Food Fight - Final Read online

  Contents

  About The Book

  Bananas & Donuts By T. Torrid

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Bagels & Brats by Heather Ohhh

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  T. Torrid Acknowledgements

  Excerpt from Down The Shore by T. Torrest

  Heather Ohhh Acknowledgements

  Excerpt from Boomerangers by Heather M. Orgeron

  Copyright © 2017 by T. Torrid and Heather Ohhh

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, photocopying, mechanical or otherwise, without express permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, story lines and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or any events or occurrences are purely coincidental.

  Editing for Bagels & Brats by Edee M. Fallon, Mad Spark Editing

  Cover Design, Interior Design & Formatting by Jersey Girl Design

  Blurb

  FOOD FIGHT is the first book in a new eroticomedy duology. Each book in the Strip Mall series contains two separate stories from the same universe. No cliffhangers... just a lot of laughs and some really hot sex!

  BANANAS AND DONUTS: It's a food fight of epic proportions when this not-so-sweet baker gets her hands on a gorgeous grocer's goods.

  BAGELS AND BRATS: A buff butcher bites off more than he can chew when he "meats" the vegan vixen next door.

  *Intended for immature audiences 18+

  THREE O’CLOCK IN THE morning.

  That’s what time I woke up for work every single day. I took my shower, got dressed, and threw my hair in its usual ponytail. And then I drove—in the dark, mind you—to get to the bakery by four.

  Every. Single. Day.

  I knew going into this gig that the hours were pretty brutal. But the fact of the matter is, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I love my job.

  My name is Stefanie Manzo Keefe and I’m the owner and self-proprietor of Smoochycakes, the best damned bakery in the entire state of Pennsylvania. Specialty cakes, kickass cookies, melt-in-your-mouth pastries... and our “Delectable Donuts” are to die for. They were my own personal creation and the main thing that put us on the map.

  I always knew I wanted to be a baker. I did it my entire life just for fun, but by the time I graduated college, decided to finally get serious about it.

  I’d kicked off my training at two New York City institutions: Le Pain Quotidien on Bleecker to learn the basics, then Butter Lane on 7th to round out my flavoring education. Another two years spent at various culinary institutes in order to learn every cake technique on the planet, plus an added year at the School of Visual Arts to hone some sculpting skills. Then I worked as an apprentice for almost three years, realizing soon after that it was time to open my own place. Eventually, I managed to land a spot in the much-coveted Rimmer Strip Mall.

  Yeah, yeah, I can hear you snickering. Those of us that live in such a dubiously-named town have heard all the jokes before. Fact is, Rimmer happens to be pretty awesome, stupid name and all. Besides, I could never decide who was worse: The numbskulls who named this town... or me, for choosing to live in it.

  I’m originally from New Jersey, the Mall Capital of the World. So what was I thinking when I decided to open a bakery in Pennsylvania?

  If you’ve ever encountered my cheating scumbag of an ex-husband, you’d know the answer to that. And if you ever encountered him, there’s a good chance you may have even slept with him. That’s not a reflection on you, by the way. I just figure that if he managed to stick his dick into as many women as I suspect he did, then a case could be made regarding the law of averages.

  The case I made, however, was divorce on the grounds of “Irretrievable Breakdown,” which could also conveniently describe my mental state at that time. I packed up my stuff and drove my piece of shit car straight down Route 80. I had no destination in mind, but the opposite coast was looking pretty appealing right about then. Only ninety minutes into my getaway, however, my car broke down, and that’s how I was introduced to the town of Rimmer. Quaint, charming, an entire state away... I figured it was as good a place as any to start a new life.

  That was almost two years ago. I’ve been here ever since.

  I pulled my Jeep Cherokee into my usual spot in the back lot and grabbed the box of T-shirts from the cargo hold to bring inside. I’d just ordered some new tees to celebrate the launch of our bacon-infused line of sweet treats.

  Yeah, okay, I know that sounds weird. But bacon seems to be all the rage these days, and believe it or not, a candied-bacon donut actually tastes pretty damn good.

  Just as I slammed the hatch, my next-store-neighbor appeared in his open doorway.

  Ugh. Couldn’t I have one day that didn’t start with Jesse Dickface Miller?

  If I’m going to be honest, I’ll admit that okay, fine, Jesse was hardly a dickface. Dark, messy hair that always looked like he just rolled out of bed. Mischievous topaz eyes. A body that could rival Michelangelo’s David, save for the micropeen. Presumably.

  Not that I cared. His good looks were the second most outstanding thing about him. The first being his unrelenting arrogance.

  Fact is, Jesse was the King of Smarm, put on this earth to do nothing more than fuck random women and annoy the living shit out of me. I don’t think I’ve ever had one conversation with the guy that didn’t end in an argument, which is a shame, because he was actually pretty funny.

  And smart. And hot.

  If I could just have one day when he wasn’t so intent on shocking me in some way, I could almost envision a scenario where we could be friends.

  That day was not today.

  Jesse wrapped his fingers around his coffee mug as he leaned against the door frame. “Mornin’, Sugar Tits.”

  See what I mean?

  It was simply easier to remain civil. Do not engage. I braced a knee against the door to balance the box on my thigh while I fiddled with my keys. “Morning, Jesse.”

  “Can I help you out with your box?”

  His raised eyebrow didn’t escape my notice, but there was no way I was going to acknowledge his leading comment. “Thanks, but I can handle it.”

  “I do love to watch a woman take care of her own box...”

  I would have laughed, but that would only encourage him. So instead, I shot back, “Probably because you’re too selfish to take care of it for her?”

  “Hey, I offered to do it, didn’t I?” He took a sip from his coffee mug before adding, “One of these days, I’m hoping you’ll let me.”

  The guy had been hitting on me for the better part of an entire year. I didn’t take it personally; that’s just who he was. He was on a constant quest to get laid, which made him no better than my man-whore ex-husband. He was lucky that we didn’t work together. I’d have sued him for sexual harassment ten times over by now.

/>   Jesse ran The Market next door, so he and I were normally the first ones here—I always needed to get the ovens cranking, and he needed to accept his produce deliveries—and it seemed he couldn’t go a single morning without trying to antagonize me in some way. And the more worked up I got, the more amused he became. Half-asleep and pissed-off was no way to start a day.

  I let the door slam behind me as I flipped on the lights with my elbow and welcomed the scent of my kitchen, that uniquely sweet aroma that always boosted my mood. The smell of buttercream danced on every inhale; it was embedded in the floorboards and in every crevice. I could almost taste it as I effected a deep yawn and deposited the box on one of the counters.

  Needless to say, the first thing I did was to make the coffee.

  While it was brewing, I went about my morning ritual, pre-heating the ovens and setting out the day’s ingredients. I hadn’t been doing much actual baking over the past months—managing the nitty gritty of this place took up most of my time—but due to circumstances beyond my control, I recently found myself back in the kitchen yet again.

  When Smoochycakes first opened sixteen months ago, I was afraid to entrust the baking to anyone other than Yours Truly. After the place was up and running, however, I realized I would burn out pretty quickly if I didn’t delegate some of my workload.

  I hired a phenomenal head baker fresh out of culinary school, and shifted my focus toward maintaining the business end of things. Things were going pretty well... until I was forced to fire her only one month into her reign.

  I hired a sweet, albeit subpar replacement out of pure desperation, but that little move sure did a number on my bottom line. Business hasn’t exactly been booming. I was actually grateful when she told me she was quitting to move to Wyoming with her boyfriend. That circumstance required me to assume my old position as head baker until I could find a new one. After only two weeks playing both roles, however, I could already feel the stress piling up. I needed to find a new head baker—and fast.

  I fixed myself a mug of coffee and settled into my “office,” a postage-stamp-sized corner of the storeroom where I was able to cram a desk between two metal bookshelves that held all our dry goods. I tackled some paperwork before checking the list of the day’s orders... and crap. Right there on the top of the pile was Mrs. Feinstein’s invoice for four strawberry shortcakes.

  Shit. Jesse was supposed to order strawberries for me. Which meant that I now had to deal with him in order to pick them up.

  I grumbled as I pushed away from my desk and went outside to the back lot again. The Market’s door was still opened, so I gave a quick knock before heading inside.

  And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a half-dressed Jesse Miller in all his beautiful glory.

  Whoa.

  I FROZE IN MY tracks, stunned by the sight of his naked torso. His back was turned, allowing me a moment to appreciate his bulging biceps. His strong shoulders tapered into a trim waist, accentuating the faded jeans that were slung low on his slim hips, exposing two perfect dimples above his luscious ass. The guy may have been a world-class antagonist but I couldn’t deny that he was fabulous-looking.

  He turned toward me, and I was able to catch a glimpse of his smooth, hard chest before his voice jogged me out of my gaping. “Ever hear of knocking?”

  I shook myself out of the stupor to shoot back, “I did. Ever hear of health codes? Why are you hanging out in your stockroom half-naked?”

  He grabbed a kelly-green tee off a shelf and pulled it over his head. I tried not to notice the delectable view as he tugged the shirt down over his rock-hard abs. “Not hanging out. You simply caught me as I was changing my shirt.” He gripped his hands around the edge of the steel counter behind him and leaned back, his lip twitching as he added, “You lucky girl, you.”

  The overabundance of testosterone was too much for me to handle. I was still recuperating from the sight of his incredible body, and now he was shooting that damnable smirk in my direction? As much as I tried to deny it, I couldn’t help my body’s response to such oozing male sex appeal, and I found myself mentally chastising my throbbing lady bits.

  “Wrong. I just always have bad timing.”

  Thing was, my bad timing had more to do with my philandering ex than anything that was happening here between Jesse and me. But even though he could hardly be blamed for my failed marriage, there was more bite to my statement than intended.

  Jesse noticed.

  His head cocked to the side as his eyes tightened. “I thought you were done being The Queefmonster.”

  Ha! When your last name is Keefe, queef isn’t too far a stretch. Trust me. I endured four entire years of high school with that nickname. But queefmonster was a new one, and, I had to admit, a pretty good one as well. “The what?”

  “Don’t get your panties in a twist. I meant it as a compliment.”

  “I’ll ask you kindly to leave my panties out of this conversation.” My lip twitched against my will as I added, “And for the record, queefmonster hardly sounds like a compliment.”

  “It wasn’t. The fact that you haven’t been The Queefmonster was the compliment. You’ve been an almost normal person the past couple of weeks.”

  The guy was observant, I had to give him that.

  The thing was, I never used to give Jesse an inch. When I first met him, I thought he was pretty entertaining. His flirty comments were intriguing, not annoying. If I hadn’t been so caught up in my own bullshit, maybe I could have appreciated that more. But I was too broken at that point in my life to indulge in his game. I was angry about my failed marriage and stressed about getting my new business off the ground.

  Jesse was relentless, however. He was determined to loosen me up, and with his offbeat sense of humor, it was hard to keep my walls in place. I started to think it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if the two of us could maybe learn to be friends.

  And then, mere days later, he had to go and ruin it.

  Any friendship we’d been working toward had been destroyed before it even had a chance to begin.

  But recently—ever since I started baking again—I guess my spirits had been raised. Being back in my kitchen made me happy, even when dealing with Jesse. The past couple of weeks, he and I had actually been getting along better than we ever had. And it’s really been kinda great.

  Until now.

  His little psychoanalysis was still echoing in the air between us as the memory of his betrayal played across my mind, firing me up all over again. My voice turned sour as I snipped, “Thanks, but I’m not looking for a personality assessment. I only came here to get my strawberries.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and stared me down. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  His toffee eyes bored into mine, causing an involuntary shiver to race along my spine. Not that I’d ever let him know it. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Okay fine,” I started in. “You want reasons? How about this: You’re a slut. You’re infuriating. You’re belligerent, cocky, arrogant—”

  “What you call arrogance, others would call charming.”

  Interesting that he didn’t feel the need to defend the other adjectives I’d used to describe him. “Wasn’t so ‘charming’ when you targeted my best baker.”

  “Sure it was.”

  “I had to fire her because of you!”

  “Who says?”

  My head almost exploded. Was he really that dense? “Ummm... society? You fucked her behind my display counter!”

  The bastard actually had the gall to smile. “So?”

  “So? SO? Your little rendezvous took place during business hours! I had to close down for the rest of the day while I disinfected the store. Thank God the Health Department didn’t catch wind of it. I could have lost my entire business!”

  “Oh, come on,” he said, leveling a brow at me. “Are you really still holding a grudge about something that happened over a year ag
o?”

  “Yes!”

  “Besides,” he went on, “it’s not like we put on a show. It was a slow day. There were no customers in there.”

  “There could have been!”

  “But there weren’t.”

  “But there could have been.”

  “Not with the way you run that place.”

  My hands went involuntarily to my hips. “I beg your pardon?”

  He let out with a calming breath, switching gears. “C’mon, Stef. Within the first month of you opening your doors, the place was swarming with customers. You were on your way. I mean, the whole reason you started this business was because you loved to bake, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, only a few short months later, you abandoned your kitchen. Your customers have been dropping off like flies because of it. You jumped the shark when you started delegating everything to your staff.”

  As much as I didn’t want to face it, he had a point. My bakery had done really well in the beginning, and yeah, duh, I was the one doing all the baking back then. As much as I loved it, there were so many other tasks that needed my attention, and soon enough, running the place became my full-time job. I’d gotten bogged down in the managerial role of my business, a duty I’d delusionally believed would come secondary to any actual baking. Huh.

  It should have been obvious, but it took Jesse’s blunt assertion for me to realize it was true. I didn’t want to admit any of that to him, however. What I wanted was to kick him right in his perfect white teeth.

  “You gonna just stand there staring at me or are you going to admit I’m right?”

  He just stood there expectantly in an unbroken pose as I snapped back into form. Who cared what Jesse Miller thought about my life? Aside from hellos and goodbyes every day, he wasn’t a part of my life at all!

  The newfound resolve bolstered my stance as I sneered, “I’m not doing this today. Can’t you find some poor unsuspecting tart to annoy?”

  “Aww, now Stef. You know you’re my favorite tart.”