Cupcake (Complete Me #1) Read online

  Cupcake

  Sloan Kincaid

  Red Hot INK

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  10. One Week Later

  Chapter 11

  Thank You!

  Afterword

  About Sloan

  Also by Sloan Kincaid

  Copyright

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ISBN 978-1-928056-39-3

  1

  The building was made of russet brick and stabbed into the cerulean sky like a spear. A weapon wielded by an unseen hand, its wicked peak was a stark contradiction to the rest of the lush, rolling green of the rest of the campus.

  The contrast spoke to me more than it probably should have. I felt like that spear, ready to ride into battle, to slice through the normalcy around me should the need arise.

  Given that this was a college campus, and I was heading to business class, bloodshed wasn’t likely. Still, I was ready, armed with defenses built over weeks of anticipation and worry.

  Going back to school at age thirty-four wasn’t for the faint of heart.

  I followed the stream of students down the path worn into the grass as I did my best to calm the nerves flocking around in my stomach like crows over a crust of bread. Through the metal doors with cranky hinges, down the snaking corridors that carried the musty scent of years past, and into the mid-sized classroom arranged in rows formed like ascending semi-circles, pond ripples that didn’t quite close.

  The professor already tapping at his laptop in the break between those seats was a stereotype, wisps of sandy hair flying about, leather patches on the elbows of his sweater. This, more than anything, drove it home.

  I was here. I was doing this. I’d lost countless battles along the way, but ultimately I’d won the war.

  Remembering the triumph gave me the strength to choose a seat. Selecting one in the second row, by the door, I was able to see the entire room clearly, yet also had access to a quick escape.

  Not that I’d need one. I wanted to be here. I’d fought for it. Uprooted my life over it. But knowing that it was there helped.

  As I pulled my tablet and keyboard from the book bag that was so new its pale blue practically glowed, I sucked in a large mouthful of that stale air and tried to get a grip. Sure, there were young people everywhere, but it wasn’t like I was old. And this, returning to school, wasn’t some knee-jerk decision I’d made—it was a wanting that had happened gradually over months and years, a need to have something that was mine, something that I’d earned myself, something no one would ever be able to take from me.

  My ex-husband Max? He’d never understood. An investment banker, he made plenty of money. He’d wanted a wife who stayed home and catered to his needs. I’d been so young when we met—nineteen, about the same age as most of the students surrounding me—that I’d been eager to fill that role.

  My mother, my three sisters? They all thought I’d landed the jackpot. Our mother had set a precedent for us all our lives, bringing home “uncle” after “uncle.” She wasn’t too choosy about who they were, what they looked like, even if they were that nice, so long as they helped put the roof over our heads and beer in her hands. My sisters, two older and one younger, had followed the same path. Between them they had seven kids from six different dads, all meatheads who thought that paying child support was optional and that being a good dad meant showing up three hours late for your kid’s birthday party, stinking of pot and some other woman’s perfume.

  Me? I’d married up. I had a meal ticket for the rest of my life if I played my part right. But that was exactly what it had been—a role, something I forced myself to be. I’d been happy enough with Max in the beginning, sure, but as the years rolled by, as I’d realized that every facet of my being was entirely wrapped up in him and his needs, his desires... well, I’d started doing something that my own mother and sisters had never seemed to do. I’d started to want—to want things that had nothing to do with Max.

  I’d started to make noise gradually, a low hum in the perfect silence of our marriage. But even that slight noise hadn’t settled well with him—the girl he’d married had been silent, after all. He’d done everything he could to squash my new needs, to force me back into the mold he approved of.

  In the end, I think it had been a relief to us both to end it. Even more of a relief to him that I hadn’t wanted any of his fortunes beyond tuition and the means to live for the four years it took to get a degree. I wanted to stand on my own, but I wasn’t naive enough to think that I could, not after so long cutting myself off from everything. I’d never even had a job, not unless you counted the title of wife.

  I didn’t. Maybe seeing themselves solely as an extension of a man was enough for the women in my family, but it no longer was for me.

  At the front of the room, the professor tapped a hardcover book against the lectern, catching the attention of the class and interrupting the thoughts I had no business having. Opening my tablet and tapping the keyboard to wake the device up, I settled back in my seat and took a quick glance around, catching the eye of the girl next to me.

  “Hey.” She offered me a sleepy smile, which I found amusing since the class was at ten am. “I’m Kendra.”

  “Anna.” I thought about offering a hand then decided it was lame, all the while wondering if she was going to sneer at a “mature student” like me. I relaxed as I realized that it didn’t even seem to register with her. I’m sure she noticed that I wasn’t a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old, but her mind was probably too full of pub crawls, ramen noodles, and random hookups to care about the bland thirty-something woman in her Introduction to Business class.

  Way to assume, Anna.

  I forced myself to focus on what the professor was saying, only to realize that his introduction was nothing that I didn’t already know from hosting countless business dinners for Max and his work colleagues. Disappointment drifted hazily through me—I’d fought so hard to get here, and this was all there was?

  It was only the first day of this semester. There would be more. Sinking back into the chair, the prof’s words washed over me as I took a longer, more detailed study of my peers, the people I would be surrounded with for the next four months.

  Most were the usual suspects, the kinds of kids I’d come into contact with on my previous visits to ca
mpus. A sought-after school on the East coast meant a lot of the students had money, and it was reflected in the studied hipster attire—skinny jeans, argyle cardigans, ankle booties and thick plastic framed glasses, five dollar coffees accessorizing it all. Not Starbucks coffee, though—these were probably from small local shops with fair trade beans, drunk after the consumption of organic, farm-to-table carrot sticks or something like that. There were the standouts, of course—the guy in the back corner with spiked hair and a floral skirt, the girl in black lace with heavy black liner and blue lipstick. And it might have been my imagination, but the hormones in the room seemed as thick as soup, all these attractive young bodies sizing each other up, searching for a mate, forever or just for the night.

  That, combined with the hints of pricey perfume and cologne, the saccharine scent of hairspray and floral shampoo, the musk of multiple bodies in one room—it all made me feel restless. Alive.

  This was what I’d wanted. What I’d fought for.

  Nerves slowly started to turn to anticipation, honey heating in the sun, as it sunk in, just the tiniest bit.

  I was here.

  It was on this ripple of joy that I saw him. Seated in the mirror of my seat across the room, leaning back in his chair. Large arms were crossed over a solid chest, a body so massive compared to the seat that I wondered it didn’t break.

  No skinny jeans or sweaters for him, either—long legs clad in no-nonsense jeans stuck out from beneath the long desk, feet housed in equally worn work boots streaked with what looked like grease. The solid planes of his face were highlighted by the fact that he wore his raven-dark hair super short, stubble that would require no maintenance.

  As if he could feel my stare like a tickle on his skin, he shifted in that tiny seat. The navy T-shirt pulled over the hard planes of his chest as he did, the bands of the sleeves pulling tight around beefy biceps, and I swallowed a low hum of feminine appreciation.

  This guy fit into this class about as much as I did. Older than most of the students—not nearly as old as me, but not eighteen either—and with a body that suggested either an insane amount of gym time or years spent doing some kind of physical labor. More, though—he looked rough. Raw. A brawler, not a fresh-faced student.

  Maybe I made some kind of sound, or maybe my staring was just hugely noticeable, but beside me, Kendra tapped her keyboard with a click of her long nails and huffed out a breath.

  “If you’re looking for someone to crush on, he’s not it.” Her lips, shiny with the all-natural honey gloss I’d watched her apply moments earlier, pursed in irritation. “That’s Shep. He’s a mechanic at a garage a couple of blocks from campus. It’s all he cares about.”

  I pondered her words, wondering how she knew his name, what he did—wondering why she sounded so bitter. Had they hooked up? Dated? Had she just made a move on him? Whatever had gone down, it was pretty clear to me that she’d been rejected. It didn’t surprise me. The young man—Shep, I guessed—looked solid, hard. Untouchable. And though nothing about him screamed that he didn’t belong, he clearly stood out in the room of college kids.

  And if his maybe twenty-four-year-old self, with his work clothes and rough demeanor stood out in this crowd, I surely did too. The average height for a woman, I had a deceptively young face, but close up it was easy to tell I wasn’t fresh out of high school anymore. My blonde hair fell to my chin in a sleek bob, not quite a soccer mom style but not the long, luxurious manes of so many of the girls here, either.

  I’d revisited the ritual of back to school shopping but was more prone to comfortable leggings and cute tops than to jeans I had to wiggle around for an hour to get into.

  Yes, I had the feeling that while I didn’t exactly stick out like the oft spoken of sore thumb, I didn’t fit in either. Much like Mr. Big—aka Shep. The longer I looked at him, though, the more at ease I felt with that.

  He didn’t fit in, but those hard planes of his body, the slight twist of his lips when the professor said something that made the class titter—it seemed real. And if I stood out like he did, then maybe I seemed real, too.

  Never mind seemed real—maybe I actually, finally was. Not just Anna, perfect wife of Maximillian Beaumont, but Anna Kent... me. Just me.

  You know how the hair on the back of your neck prickles when someone stares at you for just a little too long? A survival instinct from the days when too much attention often spelled danger? I’d lingered too long, fascinated by this strange man, and he turned his head, stare sweeping the room until it met my own.

  I jolted, awareness crackling down my spine as pale gray eyes caught and held my own. He didn’t smile, his expression didn’t change at all—he simply studied me for what felt like an interminable length of time during which my pulse inexplicably thundered through my veins.

  The ringing of the bell signaling the end of the class made me gasp quietly to myself, tearing my stare from his. Breath coming quickly, I packed up my tablet and nodded in farewell at Kendra, not having heard a word of what the professor had said in the last forty-five minutes. When I stood, swinging my bag up onto my shoulder, I couldn’t keep myself from watching him cross the classroom, those long tree trunks of legs eating up the industrial carpet in swift strides.

  He walked right past me as though nothing had happened. As he should, because nothing had. Still, disappointed lingered as I followed his wide back out the door—there hadn’t been even the hint of a flirtatious smile indicating that he’d been aware of me at all, at least not in the way that I had him.

  Lecturing myself as I headed off in what I was pretty sure was the direction of my next class, I tried to squelch the strange sensations rioting around inside of me. No, I wasn’t old, but I was well past the point of a schoolgirl crush.

  But was a flirty little attraction really so bad if it woke me up again and made me feel alive?

  2

  The day that our professor announced that our next assignment would be in partners, I’d been watching Shep—okay, ogling him—for over a week. He hadn’t given me the slightest bit of encouragement in return, apart from the occasional intense meeting of the eyes, but I’d quickly become as addicted to the surge of awareness that shocked my system when his eyes met mine as my classmates were to their ethically harvested lattes. I craved the teasing scent that reached my nose when he brushed by me after class, clean masculine soap and a hint of something like engine grease, something that reached straight to the lust-producing centers of my brain and drove me wild.

  “Oh, I hope we’re partners.” As the professor started to draw names out of a jar, a quaintly old-school method that drew snickers from the class, Kendra smiled widely at me and clapped her hands together. I blinked in return, not sure if she was being sarcastic or not—apart from spending an hour beside one another Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we hadn’t really interacted much. She seemed sincere, so I nodded in return, not sure what else to do.

  “Shepherd Sloane.” I sat up straighter as Shep’s name was called. I knew, somehow I just knew that my name would be called next.

  “And Anna Kent.”

  Beside me, Kendra huffed out a sound of disbelief, but I couldn’t focus on her words of warning. His gaze sought mine from across the room, and when our eyes met, I felt it throughout my entire body. How had he known it was me? How had he known my name? Was it possible that he felt this strange pulsing connection between us as well?

  That was ridiculous, and I shoved the thought away even as he crossed the room to where I still sat, frozen in place.

  “Annie?” He loomed over me, even more massive up close, his long body casting me in shadow. I swallowed as I looked up and met eyes that I could now tell were the color of an ice storm, pale and haunting.

  “Anna,” I corrected, fidgeting in my chair, not sure if I should stand to greet him, stay seated, or throw myself into his lap.

  He grinned, just a quick flash as he made the decision for me. Swinging himself into the seat beside me, he grabbed my han
d, and my breath left my lungs on a giant whoosh.

  “Shep.” Pinning me again with that stare as his large hand enveloped my own, I suddenly found it hard to breathe.

  He was so big. I’d seen that, known that from across the room, but now, up close? He was just huge. Crammed into the seat next to me, that hard body invaded the hell out of my space and made my mind dart to places that it shouldn’t.

  Did I imagine it, or did he hold my hand in his for just a second too long? It was enough time to register the strength in it, to take note of the calluses that roughened the palm, to wonder how they’d feel on my skin.

  I nodded, swallowing thickly as he finally released me, and the corners of his lips turned up just the tiniest bit as if he knew what I was thinking—as if he knew that the brush of his hand against mine was enough to make me rub my thighs together against the sudden ache.

  This attraction was very real, at least on my part. And I needed to get a grip on myself.

  “So. What are you thinking for this project?” Tearing my eyes away from him seemed like the smart thing to do, so I cast my stare down at my tablet, resting on the desk. Focusing. Focusing on the work was good. That was what I was here for.

  “Well. We’re supposed to choose two different businesses to analyze, so why don’t we each pick one?” It took a moment for me to understand what he was saying because I was distracted by the low rumble of his voice. It matched the rest of him—rough. Coarse.

  Sexy as fuck.

  “Right.” Sinking my teeth into my lip until I registered the sting helped clear my head. Taking a quick glance around the room, I found myself inspired by the must-have accessory of our classmates. “What about one of the local coffee shops?”

  “A local business focus. I like that.” Shep nodded, and I found myself mesmerized by the sharp angle of his jaw. There was a faint scar along the right side of it. He caught me staring.