Hooked Page 24

  He took her mouth with his, capturing her lower lip between his teeth before he slowly let her go. “I left my ropes at home.”

  She looked around the room. “I think we can manage.” She slid down between his legs. “Can you believe I’m still hungry after all that food?”

  His eyes locked with hers when Tayla took him in her mouth. He never took his eyes off her when they made love. His attention—like his attention in everything—was focused. Intent. His lips were flushed and swollen from her kisses. His body was a mass of tension.

  “I love you,” she whispered against his skin. “Thank you for being you.”

  “Baby—”

  “Generous.” She lavished her attention, teasing every inch of him. “Kind. Funny.”

  He groaned. “You’re trying to kill me.”

  “We may be different, Mr. Allen.” She released him and sat on his lap again, straddling his hips as she lifted her dress and slid onto him. “But we’re perfect for each other.”

  He smiled. “Perfectly different.” He put his left hand on her hip and thrust into her, making her back arch. He leaned forward and kissed across her chest, running his tongue under the lace edge of her bra. “You know, when you don’t have your hands, you can get so inventive with other parts of your body.”

  “Have you taught him to do tricks now?”

  His laugh was wicked. “Let’s see.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Five months later…

  “Rudy, we don’t have time for that.” Tayla tried not to lose her patience as the young man bounced in his seat on the other side of the video call. “Can you… Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

  He’d pulled back and taken out his juggling balls. “You’re asking me to design a unique portal for every SOKA user,” he said. “It’s a complicated problem and I need to juggle.”

  She leaned on her desk and waited for him to finish goofing around. “Anytime now.”

  “Are you at the bookshop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Ox there? Can I say hi?”

  Tayla’s workspace had moved several times in the months since SOKA had agreed to her weird, hybrid telecommuting offer. She’d started out working from home but had gone stir-crazy within a month of spending most of the day by herself. Then she tried working in the office at INK, hoping that Emmie and Ox wandering in and out would prove sufficient stimulation.

  Finally, after a particularly manic day, Tayla wildly threatened to knock down every wall in the office so she could see the sun, which led Ox to casually mention that they could open the office to the shop if she wanted because none of the office walls were load-bearing.

  Within days, Ox and Jeremy had gleefully taken sledgehammers to Emmie’s office walls, opening the back office to the rest of the shop.

  Now Tayla’s desk sat in the back of the bookshop, separated by low bookshelves but open to the hum of activity in the store and the buzz of the tattoo needle.

  She couldn’t have been happier.

  Tayla turned her monitor around to point it toward the old barber’s chair in INK where Ox was tattooing a client. “Ox, Rudy says hi.”

  Ox glanced up. “Hey, dude. How’s it rolling?”

  “I just came up for another idea for my back tattoo.”

  “Is it in binary again?”

  “Yes.”

  Ox shook his head slightly. “Whatever you want, man. Just tell me what Saturday you want me to pencil you in.”

  “Awesome.”

  Tayla turned her monitor around. “There. Are you happy? Can you do the profile pages?”

  “The app is not Facebook, Tayla.”

  “But it is a social network combined with an online store. Users want a place they can find items they’ve favorited, forums they’re following, and also their profile info and posted pics.”

  Rudy threw his head back and groaned.

  “Just do it,” Tayla said. “This is directly related to what Kabisa was talking about at dinner last week. You can do it. I’ll even donate your tattoo. Finish this by the end of the month and Ox will do it for free.”

  “Hey!” Ox said. “You can’t just—”

  “Shhhh.” She waved at him and mouthed, I’ll pay you! “What do you say, boy genius?”

  Rudy stared at her through the computer, his eyes intent on the camera. “Fine.” He spun around and picked up the juggling balls again. “Watch this— I just learned it from YouTube last night.”

  Tayla watched Rudy attempt to juggle the balls approximately half a dozen times before she made her excuses and shut down the video conference.

  When working with Rudy and the other new hire at SOKA, Chevela, Tayla made a point of using video conference instead of texts or phone calls. It was more personal and allowed the office in San Francisco to feel like they were part of her office here in Metlin too.

  When Azim and Kabisa had agreed to let her spend three weeks a month in Metlin, she’d been ecstatic. Tayla truly felt like she’d managed to “make the world her bitch” as Ginger so eloquently put it. She threw herself into proving she could be the model employee even from two hundred miles away.

  Three months later, Azim had to sit her down and tell her she was stressing everyone out by trying to do too much.

  Work and life balance was the key to happiness in any job, but when your office was in San Francisco, your home was in Metlin, and your market was the entire world, it could be difficult to create boundaries. The stress had gotten to her, and had even begun affecting her relationship with Jeremy, which was still finding its feet.

  “You need to relax,” Azim said, reassuring her. “We didn’t hire you as a trial. We believed in your vision for your role at SOKA, and we believe it will work. Don’t feel like you constantly have to prove yourself. Take a breath. You’ve done more work in three months than we expected out of you in six.”

  She’d taken charge of the social media accounts for the company and leveraged her network to create relationships everyone was really excited about. Two months after they’d launched the app, SOKA had a product go viral. A celebrity had shown up at a music festival, wearing a Kenyan dress she’d bought through SOKA. Fashion bloggers quickly found it, helped along by Tayla racing around the internet the day after the photo had been published, posting links everywhere.

  Supplies had sold out almost immediately. The Nairobi office bought every version of the dress they could find. Kabisa had even been invited to a national morning show to talk about the dress phenomenon and the website. Of course the hosts were dazzled by her.

  The vendor made more dresses, and they sold out just as fast. It was the trend of the summer. In another month, Tayla guessed Kardashians would be calling her.

  In short, it had been a good five months.

  Tayla stood. “I’m going to grab lunch for me and Jeremy.”

  Ox didn’t look up. “See you.”

  “Is Emmie coming back with something for you?”

  “Probably. But… she might forget.”

  Emmie and Ox were still living together in the apartment over INK. And Tayla technically was their roommate. But for the three weeks a month she was in Metlin, she lived an awful lot of it at Jeremy and Pop’s house.

  She zipped outside and unchained the brand-new mint-green cruiser she’d bought at the bike shop a few months ago. It was finally starting to cool down from the sweltering summer heat, and Tayla was enjoying her rides again. She called Tacos Marcianos on the way over, picked up a box of tacos from the take-out window, and put it in her bike basket before she rode back to the comic book shop.

  When she walked inside, she heard a low whistle from the back racks.

  “Jeremy?”

  “Is that my girlfriend bringing me Martian tacos for lunch?”

  “Yes.” She set the food and her purse down on the counter. “Now with one hundred percent more Martians. Where are you and how are you seeing me?”

  “I’m in the back corner by the manga.�
�

  She raised her eyebrows. “What kind of manga are you reading? Are tentacles involved?”

  Tayla walked around the corner and saw Jeremy with a helmet that looked like something out of a comic book. The outside was painted bright aqua blue, and a long periscope shaped like a tentacle covered one eye and stretched up and over the bookcases. “Wow. Tentacles actually are involved. What is that?”

  “Tarlec the Squid Man. Someone ordered a helmet and it just came in.”

  “And you needed to test the Tarkec—”

  “Tarlec.”

  “Test the Tarlec the Squid Guy helmet out?” Tayla stepped closer.

  “I mean…” Jeremy reluctantly removed the helmet. “If it was broken or something, he’d need to send it back.” He held it out to Tayla. “You want to try it? It’s pretty cool.”

  “Does the periscope actually work?”

  “Yes.”

  She shrugged and reached for the helmet, but instead of handing it to Tayla, Jeremy carefully placed it on her head and then adjusted the eye piece.

  “Oh cool.” Tayla swung the periscope attachment toward the front windows. “Hey, you can see stuff!” She noticed Emmie walking out of Café Maya with no box in her hands. “Uh-oh. Ox is going to be hungry.”

  The helmet came off and Tayla turned to Jeremy. “Thank goodness we were here for quality control.”

  “It’s cool, right?” He looked lovingly at the helmet. “I can’t really justify spending that kind of money on something like this since I don’t cosplay at cons or anything like that.”

  Oh, he was such an adorable geek. “But if you did cosplay at cons, it would be completely worth the money.”

  “Oh yeah.” His eyes were wide. “This manufacturer works directly with illustrators to create genuine— You’re messing with me, aren’t you? You think this is stupid.”

  She broke into a smile. “Do you think hunting for hours for a vintage Louis Vuitton bag is stupid?”

  “Uh…” He wrinkled his nose. “Honestly?”

  “You don’t have to answer, because I know you think it’s stupid, especially since I already have one.” She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. “And that’s okay. We all have our stupid things that aren’t stupid to us.”

  “So you think I should order a Tarlec the Squid Man genuine helmet replica?”

  “You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t expect me to kiss you while you’re wearing that thing.” She nodded toward the front. “Come on. Tacos are getting cold.”

  She turned around, and Jeremy patted her ass as she walked away.

  Tayla looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Just saying hello?”

  “Quality control,” he said. “I have to appreciate a fine ass when I see one.”

  “I hope your skinny ass is ready for tonight.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m always ready.”

  “To your right,” Cary yelled. “Your right. The other right!”

  “You don’t have to be so rude!” Tayla yelled down. She was three-quarters of the way up the tall wall. She’d made it farther than she had in two months. “This sports bra is cutting off circulation to my brain.”

  “You’re doing great, Tayla!” Ashley and Jeremy were her constant encouragers. “You’re almost there.”

  Dave was farther up and a little to Tayla’s right. “Can you see the hold he’s talking about?”

  She tried to look. “Dude. My boob is genuinely blocking where I think he’s pointing. I am not joking about this.”

  Dave couldn’t stop laughing. “Okay, you’re secure on your left foot and your right hand?”

  “Yeah, I’m solid.”

  “Okay, it’s no more than a crimp, but your feet are small. If you can get your toe on it, you should be able to boost yourself up to grab that jug with your left hand. Just remember to keep your weight in your legs.”

  “Okay.” She felt for the hold Cary was yelling about. “I got it.”

  “You feel it?”

  “Yeah.” Glancing down at her harness, she checked the knot, just like she did every time she climbed this crazy wall. “You know, I told him I didn’t want to do this.”

  “But you’re having fun, right?”

  “I am trying new things!” Tayla shifted her weight.

  “Then you’re home free.”

  Holding her weight with her upper-body strength was always an issue, but her foothold on the right was solid. She lifted her left knee and brought it up to the flat edge. Then her right arm went up. Her right foot found a nice wide jug.

  “You’re doing it!” Jeremy was going nuts. “You’ve got it, baby!”

  Tayla ignored everyone. She could see the route in her mind now. She’d made it past the point she usually fell. She’d put her right foot there. Her left hand there. Up would go the left foot.

  Within minutes, she was pulling herself up by her elbows and swinging her left knee over the top of the wall. She was panting. She was ecstatic.

  “Holy shit!” She sat up and raised her hand, shouting down to Jeremy, Cary, and Ashley. “Big girls can fucking climb!”

  “Whoo!” Jeremy was doing a dance. Ashley hugged him. Cary was holding her rope and nodding with a smile.

  Dave was slapping her shoulder. “Fucking right they can. You killed it.”

  Everyone in the climbing gym was clapping. It was her first time all the way up the wall, and she’d garnered more than a few skeptical looks the first time she’d tried. She’d fallen so many times she’d lost count, swinging from her harness while she tried to ignore the looks and smirks of the more experienced climbers.

  Jeremy had never let her get discouraged. He’d been working slowly, starting with bouldering while his arm healed, taking things easy.

  “Just come with me. I’ll only be doing easy stuff.”

  Ah yes, that’s how she was lured in. Just the easy stuff.

  Which led to slightly harder stuff.

  Which led to Tayla being in a harness and weird ugly shoes, trying like hell not to make a fool of herself.

  And finally she was up.

  She stood and performed a graceful curtsy at the top of the wall. Then she turned around, checked with Cary, and carefully walked down the wall to the floor.

  Where she was nearly tackled by Jeremy.

  He grabbed her by the waist and spun her around before he kissed her. “I’m so proud of you,” he said when he let her up for air. “I am so, so proud of you. Amazing.”

  She laughed. “I don’t know how you did it, but you managed to make a mountain girl out of me.”

  “I love you like crazy.”

  Her heart felt like it was going to burst. It was probably from climbing the giant wall. “Okay, I will admit that I like this a little bit. But!”

  He grinned. “What?”

  “If you insist on me continuing this crazy hobby, I have one condition.”

  “Anything.”

  She looked down and grimaced. “You have got to find me some cuter shoes.”

  He burst out laughing.

  “Because this”—she pointed to her feet—“this is ridiculous.”

  “Okay.” Jeremy kissed her again. “Deal.”

  “Deal?”

  He held out his hand. “Forever and all time, Miss McKinnon.”

  Tayla took his hand, stood on her tiptoes, and gave him a kiss. “I’m glad you see it my way.”

  * * *

  THE END

  Continue reading for an exclusive first look at GRIT,

  the next Love Story on 7th and Main.

  Coming Fall 2019

  First Look: Grit

  Cary didn’t know how she was standing, but she was. Melissa Rhodes stood across from him, all five feet and a few inches of tough. In the past three years she’d lost her grandfather, buried her husband, and taken over the family ranch. All the while, she’d continued to raise her five-year-old daughter and take care of her mother.

  And now Melissa was standin
g in front of Cary, doing the one thing he knew she hated more than anything—asking for help.

  “I don’t want to ask—”

  “You wouldn’t if it wasn’t important.” Cary cleared the roughness from his throat. “What do you need?”

  She blew out a hard breath and looked away. “Just… advice, I guess. I have a degree. I know all this stuff on paper, but I have no margin for error here. Calvin and I had been talking about this for a while. We have all the money for the planting together.”

  “You know you’re not going to see a decent harvest for a while, right? You need enough money to float the trees for a few years. Can the ranch carry that?”

  A flicker of the fire he thought she’d lost. “I can handle it.”

  “Okay.” He leaned against his truck. “I’m not gonna sugarcoat it for you—it’s a hard business, and the drought has been brutal. The only reason our place has held up as well as it has is that we haven’t had to carry debt.”

  Her grey eyes were steely. “What citrus variety will give me the best return the fastest?”

  “You’re planting your lower acreage? The Jordan Valley side?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If my dad were still living, he’d argue with me”—Cary stuck his hands in his pockets—“but I think you should plant mandarins.”

  “Not oranges?”

  He shook his head. “I can point you to some hardy varieties, and I think the market is turning hot for them. Plus you’ll get a full harvest a year sooner. How many acres?”

  “Fifty for now.”

  He nodded. It was a decent start for a new grower, especially one that already had a ranch. “I can give you advice, but are you sure you have time for this? The ranch—”

  “I can handle the ranch,” she said. “Don’t worry about that. Ox said he could help out more too.”

  Depending on family was tricky, but Cary knew Ox, Melissa’s brother, was solid. “Okay.”

  The Oxford and Nakamura families had been neighbors both Cary’s and Melissa’s entire lives. The Nakamuras grew citrus. The Oxfords raised cattle.