Page 22 of The Cinnamon Bun Book Store

‘They’re not here to talk business, hun.’

‘Right, right. Sorry.’

‘Do you know Frank?’ Hazel asked, her hand on the other man’s arm. ‘This is my other dad.’

Frank gave Noah a shy smile. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Nice to meet you, too.’ Noah would have reached out to shake the man’s hand but Mayor Kelly was already putting a giant blue cotton-candy stick in his fist.

‘Have fun you two!’ Did the mayor just wink at him, too?

‘Come on.’ Hazel tugged him by the hand away from the stand before he could think too hard about that. ‘You don’t have to eat that,’ she said when they were out of earshot from her dad’s booth.

‘Why wouldn’t I eat it?’

Hazel wrinkled her nose. ‘Because it’s disgusting.’

‘Disgusting?! What?’

A small laugh escaped her. ‘It’s just sugar-flavored air.’

‘And why wouldn’t I want sugary air? In fact, I wish all the air was sugar flavored. That would be amazing.’

‘And sticky.’

He shrugged. ‘I guess.’ He dropped Hazel’s hand to pick off some sugary fluff. It melted as soon as it hit his tongue, sending sweetness through his veins. He licked the stickiness off his fingers and he could have sworn Hazel watched him do it before tearing her gaze away.

‘So what do you want to do first?’

‘Well...’ Noah let his gaze wander suggestively toward the Ferris wheel.

‘Nope. Not ready yet.’

‘Okay, no problem.’ He looked around. ‘How about we play some games?’

Hazel nodded. ‘I can do games.’

‘Great.’ He pulled off some more cotton candy but before he could put it in his mouth, Hazel grabbed his forearm and rerouted the candy into her mouth instead. Her lips ghosted over his fingers and he nearly dropped the whole damn thing.

She gave a little sigh. ‘Might not be as bad as I remembered.’ She walked off ahead of him and he was forced to follow or risk getting lost in the crowd.

Who was this Hazel Kelly and what was he going to do with her?

He ignored the list of ideas that immediately popped into his head, starting with feeding her more cotton candy and ending with her very naked in his bed. This was a family event. Those thoughts needed to be tamped down along with the other ones about Hazel’s ample thighs, her bare shoulders and all that skin he’d never paid attention to before that he now couldn’t seem to stop staring at.

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure he was still behind her and a mischievous smile played around her lips.

If she kept looking at him like that he could no longer be held responsible for where his thoughts wandered off to. This Hazel Kelly was trouble.

And Noah liked trouble.

ChapterEight

Hazel usually avoided the carnival like the plague and so she hadn’t been here in years. Probably since she was in high school. In fact, she was pretty sure the reason she broke out into a cold sweat every time she looked at the Ferris wheel was because she once got stuck at the top with Annie for nearly an hour in a lightning storm and she was convinced she was going to die unkissed.

Annie had offered to do the job but it just didn’t seem the same as kissing Heath Ryan, who she had a horrible, unrequited crush on at the time. So she politely declined even as the two girls huddled together, shrieking at every rumble of distant thunder.

By the time the fire department arrived, she and Annie were both soaked and terrified. And she hadn’t been back to the carnival or on a Ferris wheel ever again. But that traumatic moment wasn’t actually why she avoided the carnival.