Above All by Rebecca Brooks
Reeling from a sudden breakup, Casey Webb leaves Brooklyn,
drives north and settles in a sleepy mountain town in upstate New York. She’s
convinced she’s happy being alone—until she reads the acknowledgments in her
ex-boyfriend’s hit debut novel, thanking his new girlfriend “above all”.
Good thing Ben Mailer is in town. The hot, young
Brooklyn-bound chef offers the perfect distraction, and soon Casey is having
the best sex of her life—on a mountain, in the lake, all over her cozy cabin. But
as their weekend fling turns into something more, the demands of Ben’s family
and budding career make moving to her idyllic town impossible.
Now Casey must decide what she can’t live without—her life
in the mountains or the man she wants as hers. Smart, sweet and blisteringly
hot, Above All is about getting lost…and finding yourself right where you
belong.
A Romantica® contemporary erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave
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Copyright © REBECCA BROOKS, 2014
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.
One of Casey’s additions to the office had been to put up a
bookshelf to house the collection of used paperbacks Geller had accumulated as
campers came in to take a book or leave one behind. It wasn’t the greatest
library ever amassed, but it kept Casey’s book collection rotating more than if
she’d been stuck driving forty minutes to the nearest
bookstore any time she wanted something new.
Trash was probably
the precise term Nick would have used to describe the murder mystery she was
engrossed in with her muddy boots hanging over the edge of the desk. Lucky for
both of them, Nick wasn’t up there to share his opinions on taste.
When she heard tires crunching over the dirt, Casey looked
up with a start. The office clock said just past nine. She’d had no idea of the
time. She’d have to check this group in quickly and then get home.
A dark-brown head poked into the office, accompanied by the
sounds of car doors opening and closing and staccato bursts of laughter
punctuating the night.
“Come in,” Casey called, cracking the spine to rest the book
across the desk. “Quickly, you’re letting the moths in.”
The screen door slammed shut.
Casey was so busy scanning the lines of the ledger Geller
kept by hand to check in arrived that
she didn’t look up until the man had crossed the office and was standing
directly in front of the desk.
“I’m Ben,” he said. “I spoke to a gentleman on the phone?”
Casey looked up.
And tried not to fall back in her chair. He was boyish, with
straight dark hair long enough to stray into his eyes and a dimpled grin that
carved two apostrophes into his cheeks and another in the center of his chin
when he smiled. He was tall and even under his black North Face fleece she
could tell how lean and muscular he was. He had soft brown eyes and thin lips
with a look like a puppy dog that had cultivated its sweet expression just to
make you want to hug it.
“Sure,” Casey said, rooting unnecessarily around the papers
on the desk to give herself something to do besides stare. She was flustered by
how good-looking Ben was, and even more flustered that she’d been so disarmed.
“That was Mr. Geller. He said you’d be coming in. You’re eight?”
Ben Mailer, who definitely wasn’t a beefy ex-football
player, confirmed.
“I hope it wasn’t too last minute, but he said there was
plenty of space.”
Casey nodded, still distracted. He may not have been back in
college but he sure looked as if he could be. She felt like a cradle-robber
just looking at him. But it was impossible to pull her eyes away.
She heard his friends outside, laughing about some joke
they’d shared in the car. A guy with dark hair buzzed close to his temples and
matching thick stubble across his face came in and Casey’s first, totally
unprofessional thought was that at least he looked older than Ben—late
twenties, maybe, with lines under his eyes that said he was no stranger to late
nights. Maybe they were actually the same age and Ben only looked younger. The
idea made her feel slightly better about the way his eyes were sending
something icy and hot shooting through her veins.
But no matter how old he was, it was still unnerving to
realize that she couldn’t stop wondering what he must look like without that
trim fleece jacket.
“Hey man,” the guy with the stubble sauntered over to the
desk. “Know where we’re going to be?”
Ben turned to Casey. “We have four tents,” he explained,
“but we can arrange them however you want.”
Ah. Well, that answered that. Four couples, Casey reasoned,
marking down the numbers. It looked like lucky Ben had one very lucky
girlfriend. That at least ought to make her stop thinking things that
definitely shouldn’t have been running through her mind.
“How many vehicles?” She tried to keep her voice steady,
even though she couldn’t make herself look up and meet his dark, luminous eyes.
Especially not with his friend there, who was probably wondering what was wrong
with the lady behind the desk.
“Two. I’m so sorry we’re so late. We got a little lost in
the turn off from 87 in the dark. I hope you’re not staying open longer just to
check us in.”
Casey assured him it was fine, a little unnerved by how
polite he was. Somehow it wasn’t what she expected from kids up for a reunion,
even though, she reminded herself, she obviously had no idea what Ben was like.
And had no intention of finding out, a stern voice in her
head warned.
Casey blinked furiously and tried to stay on track. She
wrote down the license plates to their two SUVs, went through the rules of the
campsite and showed on a map where to walk to their sites. Counting out the
change to Ben’s deposit—while eyeing his long, slender fingers resting on the
desk—she couldn’t help wondering who his girlfriend was waiting outside.
“So where’d you guys come in from?” She made her voice
casual as Ben passed the maps to his friend.
“All over. Boston, New York.” He gestured vaguely. “We all
went to Vassar and stayed here once, right before we graduated. So, you know,
we thought it’d be fun to get together again.”
The man with the stubble clapped Ben on the shoulder. “This
guy is way too modest. He’s studying at the Culinary Institute of America and
we’re here to give him a well-deserved weekend off. He’s been working like a
dog.”
“Have not,” Ben said good-naturedly, but somehow his smile
didn’t quite reach his dark eyes.
His friend, though, hardly noticed Ben’s sudden unease.
“We’re hoping he remembers us so that when he opens up the best restaurant in
New York City, we’ll be comped free meals since we won’t be able to afford a
single slice of bread.”
Ben winced, but as soon as Casey told him, she hoped he’d
enjoy his time off, a lopsided grin spread across his face. This time, it lit
up his eyes.
“Make sure you have flashlights,” she said quickly to cover
up the way her pulse escalated when he caught her eye and brushed back a rogue
strand of hair. “Be careful of roots and rocks, that sort of thing.”
Ben nodded, but as his friend went out to find the campsite,
he hung back, looking around. Casey told herself it had nothing to do with her,
but even so, some small spark fluttered inside as his eyes lingered.
“What’re you reading?” Ben asked as he looked over the
bookshelf.
“High-quality material.” Casey lifted up the cover and
explained the system she’d set up.
“Pretty ingenious—maybe I’ll bring you something.”
“Sure,” she said, trying to keep her mouth in a straight line.
For some reason, the edges kept wanting to pop up.
Someone called from outside, asking Ben for the keys, and at
last he turned to go. On his way out, he wished Casey a good night and then
reached up to tap the back of the doorframe before swinging the door shut
behind him.
She really, really
wished he hadn’t.
Because lifting his arms to the doorframe made his jacket
rise up enough to expose the top of his low-slung jeans. As well as the thin
green line of his boxers hugging his hips underneath. It didn’t take X-ray
vision to know that just above that patch of skin, hidden by his white
undershirt and whatever else he had on under his black North Face fleece, were
two long dimples carved into his lower back, matching the dimples on his face.
Officially the sexiest part of any man’s body and the one
thing Casey dreamed about on those rare nights when she did, in fact, allow
herself to dream.
But this was not
going to be one of those images she replayed in her mind’s eye. She was already
berating herself for noticing. Not only had she turned to putty simply because
he slid the hair out of his eyes as if he didn’t know the gesture would make
every girl within a ten-mile radius want to extend her hand to his cheek. But
she, Cassandra Webb, competent, capable, got dumped on her ass but still got
back up again, thirty-four-year-old independent woman, had checked out his
twenty-something-year-old butt.
She made herself swear she wouldn’t give him a second
thought. She wasn’t interested. Period. She’d come to the woods to be alone and
she fully planned to stay that way. She was going to read a little more until
she was sufficiently distracted and then head back to her cabin, warm some
cookies in the microwave, and go to sleep. Geller would take over registration
in the morning and she would never see this group again.
Casey reached for her book, but she couldn’t stop her hand
from hovering over the ledger. Before she knew what she was doing, she allowed
herself a quick peek at the records and groaned.
Geller’s handwriting was
unmistakable. They were staying for four days, three nights. There was no way
she wouldn’t find herself looking at those dimples again
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