All for Love : A Reverse Age Gap, Forced Proximity, Fake Dating Hockey Romance (Rock City Romance Book 3)

Olive was rebuilding her life and business. She didn’t want or need any distractions but she did need a place to stay.

Jacob needed his rookie year on the Rock City Raccoons to be flawless. He needed to maintain focus above all else to accomplish his goals and help his family. He also needed his help with his dog who was having a hard time adjusting to city life and a girlfriend to demonstrate his stability and commitment. 

A deal is struck between Olive and Jacob but will they be able to ignore the growing connection between them?

Oh and then there is the fact that Jacob hasn’t even kissed a girl much less anything else.

***

Chapter 1

Olive

Today was a bad day to be celibate. It was like being at the best buffet in Vegas with a wired shut jaw.

Not that even before my solemn vow, I would be hooking up with potential customers. That was just messy. And I don’t do messy. Anymore.

I may have issued the “Closed Do Not Enter” sign on my vagina, but today temptation took the form of a room full of young muscular men, in workout gear, all looking at me with hunger in their eyes.

“Gentlemen and beasts, I give you Chef Olive Pedersen.”

My cue.

Picturing the audience naked, the age-old public speaking cliche was not going to help me here. After years of no sex, it would only make the situation worse. Much worse. Especially when it came to that guy.

Don’t look. Don’t look.

I looked.

It wasn’t hard to find him. He was the biggest and the broadest in a room full of giants. He was fresh, clean, and square-jawed like a superhero in a room full of handsome faces, even with the acquired lumps and bumps of their chosen vocation. 

For Christ’s sake, he had dimples framing the corners of his mouth. And dimples that needed very little encouragement, just the slightest twinge of his mouth, and they would appear, making him look even younger than his twenty-three years of age. Yeah. Twenty-three. I was well past twenty-three. And then some.

Dark blond hair curled around the edges of his cap. Without the cap, his hair would be an angelic mop of curls falling across his cheekbones. How did I know this? Some might call it research. Others might say my research on Jacob Reynolds went above and beyond preparation for a pitch to a potential customer and well into the realm of social media stalking. 

Those people would probably be correct.

My friend, Ginger, squeezed my arm in encouragement as she handed off the remote for the presentation screen.

Yes. I was here to pitch my business to this room full of professional hockey players. If even half of them became customers, it could steer the future of my work into something that I chose, in a way that I wanted to work, building a business that was all me, and not for anyone else - the fruition of several years of hustle. I needed this to work.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I’m Chef Olive Pedersen, head chef and owner of Level Up Cuisine, a prepared foods company. I prepare meals that meet the guidelines of your nutrition program while still pleasing the palate. The meals will be prepared for you and delivered to your homes every other day to maintain quality and freshness.” 

I gestured to the clipboards they held in their hands. “The guidelines might dictate calories and nutrient requirements, but I control the taste and quality. I source ingredients from local farms as much as possible.” 

As I flipped through slides that showed sample meals and described what was on the plate, I quickly scanned the room to gauge reactions. I seemed to have almost everyone’s attention. When I panned to the far left, Jacob’s gaze met mine and held. He nodded at me. Did he think I was checking him out? Because I wasn’t. I was just making sure he was engaged in the presentation.  Really. Truly.

I looked away and willed myself not to blush. I was a thirty-four-year-old woman, for goodness' sake, overgrown young men barely out of their teens, ten-plus years my junior, did not, or at least should not, make me blush. And besides, I was done with men, done, done, done. Permanently. 

But my ears always betrayed me. They burned like bright red orbs on either side of my face at the slightest provocation. My mother called them my traffic lights. With my hair pulled back and tucked into the black baker’s cap on my head, there was no hiding my reaction to getting caught checking out Jacob Reynolds. I could feel the burn building. 

Ginger caught my eye, looking for the signal. I nodded. She and her interns turned to the warming cases I brought and started delivering trays. Each tray indicated the player's name for whom it had been customized and contained two-bite portions of sample entrees.  

“I noted the travel schedule. Food will not be delivered while you are away on road trips, but fresh meals will be waiting for you when you arrive home.”

“Why should we buy from you rather than from one of those food subscription boxes that get mailed to the house?” someone asked.

“Good question,” I answered. “The subscription boxes deliver ingredients and recipes. Most of the time, the food in those boxes is not prepared. If prepared in advance, it could be days old by the time it is packaged and shipped. And the menus are generic; you might be able to pick likes and dislikes and general health guidelines. The food I’m offering is completely customized and already cooked for you by me and my team of professional chefs.” 

Maybe I was overstating a bit when I mentioned my ‘team.’ It was really just me and a part-time sous chef. But hopefully, as I expanded the business, the ‘professional team’ would become less of a stretch. “My service provides food cooked for you and delivered directly to your refrigerator. All you have to do is re-warm and eat. We are talking minutes from fridge to plate, not an hour of reading instructions, prep, and cooking. My services are fully customized to your needs, preferences, and schedules. You won’t be getting that from a mail-order subscription box.” I saw several heads nod. It looked like I was hooking them. 

“Many of my ingredients are sourced from local farms.” I motioned to the screen that displayed the list of local farms I work with. I stole a look at Jacob under my lashes to see what his response would be. My research told me he grew up on a small family farm in Maine. His eyes were flitting back and forth to the screen, and he seemed to be taking notes. Huh. I gave them handouts on their clipboards. Did I leave out important information? I did a quick look around; no one else was taking notes.

I grabbed the next tray on the rack to help get the samples out faster. I noticed it was assigned to Jacob. I glanced around to see if Ginger or any of the interns were available; the tips of my ears were still burning from being caught checking him out. But the others were still delivering the trays they’d taken. I would just have to ovary-up and take the tray to Jacob myself. And besides, I wanted to see what he was writing down. 

I walked towards the too-young-and-hot hockey player, looking at the floor to avoid potential tripping hazards, or so I told myself. But I could feel his eyes on me the entire way. When I got to his seat, he reached out to take the tray from me; his large, calloused hands covered my own. 

“Thank you,” he murmured just loud enough for my ears only. 

I looked at his face then. His gaze held mine a beat longer than was necessary. His finger grazed my wrist, probably by accident. But it also seemed like he traced the tattoo on my wrist. Was I imagining it?

“You're welcome,” I squeaked out before scurrying away.

Damn. I forgot to look at the clipboard. 

The room grew quiet momentarily as the men began to sample the food. There were grunts and groans of approval. I smiled. I knew it all tasted good. I tasted everything over and over to make sure I got it right. I snuck a look at Jacob. He was staring at me while he chewed. He wiped a stray crumb from his lips with his napkin.

I could lick that crumb.

I shook my head. What was wrong with me? I was finished with men. In the two years since I walked away from my ex and the giant mess surrounding him, there’d been no one, not even a flirtation or a spark of interest on my part, on purpose, and I liked it that way. And that wasn’t going to change. After that last disastrous break-up, and the resulting therapy to help put the pieces of myself back together, I needed to put myself first and stop being such a people pleaser. Celibacy was the way. But intentional celibacy didn’t address the feelings downstairs inspired by a room full of hot hockey players. Well, at least one hot hockey player in particular.

“What if I’m not home at the time of delivery?” one player asked.

“If you live in a building with lobby staff, which about half of you do, they will be facilitating the delivery from the door to your apartment,” Ginger answered as she joined me up front to field questions.

“But what if you don't live in The Hamilton?” Jacob Reynolds asked.

God. His voice. It was a deep, deep rumble. Not loud. Actually kind of quiet, like I wanted to lean in so I could be sure of what he was saying. The sort of rumble I heard with my whole body, not just my burning-bright-red ears.

“We will make arrangements with Olive. We could give her team a passkey to your apartment, like we give the cleaning services,” Ginger suggested.

Jacob shook his head. “I don't want a ton of people traipsing through my loft.”

“What’re ya worried about, Dimps? Do ya think someone will post pictures online of all that cow porn you have stashed under the bed?,” one of the other players jabbed at Jacob.

Jacob turned in the player’s direction, grinned, and gave him a single-finger salute before returning to Ginger and me for our response. 

“I promise you, Mr. Reynolds, my staff is trustworthy and will respect your privacy,” I assured him. 

“Everyone is trustworthy until they aren't. I would feel much better if you would handle the deliveries personally, Chef Pedersen. No one is more trustworthy than the person with the most skin in the game,” Jacob explained.

Ginger turned to me with a raised eyebrow. She knew how much I needed this to work. And Jacob Reynolds had a point. As much as I would rather spend my time planning menus and making the food rather than delivering it, if it made the players feel better about hiring my services, I would do what needed to be done. 

“Mr. Reynolds. I will handle the deliveries personally for those not at The Hamilton.” What else could I do? Say no, and lose business? This model of meal delivery was what I was hoping would give me normal work hours and a sustainable income. No more late nights making and serving food at someone else’s party. No more eighteen-hour days, and maybe, just maybe, I could get a day off occasionally. And a dog. I really just wanted a dog.

The corner of Jacob Reynolds’ mouth turned up. Not a full-blown smile, more of a nod to his victory. And those dimples. Shit. They did something to a girl.