LOL #2 Romantic Comedy Anthology - Volume 2 - Even More All-New Romance Stories by Bestselling Authors (LOL Romantic Comedy Anthology #2) Read online
These 10 all-new romantic comedy stories will make you laugh and swoon. Check the description before each story for a HEAT LEVEL rating, from Sweet to Spicy.
The theme of this volume is CAKE. Enjoy!
Saving the Cake - Victoria Wessex
Baking for the royal wedding is the assignment of a lifetime. Curvy British chef Jessica has her kitchen nearly under control, until a hunky US news reporter shows up to cover the story.
Heat level: Spicy!
Sofie and the Movie Star - Rachel Schurig
Sofie is six months pregnant, and feeling hormonal in her bridesmaid’s dress. Sofie’s condition and lack of boyfriend are causing quite the scandal. And then an international movie star shows up.
Heat level: Sweet!
A Sweet Affair - Elle Casey
Bakery owner Mary-Anna is ready to quit when in strolls a handsome stranger, looking for a job.
Heat level: Spicy!
Just Can’t Forget You - Gretchen Galway
They first met as troubled teens, and now their paths have crossed again. Melissa has shrugged off her past to begin a fulfilling career, but Eduardo is definitely trouble. All grown up, he’s more dangerous than ever.
Heat level: Sensual!
Sweet as Cake - Caitie Quinn
Maddie Deren has been invited to the Brew Ha Ha to make her winning secret recipe for rock god Dalton Reddy. What could possibly go wrong?
Heat level: Sweet!
Take the Cake and Run - Daisy Prescott
Two words strike fear in a six-foot-four alpha male: wedding planning.
Alwaysland - Blair Babylon
Xan Valentine is touring with his rock band and missing his girlfriend, a virtuoso classical cellist. When Xan finds himself with an engagement ring, he invites her to hit the road with him.
Heat level: Sensual!
Crime & Cake - N.M. Silber
When Matt Brenner sees a beautiful woman dressed like Marilyn Monroe trying to flee a raid, he’s amused. When he discovers she’s the tough lawyer he’s battling in the courtroom, he’s intrigued. Hilarity ensues.
Heat level: Spicy!
Randomly Ever After - Julia Kent
An old rivalry threatens Sam’s long-planned proposal to Amy, as a case of mistaken identity makes fists fly. Can a moonlit serenade on a rooftop make up for old mistakes?
Heat level: Sensual!
Then We Kissed - Juliet Spenser
When Charlotte wakes up with regrets over a fun night with US Army Captain Bradley Ryder, she tries to avoid him while delivering a cake to her client’s wedding reception. But a mixup sends her right to the one person she’s trying to avoid.
Heat level: Sweet!
Love romantic comedy short stories and novellas?
DON’T MISS LOL ANTHOLOGY #1, which is also available here:
www.amazon.com/dp/B00MSKAFUU/
And you’re currently reading this one, LOL #2:
www.amazon.com/dp/B00MSKAFUU/
Next in the series is LOL #3:
LOL Anthology 3
Turn the page to begin reading the stories, or click one from the menu!
Saving the Cake
Victoria Wessex
Curvy chef Jessica has a royal cake to bake and no time for romance…until Donovan arrives in her kitchen.
DESCRIPTION: Bake the cake for a royal wedding—it’s the assignment of a lifetime. But for curvy British chef Jessica, it’s one long stress-fest. The last thing she needs is a US news reporter hanging around her kitchen, however hunky he is.
Fly all the way to England to cover some chef baking a cake? It’s the assignment from hell. But when Donovan meets the curvy kitchen goddess, he knows he has to have her. Can he help the frazzled Jessica rediscover the fun of cooking…and bring out her inner sex kitten?
GENRE: Romantic comedy with steamy scenes. 11,000 words or approximately 32 pages. This is a stand-alone short story with all-new characters and a happy ending. You don’t need to have read any of my previous books to enjoy it.
HEAT LEVEL: Spicy! This short story contains steamy scenes and is intended for mature audiences, 18 and up.
Turn the page to begin reading SAVING THE CAKE by Victoria Wessex, or click here to return to this anthology’s Table of Contents.
Saving the Cake
Victoria Wessex
Prologue
Los Angeles
Donovan
“Me?” I blinked at the news director. “I stay here in the studio. That’s why they call it news anchor. Get Rachel to do it.”
“Rachel? Where have you been? Rachel quit! She’s living with that billionaire Scotsman.”
I frowned. It had been a while since I’d seen Rachel around the office. “What about Shelly?”
“She’s covering the wedding itself.”
“She gets the royal wedding and you want me to go and interview some woman baking the wedding cake?”
The news director leaned forward imposingly. “Shelly didn’t get drunk at the awards dinner and make that joke about the president of the network.”
Oh. That. A whole month ago, and I was still paying for it. I rubbed the back of my neck. “England? Really?”
The news director sighed. “It’s not like it is in the movies, Don. They don’t all drive Minis and live in thatched cottages. It’s just like here.”
“Didn’t Rachel say it rained all the time?”
“That was Scotland. And it’s summer. I’m sure it’s lovely in England this time of year. Look, just fly over there, film the baker and the cake and come back. No drama. No surprises. This is your last chance.”
Chapter 1
Berkshire, England
Jessica
“Me?” I asked mournfully. “Why does it have to be me?”
No one answered, because I was down in my basement kitchen, alone. Staring at the elaborate calligraphy on the Royal Request for Services for the seven-hundredth time.
Baking—and decorating—the cake for the royal wedding. Pretty much the assignment of a lifetime for any chef, especially one who specialized in desserts. But I could feel the weight of hundreds of years of expectations bearing down on me, grinding me into the tiled floor. What if it was too dry? Too moist? Too sweet? What if the icing cracked? What if—
What if? Pretty much the story of my life. No guy in my life since the divorce, because what if he’s the wrong one? No TV deal, because what if my curves just look ginormous on screen? I would have happily turned down the whole thing except that, (a) it would be career suicide and (b) the queen might behead me.
I put my hands on the counter and took a deep breath. Okay. It’s just a cake. I’ll keep it simple and elegant. Tasteful. I can do this.
Except, when I went to write the ingredient list, my hand froze. Flour…but what sort of flour? Did I want it heavy and dense, to soak up all the champagne they’d be getting through, or did I want it lighter and crumblier, modern rather than classic?
The doorbell rang.
I stalked up the stairs to my house and then through it to the door. It’s a long walk from the kitchen and, by the time I reached the door, I was ready to give the salesman or whoever it was a frosty reception. I swung the door wide and hissed, “Yes?”
Except I didn’t. The word didn’t form and the air just sort of caught in my lungs instead.
He was just a little taller than me. Then I remembered I was in my heels and m
entally revised that upward. Then I had to revise it upward again, because I saw he’d taken a step back from the door and was standing down on the sidewalk, an umbrella over his head to shield him from the rain. He was gazing away from me, looking around at the sleepy little village street as if he’d never seen a thatched cottage before. He had on a smart suit under his raincoat, but no tie, which should have looked scruffy…but somehow, it didn’t, on him. It looked sort of…I couldn’t think of the word.
His hair was glossy black with just a dusting of gray. I put him at about ten years older than me—early forties, perhaps. His eyes were the color of darkest slate, his jaw square and solid. He was clean-shaven, which gave him a kind of old-fashioned look. He was, undoubtedly, the most gorgeous man who’d ever stood on my doorstep. Or possibly any doorstep in Berkshire. He looked as if he didn’t belong, as if someone had cut him out of a golden-era Hollywood movie with scissors and dropped him there.
Roguish. That was the word I’d been looking for. But roguish men don’t exist these days…do they?
When he finally turned to the door and saw me, his face lit up with a big, honest smile. “Hey! I thought you were out. I was just about to go.”
I blinked. “You’re American,” I said stupidly.
“And you’re British. Jessica Lords. Cake maker extraordinaire.” He said it with a teasing gleam in his eye that both irritated me and made me want to smile. And that irritated me even more.
“Can I help you?” I was trying to be calm, but my mind was still downstairs, ticking the time away like a kitchen timer. I hadn’t even planned the thing yet, let alone bought the ingredients.
He glanced around the street again, frowning at the rain. Did they not have rain, where he came from? “I’m Don.” I looked at him blankly. “Donovan. Donovan Maroney? With Now News Weekly?” He grinned. “I’m here to interview you about the cake. We did talk to your agent.”
I nodded slowly, making a mental note to kill my agent. I knew exactly why he hadn’t told me about it: he’d known I’d say no.
“So, um…” Donovan looked up at the sky and then towards the doorway.
I took a deep breath and waved him in.
Chapter 2
“Wow,” said Donovan, looking around. “You actually live in a thatched cottage.”
Now we were on the same level, he was almost a head taller than me. Taller and broader, his shoulders stretching out his jacket very nicely indeed. “Watch the beams,” I said as we moved through to the living room.
“The…?—Ow!”
I directed him to an armchair and he sat down, looking completely out of place. I fit in my cottage, with my long, frizzy blonde hair I could never do anything with, and my curves and my apron. Together with my tendency to blush, I could easily pass for some rosy-cheeked farmer’s wife—they always had generous curves, long before phrases like pear-shaped came about. Donovan didn’t fit at all. He sat there rubbing his head while I explained that while I was terribly flattered to be interviewed, the real story was the happy royal couple and not some chef in the home counties, and that I’m sorry he’d had a wasted trip and that I’d be happy to call him a cab to the airport.
He grinned as I said it. It was a very annoying habit, especially because the grins were dangerously close to being…charming.
“Here’s the problem,” he told me. “I’m sort of on probation with my station, right now. I have to get this story. I won’t get in the way. There’s no camera operator or sound guy or anything. He patted his battered, brown leather suitcase. “Just me and a tiny camera I have in here. A quick interview, a couple of shots of the cake and I’m out of here.”
My insides churned. I could feel the stress bubbling up inside me, boiling over like milk left on the burner. “That’s not going to be possible,” I said.
“Five minutes. A few minutes with the cake.”
“No, I don’t—“ The panic took over my lungs, my throat.
“Three minutes. One minute with the cake.” He grinned again. Why did he have to keep smiling so much?!
“I can’t let you—“ I croaked.
“Thirty seconds—“
“There is no cake!” I shouted.
There was silence for a moment.
“There is no cake?” he asked, bemused.
“There is no cake,” I whispered.
“Why is there no cake? Was it stolen?”
“No, of course it wasn’t stolen! I haven’t made it yet!”
He blinked. “But isn’t the wedding on Saturday?”
“Yes!”
“And won’t you have to deliver it—“
“By Friday, yes!”
“But then—“
“There are too many choices!” I yelled. “Do you know how hard it is to decide on icing designs, knowing that photographers are going to be all over it, comparing it to every royal wedding cake since Queen Victoria’s? How many times I’ve gone back and forth on the number of tiers? I had a nightmare last night about raisins!”
He stared at me and I stared back at him. I couldn’t quite believe that I’d just blurted all of it out to him, but he was the first person I’d let into the house in weeks and, for some reason, he was very easy to talk to. “I had three weeks,” I told him. “But the time just sort of…slipped away.”
“You’ve spent three weeks worrying about what sort of cake to bake?” Don ran a hand through his hair. “And now you’ve only got two days left to make the cake?”
“Don’t say it like that! Don’t say only. It’s two days. Forty-eight hours. Plenty of time.” I realized I was panic-breathing. “Anyway, this is why I can’t have you here. I need to focus on the cake.” I indicated the door. “So if you’d be so kind….“
Don stood up, but didn’t move towards the door. “I’m not sure that’s what you need.”
“What I need is for everybody to just leave me alone….”
He tilted his head to one side. “Sounds like that’s what everyone’s been doing so far. Maybe you need some company. Someone to…keep you on track.”
I gulped. He’d somehow managed to make keep you on track sound sort of like…take you over my knee and teach you a darn good lesson. Or was that just me? I flushed. Of course it was just me. I was in an apron, for God’s sake, and it did nothing to disguise that there was a lot of me, both up top and on the bottom. He wasn’t interested in me. He just wanted his story.
But however annoying he was, part of me didn’t want to kick him back out into the rain. Part of me wanted those dark gray eyes and that easy smile around as long as possible.
“Fine,” I said in my best huffy voice. “A quick interview. An hour at the very most.”
And I led the way downstairs.
Chapter 3
After the beam incident, Don kept ducking his head cautiously whenever we entered a new room. But when we emerged into the basement he stood up tall and whistled. “Wow,” he said.
For a second, the stress melted away and I preened. My kitchen is my thing—where I spend my time, where I lavish my money. I don’t do sports cars or fancy clothes. I plowed everything from my first three cookbooks into this one room.
“It’s…” Don glanced back and forth between the kitchen and the cottage above. “I mean, it’s….”
“The cottage is listed,” I told him. “I’m not allowed to change anything. So I had the cellar dug out and this put in.” I looked around at the stainless steel hoods over the double sets of burners, the marble countertops and the small forest of saucepans hanging overhead. Even after years of seeing it, it still made me smile.
“What’s through here?” Don asked, opening a door.
“The pantry.”
“The pantry? People here have pantries? I thought they just invented them for Downton Abbey, as a place to ravish the maid.”
I flushed. Very little ravishing went on in my pantry.
“So, is it just you?” He glanced at the cottage above.
I nodded. “Ther
e was…someone. It didn’t work out.” Translated: the marriage didn’t work out for me. For him and Yvonne, his secretary, it worked out quite nicely for a year or so, until I found her knickers in his briefcase. It had been two years since the divorce. I gave Don an I don’t want to talk about it look and he wisely changed the subject.
“Let’s get you unstuck,” Don said. “Where would you normally start?”
I led him across the room. “This is my mood wall,” I started. Then, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“I have a mood wall. All designers have mood walls. I’m a designer of cakes.”
“I didn’t say a thing.” But he was grinning again.
I took a deep breath. “These photos are all the royal wedding cakes from the last fifty years, right up to the last one.”
“I can’t believe another royal’s getting married, so soon after the last one.”
“I can’t believe he’s marrying a hairdresser,” I said. “The queen must have had a heart attack. I’m amazed she allowed it. Unless….”
“What?”
“You know. Unless the bride’s got a bun in the oven. Anyway….” I sighed. “This was meant to be inspiration. But it just scares the hell out of me. Whatever I make is going to be picked over by the press and analyzed to death. You know how they are with a royal wedding. They go crazy.”
He folded his arms and just stood there watching me. It was a weird feeling. After weeks of talking to myself and saying very little, suddenly all the stuff that had been bottled up inside me was coming out. And the way he looked at me, his eyes flicking downward every so often…. What was so interesting about the top of my apron, anyway?
Do you think,” he said carefully, “that there’s any possibility that maybe you’re taking this just…”—he held up his fingers, a gnat’s wing apart—“that much too seriously?”
“It’s cake!” I said, aghast. “It doesn’t get any more serious than this!”
He leaned against the island in the middle of the kitchen. “I need a drink,” he said.
“It’s ten O’ clock in the morning.”
“For you. I’m still on LA time. It’s 2am for me.”