Excerpt

I was late for a very important date. Okay, not a date, but I was still late. The team was going to have my ass in a sling if I even thought about stopping to talk to anyone. I didn’t care.

“Haylee,” I called, jogging up to the woman meandering down the sidewalk. When I got closer, I realized she wasn’t meandering. She was listing.

“I’m not going to poke your loaf, Brady,” she answered without turning around.

Poke my loaf?

“For once, you’ve left me speechless, cupcake.”

“All evidence to the contrary,” she slurred, her tongue sounding too big for her mouth. Was she sick?

I grasped her shoulder and held her in place. “Are you okay, Haylee?”

Her eyes rolled around in her head when she tried to focus on me, and I bit back laughter. She wasn’t sick. She was drunk.

“Have you been tippling, cupcake?”

The punch to my gut took me by surprise. “I told you not to call me cupcake! And you claim that you know how to listen.” She started stomping up the street, but the booze in her system made it more of a stumble than a stomp.

I put my arm around her shoulder and propped her up against me. “Do you have plans for the night?” I asked while I directed her toward the lakeshore.

“Big plans,” she said, holding up a bag that I hadn’t noticed tucked against her side. It was brown paper and most definitely held alcohol. “I’m going to drink this whole bottle of strawberry wine by myself. You can’t have any.”

With a brow in the air, I had to ask. “How many bottles have you already had?”

“I think one,” she answered. “No, I shared that one with Amber. Wait, that was vodka.”

“You’ve already had half a bottle of vodka?”

“It was a small bottle,” she said giggling. “There were also those two bearded goats and the vodka cupcakes I made. I’m kind of a lightweight, regardless of what my hips say.”

My eyes traveled to her tantalizing hips in her tight jean shorts, and I immediately regretted it. I could feel myself growing hard, and since I was wearing a wetsuit under my clothes, a hard-on wasn’t something that could stick around.

“I would tell you what your hips say to me, but I’m pretty sure you’d slap me. I do have a surprise for you, and when we’re done, we can share that bottle of wine. You shouldn’t drink it alone. You might not make it home.”

“Keep your surprise in your pants, Brady,” she said, using air quotes with one hand while grasping the bottle tightly to her chest, “and I’m not sharing my wine.”

Stopping in front of the shore of Lake Pendle, I tugged the bottle of wine from her grasp. It wasn’t a struggle, but she almost tipped over trying to hold onto it. “The surprise isn’t in my pants, though, you’d probably like that if you gave it half a chance.”

“Probably,” she said, that giggle filling the air again. A part of me wished I was recording her right now so I could prove to sober Haylee that drunk Haylee thought my manhood was worth taking half a chance on.

“Sit here,” I said, directing her to an empty patch of sand amidst all the other onlookers. “The surprise will be out there,” I explained, pointing to the water. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Give me back my wine,” she slurred, her arms wrapped around her knees.

“I will…when I come back in an hour. I want to make sure you’re still here when I get back. This,” I said, holding up the bottle, “will ensure that you are.”

The huffing sound she made was loud enough for everyone on the beach to hear. “I can’t believe you’re holding my wine hostage.”

More like I was helping her sober up before she started drinking again. She’d thank me early tomorrow morning when she got up to bake without a raging hangover. “Not hostage,” I insisted, holding it to my chest. “I just don’t want you to drink it all without me.”

“I have to get to the bakery and bake,” she mumbled, struggling to stand but wobbling more than anything before she fell to her knees.

“God, no,” I exclaimed, grasping her upper arm and helping her sit on her butt again. “Promise me you won’t go to the bakery. That’s a dangerous place to be in your condition.”

Haylee tossed up a hand and let it drop to the sand. “I can’t go anywhere. I forgot my keys and anyway, you have my wine. I’m forced to sit here and watch your surprise,” she yelled, throwing those air quotes around again.

People were looking at us, but I didn’t care. I was having too much fun with drunk Haylee.

“Remember, eyes out there,” I said, pointing her head forward.

She started ooh and ahhing over the gorgeous blue water that she’d seen her entire life. Happy she’d forgotten about the wine long enough for me to escape, I darted over to the dock. After I stripped off my shirt and wrapped it around the wine, I tucked it away and strapped on a vest.

“Did you get lost?” the team captain asked when I was ready to go. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t. “I had to help a friend. I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

The motor started, the crowd let out a ferocious roar, and I primed myself for the best sixty minutes of my week. At least it used to be the best sixty minutes of my week. Suddenly, the idea of sharing a bottle of wine with my cupcake filled that slot.

My cupcake?

Oh, boy.