A SEAL's Temptation

Lark glanced at the funky clock on the wall, a mosaic of coffee beans with spoons for hands, and gave a fond thought to the time in her life that she’d called 10:00 a.m. the start of the morning.

“Did you want it to go?” she asked, lifting the lid of the domed dessert dish and, remembering to use a napkin, grabbed the largest muffin.

“Here is fine. With business so slow, I’m sure you can keep me company for a while.”

Oh, goody. Lark filled a rich purple mug etched with stars with coffee and tried not to grimace. That sounded about as fun as being kicked in the gut by a scary clown during a tax audit.

Or barring that, having a pity party over her nonexistent sex life.

* * *

“I HATE THAT GUY. He’s such a jerk.” Her eyes narrow with suspicion, Sara watched the smarmy banker lean forward, damn near climbing over the counter to shove his capped-tooth smile in Lark’s face. “Look at how he’s getting in her space. That can’t be good. A guy like that, he’ll smudge her aura.”

“You’re a goofball,” Cassia said, shaking her head. But she twisted in her chair to check it out. “Quit worrying. It’s not like he’s hitting on her.”

“Worse. He’s nagging at her. And if he keeps at it long enough, she’ll cave and sell him The Magic Beans. If she does, she’ll move away and then we’ll lose a good friend. A good friend with a great wardrobe that she lets you borrow. Then what?”

Misery was what.

Misery for Sara, that was.

She’d lose her best friend. The coolest person she’d ever met. Lark was everything Sara wanted to be. Sophisticated yet bohemian. Clever yet sweet. She had a degree in Fine Arts, she’d owned a chic apartment in San Francisco and worked in a fancy art gallery and attended fancy art shows there featuring her own pottery. She’d had it all.

And she’d given it up for family. Lark had come to Little Lake, Idaho, a year and a half ago because her mom was sick. When Raine Sommers’s flu had turned out to be cancer, Lark had stayed. First to take care of her mother, then after Raine passed, to take over running The Magic Beans.

Sara thought Lark was the strongest woman she knew.

“Well, she’s not happy,” Cassia pointed out. “She puts on a good face and all. But she’s working her tail off to keep this place going like if she doesn’t her mom’s gonna come back and kick her ass.”

Sara winced and resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. If ghosts where real—and she was sure they were—talk like that would earn a good haunting.

“She promised Raine that she’d keep it going.”

“Lark shouldn’t be miserable just because she made a deathbed promise.” Cassia shook her head. “That’s, like, medieval.”

Sara hummed instead of answering. She knew Lark was sticking around for more than her mom’s legacy. Raine’s insurance hadn’t gone very far, so Lark had sold her San Francisco apartment and taken out a second mortgage on the coffeehouse in the hopes that something—anything—would change the prognosis.

The bottom line was that Lark couldn’t afford to leave. But Sara wasn’t telling Cassia that.

“And speaking of medieval, can you believe she hasn’t had sex in eighteen months?”

“Seventeen months, eleven days and nine hours,” Sara corrected. Then, frowning, she added, “Maybe ten by now.”

“No wonder she’s unhappy. I mean, can you imagine going that long?” Cassia gave an exaggerated shudder, but the horror in her eyes was real.

“Well, her heart was broken,” Sara pointed out. “Between her mom and that jerk, Eric, she’s had a lot to deal with.”

Eric had been Lark’s sexy San Francisco guy. They’d been practically engaged, and he’d cheated on her the first week she’d been in Idaho. Worse, Lark had found out when a friend posted New Year’s pictures on Facebook—one of which was her true love with his lips plastered on a busty blonde’s mouth and his hands on her butt.

“That’s the answer,” Cassia exclaimed, slapping her hand on the table. Sara hissed when everyone, including the woman whose sex life they were whispering about, looked over.

“What’s the answer?” she asked when they all turned back to their own business.

“Sex.”

Sara blinked.

“Sex?”

“Yeah. You know, the horizontal boogie? The mattress mambo? Riding the—”

“Stop!” In defense against the onslaught of euphemisms, of which she knew Cassia had legion, Sara threw up a hand. “We’ve already established that I know what sex is. What I don’t know is why you think it would help Lark right now.”

“Sex helps anything, anyone, anytime,” was Cassia’s sage response.

“How is sex going to help Lark’s situation?” She didn’t ask how it’d help Lark personally. She knew what Cassia would say to that.

“Sex will keep Lark from seizing her engine.”

“What do you mean?”

Her cousin grinned. “Remember that mechanic I went out with for a while?”

“The one who liked to, um, do you on the hood of his Camaro,” she asked. At Cassia’s nod, Sara shrugged. “So?”

“While we were doing the hood hop, he rebuilt my engine.” Smirking at Sara’s arch look, Cassia shook her head. “That way, too, but I mean he literally rebuilt the engine of my ’Vette. Chewed me out for not taking care of it properly, too. Said that an engine has to stay lubricated if it’s going to run right.”

Confused, Sara lifted her mug to lick the last of the whipped cream from the side. Maybe if the sugar high kicked in, she’d understand.

“Lark needs sex,” Cassia explained patiently, pushing aside her coffee mug, only half-empty. “It’ll give her a boost. If she’s boosted enough, she’ll be able to figure out what she wants to do with her life, she’ll know how to handle the coffeehouse and, let’s face it, she’ll feel damned good.”

Sara pursed her lips and thought over Cassia’s words. Sara was a smart woman when it came to most things, but in the matter of sex, she always bowed to Cassia’s greater knowledge. Everyone did. She wanted to suggest Heather’s aphrodisiac tarts, but knew better.

“So you’re saying if we get Lark some sort of date that she’ll stick around? I mean, that she’ll be happy,” Sara corrected, not wanting to sound selfish.

“It can’t hurt,” Cassia said with a wicked smile. “Now, let’s figure out who to hook her up with.”

“He has to be good-looking.”

“Better if he’s got a rockin’ bod. The kind that will make her mouth water and her hormones stand up and dance.”

“Someone with a good sense of humor,” Sara decided as she nibbled her bottom lip. “Lark’s had it rough the last couple of years, so someone who makes her laugh would be nice.”

“We want someone with stamina. A guy who can give her a dozen orgasms in one night, and still greet her the next morning with a breakfast boner.”

“A breakfast...” Knowing her cheeks were turning pink, Sara shook her head. Just when she thought Cassia couldn’t shock her any more.

“Yeah. Every woman deserves a once-in-a-lifetime guy. He needs to be temp, though. You know, transient. Otherwise Lark will get all emotionally involved and it could mess with her mind. That’d just put her right back where she is now.”