Mint Chip and Moonlight

By Sarita Leone

Amelia Caldwell has no intention of getting involved with anyone, let alone a European race car driver. She wants to attend art school in Paris and has no time for a summer fling.
Her plans come to a crashing halt when she has a fender bender with a super-hot legend on Moonlight Beach's main drag.

Jose Jiminez Rodriguez has never had a collision with an American beauty before and this one throws a wrench in his race day agenda.

Can the two overcome cultural differences to find their way to the checkered flag as a team?

• Language: Unknown
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Apr 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781509235810

Book preview

sempre

Chapter 1

Moonlight Beach, Maine

August 1979

Amelia Caldwell couldn’t keep herself from wondering what that stubbled chin would feel like against her tongue.

His features contorted into a series of indecipherable emotions as he surveyed the scene. He hadn’t even looked her way yet, which didn’t disappoint because it gave her these few precious minutes to regroup.

And ogle.

And wonder about that chin.

A crowd congregated on the busy sidewalk behind them, but that didn’t mean much. Summer crowds gathered for just about anything.

When the town’s vintage 1957 Street King street sweeper pulled into the Turner Brothers Grocery parking lot to dump its load of road grit, shoppers paused to watch.

It didn’t matter if they were holding grocery lists or bulging paper sacks filled with watermelons and wieners. They stood in clusters, commenting on the process as Bill White, the town’s highway department driver, executed the not-so-delicate and very dusty maneuver of street grit dumping.

If a cranky child threw a tantrum outside the Five-and-Dime, folks stopped to observe that, too. That it happened a dozen times a day didn’t diminish its life-stopping effect. If the tantrum had loud, theatrical tears, so much the better. Onlookers narrated those scenes as if they were a sporting event. Murmurs of good grab, Dad when a man scooped up a kid, legs flailing and lungs performing at optimal capability, circulated among those assembled.

And this? Well, who could blame the gawkers? It held much more excitement than a street sweeper dump or kid blowup.

A fiery red Ferrari mowed down by a car three times its size on Main Street in a tiny town on a small stretch of the Maine coastline? A lot of crazy things happened during the height of the tourist season, but nobody—local or visitor—had ever witnessed a spectacle like this.

It occurred to Amelia that this fender bender might make the front page of the local paper. She glanced around but didn’t see Walter. The insurance salesman never went anywhere without his battered Kodak camera. He kept it loaded and carried a spare canister of film in his pants pocket in case he happened on an especially photographable event. The paper got most of their photos from him, leaving his clients wondering when Walter actually took care of insurance business. The man popped up like a summer virus, unexpected and unwelcome.

Luckily for her, his face—and camera—didn’t appear in the crowd.

She closed out the murmurs and loud gasps coming from staring pedestrians. She ignored pointing fingers, expansive gestures, and rapid eyewitness explanations circulating on the sidewalk behind her.

Let them watch.

She did her own staring—at a sight far preferable to the usual small-town fare.

The hot hunk squatting near what remained of the front left fender of his equally sexy automobile wore dark blue jeans so tight they fit like a second skin. Muscular thighs and firm buttocks were showcased so well that they made the billboard on the road coming into town for Mike’s Gym pale by comparison.

An ordinary white T-shirt certainly didn’t look ho-hum on this guy. Bronzed skin showed, a tone the local beachcombers called Saturday-morning toast—the perfect shade of doneness for one of the sweetest meals of the week.

It shot through her mind that he did, in fact, look like a delightful way to spend a lazy morning. And tempting enough to nibble on.

Taking her gaze off him didn’t even cross her mind.

She enjoyed the first peaceful minute she’d had all morning.

If today turned out to be anything like the earlier part of her week, it would be the last one she’d have for a while. Might as well savor every single second of this.

Mr. Hotness stood, raked his right hand through a mop of thick black curls, and swore. The words were low and directed toward the fender, but she heard them. And she understood their meaning.

Curses were the first Spanish phrases she’d picked up when she’d worked as a nanny for a Bolivian professor’s son during college. The six-year-old could swear like a pro. This particular phrase even the kid wouldn’t know—it would make a dockworker blush.

When he turned to face her, she got the full effect of his strength and power. He towered over her five feet ten inches, turning her statuesque to petite. She glanced down at his feet. No laid-back Birkenstocks for this guy. Socks, either. He wore polished black loafers on bare skin.

Everything about him screamed money.

The car was slick—but some men could afford cars like this one without having a huge bank account. But there were other things that gave her a hint about the status of his wallet. His jeans didn’t have a familiar orange label on the back pocket, and his shoes looked handmade.

And when the breeze blew off the ocean and wound its way between the shops across the street that backed up onto the shore, she caught a whiff of him. Much more than the saltwater that permeated all her childhood summer memories, this scent, pure male, strong and spicy, made her heart race.

No man she’d ever dated smelled anywhere near as enticing as the stranger.

She raised her gaze. The dark pools that were his eyes flashed menacingly, sending a chill up her spine despite the midday sun.

Waves of heat came from the man standing before her. Anger, but only as an outer layer. His temper, like his clothing, concealed the true nature of him—which her initial impression put at red-hot sex machine.

She blushed when she realized she’d assessed the man’s sexual prowess. Moreover, it shocked her that the appraisal made places on her own body hotter than she cared to admit. Hotter than they’d been in a very long time.

His posture, ramrod straight, sent the notion he might be law enforcement or a member of the military on a day off through her mind, but she quickly discarded the idea. No military salary could afford a car like the one he drove or pay for the understated yet expensive clothes that fit him so well. No, something more gave him this appearance.

But right now, if the look in his eyes gave any indication, appearances counted for nothing.

The man was pissed—and by the furious glare, not afraid to express it.

Chapter 2

"Dios mio!" His hand sliced through the air, gesturing toward the mess behind him. A torrent of Spanish followed.

Amelia waited for him to stop before opening her mouth. She’d be damned if she were going to aggravate the situation by getting into a shouting match.

Finally, his lips snapped closed. They were, like every other feature he possessed, perfect. A full lower lip with matching upper that invited kissing. Or would have, had his mouth not drawn into a thin, tight line.

His hands found his hips and rested there. The feeling that they could take off at any second and begin a new round of rapid air slicing pushed her to speak.

I didn’t mean—

He slapped a palm across his forehead. Not gently, either. The smack sounded like a shot between them.

Don’t tell me! You didn’t mean to smash into me?

The man’s gaze dropped, sweeping over her body with such intimacy she felt like a bug under a microscope. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and muttered another curse, this time making no effort to disguise his words.

Hey! Watch your mouth! Evidently, she startled him because he opened one eye and blinked. Then, he opened both eyes.

You understand Spanish?

She nodded. Some things.

A slow grin spread across his face, turning surly into stunning. Damn, but the man rated off the charts on the handsome scale!

Certain things? Like the nasty words, then? Is that what you American women learn first, the bad words? His tone left no question regarding his estimation of American women. She bristled at his insinuations.

Heat rose from her chest, up her neck, and onto her cheeks. His insolent grin burned her like the sun’s rays, and she knew in that instant that no amount of sun block could protect her from such a searing stare.

But she didn’t have to take his veiled insults. She’d made that mistake once, leaving her self-respect at the door and letting a man make her feel unworthy, but it wasn’t one she planned to make again. Not ever. She remembered how it felt to be defeated by someone’s hatefulness, and it made her furious.

You must be a tourist, she countered. One who hasn’t learned that we don’t insult each other in Moonlight Beach.

His eyes widened. Moonlight Beach? You should call this place Crash City, with the way you drive!

She pulled herself up to her full height. He still looked down at her, but she could do no better. When he opened his mouth to respond, she cut him off as scathingly as he’d done to her. "Insulting women—is that the first thing you learned? I imagine it is because you’re very skilled at it."

A muscle worked in his jaw, making the five o’clock shadow undulate, but she held her gaze on his eyes. The best way to keep her wits about her—and it was obvious she would need every single wit she possessed to deal with this foreign tornado—was to refuse to be pulled under the spell of his sensual good looks. So she tried to resist the man’s charms.

A raised eyebrow. You hit me.

Amelia shook her head. A curl tumbled loose and fell onto her cheek. She tucked it back into the hairpin over her ear and gave him the barest smile, hoping for some kind of truce.

I didn’t hit you. She anchored the hairpin against her scalp with so much force that she winced.

A backward gesture with one hand, and a brisk nod. He insisted, Look. You hit me.

A somewhat British tone paired with the Spanish accent made his excellent English sound almost musical.

Their cars blocked one lane of the two-lane road. Rubberneckers crept around them like sedated snails. They gawked just as much as the sidewalk traffic did, and she doubted any of them even had a foot on their gas pedal. Their cars rolled past. Many of the faces in the driver side windows were familiar. Most smiled. Some waved.

Great. By this evening, she would be the talk of the town.

Again.

Lisa, the owner of Cohen’s Cupcakes, came out of the bakery. Flour covered her apron, but that didn’t stop her from taking charge. She peered into the convertible and pointed to the wooden crates in the back seat. Amelia? Honey, is that what I think it is?

Amelia turned, waved a hand at the crates, and said, It is. If I don’t get it home soon, Gran’s going to wonder what happened to her cream.

Let me keep it in my cooler while you get this dust-up taken care of. She reached into the car, grabbed a crate, and motioned to a man standing nearby. A woman, presumably his wife, stood beside him. Next to her, two little girls, wearing identical yellow swimsuits, watched. Grab that, would you? I pulled a tray of snickerdoodles out of the oven a couple of minutes ago. I’ll give you a bag for you and your family.

The guy reached into her car and took the second crate.

Thanks. Lisa, would you call Gran for me? Tell her I’ll be back to the shop as soon as I can get there, okay?

Will do.

Every minute counted. Her grandmother needed the cream for tomorrow’s batch of mint chip. If she didn’t get back soon, they’d be up half the night waiting for the churn to produce enough for the Sunday afternoon crowd.

She turned to the man whose car she had hit. She gave him the full-on, judge-worthy smile that helped secure the Miss Moonlight Beach title two years earlier. It had worked on the judges then, so maybe it would soften the heart of the Spanish hornet scowling at her now.

"I did not hit you," she asserted with