He expected her to spill her guts, to share her most intimate problems as though he were her friend. A friend wouldn’t make her feel like the most selfish person on earth. Christmas Eve, her birthday, was always difficult. Luke had made it intolerable.

To make matters worse, all she could think about was their one spontaneous kiss and what might have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted. Luke’s presence rekindled the burning desires she’d worked weeks to snuff.

“This is it.” The number on the door was a little fuzzy, but she heard a click when she swiped the key card and the handle moved, so good. This was good. She’d found her room. He could go and maybe she’d be able to breathe. She turned to say good-bye, only her heel caught in the carpet and she teetered and knocked into the hard chest of Luke.

Tall, sexy, handsome-as-sin Luke.

He steadied her and … bam.

Suddenly they were kissing. She wasn’t sure who started it but no one was ending it. The kiss was frenzied, impassioned. He backed her into the room and against the wall.

The door snicked closed, shutting out the world, muting reality. Not the heiress and the bartender. Just two people in crazy blind lust.

He dropped his bag and coat.

She ditched her purse and shoes.

Her senses exploded as they grappled and soul-kissed.

The same spark as before, only more.

More was not enough.

Rae shoved Luke’s shirt off his shoulders then fumbled with the fly of his jeans.

He unzipped her dress, unhooked her bra.

His palm seared the bare skin of her back while his other hand smoothed up her thigh, under her dress.

His lips, his tongue … Heaven.

But then he broke off. “Tell me to go.”

She couldn’t. Not yet.

“Dammit.”

She backed him against the opposite wall, her actions frantic as she tugged at his clothes and ate him up like a starving sexaholic.

Feel me. Take me.

Pent-up yearning and frustration overshadowed rational thought.

They had no future.

But I can have now.

His mouth was magic, his touch perfection. Skilled. Seductive. The earth moved. No, she moved. Luke spun their position, pinning her between his hard body and the solid wall. She nearly lost it when he tugged at her thong. When the tip of his shaft grazed and … God.

One swift thrust. Luke was inside her, filling her, rocking her, taking her hard against the wall.

Her heart nearly burst through her ribs, her lungs burned. Every fiber of her being vibrated with heady pleasure. So primal. So perfect.

Rae shuddered with a mind-blowing orgasm. A wondrous sensation that echoed through her being like a never-ending aftershock. Luke peaked with her. It was powerful and amazing, wonderfully amazing.

Until he froze.

She felt the tension in his shoulders, sensed a rising darkness.

He still held her close, was still inside of her, but his forehead banged to the wall. “Christ.”

The horror in his tone twisted her heart into a bleeding knot.

“Why didn’t you stop me? Why…” Another head bang. “Dammit!”

Rae was too stunned, too dazed to speak. Why was he so upset? So they’d had sex. So it was a onetime thing. Luke Monroe was a notorious hound. He typically juggled three girls at a time. He was no stranger to casual sex. She knew his motto. Everyone in Sugar Creek knew his motto. No strings attached.

“Are you protected?”

Her reeling mind glitched. “What?”

“Christ, Rae. No condom.”

Her heart and brain stuttered back to life. Her stomach churned. “I’m on birth control.”

“Great. Good. That’s something.”

His attitude was less than romantic. All she sensed was remorse on his part whereas she was still semiflying from the greatest orgasm of her life. Why was that anyway? She refused to attach it to love. Loving Luke would only end in heartbreak. He’d already done a pretty good job of crushing her tender feelings.

Suddenly, painfully aware that her dress was hiked to her waist and his jeans were around his ankles, Rae tried to disentangle herself from Luke with some modicum of dignity.

Earning her master’s had been easier.

Luke—handsome-as-sin, confident, jovial, playboy Luke Monroe—looked at Rae as if she were a two-headed monster of seduction. “Why—”

“Maybe I just needed to get you out of my system. Thank you for that. Happy birthday to me.”

She wasn’t sure why she’d been so flip, so crass. It wasn’t like her. Except her pride was smarting. She hated that Luke was looking at her like she was the biggest mistake of his life when he was her bona fide favorite.

Drawing on her mother’s questionable acting skills, Rae rolled her eyes. “It was sex, just sex, and not even great sex at that. Go home, Luke.”

She slipped into the bathroom and locked the door, fighting tears, fighting nausea. Now, in addition to thinking she was a lying, selfish rich bitch, he also thought her a slut. People were always labeling her something or another based on stereotypes. She shouldn’t care.

She cared.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

Luke knocked on the door.

Rae turned on the shower.

When at long last the outer door finally opened and shut, Rae cried.

FOUR

Six weeks later …

Sugar Creek, Vermont

“Ah, come on. They can’t be that bad.”

“No offense, Luke, but these are quite possibly the worst cupcakes I’ve ever tasted.”

Luke raised a brow at his sister’s blunt assessment of his chocolate cupcakes. Rocky always shot straight from the hip. Usually he liked that about her. But not right now. A little encouragement would be nice.

“I don’t know about the worst,” Chloe said. Although she was still grimacing after swallowing.

“Don’t sugarcoat it, kitten,” Daisy said. “He’ll never learn if you do.”

“I’m not sure he can learn.” This from Ethel Larsen, one of the senior members of the Cupcake Lovers and one of Daisy’s closest friends. “Luke, honey. Just because your grandma, sister, and cousin have a gift for baking, that doesn’t mean you automatically do.”

“Sam’s the one who told me to get a hobby,” Luke reminded them. Apparently, Luke had been driving his friends and family crazy for several weeks. Not on purpose, but he was bored. He wasn’t dating anyone and he didn’t like being alone. He could only work so many hours at the Sugar Shack, so he’d been volunteering to help folks with various projects or trying to rope them into social activities. When Sam had suggested Luke take up a hobby, Sam had been on his way to the weekly Cupcake Lovers meeting and Luke had thought, what the hell. He’d been working hard to mend bridges with Sam, and maybe they could man-bond over man cakes.

Casey Monahan, part of the younger set of this club, regarded Luke with strained patience. “If Sam were here tonight, I’m sure he’d tell you he was thinking of a hobby along the lines of a poker club or bowling team.”

“You know we love you,” Monica said, “but this is your third meeting, Luke. The third batch of cupcakes you’ve shared with us and every batch has been worse than the one before.”

“Who substitutes maple syrup for vegetable oil?” Casey asked.

He’d been out of oil so he’d improvised. That’s what he did when he mixed drinks and it usually worked. “The consistency seemed right,” Luke said in his defense.

Daisy thunked her hand to her forehead.

Luke frowned. He couldn’t even count on his own grandma to defend him. He looked at the women seated around Dev and Chloe’s dining room table. He’d known all of them, with the exception of Chloe and Monica (transplants from the Midwest) all of his life. The Cupcake Lovers had been around since World War II. They were presently in the process of having their very own recipe and memoir book published—which was sort of exciting if you asked Luke. Baking was out of his realm, but he liked the social aspect of the club and the charitable causes. Plus, he liked cupcakes. He’d been eating a lot of them lately. Just not his own.

“Listen. Just tell me where I went wrong here.” He gestured to their plates and his barely sampled cupcakes. “You told me to keep it simple. I did. Plain ol’ chocolate as opposed to the Chocolate Cherry Cola with Red Licorice or the Spicy Double Dark Chocolate.”

“Someone who’s never baked before shouldn’t be getting their recipes from Cupcake Wars,” Judy said.

Since the Cupcake Lovers prided themselves on unique cupcakes, that TV baking show had seemed like the perfect source to Luke. Also it was easier and faster to watch and listen than to search a printed book or the Internet. But, whatever.

“This one came straight from a cookbook I checked out of the library,” he said. “Monica helped me pick out the recipe.” Monica, who was Chloe’s best friend, worked part-time at the Sugar Creek Library. Luke went in there a lot to check out audiobooks. Getting her to help him choose an actual recipe book without betraying his reading disorder had been pathetically easy. When it came to hiding his lifelong dyslexia, Luke was a master of deception.

“I honestly didn’t think he could screw this one up,” she said.

“Where did I go wrong?” Luke leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Go on. I can take it.”

“They’re too salty,” Judy Betts, one of the senior members said.

“And gooey,” added Helen Cole, another senior and crackerjack baker. “What kind of flour did you use?”