Chapter 2—Aspen
“Suh guhd,” Aspen’s employee-come-friend, Mia, sighed and even moaned with pleasure around a mouthful of a triple-chocolate muffin. This definitely pleased Aspen as she had been baking long before the sun welcomed the day that morning.
“I take it the ‘Godiva This is Good” muffin hit the spot?” Aspen quizzed Mia in a serious tone, but couldn’t keep the smile from dancing across her lips.
Aspen would take Mia’s passionate response as high praise for her latest recipe. Especially since she focused on feeding the wants and needs of the most addicted chocoholics who visited her shop.
But alas, Aspen couldn’t savor the moment too long.
She began working on another batch of batter showcasing her own spin on carrot cake cupcakes.
The treats featured perfectly pulsed carrots in her food processor, crushed pineapple and rich spices that made her ‘What’s up Doc?
’ cupcakes topped with cream cheese frosting a customer favorite in her bakery.
Mia had only worked with Aspen a short time, and only part-time at that, but what had started as a desperate need for an early-morning barista so Aspen could focus on her baking and business side of things had shifted to a wonderful friendship with the cute-as-a-button-come-sassy grad student.
Mia may be several years her junior but was wise beyond her age right down to the tips of her glorious mane of mahogany hair.
Mia performed lifesaver duties on so many levels, both professionally and personally. In fact she became one of Aspen’s closest friends in a short period of time.
On the business side of the house, Mia’s meager salary, along with two other part-timers, prevented Aspen from fixing some of the many, many things in need of repair around the shop.
However, she required the small staff to help elevate the bakery from struggling to successful.
There just weren’t enough hours in the day to perform the things on Aspen’s to-do list to run the business solo.
And there wasn’t much left after paying her small staff to return capital back into the bakery. That, combined with a hit to her bottom line when a national coffee chain recently opened up down the block, presented even more challenges to Aspen’s skimpy profits in recent months.
Aspen did have a plan to expand the bakery by forging into catering for meetings and small events, all while preserving her loyal customer base.
She’d then have the money to slowly invest into the business.
Something her parents probably should have done when they owned the business before moving to Florida a few years ago, but never got around to.
And although they continually told her, er, guided her, in how they thought she should run the bakery, the reality was they failed to invest in the bones of the small shop in all those years.
Aspen paid the price for their procrastination as the building showed its age and wear from the battered flooring to an oven on its last leg.
Aspen’s plan to expand into catering was solid since she had far too much debt to qualify for any more money due to covering much of her parents’ own debt when she assumed their loan. She figured she should have enough capital to inject into her business by the time she turned... sixty.
So, while most of Aspen’s pennies headed toward whittling away the debt her folks amassed who were now forging ahead with a meager retirement in Florida, she’d limp her way through some of the worn – heck, who was she kidding – broken parts of the bakery like the handle she had to jiggle on her oven to ensure the interior light turned off.
Shifting her mind away from those depressing thoughts, Aspen looked up from the cupcake batter to see a dreamy expression crossing Mia’s face.
“My muffins are good but, damn, girl, whatever fantasy flight you were on must have been a hella journey.”
Mia gave her head a shake that caused her dark ponytail to flutter across her back in sleek waves.
Mia was (literally) saved by the bell from further questioning about her faraway look when the tinkling of the cascading chimes over the front door signaled a customer.
Or customers as was the case. And, hot damn, the trio of men entering the shop with their movie-star-quality-looks couldn’t have been any different if they tried.
The oldest looking of the three, maybe in his early thirties, had dark hair trimmed in a stylish, short cut and had perfectly sun-kissed olive skin.
Guy two seemed pretty young, but had the muscles of a man and an impish look in his denim-blue eyes that she was certain caused girls of all ages to swoon.
Aspen couldn’t linger on the young buck because guy three caused a shiver of anticipation to zing through her system when she spied the blonde behemoth of a man with his shoulder-length golden hair paired with a perfectly stubbled beard a few shades of darker blonde, and the most-piercing blue eyes she’d ever seen.
The blue replicated the winter sky across the snow-covered Siberian expanse, or at least what she’d thought a Siberian sky would look like.
And tall. He was so freaking tall. Aspen was no slouch at five-nine, but the beast towered over her. He was by far the biggest of the three men. Speaking of big, his muscles literally bulged beneath a vintage rock band t-shirt with Aerosmith’s logo stretched across his chest as broad as a bus.
Aspen gave herself a mental jolt to return to reality.
No time for a man, girl.
She silently admonished herself and offered the sex-starved part of her brain a reminder that the bakery was her lover. A lover that demanded her sole attention until she made a dent in the loan and could invest back into her future.
In a few decades. Ugh.
And yet Aspen couldn’t take her eyes off of the beast’s tattoos. She never gave much thought to tattoos in the past, but the colored ink tracking down his arms in intricate patterns and designs had her itching to trace her fingers and tongue across the permanent pigment.
“Hey sis. What’s shaking?” the suave looking, dark-haired hottie asked Mia and sauntered up to the counter where she stood at the espresso machine.
Ahhhh. Recognition donned on Aspen that the hunky guy with an uncanny resemblance to Mia was her brother. He was a professional hockey player and part of the hometown team. Aspen could only assume the other two well-built Adonis-like men were his teammates.
Speaking of teammates, Aspen couldn’t linger too long on Mia’s brother because she again focused her attention on the sexy blonde who took a deep inhale through his nose, a slight smile tugging up one side of his mouth.
Damn, even his lips were sexy in their fullness accentuated by his beard.
Sensing he was enjoying the rich scents the bakery offered, Aspen’s traitorous mind wandered to a vision of her placing a bit of icing on the thick cords of his neck and further down the rippling muscles of his chest and licking off the confection one dart of her tongue at a time.
Where in the hell did that thought come from?
Aspen was losing it.
Meanwhile, the Viking-like blonde ended his indulgent inhale and levelled a glare at the guy Aspen assumed was Mia’s brother.
“Seriously, old man, you’ve gotta claw your way into the twenty-first century. Next, you’re going to be saying groovy or Daddy-o, for fuck’s sake.”
Aspen used the redirection of the moment to anchor herself in the present and not some erotic fantasyland concocted by her mind to ease her loneliness and sexual drought.
And what exactly was the present? Aspen lost all focus as she spied the blues and silvers of the man’s ink hugging the thickest forearms she’d ever seen. Was she a forearm girl? She didn’t think so, but...
Baking, yes that’s it. Baking, Aspen silently reminded herself.
She returned to the task of stirring the spice-colored cupcake mixture by hand, trying to be discreet as she stole looks. She couldn’t help it, the way his defined pecs pressed firmly against the thin material of his t-shirt.
As if her sex-starved body had a mind of its own, her eyes instinctively drew downward to take in his pair of Levi’s so worn with wear they were nearly white in places, like at his knees and other interesting areas, like at the juncture of his thighs, causing another round of shivers to skitter through her insides.
Enough, Aspen!
She began violently mixing the carrot cake batter and prayed the hottie hadn’t caught her ogling him like a child getting their first look at the holiday season’s toy catalogue.
“Shit!” Mia yelped.
Aspen’s attention instantly zipped away from her errant thoughts of the hunky blonde to Mia who was holding her burned hand. The milk Mia frothed for a latte spilled over the metal canister and onto her skin.
Aspen abandoned her cupcake mixture to come to Mia’s aid at the espresso station but was beat to the spot by Mia’s brother and the younger lad.
It didn’t matter that she was seemingly late to the party; Aspen was going to join the pair to ensure Mia was okay.
Aspen was only a few steps behind as she hurried to where Mia stood, but the warped wooden trim that jutted from the bottom of the counter caught her foot, sending her sailing in the air. She landed with a mighty thud right at Mia’s feet.
Aspen lay face down, the shock of the fall paralyzing her for a moment. She began taking stock of her body to ensure there were no apparent injuries, when she felt herself being swept off the floor and into the muscley, tattooed arms of the man she’d been gawking at just moments before.
Aspen’s first thought was complete awe that the giant could so effortlessly lift her from the floor and into his arms.
Her second thought focused on how hard those muscles of his arms were, the same arms she now held in a death grip. Touching the beast caused the earlier vision of licking and tasting him to zoom back to the forefront of her mind.