Cinders Read online

  Cinders

  A Midsummer Suspense Tale

  Asha King

  www.AshaKing.com

  The sad girl he never forgot...

  Things haven’t been the same since the death of Gina Cassidy’s father. It thrust her under the rule of her cruel stepmother and turned the family bakery into something unrecognizable. But now Gina’s an adult, not a frightened child, and she has a plan: figure out what secrets her stepmother has been hiding and how it relates to her father’s death once and for all.

  The complication she doesn’t need but desperately wants...

  When wealthy, reformed troublemaker Brennen Prescott weaves his way into her life, her desire for a different future—her desire for him—can’t be denied, even if it upsets the fragile balance around her. But getting close to Brennen puts more than her carefully laid plans in jeopardy: his life will be in danger if she can’t unravel her own dark family secrets in time to save him.

  Also by Asha King

  Now Available

  Near to You

  Bad Moon Rising

  Somebody to Love

  Wild Horses (Stirling Falls #1)

  Wild Horses: Cold, Cold Winter (Stirling Falls #1.5)

  Sympathy for the Devil (Stirling Falls #2)

  Circle of Friends: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?

  Cats in Heat (Cats & Conjure #1)

  Cat Scratch Fever (Cats & Conjure #2)

  Coming Soon

  Beauty: A Midsummer Suspense Tale

  Snow: A Midsummer Suspense Tale

  Stray Cat Strut (Cats & Conjure #3)

  The Book of Love

  Gimme Shelter (Stirling Falls #3)

  Cinders: A Midsummer Suspense Tale

  Copyright © 2014 by Asha King

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Edited by Adrienne Jones

  Cover Art © 2014 by Asha King

  First Edition July 2014

  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 author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places 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, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this or any copyrighted work is illegal. Authors are paid on a per-purchase basis. Any use of this file beyond the rights stated above constitutes theft of the author’s earnings. File sharing is an international crime, prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice Division of Cyber Crimes, in partnership with Interpol. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is punishable by seizure of computers, up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 per reported instance. Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material.

  Thank you for only purchasing legal copies of my work.

  Illegally obtaining my books means I can’t continue to write/publish and future works will be canceled.

  For Darien, who encouraged me to chase plot bunnies.

  You are completely responsible for this.

  Once Upon a Time

  The funeral was held on a sunny Tuesday.

  Brennen Prescott stood between his parents, dressed in black. He’d only been to one funeral before, his grandmother’s, and that was years ago when he was much younger. Young enough that he didn’t remember it well, not the sorrow and the weeping. Young enough that he didn’t understand and was too busy playing in the grass, chasing bugs, to understand what was happening.

  Now at age twelve, he understood. Someone had died and wouldn’t be coming back again.

  Not someone he knew, exactly. The man knew his mother and father, and they’d brought Brennen along because—after some arguments on the subject—they decided he was “old enough.” Old enough to stand there awkwardly in a black suit bought for his cousin’s wedding next month, wedged between his parents, watching silently as mourners gathered around the coffin.

  His gaze skirted the people in black gathering around the grave, feeling oddly voyeuristic about it, and instead looked at the tombstone.

  William L. Cassidy. Husband and Father. Rest in Peace.

  Brennen didn’t recognize the name but his mom had explained he owned Bella’s in town, the local bakery. That place he knew—they had the best cupcakes, and everyone went there for a cake on their birthday.

  Across from the rose-laden coffin in front of him, a small clumping of people had gathered. In the center stood a tall woman with pale blonde hair, frozen in a twist. Icy in appearance. She stared down a long slim nose at the coffin, and despite the black veil over her eyes, Brennen didn’t think she shed a tear. On either side of her stood two girls, one his age and another a few years younger. Both in black satin, dressed primly and fashionably. He thought he’d seen them around, but he attended a boys’ school and they didn’t mix outside of it. Midsummer was a small town, though, and it was hard to turn a corner without seeing someone you knew.

  But he didn’t spend much time looking at the girls he assumed were the ice queen’s daughters. No, his gaze was drawn to the young girl tucked to the side of them.

  Her long curly hair was light brown, and her skin was about the same shade. Big brown eyes were downcast, tears snaking down her cheeks. Her black dress was plain, just a simple skirt that hit her knees and buttons straight down the front. Black shoes polished to a shine. Her fingers clasped a big white and yellow daisy, an odd contrast to the severe red roses everywhere else. Maybe she’d picked it herself.

  Others in attendance were sad but a cloud of grief hovered around the girl, strong enough that Brennen sensed it from several feet away. Her shoulders shook but she didn’t make a sound, her lips pressed tightly together as to not let a single sob escape.

  She was maybe ten or so, younger than him. He didn’t know her but he was drawn to her, felt for her. He’d seen a picture in the paper of Mr. Cassidy and put the pieces together—it was probably her dad.

  Brennen fidgeted, frowning at the grass at his feet, glancing up every few seconds at the sad, pretty girl. The pieces filled in bit by bit, what he read in the paper and what he’d overheard his mom and dad say. Mr. Cassidy had a heart attack. The ice queen there was his wife, the little blonde girls his stepdaughters. He had one child himself, and her mother died years ago.

  Poor Gina, his mom had said this morning, absently and more to herself than him, while Brennen was getting ready. Poor little Gina has no one.

  Gina Cassidy. The girl with the big daisy.

  As if sensing him watching her, her doe eyes turned up and met his.

  Brennen’s fidgeting grew worse, his feet itching to move and take him over there, but then his mom’s hand clamped on his shoulder, her murmured voice reminding him to stand still. He turned a brief scowl up at her and then glanced back at Gina. She’d once again turned her gaze downward, silently crying.

  Proper etiquette was to offer sympathy, he knew—he’d been schooled by his mom all morning to be polite and say “I’m sorry for your loss”—but he was too far away to say that, not without looking stupid. And it seemed inadequate. “I’m sorry for your loss.” How about sorry for the fact she had no one now, her own dad gone, and she was living with some lady who didn’t even cry at her husband’s grave?

  But Brennen couldn’t say any of that, so he stood there feeling badly while the minister began to speak, droning on about God and heaven and not saying a wo
rd about the little girl who lost everything.

  Chapter One

  Gina Cassidy was covered in flour from head to toe.

  Literally. It dusted her dark hands, wrists, and straight up to her elbows, powdered her red apron like misshapen polka dots, and every time she swiped the back of her hand over her forehead, she left streaks of it across her face. Her hair, light brown streaked with dark blonde, was held back in a net and thankfully missed the worst of it, but flour dotted the tops of her bare feet as well. Someone hadn’t put the lid on the all-purpose flour canister properly and she paid for it when it tumbled from the top shelf.

  At least I got the worst of it off the floor.

  She moved the cookie sheet with rolled biscuits from the counter to the preheated oven, brushed a towel over her hands to create some semblance of order, and began wiping down the white granite counter.

  The base of the bakery’s kitchen was white, all white. White subway tile walls polished weekly to a shine, the floor was white and similarly gleaming. Why white when it stained so easily, she didn’t know—before her dad died, the floors were worn creaky hardwood that had seen her tiny feet racing back and forth as a small child, and the walls were a cheerful blue and white check that had faded from the sun streaming in the back windows over the years.

  But Maureen Chandler-Cassidy had changed all that during the past decade when she took over. She wanted white, she said, because the place should be clean and pristine for handling food. More like cold and sterile, Gina had thought, but she said nothing. She couldn’t object, after all. Not when Maureen changed the bakery’s name from Bella’s—after Gina’s late mother—to Sweet Haven. Not when her expensive renovations turned the bakery into something Gina barely recognized. Not when a ridiculous number of orders added up, more than Gina could handle in a day, because Maureen wanted the income and wouldn’t decline a client no matter the strain on their resources.

  If Gina looked carefully, she could still glimpse the bones of what used to be Bella’s. Her mind would fill in the details missing—the old needlepoint picture that said “Stressed Is Desserts Spelled Backwards” with a cupcake below it that always made her smile; her mom’s apron hanging on the back of the door, tattered-edged but clean and waiting there in memory long after her death; the open mason jar on the windowsill with fresh cinnamon sticks spicing the air when the sun hit them.

  Now the needlepoint was gone—Maureen didn’t like “clutter”. The apron had been trashed when Gina’s father’s body was barely cold—“That moth-eaten thing carries germs,” Maureen had said. And under the fresh smell of whatever items were currently in the oven hovered the scent of sharp pine-tinged cleaning products rather than cinnamon.

  But still, Gina remained. Adapting, trying to keep up, holding her tongue no matter how much she wanted to speak. The bakery was her father’s legacy, the resting place of most of her remaining memories of her mother. She couldn’t bring herself to leave. Not yet, anyway.

  The bell chimed over the door in the front room. Tamara was supposed to be working the counter today but, like most days, Gina knew she wouldn’t be. She had half a mind to leave her stepsister to get caught but it probably wouldn’t do any good—Maureen excused away any flaws her own daughters had, after all, and Tamara was the younger of the two, pretty much immune to any scrutiny.

  Gina slipped off her apron, hung it beside the door not far from where her mother’s used to go, and grabbed a fresh towel to run over her skin. A glimpse in the silver-framed mirror over the porcelain hand washing sink—cleanliness is next to godliness, Maureen’s voice parroted in her head—revealed flour streaks over her forehead and a clump of it somehow on her cheek, but otherwise it wasn’t that bad. She ran the hand towel over her face swiftly. It would have to do. She didn’t wear makeup—what was the point?—and no one paid attention to her anyway. She slipped the hairnet off her head and hung it over the pristine edge of the sink, shaking out her mane of sun-streaked curls.

  Her clothes were plain, a faded-black boat neck T-shirt and cropped denim pants that were once indigo but now light blue. She’d worn her stepsisters’ hand-me-downs growing up, but their body types were all different and she picked up her own clothes at the Sally Ann. And her clothing wasn’t proper, Maureen said with a critical eye, but Gina didn’t see the big deal when she stood behind the damn counter—no one saw what she was wearing anyway.

  She slipped through the white-curtained doorway into the main room of the bakery, which was just as blindingly pale and dull as the backroom but for the pops of color from the carefully decorated baked goods in the streak-free glass cases around the room.

  Immediately Gina’s gaze went to the cash register—no one was there, Tamara having taken off at some point that afternoon. When they were still in high school, she would use the “homework” excuse, but she had no such reason to leave her post now. She was likely out with her sister and friends. Anyone could’ve walked in and taken off with the antique-style cash register before Gina realized and there would’ve been nothing she could do about it.

  She moved behind the counter, padding barefoot across the tile—Maureen would kill her for not putting on shoes, but she likely wouldn’t be by to notice—and paused with a weary smile near the register. “Can I help...you?”

  One of the two tall men peering at the display across the store glanced over his shoulder at her. An odd tangle of emotion rushed through her at the sight.

  Brennen Prescott.

  Son of the senior partner at Midsummer’s single law firm, devilishly good looking. His height topped 6’2”, body was lithe and muscular beneath his well-cut casual clothes. A white pine-stripe button down with the sleeves rolled up complimented his tan skin, and he wore black slacks tailored to him. His dark brown hair hung loose, a few weeks past a needed haircut, but it somehow only made him sexier.

  Which annoyed her to no end because he’d made her life hell as a teenager.

  Granted, that was years ago, and her opinion of him had softened since. Even as her brain leapt up to remind her how often she was in trouble—and hurt—because he and his friends had done something, the truth was that his misbegotten youth seemed behind him. And if he sensed anything was wrong, he didn’t show it. His lips—where her gaze was almost always drawn far too quickly—pulled into a grin upon seeing her, and he offered a small wave.

  She wiggled her fingers in a wave back, her heart skipping happily even as she tried to deny it.

  There was that time when he was fifteen and she was thirteen, and his little crew of hellions egged and toilet papered the store. Which she had to clean. And when he and his friend grabbed some cookies without paying. Which she had to work off. And when the group of them had tossed water balloons at her when she was on her way into the store after school. Which forced her home to change so she was late for her shift. Each time, she’d received a sound beating from Maureen, and that was enough to make her resent him.

  But time had mellowed him and by his late teens, he was sweet and friendly, casting off the “bad” element he’d hung out with. A week after the cookie incident, he’d dropped by and paid for the stolen items. It wouldn’t undo the beating he didn’t know she’d received, so she didn’t tell Maureen but pocketed the money herself. It had been enough to soften her view of him.

  Now Brennen dropped by just often enough that she knew him but not quite enough to be considered a regular, so she never knew when he’d stop in, making it a pleasant surprise.

  “Looking for anything in particular?” she offered. Is it bad that I hope he says yes and looks at me? Probably, but she was so exhausted from working all the time, silly fantasies like that were all she had.

  “The secretary at Mike’s office was going on about your butter tarts,” Brennen said.

  Mike, she assumed, was his friend—a man his height but a bit older, late-twenties perhaps, with short auburn hair and a dark suit, his whole look reminding her of secret service guys from movies, serious and lethal. H
e gave her the briefest of glances but his face was stony. He wandered in front of the display, looking it up and down. His movements were careful and deliberate, not the easy openness of Brennen.

  “We have several types of butter tarts in the display to your right,” she called to Mike. “The white chocolate raspberry drizzle is my personal favorite.”

  Mike nodded but otherwise didn’t acknowledge her.

  Well, she’d be pleasant because she had to be with customers, but the guy left her unsettled.

  Brennen left his friend and strolled up to the counter, giving her a wicked smile that sent her pulse fluttering. “What’s the baker’s special today?”

  “Caramel brownies.” Gina lifted the glass top on the pedestal dish near the cash register where samples of said brownies waited, cut into bite-sized pieces and each with a toothpick in the top.

  Brennen stopped there and eyed them, near enough that Gina breathed in the scent of his spicy aftershave. It had a hint of cinnamon, and the irrational sense of home washed over her. He selected a brownie, lifted it on the toothpick, and popped it in his mouth.

  His eyes closed and he let out a satisfied sigh. “I think you’re magic, Gina.”

  When he looked at her again, she knew she was positively beaming. “Family recipe.”

  “Then you come from a magical family.”

  Her smile wilted a little, the hollow ache of sorrow pulling at her heart, and she braced for him to tease her.

  Brennen noticed and winced. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. He reached out, fingers brushing hers gently, and a sudden thrilling jolt rushed through her at the contact.