Quintessentially an abcs.., p.1
Quintessentially: An ABCs of Love Novel, page 1
An ABC of Love Novel
A second-chance, secret-baby, contemporary ‘lighter’ ONE stand-alone romance
ALEATHA ROMIG
New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of Sin series, Devil’s duet, Sparrow Webs, Infidelity series, Consequences series, and Lighter Ones
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE INFORMATION
QUINTESSENTIALLY the ONE
Copyright @ 2022 Romig Works, LLC
2022 Edition
ISBN: 978-1-956414-17-2
Editing: Lisa Aurello
Proofreading: Stacy Zitano Inman
Cover Art: Indie Sage
Formatting: Romig Works LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without the written permission from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
2022 Edition License
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the appropriate retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's hard work.
Quintessentially the ONE
A secret-baby, second-chance contemporary stand-alone romance
Quintessential~ “Representing the most perfect example of quality or class”
A trip back to the small Indiana town of Riverbend to finalize my grandmother’s last will and testament throws my world off its axis. I wasn’t prepared to learn the stipulations of her will or that she’d left her beloved mercantile Quintessential Treasures to my college summertime love, Kandace Sheers.
Imagine my greater surprise when I learn about the secret that’s been roaming Riverbend for the last five years. Here are a couple of hints:
She’s five years old.
She has her mother’s silky auburn hair and my golden eyes.
The answer should be simple—I take responsibility for the girl and go back to Chicago where my life awaits.
It turns out, Grandma had other plans because life’s never that simple.
Have you been Aleatha’d?
Enjoy this sweet, funny, and sexy secret-baby, second-chance contemporary stand-alone romance that brings back the feelings of what it’s like to be young and in love. A stand-alone in the ABCs of Love and one of Aleatha Romig’s ‘Lighter Ones,’ QUINTESSENTIALLY - the ONE.
An ABC of Love novel
A second-chance, secret-baby contemporary ‘lighter’ ONE stand-alone romance
ALEATHA ROMIG
Chapter One
Dax
Eight years ago
Peeking over her shoulder Kandace giggles as she climbs the ladder up to the hayloft. “Hurry up.”
Her long auburn hair sways down her back, stopping before her perfectly round ass covered by her blue-jean shorts. I can’t help but stare at her tanned long legs as I climb a few rungs behind her, balancing an old cooler under one arm.
There’s something about Kandace, there always has been. Even though I don’t live in Riverbend year-round, I feel like we’ve known one another for our entire lives.
Summers in Riverbend are supposed to show me life away from Chicago. Like every teenager, I complained about the small town, but the truth is that I like my summers with my grandparents. I enjoy the hard work that comes from helping my granddad’s friend Bruce Gordon on his farm. Each year, the town welcomes me back as if I never left.
Kandace peers over the ledge as pieces of straw fall to the floor below. “What’s the matter, Dax, can’t keep up?”
I take the remaining rungs two at a time until I’m standing on the loft. Dropping the cooler, I reach for Kandace’s waist and spin us around. With the moonlight streaming through the opening in the ceiling, I stare into her eyes. The color is a mesmerizing blue, light like the summer sky early in the morning. Her laugh energizes me as we both fall to the soft bales of hay, and I pull her on top of me.
“Do you want a beer?”
Lifting her face over mine, Kandace shakes her head. “I’m not one of the girls at IU. You don’t need to get me drunk.”
I tuck a rogue strand of her silky hair behind her ear. “Have you thought about coming to IU?”
“My degree may come from a community college, but it’s still a degree.”
“Don’t you want to see more of the world than Riverbend?”
Kandace rolls off me and stares up toward the rafters high above us. “I know you think this is some hick town, but look up there.”
I follow her eyes to the large square opening in the roof. The purpose is an access to drop hay bales onto the loft. Through the opening, the velvet black sky twinkles with stars. “What do you see?”
Kandace lifts her arms and clasps her hands behind her head. “I see the big world. I also see that we’re such a small part.”
“I’m not going to be a small part.”
“Everyone is.” She rolls toward me, wrapping her arm over my chest, and lifting her face as she stares at me. “It’s not bad. It’s like when I flew to visit Florida. From way up there in the sky, houses and cars are nothing but specks. People are even smaller. I like living where I’m more than a number, where I have friends and family.”
I frame her face and stare at her features, her incandescent gaze, perky nose, high cheekbones, and full lips. She’s perfect without makeup or trying. “You’re not a speck, Kandace. You’re so much more than that. You could transfer to IU. Your grades are better than mine.”
“You could transfer to the community college, and we could…” She doesn’t finish the sentence. Her words fade away to the cobwebs and summer heat.
Finally, I speak, “You’re not, you know?”
“I’m not what?”
“Like the girls at IU. You’d blow them away with your looks, laugh, and smarts. You’re more than they are.” Still holding her cheeks, I pull Kandace toward me until our lips meet.
My body roars to life as she kisses me back, our hunger not to be outdone by the other. My tongue is the first to breach her lips. She tastes sweet like peppermint as her tongue twists with mine. Beneath her thin t-shirt, her nipples bead against my chest as she moans.
Reaching for the hem of her shirt, I pull it over her head as her long hair cascades over her shoulders. “Fuck.”
Kandace’s smile grows.
“You’re not wearing a bra,” I say, staring at her round breasts before me.
“It’s not the only thing I forgot.”
“You’re killing me, Kandace.” In one swoop, I have my shirt pulled over my head.
Her fingers splay over my chest. When her eyes meet mine, she grins. “I remember when you were skinny and scrawny.”
Between working summers on Mr. Gordon’s farm and football back in Chicago, I’m no longer the skinny boy who used to visit. Hauling bales of hay has a way of bulking a person up. It’s a better workout than summer football training. It took one year of farm work for my high school coach to approve my missing summer practice.
Now that I’m about to be a sophomore at Indiana University, I no longer play football. That doesn’t mean I don’t work out during the school year. I do.
I’m not the only one who has changed over the years.
I lean down and suck one of Kandace’s nipples and then the other. Her back arches and her tanned flesh covers in goose bumps. “And I remember when you didn’t have this rack.” Or the soft curves.
“It’s hardly a rack.” Her fingers weave through my hair as she pulls me toward her, and I continue my teasing of her breasts.
“They’re perfect.”
Sitting back, my gaze meets hers. She doesn’t say a word as I unsnap the front button on her shorts and tug on the zipper. With each movement, my heart thumps harder, the circulation echoing in my ears drowning out the night sounds of crickets and frogs. Even in the dark shadows I can tell that she isn’t wearing panties under her shorts.
“I want to taste you.”
She tugs on her lower lip. “I’ve never.”
“Tell me to stop and I will.”
Under the shimmer of the sky, she nods. “I trust you.”
Her pussy glistens in the moonlight. I’d like to say that I’m well experienced in the sex department, but if I did, I’d be lying. At nineteen, this is my first time to go down on a girl. I heard stories. As Kandace spreads her legs for me, offering me this gift, I grow painfully hard beneath my jeans.
I’m immediately addicted to her scent, sweet like her name. My first lick is as if I’m about to taste a new flavor of lollipop or popsicle.
Fuck.
If I could buy this, the stores would constantly be sold out.
Not only does Kandace taste sweet, with just one lick, her legs tense and her hips buck. The second and third are even better.
It’s as I swirl her clit that Kandace yells out. “Stop.”
My entire body freezes, wondering what I did wrong. I’d tol
“No. I’m going to…come.”
A smile spreads over my face. “That’s the point.”
She leans up on her elbows. “I know, but…are you sure?”
“Am I sure that I want to be the first one to make you come with my mouth? Yes.”
“Okay,” she says in a whisper as she lays back her head.
Adding my fingers to the mix, I lick and nip until her pussy pulsates, and I drink her essence.
Crawling over her, I kiss her lips to show her how good she tastes.
When her blue stare meets mine her cheeks are flush as she smiles. “That was…amazing.”
I lie back on the hay and stare up at the ceiling, afraid that if I move I might too come. Soon, Kandace is over me, her nude body draped over my leg and torso.
“Do you think Mr. Gordon knows that people use his barn…for this?”
“I doubt he knows.”
“I’ve heard rumors that this is the place many people have lost their virginity.”
My eyes open wide. “Kandace.”
“Where did you lose yours?” she asks.
“I haven’t.”
Her forehead falls to my shoulder. “Me either.”
Chapter Two
Kandace
Six years ago
“Damn,” Chloe, my best friend, whispers, “Dax sure knows how to fill out a suit.”
I look over, seeing Dax Richards sitting with his parents and grandma in the front pew. My best friend is right about the way he fills out his suit. And while I know from experience how sexy he is beneath the suit, I can’t help but concentrate on the sadness in his expression. It makes me want to go to him, to hold him, and give him a reason to smile.
It’s been two years since I gave Dax my virginity. According to him, he’d given me the same gift. And yet we are what people might call friends-with-benefits. Geographically, we are only together during his visits to Riverbend and my few visits to IU. Although he’d tried to convince me to attend the large university, it only took me a couple of visits to realize that life on a big campus with a population five times that of our town isn’t for me.
Occasionally, he and I text and call one another, but neither of us has made a commitment. That doesn’t mean I want to be with anyone else. It means I know that while my body and heart became his even before our first time, my mind has come to grips that there will never be a future for us.
We both have one more year of undergraduate. While my plans include Riverbend, Daxton Richards has already been accepted to Indiana Law for a double master’s degree in law and business. His plans are to follow in his parents’ success. His mother is partner at a big law firm in Chicago, and his dad is a CFO of some gaming company that is doing very well. The days and nights of Dax in Riverbend are about to be history. The reason he is here now is further proof.
The minister completes the eulogy for John Richards, Dax’s grandfather, and asks us to bow our heads in prayer. With my chin down, my eyes stay fixed on Dax. Maybe it is because he thought no one would see or was watching, but during the prayer he wipes a tear from his cheek. His father sits on one side of Ruth, Dax’s grandmother, and Dax is sitting on the other.
While I don’t know his parents well, everyone in town loves his grandparents. They own a shop on Main Street called Quintessential Treasures. While finishing my classes, I’m working part time with his grandparents—now only Ruth.
After the service at the cemetery, we all go back to the church for a dinner in the basement. The large dining hall is filled with long tables and chairs. All of the ladies in town contributed to the potluck. By the time my parents, Chloe, and I get down to the hall, it appears there is enough food to feed all of Riverbend.
“Kandace,” Ruth calls, lifting her hand when she sees me.
My throat clogs and tears prick my eyes as I go to her. Even though she has to be in her seventies, Ruth is spry and full of energy. “I’m so sorry, Ruth,” I say.
She lifts her chin. “I had over fifty years with the love of my life. One day, we’ll be together through eternity. I know I’ll miss him every day, but I also know my Jack. He doesn’t want me sad. For him, I’ll smile until we meet again.”
I don’t understand how Jack is a nickname for John, but it is.
I wrap my arms around Ruth’s slender shoulders. “If you need anything.”
The church’s dining hall is filling up as more and more people arrive. As I hug Ruth, Dax steps closer.
Ruth reaches for my hand and Dax’s. She turns to her grandson, looking up at him with love and pride. “Did you know that Kandace is working for me?”
His sad golden eyes meet mine. “Thanks for helping Grandma.”
“I like the store.”
Ruth puts our hands together. “You two catch up, and remember, Jack doesn’t want tears. He wants you to remember him with a smile.”
Dax takes my hand and walks with me to the wall away from the food lines that are forming on both sides of a long buffet. When he looks down at me, I see the sadness Ruth said her husband wouldn’t want.
“Do you want some food?” I ask, looking at the gathering people.
He shakes his head. “I’d like to get out of here.”
“Will your parents mind?”
“How about a drink?”
There are only a few drinking establishments in Riverbend—Bob’s and Decoy Ducks. “Unless you want to get out of town, you’re going to get the same condolences there as here.”
“How about a walk?” he says.
Without a word, we climb the back steps of the church like salmon swimming upstream. Dax nods as each person offers condolences. Once at the top of the concrete stairs, we open the door to the parking lot. The late summer sky is filled with shades of gray. The trees sway in the strong breeze as if even nature is mourning John’s passing. Dax lifts his chin to the sky and closes his eyes.
I can’t take it any longer. I reach for his arm. “I want to help.”
He takes my hand and begins to walk. His grip is strong and tight, filled with determination. I’m not certain where we’re going as my heeled shoes click on the concrete in time with Dax’s steps, and the dress I wore to the funeral blows in the breeze. For the first few minutes, we walk without talking. It’s as if our connection is Dax’s lifeline. His hold of my hand is stopping him from flying away.
We pass few people as we walk past the bank and post office and head north of town.
The sidewalk ends as we continue along the gravel edge of the street. At our sides, the corn stalks are taller than Dax, and the mature ears are large with white hair, indicating that harvest will be soon. As Dax leads me down a path we’ve taken many times, I know our destination.
The fact that I am walking in heels and a dress through a forest doesn’t register as much as the man at my side. He’s grown more handsome every year. His chiseled jaw is tight and his eyes, the golden color of winter wheat, stare straight ahead as we continue walking. Soon the trees open to a grassy bank at the edge of a pond.
When we were kids, we swam in the murky water to an island in the center. Due to its size, the pond would warm early in the swimming season. As we approach it, I recall the mucky bottom. The island is now overgrown with grass, bushes, and trees.
Letting go of my hand, Dax looks up at the clouds. “Do you want to know what I told my grandpa the last time we spoke?”
The pain in his deep voice made my chest hurt. “Dax, John knew you loved him.”
“I told him I couldn’t come here this summer.”
He hadn’t.
It is the first summer without Dax here…until now.
“You have your internship,” I say. “He understood.”
Dax shakes his head and stuffs his hands deep into his pant pockets. “I said I’d come later and now, there’s no later.”
