Hooked Page 2

Frannie walked back to the table just as Tayla brought her spreadsheet back up on the screen. “You ready?” She was carrying two cups of coffee. “I made a fresh pot.”

  Bless small-town manners. “You’re awesome, Frannie.”

  The silver-haired woman settled next to Tayla and put on her reading glasses. “Okay. Let’s try to make sense of all this.”

  “You can do it.” Tayla highlighted the columns she needed to explain. “If you can run a successful business for thirty years, Miss Frannie, understanding all this stuff will be a snap.”

  Tayla was still mulling over the questions on the SOKA form at the Ice House that night. Emmie and Ox were closing up the shop and planning to join her shortly. It was open mic night, which was surprisingly good instead of cringeworthy. So far some students from the music school had performed, two country-and-western acts, a jazz singer, and a folk harpist.

  You couldn’t say Metlin wasn’t eclectic. A tad boring at times? Yes. But surprising too.

  Why is fashion important?

  Shallow.

  Airhead.

  Pig.

  Perfectionist.

  Dumb bitch.

  Superficial.

  Trashy.

  Materialistic.

  Ugly whale.

  They were all labels that had been thrown her way more than once. Online and in person.

  Tayla ignored the haters. People who didn’t take the time to understand why fashion was important—especially to women over a size twelve—grated on her nerves. She’d minored in anthropology at college. To her, fashion and makeup were wearable art, just as complex and individual as any book, painting, or music.

  Did the fact that major fashion houses often ignored big women bug her? Of course it did.

  Did she wish the world hadn’t become addicted to fast-and-cheap fashion that disregarded the negative consequences of the international garment industry? Yes!

  Did that mean she had to look like a slob?

  Not in a million years.

  Fashion was expression. Fashion was armor. Fashion was art. It was a mask and a confessional. It was a mirror of popular culture and a challenge to it. Fashion made her feel amazing and powerful. Looking at fashion media made her nearly cry with joy at times, whether it was an exquisitely fitted gown on a Milan runway or street styles in Singapore.

  Fashion was important.

  Someone bumped her hip and nearly made her spill her cider.

  “Sorry.” Jeremy’s dazzling smile flashed as he sat next to Tayla on the bench. “You looked mad at the world. Need another drink?”

  She couldn’t help but smile back. “I’m not finished with this one, but I’ll never say no to a handsome man buying me a drink.”

  “What about an ugly one?”

  Tayla looked around the room. “I don’t see any ugly men here, only ugly attitudes.” She grimaced when her eyes landed on the harpist. “Though I am questioning that one’s comb-over.”

  “Earl hasn’t been able to let go of his rock and roll past yet,” Jeremy said. “The hair was his trademark.”

  “On the wild-and-crazy folk-harp scene?”

  Jeremy stood, leaving his near-empty glass next to Tayla. “There were a lot of drugs in the sixties, Tayla. A lot of drugs. Even in Metlin.”

  She watched him walk to the bar. He was dressed in his usual uniform of broken-in jeans, a comic book shirt, and a worn flannel shirt. He wore nearly the same thing every day—unless he was dressing up—but it suited him. He nodded to grab Hugh’s attention behind the bar. The bartender walked over and poured two pints, one dark lager and one cider, as he and Jeremy chatted.

  They’d probably gone to school together. Hell, nearly everyone in this room had gone to school together at one point or another. Metlin only had two high schools. Hugh and his wife Carly ran Metlin Brewing Company, which sold beer to the Ice House where Hugh worked part time.

  All the businesses in town were slightly incestuous when it came to it.

  The Ice House was owned by Hugh’s cousin George—also known as Junior—who had gone to school with Emmie. According to Emmie, Junior had been an asshole in high school, but he seemed to have improved over the years. Junior was Frannie’s great-nephew, so she was a part owner of the Ice House even though Tayla had never seen her here.

  Tayla looked around the bar where everyone chatted and drank, exchanging stories and listening to the music. Despite her expectations a year ago, Metlin had been welcoming to her. The friendliness had freaked Tayla out for the first few months she’d lived here. She was convinced it was an act. After all, Emmie hadn’t shared the most flattering description of the small California town when she and Tayla had first met.

  But it wasn’t an act. People were just relentlessly outgoing.

  So weird.

  Jeremy walked back to the long picnic table where Tayla had claimed some space next to a group playing Scrabble while they drank. He set down the drinks and swung his long legs over the bench. “Pear cider, right?”

  “Yep. If the trees are going to make me sneeze, at least they make delicious cider I can drink.”

  “It’s the least they can do,” he said. “Want to play a game?”

  She pursed her lips. “I’m not a game player, Jeremy. I’ve told you that many times.”

  His smile was slow and seductive. “I can think of a few games we could play. I bet you wouldn’t say no.”

  She glanced at his hands. “I bet you— What did you do?” She grabbed his hand and turned it over. His palm was torn and scabbed. “Are you climbing rocks again?”

  “Of course not.” He closed his fingers around hers. “There’s still too much snow in the mountains. I got this from being careless at the climbing gym. And if you wanted to hold hands, all you had to do is ask.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Tayla gently tugged her hand away. Contact with Jeremy gave her goose bumps. She had to ration it out or she’d end up addicted. He was like liquor, dark chocolate, and a really good end-of-season shoe sale combined. “Where’s the climbing gym? I didn’t know you had one in Metlin.”

  “It’s in Fresno. We don’t have one here. But the one in Fresno gets lots of Yosemite tourists, so they stay busy. I go with Cary a few times a month during the winter.”

  Cary was Ox’s silver-fox neighbor who farmed oranges outside town. He was well over forty, but Tayla wasn’t blind. Now she had the happy mental picture of both Jeremy and Cary shirtless and climbing a rock wall.

  She couldn’t stop the smile. “Nice.”

  “Yeah? We can go if you want to try it.”

  “What?” She snapped out of her happy mental place. “Try what?”

  “Climbing. I could take you to the climbing gym. It’s fun, and they have beginner classes.”

  “You want to take this ass rock climbing?” She patted her hips.

  Jeremy looked at them. “I would take that ass pretty much anywhere.”

  Tayla had never climbed. She loved yoga and was an avid biker, but she had her doubts as to how easy it would be to haul her backside up a cliff. Her curves were solid, but they were sizable. “Maybe another time. Upper-body strength is not my forte.”

  “I would spot you from the ground.” His face was all seriousness, but his eyes told a different story. “I wouldn’t take my eyes off you. Promise.”

  “I feel like this is mostly about you getting to stare at my butt. Am I getting that right?”

  “Me?” He put a hand over his heart. “I’m only interested in expanding your athletic horizons, Miss McKinnon.”

  “I’m so glad I have friends like you looking out for me.”

  “It’s the least I can do.” He turned toward the stage when another jazz trio took over. “Want to dance?”

  Tayla considered. She adored dancing, but dancing with Jeremy was treading a dangerous line. Depending on the song, it could be a lot of contact.

  Danger! Smart Tayla warned. Danger, Tayla McKinnon!

  Mmmmm. Evil Tayla purred
at the prospect. Do it. Live dangerously.

  “Sure.” She set her cider down. “One dance.”

  “Only one?” He stood and held out his hand. “I might have to change your mind.”

  “You can try.” Tayla took his hand, leaving her purse and their drinks to save their seats.

  In a million years, she’d never leave her drink or her purse unattended in San Francisco. But she wasn’t in the city. She was in Metlin. The girl who’d been sitting across from her would guard her drink and her purse with zeal, even though she and Tayla hadn’t even exchanged names.

  Jeremy pressed their folded hands to his middle as they worked their way through the crowd.

  Was it wrong that she turned her palm into his abs to cop a feel? Jeremy’s abdominal muscles were a thing of beauty. He worked hard. It would be wrong of her to ignore them. She wasn’t usually into super-cut muscles, but she made an exception for Jeremy. He’d earned the muscles from doing outdoorsy things like kayaking and climbing mountains and… chopping wood? She had no idea. Mountain man stuff. They weren’t just abs. They were wholesome abs.

  Jeremy turned and pulled her into his chest. The song the band was playing was medium tempo, but the dance floor at the Ice House was crowded and they had to stand close. Tayla’s eyes only came to Jeremy’s chin. He linked their hands together, palm to palm, as his other hand rested at the small of her back.

  He could dance too. It wasn’t fair. Tayla felt herself zoning out, surrounded by the press of the crowd, the music, and the feel of Jeremy Allen’s arms around her.

  She felt his chest rumble and looked up. “Did you say something?”

  His eyes crinkled with his smile. “Weren’t you listening?”

  “I was dancing.”

  “And I was telling you you’re a good dancer.”

  “Thanks.” She felt flustered. Dammit. “You too.”

  “I don’t dance much.”

  “You should.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Nah. I’m picky.”

  “About music?”

  Jeremy leaned down and his breath tickled her ear. “About partners.”

  Tayla drew in the scent of his skin and a hint of his cologne. He smelled like sunshine and pine and a log cabin with a cozy fire. Jeremy Allen was the scent equivalent of a muscled action hero—pick your favorite Chris—in an ad for flannel shirts at Christmas. And judging from the length of time he lingered at her ear, she had no doubt he knew it.

  Oh, he was good. He was very good.

  And so very inconvenient.

  Chapter Two

  “Pop!” Jeremy stood in the doorway of the kitchen in the two-story Craftsman house on Ash Street and yelled down the hall. “We gotta get going.”

  His grandfather hated it when he yelled down the hall. He hated when Jeremy bugged him about the time. He also hated when they made it out to Lower Lake and the fish weren’t biting anymore.

  Jeremy had loaded the gear and tackle and pulled the truck out of the garage so his grandfather could make it down the ramp and directly into the old Chevy. Now he was just waiting. The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but it would be breaking over the mountains by the time they made it to the lake.

  “Pop!” He stood in the doorway and called again. He’d heard the old man moving around, so he knew he was awake. The door cracked open.

  “I’m coming,” Pop growled. “Hold your horses, young man.”

  “Holding them. The truck’s loaded.”

  “Coffee?”

  “In the thermos.” The battered green thermos was the same one his grandfather had filled with hot chocolate for him when he was a kid. Now he filled it with black coffee for his pop. “Cary is bringing breakfast tacos.”

  “We ain’t eating fish for breakfast, we ain’t doing our job.” Augustus Allen opened the bedroom door with his cane and walked slowly toward the kitchen door.

  “Just in case,” Jeremy said. “We can save the fish for lunch.”

  His pop muttered something unintelligible while he shuffled down the hall, straight through the kitchen, and toward the open door. The old man was wearing his usual uniform of overalls, a worn thermal shirt, and a quilted flannel shirt. His wrinkled brown face was shaved clean, just like it had been every day of his adult life, and his silver hair was clipped short against his skull.

  “Morning, Pop.” Jeremy leaned over and kissed his pop’s head. “How’d you sleep?”

  “Like an old man,” Pop said. “Don’t get old, son. It’s damn annoying.”

  Jeremy smiled. “I don’t much like the other option.”

  A gruff laugh. “Well, you got a point there.”

  Jeremy had moved back to Metlin from Los Angeles three years before. His grandfather had broken his hip and needed help. Augustus was refusing help from his son and daughter-in-law, but Jeremy and Pop had always had something special, and Jeremy’s mother had appealed to her son to help.

  Once Jeremy convinced Pop he was doing Jeremy a favor by allowing him to live upstairs at the house on Ash, his grandfather acceded to letting Jeremy live with him. Augustus got company during his recovery, and Jeremy got a rent-free place to live while he started Top Shelf Comics with the boxes and boxes of old comic books his pop had kept in the attic.

  Over the years, the uneasy dance between grandfather and grandson turned roommates had matured into one Jeremy cherished. His pop was such a huge part of his life; he couldn’t imagine living without him.

  When he’d first moved back to Metlin, he’d been reluctant to return to a town that had seemed stifling to his teenage self. He’d escaped immediately after graduation to attend business school in Los Angeles. Jeremy had attained a degree in finance that he still put to occasional use, but he had missed his family. He’d missed community. And he’d really missed the mountains. He’d been thinking about moving out of LA, but not back to Metlin. Maybe Fresno.

  Life had other plans.

  He glanced out the door over his grandfather’s grey head and watched the sky turn pink over the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Snow still covered the peaks of the mountains, but it was spring and the melt would be starting soon. In a few months, the heat would bake the valley floor and he’d escape every chance he got to the cool meadows and heights of the mountains, sometimes joining his mom and dad at their cabin on Upper Lake and other times camping in the grassy valleys between his favorite climbing spots.

  “Gonna be warm today,” Pop said.

  “I think so too.”

  “Might get some rain tomorrow though.”

  “The farmers won’t like that with all the trees in bloom.”

  Pop grunted as he climbed into the truck. “The weather cares less about farmers than the government does.”

  Jeremy smiled as he closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. It was an old complaint. His pop had run a small herd of cattle in the old days, along with tending some orange groves in the foothills.

  They backed out of the driveway as the sky turned purplish blue and puttered through town until they came to the highway. Jeremy turned left and drove through town and out to the country, headed to the reservoir where they’d cast their lines and hope the bass were hungry.

  Pop stared out the window, watching the spreading land and rolling orange groves, the trees heavy with fruit. He’d sold his land to a big ranch years ago after Jeremy’s grandmother had passed and was more than happy to turn his farming know-how into consulting work for the local citrus co-op. Moving into town had allowed him to take part in his grandchildren’s lives in a way he hadn’t been able to for his own children.

  Farming and ranching was time-consuming work, and Jeremy had never been tempted to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. His own father had been a high school shop teacher and coach. His mother was a pediatrician originally from Chicago who’d fallen in love with Metlin and his father when she’d been sent to the valley to run a rural clinic.

  And Jeremy had a comic book shop. He liked it, but his true pa
ssion was anything in the mountains. Fishing, camping, and rock climbing didn’t pay any bills, but his shop was making it. He hosted game nights and was more than happy to have a safe place to let his geek flag fly. He and Ethan hosted Game of Thrones watch parties and Magic tournaments people paid to attend. The same activities that would have gotten them beat up in high school.

  “What you got going on at the shop this month?” Pop asked.

  “I’m doing a cross promotion with Emmie next week.”

  “How’s the old bookshop doing?”

  “Good. We’re doing games at my place that feature books or manga or comics. Stuff like that. Emmie’s got a bunch of kids from the middle school book club signed up for it. They’ve all bought the Harry Potter series from her, so we’ll see if they want to buy any of the Harry Potter games too.”

  “Computer games or real games?” Pop asked.

  Jeremy smiled. “Computer games are real games, Pop.”

  His grandfather grumbled. “I don’t know ’bout that.”

  “We’re doing both, but focusing on tabletop games. We’re starting a chess club too.”

  Pop nodded approvingly. “Every child should know how to play chess. That’s a thinking man’s game.”

  “Only we’re calling it wizard chess and dressing up in costumes.”

  “Lord.” Pop shook his head. “Whatever makes you happy, J.”

  Jeremy couldn’t stop the smile. His pop had taught him how to fish, how to camp, and how to paddle a canoe, but he’d never understood Jeremy’s love of comics. He’d only kept the comic books in the attic because they were books. And one did not throw away books in the Allen family.

  His parents had thought he was insane to start a comic and game shop in Metlin, but they went with it. Pop had been even more skeptical, but it had always come back to that.

  Whatever makes you happy, J.

  Surprising everyone, including Jeremy, the shop had kind of taken off. He’d hit the market at the right time. Geek stuff was cool now, thank goodness, and Jeremy managed to pay his bills with enough hard work and imagination.

  More than once he’d had to stifle a laugh when one of the older jocks from school brought an eager son or daughter into the shop. The kids’ eyes would light up with wonder at the walls of comics, games, and fandom T-shirts while the parents looked lost.