Treat her Right: A New Zealand Sexy Beach Romance (Treats to Tempt You Book 2) Read online

  Treat her Right

  Treats to Tempt You Book 2

  By Serenity Woods

  *

  Copyright 2014 Serenity Woods

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is coincidental.

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  TABLE OF 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

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  A Sneak Peek at A Rare Treat (#3)

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  Author’s Note

  Other Books by Serenity Woods

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “I’d like you to take off all your clothes and let me photograph you covered in melted chocolate.” Maisey announced the revelation to her brother’s best mate, keeping her face as deadpan as possible.

  Joss paused in the process of lifting his coffee cup to his lips and stared at her. “Pardon?”

  “Something wrong with your hearing?” Maisey was determined not to giggle and give the game away. “Maybe you need your ears syringed. Shame we don’t know any good doctors.”

  Ignoring her jibe about his profession, Dr. Heaven’s blue-eyed gaze slid across to Tasha where she sat beside them at the shop table, then seeing her serious expression, came back to Maisey. “Covered in chocolate,” he clarified.

  “And possibly whipped cream,” Maisey added. “Or sprinkles. I’ve yet to decide.” Laughter bubbled up inside her and threatened to curve her lips, but she forced herself to keep a straight face for a few moments longer.

  He finished off his coffee and replaced the cup in the saucer with a clatter. “There’s no way I’m letting anyone take a photo of my crown jewels, chocolate-covered or not, for the entire population of Mangonui to laugh at.”

  “Oh, come on,” Tasha said with a snort, “don’t be shy. I’m sure your crown jewels deserve to be on public display.”

  Joss’s eyes widened. “Tasha! Jeez.”

  “Yeah,” Maisey added, “And what better way to advertise Treats to Tempt You than photographs of a guy force-fed truffles while handcuffed to the bed?”

  At the look on his face, she couldn’t hold it in any longer. Laughter rose within her like bubbles in champagne, erupting from her in infectious giggles. Tasha joined in, and eventually Joss smiled.

  “You two,” he scolded, shaking his finger at them as if they were six years old. “You had me believing you for a moment.”

  “I wasn’t lying.” Maisey wiped delicately under her eyes. “I was perfectly serious about the photographing part.” She grinned. “Not the crown jewels bit though, I promise.”

  Joss was like a brother to her, and seeing him naked would be weird.

  Although…when she’d spotted him at the gym, working out in a T-shirt and shorts, she’d done a double take. The dude possessed muscles in places she hadn’t even known dudes had muscles. Even his muscles had muscles. He’d been all tanned and shiny and flexing, his hair slick with sweat, and she’d almost walked into a wall as he bench pressed weights she wouldn’t have been able to lift with a forklift truck.

  Now, though, he gave her a look that told her he still didn’t believe her. “You really want to take photos of me for your new advertising campaign?”

  “Yes. The shop needs a spritzer, and I thought posters of a sexy guy eating caramel crèmes might do the trick.”

  “But we couldn’t get a sexy guy,” Tasha added, “so we decided to ask you.”

  Maisey chuckled again at Joss’s wry look. Smartly sexy was Joss’s default setting. New Zealand doctors tended to dress casually, especially those in rural towns such as theirs. But Joss always wore a shirt and tie with a jacket, and quite often a suit, like the dark-grey one he wore today. True, every guy looked good in a suit, but Joss looked uber-good. He was even wearing cufflinks. Cufflinks! She suppressed an urge to fan herself. But then, she suspected, he’d have looked good in any kind of suit, be it clown’s, boiler, or birthday.

  Birthday suit. Joss. Naked. Covered in melted chocolate.

  Yum.

  She blinked to focus as he looked puzzled. Best not to go down that road, Maisey. Back to the teasing.

  “Tasha’s joking. You’re hot,” she informed him. “And photos of you holding an almond truffle would triple our sales overnight.”

  “Maisey!” Now he looked exasperated. “Stop talking about me being hot. You’re making me uncomfortable. I sympathize that you’re trying to come up with a campaign, but I don’t see how photos of me would help at all.”

  “You can protest all you like. I saw you at the gym, minus the suit. They had wet flannels on standby to revive all the fainting women.” And me.

  That made him laugh. “When was this?”

  “Last week.”

  “What the hell were you doing at the gym?” Tasha looked much amused, to Maisey’s chagrin.

  “I wasn’t at the gym,” Maisey corrected haughtily. “I was passing it to get to the fish and chip shop.”

  “No surprises there,” Joss said.

  She glared at him. “What are you implying?”

  “Your figure doesn’t suggest regular use of the bench press and cross trainer, sweetheart.”

  She looked down at herself. Okay, she could see what he was getting at. Maybe she did carry a few pounds more than she should. Rounded, she told herself, I’m rounded. Who wanted to be all angles and bones anyway? “I’m a chocolatier,” she protested. “What sort of message would I be sending my customers if I was skinny? They say never trust a thin chef.”

  Joss said nothing, his eyes skimming down her before travelling back up to her face. He held her gaze, and a shiver went through her from the base of her spine to the roots of her hair. He looked amused and slightly exasperated, which was his default setting where she was concerned. But there was also a hint of something else. He looked…interested.

  She crossed her arms over her boobs. “Stop being a letch. Now you’re making me uncomfortable. Are you going to let me photograph you or not?”

  “Not,” he said, and pushed his cup away.

  “Spoilsport.”

  He grinned lazily, and another shiver went through her. How long had she known him? Thirteen years? He’d been one of Kole’s mates at school. Back then the boys had been tall, gangly youths, all elbows and knees. They’d worn T-shirts with the names of heavy metal bands, and ripped jeans, and played atrocious music on second-hand instru
ments, when they weren’t getting themselves knocked out on the rugby field. As they’d progressed through high school, they’d both regularly appeared at the house with different girls on their arm, and she’d grown used to her friends doodling the names of one or other of them on their books over the years.

  But although she’d always acknowledged how gorgeous he was, she’d made sure never to think about Joss in that way. For a start, he’d always treated her like a sister, and had never hid the fact she drove him spare with her constant chatter and ability to voice whatever was in her head without screening it first. He’d teased her about her braces as she grew up, about the posters of boy bands on her wall. But he’d never shown an ounce of interest in her, no matter how low she undid her shirt buttons to try and garner some attention.

  He noticed you a couple of months ago. The memory sent another frisson down her spine. At the launch of Treats to Tempt You on New Year’s Eve, Joss had kissed her on the stroke of midnight. And not just a peck on the cheek. It had been a full blown, heart thumping, weak-knee-inducing kind of kiss that had left her worried she might pass out and fall into the harbor.

  But they’d both been drinking. He’d apologized afterward. And since then, he hadn’t mentioned it at all. Clearly, it hadn’t meant anything.

  Besides which, Kole had always made it clear his mates were out of bounds. “Don’t even fucking think about it,” had been his actual words when she’d once told him Joss looked sexy in his swim shorts. Following that, she’d removed him from her mental list of eligible guys and stuck the “No entry” sign of a red circle with a line through it above his name.

  But for the first time since New Year’s Eve, his gaze held a flicker that made her mental processes screech to a halt like a car that had run out of oil. Just a flicker, and in seconds it had gone, smoothed over like a mark in soft concrete. Had it been there at all?

  The bell over the door rang, and she glanced up to see her brother enter the shop. He walked to their table and dropped heavily into a chair.

  “Hey,” he said. “Latte, and make it snappy.”

  Maisey just raised her eyebrows, and Tasha gave him the finger.

  Kole rolled his eyes. “The service in this place is terrible.”

  “I’ll get you the coffee, on one condition.” In contrast to her rebellious gesture, Tasha pushed herself to her feet, leaned over to Kole, and kissed him. They’d been dating for two months, and things appeared to be going well. Maisey was pleased for them, although secretly surprised they’d lasted so long. She hadn’t thought her brother would ever settle down. There was hope for them all yet.

  “What’s the condition?” Kole asked as Tasha walked over to the coffee machine.

  “Talk Joss into having his photo taken.”

  Maisey grinned as Joss blew out a breath. “It’s for the good of the shop,” she pointed out.

  “I’m a respectable pillar of the community,” Joss said. “I can hardly have naked images of myself posted on billboards across town.”

  Maisey affected a yawn, and Kole laughed.

  Joss glared at them both. “Nothing wrong with respectability. You should try it some time.”

  “You’re so boring since you came back to Mangonui,” Maisey said sulkily. “I seem to remember you being much more fun than this.”

  “That was before I grew up,” Joss said.

  “How dull.”

  Joss ignored her and started talking to her brother about the rise of house prices in rural districts, and Maisey zoned out.

  She studied him as he talked, noting his carefully combed hair, his clean shaven jaw. Yes, respectable definitely described him nowadays. But it hadn’t always been that way. What had happened to him over the last few years? As a youth, he’d been deliciously naughty, making her mouth water with his wicked ways. He’d gate crashed her and her friends’ camping trip in the middle of the night with Kole and a couple of their other mates, scaring the wits out of the girls by making spooky noises in the dark. He’d pushed her into the pool fully clothed at a party after she’d told his girlfriend she’d seen him kissing someone else. He’d fallen into her father’s flowerbed when drunk, flattened all the agapanthus, and earned himself a right telling off. He’d been suspended at school for bunking, run away from home and been marched back by a policeman, got a tattoo, smoked marijuana, and gone through girls like most men went through socks.

  Then he’d studied at university to become a doctor, and when he’d returned home in the holidays, he’d talked with enthusiasm about going to Cambodia, South America, or Africa, places where they needed doctors who didn’t mind working without all the mod cons of the western world. Somewhere he could make a difference, he’d said, his eyes lighting with a passion she’d envied at the time. And he had, for a while anyway, travelling for a few years and working abroad.

  And then six months ago, he’d come home and taken up, of all things, a post as a general practitioner, treating toddler’s grazed knees, soccer mums’ high blood pressure, and old men’s prostate troubles at a local surgery.

  She’d pestered Kole to tell her what had happened, but in typical Kole fashion he hadn’t said much, just mumbled something about “family issues” and “ex troubles” and annoyingly refused to elaborate.

  Now, Joss seemed blue. He gazed out of the window into the distance, his eyes seeing some place other than the busy high street and the palms waving in the soft breeze. He seemed tense and constricted, as if all the nuts that held the joints of his skeleton in place had been over-tightened, making every movement an effort. It was almost as if being back made him feel…imprisoned. The thought made her sad.

  And that was when she hatched the plan. The plan to take a wrench to his nuts.

  Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best analogy. But her new goal in life was definitely going to be to Loosen Joss Up.

  Chapter Two

  Nothing’s changed, Joss thought as he gazed out of the window at the warm March sunshine. Nothing ever changes here…

  He wasn’t sure why he was so surprised. Maybe because he felt so different to the carefree young man he’d been before he went away, and he’d assumed the whole world had changed. Although he’d returned occasionally to visit friends and family, he’d been so busy he hadn’t had time to consider the fact his home hadn’t evolved the same way he had.

  Strictly speaking things had changed over the last few years; the town had expanded; some shops had closed down, others had opened up; the council had implemented a one-way system and planted a new row of impressive palms along the high street; some people had moved away, while new faces replaced the ones he remembered from his youth.

  Perhaps it was the people who hadn’t changed. And yet again, they had; Kole had finally opened up his photography business and appeared to be doing well; his other mates were all starting to settle down work-wise, if not necessarily in their personal lives; and the girls had all left uni now and had opened up the chocolate and coffee shop they’d talked about for years, and seemed to be making it work. They were all growing up, moving on.

  And yet somehow they weren’t. Kole was still how Joss remembered him from school, carefree, irreverent, and impulsive. Although he was clearly throwing himself into his business, and he was now dating Tasha, their relationship seemed lighthearted and carefree, not exactly the long-term commitment Joss had expected, considering the two of them were crazy about each other. His other mates were the same, most of them still single, and only a few showing any signs of wanting to settle down, take out mortgages, get married, have kids. There was plenty of time, of course—most of them were only in their late twenties. But even so, they seemed to think they were immortal and there was all the time in the world.

  And as for the girls… None of them had grown up at all. They were all younger than the guys, in their mid-twenties, so why should they rush into anything? But it surprised him they seemed the same as the teenage girls he remembered as a youth—giggly, untroubled, thinking about lit
tle else than clothes, hairstyles, music, and having a good time, in spite of their attempts to appear businesslike with the shop.

  He hadn’t known Elle and Caitlin, the other two girls who helped run Treats to Tempt You, for as long as Maisey and Tasha, but they were both fun, flirty, and light of heart, like summer clouds. Tasha hadn’t changed much since the early days. When she went out with Kole, she might wear contact lenses and something pretty, but most of the time she still refused to wear skirts or anything with color except black and neutral shades, and wore her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and her bookish glasses.

  And Maisey? Joss’s gaze finally came back to settle on Kole’s sister. A customer had come to the counter, so she’d gone to serve, and she was busy placing truffles into a box with a pair of tongs. It gave him the opportunity to study her and compare her to the girl he’d known for a long time. She’d grown up, physically anyway; she’d been skinny as a teenager, but she’d put on a little weight over the last year or two, presumably from sampling too many of her own wares. It suited her, though. The white blouse and black miniskirt she always wore to work clung to womanly curves, and when she bent forward to reach for a truffle near the front of the cabinet, she presented him with a view of her cleavage. She’d grown her glossy dark hair long, although she always tied it back when working, and her skin had lost the imperfections of youth and had a healthy glow.

  But her personality hadn’t changed, even after the tragedy that had struck the Graham family just after her nineteenth birthday. When the oldest brother, Harry, had died in a car accident, Joss had been abroad and hadn’t been able to return until a few months had passed. He’d expected to find Maisey quiet and reserved, the incident having shocked her into maturity. Instead, she’d seemed more of a crackpot than he remembered. She was still impulsive, still playing pranks and getting into scrapes and being the Crazy Maisey he’d christened her years ago. When she wasn’t working, she continued to wear girlish clothes and pin her hair up with childish ribbons and glittery clips. Today, she’d painted each fingernail a different color. Presumably, the death of her brother had resulted in her deciding to enjoy every moment to the full. Joss admired that, in a way, but would she ever really grow up?