I figured the best way to introduce you to Jo and Nate is to let you start their love story, so I'm hosting some mega reveals! This week, you'll get the first chapter which is in Jo's POV and next week I'll be sharing the second chapter which is told by Nate!
I know you are going to fall head over heels for these two and I can't wait for August 27th to just get here already! Until then, these teasers will have to do :)
FYI - The final manuscript is currently being proofread, so there may be some grammatical errors! Sorry in advance!
The kitchen resembled a war zone. Flour hung in the
air like a slow-motion explosion. Dirty bowls littered the counter. Crumbles of
dough spotted the floor. Whisks and spatulas floated in the water-clogged sink.
But Jo hardly noticed. She was transfixed by the little mounds rising higher
and higher in the oven.
Her newest creation.
The pookie.
Jo pursed her lips, thinking.
Something about that wasn’t quite right.
Or maybe the cookie-pie?
What about the cook…ie…
No, wait.
She shook her head. That doesn’t work.
The coopie?
Jo chewed her bottom lip as
she watched the pie crust start to brown. The sugar-butter glaze she’d decided
to add at the last minute had been the perfect touch. Now she just needed a
name. It was all in the name. Jo still held that she invented the cronut long
before it became the newest fad. But she’d called it the doussant. Because,
well, it was a doughnut and a croissant… a doughnut-croissant… a doussant.
Long-festering resentment
brought a sneer to her face. The freaking
doussant!
If only she’d flipped the
words around…
If only she’d called it a
croissant-doughnut…
If only—
Jo sighed.
Cronut. So simple. So annoyingly catchy.
The oven dinged.
Jo leapt from the marble
counter of the center island, sending another wave of flour into the air as she
landed on her feet and rushed across the tile floor to open the stainless-steel
door. A wave of tangy-sweet goodness hit her nose, making her eyes flutter
closed with pleasure.
The coopie.
Simple.
Catchy.
Perfect.
Her lobster oven mitts were
still on her hands, so she reached into the heat and grabbed a baking sheet in
each claw, then nudged the oven closed with her hip. And though she knew she should
wait, her impatience won out—as it usually did.
Hot, hot, hot!
Jo juggled the coopie in her
palms, shifting it from one to the other so it could cool for a moment before
she took a satisfying bite. Sinking her teeth through the flaky pie dough, she
sighed as the ooey-gooey chocolate chip cookie stuffed inside hit her taste
buds like a blissful, sugary explosion.
Oh. My. God.
Her mind was already spinning
with the million directions she could take this. Pie crust stuffed with caramel
apple bars. Pie crust stuffed with rainbow sprinkle sugar cookies. Pie crust
stuffed with molten chocolate brownies.
Jo dashed to a stool and
hopped onto the seat as she slid her laptop across the counter. She flipped the
screen open and immediately began typing.
@TheBakingBandit: Guys, guys! Are you awake? Are
you there? I have it. I have the idea for my future bakery. This is it. For
real this time!
There was no response.
Jo glared at the screen as
she took another bite, then perked up when she saw a thought bubble appear on
the group chat.
@TheGourmetGoddess: That’s what you said the last
time…
@TheBakingBandit: I know, I know, but I mean it
this time!
@TheGourmetGoddess: Sure you do…
@Sprinkle-Ella: I’m here! I’m here! What’s the new
idea?
@TheBakingBandit: Wait for it…
@TheBakingBandit: …
@TheBakingBandit: drumroll please…
@TheGourmetGoddess: Spit it out!
@Sprinkle-Ella: *slapping my hands against my
cutting board*
@TheBakingBandit: The coopie!
A huge grin spread across
Jo’s face as she typed the words, giving her creation a life outside of her own
head and this isolated kitchen sitting smack-dab in the middle of nowhere.
Well, not nowhere. The kitchen, and by definition the house, sat on a ten-acre
private island off the coast of the Bahamas—her father’s personal paradise.
They’d lived there for over a decade, ever since her mother passed away the
summer just before Jo entered high school. Her childhood hadn’t exactly been
normal. But her father was Robert Carter, one of the world’s most renowned art
thieves, and Jo, for lack of a better word, was sort of his protΓ©gΓ©. So normal
had never been in the cards anyway.
She frowned at her computer.
Waiting.
Waiting.
@TheBakingBandit: GUYS!
@Sprinkle-Ella: Um…I love it!
@TheGourmetGoddess: What the hell is a coopie?
@TheBakingBandit: I thought you’d never ask :) The
coopie is a miniature pie crust stuffed with a delicious cookie! Currently
munching on chocolate chip coopie goodness, but my mind is spinning!
@TheGourmetGoddess: I never thought I’d actually
say this, but that is a GREAT idea!
@Sprinkle-Ella: OMG! Love! Send us your recipe so
we can test it out!
@TheBakingBandit: Sending now…
Jo reached for the papers
scattered across the countertop and gathered them into a pile, scrambling to
put the recipe into a more coherent format. A smile widened her lips, tugging
at her cheeks and spreading them until it was almost painful. But she loved
moments like this—when her creative juices were flowing, yes, but also her time
with these girls. Cyber friends, sure, but they were the best girlfriends she’d
ever had.
The three of them had met
almost two years ago in an online forum for fans of The American Baking Championship. They’d bonded over their
obsession with the runner-up (Jo still contested he’d been absolutely robbed!
The little old lady who’d won had been the fan favorite by a landslide, but Jo
knew an act when she saw one. Granny had evil-genius in her eyes, no doubt
about it.). And well, the fact that they were the only three women under forty
in the forum. After the show ended without being renewed, she’d invited them to
their own little group chat, and the three of them had been swapping recipes
and gossip ever since. @Sprinkle-Ella’s real name was Addison Abbot, and she
worked at a cake shop in South Carolina, specializing in wedding cakes and
fairy-tale dreams, obviously. And @TheGourmetGoddess was really McKenzie
Harper, a trust-fund baby who’d forsaken the family expectations to become a
pastry chef, and a fabulous one at that. She worked as a sous chef at a
Michelin-starred restaurant in New York City.
And Jo?
Well, they knew her as Jo
Carter, Florida resident working in the family business, dreaming of something
more. Mostly true, though the best lies always were. Her full name was Jolene
Carter. The Bahamas were sort of close to Florida… Close enough, anyway. And
they didn’t need to know that the family business was crime, just that one day
she hoped to be free of it, doing what she’d always wanted—owning her own
bakery instead.
The Coopie Factory.
Eh, needs a better name than that…
What to call it…?
What to—
Just Desserts!
The corner of her lip perked.
Now that has a nice ring to it.
Jo finished typing up the
recipe and pressed Send, then drummed her fingers against the counter as she
waited for a response. Her eyes wandered to the edge of the screen, and she
practically fell off her stool when she noticed the time.
It’s almost two!
Shoot!
Her father and Thad, the son
of his late partner and one of her best friends, would be back in an hour and
she hadn’t done any of the recon she’d promised. The coopie had taken over her
entire weekend.
Jo jumped from her seat and
raced toward the French doors on the other side of the kitchen. Her gaze flew
across the pool deck, down the boardwalk, and along the entire length of the
dock, then froze on the empty slip all the way at the end. She breathed a sigh
of relief. They weren’t here yet. She had time.
Jo glanced over her shoulder
to the stack of coopies fresh out of the oven, ripe for the taste testing. Then
she reluctantly tore her attention away, shifting it to the second laptop
sitting on the kitchen table, the one she used strictly for business. Her
father was an artist, and forgery was his greatest skill. But Jo hadn’t
inherited any of his craft. No, her specialty was something very
different—hacking. She hadn’t even realized it was a skill, or, well, a crime,
until she’d been caught breaking into the middle school mainframe to change her
schedule around, skipping French and Biology while adding extra sessions of
Home Ec and Computer Science. She’d never seen her father so proud…or her
mother so pissed.
Now, at twenty-five, she’d
graduated to more sophisticated techniques. And ever since that first
punishment—a week-long suspension that, truth be told, felt more like a vacation—she’d
never been caught red handed again. Pink, maybe. But she didn’t mind living on
the edge.
In fact, she thrived on the
edge.
Which was why her focus
shifted back to the oven, still hot, and the many recipes flitting across her
mind. An hour. An hour. Was there time? Did it matter? She just wanted to try
one more recipe before her father and Thad got home, and then she’d focus. Then
she’d get to work. Just one more…
Jo turned her attention back
to the window, to the empty dock. Only, this time, something in the water
caught her eye.
A boat.
Not her father’s.
A boat she didn’t recognize.
And it could only mean one thing. Well, two. A lost fisherman—a really, really,
incredibly lost fisherman.
Or the Feds.
Again.
