Cupcake Club 04 - Honey Pie Read Online Free Page A

didn’t stop until she stood by the passenger door of the only pickup truck parked behind his garage.
    A moment later, she heard the bay doors being rolled down, then the back door slap shut. From the corner of her eye, she saw him load her suitcase in the open flatbed.
    â€œDoor’s unlocked,” he said, walking around to the driver’s side and climbing in.
    She got in, closed the door, pulled on the seat belt, rolled the window all the way down, and very carefully kept her gaze straight out the front window.
    He didn’t say a word as he drove her the half mile or so to the front of a tidy little island bungalow with a sign out front, announcing it was THE HUGHES’S B&B. He put the truck in PARK, left the engine running, and got out.
    By the time she climbed out and closed the door, her suitcase sat on the low curb by the side of the road.
    â€œTell Miz Barbara I’ve got your car, that you’re stuck for a night or two. She’ll give you a good deal on the room.”
    Honey nodded, feeling nothing but numb. And foolish. So ridiculously foolish.
    Apparently happy to make his escape, and not requiring or expecting any further conversational niceties, Dylan headed back around the front of the truck, leaving her and her suitcase parked on the curb.
    â€œThank you,” she said, finding her voice, if not her courage. She kept her gaze averted.
    â€œNo problem.”
    She wasn’t sure what prompted her, or where the words came from, or why on earth it mattered, but when she heard the truck door creak open, she looked up, looked at him. “I’m not crazy.”
    He glanced over at her and she held his gaze, almost defiantly.
    â€œI’m not.” Immediately, she wished the words back. Pathetic and pitiable were two things she refused to be. Ever.
    Rather than look at her with either of those emotions flickering in his gray eyes, he did something that shook her hard-won control in a way she’d least expected. He grinned. Broadly.
    â€œSugar, we all have a little bit of crazy in us. It’s what keeps us interesting.” Then he climbed in his truck and drove off.
    Honey stood there and watched until his taillights disappeared around the corner. Then she did something that only five seconds earlier she thought she no longer had in her to do again, possibly ever. She laughed.
    Danger. Danger, indeed.

Chapter 2
    D ylan had known she’d be some kind of trouble from the moment he’d read her name on the service order. Honey D’Amourvell. Sounded like very old, deep pockets Southern money. Or a stripper. Either way, she wasn’t something the fine citizens of Sugarberry—well, one particular citizen, anyway—needed to deal with. Then he’d gone out to look at the car: a powder blue ’72 Volkswagen Beetle.
    Definitely not old money . . . unless it was eccentric old money.
    So, he’d been assuming stripper, while looking over the initial list Dell had compiled of what needed to be done to get her junker up and running again. Vintage parts like she was going to need were going to take some tracking down. And likely cost a king’s ransom.
    Given the condition the car had been in even before it had broken down and the equally ancient suitcase she’d lugged out of the car, he’d bet his own bottom dollar she didn’t have such a tidy sum. Maybe it was a sentimental junker and she had a sweet little hot rod stashed somewhere across the causeway on the mainland.
    I could only be so lucky, he’d thought as he’d pushed through the door to the bench out back of the shop. He’d glanced up from the work order on the clipboard to tell Ms. D’Amourvell the sad and sorry news, only to have the words jam right up in his throat.
    Honey was no stripper. Neither tall nor short, large or particularly small, she was just . . . well, average. She had brown hair that was probably about shoulder length, pulled back in a single