Keep Me Wanting Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover more New Adult titles from Entangled Embrace… Chaos and Control

  Dirty Irish

  Until You’re Mine

  Game On

  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 events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Angela Addams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 105, PMB 159

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  [email protected]

  Embrace is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Heather Howland

  Cover design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes

  Cover photography by ShotPrime Studio/Shutterstock

  ISBN 978-1-64063-893-8

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition February 2020

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.

  xoxo

  Liz Pelletier, Publisher

  Dedicated to Linda Farnes-Copan: A true friend who has been with me through thick and thin.

  Chapter One

  Maggie

  I bet I could bounce a quarter off that ass.

  “Yo, Maggie, close your mouth and quit drooling.” Stella snaps a towel at my butt before turning to pull a cake from the display cabinet. “I need a double shot vanilla iced latte. You on it or what?”

  “Yeah, got it.” I cough, feel the burn of embarrassment rising from my chest to my cheeks. I shift my hair so it hides the worst of the red and get to work.

  I sneak a peek at him, the guy who has me drooling all over myself. He’s third in line and looking delicious as always. Liam of-no-last-name, who comes in for a coffee every morning—or at least every morning I’ve been working at the Coffee Hut—so that’s like four months now. He’s got these eyes, brown I think, dark and penetrating, a look so intense that I swear he’s undressing every woman he sees. Maybe not me—I could blend into most walls if I stood still enough—but a woman like Stella, vivacious and flirty? Yep, he totally imagined her naked.

  Heck, I’ve imagined her naked.

  “One double shot vanilla iced latte,” I say as I slide the coffee over to the waiting customer.

  Stella serves the next person in line. I start pouring Liam’s drink. Black. Some mornings he likes a shot of butterscotch.

  “Maggie, can you help the next customer, please? I need to get some more napkins from the back.” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. She just leaves.

  I look over at Liam. He’s watching her walk away. Her ass sways naturally, like she was born knowing how to pull all eyes in her direction.

  Thanks, Stella. She knows I’ve been fantasizing about Liam for months, lusting over his muscles, his face, that chiseled jaw, thinking about running my fingers over that stubble that’s sometimes there. Pressing against those pouty lips he has or licking along the scar on his cheek.

  My face gets hotter if that’s possible. I keep my eyes down. “No problem,” I mumble. I wipe my hands on the towel and move to the cash. “Is today a butterscotch day?”

  “Excuse me?” His voice is so gruff, like he’s gargled in liquid sex.

  I snap my eyes up, suddenly panicked. Maybe he doesn’t get a shot some days. Am I remembering it wrong? “I thought you liked your coffee black with a shot of butterscotch every once in a while.”

  “Oh, sure, I do.” He offers a smile. It’s not a big one, just a slight turn of his lips, but it’s there. “That’d be great, thanks.”

  I try to smile back nonchalantly, but I can’t control what my mouth is doing. I go all crazy smile on him, like flash my teeth and set my burning red cheeks on full display. My eyes are probably sparklingly with unconfined lust.

  His eyes flick to my chest, where I can feel my nipples harden. Wearing a cotton bra might be comfortable, but it does nothing to disguise the twins from jutting at the slightest breeze—or penetrating gaze.

  “And your muffins look great today.”

  “Um…huh?” I choke on the words, sputtering a little as I do. “My-y-y muff—”

  He smirks, his eyes back on mine, raising a finger to point toward the display of blueberry muffins. “Those muffins look delicious. I’ll have one of them, too.”

  “Oh, right, of course.” I whoosh out the words like I’ve been holding my breath and do a once over of his body while I’m punching his order into the computer. The top button of his dress shirt is undone, a hint of a tattoo poking just under the collar. I trail my eyes down his torso to his black slacks. “Do you want your muffin heated?”

  I did not just say that, not like that with my eyes so obviously glued to his crotch.

  He chuckles. “Who doesn’t like a warm muffin?”

  I look back up at him and wonder if this is really happening. Sexual innuendo word play at nine a.m. with the sexiest man alive? “With melted butter drizzling down the sides?” I’ve cocked an eyebrow, like this is some kind of game I’m good at.

  Now he really smiles, and it sends a jolt of heat through my eyes, down my spine, and straight to my belly. He opens his mouth, and I can’t help but wonder for the millionth time what it would feel like to have those lips skimming across my collarbone or what those thick fingers of his could do to my—

  “I got this.” Stella shoos me to the side. “That’ll be four-eighty, Mr. Liam. Stop drooling,” she adds out of the corner of her mouth.

  It snaps me out of my lusty brain freeze, but I stand there lost for a moment, like I can’t quite remember how to do anything but breathe, if I’m even doing that. He’s still smiling at me. I picture myself standing there, hands at my sides, mouth agape, staring.

  “Butter would be great. Thanks, Maggie.”

  Oh God, he knows my name. I abort any attempt to smile back, grab a muffin, and then turn away, keeping busy while my head nearly explodes. What just happened? I talked to him. He talks. He jokes. He…flirts? Was I reading that wrong?

  My heart is thudding, my nerves zinging, and yeah, my hands are sh
aking. A guy like Liam, all tall, dark, and mysterious, doesn’t flirt with girls like me. I’m average everything. Nothing to draw the eye in my direction. I’ve got this hair that has a mind of its own; sometimes it’s blond, sometimes it’s brown, sometimes it’s curly, sometimes it’s not—the sun and time of year play havoc with it, and hair products literally laugh in distain when I attempt to wrangle it into place. I’m resigned to ponytails most days or, like today, a strategically placed headband. I could probably lose a few, twenty, pounds, but working at the coffee shop part time with a food discount doesn’t help the waistline much. I like to think of it as baby fat that’s just too comfortable to leave the curve of my hips and cheeks.

  Baby fat, I snort. Yeah, right.

  I graduated college five months ago with a degree in marketing, a head full of what ifs, and a debt the size of luxury car, minus the car. I’m working the Coffee Hut every morning and then head to one of two options on any given day: my second job at the mall information desk or an interview in my field. A field that I was so sure would get me working and up the ranks well ahead of my sisters, both uber-successful lawyers who stayed in school despite the mounting tuition bills, who both incurred the massive debt and then paid it off by the time they were thirty.

  I had big plans when I started my post-secondary pathway. I’m a creative, determined to work my magic in marketing, a field that I find exceptionally intriguing, a field that hundreds if not thousands of other graduates also find exceptionally intriguing. Hundreds of graduates who I’m competing with at every interview I go to.

  The marketing firms want interns, and while I understand the logic there, young energetic work at no pay, prove your worth and all that, I simply can’t afford it. I need a job that will pay me for my creative energy so that I can start to tackle this debt and get my life under control.

  My family thinks I’m wasting my time. You’re smart, Maggie. Write your LSATs. Do something with your life. But I have a plan, or at least I thought I did. While I was doing my degree, I thought for sure I’d be snapped up by some hot as Hell promotions company doing big events or something before I even graduated.

  When that didn’t happen, I became convinced that a dream job was just an interview away. A few months ago, I came to the bitter realization that what college really sells is a pipe dream. I’ve had to lower my expectations.

  Now I’m just hoping to land a killer internship and somehow get by on the jobs I currently have.

  “You think you can handle taking it to him, Maggie, or will your panties catch fire if you get too close?” Stella is standing at my side watching me butter up Liam’s warm muffin.

  I nudge her with my elbow. “Shut up,” I hiss, glancing over my shoulder at Liam. He’s sitting at his usual table, looking hot, oblivious to my raging hormones and the fact that I undress him with my eyes every time I look at him.

  “Hey, maybe you should ask him.”

  “No.”

  “You’re running out of time, girl. And really, what’s there to lose at this point? Carpe the fuck out of that diem is what I say.”

  I look at him again. “Absolutely not.” I pick up the plate and his coffee cup and leave the counter before she can say anything more.

  Ask him. What exactly? Well, it’s nine a.m. on the Friday before the biggest, five-years-in-the-making family reunion that my mom and her side of the family have been planning. She’s due to arrive here in a matter of minutes, expecting me to produce a boyfriend who might just happen to look a lot like Liam but who doesn’t actually exist, not in the context that I’ve created, anyway.

  My mom is seriously going to kill me if she finds out I’ve been lying to her. Worse than that, she’s going to blame me for ruining her dream family reunion by insisting on being unsuccessful and unattached, like it’s some personal dig against her that keeps me from landing the perfect job and the perfect man.

  I was a total oops baby. Not unloved or unwanted, just unplanned. And so, given the huge age gap between me and my sisters, I’m also pretty independent…which means I like to do things my way. I have failed in so many ways to fill the space that my family has carved out for me, and I continually miss the mark trying to fulfill the image of perfection my mom likes us to present to the world. It’s not that I don’t want the perfect job. I just want it to be my perfect job.

  “Here you go,” I manage to mumble as I set Liam’s stuff down.

  He glances up from his paper and smiles again. “Thanks, Maggie.”

  The way he says my name, like the butter that’s melting on his muffin, makes me feel bold, as if I could actually ask him if he wouldn’t mind playing along.

  “What are you reading?” I blurt. The newspaper, you idiot.

  He glances down at the paper. “Just the business news.” He pulls the muffin plate toward him, and when I don’t leave, he quirks an eyebrow.

  I look up at the clock. Mom is on her way for sure. She’ll be here any moment, expecting to find a successful, fully functioning adult male by my side. One who has a real job and a bank account and who looks like a sex god, er, model with all those muscles and brooding expressions.

  I suck in a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Carpe Diem?

  Yeah, right.

  “So, I was wondering if you’d be willing to do me a favor?”

  “A favor?” He curls his fingers around the handle of his mug but doesn’t lift it.

  “Uh, yeah, because I did this thing. I mean, I have this problem.”

  I let out another breath and then collapse in the chair opposite him. I can feel Stella’s eyes on me. I know she’s judging. I sit up and straighten my back in a vain effort to push my boobs out more, somehow thinking that that’s going to help. “My mom, she’s always on my case to bring a boyfriend to our family things, and we’ve got this reunion, and I kinda, maybe, let her believe that a guy, named Liam, who looks strikingly similar to you, has been my boyfriend for the last few months.”

  I rush my story, speaking so fast I’m not sure he’s actually following. His eyes widen then narrow. “I’m not asking you to come. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t inflict my family on you.” I let out a nervous laugh. “It’s just that, my mom, she was planning this with my granddad and, well, he passed, so I was trying to avoid upsetting her.”

  I suck in a deep breath, tears burn my eyes, and my heart clenches. He died five years ago, but he was the anchor of our family, and his death still feels like a gaping hole. “It’s a huge deal for her, you know, because life is so short, and my granddad, he really wanted this to happen, all these family members are coming that we’ve never met before. I mean, it’s a big deal to everyone in my family but especially Mom.”

  I attempt a smile and shove the sappy stuff way down in my gut. I cannot go all teary on this poor man. “So Mom is super stressed, and when she gets this stressed, sheesh, look out. She channels it directly at me and my less-than-perfect life.”

  I flop back into my chair again and blow air up my face so that my straggling curls that have escaped the headband puff away from my eyes. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say but butchering horribly is that my mom is expecting me to bring someone, and I was wondering if you’d play along for, like, five minutes. Just long enough to make her believe that you’re my boyfriend so that I get her out of here before she makes a scene. I’ll deal with not having an actual date later.”

  My face is on fire. I can feel the flames on my cheeks. My head might explode. I glance down, daring a look at him through my eyelashes. “I’ll totally buy your coffee for the next two months.” I add the last part out of sheer desperation because the look on his face is a little hard to read, but it definitely doesn’t seem enthusiastic.

  The silence hangs. I clamp my mouth shut. Stella clangs something at the counter then curses quietly. I gulp. Sweat trickles down my back. Fuuuuuck, this is awkward.

  He lifts his fingers f
rom the mug, rubs the corners of his mouth, studies me with those eyes, like he’s trying to figure out what in the hell is wrong with the girl who serves him coffee every morning. Then he clears his throat, pushes his chair back, gets up, and leaves.

  Oh. My. God. I want to die. All of my insides are pooling in my feet. I can’t believe I did that. Of course he just left. He probably thinks I’m a fucking lunatic.

  Stella is at my side. She grabs my shirt and tugs me to my marshmallow feet. I can’t feel my lower body. It’s like I’m detached from myself.

  “Please tell me I didn’t just—” I choke. “Oh fuck.”

  “No time for this, Mags. Heads up, your mom is coming in.”

  I turn toward the door. My mom is there with her beaming smile, her hair piled high on her head, face done up, nails manicured, wearing a sundress that looks fresh and breezy and heels that are way too high for any sane human but that she rocks as usual.

  “Margaret, sweetie, is it break time already?” She glances at Liam’s uneaten muffin sitting abandoned on the table in front of me. “No wonder you’ve put on so much weight if that’s what you’re eating everyday!”

  Chapter Two

  Liam

  Of all the things I thought might come out of the sexy-as-sin woman’s pretty little mouth, a fake boyfriend proposition was not one of them. Girls I know—knew, actually, since I haven’t known many girls in the last four years—don’t ask things like that. They want some cash, or the connection, or to get to my brother so they can be on the arm of a real badass.

  But Maggie, the sweet coffee girl I see every day…she doesn’t even know who I am, and yet she asks me to, what, pretend I’m the boyfriend who’s supposed to be her date to some family thing? Like I’m some upstanding citizen that she’d want to show off to her folks?

  Unreal.

  I’m not an upstanding citizen. Not anymore. Not now that I’ve got a criminal record and a hardened heart to go with it.

  My brother made sure of that.

  It wasn’t supposed to be that way. I had dreams. Plans. I wanted to open my own business, like a legit one, maybe a bar or a restaurant. A chain of them somewhere far away from what my family is becoming. Use the capital I’ve built to really do something that will last, something I could pass along to my own kids one day.