Stormy Hearts Read online

  Stormy Hearts

  Julia Gabriel

  Serif Books

  Stormy Hearts

  Copyright © 2021 by Julia Gabriel

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this story may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-1-7343832-9-4

  When rock star Ian Youngblood stops to do a good deed in a storm, he’s not expecting to find the woman with the angel’s voice who walked out on him in London ... a woman he hasn’t been able to forget.

  * * *

  Two years ago, Mai Tran narrowly missed becoming just another notch on a rock star’s bedpost. But when the lights go out tonight, can she resist their undeniable attraction one more time?

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  The St. Caroline Series

  About the Author

  Also by Julia Gabriel

  Chapter 1

  “So.” Mai peered out the large front window of her coffee shop. “It doesn’t look like the storm has changed its mind and decided to head back out to sea.”

  “Nope. I think we’re in for one heck of a weekend.”

  Mai stood shoulder to shoulder with Becca Wolfe as they watched the rain fall outside. It was still hot enough that the raindrops were sizzling and evaporating as soon as they hit the street. August in St. Caroline, Maryland, was normally rather sweltering, but the temperature was dropping—practically by the minute.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Main Street this deserted before.” August was also peak season in St. Caroline. Summer was when the east coast sailing enthusiasts descended on the town. Along with fishing enthusiasts, group bicycle tours, photography buffs, people headed to Ocean City taking an afternoon detour, the owners of the estates and mansions ringing the town’s perimeter, and weddings.

  Good Lord, the weddings.

  Mai’s Two Beans coffee shop caffeinated them all.

  Becca leaned her forehead against the glass, looking toward her quilt gallery where her husband was busy sandbagging the front of the building. “Looks like Jack is almost done.” Up and down the street, business owners were stacking giant bags of sand against their storefronts. Several had nailed great sheets of plywood over their windows. Mai hoped that was an overabundance of caution on their part.

  Hurricane Ian had been downgraded to Tropical Storm Ian as it swept across the mid-Atlantic coast. Seventy mph winds could still do a lot of damage, though. Not to mention the flooding that was the town’s main concern. Living in a waterfront town was idyllic … as long as the water stayed in the bay where it belonged.

  Becca patted Mai’s forearm. “It’ll be fine. What the insurance agent said to me was, ‘If the building is still standing after two hundred years, it’ll withstand any weather Mother Nature throws at it.’”

  “Did you get that in writing?”

  Becca laughed and turned around. Her eight-year-old daughter, Jackie, was sitting at a table, carefully coloring in one of the many coloring books Mai kept on hand for younger patrons. “Finish up your page, sweetie. Daddy will be here soon.” She grinned at Mai. “Those coloring books were a genius move, by the way.”

  “Clearly. I’ve been going through half a dozen a week.”

  “Well, the moms appreciate it.”

  Mai nodded. At twenty-eight, she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever be a mother herself. A downside of living in a small town, to be sure. She’d already dated or passed on most of St. Caroline’s eligible bachelors. Still, she loved living here. Loved the history of the place. Most of the businesses on Main Street, hers included, were in buildings that dated back to the 1800s.

  And of course, she loved that Two Beans was a popular hangout all year round. If only some new guy would decide to move here and fall in love with her, life would be grand!

  Fortunately, the pity party that was about to launch in her mind was interrupted by Jack Wolfe coming in the front door.

  “All done,” he said, bracing for impact as his daughter launched herself at him. “Mai, do you need any help?” He glanced back toward the street.

  “No, I’m good. My brother sandbagged the back of the building and brought up the rest for the front.” She nodded at the bags stacked at the back of the shop.

  “Why didn’t he do the front?” Jack peeled off his daughter.

  “He had to get back to Annapolis.” She swallowed the bubble of irritation that rose in her throat, again. She came from a restaurant family, had grown up working in her parents’ mini empire of Vietnamese restaurants. Her brother now ran the newest addition to the empire—an upscale French-Vietnamese restaurant on the water in Annapolis. To her parents, Mai’s small coffee shop was not a “restaurant.” Thus, not important.

  “I’m fine,” she said to Jack and Becca’s concerned expressions. “I checked last night. I can lift the bags. You guys should get home before the winds pick up.”

  Hesitation flickered in Jack’s eyes, before he acquiesced.

  “Alright. But get those bags out there. The storm’s going to hit soon.”

  “I will. No worries.” She waved them off and then eyed the small mountain of sandbags waiting for her. I got this.

  Ian Youngblood slowed the rental car. He was driving down Main Street on his way back to the house he was house sitting for a friend. Through the hyperactive thwap-thwap of the windshield wipers and the monsoon-like rain, he could just barely make out a small figure struggling to heave a sandbag up onto the pile of bags already in place. It was clearly a woman, and a drenched woman at that.

  As much as he wanted to get to the house and hunker down for the storm, he couldn’t, in good conscience, simply drive by. He pulled over to the curb and parked. Two Beans. Simone had recommended the place before she and Douglas left on their honeymoon. The way she’d described it made it sound like Cheers, only with coffee.

  He jumped out of the car. “Hey! Let me help you.” He ran over and pushed the sandbag easily onto the pile. “There.” He brushed wet, leaking sand from his hands.

  The woman turned to look at him. “Thanks. I only have a dozen more to go.”

  His breath caught in his throat, even as rain needled his scalp and dripped off his nose. It was the karaoke woman from London. He was sure of it.

  “Where are the rest?”

  Her expression was one of skepticism, not recognition. That disappointed him on both counts. Of course, he was going to help her with the rest. He wasn’t a dick. That was Alex’s role in the band.

  But wait—she doesn’t remember me?

  He wasn’t accustomed to not being remembered. At the very least, his manager wouldn’t mind a viral tweet or two about some Good Samaritan behavior to counter all the recent bad publicity from Alex. Who was now in rehab for the fourth time after trashing one tour bus, two hotel rooms, and half of a backstage dressing room. Ian had gotten there just in time to save the other half.

  He loved Alex like a brother—he really did—but the drinking was out of control. And Ian wasn’t the only person who was tired of it.

  “In the back.”

  She climbed over the stack of bags in front of the shop’s front do
or. He was momentarily mesmerized by the sight of her legs, shiny and sleek in the rain. He followed her over the bags and into the coffee shop.

  “Sit down and rest. I can do it.”

  “It’ll be faster if we both do it.”

  Looking her over, “unlikely” was the word that came to mind. She was maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, soaking wet. Her long, dark hair was plastered to her head, cheeks, and neck. Her white button-down shirt was now nearly translucent, revealing a lacy yellow bra underneath. Yellow was an unusual color for lingerie, in his not-so-limited experience.

  He was remembering the black lingerie she wore the first time he saw her, when a gust of wind slapped against the roof of the building. Oh right. His namesake storm was bearing down on them. There was no time to ponder lingerie or the fact that she apparently had no recall of him.

  “Well then, let’s go.”

  Chapter 2

  They had just shoved the last bag of sand into place when a blast of wind nearly lifted Mai off her feet. Her Good Samaritan steadied her and helped her climb over the bags and through the front door. He closed it and turned the lock not a minute too soon. As they stood side by side and watched, all hell broke loose outside. It was raining hard before, but now the rain was blowing sideways. Great sheets of water hit the shop’s front window.

  “Well, I hope that works,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Sorry about your car out there.”

  “It’s a rental. Hope you don’t mind if I wait this out a bit.”

  “You might be here awhile. But you’re welcome to stay.” She looked at the puddles of water gathering around their feet. Their clothing was saturated and dripping onto the floor. “Umm, I’m going upstairs to change into something dry. I, uh, don’t have any men’s clothing …”

  “A towel will work, if you have one.”

  “Do have those.” She hurried up the back stairs to her second floor apartment, her leather sneakers squishing and squeaking the entire way. She yanked them off in her tiny kitchen. They were almost certainly ruined. She grabbed a stack of towels and took them back downstairs.

  “Here.”

  She returned to her apartment to peel off her shorts and blouse, which—she realized belatedly—was so wet it was see-through. Oh well. There was a pretty good chance the guy downstairs had already seen her half naked, not that he would remember it. Outside, she’d been too busy to take a really good look at the guy who’d offered to help her with the sandbags. She was just grateful for the unexpected help.

  But now that she’d had a good look at him inside, she was ninety percent certain that her Good Samaritan was either A) Ian Youngblood, lead singer of Pulse; B) Ian Youngblood’s identical twin; or C) one of those random universe doppelgangers who was an exact replica of Ian Youngblood.

  If he was A … well, she had nearly hooked up with him two years ago in London.

  Nearly.

  She had a good excuse. Or a reasonable excuse, at any rate.

  She and Kyle had gone to London for a romantic Christmas vacation. After a year and a half of serious dating, she’d been expecting a proposal on the trip. Along the Thames or atop the Eye. Something like that. Hell, Mai would have settled for the Tower of London.

  Instead, Kyle had dumped her—leaving her to spend the rest of the trip by herself. One thing led to another and she had ended up in a hotel room with one Ian Youngblood. Fortunately, she came to her senses before becoming another notch on his bedpost. It was a story she hadn’t shared with anyone. Who would believe it?

  She peeled off her bra and underwear, then wrung out her hair over the tub. She was soaked to the skin. After combing through the tangles in her wet hair, she pulled on clean clothes. Then she combed her hair again, fixing the part ever so slightly.

  Yeah, she was stalling. There was a bonafide rock star downstairs! And, despite that near miss in London, Mai was not the type of person who knew bonafide rock stars. Sure, among St. Caroline’s summer and weekend residents there were some semi-famous people. But they were CEOs, tech gazillionaires, politicians. With the exception of the singer Simone Adkins, who had a personal childhood connection to the town, St. Caroline did not harbor celebrities on the order of Ian Youngblood.

  She stalled a few more minutes, then resigned herself to going back downstairs. There was no chance he remembered her, anyway. Out of all the women he must meet every day? Mai was nothing more than a blip on the radar. She would pretend that she had no idea who he was.

  She turned off the lights in the apartment and closed the door behind her. She heard him moving around as she descended the stairs. Still, nothing could prepare her for the sight of a mostly naked rock star sweeping up the trail of sand that had spilled from the bags. He was all smooth tan skin except for the white towel wrapped around his waist.

  She could have sworn the towel looked bigger in her bathroom.

  She stopped on the last riser and gawked. Yep, that was definitely the body she had spent the past two years fantasizing about. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, shapely ass. In London, his dark blond hair had been long—below his shoulders. It was cropped close to his head now. It looked better short. The fewer distractions from his fabulous body the better.

  She halted that thought right in its tracks. What are you thinking? It doesn’t matter whether you like his hair. You had a chance at Ian Youngblood in London and you blew it.

  She spotted his wet clothes piled on the floor and made a beeline for them. “I’ll put these in the dryer.” It would give her a minute to rein in the inappropriate ideas that were swirling around her brain. And other parts of her body.

  “Thanks.”

  She took a deep breath. That voice. Rich. Deep. It had lured her so close to trouble before. She appreciated a beautiful male body as much as the next woman, but she was a sucker for a beautiful voice. It got her every time.

  She clutched his wet clothes to her chest and practically ran upstairs.

  So that’s how she’s going to play it—that she doesn’t recognize me. Huh. He’d recognized her the minute she turned her rain-soaked face toward him on the sidewalk. She was the karaoke woman from London who had entranced him with her voice, bewitched him with the promise of her lovely body, and then walked out on him—leaving him naked and hard in his hotel suite. As much as he might like to forget that particular humiliation, he hadn’t.

  Quite the opposite, in fact. He remembered every minute of that evening in vivid—if excruciating—detail. Minus the one detail he really needed. Her name. Without that, he’d been unable to look her up. And he’d wanted to look her up. If not for the purpose of finishing what they had started in the hotel, then to ask her to record a duet with him.

  Now I’ve found her in a small-town coffee shop in Maryland. In the middle of a raging storm. And I’m wearing nothing but a towel.

  There were so many directions this could go. Not all of them good.

  He looked around the coffee shop. Nice place. Exposed brick walls. Small wooden tables and chairs scattered about in the front. In the back, which looked like a newer addition, deep leather sofas beckoned. Behind a long glass pastry case was a lineup of espresso machines and a quaint chalkboard announcing the day’s specials. The aroma of coffee and warm sugar lingered in the air.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs announced her imminent return.

  “Your clothes will be dry in half an hour, I think,” she said.

  He cocked his head toward the front window and the maelstrom beyond. “I don’t think I’ll be leaving in half an hour.”

  Damn, but she was really lovely. Even more stunning two years later, if such a thing was possible. There had been a sadness about her in London, a mood he hadn’t probed. They hadn’t gotten into each other’s personal lives. It had been the day after Christmas and they both were sitting in a nearly empty karaoke bar. That right there said a lot about their personal lives, didn’t it?

  Instead they’d talked about music and singing for a bit, and
then agreed to walk to his hotel down the street. At the time, he assumed she knew who he was. She hadn’t offered her name and he didn’t ask. An anonymous hookup between two people in a karaoke bar on the day after Christmas had struck him as oddly—desirably—something normal people did. And he hadn’t been merely a normal person in years.

  “Hurricane Ian out there is still going strong,” he added.

  The corner of her mouth twitched, like she was stopping a smile. Maybe she did remember him? Maybe she remembered him, but hadn’t recognized him in London. Was that possible? He was Ian Youngblood, after all. You’d have to be living under a rock to not recognize me.

  Either way, now here she was—gorgeous in cutoff shorts and a black tank top that was slightly damp after carrying his wet clothes upstairs. The sadness about her was gone.

  “I believe it was downgraded to a tropical storm. Can I get you something to drink?”

  For a split second, her eyes dropped to the towel around his waist. Well at least the interest was still there.

  “What are my options?”

  Again with the little twitch of her soft, pink lips. Lips he had kissed the hell out of. Lips he had dreamed about too many times to count since.

  “Pretty much anything that doesn’t involve alcohol. I’m going to have an iced coffee myself.”

  “That works.”

  He watched as she moved gracefully behind the coffee bar. “Do you own this place, manage it, or just work here?”

  She looked up from a pitcher of cream and gave a wry smile. “All of the above.” She carried two glasses over to a table by the front window, before going back to retrieve two generous slices of pound cake.