Authors: Anne Rainey
Forbidden Fruit
An eRedSage Publishing Publication
This book is a work of complete fiction. Any names, places, incidents, characters are products of the authors imagination and creativity or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is fully coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form whatsoever in any country whatsoever is forbidden.
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Red Sage Publishing, Inc. • P.O. Box 4844 • Seminole, FL 33775
Forbidden Fruit
An eRed Sage Publication • All Rights Reserved • Copyright © 2008
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Published by arrangement with the authors and copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
Forbidden Fruit © 2008 By Anne Rainey
Cover © 2008 by Rae Monet, Inc.
Printed in the U.S.A.
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Forbidden Fruit
* * *
To My Reader:
It’s a pleasure for me to create less than perfect heroines that are easy to relate to and I especially had fun with Ava Sweet. She’s one tough lady, but with a soft center. She deserved a hunky bad boy to show her just how beautiful she is. I dearly hope you enjoy Ava’s transformation from shy tomboy to sexy siren!
Forbidden Fruit: Chapter 1
“Oh god, what am I even doing here? I don’t belong here!”
Jen took Ava by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Remember Monday? Standing on Luke’s front porch and hearing every awful word that fell out of his big dumb mouth?”
Ava remembered. It hurt, but she remembered.
She’d gone to Luke’s on Monday because he’d found a cat on his front porch and hadn’t a clue as to what to do with it. Inches from the screen door, she stopped dead at the words that drifted out to her.
***
“I wouldn’t say I have the hots for her, but there’s no denying that she’s one sexy piece of ass, Luke.”
“Dr. Doolittle? Sexy?”
He sounded so incredulous and Ava felt her heart sink.
“Hell, yes, sexy!” At that moment, she could have planted one on Pete’s lips for that manly comment. “I’d give my left nut to see that curvy ass of hers in the buff. It’s all heart-shaped and… just so damned squeezable.”
Luke, the idiot, dug himself in deeper. “Are we talking about the same woman here?”
Pete just plowed on, oblivious that Luke wasn’t buying a word he was saying. “And those magnificent tits. Just right, ya know? All soft and bouncy and round. I swear to Christ I don’t think she owns a single bra.”
“How can you tell what her ass or her tits look like when every piece of clothing she owns is big and baggy and ugly as sin?”
Her shoulders slumped. That confirmed her worst fears. Luke would never see her as a woman. Only ever as the plain tomboy, animal lover friend of his sister, Jen.
Great.
“You don’t need to have x-ray vision, Luke. Ava Sweet isn’t all fluff and makeup, true, but, she’s real and everything a man could want in a woman. She has natural beauty. The kind most women envy. And I’d bet money that beneath those baggy clothes is one helluva woman just waiting for a man to sink his teeth in.”
“But, again, I ask you, how the hell can you even tell? She’s all bulky cotton material! And that hair. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it out of that nasty ass ponytail she wears day in and day out.”
Can you blame her?”
“What do mean?”
“She probably dresses like that to deter her boss and every other man she comes across.”
“What does her boss have to do with it?”
Yeah, that’s what she’d like to know.
“I’ve been to the clinic where she works and I’ve seen the good doc giving her the once over. If she came to work looking all…
girly, he’d be on her quicker than a cat to cream.”
“You’ve been to her clinic?”
“Yep.”
“What the hell for? You don’t even own a pet.”
“Jesus, Luke, for such a ladies man you can be real dense sometimes.”
Enough was enough, Ava decided. Time to retrieve the cat and give Luke a piece of her mind in the process.
Without waiting to hear anymore of Luke’s cutting remarks, Ava swung the screen wide and strode right in. Both men turned to her with twin-horrified expressions on their handsome faces. Ava didn’t waver. She asked where the cat was and Luke showed her to the backyard. The poor cat was on the brink of starvation. Judging by the bowl of food on the porch, Luke had apparently been trying to fatten the poor thing up. But one look and Ava knew the neglect-ed animal would need to be looked over by her boss, Dr. Ryan.
She moved slowly towards the scared orange tabby and picked her up, nearly crying when she felt the animal’s ribs. She made soft, reassuring sounds to her and went back into the house. But she didn’t head for the front door. Instead, she sat the cat gently on the floor, walked right up to Pete, and kissed him.
On the mouth.
Tongue and all.
Pete reached out and placed his palms on her head, holding her still while he plunged and ate at her mouth. She pulled back finally, breathless and shocked that she’d done something so brazen.
Shocked that Pete had let her.
“Friday night, seven o’clock. You and me.” Ava demanded, not bothering to play the shy schoolgirl. She just wasn’t cut out for it.
For a minute, Pete just stared at her, as if trying to figure her angle and then he whispered, “Anything you want, darlin’.”
She nodded briskly and then went to Luke. His gaze was a mixture of anger and surprise. Ava was pleased. She smiled at him and his eyes narrowed. Then she brought her knee to his groin. Hard.
Luke’s smile disappeared as he fell to the floor, cursing.
“Pete’s right, you can be real dense sometimes, Luke McGiffin.”
Then she’d picked the cat back up and left. Her body vibrating with rage and hurt and even fear. Fear that she’d never be able to get over her infatuation for a man that viewed her as nothing more than an oddity.
***
A few minutes later, Ava was looking in the mirror of the tiny dressing room. The woman staring back at her was a stranger. She didn’t even recognize herself. Amazing the difference a few scraps of material could make. And that’s all they were too, a few very small scraps of material.
She shored up her nerve and swung open the curtain. “Well, what do you think?”
Jen stared, her jaw dropping, eyes bugging out. She stared for so long it made Ava snap out, “If you can’t even form a coherent sentence then it must be even more horrid than I thought!” She threw her hands up and started back into the dressing room.
Finally, Jen found her voice.
“My lord in heaven, Ava. You look absolutely gorgeous. I really had no idea.”
That had her stopping and turning. “Gee, thanks, Jen,” Ava said ruefully and planted her hands on her hips.
Jen shook her head and beamed a smile at her. “No, what I mean is, I knew you had a body under all that material, but lordy that skirt looks fabulous on you. Luke is going to swallow his tongue when he sees you, I can promise you that. I know my brother, Ava. He’ll stop, he’ll stare, and then he’ll pounce.” Then Jen’s brows drew together in concern. “As a matter of fact. Pete may just do the same thing.”
Ava shook her head in denial of that statement, before looking down at the white skirt. She tugged at the hem, willing it to grow another inch. She’d never felt comfortable with her thighs showing.
Not even in the dead of summer. It made her feel vulnerable and gangly. Somehow, it just seemed too intimate to have that much flesh on display. She was a throwback to the old spinster days, that’s what she was. And she’d never get Luke’s attention if she continued acting the maiden.
“We made a deal, Jen,” Ava reminded her best bud. “I’m going to get Pete to the nightclub, but you are going to be the one to knock his socks off.”
Ava knew that Jen had been enthralled by Pete for a long time.
Maybe not as long as she’d been taken with Luke, but long enough.
Jen was just too shy to make the first move. Apparently, Pete was too. Ava didn’t tell Jen that Pete had a thing for her. She, however, had seen the signs. Anytime Jen and Pete were in the same room together, Pete watched her. Stalked her with his eyes. Jen couldn’t stub a toe without Pete taking notice. But she knew Jen too well.
If she had any inkling Pete wanted her she would back out. No, Friday night, Ava would get the pair in the same room together and let instincts and pheromones take it from there.
“Well, I know for sure my brother is going to be begging your forgiveness the instant he sets his sights on you in that outfit, Ava.”
She turned again and looked into the three-way mirror, seeing her reflection from every possible angle. The white skirt was clingy and short and undoubtedly sexy. Good thing she was in decent shape. All the time she spent going up to the high school, jogging the track before heading to work was now paying off.
The pale pink silk blouse with its scooped neckline and billowy sleeves was just enough enhancement too. Not overblown, but quiet and delicate and feminine. And that was the plan, wasn’t it? To look, girly? She’d never attempted that sort of thing. From the time she was big enough to walk, she’d been a tomboy. She had played sports in school, had hung with the guys, and was more comfortable changing her own oil as opposed to watching demurely from the sidelines as some macho mechanic did it for her. And yet, she’d somehow made fast friends with the head of the cheerleading squad, Jen McGiffin.
Ava was a senior in high school when the McGiffin’s had moved to town. Jen with her sweet smile and pretty, blond hair had nothing in common with her brother. Where Jen was the good girl who’d gotten straight A’s, Luke was the bad boy who’d been held back a grade, putting him in the same classes as his sister, ten months his junior.
The rebel with the dark hair and leather jacket and fast car.
She’d melted the first time she’d seen him. Luke had walked into their school, strode straight up to the most popular girl at Green Valley High, and kissed her. Then he’d asked her out. The popular, Heather, along with every other girl in school, had panted after him like little lost puppies. Ava had stomped off, making fun of the simpering little fools. But deep down, in the most secret part of her soul, she’d been the same as those girls. She’d just been too afraid to admit it. And where had that gotten her? At a fancy boutique, trying on outfit after outfit in the hopes of gaining the attention of the biggest playboy and rebel that Green Valley, Ohio had ever seen.
Whom was she kidding?
Once again, she covered her face and moaned like a wimp. “I cannot believe I’m doing this, Jen!” she felt Jen’s comforting hand on her back, patting and soothing. “I’m not cut out to be a vixen!”
Jen laughed. “Of course you are, hon. Every woman on the face of the earth was born with an inner vixen. She just needs to tap into her. Which is why we’re here. It’s also why you’re going to go get your hair done, a facial, manicure, and pedicure.”
When she put it that way, she almost wanted to hide under a rock. Ava had never painted her fingernails. And she’d certainly never had someone kneeling at her feet to apply color to her toes. It would probably tickle. She sighed and knew a new determination she’d never felt before. Tickling or not, she’d get her stupid hair done, her nails would have color and she’d walk into that nightclub ready for battle, armor and all!