Just Desserts Read Online Free PDF Page A

rumored bad-ass reputation, I wouldn’t have given you her number.”
    Quinn heard Lindy laugh as she pulled the van out from under the market tent and crept away on the vehicle utility road. It was easy to mess around with Lindy, but there was no need for her to worry. Quinn wanted the diner. And Sadie’s heat wouldn’t sway him; he knew better than to mix work and play. His bachelor standing was full proof. He operated alone and liked it. Women didn’t bother with him when they found that out. Sadie wouldn’t be any different.
    A picture of Sadie’s hair popped in his mind. The way it was wrapped in a ball on top of her head and the sticks that kept it in place. It reminded him of needles in a ball of silky red yarn. He wanted to pluck out each stick and let her hair cascade down her shoulders—better yet, onto his chest, then stomach, then lower.
    He started to jog, and then picked up the pace to get to his Jeep. It was parked on Lake Geneva’s main street infested with touristy tchotchke shops so he brushed past the few window shoppers. Quinn punched Sadie’s address into his GPS. He’d forgotten to put the bikini top on, to cover the Jeep’s interior from the blasted sun. His steering wheel scalded his hands. He chuckled. “Yeah, I’m a devil all right.”
     
    ***
     
    After Sadie’s descent into hell with Bryan at the market, she had ridden her bike home so fast that her legs ached. She soaked in the tub for almost an hour before her thighs stopped throbbing. But she could still feel the exact spot where Quinn touched her leg. Warmth tingled up along her inner thigh to her Brazilian.
    She tried to shake it off by throwing the mini skirt in the wicker hamper and tugging on one of her oldest sundresses. A sleeveless floor-length cotton thing, so long and black that all she needed was a white collar around the neck to make it look like a nun’s habit. Whatever sexy sorcery of Quinn’s affected her, she wanted to purge it. Convent-style garb might do the trick.
    As an icing to cool her overheated madness, she found a pair of tacky black silk boxers that she had bought as a joke for Bryan. She never had the chance to give them to him.
    An STD and Bridget .
    Barefooted, she padded downstairs to the kitchen. She wanted to finish planning all of the diner’s desserts for the week and jot a list of the ingredients. Out of the blue, she had a taste for her mother’s peanut butter cookies, rolled in a thick crust of rock sugar.
    The cookies were her favorite, but her mom had stopped baking them because of an increase in customers who suffered from peanut allergies. Kate Maxon had been vigilant of health trends, which made the diner renowned as a health foodie choice, but Sadie felt it sometimes smothered classic old-fashioned cooking.
    She found the recipe stuck on the bottom of an old tin lock box. It was on a three-by-five notecard with a K monogrammed in the corner and buried under her mother’s scads of newspaper clippings and old disused recipes.
    Opening and slamming shut the knotty-pine cabinets of her parents’ farmhouse kitchen, the cupboards were like old Mother Hubbard’s—mostly empty with a couple of imaginary spiders. The box of Weetabix and cans of tuna made Sadie roll her eyes. Had they really survived on diner meals since she had died?
    It was as though she and her father had signed a treaty to only dine out. To eat in her mother’s kitchen was like an admission of truth that she would never be back. Sadie trudged over to the refrigerator and landed gold. She found a couple jars of East Wind peanut butter, rock sugar, and some flour and butter all in the freezer. “Woot. Too bad I don’t have any almond milk.”
    She dug out the stainless measuring cups, slammed the drawer shut, and dusted off the Kitchen-aid mixer. After she froze the dough for a couple hours, she would bake the best damn cookies and eat every one of them…until her stomach ached. She wasn’t going to worry about her