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?”

Luke shrugged. “The white kind.”

“Self-rising?” Gram asked. “Or all-purpose?”

“There’s a difference?”

“Sweetened or unsweetened cocoa powder?” Chloe asked.

Luke furrowed his brow. He thought he’d bought the right one, but maybe he’d misread. When it came to reading, letters typically swirled and flipped. Patience was key and he didn’t always have it. “I didn’t look specifically,” he lied.

Everyone groaned then traded cryptic glances.

Luke braced. Because he loved people, people usually loved him. He was always the life of the party, the guy everyone wanted to hang with. He’d never been kicked out of a club or any other circle but he had the feeling the CLs were about to give him the boot.

His sister, who was also the president of the Cupcake Lovers, braced her forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Here’s the thing, Luke,” she said with a gentle smile.

Oh, yeah. He could almost feel Rocky’s boot heel on his ass.

“As you know,” she went on, “we’re coordinating several overseas cupcake care packages. We’re also struggling to hold on to that publishing contract. It doesn’t bode well that they put our project on hold.”

“I’m almost sorry Tasha moved to Arizona,” Casey said. “She had a great relationship with our editor. If she were still acting as our liaison, she could probably persuade Brett to keep the release date on track.”

Luke wasn’t one bit sorry about Tasha and Randall Burke’s unexpected move. Although she hadn’t been directly responsible, Tasha had played a role in the destruction of The Red Clover—Rocky’s former bed-and-breakfast. His sister’s home and all of her belongings had been lost in a fire set by Randall’s son, Tasha’s stepson—who was now serving time in jail. Tasha had tried to make amends, but that hadn’t gone so well and Randall hadn’t appreciated living in the fallout of the scandal. He’d retired early, giving up his position as town mayor and packing up his trophy wife (whom he really seemed to love, for reasons that eluded anyone who knew the catty woman), trading one million-dollar home for another. Randall was richer than that Facebook dude.

Sort of like someone else Luke knew. Although he didn’t really know Rae at all and tried very hard not to think about her.

“Tasha’s absence factors in on multiple levels,” Chloe said. “Even though she’s still an honorary Cupcake Lover, she’s not a local member. It puts a kink in the overall package considering she contributed so many recipes and stories.”

“Not to mention she’s featured in photos and the publicity video,” Monica said.

“Also,” Chloe went on, “Brett wasn’t lying when he said there’s a glut in the cupcake market. Between that, Tasha leaving, and the whole Rachel snafu, I can see where we’ve lost some of our appeal.

“If we only had a gimmick,” Ethel said.

“I hope they don’t cancel our deal altogether,” Helen said.

“Would we have to give the advance money back?” Judy asked. “How would that work?”

“I know I was never a fan of this project, but there’s no denying the extra income would benefit our special causes,” Rocky said. “Take Sugar Tots for instance. I still can’t believe Gretchen closed the day care center and moved on just because she lost her grant money. We could have helped. A little anyway.”

“Every time I think of Sugar Tots I think of Rachel,” Casey said. “I mean Rae. Anybody heard from her again?”

“Just that one letter,” Chloe said. “The same one that everyone else got a few weeks ago.”

Everyone but Luke.

One good thing had come out of his disastrous visit to California. He’d made Rae feel guilty enough about fleeing Sugar Creek in the middle of the night that she’d finally written a letter to each and every member of the Cupcake Lovers apologizing for her abrupt departure. She’d also apologized for pretending to be someone she wasn’t, explaining she’d been desperate to escape the limelight and certain pressures associated with her family. She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone and hoped that in time they’d forgive her. She’d then personalized each letter and wished each person well, saying she’d be the first in line to preorder Cupcake Lover’s Delectable Delights—Making a Difference One Cupcake at a Time.

The only reason Luke knew all this was because Rocky had shown him her letter and, of course, Rae’s true identity had dominated the gossip portion of the CL meeting two weeks back—Luke’s first meeting. Everyone, including Sam, had been stunned that Rachel was actually Reagan, and that she was the daughter of the famous starlet Olivia Deveraux. Stunned, confused, curious, but not angry. Luke didn’t get that. How could they not be angry? She’d lied to them. For a year.