Captured Memories: Cupid’s Cafe, Book Three Read online

  Captured Memories

  Cupid’s Cafe, Book Three

  Katherine McIntyre

  After Glows Publishing

  Captured Memories

  © Copyright 2017 Katherine McIntyre

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  Published by After Glows Publishing

  PO Box 224

  Middleburg, FL 32050

  AfterGlowsPublishing.com

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  Cover by LKO Designs

  Formatting by AG Formatting

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  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. 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 information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  AfterGlowsPublishing.com

  To the individuals who get up every day to wage war against their demons.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  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

  About the Author

  Note from the Publisher

  More from Cupid’s Cafe

  Acknowledgments

  First off, I want to shoutout to the lovely ladies of Cupid's Cafe. Landra Graf, Lori Sizemore, and Catherine Peace are totally inspiring to work with, and I'm so grateful to be a part of the Cupid's Cafe series with top notch authors like them! I also want to give a huge thank you to After Glows Publishing for publishing this series, because it's so very important that all voices are heard in romance. The concept for this series had me smitten from the start--romances where the hero and heroine are dealing with underrepresented issues, from depression to surviving assault? There was no way I wouldn't want to get involved! Many thanks to Sara Lunsford and Michelle Pollina who were wonderful editors and really helped me polish Captured Memories, and a huge thank you to Rob and Nadine for helping look over the manuscript and offering fantastic input! With such a fantastic team of people to help me, I am really proud of the addition to this amazing series, and I'm hoping you all enjoy it too!

  Captured Memories

  Cupid Café, book 3

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  An invitation to Cupid’s Café will change your life.

  After the incident that caused Liv Morozov to drop out of college, years later she’s still trying to pick up the pieces of her life. She’s managed to carve out a career for herself as a photographer, but when it comes to guys? Her issues send them running for the hills, every damn time.

  Zane Parata has declared himself off-limits for relationships. Between trying to maintain sobriety and the long hours he works as a chef, no one wants to deal with his brand of damage, and he wouldn’t want to burden them in the first place.

  When Liv shows up at Cupid’s Café, she never expected to find Zane, her brother’s former best friend who had vanished one day and never returned. The sparks that surged when they were both teens rekindle stronger than ever, and all too fast, Liv and Zane entangle in each other’s lives, breaking their own rules. Except with both struggling with the demons from their past, the love that’s begun to grow is one lapse away from shattering the two of them beyond repair.

  1

  The date started as bland and was speeding right along to abysmal.

  Liv sucked on her straw, taking in an extra hefty helping of her black-and-white milkshake, as if the creamy goodness could block out the absolute drivel coming out of this guy’s mouth. He hadn’t seemed like this much of a twat online, but hey, dating profiles lie, lie, lied. The overhead lights of the Denny’s blared down on her, and the rattle and chill of air conditioning blasting through this place made her skin prickle.

  “So you take photographs, right?” Kyle asked, his smarmy grin the kind she itched to punch off his face, and the Drakkar Noir he’d slathered on making her stomach churn. “What’s your real job?”

  Liv swigged so much milkshake it went straight to her head, but even brain freeze melted in the fury his question inspired. So far, he checked off every item on her ‘Shit that Makes Liv Morozov Rage’ list. Acting like her career wasn’t a legitimate profession tended to top that, along with the territorial way he leaned forward, his hand inching across the laminate table as the minutes wore on.

  “Professional Emasculator. I’ve been told that’s why I’ve got such a problem keeping a man,” she drawled, batting her eyelashes innocently while the venom poured from her mouth. This had been a bad idea from the start, spurred on by the promise she made to Tessa to give the dating pool a fair try, again. Common sense-wise, making connections she might be able to use for her quite-real job as a photographer didn’t hurt, and she figured she could slice through any assholes who came her way.

  Looked like right off the bat they lined up for the slaughter.

  Kyle laughed, because he thought she was joking, and then his eyes flicked to her tits for the umpteenth time this conversation. When it came to full-throttle d-bags like him, the barbs she delivered weren’t sarcastic.

  She slurped up the dregs of her milkshake, savoring the last bits of chocolate syrup pooled at the bottom. If she didn’t have anything left in her glass, she had no more reason to stay. His cell phone began to ring, an off-tone that rang with a loud beep, beep, beep, beep through the nearly empty diner at the pre-early bird dinner hour.

  She hadn’t heard the sound in a long time.

  Nausea flooded her in one sickening sweep. The smell of bacon grease and cleaning fluid faded away, and the stench of Stoli Vanilla arrived in its place. Liv began rubbing her wrist, over and over. Bile rose in her throat while her heart kicked in double time.

  The whole place blurred to the back of her focus, vision tunneling to the way her hand circled her wrist, again and again. Words stuck in her throat, and the air evacuated her chest as numbness descended.

  “I need to leave.” Some other Liv, not her, spoke to her date in this quiet, detached voice. The robotic tone must have thrown him off, because his brows crinkled in confusion, and he opened his mouth to respond.

  Before he could put up an argument, Liv dropped a couple of bills to cover her milkshake, and with a slow and steady stride, she exited Denny’s.

  Each step forward felt like slogging through deep water, her boots hitting the floor even though she couldn’t feel the ground beneath her. Numbness reigned, as it traveled up her legs, down her arms, and strangled her heart. Even as she descended the concrete walkway towards her car, her hand kept circling her wrist, the motion beginning to chafe her skin. The air remained crisp from rain the day before, providing a slight edge from the humidity wrapping around her. Before she was even aware, she stood in front of her forest green Subaru.

  Once she s
ettled into the driver’s seat and the locks clicked, Liv took her first real breath. The air came out shaky and sharp. Liv leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the steering wheel, the sole thing she could bear focusing on as the breaths cycled through her. Her nerves melted in a shuddering adrenaline crash, and her arms trembled.

  Great. First foray into dating in a year and she royally fucked it up. Kyle would be reporting to his bros tomorrow with a big ol’ headline of ‘Crazy Chick Strikes Again’ after the abrupt way she jetted out. She shouldn’t give a damn, but she did. The lack of control got to her, every time. Kyle didn’t know the unstable firework he signed on for when he swiped right. Liv gritted her teeth, turning the ignition on. Behind the wheel, she sank into a measure of control, something she needed in a real way right now.

  Her phone began ringing in a symphony of sound as different as possible from the old ringtone that played in the Denny’s. She glanced to see who called. Tessa. Her bestie must have sensed a disturbance in the force. Woman claimed to be psychic, but she was just Grade A at reading body language. Her friend wasn’t a menace in the briefing room for nothing—Tessa earned her rep on Louisville’s police force.

  Liv picked up the phone. “Hey, chica. Meet me at my apartment. We’re pulling out the whisky tonight.”

  Tessa’s sleek black Charger sat in the back parking lot by the time Liv returned to her apartment. The drive down the freeway had given her time to collect herself and flip off a couple shitty drivers in the process. She’d managed to quell the shaking and the descending nausea from whenever her jerk body decided to relive events of the past she wished would stay dead and buried.

  Tessa Riviera strolled up, her smooth caramel skin on full display due to the tank and running shorts she wore. Her glossy black hair had been pulled into a sporty ponytail. Liv unbuckled her seat belt and checked her appearance in the driver’s mirror—she didn’t think she’d started crying or anything weird, but she’d dealt with these involuntary responses before.

  She and Tessa couldn’t be more opposite. The late afternoon sun amplified Liv’s innate paleness, what little skin wasn’t covered in ink, and her shoulder-length curls shone in a myriad of shifting teals and blues. Her dedicated hair sorceress had outdone herself with this array of colors that glittered like the ocean.

  Her combat boots thudded to the asphalt, a helluva lot sturdier than her shaky legs at this point. Liv stood, rolled her shoulders back, and forced a grin as Tessa stopped in front of her.

  “Knock that fake ass grin off your face and prepare to get wasted.” Tessa lifted a brown paper bag that sloshed while they walked in unison to Liv’s apartment.

  She stepped to the foyer first, the faint smell of cat piss lingering from last week when Miss Lorcan’s tabby, Pickle, tried to make his grand escape. Liv stopped by the mail slot and fumbled with her key while Tessa waited by the steps. A red envelope stood out amidst a sea of white bills and Sav-A-Lot packs. Her brows furrowed on instinct as Tessa took the lead up the stairs.

  Liv’s heart accelerated when she scanned over the letter—no return address, which always pinged her internal alarms.

  As they clomped down the echoing hall of her second-floor apartment, she ripped open the letter. Today had already turned into a shit sundae, so why not pop a cherry on top? A thick, cream-colored card lay inside. As she flipped open the invite, Tessa leaned against the door to her apartment with her brow lifted and a hefty helping of side-eye thrown her way.

  An admirer looks forward to meeting you.

  Come as you are to Cupid’s Café on Bardstown Street tomorrow at noon for the second chance you always hoped for, yet didn’t believe possible.

  Sincerely,

  Mr. Heart

  Liv’s blood turned cold, and she nearly dropped the letter.

  Tessa strode over to her and plucked the paper from her hands. “What’s the card say?” she asked, concern sharpening her voice. After scanning the invite, she let out a low whistle. “You don’t think it’s him, do you?”

  Cold settled over Liv like a blanket of snow, and despite her hand resting on the handle of her apartment door, she couldn’t urge herself to make the knob turn. Her throat dried at the fear of going face to face with the guy who’d turned her life upside down. Even though she’d sliced off contact since that day, the man continued to reappear in the shadows slinking down her hall, in the eyes of the guys who stared at her for too long on the streets, and in the way those reminders of the past froze her on the spot.

  “This is your chance, Liv,” Tessa said, turning the knob for her as she made her way into Liv’s apartment. “For some form of justice.”

  Tessa’s movement jarred her own, and the moment she stepped into the embrace of her apartment, greeted by the hiss of the jasmine air freshener and the meow of Percival the Bold, her nerves calmed. Two shake-ups in one day and she was about ready to slump into her couch, burrow under a down comforter, and crash out. Liv sucked in a deep breath, making her way across the hardwood to the pop open the toothpaste-white cabinets in her kitchen.

  She turned to face Tessa with two glasses in hand. “What sort of plan do you have in mind?” Anger simmered inside her, a longstanding, complicated, and endless rage that never quite retreated.

  Tessa unscrewed a bottle of Tullamore Dew and poured the honey liquid into the glasses, the cedar and sharp scent infusing the air. Her mouth formed a grim line, and her brows tugged together with the fierce expression on her face.

  “If this creep is reappearing to torment you, we’ve got to get him behind bars. If you show for this bullshit date, I’ll follow and find a way to book him on harassment charges,” Tessa proclaimed, taking a swig from her glass a moment later.

  Her friend’s enthusiasm should have sparked her to life, but the raging tundra inside her permeated too deep at this point for any hope of retribution. She swallowed the whisky, fabricating the warmth that should have coiled in her stomach, one she missed. The invitation glared at her like a threat, and she sneered back.

  She lifted her glass in Tessa’s direction, leaning against her kitchen counter. Even though fear gripped her in a vice, her friend was talking some sense and offering a chance to maybe sleep in peace for once. She’d take any shot at normalcy again, even if she had to face her demons.

  “Let’s do this.”

  2

  Either customers were getting stupider as the years wore on, or Zane was losing what little patience he had. With the sheer amount of menu modifications Jessica kept reporting, these idiotic diners should have stayed home and cooked their own damn meals. The temptation to serve them a bowl full of water rose to the forefront, but he quashed the urge down.

  “Order up,” he called, sliding to the counter the mush that once constituted a meal before the five thousand substitutions. Last table of the day.

  Sweat dripped down his forehead, and he mopped the slick sheen with his ratty-ass undershirt, though it did little to help. He packed away open containers, cleaning up his station with the rehearsed quickness of years of practice. The scents of butter and steak roasting, of freshly-warmed rolls, and asiago cheese permeated the air and his skin at this point. His heart beat with the steady tap-tap-tap of the constant rush in the kitchens, the exact type of distraction he needed. His Friday night shift kicked off the weekend rush, and Sunday couldn’t come soon enough.

  The undercurrent prickling through him at all times, the tug he couldn’t completely banish on the best of days, had made an ugly resurgence as of late. The weight in his pocket sometimes became the one thing that kept him from slipping behind the bar here and drinking straight from the bottle.

  Paolo, the dishwasher, kept the back door opened a crack, the faint scent of cigarette smoke trickling in with the fresh air. That would have to do for now. Cigarette and a shower, and he’d be feeling shipshape.

  Zane tugged the pack of Marlboros from his pocket, turning for the door. Even with his shoulder length hair pulled back, tendrils stuck to
his temples, and he grimaced at the feel of the grease clinging to his beard. One hell of a long shower.

  A manicured hand rested on his arm.

  “Z, why don’t you come back to my place for a drink?” Chloe asked, a smoky glow in her chocolate eyes, her pink lips pursed with sensual promise. Even the husky way she asked left little to the imagination. The girl had started working at La Rouge a couple months ago and eyed him like a choice cut of prime rib every chance she got. Not that she wasn’t a looker — most of the guys in the back, or hell, even the ones lining the barstools as she doled them drinks — would give their left nut to take her for a test drive.

  “Sorry, sweetheart.” He flashed his teeth with a smile, pulling a cigarette from his pack as he made his way to the back door. “I don’t shit where I eat—personal practice of mine. I’m not good company anyway.”

  The brisk air coated his skin the second he stepped outside, and his shirt glued to his chest. The thump-thump-thump scratched at his veins, an insistence he needed to sate, however necessary. He couldn’t help but eye the way Chloe pouted behind him, charming enough to not throw a tantrum over the rejection.

  “Keep telling yourself that, Zane Parata,” she called to him. “Can’t keep rejecting everyone forever. Some day someone’s going to pierce through your rough and tough shell.”