Flirting with sunshine, p.1
Flirting with Sunshine, page 1
FLIRTING WITH SUNSHINE
by
J. Sterling
FLIRTING WITH SUNSHINE
Copyright © 2023 by J. Sterling
All Rights Reserved
Edited by:
Jovana Shirley
Unforeseen Editing
www.unforeseenediting.com
Cover Design by:
Michelle Preast
www.Michelle-Preast.com
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Kindle Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Please do not participate or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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ISBN-13: 978-1-945042-57-7
Please visit the author’s website
www.j-sterling.com
to find out where additional versions may be purchased.
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I hope you enjoy my Fun for the Holidays collection!
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Other Books by J. Sterling
Bitter Rivals- an enemies to lovers romance
Dear Heart, I Hate You
10 Years Later- A Second Chance Romance
In Dreams – a new adult college romance
Chance Encounters- a coming of age story
The Game Series
The Perfect Game - Book One
The Game Changer - Book Two
The Sweetest Game - Book Three
The Other Game (Dean Carter) – Book Four
The Playboy Serial
Avoiding the Playboy- Episode #1
Resisting the Playboy- Episode #2
Wanting the Playboy- Episode #3
The Celebrity Series
Seeing Stars- Madison & Walker
Breaking Stars- Paige & Tatum
Losing Stars- Quinn & Ryson
The Fisher Brothers Series
No Bad Days – a New Adult, Second Chance Romance
Guy Hater – an Emotional Love Story
Adios Pantalones – a Single Mom Romance
Happy Ending
The Boys of Baseball
(the next generation of fullton state baseball players):
The Ninth Inning – Cole Anders
Behind the Plate- Chance Carter
Safe at First – Mac Davies
Fun for the Holidays
(a collection of stand-alone novels with holiday based themes)
Kissing my Co-worker
Dumped for Valentine’s
My Week with the Prince
Fools in Love
Spring’s Second Chance
Don’t Marry Him
Summer Lovin’
Flirting with Sunshine
Falling for the Boss
Tricked by my Ex
The Thanksgiving Hookup
Christmas with Saint
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Other Books by J. Sterling
Good Morning
Solitude & Punishment
Infuriating and So Damn Hot
This is a Bad Idea
Losing My Damn Mind
When Your Past Walks Through the Door
You Can Never Run Far Enough Away
Learning the Truth
Shit, Shit, Shit
Trying to Keep It Together
Taking What He Gives Me
Trying to Move Forward
Is This a Date?
I’ll be Dessert
Turning the Page
No More Mr. Grumpy
Author’s Note
Other Books by J. Sterling
About the Author
GOOD MORNING
AVA
The sun was just starting to rise, and I was already on my second cup of coffee. I’d always woken up early, even before the restaurant was my sole responsibility. As a child, I’d adored my father so much that I emulated whatever he did, just to be around him more. That included waking up before most people even thought about hitting the snooze button for the first time. He’d been gone for almost a year now, and I still missed him at every sunrise.
Meow. My cat, Snickers, wrapped her soft body around my feet, begging for attention.
Reaching down, I picked her up with both arms and patted her on the head. She purred loud—a sure sign that she enjoyed that scratch behind the ears.
“You like that?” I asked, and she continued making the vibrating noise, her head pushing against my palm in a silent demand for more.
Snickers had been a haggard-looking stray at first, hanging around the restaurant, begging for scraps. I started leaving her a little dish of food, an array of whatever was leftover at the end of the night, but she never let me get anywhere near her. One step in her direction, and she bolted like I was going to snatch her up and put her on the menu.
It took six long months before she trusted me enough to let me touch her tail. Just her tail.
And then, one night, after I’d had a particularly long day filled with drunk tourists, she followed me up the stairs outside the restaurant and walked right into my apartment like she owned the place. I’d watched her meander from room to room before hopping up onto the couch and settling on top of a pillow, claiming it.
From that moment on, I became the proud owner of the fattest tabby cat you’d ever seen in your life.
A group of silhouettes moving like a choreographed dance caught my eye, and I put Snickers down, so I could focus. Holding her for too long was a workout most arms couldn’t take. Mine were used to it by now. What I felt like I’d never get used to was seeing Tony Garcia, all tanned skin and flexing muscles from his job on the water, with his multicolored dog following his every move.
Tony had shown up in our sleepy town like a breath of fresh air, breezing in without warning and settling down in a house not far from my own. I assumed he liked being close to his boat, the same way I enjoyed living above my restaurant. It was comforting to know that if anything went wrong, I was only a few steps away from being able to solve it—or at least attempting to. You see, when you worked for yourself, certain things just hit a little differently, like location and timing and the fact that I was a bit of a freak who didn’t like to give up any control to others.
He was a fisherman, new to our waters, and I bought fresh fish from him multiple days a week, depending on what I needed and what season we were in. My attraction to him had sprung to life when he sold me his morning catch that very first time. It had caught me off guard, throwing me for an unexpected loop, but I didn’t think he’d even so much as cracked a smile in my direction in nine months. The guy couldn’t be less interested in me or any other female in town, it seemed, so I refused to take it personally. Well, I tried not to. It was hard though.
Tony was like Snickers, I’d decided. He simply needed some wearing down.
Hmm … maybe if I left a bowl of food for him outside my front door each night, he’d eventually come inside.
As I laughed to myself, my voice caught in my throat, and I coughed, pounding on my chest. Tony was looking up in my direction, clearly able to see me through my kitchen windows. He gave a slight wave with his hand before turning around and getting back to work, reminding me that I needed to do the same.
It had always been the plan for me to run the family restaurant when the time was right. And even though my ex-husband, Liam, had known that fact, he still tried to take me away from here permanently. While he went off to college after high school, I stayed back home and learned the ropes from my dad, knowing that, one day, it would all be mine. Or more accurately … all ours.
Once Liam graduated, he got offered an entry-level position at the financial company he’d interned at for the past two years. He proposed to me and filled my hopeful, young head with all kinds of promises. The kind that you were willing to bet on because you were so in love that you convinced yourself that nothing could ever go wrong.
My moving to the big city was supposed to only be temporary—a handful of years at the most. Liam would make a name for himself in the firm before opening a remote office back here in Port Rufton, taking on new clients the company hadn’t considered or reached before, while I ran the restaurant with my dad before taking it over completely.
I naively b elieved the narrative Liam had sold me in the beginning. Or maybe he had truly meant it at the time. I couldn’t be sure, but something seemed to change along the way. Too many years started passing by with no mention of relocating or my running the restaurant. Liam kept getting promoted, and the allure of something bigger and better was always waiting around the next corner. He just needed to work longer hours in order to reach it, and then our future would be “all set.”
I finally put it together that Liam never planned on bringing us back home, no matter what he said to the contrary. It was all lies to buy himself more time. He assumed that once too much time had passed, I’d give up on my dreams and do nothing but support his.
We started fighting … viciously.
He started cheating … voraciously.
I eventually found the strength to leave.
And, yes, I took half of what he had acquired. And, no, I didn’t feel bad about it.
My dad got sick soon after and was too weak to keep going. I was grateful that I’d been back home for a few months by then, working side by side with him, learning everything I truly needed to keep the business running smoothly and successfully. I wouldn’t have thought that much had changed over the years while I was away, but I was wrong. Time was always moving forward, and keeping up with it was a must. I’d been impressed when I learned my dad had hired a local teenager to run his social media accounts.
Losing him had been like a blow to the guts; it’d hurt, it’d ached, and it’d stolen my breath without warning.
I was grateful that I saw my mom almost every day. She stopped by the restaurant to drop off her homemade desserts—things you wouldn’t typically think paired well with a seafood meal, but still got purchased nonetheless.
The one thing I could count on was that my mother’s creations would sell out daily. Port Rufton loved Rosalinda’s sweets. I’d been trying to convince her to open a bakery for as long as I could remember, but she wasn’t the least bit interested. I thought one food business in the family was enough for her.
A hard knock on my door almost made me drop my coffee mug. Padding over, I pulled it open and tried to play it cool. Tony was on the other side, his smoldering glare staring at me like my existence bothered him somehow, his adorable dog sitting like a good boy at his feet.
“Fish is ready,” he said with a nod toward the wharf.
“I’ll be right down.” I gave him my signature grin, but he turned away, unfazed. “Good morning, Tony. It’s nice to see you. You look good today. Did you have fun on the water? Of course you did.”
I continued shouting out ridiculous things, but he only huffed. Or maybe it was a grunt. I couldn’t really tell, but no words followed any of his annoyed sounds. This was part of my morning routine; one of the fishermen would let me know they were ready, and then I would walk down and hand-select the pieces I’d use that day. The guys always gave me first access to their catch. I wasn’t really sure why, but I appreciated it all the same.
I always bought my seafood fresh, local from the ocean right outside the window, and rarely stocked for more than one day at a time. If there were any leftovers after we closed for the night, they would get incorporated into a dish the very next day. Just like any fresh food or produce, fish was better when it was cooked quickly. Plus, the last thing I needed was someone getting sick and claiming it was my restaurant that had done it to them.
Social media these days could be brutal if someone posted the wrong thing regardless of how accurate it was or not. People usually didn’t take the time to seek out the facts anymore. They simply bought into whatever they read, depending on who had said it. So, in all fairness, the opposite was also true. And those complimentary posts had brought in tons of new people to my restaurant over the last year and a half. I knew because they had told me.
We saw it online. So and so posted how much she loved the desserts here. I read this is the best place for lobster rolls and fish cakes.
I walked over to my couch and reached for my shoes before sitting down and pulling them on. Snickers hopped up next to me, pushing her head into my arm as I tried to work at tying them.
“Okay, okay,” I said, giving her some extra love before standing tall with a grin. “How do I look?” I asked, and she meowed her approval. “Thanks. I’ll be right back.”
Snickers meowed again, and I pretended like I knew exactly what she was saying.
“Of course I’ll bring you a treat.”
As I headed toward the front door, Snickers moved from the couch and hopped up onto the kitchen counter, taking her place at the window, where she could watch me the whole time, her tail wagging like she was up to something devious. I wondered what she did when I wasn’t around. Rolling my eyes, I silently cursed at myself for the crazy cat woman I’d suddenly become. I really needed to get out more.
SOLITUDE & PUNISHMENT
TONY
I wasn’t immune to the charms of Ava Starling, which was why I did my best to limit my contact with the woman. She was stunning in an unexpected manner. And I only meant that she didn’t go out of her way to make sure she was presentable whenever she was in public.
I couldn’t count on both hands the number of times I’d seen her without a stitch of makeup on—it had been so many times. Not that she needed any—I wasn’t saying that. It was refreshing, the way she naturally glowed and danced around in her kitchen, creating meals that the men out here drooled over … and constantly talked about. She was a talented chef, although she scoffed whenever anyone called her that.
And she was always. So. Happy.
Which was another reason why I stayed away from her. Happiness was the last thing I deserved. Not after what I’d done. After everything I’d destroyed. I planned on punishing myself until the day I died, avoiding people who were the epitome of sunshine and goodness, like Ava, no matter how attracted I was to her or how jealous I got when the other guys talked about trying to get her into bed. My feelings toward her were irrational and illogical … and had to be ignored.
I would never deserve someone as sweet as her. Not ever again.
I spotted Ava walking down the pathway toward the group of us, a huge grin on her face, like usual, as she pulled two rolling coolers behind her frame, like she always did.
Fishing in other cities was highly regulated, and you had to go through middlemen in order to sell your catch once it was off your boat. There were unions and all sorts of people with their hands in our pockets, sharing in our profits without doing any of the actual hard work. Selling directly to restaurants and businesses was typically forbidden, but this town had established their own rules back in the 1800s, and it had never been overturned, no matter how many times someone had tried. As long as the population stayed under a certain number, we were allowed to continue selling directly without any real regulatory fees or overlords.
“Morning, Rory.” Ava’s voice echoed through the crisp morning air as she stopped at his table, doling out compliments and inspecting his latest haul.
She always came to my station last, and I knew she did it on purpose. It was her way of torturing me, of making me watch her flirt with and charm every man on this dock until it was my turn for a sliver of her attention. I’d never let her know how much she got to me though. I couldn’t. If I let my guard down even once around her, I’d fall in two seconds flat, and that wasn’t part of my new life plan here. A plan that basically consisted of two words—solitude and punishment.
When Ava walked away from Rory’s table, he started wrapping up her purchases. He’d deliver them to her restaurant, just like he did every morning, never letting her carry them herself.
Kiss-ass.
I hated how much he wanted her, but she never seemed to give him a second thought, treating him the same way she treated all of us fishermen.
Rory loved to throw it in my face that they had dated once in junior high school, but that was a hundred years ago, so who gave a shit about that? Not me. And clearly not Ava either, or they’d still be dating. At least, that was what I kept trying to tell myself.
Rory looked up, his eyes meeting mine before he opened his big, fat mouth.
“I’m gonna do it soon,” he yelled, and I knew exactly what he was referring to.
