Page 1 of Taken By Storm

Chapter One

August was a bitch.

Because it was hot.

Too freaking hot.

Kasi Mills felt a bead of sweat roll down the back of her neck and along her spine. She sat still on her stool, marking the progress of the perspiration all the way to the waistband of her shorts, cursing the summer heat.

Every now and then, she got a brief blast of less-hot air from the two rotating fans she’d set up in the back corner of her family’s small roadside fruit stand, the “storefront” for all the produce grown on Lucky Penny Farm.

This current stand was an improvement on the original as at least now, it was a permanent structure with electricity. Her father had replaced their old stand—which had been little more than a series of three long wooden shelves covered with a bit of awning—five years earlier.

While this new stand was larger, it would be a stretch to say they’d stepped up from fruit stand to farm market. Regardless, the stand had a concrete floor and an actual door so shoppers could walk into the shed, which boasted three full walls linedwith shelves containing large baskets of green beans, apples, peaches, berries, tomatoes, corn, and more.

The front was a bisected wall, with a hinged top half that served as an awning when opened. There was a tiny checkout station in the center of the space, which was where she was perched. Daddy had built the stand so that she and Mama weren’t constantly reloading their truck at the end of each day with all the buckets of unsold fruits and vegetables. Nowadays, she simply lowered the large piece of plywood at the front that revealed all their wares, padlocked it, and called it a day.

Kasi did a visual scan of the table along the front wall where she kept the home-baked goods, such as pies, bread, cakes, and cookies that made their stand so popular. Kasi’s mother had been the world’s greatest baker, and she’d passed those skills—and recipes—on to her. While they did a fair amount of business with the produce, the pies were the true star of the Lucky Penny Fruit Stand show.

Which was why, with only a half an hour until close, Kasi was completely out of the loaves of home-baked bread, Bundt cakes, and apple pies—today’s featured flavor.

Well. Not completely out.

There was one tucked away, saved—as always—for Levi Storm, though he’d never made that request of her. In truth, Levi didn’t know that she started every single one of her days trying to determine which pie was the best so that she could tuck it on a shelf behind her, hidden away until just a few minutes before his arrival.

It was a completely silly thing to do, but her schoolgirl crush on Levi had started…well, when she’d been a schoolgirl.

Ninth grade to be exact.

Levi’s cousin, Remi, had been her best friend since birth, so Kasi was no stranger to Stormy Weather Farm, a large propertynestled on the side of a mountain and home to the hottest men in Gracemont.

No, strike that. The hottest men in Virginia.

The Storm men had been setting hearts aflutter in their tiny neck of the woods for decades. Seven brothers, all single, all so pussy-meltingly hot, they sometimes didn’t seem mortal.

Levi was the oldest brother, and even though he was thirty-seven, the fair women of Gracemont hadn’t yet given up hope on the stubborn bachelor finding love with one of them and settling down. Not that it made a damn difference in Kasi’s life if hedidhave a change of heart regarding his single status.

Because…again…Kasi was and always had been Levi’sbabycousin Remi’s best friend. So when Kasi’s crush began in ninth grade, she’d been fourteen, Levi twenty-seven. He’d spent a great deal of that summer working in the family’s vineyards without a shirt on, and while Kasi had never noticed or given a shit about such things prior to that year, puberty kicked in hard because, damn…

Shesawhim that year, with his long brown hair, full beard, mahogany-colored eyes, chiseled jaw, and even more chiseled abs. He was tall and broad in a sexy lumberjack way, and he struck her as the kind of guy who could pick a woman up, toss her over his shoulder, and carry her off to the bedroom without even breathing heavy.

Not that she knew that for sure. Or from personal experience.

Because ten years later and well into womanhood now, Levi noticed one—and only one—thing about her, apart from her status as Remi’s bestie.

Her pies.

Every single day for the last few years, at the end of his workday and just a few minutes before she closed, Levi drove off the mountain to buy a pie. It was, and always had been, the highlight of Kasi’s day. She’d watch his truck make the turn ontothe country lane that ran in front of her family’s farm, which was the cue for her to grab her best—hidden—pie and place it on the table. Levi would come inside, give her a quick nod of the head—the quiet man’s hello—pick up the pie, bring it to the counter, and hand her a twenty. Every single day, she tried to give him his change, and every single day, he said, “Keep it,” in that dark-chocolate voice of his that sent her pulse racing. Then he’d give her another nod—this one a goodbye—and that was it.

The sum equivalent of her daily bright spot.

How fucking sad was that?

Kasi lifted her hair away from the back of her neck, desperate for some relief from this unbearable humidity. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine colder things.

Ice skating on the pond at Gracemont Park.

Sledding down the hellacious hills on Stormy Weather Farm with Remi.

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