Brewing Temptation: A slow burn, fake dating, small town romance. (Nomadic Rhodes) by Sydne Barnett

Author:Sydne Barnett [Barnett, Sydne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798986814360
Publisher: Flame & Fiction LLC
Published: 2023-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

“Look! El, it’s like a little fairy garden.”

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you the best damn part of our hellish, eternally damp island was the way the sun lit up the forest. You know, when it dared to make an appearance. Everything was green here. Even the tree trunks were half consumed by emerald moss. Blankets of it hung from branches and coated the dirt. Noel had been exuberantly exploring her new surroundings like a six-year-old we surprised with a trip to Disney World. She gave off mad golden retriever energy, and I’d bitten back a smile more than once.

“Fiddlehead ferns!” Elora chirped back, skipping up beside her and grinning. El loved Mistyvale the most out of all of us kids. We might have all grown up here, but from the time she could talk, she romanticized everything. And I mean everything. We weren’t going grocery shopping, we were embarking on an adventure. We didn’t walk, we explored. That one time she fell in a puddle, she actually just learned what mud felt like beneath her clothes and decided it wasn’t for her. But kudos to that kid in class who liked to bathe in it. More power to you, man.

I’d always assumed she was an oddity—one of her kind—but as she knelt beside a beaming Noel to study the way the fiddleheads curled in on themselves in a tight little spiral, I realized Brin and I had been correct in assuming there were actually two of them. Go fucking figure.

“They’re so cute. When they unfurl, they look like tiny little dancers.” Elora gave an apt imitation of the way the leaves uncurled. “Faeries really would love them. I wonder if they have these in Ireland.”

“You can eat ‘em,” I added as Elora yammered on about her deep adoration of the little greens.

“What?!” Noel gasped, turning to face me with comically wide eyes. My shrug was evidently unsatisfactory as that adorable face was turning scowl-like. Max, ever the hero, had to pipe in, for once in my favor.

“Nah, he’s right, Noelie. As kids we’d all harvest them and cook them right up. Honestly, this place is a forager’s paradise.”

“Hunting and fishing are both abundant too.” Judging by the wrinkle in her little freckled nose, she didn’t much care for my addition. “I didn’t say you had to do it.”

“Good, thank you. Once it’s dead and dismembered, it’s easier to stomach eating something that was perfectly content, minding its business.”

“Jesus,” I said, fighting back my smile as I shook my head. Max’s knowing attention chapped my hide, his smirk growing as he bypassed me, a hand on a mossy trunk for balance, and I pretended not to notice him. “Brutal.”

“Am I wrong?” she said with a reserved giggle.

“S’pose not.”

“Suppose,” she scoffed, accepting my outstretched hand as she stepped over a log. “What do you suppose? I said it how it is.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Just hadn’t heard anyone say it that way, that was all. Now I was losing the fight with my face, trying not to grant her a smile.

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