Tempt Me!: Men About Town, #2

By Tracey Pedersen

So much temptation, so little time!

Chris Nash loves owning his own cafe. He works hard, plays hard and thinks he has the perfect life. Between the temptation in his dessert cabinet, and the ladies making tasty offers over their morning coffee orders, he yearns for nothing more than his daily routine.

Enter Becca James.

Becca is a firestorm of emotion and the very essence of temptation. When she steps through his door that first morning, Chris suddenly realizes there's one thing he's been missing in his well-ordered life.

Excitement.

One taste of Becca and there'll be no more sitting home at night, eating leftovers from the cafe. There's something far more elusive on the menu...

If you love sexy books that also make you laugh, this is the book series for you. Follow the members of this community as they go about their daily lives, working, playing, fighting and falling in love. No cliffhangers, only happy endings that have you reaching for the next book. Each one can be read as a standalone and you can read them in any order you discover them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daring Online Adventures
• Release date: Jul 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9780648584018

Tracey Pedersen

Tracey Pedersen is an Australian USA Today Bestselling author who has finally accepted that she is meant to write, write, write! In 2016 she released her first romance novel and hasn't looked back. Now writing full time, and fighting the urge to write every second of the day, she loves travel, crocheting, replying to reader emails and spending WAY too much time on Facebook!

Book preview

Chapter 1

The pretty woman with the blue hair waved her arms and shouted at a heavily-tattooed man right outside the café window. Each time she raised her arms, her bright yellow skirt slipped up her thigh, revealing tanned skin and well-defined muscles, and each time, the movement caught the attention of the café’s owner, Chris Nash.

He flicked his eyes back to his order pad as the customer in front of him kept talking. Would that be suitable? she purred, licking her lips as his eyes focussed on her again.

What the fuck did she just say?

He stared blankly at her, trying to guess the words he hadn’t heard.

Chris, you’re such a daydreamer! She ran her hand along his forearm with a laugh. I said you promised me a coffee date, and I have Wednesday free. Would that be suitable?

Oh, I work on Wednesday. In fact, I work every day—I’m a seven-day operation—so I’ll have to take a rain check. He stepped to the side and grabbed the silver handle to prepare the next order. The café was bustling this Thursday morning and he had seven slips of paper already lined up with coffee requests as a small crowd formed to the side of the counter. He had no time to stand here, fending off random date requests.

That’s a shame. You should live a little. I’ll take a calendar with my coffee, please, since that’s as close as I’m going to get to the real thing.

He grinned at her as relief washed over him. She was backing off—giving him an out—and he couldn’t have been more grateful. If only the twenty women who had come before her this week with similar offers to make his day had been so forgiving. Who knew posing in the community calendar would lead to such an increase in turnover for his small business? He’d had at least twenty-five percent more people come through the door in the month since it was published. They were mostly female customers buying more than their fair share of morning coffee with a side of hot-man-calendar.

He’d sold five copies already this morning and it was only ten o’clock! Mimi Fletcher, the brains behind the community calendar, had promised to restock his supply on the weekend, but if too many more single ladies got their hands on it, he’d have trouble keeping up with the demand.

He frothed the milk for the coffee and glanced around. Four tables of customers were patiently waiting to place their breakfast orders, but he had all these coffees to make for the takeaway crowd. Kenneth, his cook, was busy in the kitchen making the orders that had already been placed, and several tables begged to be cleared of the debris left by previous customers. His eye twitched as he glanced at the dirty tables—a pet peeve of his, especially in his own café.

Damn Tina for quitting without notice. That was a really shitty thing to do.

Cursing his sister for leaving him in the lurch after acing her acting audition and rushing off to pursue her dream wouldn’t do him any good, though. He made a heart pattern in the frothy milk and expertly popped the lid into place. The till chimed and the drawer popped open as he made change for his admiring customer. When she left, calendar tucked under her arm, two more couples entered and chose a table.

God damn it! Any second now, people will start to leave!

Three coffees later, Chris knew he’d have to leave the takeaway orders and rush around to attend to customers at tables. He’d almost completed an order for four lattes when the door swung open again. He shut his eyes for a second, wishing the day would speed past so he could go home and feel sorry for himself.

Damn you, Tina.

His eyes flew open when a strong voice called through the door to the street, No, Rodney, I really don’t need your help, as I’ve said a dozen times already. I don’t want your money—I don’t want anything from you. Now, please go home. I have a job to get to and you’ve already made me late! The door banged shut and Chris watched in fascination as the blue-haired woman with the best-defined thighs he’d ever seen walked confidently toward the counter.

She glanced around at the tables full of people, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head when she leaned toward the closest table and said, Give me a moment and I’ll be back to take your order. The couple at the table smiled gratefully at her, and Chris let his mouth hang open as his hands continued to move the coffee pot and churn the steaming water.

The woman, who he’d seen for the first time in his life just fifteen minutes ago, stepped behind the counter—his counter—and quickly washed her hands at the sink. She grabbed an apron from the wall and tied it around her waist as she turned and looked over the workspace. She pulled a pen from the cup beside the register and took the pad Chris had been writing his coffee orders on. Without a single glance in his direction, she stepped back around the counter and apologised to the couple for their wait.

What can I get for you? she asked, her friendly smile putting them immediately at ease.

We’d both like the omelette with gluten-free bread, thanks—plus two lattes and some water for the table.

No problem. We’ll get that for you as fast as we can. She moved to the next table and repeated the process as Chris moved to the next coffee order.

I should stop her. What is she doing taking orders when she doesn’t even know what we serve here? Scratch that—why is she taking orders in my café when she doesn’t even work here?

He looked out the window as more movement caught his eye. The man she’d been talking to—Rodney, apparently—peered through the glass, shook his head, and then stormed up the street. There wasn’t an inch of skin on his enormous biceps that wasn’t covered in tattoos—the tattoos that Chris knew belonged to a man who’d spent some time with bikers.

He frowned as he cleared his coffee backlog and watched the woman, whose mix of blonde and blue hair should have seemed tacky, but didn’t, expertly serve his customers. She took each order with a smile and promised to check back with them. Water was served to each table, and the dirty dishes that had irritated Chris were cleared away before the tables were wiped down. Without any acknowledgement of what she was doing, she twice enquired about ingredients for a customer’s order and relayed his answer to the respective tables.

Chris could feel Kenneth’s eyes boring into his back each time the little bell in the kitchen rang, but he refused to turn around. Since his mystery helper had arrived, they were back to running a smooth ship. There’d be time to grill her about her actions as soon as the morning and lunch rush was over. She didn’t miss a beat each time the bell sounded and went straight back to the kitchen, checked the dockets carefully, and made sure the meals went to the right table. As breakfast turned into lunch, she even located the pepper grinder and began offering patrons pepper with their meals.

Who the fuck is this woman?

Do you have a bathroom? There she was, standing right next to him, her large, brown eyes waiting for an answer.

"Of course. Right around the