Love at the Electric (A Port Bristol Novel Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  LOVE AT THE ELECTRIC

  Acknowledgments

  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

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  LOVE AT THE ELECTRIC

  JENN HUGHES

  SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

  New York

  LOVE AT THE ELECTRIC

  Copyright©2018

  JENN HUGHES

  Cover Design by Fiona Jayde

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Published in the United States of America by

  Soul Mate Publishing

  P.O. Box 24

  Macedon, New York, 14502

  ISBN: 978-1-68291-729-9

  www.SoulMatePublishing.com

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  It seems strange to thank my family here because

  that’s like saying, “Thanks for letting me spend hours

  writing about fake movies and the romances

  and sex lives of imaginary people.”

  So I definitely won’t thank my wonderful,

  supportive family. Nope, not one word of gratitude

  for allowing me the opportunity to dream up

  such a fun story.

  (Seriously, though, you’re the best.)

  Acknowledgments

  To Caroline Tolley, whose intimidatingly brilliant resume speaks for itself, I want to express my deepest gratitude. She, as well as everyone at Soul Mate Publishing, took a chance on an unsure thing. I want to thank you for the time and effort you put into shaping this story, and for your thoroughness and patience throughout the process.

  I also want to extend my warmest thanks to Belea T. Keeney, editor extraordinaire. Thank you for all the encouragement and unfailing support, and for never giving up even when I had.

  Chapter 1

  Friends and Lovers . . .

  and Big Brown Walking Carpets

  I look fantastic.

  Lillian Walker zeroed in on the killer cleavage peeking out from a plunging lace-paneled yoke top, and promptly scowled at her reflection in the fitting room mirror.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, tugging off the blouse.

  Her only remaining option had been officially banished to the fitting room return rack—along with the ten other fantastic tops she’d had the misfortune of trying on.

  The tightrope she walked, the one separating the necessity of looking phasers-on-stunning while appearing completely disinterested, allowed for no leaning too far in one direction or the other. A reunion with Richard Bryant, their first in fifteen years, demanded careful consideration of absolutely everything.

  The fact she’d agreed to meet him at nine o’clock on a Saturday night already came across as yellow-light behavior. A dangerously low neckline would serve no purpose other than to send him mixed signals he’d only interpret as green.

  Green lights in low lights are how you got into trouble before . . .

  For the better part of her afternoon, Lillian had caged herself in a fitting room inside one of Port Bristol’s trendy downtown clothing shops. A fitting room obviously doubling as a portal to another dimension. Every single top she’d tried on looked fabulous on her. That was a big problem.

  The peach cashmere sweater she loved looked too much like bare skin.

  A shimmery burgundy top screamed disco on the rack, then purred sexy when she tried it on.

  She didn’t need to leave little to that legal Lothario Richard’s imagination but, there she stood—gorgeous in everything for the first time. The wrong time. Lillian glanced at her watch and groaned. Less than three hours left until the big meet-up.

  After slipping back into her soft gray sweater, she grabbed her coat and handbag and resumed her search through the hipster secondhand clothing jungle known as Back to the Fashion. Another mistake on her growing list—thinking any store with a size zero mannequin wearing only thong underwear and a black leather motorcycle jacket might contain anything appropriate for her.

  But her biggest mistake remained her agreement to meet with an old college flame. In a bar. His idea, of course. Same old Richard. Alcohol might have impaired her judgment in the past, but she’d learned to avoid making gin-soaked bad decisions.

  As she weaved between the store’s clothing racks, the glint from a pair of sequined black spandex tights caught her eye. She pulled them off a shelf and twirled them in the light.

  “Not even in the womb was I young enough for these,” she grumbled, folding them up before placing them neatly back on the shelf.

  She checked her watch again. Barely time to check out one more store. As she turned to leave, Lillian bumped into a rack of men’s clothing. Fedoras and bottles of beard oil teetered on the top shelf, and a very suitable piece of evening attire grabbed her attention.

  “Perfect. White, boring, big, and button-up,” she said, plucking a men’s dress shirt from the rack.

  She spotted a pink stain on the sleeve. Bonus. She’d look like she didn’t give a shit . . . even if she did. A little.

  She had to look great, but not too great.

  Hot, but not so hot as to seem interested.

  Flawless, but not so put together it looked like she’d spent hours picking out the right outfit.

  Kinda failing on that last one.

  A tired sigh crept out. Regardless of where exactly she had to fall on the barometric scale of h
otness, Lillian knew what she wanted out of her evening. It was simple. Newly separated Richard Bryant needed to realize that leading her on in college while keeping their relationship a secret and then dumping her without so much as an explanation had not affected her. And then he needed to choke on that realization.

  So all Lillian had to do was appear fantastically indifferent while doing everything in her power not to tip him off that he had, in fact, significantly affected her. Piece of cake.

  On her beeline back to the fitting room, a very blond obstacle hopped into Lillian’s path. “Oh, you found something. I was coming over to ask if you needed help,” said the young saleswoman with a smile.

  “Thanks, but I found exactly what I needed.”

  Lillian tried to squeeze past the woman but, like a mongoose in sprayed-on jeans, she moved and blocked Lillian’s path.

  “Going for an Annie Hall look?”

  “No, but it’s nice to meet someone so young who likes older movies.”

  The woman looked confused, like an adorable but annoying baby deer. “Huh?”

  “You know, the movie. Annie Hall. I was thinking how this looks like—”

  “Oh! So that’s a movie? Jacinda Shields, you know, the supermodel, was on the cover of Saveur magazine wearing a men’s dress shirt and tie and it said Annie Hall, so I thought it must have been a designer.”

  Lillian tried not to roll her eyes. They were soooo old they might pop out of her head in a puff of dust. “Yes, it’s a movie, and no, not going specifically for that look. I need something simple for tonight. Drinks with an old college friend. Nothing too tight or revealing—at all.”

  “A guy friend?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “We have lots of better options than a men’s dress shirt for a hot date.”

  “It’s not a hot date. Or a lukewarm or even cold one. It’s an accident. We used to . . . know one another. And we reconnected recently. I mean, we work in the same field, but I managed to avoid him for months. Then he found me on social media, and we started catching up on there. And over the phone. When he asked me to meet him for drinks, it caught me off guard, and I agreed because my brain momentarily stopped functioning . . . ”

  Lillian bit her tongue way too late. Good attorneys didn’t have loose lips, and so to describe herself as guarded was an understatement but, there she stood, about to tell a complete stranger her most private thoughts. To admit to herself that Richard’s infectious sort of septic charm still turned her mind to mush was one thing, but to tell her new nameless BFF was quite another.

  Maybe my biggest mistake is thinking I can be friends with the man who helped turn my love life into a nuclear wasteland.

  She looked down at the rumpled shirt in her hands. A cotton suit of armor. Bright white and a size too large. Ready to defend her against unwanted advances by leaving her pale skin looking washed out and her brown hair as dull as dishwater. Lillian crushed the soft fabric in her fist. She was over Richard and everything he’d done to her. Now she had to prove it.

  After a quick glance at the price tag, and the subsequent realization she could have spent the money on at least five pints of gourmet ice cream, Lillian squared her shoulders and smiled.

  “You know what? I’m not even going to try it on. I’ll take it.”

  At the front of the shop, Lillian stared out of the windows while waiting for the saleswoman to ring up the shirt. The other storefronts on the street practically glowed, their facades adorned with twinkling Christmas lights and decorations. Through gently falling snow, pedestrians passed by with shopping bags in their hands and contagious smiles on their faces. Her new town cultivated a quirky kind of happiness unlike anywhere else she’d lived.

  Port Bristol was fresh in the spring, sparkling in summer, crisp in autumn—basically a fabric refresher commercial. But winter stole the show, and her first Christmas in the East Coast’s version of Silicon Valley appeared destined for perfection. Ten months since moving from Boston and she didn’t miss it at all.

  Although, in those ten months she’d had very little time to explore much of the city. Nights spent shackled to an office desk tended to keep a woman preoccupied. Hours whittled away while catching up on patent filings and the variety of lawsuits her new employer enjoyed bringing on anyone who looked at him cross-eyed left her with little . . . well, no spare time for fun.

  Such is the life, or lack thereof, of an intellectual property attorney.

  Not that Lillian complained. Her position on the legal team of one of the country’s leading software firms was a massive step up from the private firm in Boston. It meant more.

  More money.

  More respect.

  More work.

  More work.

  Oh, and more work . . .

  Two hairy brown aliens walked past the windows, interrupting her train of thought. Complete, head-to-toe Quasar Crusades Koowiee costumes. Lush brown locks covered their entire bodies. They looked like adorable walking carpets. Lillian grinned.

  “I love this city. Honestly, where else in the world would you find an entire downtown dedicated to cosplay on the weekends?” she quietly commented while admiring a stopped car with gull-wing doors that had been decked out to look like a big-screen time machine. “And then, bright and early on Monday morning, everyone’s back in the office, inventing the future.”

  “Yeah, that’s Port Bristol for you,” said the saleswoman as she handed Lillian her change. “Origin and Mythos and the other tech companies setting up shop transformed this town. It used to be a teeny little fishing village only tourists found interesting. But that was forever ago.”

  “And by forever, you mean . . . ”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “Like, 2006. Anyway, I love how much Port Bristol has grown. Sure, traffic is terrible with all the tiny streets, and my grandmother calls the tech district the fourth circle of Hell. But I get the local discount on Origin’s new cell phones, so I’m cool with it. And you wouldn’t believe the number of superheroes and sci-fi characters who hit on me when I go out after work. So much fun.”

  With a smile on her face, Lillian left the shop and stepped into an increasingly cranky winter storm. Gently falling snow had quickly segued into a face-slapping tempest of ice and wind, and a growing throng of holiday shoppers slowed Lillian’s pace to dial-up speed on the journey back to her apartment several blocks north of downtown. But when she reached the brick storefront of century-old Trescott’s Tailors and spotted a group of red-shirted ensigns, blaster-toting troopers, and mountain trolls huddled together beneath the shop’s black awnings, she couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdly awesome sight.

  Never was the fusion of old New England and modern innovation more apparent than when walking down Port Bristol’s LED-lined sidewalks. Antique cast-iron streetlamps had been deemed inefficient, and so cracked brick walkways laid in the nineteenth century now accommodated thin strips of glowing white diodes. The upgrade, a hot-button topic nearly defeated by a fervent local anti-tech group, not only helped melt ice but also made maneuvering easier as evening fell.

  Nearby, a gang of autonomous industrial street cleaners the size of hubcaps whirred past. Each of the silver UFOs amazingly avoided a fire-engine red cargo truck, one that looked to have lumbered right out of 1949, and continued on with their upkeep of the city’s pristine cobblestone streets. But despite all of the excitement of Port Bristol on a Saturday evening and her victory in finding the perfect-not-perfect shirt, something gnawed at Lillian while she stood beneath Gallagher Construction’s large saw blade sign and waited for a red crosswalk light to change.

  Her heart started pounding in her chest, and she couldn’t ignore it. Fifteen years of regret suddenly came to a head. No shrugging off the intense pressure from it. No covering it up with confidence. She tugged at the suffocating collar o
f her coat.

  What if I can’t pull off a realization force-choke?

  Like most high-caliber attorneys, Richard had a habit of using any means possible to win—especially when it came to romantic entanglements. So his recent onslaught of innuendo-laden texts had left Lillian on edge and wondering what in the hell he had up his sleeve.

  After connecting with Richard on LifeLink, four weeks had passed with nothing more than occasionally liking each other’s updates or photos. No big deal. Then, out of the blue, he’d asked to meet for drinks. She’d agreed—and suddenly Lillian had started waking up to texts like:

  Richard Bryant: Remember when we made out at . . .

  Insert any location at the end. She had a lot more energy in college. But for all his reminiscing over their hot-blooded history, he’d never said a word about the one thing that had wounded her already weakened heart all those years ago. Not a single mention of completely forgetting to break things off with her before he proposed to Emily Bradshaw over Christmas break.

  Happy New Year and hello wedding invite. Plus one is a bottomless pit of depression.

  Lillian had never asked why. Never confronted him. Of course she’d wondered, but she was too ashamed to say anything. So she’d kept quiet, stayed strong, and never let herself get into the position of caring so much it hurt when a relationship ended. And she deserved a damn medal for never having been bothered since.

  But coming face-to-face with that roundhouse-kick-to-the-heart named Richard had stirred up more than she anticipated. The years hadn’t dulled her insecurities as much as she’d thought. Lillian shook her head and took a calming breath of painfully cold air. Traffic finally stopped. The crowd around her surged forward, leaving her alone on the sidewalk.

  A few more breaths of evergreen and exhaust fumes slowed her galloping heart. She reminded herself that this time, she was in control—not competition. No one to impress. She knew what she wanted and how to get it. Nothing held her back.