The Family Man
Kelly Eadon
Releasing July 5th, 2016
Forever
TEMPTATION NEVER TASTED SO SWEET...
When life hands lemons to Beth Beverley, she makes mouthwatering lemon squares. Mostly because they're coveted by the sexy single dad who owns Belmont's most popular coffee shop. But that's where her crush on Griffin has to end. Her sweet treats are selling like crazy cakes in his shop, and she doesn't mix business with pleasure. Too bad his sinful smile has her flirting with the idea of forever.
Griffin Hall definitely needs to keep his eyes--and his hands--off Beth. Since he's traded in late-night gigs and partying for bedtime stories with his little girl in his arms, he doesn't have time for anything else. So why does Beth's big heart and easy way with his daughter make him finally feel alive again? But there's a little secret Beth doesn't know, something he can't bear to tell her . . .
He lifted a few containers
out of a picnic basket and opened them on the blanket. “But you remind me of
this town in Italy. I know that seems like a weird thing to say, that you
remind me of a town. But it’s full of all these paths that take you to
completely unexpected places. Everywhere you turn, someone is trying to feed
you. Everyone smiles all the time, and they have a little street theater with
puppets that the kids gather around to watch.”
He lifted his eyes to her
and grinned. “If you were a place, Beth, you would be this place. We played a
concert in a city nearby, but we had a day off and I explored the town by
myself. The whole time I kept thinking how great it would be to share it with
someone. The other night it came to me: I had to have lunch with you in
Urbino.”
Her breath caught. Wow.
He gestured to the food
he’d laid out on the blanket. Olives, figs, cheese, bread, dried fruit. Her
mouth watered just looking at it. “So here you go. Lunch in Urbino.”
Her eyes stung and she
blinked hard. This could not be happening. This could not be real.
“Wow.”
The corners of his mouth
dropped and his eyebrows furrowed. “Do you like it?” He dropped his gaze to his
lap, where his hands fidgeted. “Is it too much?”
She threw herself at him,
covering his face with kisses, not caring if she knocked anything over. “It’s
the most incredible thing anyone has ever done for me.”
His fingers closed around
her waist and he tugged her into his lap. He pressed his mouth to hers and used
the tip of his tongue to trace the seam of her lips.
A high-pitched whistle
pierced the air. She raised her head and found a group of teenage boys giving
them the thumbs-up.
Her face heated and she
crawled back to her spot on the other side of the blanket.
She reached for the
container of olives and spooned a few onto her plate. “I feel like I should
warn you that dessert is entirely off-theme.”
He raised an eyebrow and
popped a fig into his mouth. “Oh yeah?”
She nodded. “Oh yeah.”
Then she reached for the
plastic bag in her purse and plopped it onto the blanket, so that one of the
cookies was faceup inside the package.
He leaned toward it, his
eyes narrowing. “What kind of cookie is that?”
She’d iced them pink and
then used magenta piping to create little curlicues. “Pig butt.”
His gaze jerked to hers
and he blinked a few times. “A pig butt cookie?”
The tickle in her throat
became too much, she burst into giggles. “Just the decoration, not the
flavoring. I found them on Pinterest. Nailed it, right?”
He threw his head back and
laughed. “Yup. You nailed it. That is most definitely a pig’s ass. Martha
Stewart, the person not the van, would be impressed.”
With a giggle, she tipped
her head back to let the sunshine warm her face.
It was as near to perfect
as a date could be.
Kelly Eadon is a romance writer living in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and a house full of rescue animals, aka "the kraken". She swears like a sailor and says whatever pops into her head. In order to counteract her big mouth, she wears high heels whenever possible. In her spare time she spins, kick boxes and attempts to renovate her farmhouse. She hates sanding drywall, loves to cook, drinks lots of wine, gets scary competitive at trivia, and enjoys time spent exploring with her rescued beagle mixes.
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