One Kiss Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Praise for Misty Simon and…

  One Kiss

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  “Are you sure I can’t help you with anything?” He wasn’t above offering himself for kitchen duty to get out of playing games with a roomful of single people. Knowing Melanie, it would probably be something like Spin the Bottle.

  “No, you can’t.” She grabbed his elbow, and he let her lead him out into the living room. “Mingle. And I can find you if you try to sneak away, so don’t.”

  With that, she walked away in her four-inch heels like a drill sergeant on a mission, to greet more people coming through the door.

  He made no eye contact as he headed for the buffet set up in the spacious dining room. He’d promised Melanie he’d come to her party to get her off his back about finding someone, but he had not agreed to participate in party games. An hour tops and he was leaving.

  A woman laughed at the front of the line with a bunch of other women. The husky sound shot like one of Cupid’s arrows down his spine and landed in his gut. Where had he heard that laugh before?

  He didn’t place it for a moment. But it all zinged into place when she turned toward him and he caught a full-faced glimpse of her mismatched eyes.

  Praise for Misty Simon and…

  THE WRONG DRAWERS:

  “...a sass filled, one-two punch of delightfully quirky humor and intriguing mystery.”

  ~Jacki King, bestselling author

  POISON IVY:

  “A fun romp, and the mystery isn’t really difficult to solve. The characters are fun and Ivy’s perspective on them lets the reader learn more about Ivy as well as the other characters.”

  ~Cyclamen, Long and Short Reviews (3 Stars)

  “I loved this book. I was laughing during most of it. I enjoyed the characters and I like how they seem like people you would want to be friends with.”

  ~Rae, My Book Addiction and More (4.5 rating)

  WHAT’S LIFE WITHOUT THE SPRINKLES?:

  “Ms Simon’s writing has warmth, her characters seem like real people, and her plotting drew me in…. Misty Simon approaches the emotional element so well…. Put this one on your TO READ list because you won’t be disappointed.”

  ~Angie Just Read, The Romance Reviews

  ~*~

  Other Books by Misty Simon

  at The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  What’s Life Without the Sprinkles? (Kissinger Kisses 1)

  Making Room at the Inn (Kissinger Kisses 2)

  Go Ahead, Make My Bouquet (Kissinger Kisses 3)

  Poison Ivy (Ivy Morris Mysteries, Book 1)

  The Wrong Drawers (Ivy Morris, Book 2)

  Something Old, Something Dead (Ivy Morris, Book 3)

  Frame and Fortune (Ivy Morris, Book 4)

  One Kiss

  by

  Misty Simon

  A Candy Hearts Romance

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  One Kiss

  COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Misty Simon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by RJ Morris

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Champagne Rose Edition, 2016

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-0340-6

  A Candy Hearts Romance

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Daniel — the one kiss that started it all

  Chapter One

  Just inside the doorway of her friend’s house, a spacious dwelling—Melanie Allenson née Brockwell did nothing by halves—Lorena Weber hesitated. Did she really have to take her coat off after the chilly February evening air? Couldn’t she sneak back out into the frost, tell her best friend later she’d been here amongst the throng and they just hadn’t seen each other?

  Yeah, there was no way Melanie would believe that, and then Lore would never hear the end of it. Better to take her coat off, do minimal mingling, and then leave. Because it was her oldest and best friend, that friendship bought Melanie an hour, two at the most. Guilt could sway Lore but not persuade her to stay longer than two hours, max, in what was essentially an upscale meat market.

  Melanie had gotten married ten days ago, and suddenly she wanted everyone else she knew to be in a relationship. Hence what she thought was a great idea and Lore thought of as the Great Disaster Waiting to Happen—an all-singles Valentine’s Day party hosted by a pair of newlyweds.

  Maybe she would sneak out the door again without giving up her coat.

  “Lore! You made it! Here, give me your coat so you can mingle!” Excessive exclamation points had been added as a new tick ever since Melanie conceived this party.

  “I…” Lore chickened out. “Of course.” Shrugging out of the puffy black coat, she took off her mittens and unwound her scarf. She reluctantly handed them over to the glowing woman before her and immediately wished she had them back on. Two hours, she told herself. Just two hours and she could leave.

  “Oh, look! You’re under the kissletoe!”

  Lore looked up and, sure enough, a very dried-looking piece of mistletoe was over her head, overrun with hearts and red tinsel. She stepped to her left as fast as she could but came up against a solid body in her way.

  Backing, she caught the sly smile of Brand the Handyman, and she didn’t mean with tools. He was an octopus, too many hands and not enough common sense to realize she didn’t want them on her.

  “Give us a kiss, then,” he said, holding his arms out with those handy hands extended.

  She looked imploringly at Melanie, who simply smiled. “You’re not getting away with anything less than a hug, Lore!”

  Crap. She stepped into Brand’s embrace and waited to be swallowed whole. But he wasn’t exactly a big guy, not like the man she’d hugged on New Year’s Eve.

  That man had been in and out of her life in a flash, but not forgotten. A weird coincidence where they were both standing outside at the annual wrench drop, a long-standing custom in this town started by mechanics. The wrench had dropped, everyone was hugging or kissing someone, and the two of them were left standing alone as if in a bubble.

  She’d looked up at him, shrugged, and opened her arms for a hug. His blue eyes had crinkled, his wide mouth smiling and framed by his scarf. He’d been bundled up in a hat and jacket like she was, so she couldn’t tell much else. They’d stepped into each other, and she’d experienced a brief moment of comfort, safety, feeling surrounded in a wonderful way.

  She’d tipped her head up to thank him, and he’d planted a kiss on her that still made her tingle all the way down to her toes when she thought about it. It had been full, luscious, and more than she had experienced in almost six years. His lips had sealed to hers in a way that had made her want more. She’d only meant to nibble on his bottom lip to see what it tasted like and had been surprised when his tongue swept along her tee
th. What followed was the stuff of her fantasies lately, as they’d kissed for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a minute.

  Because then it was over, and the crowd surged between them. At that moment she had run from the feelings he’d managed to bring to the surface in such a short encounter. Later, she’d regretted it. She’d had no one to blame but herself for not even trying to ask his name.

  It certainly wasn’t Brand, though, who was trying to cop a feel of her butt as they stood there for the two seconds it had taken her to fade out to a better moment in time.

  “Okay,” she said, extracting herself from Brand and his hands. “Okay!” She brushed herself off and straightened her sweater. “Nice to see you, Brand, but I better get to mingling before Melanie starts a conga line or something.” She gave him her best fake smile, the one almost no one realized was fake, not even Melanie most of the time.

  “I like the way your eyebrows crinkle up between your different-colored eyes. You have beautiful eyes.”

  He sounded sincere, and it wasn’t the first time someone had commented on the fact that her one blue eye and one hazel eye were beautiful. She’d lived with them her whole life and found them more of a nuisance than beautiful. Makeup was a pain in the butt, to say the least. “Thanks, Brand.” She looked over his shoulder. “Looks like you have another customer.”

  She backed away as his embrace welcomed the next not-so-lucky woman into the party that couldn’t end soon enough.

  ****

  “Keys, watch, wallet, sanity.” Caleb Manning laughed at that last one as he got out of his car at the end of the block in Mechanicsburg, his hometown for the last six months. It was a far cry from the bustle of New York City, but he preferred it, even if working in a small town meant that sometimes he was forced to do things he didn’t want to do, just to keep the natives happy.

  The house at the other end of the block was ablaze with lights. Laughter spilled out, reaching his ears from this far away. He’d go in, say his hellos, grab a drink, hang against the wall, stay out of Melanie’s sight, and then move on to the rest of his night. He didn’t know what else he’d do with his Valentine’s Day, but it had to be better than being at a party full of single people.

  Rounding the corner to the front walk, Caleb was nearly assaulted by a whole line of cupids and their pointy arrows. Melanie had probably placed them with a regular-sized person in mind, but Caleb was six four and built like the proverbial brick house. He was wide in the shoulders and resembled a linebacker. He’d played football in college and was affectionately called the Tank, and not without reason. He didn’t even always fit through doorways without squeezing. The attack of the cupids was a new challenge but not a new scenario.

  He stepped around and through the array as best he could without knocking anything over. He’d ask if he could just cut through the yard on his way back out—in an hour, ninety minutes at most.

  The door was thrown open, and a warm blast of air met him as he stepped onto the front porch. And there was Melanie, a sales rep for the local radio station where he worked. She was bubbly and lovely and could get almost anyone to do what she wanted. Persuasion had been defined with her in mind. But because she was the one who kept him in ads enough to run his nighttime show, he couldn’t fault her. She was good, and now he was here.

  “Caleb! Come in!”

  “I’m working on it.” He eyed the man giving out hugs just inside the door as Melanie walked away, her greeting done. He had lines, and that was one of them. A buddy, sure. A friend he hadn’t seen in a while, yeah, he’d hug. But not just some random person who was standing under what looked like a heart that had vomited tinsel.

  He sidestepped the huggy-guy and handed his coat to Dillon, Melanie’s new husband, who shrugged and smiled at him. “I swear I’ll buy you a beer later if you just hang out long enough for Melanie to think she’s made a difference tonight.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that, Dillon.”

  “I wouldn’t think of backing out.” Nodding at him, Dillon walked away with his coat, leaving Caleb to stand in the foyer of the enormous house.

  It reminded him of the house he and his ex-wife had looked at buying when he’d decided to leave Wall Street and slow down before he was forced to do so. At thirty-two he’d been on the verge of a heart attack. By thirty-three he was on the verge of a divorce. The heart attack never came to pass, but the divorce had finalized just before New Year’s Eve, in time for the taxes to be screwed up.

  But at least it was over. And he had celebrated New Year’s by going downtown to a local celebration where his new town actually dropped an eight-foot wrench from a crane in celebration of the New Year. The absurdity of the eight-foot wrench had distracted him from his loneliness for the moment. But then he’d been alone while everyone else was hugging and kissing at the stroke of midnight. He’d turned and seen the woman next to him was alone, too. They’d both laughed, shrugged, and then hugged. He hadn’t meant to kiss her, but she’d looked up at him with her mismatched eyes, and he couldn’t resist. Something had flared between them, something impossible to deny. Hell, he hadn’t even tried. It had been short, as kisses went, but it had packed a wallop. He hadn’t been able to get her name, and that was his only regret.

  “Caleb!”

  He hadn’t moved fast enough into the room for the ball of energy that was Melanie. She must have thought he wasn’t doing enough to immerse himself in her party. “Hey, Mel.”

  “Did Dillon get your coat?”

  “Yep.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and hunched a little. He felt gargantuan next to her.

  “Well, come in and get something to drink. Mingle. The games are going to start in a few minutes, and I want you hydrated.” She smiled, and he blew out a soft breath. He’d had no idea what to expect, and the prospect of games did not exactly inspire confidence in him. But he could always step outside into the frigid February air if he had to. At least she’d calmed down on the exclamation points that had infused her voice for the last ten days. She was like one of the perpetually happy people he wanted to throttle except they were just too cute for him to actually do anything like that.

  “Are you sure I can’t help you with anything?” He wasn’t above offering himself to kitchen duty to get out of playing games with a roomful of single people. Knowing Melanie, it would probably be something like Spin the Bottle.

  “No, you can’t.” She grabbed his elbow, and he let her lead him out into the living room. “Mingle. And I can find you if you try to sneak away, so don’t.”

  With that, she walked away in her four-inch heels like a drill sergeant on a mission, to greet more people coming through the door.

  He made no eye contact as he headed for the buffet set up in the spacious dining room. He’d promised Melanie he’d come to her party to get her off his back about finding someone, but he had not agreed to participate in party games. An hour tops and he was leaving.

  A woman laughed at the front of the line with a bunch of other women. The husky sound shot like one of Cupid’s arrows down his spine and landed in his gut. Where had he heard that laugh before?

  He didn’t place it for a moment. But it all zinged into place when she turned toward him and he caught a full-faced glimpse of her mismatched eyes.

  Chapter Two

  Brand had apparently been overly busy already, and Melanie had to send him to wash dishes to get those hands doing something constructive. Alice Wetzel had threatened him with bodily harm just before he’d been sent to suds land.

  “Oh, I threatened to castrate him with a plastic spoon if he touched my butt again.” Janiece Franklin stood with her arms crossed and a plastic spoon tapping her bicep.

  Lore couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing. She had no doubt Janiece would actually follow through with that threat. She was that bold. Lore tended to be a sidestepper, but Janiece went right after what she wanted. Then again, Lore’s job as a waitress was all about customer service, especia
lly if she wanted those big tips to keep rolling in with the big dinner orders at Wilfred’s Victorian Fine Food and Spirits.

  She turned her head to make sure no one had been looking at her when she’d guffawed in surprise and found a very tall, very big guy standing at the end of the buffet table. His dark hair was a little spiky in the front, and he had to be several inches over six feet tall. As a taller-than-average woman, she tended to notice when a man had enough height for her to wear heels in his presence. And though she’d willingly been single for a while now, she also tended to notice when a man was as handsome as this one. His face was chiseled perfection, dark brows arched over blue eyes, and a wide mouth smiled her way. If she were older she would have thought she was having a hot flash, but since she wasn’t even thirty yet, she had to admit it was the breadth of those massive shoulders and the thought of how he could block out the sun if he stood close enough.

  For about a half second she thought about approaching him but then remembered where she was and that she did not want to be part of this meat market. Who knew where Melanie had dragged him in from? But he sure was delicious with his pale green button-up shirt opened at the collar. She’d bet anything she’d be engulfed if those bulky arms wrapped tight around her. Whew!

  If she’d been in the restaurant, she would have run back to the kitchen and fanned herself, then tittered with the other girls about the hottie at table four. As it was, she was not going to make a spectacle of herself by being the one everyone thought was trying to hook up first.

  She did need a moment to compose herself, though. She didn’t know if she necessarily believed in love at first sight, but she definitely believed in instant attraction. And he sparked it in spades for her. That and a healthy dose of lust as an instant vision ran through her mind of holding onto those broad shoulders in surrender.

  Placing her small heart-shaped plate on the side table, she left her wineglass there, too, and headed for the bathroom. The bathroom that, if you knew where the key was, opened into a small office where she could get that perspective and fan herself. No one had ever before affected her on this visceral a level just by exchanging a look, and it shook her to her core. She was here to not have Melanie bother her anymore. She was here to spend Valentine’s with her friend, not get sucked in by a man who was actually taller than her own five ten, someone who had adorable hair and with whom she could wear heels without fearing she’d tower over him. Someone who made lust simmer low in her belly.