All You Can Handle (Moments In Maplesville Book 5) Page 4

  Ian folded his arms across his chest. “I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t shoot your movie until after the science fair?”

  “These are just practice scenes,” she said as she fiddled with the Sony Action Cam handheld video camera Ian had bought her for Christmas.

  He knew he should order her to get back to learning her information for the science fair, but Ian decided to leave her to her movie making for now. Even though he thought building a robot was the coolest thing on the face of the earth, Kimmie was more concerned with making them the stars of her next big feature film. His baby sister was determined to take Hollywood by storm. She just had to get through junior high first.

  Ian made his way back to the kitchen. He stopped with his hand on the door, his head falling forward as he sucked in a deep breath. He wasn’t ready to go back into the garage.

  Was it the coincidence to top all coincidences, or was it just his bad luck that the woman who had occupied every square centimeter of his brain since she’d pulled out of the parking lot of The Corral last night would be the same person who Vanessa had described as the perfect candidate to rent his garage apartment?

  Coincidence or not, the question was what exactly was he going to do about it?

  When he’d opened his front door and saw her standing there, it was like a dream come to life. Until she mentioned sneaking into his room. Then he remembered the young, impressionable pre-teen who slept just down the hallway from him.

  That’s when Ian realized how so very dangerous it would be to have the woman he’d spent the night fantasizing about living just a few yards away.

  A part of him wanted to tell her that the apartment was no longer available. He could say that he and Vanessa had gotten their wires crossed and the apartment had been promised to someone else.

  But what would he say if, in a few weeks, she discovered there was no one living there? In a town as small as Maplesville, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that word wouldn’t get back to her.

  Besides, he needed to get this apartment rented out as soon as possible. He’d already listed it as extra income on his loan application. Mr. Babineaux at the bank had encouraged him to provide as many income streams as possible, suggesting that it made Ian a more attractive candidate for a mortgage.

  Ian had been hesitant, because finding a renter had not been the easiest task, especially with all the new apartment complexes coming up in town. It’s why he’d enlisted Vanessa’s help. When he’d tried renting it out on his own, the only takers Ian had found were a loner with bloodshot eyes and a college kid whose clothes reeked of marijuana. He had to be picky when it came to choosing a renter. He wouldn’t have just anyone living so close to Kimmie.

  It wasn’t as if he knew Sonny all that well, but hell, he’d had sex with her in a Volkswagen. That had to count for something.

  It was the something that made him edgy.

  If circumstances were different he would jump at the chance to have Sonny living just steps away from him, but he had to consider the kind of influence his actions had on Kimmie.

  There was a knock on the kitchen door. Ian looked up and let out a soft groan at the sight of the wild Afro silhouetted behind the burnt orange curtains. His fingers were itching to sink into that ‘fro again. To hold her head steady as she rode him hard and fast…

  Shit!

  He could not entertain thoughts like this with his baby sister only one room away.

  He sucked in a deep breath and opened the door. Sonny remained on the other side of the threshold.

  “Um, you mind if I come in?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah, sure.” He moved out of the doorway so that she could enter. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay,” she said as she moved passed him. Her unique scent wafted through his nostrils and his body stirred to life. Goodness. Just being in the same room with this woman set his blood on fire.

  Sonny walked over to the kitchen island in the center of the room.

  Ian debated feeding her the mysterious other renter story for a half second before tossing the idea out.

  “So, what do you think?” he asked.

  She clasped her hands together and stretched them out in front of her before letting them fall back to her thighs. “It’s perfect,” she said. “It really is. It’s just enough space, it’s close to work, and it’s within my budget. It’s exactly what I was looking for.”

  Great. There was no way he could tell her no now, not with the excitement glittering in her eyes.

  “Good.” Ian nodded. “Yeah…that’s good.”

  Kimmie swept into the kitchen, robot in one hand, video camera in the other. She charged up to Madison like a bull on a wavy red flag.

  “So, are you staying?” Kimmie asked. “I hope you do. But I want to move into the garage when I’m sixteen, so you’d have to be out in three years. By the way, this is my robot, Fitzgerald. I call him Fitz, for short. I built him for my science project. Well, technically, Ian built him, but I helped a lot and I know exactly how he works so when it’s time to present him at the science fair, no one will know that I didn’t actually build him. So, are you going to rent the apartment?”

  Sonny’s face held the shell-shocked expression Ian had grown used to seeing on anyone who encountered Kimmie for the first time.

  “Uh, I would like to,” Sonny said.

  “Awesome. If you do, can I please, please, please borrow those bangles? Those are in now. When I say ‘in’ I mean that they’re in-style. It’s like when old stuff becomes popular again. And those are—”

  “Kimberlyn,” Ian said, a hint of warning in his tone.

  “It’s okay,” Sonny said, laughing. “These happen to be vintage. I get a lot of my clothes from consignment shops and thrift stores. You can find all kinds of old stuff that’s become popular again.”

  “Oh my God! Can we go shopping?” Kimmie asked, bouncing like she had springs in her feet. “Ian has horrible taste and he won’t let me buy anything that’s in style. It’s so—”

  “Kimmie, go back to your science project,” Ian said.

  She looked over at him with the annoyed pre-teen eye-roll she’d perfected over the past couple of years. “Fine,” she said.

  Ian usually called her on the attitude, but right now he just wanted to get her out of the room.

  Once she was gone, he wanted to call her back. He hadn’t realized just how much of a buffer Kimmie and her insistent chatter had brought. Standing in his kitchen alone with Sonny was an exercise in awkwardness.

  “So, the apartment will work for you?” Ian asked.

  “Yes. As I mentioned before, I love the size, and the flexible lease agreement is perfect.”

  And if he counted the steps, Ian was sure it would take less than a hundred of them to get from his bed to hers. The temptation would be so great he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to fight it.

  “Look, Madison—”

  “Sonny,” she interrupted. “I usually go by Sonny.”

  “Yeah, well, when I read the name Sonny in Vanessa’s e-mail, I pictured a fat, balding middle-aged guy who’d finally been tossed out of his mom’s basement. It may take me a while to get used to calling you Sonny.”

  She bit her bottom lip, but the smile she was trying to hide still came through her eyes.

  “I’d appreciate it if you tried.” She hesitated a moment. “Does this mean I get the apartment?”

  Ian gave her one curt nod. Then he went around to the other side of the kitchen island. He needed to put some distance between them.

  “If you’re going to rent the apartment, we need to set some boundaries,” he started.

  Well-shaped brows peaked over whiskey brown eyes. She crossed her arms and leaned a hip against the counter. “Okay,” she said.

  Looking toward the dining room where Kimmie was, he lowered his voice and said, “What we did last night will have to be just what it was—that one night.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Wait a minute?
Aren’t you the same guy who offered to be my new friend who shows me around town and gives me regular orgasms?”

  Damn. Just hearing her say the word orgasm nearly gave him an orgasm.

  “That was before—” Ian took several steps toward her and lowered his voice even more. “That was before I knew there was the possibility of you living above my garage.” He released a heavy breath. “Look, I have to think about the kind of example I set for Kimmie. She’s only twelve years old.”

  Sonny hesitated for just a moment before nodding. “I understand where you’re coming from. Consider last night forgotten. Do you have a lease for me to sign?”

  Ian’s head jerked back. Damn, he didn’t think she would get over it that quickly.

  “Not right this minute,” he said. “Vanessa is handling all of the paperwork.”

  “Well, I’d feel better if there was something in writing that I could sign right now, just to make sure you don’t rent the room to anyone else,” she said. “You can Google ‘simple lease agreement’ and print something off the Internet, then I can sign the official document once you get it from your real estate agent.”

  “I’m not going to rent the apartment to anyone else, Sonny.”

  “You’re still offering a month-to-month lease, correct?”

  “Yeah. Sure,” Ian said.

  “Good, because that’s a deal breaker for me. I’m not sure how long I’ll be in Maplesville.”

  His head reared back again. “Really? How temporary is this?”

  “I’m not sure yet. It all depends on how this new job works out, or if something more suitable comes along. Flexibility is important.”

  Ian didn’t know what to make of the uneasy feeling that settled in his gut at her talking so nonchalantly about moving onto the next town when she’d just arrived in this one.

  “We can do the month-to-month thing,” he said. “Nothing complicated.”

  “Great,” she said with an overly bright smile. “So, we’re good?”

  Ian stared at her for several long moments before he nodded. “We’re good.”

  “Wonderful. I promise you won’t even know I’m here.” She gave him another of those too-cheery-to-be-real smiles before she left out of the kitchen door.

  Ian slumped against the counter and cradled his head in his hands.

  Won’t know she’s here?

  As if there was a chance in hell of that happening.

  Chapter Three

  “Where are you little grater?” Sonny murmured as she searched the huge pullout utensil drawer. “I know you’re here somewhere.”

  The prep station she’d been appointed to at Catering by Kiera wasn’t huge but it was well-stocked. She knew there must be a grater somewhere. But she’d been searching for the past five minutes and continued to come up short.

  Maybe if she could concentrate on her actual work instead of thinking about her new living situation, she could find what she was looking for.

  “It’s only temporary,” Sonny reminded herself. If she found it too difficult to live in such close proximity to Ian, she could just leave. Simple.

  Although finding another apartment that offered a month-to-month lease was probably impossible. Her best bet was to just stay away from Ian altogether.

  She had not seen him since Vanessa Chauvin had arrived with the official lease late yesterday afternoon. Other than hearing the rumble of his truck’s engine as he backed out of the driveway, she’d managed to avoid all reminders of him.

  Okay, so that wasn’t entirely true. She was constantly reminded of him. There was this humming throughout her entire being all night long, knowing that he was just yards away. She’d fallen asleep thinking about him right next door, having dinner, taking a shower, slipping into bed.

  Sonny braced her hands on the stainless steel workstation and searched for her center of control. She had a job to do, and allowing thoughts of Ian’s nude body on black silk sheets—because he had to sleep in the nude on black silk sheets—would do her no good.

  “Concentrate,” she admonished with a fierce whisper. It was her first day on the job, and she already had her first big test.

  The day began easy enough. Once she arrived, the catering company’s owner, Kiera Coleman-Watson, had given her a brief tour of the two thousand square foot corrugated building. After a meeting to discuss dessert ideas for a wedding they would be catering in a couple of weeks, Kiera had left her to become acquainted with the lay of the land.

  Sonny had toured through the pantry room and large, walk-in refrigerated room. Then she’d moved just a couple of the baking instruments around—after gaining permission from Kiera, of course—so that they better suited her work style. She was just settling in when Kiera barged in with an emergency catering job for a law firm downtown. They needed hors d’oeuvres for fifty by noon. Kiera tasked Sonny with coming up with a suitable dessert using whatever she could find in the kitchen because she would not have time to go out and buy supplies.

  It had been a mad scramble for Sonny, but also wicked exciting, like something from those Food Network challenge shows, when chefs had to come up with recipes on the fly. Thankfully there was high quality cake flour. As long as she could make a plain yellow cake as a base, Sonny could do just about anything dessert-wise.

  She’d baked two large sheet cakes and cut them into small squares. Then she’d dropped several pieces into the plastic shot glasses that she’d spotted during their tour, except for a few cake squares that she’d soaked in a combination of espresso and brandy for tiramisu. Sonny made a mental note to order a few more dessert liquors. Then she could really show what she could do.

  That would come later. Right now all she needed was a grater so that she could shave some pieces of the thick bar of dark chocolate that had thankfully also been in the pantry. One thing she’d discovered, when it came to quality, Kiera didn’t skimp. Every ingredient she found was top-notch.

  “Yes!” Sonny said as she finally located the grater.

  As she made delicate shavings into an empty pie tin, she caught herself smiling. When was the last time that had happened while working? Sonny realized this was the difference between doing what you feel you have to do as opposed to doing what you want to do.

  She’d spent the last eight years doing what was expected of her. Her happiness had not been part of the equation, as long as she was holding up the proud White family tradition—being at the very top of her class, earning the highest praise from attending physicians who evaluated her residency program—that’s all that mattered.

  She could still hear her father’s voice.

  There’s no such thing as an overachiever.

  Yeah, well, that wasn’t her life anymore. Finally, she was doing what she wanted to do.

  Saying adios to the fake persona she’d perfected over the years was the best thing she could have done. She’d finally revealed the body art she’d hidden from her parents since her first tattoo back in college and had gotten three more just this past year. She’d given up taming her hair with relaxers and let it grow freely. Her unbound ‘fro was her crowning glory.

  But nothing said eff you to her old life more than when she’d dropped out of her residency program to pursue the career she’d always wanted. Her love of baking had been cultivated over those long, lazy summers she’d spent in west Louisiana with her maternal grandmother, Maw Maw Jean, whose cakes and pies were known throughout Cajun country.

  Sonny sucked in a deep, shuddering breath.

  It was the night before her grandmother’s funeral, while Sonny stood in her kitchen baking Maw Maw Jean’s famous sweet potato pie for the post-funeral repast, that Sonny decided to quit medicine. Life was too short to spend it doing something she didn’t love. Baking was her passion; she owed it to her grandmother to pursue it.

  And if she were standing here right now her grandmother would tell Sonny to stop daydreaming and get to work.

  Just as she sprinkled the last of the chocolate shavings
over the tiramisu, Kiera entered her prep area.

  “How’s it going in here?” Kiera asked. She stopped short. Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open as she perused the dessert cups lined up along the stainless steel table.

  “I hope you didn’t have these shot glasses set aside for anything in particular,” Sonny said. “They were perfect for this dessert. I made individual strawberry shortcakes, lemon curd with blueberry syrup, and tiramisu. You wouldn’t happen to have any fresh mint leaves lying around, would you?”

  Kiera shook her head as she rounded the table. “These are amazing. I can’t believe you were able to come up with this just from what was lying around in the pantry.”

  “It was a challenge, but it was fun. I think they came out okay.”

  “You think?” Kiera’s incredulous smirk wrenched a laugh from her. “I love you for this. Now let’s get it over to the law firm.”

  Kiera’s assistant, Macy Bardell, who’s electric blue hair had been the first indication to Sonny that Kiera wouldn’t have a problem with her own unique style, helped them load everything into the van. Sonny joined Kiera on the delivery so that Macy could prep the food for Kiera’s Kickin’ Kajun food truck, which would be hitting the streets later tonight.

  Sonny climbed into the back of the van so that she could make sure the desserts didn’t jostle too much as they drove into downtown Maplesville. The office manager at the law firm was ecstatic when they arrived, thanking Kiera profusely for saving her hide. Their usual caterer, who was an hour away in Covington, had bailed on their standing job to cater the firm’s monthly assessment meeting, which was held every third Wednesday of the month. The office manager offered Kiera a contract on the spot to take over all of the law firm’s catering duties.

  “Did that just happen?” Sonny asked as they made their way back to the van.

  “It sure did,” Kiera said. “It serves them right for going with Entertain Us Catering in the first place. I’m the local caterer.”

  “Is Entertain Us your biggest competitor?”

  “They’re one of them,” Kiera said. “There’s another in Slidell that people like to use, even though they’re forty-five minutes away. But Entertain Us gives me the biggest run for my money. They have an amazing pastry chef who does competition-caliber cakes. You can thank him for your new job, because he’s the main reason I decided to look for a pastry chef. I needed to step up my game if I was going to compete.”