Page 4 of The Barista's Beloved

“Hi, yeah. Good to meet you.” Ben hoped his voice hadn’t cracked too badly. He didn’t often get starstruck, but then he also hadn’t met a bonafide celebrity before either.

A couple of years ago, a woman he’d been casually dating had dragged him to one of Angelica’s movies—some re-telling of a Jane Austen book. Afterward, she’d complained endlessly about how fat Angelica had looked and how she’d been totally miscast in the role. Meanwhile, Ben had spent the entire movie with his eyes glued to her cleavage. While he’d admired the way she’d looked in her costume, he’d also thought the film was mediocre at best, and Angelica had done more with the material than her co-stars had. Needless to say, he and his date had parted ways without so much as a goodnight kiss. Since then, he’d occasionally caught an episode of Angelica’s TV show, which featured large-scale renovations like the one she’d done here. He’d never expected to meet her, much less over drinks around a fire pit.

Angelica pumped his hand a few times and then stepped back, her eyes darting between him and Maeve. She turned to the willowy brunette. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Ben blinked at the three-sixty the conversation had taken. Max had ruefully warned him that Noah’s fiancée was a bit of a busy-body, and that she might try to set him up with one of her friends. He just hadn’t expected it to happen within seconds of being introduced. And he certainly hadn’t expected her to be quite so blunt about it. Most of the women Ben had interacted with the last few years were uptight ice queens who wouldn’t be caught dead discussing sex in mixed company. He thought their Botox-ed foreheads might crack if they laughed too loud—let alone guffawed the way Angelica was currently doing.

“Yes,” Angelica’s friend hummed, her lips lifting in a sly smile. “It’s perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it first.”

Ben’s eyes flicked surreptitiously to Maeve, who was burrowing down in her seat, trying to pretend she was invisible as the two other women carried on about her needing a good dicking— their words, not his. Without conscious thought, Ben’s cock swelled, and he shifted on his feet to try and hide his growing arousal. Damn. He’d just met these people; they did not need to see him getting hard at the idea of having sex with one of them.

And what was that about, anyway? He wasn’t even sure he liked Maeve.

Liar, the devil on his shoulder taunted.

Inwardly, he sighed. Okay, he was lying.

While the jury was still out on Maeve’s personality, he couldn’t deny that he really liked the way she looked. And he’d fucked plenty of women he didn’t particularly like. As far as he was concerned, having sex with a beautiful woman was no hardship. Hell, hate sex could be downright hot. Briefly, he imagined ripping Maeve’s clothes off, their lips locked together in battle as he backed her up against the wall of his temporary apartment over Max’s garage.

The fantasy was interrupted by Maeve jumping to her feet. “Oh, no you don’t!” She pointed angrily at Angelica. “Just because your meddling in Iain’s love life worked out reasonably well doesn’t mean I want you doing that to me.” Turning to the other woman, she added, “And you! Don’t make me tell my brother on you, Naomi.”

The woman—Naomi—waved her hand in front of her face. “Please, like he’s one to talk. We had sex within hours of meeting each other.”

Max choked on his beer and Noah groaned. “You have zero filter, you know that?”

Naomi threw her head back and laughed. “That’s why you all love me.”

Noah muttered something under his breath that Ben couldn’t make out from where he was standing. Not that he had much time to try. Maeve was calling his name.

He turned to her, careful to keep his face blank. It was obvious she was unhappy with the direction the conversation had turned, and he didn’t want to add to her discomfort. He might not hate the idea of having sex with her, but he wouldn’t push if she didn’t feel the same. That was just basic fucking courtesy. “Ignore them,” she pleaded, her eyes bright with the reflection of the fire. “They’re horrible people who hate me.”

Angelica dragged a chair next to Noah and settled into it. “Pshh. We love you and want you to be happy.”

“And you think sex with a virtual stranger is going to make me happy?” Maeve stood facing Angelica, her hands on her hips and her feet planted shoulder-width apart.

In that moment, Ben thought she looked like an avenging fairy, her long hair flowing down her back in a cascade of fiery curls. He could practically see the steam coming out of her ears.

Fuck, he thought, this is getting out of control.

It was one thing to joke about sex among friends, but it was an entirely other thing to make one of them the butt of said jokes. The fact that they seemed not to notice that Maeve was near tears had him jumping to her defense. “Okay, that’s enough. There’ll be no sex between strangers tonight.”

“Thank you!” Maeve exclaimed, moving to his side as if to present a united front. “I don’t know why you guys can’t accept that I don’t need a man in my life to be happy.”

Jess looked at Maeve with something that looked a lot like sympathy. “We know you don’t need a man to be happy, Maeve. But you told me yourself you miss being part of a couple. Don’t be mad at Naomi and Angelica. They just—”

Next to him, Maeve took a deep breath and straightened her spine, rising to her full height—all five foot two inches of it. “You want me to have sex with the hot barista? Fine.” She turned to him. “Come on, Ben.”

Ben tried to keep the shock from registering on his face. This was not where he’d seen this going. He looked at Max, whose bottle of beer was frozen midway to his mouth, his eyebrows raised in surprise. Ben’s gaze skated across the group to see that he and Max weren’t the only ones who hadn’t expected Maeve’s outburst. Noah’s palm was slapped over his eyes, and he was shaking his head. Jess and Sean wore identical looks: their eyes were bugging out, and their jaws were somewhere down around the floor. Not surprisingly, Angelica and Naomi were smiling, although he wasn’t sure they believed Maeve meant what she was saying. He wasn’t sure he believed it either.

Maeve took hold of his hand. “You coming?”

He looked down at the beautiful woman asking him to go home with her, and the earlier image of him kissing her like their lives depended on it flashed through his mind again. He shrugged.“Yeah, let’s go.”

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