Sugar & Spice (Spicetopia Book 1) Read online

  Just then I heard footsteps pounding down the cement hallway, bouncing off the concrete block walls. Jolie appeared, chest heaving as she gasped for air.

  “Guess we’re all running late this morning!” Colleen observed and rolled her eyes. She glanced over her shoulder at Jolie and looked for a moment like she was about to say something, but then thought better of it.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered to Jolie, and she nodded, not saying a word but throwing her gaze toward Colleen as if to tell me she didn’t want my boss to overhear our conversation.

  “I’ll come visit at lunch,” I whispered back, and she nodded before darting down the hallway opposite the bakery.

  I’ve never been so eager for lunch as I was today. I almost drop-kicked the last kid in line over to her parents and yelled, “See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya!” at the top of my lungs right before the ropes fell, announcing my break. Not exactly queen-like, huh?

  This weekend with Marcus—though we only had about four hours together total—was undoubtedly the most amazing weekend I’d ever had with a man. Friday’s date was the best sexual experience I have ever had in my life hands down. I a) couldn’t believe he was so young and b) couldn’t believe how many orgasms he gave me. Furthermore, I was astounded by how much I enjoyed him taking control.

  When I got back to my dressing room at 12:05, he was waiting for me right outside the door with the most adorable little knowing smile on his face. He waited for me to get the door shut behind him before he pressed a kiss against my lips. He then went for my neck, but I had to cut him off there.

  “You can’t be starting that,” I warned him, “or neither of us will ever get back to work. And now that I’ve had the full monty, so to speak, I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with dressing room quickies again.”

  His lips spread into a devious grin. “Is that so? Well, I was going to say I didn’t think you could stroke my ego any more after the other night, but I was clearly mistaken.”

  He’s so fuckin’ cute! I just wanted to kiss that salacious smile right off his face, strip that pink polo over his head, and sink my teeth into him. One of the things that kept going through my mind about last weekend was how dominating he was. Not in a cruel way, not like I could be with my clients. But in a demanding, greedy way. Like he just couldn’t get enough of me. I never thought I would enjoy that so much, but fuck. It was hot as hell.

  “Are you going to eat your lunch?” he asked as he made himself comfortable in the wingback chair in the corner. I sank onto my stool, my skirts gathering around me as I reached down into my mini fridge to pull out my lunch bag.

  “I made one for you too,” I said, tossing him a chicken salad sandwich on a croissant.

  “Wow, fancy!” He laughed as he caught the plastic bag in one hand.

  I’d picked the sandwiches up in the hospital cafeteria this morning on my way out after stopping to relieve my mom and see River, but I couldn’t tell Marcus that. There was a lot he didn’t know about me yet, but I wanted to come clean.

  After Saturday night, I realized that someone as open and honest and transparent as he was about his situation deserved the same from me. In some ways, it seemed like we were both struggling. He was trying to make it abroad, make a life for himself here and avoid having to go back to England. He was torn between his passion for art and his need to support himself. I knew exactly how that felt. We were cut from the same cloth.

  “Is the chicken salad that good or do I have it all over my face?” he asked, drawing me out of my thoughts.

  “It’s pretty good. Why?”

  “You just have such a beautiful smile on your face,” he observed. “It’s contagious, I think.”

  His accent colored all of his words with so much spark and sunlight that I couldn’t help but beam. “Sorry, you just have that effect on me. It had been forever since I’d gone on a...date...if that’s what we’re calling what happened this weekend?”

  “We can call it that.” He took another bite and chewed as if he’d just bitten off a piece of victory.

  “I feel like I got to know you more in those four hours than in the, what has it been, three weeks now that we’ve known each other?”

  “Ah, pillow talk with actual pillows will do that,” he agreed. “I only wish we’d ended our date Saturday night the same way. I feel like I’ve known you much longer.”

  I nodded. It did feel that way. We had such a strong connection. He told me Saturday how he had grown up the son of a single mom, how he and his siblings never really knew their dad. He was the youngest in his family and the first to go to university and to America. It made me think that maybe River had a shot at a normal life, of achieving more than I could have ever dreamed of.

  His smile faded a bit as his eyes trailed across my face. “You didn’t share as much about you, though. You let me do most of the talking during our Saturday session.”

  I wasn’t accustomed to hearing the word “session” used like that. I used it to describe my appointments with my clients. “Sessions” and “appointments.” Those were the terms I felt most comfortable with—business transaction terms. It seemed appropriate for that line of work. It didn’t seem right for what Marcus and I shared this weekend. How could I tell him?

  I sighed. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he’d made me feel so accepted, so desired, a small part of me believed that laying all my cards on the table could only strengthen our connection.

  Listen to me. A week ago I wouldn’t have even considered letting him into my inner circle or letting him be privy to the crazy life I was dealt. Him and that magic cock, that magic smile, magic accent...it was just too much for me to fight any longer. The more I learned about Marcus Young, the more unbelievably right he became. He was like a one in a million shot. So much so that I was considering telling him about my plans to hold Sweetopia accountable for the way they’d hurt me, hurt my children. The more I spoke with Marcus, the more I saw him as an asset. An ally.

  “I’m glad you asked, to be honest. There’s a lot I want to share with you. I don’t know if we have enough time right now, though.” I glanced up at the clock. It was already 12:30. How did twenty-five minutes fly by with us just sitting here nibbling on these sandwiches? It seemed to defy the space/time continuum.

  “More than you having two kids?” His eyebrows flew up. “To be honest, that was pretty surprising to me, but I think it’s awesome. I know you’re a great mom.”

  “Well, there’s a little more to it than that. And I need to tell you about my second job—”

  I stopped talking when I noticed him patting his pants pocket. He held up one finger as he retrieved his phone, pulling it out to glance down and see who was calling. “Oh, shit, it’s Colleen. I better take this.”

  I watched him put the phone to his ear, the smile he had worn seconds ago fading into oblivion.

  “Okay. Yeah, I can come back. No problem. Just a sec.”

  He frowned, pursing his lips as he returned the phone to his pocket.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Colleen said she needs me to come back to the bakery right away.”

  “Oh.” I stood up as soon as he did, hoping I would at least get a kiss goodbye. In a way this was good. I could sit on my throne all day on autopilot while I figured out how I wanted to tell him about River’s CF and my second job as a Mistress Magenta. Those were the two main things I figured anyone getting into a relationship with me ought to know.

  “Sorry. I can drop by after work...” He paused for a moment as if his memory was kicking in. “Oh, is that meeting tonight?”

  The meeting had been postponed till tomorrow, but I didn’t want to talk to him about that yet. I wanted to see how he reacted to the other stuff first. And then I would tell him about my involvement in the Rebel Alliance—which is what we called our organization that was plotting to take down the Sweets and their Evil Enterprise once and for all.

  “I’ll text you, okay?
” I gave him a sweet smile and reached my arms out to offer him a hug.

  He scooped me up into his embrace and planted a kiss on my lips. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Twelve

  I breezed through the kitchen, catching sight of Colleen in the cramped little office that was enclosed in glass in one corner. The timeclock was right outside the square enclosure, and that was pretty much the closest I’d ever gotten to the office. My boss was never in it. Until now. As soon as she saw me, she gestured for me to come inside.

  “Hey, sorry, I thought I had a little more time,” I apologized as I took a seat in the hard plastic chair across from her desk. She was reading something on her computer, but when she did finally look at me, I saw a fire in her eyes I’d never seen before. It almost looked like rage.

  “Close the door, Marcus,” she barked at me.

  Whoa. I had never heard her sound like that before. What the fuck had I done? I reached over to swing the door shut, not realizing how hard I pushed it. It crashed into the frame with a bang, which only seemed to make the scowl on Colleen’s face deepen. “What’s going on? Is there a problem?”

  Her eyes whipped toward me, locking on to mine as her intense glare ramped up. “Yeah, there’s a problem.” She adjusted her computer monitor, turning it around to a photo on the Sweetopia website.

  Of my family.

  With me in it.

  Oh shit.

  “You want to explain to me why you look exactly like the Sweet’s youngest son?”

  There was a nasty sneer in her voice. I scraped my hand down my beard, which had grown in nice and thick. “Oh, I do look a wee bit like the Sweet chap, don’t I?”

  She huffed out a breath as she turned the monitor back toward her. “You know, when I saw you chatting with Clem in the hallway earlier this morning, it all became crystal-fucking-clear. You’re here undercover, aren’t you?”

  “What?” I mustered up as much shock and outrage as I could. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My fake accent held steady.

  “Stop with the fake British accent already,” she snapped. “I understand now why you’ve asked so many questions about the meeting, about the secret Facebook group. Your parents sent you in here as an undercover boss, didn’t they? They couldn’t send Clem or Carson because we all know who they are, but you’ve barely worked in the park, right? You’ve been gallivanting all over the globe studying art.”

  Fuck.

  “Are you the one organizing the employee uprising?” I asked. There was no sense in beating around the bush now.

  “No, I’m not, but there is no fucking way in hell I’m giving you any more information about it,” she seethed. The veins in her temple looked to be throbbing, and her jaw was clenched so tight I thought it might snap.

  “You know your job is on the line, right?” I reminded her. “All I have to do is say the word, and they’ll fire you.”

  She ignored that little nugget of truth and attacked from a different angle. “And that’s why you’ve been getting close to Jolie, isn’t it? You’re trying to figure out how she’s involved in all this, aren’t you?”

  “No, actually, I really like her.” That wasn’t a lie, even if it was a little hard for me to admit it to someone else.

  Colleen looked me up and down, the wheels clearly turning in her head. “I won’t blow your cover and tell your parents you’ve been goofing off in here with some girl instead of doing whatever the hell you are supposed to be doing, if—”

  “If what?”

  How dare she threaten me. I could fire this woman. My parents would back me up on that, right?

  Ugh. I didn’t know that they would.

  “If you stay away from Jolie,” she sneered. “I mean it. No going to her dressing room. No talking to her if she comes in here.”

  “But I already told you, my mission here has nothing to do with Jolie. I genuinely like her!” I didn’t mean to raise my voice, but it was too late. I wondered how soundproof those glass walls were.

  “You Sweets are all the same, you know that? You think of people in terms of what they can do for you instead of being actual human beings with needs and feelings. It’s sick, really.” Colleen shook her head as she continued to shoot daggers at me. “Jolie deserves better than that. She’s a good, kind, young woman and a hell of a mom. I don’t want her getting mixed up with you—and if she finds out you’re the Sweet’s son, she might be tempted—”

  “Tempted? Because of my money?” I shook my head. That didn’t sound like the Jolie I had gotten to know.

  Colleen sighed. “No, she’s not a gold digger, if that’s what you’re afraid of.” She flared her nostrils as another deep breath huffed out her mouth. “Look, this isn’t my story to tell, but if you care about her, you’ll stay away from her. She has enough on her plate. She only needs loyal, reliable, trustworthy people surrounding her, and you’re not it.”

  “Why? She’s an adult. She can make her own choices,” I protested.

  “Her kid is sick, okay?” Colleen fired at me.

  It was a flaming arrow that pierced me right in the heart. “What do you mean, sick?” The story Buster told us last week of the park employee with a terminally ill child came to mind.

  “Her younger son has cystic fibrosis,” she filled me in. “Even right now, he’s at the hospital getting a high-power course of IV antibiotics.”

  “What?” I shook my head in disbelief as I flashed back to our conversation in her dressing room just moments ago. She said there was more she wanted to tell me, more that I should know.

  Here she was about to bare her secrets to me, show me who she really was beneath the crown, the costume. And she still had no fucking clue who I was. She didn’t even know my real name. Maybe Colleen was right. Maybe I didn’t deserve her.

  “You heard me. Now, look, you need to come up with something to tell your parents, and if you really care about Jolie, you will protect her. She doesn’t need any more shit in her life, and she really needs this job, okay?” Colleen’s dark eyes were blazing with compassion. She really did care about Jolie a great deal; that much was obvious.

  “But they’re breathing down my neck. They want details on the meeting and this media shit going down. I don’t know what to tell them. I can’t make everyone happy here.” And that was the honest truth of the matter.

  “I don’t think you’re a bad person, Cy,” she said, using my real name. “Not if there has been any truth behind your portrayal of ‘Marcus.’ But your parents are two selfish, greedy assholes. And I have a feeling your two older brothers are just as bad. Things at Sweetopia will probably get even worse with them at the helm. That’s why the employees are banding together now, getting our ducks in a row. We want to stand up to them, force them to do what’s right—”

  “But if Sweetopia shuts down, you’ll all lose your jobs. What are you calling for...a strike? A boycott?”

  Her eyes gleamed at me, even though she didn’t confirm or deny my accusation.

  “Once the media breaks the story of a single mom who can’t get the treatment she needs for her terminally ill son because of the Sweets’ ridiculously expensive and useless health plan...”

  Oh, god, Jolie was the organizer. Or if she wasn’t, she was definitely the poster child. Their entire operation hinged on her and her story.

  “You have a chance to do the right thing, Cy,” Colleen continued.

  My head was beginning to pound as the weight of all these realizations pressed down on me. “If I don’t give up the name of the person behind this...this...union you’re organizing, then I’m toast. They’re cutting me off.”

  “It’s up to you, Cy,” she reiterated. “You’re going to have to make a choice. And you don’t have much time.”

  I had no idea where Marcus was. It was past the time he’d agreed to meet me, and he still hadn’t shown up in my dressing room. Maybe I’d scared him off with my warning that I wanted to divulge some things he needed to know. I wasn�
�t supposed to be venturing outside of the throne room or my dressing room during work hours, but I knew a way through the employee tunnels to get to the bakery. I’d just check and see if he got held up over there.

  Colleen was in her office when I made my way through the back room and kitchen from the tunnel. I knocked a bit on the glass so I wouldn’t scare her, but she jumped anyway.

  “Hey,” I said, poking my head in. “Have you seen Marcus?”

  She tilted her head for a moment as if she had to think about it. Then her brows furrowed as she gestured for me to come in and have a seat.

  “What’s up?” I arranged my dress around my legs. It was so voluminous, it barely fit between the chair and the desk where she sat.

  “Have you and Marcus been...uh...dating?” she questioned, fixing her dark gaze on me.

  I wasn’t expecting to be interrogated about my private life, but Colleen knew me well enough. She knew all about my situation with River and how I didn’t have help from either of my sons’ fathers. “Well, we’re just...getting to know each other,” I settled on.

  “Getting to know each other in a romantic way?” she pushed, her eyebrows arching.

  I shrugged. “I guess you could say that.”

  She huffed out a long breath as she continued to stare at me. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, hun.”

  “Why not?” Was she judging me for not being with my kids every moment I wasn’t at work? She didn’t know about my dominatrix gig. That was just about the only thing she didn’t know about me. Maybe she didn’t think I should date, that I should be in Mom Mode any time I wasn’t at work. I guess that’s what I thought too up until a few days ago.

  She cleared her throat as she seemed to struggle with how to articulate her thoughts. “I just don’t know if Marcus is really who he appears to be,” she warned me. “I don’t have any concrete evidence, but a couple things aren’t adding up.”

  “Like what?” My heart was beginning to thump hard against my ribs, and the pressure from my corset wasn’t helping.