Breathless: The Complete 5-Part Series

By Emma Rose

This 5-Pack includes the entire BREATHLESS series by Emma Rose, formatted as a full-length novel.

Lori and Matt have been working together, laboring and growing and sweating alongside one another for years. However, Lori’s always felt a tingling when Matt’s around, a sensation warming her and enticing her to become more than just a friend.

She was never sure that Matt felt the same way, until one night...

For one night, Matt and Lori decide to throw caution to the wind and give in to the fantasies and desires both had been keeping for each other. For one night, Matt and Lori decide to give in to temptation, and leave each other breathless...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emma Rose
• Release date: Sep 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311261663

Emma Rose

As a full-time independent author, Emma Rose delights in giving you stories that draw you in and characters who captivate your imagination.

Book preview

Breathless: An Adult Romance

By

Emma Rose

Copyright © 2014 by Emma Rose

Smashwords Edition

*****

PUBLISHED BY:

Crave Romance

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All characters in this book are eighteen years or older.

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 where permitted by law.

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Breathless: An Adult Romance

Chapter One

It’s 5:18 a.m. and Lori has her hands deep in a vat of dough. The dough is moist and a little warmer than her hands, and it feels wonderful and alive, folding and stretching. Kneading takes muscle, and Lori’s hands have become strong. When she was first learning to make bread, when she was very young, Lori remembers watching her grandmother’s hands folding and kneading—it looked so easy. When Lori tried to do the same, her hands felt minuscule. They were!

Now she is grown, and baking bread is the first ritual of her every day. Lori has a big, professional dough mixer in her small but ample kitchen, but she prefers to shape the loaves by hand in their last stages.

A dozen loaves are already laid out on trays. Lori slides them into a sheet-pan rack which stays on the warmer side of the kitchen, where the loaves will happily rise for another hour before she slides them into the oven to bake. They will pop out fresh and smelling exactly like heaven.

Lori wipes her floury hands on her apron, and then rinses them in her big, stone sink. They are strong hands—much stronger then when she was a child, first watching her grandmother baking! She unties her apron strings from around her back—they hug her sweet, hour-glass shaped figure nicely. She bakes all day and she loves to eat the fruits of her labor, but Lori also walks everywhere, works in her garden and her little greenhouse. She is strong and lithe, curvy and womanly, with wispy, unruly hair she keeps tied back in a bun as best as she can. She’s proud of her well-proportioned body—its ability to work hard, to wake early, to live with vigorous joy.

She looks up at the shelf above her head where there are two handmade ceramic items—a tiny box with a well-fitted lid, and a large coffee mug. Both were made by Joe. Lori’s heart is long past missing his bronzed shoulders and scruffy beard, his knobbly potter’s hands and the sweet, heady smell of his body after he’d been awake for days, stoking the wood kiln behind his studio. He made these things for her, and somehow she’s allowed herself to keep treasuring them, even though it has been two years since he left her.

Somehow, the objects themselves remain precious and pleasurable, even though it was an absent pair of hands that had fashioned them for her.

She takes down the box. It contains her rings—she takes them off when kneading. Otherwise, Lori always wears the rings her Aunt Joan passed down to her—one turquoise, one amber, both set in silver.

She slides the rings onto her fingers and smiles to herself, closing the box and replacing it on its wooden shelf. She sips from the large mug of warm coffee, feeling it spread all through her bones. Lori’s life is like her kitchen—warm, comfortable, a little too small for what she really wants, but slowly forming the foundation for her to make her dreams into reality.

The shelves in Lori’s kitchen are made from waxed wood, and they look dense and rustic and old-fashioned. Her house sits close enough to the sea that she can smell the salty wind, especially in this early morning air of late winter. The wind howls outside in the thin light, but the kitchen feels warm and brims with the ever-lingering smell of bread baking. It’s like a wheat field in summer: the walls are a deep, golden yellow. Matt and Joe together helped her paint them, and Lori remembers one night after the three of them had joined Matt’s girlfriend at the bar and shared a few pitchers. She and Joe had walked home, giggling, and she had tripped over a not-quite closed bucket of yellow paint. It had spread out onto the plastic drop cloth and her feet, and when Joe had swept her up to carry her to the bedroom they’d shared, it had dribbled off her toes like sunshine.

The funny thing is that Lori doesn’t feel bitter toward Joe, even though her heart ached when he left. He helped her build this place—he stoked the flame of her confidence. Lori wanted to support herself doing what she loved most in the world—baking. Joe had helped her believe that it was possible—that she didn’t need a million dollars to buy some state-of-the-art bakery where she could pump out a large-scale production line of loaves. Instead, he helped her focus on a small-scale plan, an artisan practice where her hands stayed close to her ingredients, which she could run out of the kitchen of the beautiful, old, drafty cape house she had inherited from her aunt Joan.

Now Lori supplies fresh-baked bread to three small restaurants and the local co-op grocery store. She has three people who come to work for her. And she is starting to make pastries.

The pastries have always been her dream, really. The bread is like her grandmother—warm, practical, old-fashioned, simple, gorgeous. By now, Lori could make it in her sleep, and she often does, it sometimes seems, waking up before dawn to work the dough into fat, rising bundles which spend sunup growing and getting ready for the oven. But her dream is about the pastries—fluffy canoli; hard, sweet, little amaretti; dense and frothy tiramisu. Lori dreams of knowing pastries as well as she knows bread.

She’ll do it. Soon! The thrill of it starts in the ends of her hair and tingles down into her toes and then stays in her throat, nervous and delicious. It’s almost real. It’s going to happen. She has already paid the deposit—the whole thing has already been set in motion.

She sits down at her little kitchen table with her cup of warm coffee, and closes her eyes. She can see a plane ticket in her own hand—she imagines the old-fashioned, paper kind—she can see her practical hands gently layering filo dough and folding soft, fluffy pastry cream into decadent, buttery pastry shells. She has a plan, she reminds herself. She has a plan, and she is only three months away.

The pamphlet of courses from the Italian Institute for Culinary and Pastry Arts is pinned to the kitschy little bulletin board above her table. She sighs, just glancing at it. She already has the whole thing memorized, practically—the images of warm, aquamarine waters, the shining stainless steel kitchen appliances, the lush dinners with delicate Italian wines. This is her dream, and she is three months away from living it.

She can’t help but admit to herself that she is also hoping for an adventure that will sweep her off her feet. Not like Joe and the golden-yellow house paint, not like Joe and his wood-kiln scented hair. Something finer, something different than what she’s known. In her mind, there is a vague shape of someone with a handsome face who will hold her hand and help her dive into unfamiliar territory with glee and abandon. She sighs again—stopping short of a fantasy—and reminds herself that she ought to listen to the Italian language instruction CDs her mother sent her more often.

And Lori reminds herself that it’s silly to want that kind of help—if anything, now more than ever, she thinks, she needs to keep up her own confidence about accomplishing her dreams on her own terms, with the sweat of her own muscle. If Joe’s leaving had taught her anything, it had been the importance of holding true to her own goals, not getting them mixed up with someone else’s.

Italy. It’s almost real. It’s going to happen.

Lori stands up with the intention of putting one of the CDs on, as a good step toward actually being there. Italy!

She goes over to her old-fashioned stereo. She’s taking out the unwieldy plastic box full of the language instruction CDs when she hears the front door. There is a sound of a step in the hall—a man’s foot.

It’s Matt who comes around the corner into the kitchen, catching her eye and grinning. Hi! he says, brightly.

Matt is Lori’s best friend. He’s tall-dark-and-handsome, in that best-friend kind of way—she can look at him and see his sweetness, his limber arms, his wide smile, his brown eyes, and she feels a deep affection for him. His presence is consistent and always both teasing and gentle. They have known each other for more than eight years, and Matt knows more about Lori than almost anyone.

He chuckles, immediately understanding what she is doing there, with the box of CDs in her hand. Practicing? he asks, a lilt to his smile.

Maybe, Lori says.

Ever since she’d told Matt that she is going to make her dream a reality, that she is really going to study pastry making in Italy, he’s been a strange combination of supportive and teasing. The teasing isn’t any more out of character than the support, but sometimes Lori wonders if some part of Matt wants her to stay. He’d never hold her back, of course. But something about the lilt in his smile reminds her to wonder.

"Je m’appelle, canoli," he says, stepping farther in to the kitchen. Even though he’s in the middle of teasing her, Lori can see him breathing deeply through his nostrils, taking in the delicious-smelling kitchen air. She smiles to herself, seeing him enjoy her craft.

No, she says, "that would be sono canoli ."

Yes, I am Sir Canoli, Italy’s first pastry superhero, he sweeps his arm and bows to her, presenting himself.

Early morning makes you silly, Matt, says Lori. Do you even know what language you’re speaking? Geez.

Matt is hovering around the ovens, peeking at the loaves. Who cares? he says. I studied ’em all and forgot ’em all.

Lori can tell he wants bread to eat. It brings her joy to offer her friends a steaming slice of bread with a pat of softened butter. No one can resist.

She puts down the CDs and comes over to the ovens. None of today’s bread is ready yet, but she has a few rolls left from yesterday. She pops two of them into one of the hot ovens to warm.

Matt has dark brown hair, which grows a little bit too long, and tan skin. He’s much taller than Lori, and slim, with a few endearing crinkles developing around his eyes. They stick there after he laughs. Tattoos curl down one of his arms. He is a woodworker, and he loves to read. Lori’s seen him date a few women since they’ve known each other—usually tough looking brunettes with hard smiles and more tattoos than him. He was in love with Marci, the woman he dated back when Lori and Joe were together. The four of them went on double dates, adventures, a long canoe trip once. She was nicer than the women he’s dated since she left him.

It’s been more than half a year since Matt’s introduced her to anyone he’s been into. She figures he’s getting tired of dating. She’s felt similarly, lately, not really caring to look around for any real romance since Joe. Her dates have been few and far between, and mostly boring. She and Matt will talk about them, chuckling. But it’s been months since she’s even felt like bothering, and she’s been busy with the bread, getting a fourth oven, trying new recipes.

Lori likes to be doing something with her hands when she’s talking, so she starts by grinding coffee beans and putting on a kettle of water to make a cup for Matt in her French press. She wants him to stay a little longer on this chilly morning.

Catching the hint, he sits down at her kitchen table in one of the worn chairs. As if he’s heard her thoughts, he glances up at the Culinary Institute brochure on the bulletin board and says, Been on any good dates lately? Or you too focused on those blue waters and wood-fired ovens?

Lori smiles, looking up at the photo he’s pointing to as she spoons the ground coffee into her French press. No dates, she says. Just bread and dreams.

Matt looks rueful for a second.

You? she asks.

Oh, he says. I went on that date with Cate’s friend Kym last week. But I was bored and she’s moving away.

Lori shrugs, taking the kettle off the stove and pouring the steaming water over the fragrant coffee grounds. That’s not a very good story, she says, disappointed that Matt didn’t come over with any good gossip. No smooching? she asks, smiling.

Matt doesn’t bother to make it into a joke. Yeah, he says, a little smooching. A little more than a little smooching. But honestly, I’m starting to feel too old for the whole dating thing. It’s not as easy to be casual as it used to be, you know?

Yeah, look at those wrinkles, she teases, passing her hand through the wisps of hair around her face before she plunges her hands into a sink of soapy water and doughy bowls, scrubbing vigorously. A little soapy splash lands on her cheek, and she sees Matt notice it with a strange gleam in his eye, as if he’d like to wipe it away for her.

A strange feeling comes over Lori, and she wishes he would. Maybe it’s just