SNEAK PEEK

Hot for the Jerk

The Single Moms of San Camanez: The Vino Vixens

Book 1

Jagger and Raina

https:books2read.com/HFTJ-VV-SDSC

Chapter One

“J ag!” Wyatt called to me from where he stood with his wife Vica near the bar. He lifted his chin, then made a little finger crook which meant I was supposed to stop whatever I was doing and hop to it, because big brother said so. Rolling my eyes, I finished my conversation with Willy Reilly the crab man, and took my half-full bottle of winter berry ale over to my brother. “You rang?”

Wyatt snorted and Vica giggled.

“Even though Dom said no, we hooked up the karaoke machine Vica bought. Figured you’d like to be the one to break it in since you’ve got that deep, magical singing voice.” Wyatt playfully gripped me the shoulder and gave a brotherly squeeze.

I rolled my eyes.

“He’s not saying no,” Vica said with hope in her voice. “I love karaoke, but my voice is rubbish compared to the delightful baritone of Mr. Jagger McEvoy here.” She batted her long, dark lashes at me. “Please, Jagger? It can be your Christmas present to me.”

“Is this your way of seeing if I got you for Secret Santa?” I asked. “Nice try.” I turned to Wyatt. “Your wife is one sneaky little Italian, you know that?”

Wyatt snickered and looped his arm around Vica, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. “I know. I love it.”

“You still haven’t said no,” Vica went on.

Summer of ’69 by the legendary Canadian, Brian Adams. I glared at Wyatt. He knew this song was my weakness. All he did was grin at me. I glanced around the party and found my three other brothers and their partners all staring at me, smiling.

This was a set-up if ever there was one.

But it wasn’t their eyes I was truly searching for. I subtly scanned the room until I found the yellow-green cat-eyes of my nemesis. And of course, she was looking right at me.

I managed a sneer at her before puffing up my chest, slapping on a big grin and marching over to where the karaoke machine was set up.

“Yesssss!” Vica cheered. “I knew it!”

I reached for the microphone just as Brian sung about playing his six-string until his fingers bled.

The whole crowd—which consisted of most of the islanders—turned to face me and many of them cheered, their heads bobbing along to the music. I didn’t even need to read the lyrics off the screen. I knew this song by heart. It was one of the few songs that I couldn’t say no to.

Everyone in the crowd was smiling or singing along.

Everyone by Raina.

I snorted and smiled even wider as I sung, delighting in her glare and the way she tried with all her tiny redheaded might to pop my head off with her laser-vision.

Sorry, sweetheart, you’ll have to do more than that to take me out.

I got real into it and by the end, I had the entire bar singing along just as loud as me. The rain and wind outside, hammering our humble little restaurant was no match for the warmth, and community inside. It was our first-ever Christmas open-house and if the bright and cheery faces in front of me were any indication, I would say it was a huge success.

The last line of the song was chanted in perfect harmony through all of us, followed quickly by cheering and applause. But my joy was fleeting as I was abruptly elbowed off stage by a very bony elbow, and the microphone snatched from my hand as Madonna’s Like a Prayer came up on the screen.

“My turn,” Raina said to me, plastering on a big, fake smile before turning to the audience and offering them one more genuine.

Heat filled my face and belly.

Nobody had ever pushed my buttons the way this tiny little woman did, and she’d done so since nearly the moment I met her. She also seemed to follow me around like a bad fart. She was always where I was. First, she infiltrated my book club, then she started turning up at local artisan markets where I peddled some of the brewery’s beer to people who trekked over to the island during the summer months for the markets. She booked herself a table which was right next to mine to sell her family winery crap. Okay, fine, the wine wasn’t crap. It was actually fucking delicious. But because she peddled it, it was crap. She always seemed to be at the grocery store when I was, and even ran the same trails that I did. It was like she was stalking me or something.

I stepped down off the small stage and went behind the bar to grab myself another beer. When I stood up, popping the cap, all four of my older brothers were standing on the other side of the bar giving me some very curious looks.

“What?” I snapped, tipping the lager up to my lips.

“What the hell was that about?” Clint, our oldest brother and brewmaster asked before taking a sip of his cranberry spice witbier.

“What was what? I got ambushed into singing. You know I can’t say no to that song. I had no choice in the matter. It was compulsory”

Bennett, Wyatt and Dom all snorted and shook their heads.

“Which was why we put that song on, doofus,” Wyatt said. “What we mean is, your little eye-fuck masked as eye-hate with Raina Aaronson. And then she just came and snatched the microphone from you.”

“And is doing a hell of a good job singing Madonna, I will say,” Bennett added, turning to face the stage where Raina poured her heart into her song.

Fuck, she even had a nice voice. Damn her.

“It’s nothing,” I grunted, taking a sip of my beer. “Leave it.”

They all rolled their eyes. We all had blue eyes, but mine were the darkest. Clint’s were a royal blue, Bennett’s were dark, Wyatt and Dom hazel mixed with their blue, and mine were the darkest yet. When my pupils dilated you could barely see the irises they blended so much with the almost navy shade.

I was also the only one with a long, thick beard. We all had facial hair, but they all kept theirs trimmed and hugging their jaws. More of a scruff than anything. Mine was long, soft and luxurious.

Wyatt, Bennett and I wore glasses, but I wore mine the most.

There was no denying we were all brothers.

We were all tall, though, I was the tallest. We all had dark hair, and besides me, the other four served in the Marines. I got a football scholarship and went to college, only to get an injury early on and graduate with a psych degree.

Vica joined us, along with Clint’s woman, Brooke. Both of them had very suspicious, very sneaky looks on their faces. They sidled up beside their men.

“What’d you do?” I asked them both, knowing immediately that it had to do with me. Neither of them was subtle. And Brooke should be since she was a very famous Hollywood actor. Her acting skills should have been a hell of a lot better.

“Nothing,” Vica said, feigning innocence. “Absolutely nothing. Right, Brooke?”

Brooke blinked at me with her green eyes, tossing her flaxen waves over her shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re accusing us of right now, Jagger, but it’s very offensive.”

“Offensive indeed,” Vica added.

I growled and glared at both of them.

“While you’re back there, Jagger dear, could you fetch me a cranberry spice witbier, please?” Brooke asked, blinking innocently and tilting her head to the side. Her innocuous shtick wasn’t working on me for a second. I got her the beer anyway, but set it down on the bar with a bit more force than necessary.

Raina’s song was winding down and Vica was quick to exit our little group and race forward, stopping Raina from leaving the stage or relinquishing the microphone. She reached for the second microphone and locked eyes with me. “Jagger!”

I shook my head stiffly. “No.”

Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ duet Islands in the Stream started to play. Nobody was singing yet, but it was an easily recognizable song. It was one my parents always listened to and danced to in the living room when we were kids.

My nostrils flared and I shot daggers out of my eyes at my sister-in-law who continued to try to usher me on stage.

Tiny hands behind me pushed my back. I craned my neck around to find all of my nieces and nephews shoving me out from behind the bar toward the stage.

“Go sing, Uncle Jagger,” Aya, the feistiest seven-year-old on the freaking planet, said. “It’s a song for two people.”

Griffon, Wyatt’s youngest and who had also just turned seven, raced around me, grabbed me by the beltloops and started to haul me forward while Talia, Emme, Jake and Silas all pushed from behind.

“You can’t deny the children,” Bennett said with a smirk. “Not on Christmas.”

“I absolutely fucking can,” I ground out. “And it’s not Christmas yet.”

I glanced at the children I would literally fucking kill for and growled at them. But that didn’t deter them at all. They all knew my bark was way worse than my bite. When it came to them, I didn’t even have a fucking bite.

To make matters worse, they gave me sad, puppy-dog eyes and started to beg.

“Please, Uncle Jagger! Please go sing.”

Glancing up at the Christmas crowd, I found a whole hell of a lot of eyes on me.

Fucking hell.

Raina was singing Dolly’s part, but Vica refused to sing for Kenny. She held out the microphone to me.

Then the whole fucking bar started to chant my name.

“Jag-ger! Jag-ger!”

“You can’t deny your fans, Jag,” Dom said with a chuckle, looping his arm around his woman Chloe as she came to stand behind him looking a little green around the gills. We all knew why.

The kids were still pushing me from behind and Griffon was pulling on my beltloops. If I really wanted to stand my ground I could and they wouldn’t make me budge. But fucking hell, it was hard to say no to the little squirts.

Eventually, they had me all the way on stage and Vica, with a shit-eating grin and a cheeky glint in her brown eyes, handed me the microphone just as Kenny started to sing that tender love is blind. I put the mic to my mouth and sung the words. Again, I didn’t need to read the prompter. This was a song that as ingrained in my mind as Summer of ’69 —perhaps more. All I thought of when I heard this song was my parents, madly in love and dancing around the living room. And now my siblings and their women went and ruined it by making me sing with the devil in stretchy black pants and a forest-green sweater that hugged her soft curves like a second skin.

Fuck them all.

Raina glowered at me as she sang Dolly Parton’s words—beautifully.

Fuck.

I turned to her, hate in my eyes and replied with Kenny’s part, then came the chorus where we both had to sing, and everyone in the bar cheered even louder than when we sang our solos. Her cousins who she ran the vineyard and winery with slowly made their way toward my brothers and their women, all of them smiling like this had been an elaborate plot between them.

Pink slashed high across Raina’s cheeks and she made deadly promises with her eyes at her cousins who didn’t seem to care. Much like my siblings.

Her nostrils flare when she turned back to me for the next round of the chorus. Loathing burned like acid in my gut. This woman was everything I hated. A know-it-all. A one-upper. A cheat—not in relationships, at least I didn’t think, but in life—and an all-around irritation. She was like a mosquito in a dark room. But fucking hell, she was a pretty mosquito. One you might hesitate—just for a moment—about squishing. Until you remembered she was a bloodsucking pest, probably riddled with disease, or at the very least, about to make your arm very fucking itchy for a week.

I sung harder.

So did she.

I poured my soul into the words.

And fuck her, she did too.

It was like we were fighting and collaborating at the same time.

And why in god’s name was my cock hard?

What the fuck?

Somehow this felt like fucking foreplay now. Really, rough, really angry, really hot foreplay.

The last round of the chorus was upon us now, and she did what Dolly always did, emphasizing certain words and singing them just a little louder. She was good. I’d give her that. Good at tricking the crowd into loving her.

She was no Dolly Parton, though. Dolly was a saint, and Raina probably had horns hidden beneath her hair somewhere.

We faced each other, ready to finish up the song.

Her eyes glittered like peridots under the recessed lighting of the pub and she smirked at me like she’d won something, and sung the lyrics, asking me to sail away with her.

I repeated, “Sail away,” three times before finishing it with, “with me.”

Then the music ended and the entire restaurant exploded with applause and cheering. My nieces and nephews charged the stage hugging me, and off in the corner, Raina’s nine-year-old son Marco, gave his mom a smile and a thumb’s up.

Raina set the microphone down on top of the monitor and sneered. “You were a little pitchy.”

Anger bubbled hot in my veins as my nieces and nephews praise blended together to create a muddling din in my brain. I was seething. “You couldn’t find a key if it hit you in face.”

I could tell my insult landed based on the flare of her eyes, but she wasn’t going to dignify me with a response. All she did was smirk and step down off the stage.

With bloodlust coursing through my body, I exited the stage and joined my family, glaring at all of them.

“Anybody else get hot just watching that?” Brooke asked.

Vica, Justine—Bennett’s woman—and Chloe all fanned themselves.

I flipped them double middle fingers and stomped off through the crowd, shoving my hand into the swinging door that separated the kitchen and the bar.

Never again.

That shit would never happen again.

It was a small island and I couldn’t avoid Raina all the time, but like hell would I allow myself to be manipulated into something like that with her again.

Nobody besides her and I knew what happened between us when we first met, and I intended to keep it that way. I was a private person, and the last thing I needed was for our quirky little hippy island with gossipy weirdos spreading rumors about the youngest “Brew Brother” and the youngest “Vino Vixen” as they were called.

I pulled in a deep breath through my nose and started to count to ten to calm myself down.

One of my favorite songs had just been ruined.

What else was that viper going to ruin in my life before I finally decided to just jump ship and leave the island all together?

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