Jeannie Watt - Just Desserts

This is one sure-fire recipe for disaster!

Always proper Layla Taylor never expected to need her childhood nemesis. But when she’s stranded in a blizzard after breaking up with her cheating ex, Justin Tremont is exactly what she’s missing. Well, Justin and his car’s snow tires.

Justin’s more than okay being the rebound guy. A little fun, no strings—that’s his kind of relationship. But Layla Taylor? She’s by the book, to put it mildly. Justin, on the other hand, hardly ever follows his own recipes for the spectacular cakes he’s become known for. This woman is making him feel protective and possessive, of all things. And she sees right through him. That he can’t have. After all, no chef likes to tell all his secrets….

“Why not work for me?”

Layla smirked. “Thanks for the offer, Justin. I’ll see you around.”

He smiled at what was obviously a lie, since she was going to take great efforts not to see him, and took a step back. “Yeah. Layla. Sounds good.”

Layla barely got outside the door when the words he’d said sunk in. She’d given as good as she’d got.

Hadn’t she? Hmm. Maybe she hadn’t.

She turned and knocked. When Justin opened the door, she took both sides of his face, pulled his head down and kissed him.

“What was that for?” he said when she finally let him go.

“That was for every time I’ve taken the high road and didn’t respond in kind to all the stuff you and my brothers did to me.”

He rubbed his thumb over his lower lip. “I like the way you retaliate.”

Dear Reader,

Layla Taylor has long believed that if she planned well enough, her life would be safe, organized and secure—the exact opposite of the way she was raised. But when both her career and her love life evaporate within a matter of days, she begins to suspect that she’s wasted time chasing goals because she thought she had to, not because she wanted to. She’s determined to loosen up and enjoy life, but old habits are hard to break.

Enter Layla’s childhood nemesis, chef Justin Tremont, the guy who ran her bra up the ROTC flagpole fifteen years ago. Justin is the last person Layla thought she’d use as a role model, but who better to teach her to loosen up than someone who lives for a good time?

Justin, however, is not the carefree guy he pretends to be, because he has a secret. The kind of secret that doesn’t go away. The kind of secret that eats at a guy and eventually keeps him from forming long-term relationships. He’s getting a kick out of the new Layla and is more than happy to help her loosen up a little—until he starts to suspect that Layla deserves a whole lot more than he’s able to give.

Just Desserts is a book about acceptance—accepting the mistakes you’ve made, accepting that life isn’t something that can be planned and controlled. Accepting that sometimes you just have to take a chance and hope for the best.

I enjoy hearing from readers. Please feel free to contact me at jeanniewrites@gmail.com, or visit my website, www.jeanniewatt.com.

Jeannie Watt

Just Desserts

Jeannie Watt

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeannie Watt lives off the grid in rural Nevada and loves nothing better than an excellent meal. Jeannie is blessed with a husband who cooks more than she does, a son who knows how to make tapas and a daughter who knows the best restaurants in San Francisco. Her idea of heaven is homemade macaroni and cheese.

To Jamie, baker of delicious cakes and other fattening treats, too numerous to name.

To Victoria, my most patient editor,

Thank you!

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

LAYLA©TAYLOR©WASN’T©DRUNK enough to be hallucinating, which meant that Justin Tremont was not a figment of her imagination. Her childhood nemesis and the sworn enemy of all she held dear was indeed standing in the doorway of the Lake Tahoe lounge, scanning the room.

Crap.

She ducked her head, hoping he wouldn’t see her drowning her sorrows, alone, as she waited for her sister to come pick her up. The lounge was dimly lit and crowded. There was no reason he should notice her, but less than a minute later she felt the vinyl bench give way beneath his weight as he sat beside her.

This evening just kept getting better.

“Hi, Layla,” he said, when she cut him a sideways glance. “I’m here to take you home.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Whatever.”

Layla leaned her head back against the black vinyl booth cushion, noting with some alarm that when she closed her eyes, the room began to spin.

“Why are you here?” she asked without opening her eyes, certain that if she concentrated hard enough, she could make the spinning stop. Besides, she didn’t need to see to know exactly what Justin was doing—smirking at her. Just as he’d smirked at her for her entire life. Well, not all of it. Only the ten years they’d lived down the street from each other, and her younger brothers and Justin, who were all a year behind her in school, had enjoyed some kind of an outlaw bond. The three of them had made her life miserable whenever possible.

“Sam called,” Justin said, bringing her back to her very real problem at hand—him. “She asked me to take you home when I got off shift.”

She’d called her sister to rescue her, and Sam had got Justin to come. Was no one in her entire family responsible?

Easy answer there. No.

She was going to kill her sister.

Layla opened her eyes to find Justin studying her with a slight frown, as if assessing her condition. She didn’t like being assessed by Justin.

“Go home,” she said, the last word slurring slightly. She wasn’t going to tolerate any more smirking or misery at his hands. If he thought for one blinking second that she was going to allow him to be party to yet another of her humiliations, and drive her back to Reno…well, he could kiss her ass.

“I fully intend to do just that. Once I deliver you home as per Sam’s orders.”

Sam could kiss her ass, too.

Layla attempted to fix him with her teacher stare, the one that could melt a kid at twenty paces. Big mistake, because in doing so she had to focus, and that caused a dull pain to shoot through the front of her forehead, and her vision to waver. She clamped a hand to her head before she realized what she was doing.

“You know Sam wouldn’t have asked me to give you a ride unless it was an emergency.”

What in Sam’s life wasn’t an emergency? That was how her siblings—and her parents, for that matter—seemed to live, rebounding between emergencies. As if it energized them, for Pete’s sake. She was, without a doubt, adopted. There was no way she shared DNA with her family.

“You want to help? Call me a cab.”

“Are you kidding? From the lake to Reno? You don’t make that kind of money.” He stretched his arm out along the back of the booth, his fingertips making light contact with her shoulder.

Layla let out a breath. The connection actually felt kind of good. As if she wasn’t alone in all this. But she was halfway drunk and her perceptions were not to be trusted. She didn’t move any farther away, though, because that would have meant she cared.

“What happened with Sam?” she asked resignedly. Hopefully, not something that would require Layla to bail her out.

“It’s snowing pretty hard. Didn’t you know? There’s no way her little car will make it up here and back unless she’s right on a snowplow’s ass.”