Dangerously Sweet: Barefoot Bay: Dangerously, #1

By Angela Evans

Blake "Dex" Dexter has been undercover so long, and so deep, that even he can't separate the real Dex from his cover story anymore. A week in Barefoot Bay would sound like paradise to anyone else, but to Dex, it sounds like way too much time to spend alone with his own thoughts until he meets Amelia Barton, then he thinks it might not be enough time.

Amelia Barton had her whole life planned out like she plans a recipe for one of her decadent cakes, but somewhere along the way she got seriously off track. When a cheating fiancée is exposed she decides to take her dream honeymoon alone. Barefoot Bay feels more like home to her than she's ever felt in Alaska. And then there's the sexy cop who seems unsure whether he wants to pull her closer, or keep her at arm's length.  Amelia knows which one she wants him to do.

When Dex's cover is blown and the drug cartel follows him to Barefoot Bay, Amelia is suddenly a target. Dex is determined to keep her safe, but the only way he can see to do that is by keeping her away from him. Amelia has finally found the recipe for her sweet life, but can she convince Dex that their love is worth the risk?

This story is set in a world based on Roxanne St. Claire's Barefoot Bay Series; it is published with the permission of Roxanne St. Claire. Visit her website for links to her books and more information.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angela Evans
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386552277

Angela Evans

As a child, Angela remembers her mother telling friends that Angela would read anything she could get her hands on, even the back of the cereal box. That changed when she discovered romance novels as a teenager, secretly reading her mother’s entire collection of Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and being amazed at how captivating the stories were. She knew that writing romance novels was what she wanted to do for a living. On her way to publishing her first book she took a slight detour to be a successful mom-blogger and was honored to be included in two parenting anthologies. That reignited the fire in her to be a published author, so she shifted her focus from blogging to fiction writing and never looked back. Angela lives in Southern Illinois (think St. Louis, not Chicago) where she is living her own happily ever after with her husband of over 20 years, their two teenage children, a very spoiled dog, and two equally spoiled cats. When she’s not writing she loves reading, cooking, and photography.

Book preview

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Barefoot Bay World, a place for authors to write their own stories set in the tropical paradise that I created! For these books, I have only provided the setting of Mimosa Key and a cast of characters from my popular Barefoot Bay series. That’s it! I haven’t contributed to the plotting, writing, or editing of Dangerously Sweet. This book is entirely the work of author Angela Evans, a talented writer I handpicked to write in the world of Barefoot Bay.

I first discovered Angela’s work when I had to opportunity to read her first novel and give my endorsement. That was easy because I instantly fell in love with the depth of her voice and her deft hand at characterization. She’s joined the Barefoot Bay World with a story that includes romance, suspense, and some incredible baked goods! It’s truly a combination of sexy, savory, and sweet!

Roxanne St. Claire

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Barefoot Bay Series

www.roxannestclaire.com

Table of Contents

––––––––

Welcome to Barefoot Bay World

From Angela Evans

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

About the Author

Chapter One

You are taking two weeks off and that’s final. The little vein on the side of Captain Morrison’s neck was pulsing in a way Dex knew indicated they were in the danger zone, but still he pushed.

I am this close, he held up two fingers pinched tight together, to busting these assholes I’ve invested a year and a half of my life in. I’m not about to take two weeks R & R so you can give my bust away to someone who plays better in the sandbox than I do!

Everyone plays better in the sandbox than you do, his boss admitted with a frustrated wipe of his hand across his forehead. I’m not giving away your bust. I’m telling you that you exhibit more signs of burnout than I’ve ever seen in one cop. Right now the cartel thinks you’re on the inside. Take advantage, and get out of town for a few days and clear your head. Remember you’re actually a cop, not a drug runner, before you slip so far undercover it’s no longer a cover!

Dex knew his boss was right, but he wasn’t going to admit it, not for a damn second. He’d put everything he had into this case and he knew he was getting close. The last thing he wanted to do was back off while things were this hot.

That wreck could have killed you, and it did kill the punk who was riding with you in the passenger seat. Another thing Dex wasn’t about to admit to. You haven’t passed your physical yet. Don’t bother lying because I checked, which means technically you can’t come back to work anyway.

Dammit! Dex spun away from his boss’ desk and barely resisted the urge to put his fist through the drywall next to a commendation plaque from the mayor.

The fact you’re fighting me this hard on taking a little time off just confirms what I’m saying. You’re in so deep you can’t separate the cover from Blake Dexter anymore.

Dex stood with his back to his boss, but he could picture him well enough in his mind’s eye he didn’t really need to look at him. Mid-fifties, more gray in his hair than there was charcoal these days, a midlife spread happening in the waist line, shirt collar open, and the jacket and tie he’d worn to work that morning discarded in the chair next to his desk.

At the sound of papers being dropped on the top of the desk, Dex reluctantly turned around to appease his curiosity.

You haven’t asked for your mail in months. I checked that, too.

Since he’d been undercover, any mail addressed to Blake Dexter at his real apartment had been rerouted to a P.O. box where the police department had access. Someone monitored it for anything important, made sure bills got paid, and notified him if anything urgent came in. He was supposed to pick up what had been flagged as personal once a week or so, but he didn’t get much in the way of personal stuff so he’d given up the habit.

What is that? he asked, spying his mother’s handwriting on a pink envelope with a flower trailing along the bottom. Embossed stationery wasn’t something his mom typically used, so he was equal parts curious and alarmed.

A wedding invitation.

* * *

The kitchen in Barton Lodge was a sea of noise; everyone was talking at once, and most of them were asking her a question. Dinner service was hectic as usual. The menu board that covered the entire back wall of the room was supposed to eliminate most of the chaos. Somehow everyone still found it easier to come and ask her a million questions during meal prep than they did to consult the menu board and find the answer themselves.

Tonight’s dinner consisted of a hearty venison stew, served with jalapeno cheddar corn bread and mashed potatoes. Dessert, which was always Amelia’s moment to shine, was a chocolate soufflé with a raspberry sauce. Fresh raspberries were a rare treat in Alaska, so she had figured out how to make her own version using raspberry jam. Her office at the back of the kitchen was as neatly organized as the rest of her life. A filing system organized and catalogued every recipe she’d ever made and each had a success rating with notes for possible changes to try next time. Covering the top of her small desk was an open bridal magazine her best friend from college had sent to her with a note telling her to check out the spread the magazine had done on Casa Blanca, a resort in some place called Barefoot Bay.

Looks like the perfect place for a girl from Middle of Nowhere Alaska to honeymoon if you ask me! Bianca had scrawled across the page in her instantly recognizable handwriting filled with swirls and curlicues. She even dotted her I’s with little hearts, and added smiley faces after her name. It was as if Bianca refused to admit they were now in their late twenties, and insisted on writing exactly the same way she had in school.

The resort was stunning, to put it mildly, and Amelia had wasted many a precious, unorganized minute daydreaming about walking on the warm white sand listening to the surf. Her fiancé was bugging her to set a date, her best friend was pestering her to choose a honeymoon location, and really she just wanted someone else to plan the whole thing and tell her when to show up. Which was oddly out of character for someone who planned every second of her life the way she planned a recipe.

Chocolate soufflé? You know our guests would be just as happy with a chocolate and peanut butter brownie from a box, right? Her oldest brother, manager of the family hunting lodge, stood in her office doorway with the copy of the menu she’d delivered to his desk over a week ago.

You do realize I am a pastry chef, right? Baking amazing desserts is what I not only love to do, but it’s what I went to school for? She pushed her chair back with more force than was necessary, the stress of this ongoing battle over the menus wearing thin on her nerves.

And you realize that isn’t your job here, right? You’re the kitchen manager for a hunting lodge in Alaska? Her brother gestured around to indicate the mammoth 80-acre lodge she and her six brothers had run together ever since their parents died when Amelia was in college.

Temporary kitchen manager, she reminded him.

You’ve been managing the kitchen for four years, and we haven’t even interviewed a single candidate to replace you, Sis. I think it’s time to accept this isn’t temporary. The rest of us have. He walked out of the office without another word.

Tears stung the back of Amelia’s eyes. She’d had her whole life planned, but somewhere she’d put aside her plan. How had she let things get so far off track? The only thing she’d wanted since she turned fifteen and her parents had moved them all from the lower forty-eight was to get the hell back out of Alaska. Here she was managing a kitchen, a job her mother had always done with delight, in a state she loathed, engaged to a man she felt absolutely no spark with.

Amelia didn’t know what it felt like to be smothered, but she was pretty sure the way she felt right then standing in her office with the dinner service demanding her attention was a pretty close match to having a pillow held down over your face.

Her cell phone dinged on her desk, distracting her for a moment. An email addressed to her from someone she didn’t know had been delivered; Amelia almost chalked it up to spam and sent it to her trash folder when she had a moment of doubt. The email contained photographs; she could see the thumbnail images of them in the lower left hand corner of the email screen.

The body of the email said, Do you really know who you’re marrying?" which was ominous enough, but combined with her mood, Amelia felt compelled to open the attachment. The moment she did, she dropped her phone as if it had become scorching hot. It landed directly on top of the bridal magazine, the voyeuristic photo open on her smart phone screen in direct contrast to the natural beauty of the posh resort.

The noise of the kitchen continued to grow louder and she could hear the cooks calling her name and barking orders at the small staff. Tears burned the back of her throat and rage had her hands trembling as she reached out a finger and dismissed the email and the obscene photographs from her screen.

Taking the service staircase out of her office, she headed up to her room with her back ramrod straight and her shoulders square. She couldn’t think here; hell, she felt like she couldn’t even breathe. She needed to get out of Alaska and out of this lodge before she suffocated.

Acting on impulse wasn’t her norm, but her norm had made a mess of things so far. Maybe it was time to start being a little more unpredictable. That thought, combined with the almost desperate need to get away from her family, the lodge, and most of all Alaska had her spurred into action.

White sand beaches and warm sunshine awaited her. What she was going to do after that she didn’t know, which was so far outside of her normal character the thought of it nearly made her knees buckle in fear, but she wasn’t the wilting flower type. She would make a plan when she got to Barefoot Bay. She always felt better with a good solid plan in hand.

* * *

She’d lost track of the number of hours she’d spent wedged in a tiny airplane seat between two armrest-hogging men, pushing Amelia Barton’s normally agreeable personality to the very verge of losing her cool. Halfway through the flight, the guy in the window seat had passed out, probably because of the steady stream of gin and tonics he had ordered from the flight attendant. She’d spent the next four hours shoving his drooling chin off her shoulder. Meanwhile the guy in the aisle seat had made no attempt to conceal his efforts to sneak a glance down her blouse whenever she shifted in her seat.

Just as she finally thought she was getting released from the hellish portion of her runaway vacation, the airline had lost her luggage, leaving her standing in the Florida heat slowly melting in her lightweight flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. This was exactly why she was not a spontaneous person. Spontaneity did not work out for her. It never had and it likely never would.

The woman behind the service counter for the airline smiled her perfectly polished smile at Amelia yet again while she wondered what one had to do to get as tan as this woman was. Not that she would ever know, with her strawberry blonde hair and pale complexion.