Hot for the Jerk

Welcome to San Camanez, a humble, peaceful little island in the Puget Sound and home to the Vino Vixens. Four cousins—and single moms—who run a vineyard, love the wine they sell, raise their kids together, and still hold out hope that not all men are the like ones they married. This is Raina’s story …

Jagger

Raina Aaronson is my nemesis. The Poison Ivy to my Batman, the Fem-Bot to my Austin Powers. Wherever she is, so is a guaranteed bad time. So when the two of us wind up stranded, unable to get home, with just one bed left at the Inn, the only reasonable thing to do to pass the time is get drunk.

Raina

Jagger McEvoy can sleep in the woodshed for all I care. That bearded nuisance is the contaminated cork in my merlot. The black rot on my grapes. However, when the power goes out at the B&B, he goes all out helping the guests, making sure they’re safe, warm and comfortable—taking his shirt off in the process.Wait, so this man isn’t the irritating, self-serving asshat I thought he was? He actually cares? And not just for me, but for my son as well.Because when danger comes knocking on my door, threatening the safety and peace I’ve so carefully curated for my family, Jagger might be the only person able to stop it.Unless I screw things up first.

“Jag!” 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 winterberry ale with me as I made my way over to my brother with zero hurry in my step. “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 by the shoulder and gave a brotherly squeeze.

I rolled my eyes.

“He’s not saying no,” Vica said with hope in her voice, her Italian accent extra thick since she was on at least her second glass of wine. “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, Bryan Adams, came on. I glared at Wyatt. He knew that 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 setup 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 catlike 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 the karaoke machine.

“Yesssss!” Vica cheered. “I knew it!”

I reached for the microphone just as Bryan 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 of the screen. I knew the 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 but Raina Aaronson.

I snorted and smiled even wider as I sang, 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 really 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 a very boney elbow abruptly shoved me off of stage and the microphone was snatched from my hand. Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” came up on the screen, the first few chords of the intro filling the room.

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

Heat filled my face and belly.

Nobody had ever pushed my buttons the way this prickly little porcupine of a 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 up 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 out.

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 darker, Wyatt and Dom had 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 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—mine was the lightest—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.

My brothers and I all stood at the bar, sipping beer and watching Raina sing her heart out when Vica joined us, along with Clint’s woman, Brooke. Both of them wore 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 were 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 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’s duet “Islands in the Stream” started to play. Nobody had sung yet, but it was an easily recognizable song. It was one my parents always listened 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—who had also just turned seven—raced around me, grabbed me by the belt loops, 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 like a bear 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. She was still early in her pregnancy, so we weren’t telling anybody, but the morning sickness seemed to be spreading into most of the day these days.

The kids still pushed me from behind, and Griffon was still pulling on my belt loops. 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 was 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 flared 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 sang 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?