanisms for dealing with Salvation’s massive ’tude about the Sweets. Miranda had become a super-achiever and Natalie had compartmentalized everything, but Olivia had embraced the crazy—at least on the outside. The one who never backed down from a dare. The kid who would try anything once. The girl most likely to do…well…anything. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what life would have been like if she hadn’t been a member of one of the most despised and yet gossiped-about families in town.

“Speaking of our long and illustrious line.” Miranda turned a soft shade of pink. “I’m pregnant.”

The words sank in slowly, like a feather in quicksand.

Baby? A niece? A nephew? The idea settled, took root and filled her up, making her chest expand with love until it nearly burst. A baby!

Miranda’s grin was wide enough to show every tooth in her mouth. “Well, aren’t you going to say anything, aunties?”

Everything sped back up to normal speed and she launched herself at Miranda, wrapping her arms around her sister and hugging her close and jumping up and down. Natalie joined in a second later. Dogs three counties away had to have heard the Sweet triplets’s squeals because within a minute, half the brewery’s staff was spilling in through the doorway.

Sean elbowed his way to the front of the crowd. “What’s wrong?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Miranda said. “I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulations.” He gave her a quick hug. “Now
that’ll
give ’em something good to talk about at The Kitchen Sink.”

Ice washed through Olivia’s veins. Talk? Oh yeah, there’d be tons of talk, and everyone in town would be watching. The baby’s last name would be Martin, but Salvation had a long enough memory to still think of him or her as a Sweet.

Olivia couldn’t let this baby grow up like she and her sisters had, in a town where his or her heritage was despised.

She had to change the way Salvation looked at the Sweets, and the veterans’ center fundraiser would be the first step in that. It would show the town that the Sweets really could be a power for good. But first she had to get Mateo on board and involved for real. If she couldn’t convince him that the Sweets could help the community, then she’d never get the rest of Salvation on board and the baby growing in Miranda’s belly would pay the price. Olivia refused to let that happen.

Operation Grumps Garcia would commence as soon as she moved into the cabin behind his house.

Mateo stood in his darkened second-floor bedroom, feeling like a peeping-Tom voyeur but unable to look away as he watched out the window and as light after light flickered on in the cabin behind his house. She’d arrived just before dusk and unloaded a piddling amount of stuff—a few suitcases and a three-legged cat that yowled as if its other legs were being pried off with a pair of rusty pliers. Good thing Luciana had the dog, or the mutt would have howled at his fuzzy nemesis and blown Mateo’s cover straight to hell.

The cabin was small—one bedroom, one bath, an eat-in kitchen and a living room. His dad’s wondering eye, which had ruined his marriage, had disappeared the moment his mom had served him with divorce papers and he’d moved into the guest cabin behind the main house. The old man had a thing for wanting what he couldn’t have. Now wasn’t that something father and son had in common?

Olivia moved to the large window in the bedroom and stared out. Mateo slunk back from the window far enough that he wouldn’t be seen but not so much that he couldn’t watch her. Just because he was acting like a perv didn’t mean he wanted her to
think
he was a perv.

She reached for the hem of her T-shirt, inching it upward over her smooth stomach. Then she dropped it as if the material had burned her, reached up and closed the curtains.

Had she seen him? Not possible, but she couldn’t have missed that a good dozen windows in the main house looked out straight at her cabin. What she couldn’t know though is that the light in her bedroom made a perfect backlight, outlining her every luscious curve against the curtains.

She lifted her T-shirt over her head and dropped it to the floor. He may only be able to see a dark shadow of her form, but he didn’t need a clearer picture to remember the way her hips flared out from her small waist or how soft her skin felt under his rough fingers. In the cabin across the yard, with its wildflowers starting to bud, she shook out her wavy hair and lowered her hands. He held his breath as he watched her black outline shimmy her form-fitting jeans over her hips and down her long legs. She still wore underwear, something frilly and lacy and minuscule no doubt; he couldn’t see it because of the curtain but he knew she wore it. He’d remember her lingerie addiction for as long as he could recall the feel of her underneath him as he slid his hard cock home inside her—forever. There was a list a country-mile long of things he’d like to forget, but the memories of fucking Olivia weren’t on it.

One of his favorites had started with a strip tease and ended with her tied to a chair. He slipped his hand under the elastic waistband of his basketball shorts and gripped his rock-hard cock, stroking slow and steady as he closed his eyes and brought the memory into clear focus.

Miami. Summer. The hotel room had a balcony that overlooked the miles of crowded beaches. He never got a single grain of sand between his toes, though; everything he wanted was in his hotel room.

Olivia sat on a thick cotton beach towel stretched out over a chair on the balcony. Her legs were splayed open, the belts from the hotel robes wound around each of her shapely calves, binding each one to a chair leg. It was the only material touching her soft skin.

“This is what you get for teasing me with that strip-and-run-away routine,” he’s said. “Now you’re mine to play with right here in front of everyone.”

Only their shoulders and faces were viewable over the top of the solid balcony up on the twentieth-floor, giving her an exhibitionist thrill without a significant risk of getting caught.

“Now…” He lounged against the small table on the balcony and reached for the bright-red shopping bag with The Treasure Box written across it in fancy script. “What did you bring back from your shopping trip?”

He pulled out an eight-inch pink silicone rabbit-style vibrator. “I hope you got batteries.”

“Do I look like the kind of girl who’d forget something like that?”

No, she looked like sin and salvation disguised as the hottest woman he’d ever touched.

Keeping his gaze locked on her as he fished around inside the bag, his hand brushed up against a package of batteries. “That’s my Olivia.”

He had it loaded in less time than he thought possible but longer than she wanted, judging by the way she squirmed in the chair.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart? Does your pussy need some attention?”

“Yes.”

“Open your mouth.” He slid the vibrator inside. “Suck it; take it deep just like you’re going to take my hard cock later.”

It disappeared into her mouth as he lowered the back of her chair so she lay flat with her legs secured and her feet flat on the floor.

“Raise your arms up and hold on to the chair. Don’t you dare let go.” He withdrew the vibe from her mouth.

“What if I do?”

He settled back on his haunches, putting him as close to eye level with her wet pussy as possible. Her pink lips were slick and swollen with need already. Just how he liked her. “You’ll miss out on one hell of an orgasm.”

“We can’t have that.”

“Glad we agree.” He pressed the vibrator against her opening and inched it forward. “I love watching you take this in almost as I love watching my big cock sink inside you.” He eased it out. “Now
that
is wet.” Bringing it close to his nose, he inhaled. “You smell so sweet.” He dragged his tongue up the silicone length, licking up her juices. “And you taste so fucking good that I’m jealous of a sex toy.” He pressed it against her opening again, feeling the slight resistance of her tightness before it slid inside. “But not enough that I don’t want to watch you up close and personal as you come all over it.”

That’s when he pushed it as far as it would go and turned on the dual vibration motors—one that made the part inside her push against her G-spot and the other that rubbed and flicked her clit.

“Oh my God.” She arched her back and her legs strained against the bindings.

“That’s it; show me how good it feels.” He rolled his thumb across the speed control.

She held on to the chair with a white-knuckle grip.

“Look how you tighten your hold on this fake dick. That feels so good, doesn’t it, baby? How about when I do this?” He tilted his wrist so the tip of the vibrator rubbed harder against her G-spot.

“Mateo!” Her cry came so loud it had to have carried down to the beachgoers but she was too far gone, too close to the end to care.

Seeing her thrash as she balanced on the threshold of orgasm, as much as she could in her restrained position, had pre-come dripping from the tip of his cock, but he wanted to send her over the edge first. Lowering his head so his face was between her legs, he laved her swollen clit, his tongue rubbing against the buzzing part of the vibrator pressing on one side of her sensitive nub, pushing it harder against her.

Breaking the rules, Olivia released her hold on the chair and grabbed his hair, pressing him against closer to her core. Her climax hit like a tidal wave against his tongue.

Sitting back, he watched her body melt against the chair in the warm Florida sunshine.

The memory of her face as she came back to herself, the absolute ecstasy followed by that look in her eye—the one he hadn’t realized until too late meant so much more, sent him over the edge as he stroked his cock. He came hard and sudden, spurting over the top of his hand and splattering against the inside of his basketball shorts.

He grabbed the T-shirt hanging on the back of a chair and wiped his hand clean as he looked out the window at Olivia’s cabin. While he’d been jerking off, she’d turned out the lights and disappeared from view.

It was a good thing he had the memories because it was as close as he’d ever get to touching her again—and that was for the best. He didn’t need her kind of trouble in his life.

Mateo stopped dead in his tracks in front of the Salvation Police Department the next morning. The mangy dog Luciana had dropped off earlier was inside losing his mind, spinning and scratching at the Salvation Police Department’s glass front door. His unshorn nails clicked the glass as Mateo stood on the opposite side armed with a dozen donuts and the largest coffee he could buy at Heaven Sent Bakery. He’d walked the three blocks down Main Street to the station, ignoring the uncomfortable glances and less-than-covert stares from the people he’d grown up with, so the mutt’s happy-to-see-you spaz attack halted Mateo’s movements.