Sugar Rush Read online

  Copyright 2020 by Emma Quinn

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  WARNING: This eBook contains mature themes and language intended for 18+ readers only.

  Sugar Rush

  Emma Quinn

  Content

  Sugar Rush

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Extract from the book: Wrong Number (or not)

  Sugar Rush

  Emma Quinn

  1

  Brandon

  “ I

  don’t understand you at all!” Lara screamed at me across the room, lobbing her shoe so hard that it just about missed my ear. “Why can’t you be excited for me, Brandon? This is great news for me.”

  “I was excited!” I threw my hands in the air in frustration. “I said that’s awesome. What more do you want?”

  She shot me a scathing look. “Twenty five thousand Instagram followers isn’t ‘awesome’, it’s incredible. It means the world will start taking me far more seriously as an influencer and that will help my modeling career as well. This is fucking incredible news and you’re treating it like it’s nothing.” Her hands flung on to her hips in defiance. “Just because I don’t go to an office every day to work like you, it doesn’t make me less of a person.”

  Fucking hell, this was getting frustrating. Over the last few weeks I felt like I couldn’t say anything right to Lara. After nearly two years I felt like she was getting irritated with everything that I did. It was ridiculous.

  “You know I don’t feel that way. I have always supported your career, Lara.”

  “No, you haven’t.” She pouted out her bottom lip childishly. “Just because you’re God damn thirty six years old, seven years older than me, you think that I’m not as good as you. I’m sick of it, Brandon. I’m sick of wanting more from you. You should be pleased for me, encouraging me, helping me out…”

  “I do when I can.” I narrowed my eyes curiously, trying to work out where this one had come from. I’d had a lot of careless accusations tossed my way in our explosive fights, but this was a new one. “I have a business to run as well. BRJ Marketing doesn’t run itself, but when I can help you, I do what I can…”

  I didn’t want to remind her that without my business we wouldn’t have this roof over our head, so much as I wanted to dedicate myself to making Lara’s career work, I had to focus on my own thing as well.

  “Look, Lara, I don’t want to keep fighting with you,” I told her wearily. “This feels so unnecessary to me. Can we just agree to disagree and move on with our evening? We both have things to do…”

  “Wow, that is just crazy.” Lara grabbed her yoga mat and stared angrily at me. She might as well have had steam pouring out of her ears because she was so furious. “You are a ridiculous human being. Because you’re in the wrong, you just want to ‘forget about it’? You can’t even say sorry for being a massive dick head…”

  “But I don’t think I did say anything wrong.” It wasn’t the right thing to say, I probably should have just apologized, but instead the need to defend myself over shadowed everything else. “I supported you.”

  “If you can’t understand what you have done, then this conversation is over.”

  She stalked towards the front door and she slammed it so hard behind her that the walls of the whole building might as well have shook. I hung my head low, a sadness over coming me as I realized that we had yet another night ruined. And not just ruined but utterly destroyed, and really over nothing. Because she was talking about her Instagram account and I didn’t give her the right answer that she wanted. That set her off. Now we were going to be in a pit of rowing all night long. As soon as her yoga class was over and I got back from the bar, we would be back in this fight. Lara didn’t let things go easily and these days she seemed to hold a grudge more than ever. With me anyway. There were a lot of days where I could do no right.

  With a deep sigh, I grabbed my keys and I headed outside, glad that at least Gary would cheer me up. That man had been my best friend since we met in business school and he always knew what to say…

  “Hey!” I was barely through the bar door before Gary yelled at me top note. “You finally made it. Did the ol’ ball and chain take a while to lift her thumb off your head today? You look all hen pecked…”

  “Don’t give me that, Gary,” I declared wearily. “I just need a drink. It hasn’t been the best of days.”

  “Uh oh.” He slid the glass of beer my way. “More arguing? What did you do this time?”

  I took a giant slug of the amber liquid before I replied. I needed the warmth of the beer and the fizziness that it might give me after a while to get me in the right frame of mind to discuss this. It felt like it was never ending at the moment, that it was one issue after another, and I hated the stress it balled up within me.

  “I didn’t congratulate her properly on something to do with her Instagram account, so she went off, yelling that I don’t support her and all this other stuff… I lost track of most of it.”

  “Don’t support her?” Gary was incensed on my behalf. “What about all the head shots you’ve paid for? That photographer you sourced for her? All the times that you have driven her to shoots?”

  “Yeah, that’s true. I forgot about all of that.” I drank some more. “I have done a lot for her, haven’t I? She makes me forget all of that when she yells at me. She twists me all up in knots.”

  Gary clapped me on the back sympathetically and ordered me another much needed drink when I finished the first one. He slid in my way and watched me with sad looking eyes, making me feel even shitter about my situation. How had it gotten so wrong between me and Lara? How could we get it right once more?

  “You need to get rid of her, mate,” he finally told me. “She is no good. She treats you like shit.”

  I groaned loudly. “You always say that, Gary, but I can’t just break up with her like that.”

  “Why? She doesn’t make you happy. Look at you,” he shrieked a little too loudly. “You’re miserable. She treats you like crap, she yells at you all the time, she makes you forget the good things you’ve done…”

  I shook my head hard. “You just don’t get it, Gary. You haven’t ever been in a relationship, so you can’t get why I might want to stick around. I love Lara. She’s my girlfriend. We’ve been together for years.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.” Gary was stuck in one place; he wasn’t going to shift his mind one bit. “She still doesn’t have the right to speak to you badly. She has stripped the life out of you, Brandon. You aren’t half the man that you used to be. Me and you used to h
ave the best time ever, remember how fun our party days used to be? I’m still loving that life and you can as well. You just need to give yourself a chance…”

  The idea of being a single party boy again just didn’t appeal to me at all, but I wasn’t sure that Gary would get it, so I figured the best thing for me to do was ignore his remark. To carry on with what I wanted.

  “Look, Gary, all couples fight. It doesn’t mean it needs to be the end of everything. I have a way to make things right anyway…” I smiled to myself as I thought about my plan. “It’s Lara’s thirtieth birthday soon, and I’m going to make it special because I’m going to propose. I think it’s finally time.”

  “Oh, fucking hell.” The groan that came from Gary’s chest was utterly ridiculous. He definitely went too far with his displeasure in the idea of me getting married, but I guess that was to be expected from the forever bachelor who wanted to be a player until he was in his old age… and probably even then. “Don’t do that, Brandon. Please tell me that you haven’t brought a ring or anything because this is dumb. You can’t marry her. She is so wrong for you. Hot but crazy, sexy but life ruining, Lara is the sort of woman that you have an intense one night stand with, but you don’t marry her because she will destroy you.”

  I slid my chair back and glared at my friend, not taking his comments kindly. “Look, Gary, I know that you think you might have my best interests at heart, but I don’t like you speaking that way about my girlfriend. Just because you don’t like her or the idea of us getting married, I don’t need you to be so cruel.”

  “It sounds to me like you’re digging your head in the sand.”

  “No, Gary, that isn’t it at all.” I shook my head and stuffed my hands in to my pockets while walking towards the door. “I can’t talk to you about this because you don’t understand. I have to make this work with Lara because she is the only woman that I have ever loved. She’s the only person I’ve cared about. I want her to be my wife. I just need to…” I raked my fingers through my hair in frustration. “I just need to be more careful about what I say, that’s all. I need to stop being so involved in my work that I’m distracted and not the best man I can be for her. If I want her to marry me then I need to be perfect.”

  As I span and walked towards the door, I heard Gary calling out comments about me making a whole bunch of mistakes and that I would regret what was to come, but I ignored him. His single life of partying every night might have worked for him, but it wouldn’t ever be for me. I had been there and done that, I was beyond it now. Now, I wanted to be with Lara, I wanted to marry her and make it work, just because we had our issues it didn’t make it wrong. It didn’t mean that we shouldn’t be together.

  No, it was fine, we were going to make this work. I was going to be there when Lara got out of her yoga class and finally apologize for everything that I had done. Really, our issues didn’t stem from the Instagram comment, it came from me not being present enough with her. That, I could work on, that I could change.

  2

  Jane

  “ T

  hese donuts are the bomb!” one of the teenagers in her school uniform declared loudly. “I have to get one before school every single day. Luckily, I still have a good metabolism at the moment.”

  “Are you going to sue Bluebell Bakery if you end up getting fat?” her friend laughs. “It’s her fault.”

  I turn my back on the group of girls and roll my eyes. Like it can be my fault if these girls love my baking. Honestly, it’s their choice to shop here every single morning. I try to make my treats as healthy as possible whilst also keeping them delicious. It just seems like I am doing an incredible job of it.

  “Jane Watson.” Just as the girls slide out the front door with their donuts in their hands, my old friend Mrs. Lovely, the teacher from the local elementary school, came to the counter for her usual. “What are you doing to me, young lady? I dream of your cupcakes because they’re so good. I wake up craving them in the morning…”

  I let out a laugh as I grabbed the cakes that she pointed out and I put them into a box for her. One of the purple flower shaped boxes that made my bakery stand out from the rest. Everyone knew that as soon as they saw one of those boxes, the products had been purchased from my store. It was all about the little touches.

  “Well, I’m glad that you always come to see me, Mrs. Lovely, because I enjoy talking to you.”

  She remained in the store for a while, chatting to me about her nextdoor neighbors’ flowers, her niece’s piano lessons, and the newest book that her book club was reading. That was another part of the job that I liked, and another aspect that made me stand out from the competition, the community feel, the personal touch where I got to know my regular customers well. They shared their lives with me, and I liked that.

  “So, how are things with you?” Ms. Lovely asked as she was just about to leave the store. “Any news in your life? Every time I come here; I expect to see a line of men waiting to take you out on a date.”

  I laughed once more, only this time it wasn’t quite so loudly. “Oh, I don’t have time to date anyone at the moment. The bakery keeps me very busy. Boyfriends would only get in the way of that.”

  Mrs. Lovely had been coming in ever since I opened this store three years ago, so I couldn’t really convince her that I was single only because of the business. She had seen me at my lowest ebb when I was hurt by my ex-boyfriend — ex-fiancé, actually. When he broke up with me because he fell in love with someone at his office who was apparently more important than me. I could tell by the way that she looked at me with sheer sympathy in her eyes she knew that it was really fear of being hurt holding me back from falling in love again.

  Luckily, the store filled up quickly with a line of people that went out of the door, so Mrs. Lovely couldn’t me question me further and I didn’t have to think about it anymore either. I could focus on serving the customers to the best of my ability, making the rush hour before work the best that people could have.

  But soon, the rush died down, leaving me a moment to wipe the sweat from my forehead and to rearrange the store window once more to make sure that all of the stock levels were the best that they could be…

  “Hey, girl.” I turned and grinned at my best friend, Samantha, who had come to visit me on her way back from her morning gym session. “You look like you have been busy this morning.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. Hey, take a seat. Let me make you a coffee and get you a cake.”

  “Ooh, you really are the perfect wife,” she teased me as she did what I asked. “I don’t know what I would do without you. Especially since me and Ned have broken up again. For good this time. I scared him off.”

  “What did you do?” I felt compelled to ask this even though I didn’t really need to. It was always the same story with Samantha. She was a relationship girl and loved being with someone, but she never picked the right guys for her. Some were too weak; some were scared of commitment. And most men just couldn’t handle her strong personality. The guy that Samantha would finally end up with was going to have to be her match. Someone equal to her.

  “I just called him out on a few things, that’s all.” She offered me a one shouldered shrug. “Nothing serious, but he couldn’t handle it. Not that it matters. I don’t need someone as weak as him.”

  “Of course not.” Since there was no one in the store and there probably wouldn’t be for a while, I took a seat with her and had a drink of my own. “So, what’s the plan from here on out? I know you; you don’t take things lying down. Always moving on the bigger and better things. You have an action plan in mind?”

  “I’m going out.” She nodded determinedly. “We both are, Maybe this weekend. We need men in our lives. You more than me since it has been absolutely forever. It’s time for you to find someone…”

  “Oh, don’t you start as well,” I chuckled. “I’m busy at the moment. Focused on the bakery. I don’t want to think about dating because I’m not even clos
e to being in the right frame of mind. Not right now.”

  “You have been using that excuse for three years, Jane.” Samantha’s tone was blunt, but that was just her personality. She wanted to encourage me to live life in the care free way that she did, always focusing on the future, never dwelling on the past. She only had my best interests at heart always… but that didn’t mean I found it easy to go along with what she wanted for me. “It’s time for you to get yourself out there again. You’re so beautiful, Jane. I know that you don’t see that, but you are. You’re stunning and you deserve happiness.”

  I couldn’t help feeling worthless and not good enough for love. Especially since my ex went on to actually marry the woman who he cheated on me with. They didn’t have a long ass engagement that didn’t go anywhere. Now they even had a family as well, it was sickening, and inescapable thanks to the Internet.

  “I don’t need a man to make me happy though, Samantha. I have everything else that I want. In my life. a successful business that I love, a great friend in you, an apartment which is perfect and just mine… no man messing it up for me. I love it.” I extended my arms wide and grinned. “But I will go out with you. Be your wing woman.”

  The door to my bakery swung open and a stressed looking woman in a tight pant suit came bursting in with her eyebrows knotted together in stress. I could tell from her pale complexion that she spent half her life stuck in an office building in a high pressure job that didn’t make her happy. This was just a reminder why I had it good here. This company was all mine and I could do exactly what I wanted with it. Sure, there were times when it was stressful, but I didn’t have anyone else putting the pressure on me. It was all mine.

  “Hello there,” I said kindly as I slid out from my seat. “How can I help you today?”