The Matchstick Grill (The Feminine Mesquite Book 4) Read online

  The Matchstick Grill

  The Feminine Mesquite, Book 4

  Sable Sylvan

  www.sablesylvan.com

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek: “Little Red Hot Sauce”

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Sable Sylvan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Foreword

  Dear readers,

  You can buy all the hot sauces and sweet teas featured in this series online. You can find links to these items on www.shopsablesylvan.com . The hot sauces are by a company called Mo Hotta Mo Betta, fulfilled through Zazzle. The teas are fulfilled by a company called Adagio Teas through their website. All teas can be enjoyed hot or cold, with or without sweetener. To make a delicious iced sweet tea, make your tea hot, add as much sugar or sweetener as you want/can, and then, chill the tea in the fridge or with ice.

  The Cinderella Cook-Off:

  Alice and Herb’s story

  Jalapeño ‘Secret Sauce’

  Watermelon Sweet Tea (herbal, no caffeine)

  Beauty And The BBQ:

  Abigail and Clove’s story

  Roasted habanero ‘Awesome Sauce’

  Mint Julep Sweet Tea (chocolate mint green tea)

  Spicy Beauty:

  Addison and Sage’s story

  Adobo chipotle ‘No Bullshizz Sauce’

  Raspberry Sweet Tea (black tea)

  The Matchstick Grill:

  Cayenne and Basil’s story

  Cayenne garlic ‘Fated Mate Sauce’

  Peach Sweet Tea (black tea)

  Little Red Hot Sauce:

  Savina and Mace’s story

  Savina habanero ‘Alpha Sauce’

  Lemon Sweet Tea (black tea)

  Yours truly,

  Sable Sylvan

  Prologue

  May

  The Quincy Sisters and Scoville Brothers had flown back to Fallowedirt, Texas to the Mesquite Manor just in time to leave again to make it to Abigail ‘Abby O’ Olivia Quincy’s graduation. All eight of the younger siblings had finished school a few weeks earlier. Abigail’s fiancée, Clove, was on the plane, ready to surprise her by showing up at her graduation. As Cayenne ‘Kai’ Quincy sat in the first-class section, which was pretty much entirely booked by the now joint Quincy-Scoville clan, she couldn’t help but reflect on how different things had become in the last year.

  Cayenne and her sisters had met the Scoville Brothers at the end of the last summer. Alice ‘Allie Penny’ Penny Quincy, the oldest Quincy Sister, had met Herbert ‘Herb’ Scoville at her grandfather’s lawyer’s office after the reading of her grandfather Elijah’s will. Grandpa had left his hot sauce company and his recipes to Alice, but Herb’s grandfather Morten was Elijah’s rival. The former best friends had met during World War 2, the Norwegian polar bear shifter meeting the boy from a small Texas town who had big dreams after both were captured by the Nazis and placed in a prisoner of war camp. The one thing that the nobleman’s son and the son of a farmer had in common was a love of delicious food, and of course, everyone loves spicy meat. Morten claimed Elijah stole his recipes for hot sauce and sold them, so Herb had come to sue Elijah’s heir and retrieve the recipes, but instead, had found something more important than a family rivalry. He’d found true love, in the form of Alice, his Cinderella fated mate.

  The pair had purchased an old dilapidated mansion in Fallowedirt, Texas and fixed it up. They’d announced their engagement to the Quincy Sisters and the Scoville Brothers at their housewarming party in October. That December, the second eldest siblings went to the mansion, now renamed Mesquite Manor, to escape the drama that surrounded them back at their colleges, but instead, they had found true love. Alice’s younger sister, the second eldest Quincy, Abigail, and Herb’s younger brother, Clove, the future beta of the Scoville Polar clan, had fallen in love, the beauty and the beast becoming engaged on Christmas Day.

  That wasn’t the only thing that happened that Christmas. Herb had given each of the Quincy Sisters a special gift. Alice’s gift was a greenhouse. Abigail was given an epic graduation party in Denver, Colorado, which is where the ten siblings would be headed after her graduation ceremony.

  Addison had received the most special gift of all. Herb had arranged for Addison to attend the exclusive Bonimolean University, a university in the English countryside that Addison had dreamed of attending all her life. Addison was off to England with Clove to spend her spring semester at the school of her dreams. However, Addison wasn’t the only junior from their group that was attending Bonimolean that semester. The middle Quincy Sister, Addy, and the middle Scoville Brother, Sage, were stuck together in the same English literature class, assigned as partners for the semester. The bookish, quiet Addy and the bad boy Sage were confirmed to be fated mates, and after the Scoville Ball, Sage had proved he was serious about her by presenting her with a ring. Cayenne could hardly recognize her sister now. Sage had woken something inside of Addy. It was like he was a prince, waking up his sleeping beauty and helping her come out of a trance.

  The summer would come to a start after the graduation party, one last blowout before the season started. Summer wasn’t about to be a vacation. The agreement that the younger Quincy Sisters and the Scoville Brothers had made with their eldest siblings was clear. Their eldest siblings would pay for their college educations and grant them their shares of the company and the Scoville fortune if they put in the work to ensure that the hot sauce company owned by Alice and run by both Alice and Herb was a success.

  The hot sauce company, The Feminine Mesquite, had grown by leaps and bounds over the last few months. Alice and Herb had purchased a local mill building and repurposed it into a factory. They were providing the community of Fallowedirt with new jobs, breathing new life into the town. Hopefully, Fallowedirt would soon become the star of Bright Star County. Alice and Herb had also purchased a warehouse to store the excess sauce and to process larger orders, but of course, they kept Grandpa Elijah’s old storefront on Fallowedirt’s Main Street open.

  Every sibling had been briefed on their jobs for the summer and had started their jobs over the last week.

  Alice and Herb were the president and CEO of the company respectively. They were responsible for delegating the work and checking in on everyone.

  Abigail and Clove were going to be running the factory, as that job required the most responsibility. Clove had set things up before they had headed to Abigail’s college. They were responsible for ensuring that every sauce came out perfectly. There was their grandpa’s signature jalapeño ‘Secret Sauce.’ The first sauce that Allie and Herb had developed together, decoding Elijah’s recipes, was the roasted habanero ‘Awesome Sauce.’ Next was the sauce that was dedicated to Addy and Sage, the adobo chipotle ‘No Bullshizz Sauce.’ The only question was, what would be the next sauce to be developed, and could it prove to be an even bigger hit than the last sauces had been?

  Addy and Sage would be working the warehouse, with Addy working on the bookkeeping, naturally. Sage had a natu
rally dominant aura, even given his status as the future gamma of the Scoville Polar Clan, and he was a natural leader. It was hard to believe he wasn’t the alpha of his clan.

  The youngest siblings, Savina ‘Sav’ Quincy and Mason ‘Mace’ Scoville, did not get along at all. They were stuck minding the store on Main Street until they proved they could handle more responsibility. The only silver lining was that during the work day, Cayenne didn’t have to hear their bickering, but once they got home, all bets were off. After all, all nine siblings, soon to be joined by the tenth, were living in Mesquite Manor over the summer. They had been paired up with suitemates. Each suite consisted of two bedrooms, each bedroom attached to a private bathroom, a few closets, and a large shared room. Abigail and Clove had used their shared room as a study over winter break, and Addy and Sage were still figuring out how they wanted to set up their space so that Addy could read while Sage practiced piano. Sav and Mace couldn’t agree on what to do with their center room and fought about it over nightly dinners.

  That left Cayenne working and living with the other second youngest sibling…Basil Scoville, a man who always managed to irk her. Alice and Herb had purchased an empty restaurant on Main Street, next to the store. They were planning on making the store into a gift shop for the restaurant. People could browse the gift shop while waiting to be seated and sample sauces by The Feminine Mesquite in delicious food. The only question was, what kind of restaurant should they open? That’s where Cayenne and Basil came in. As Cayenne was a hospitality major and Basil was the most well-traveled of the Scoville siblings, not as bound to responsibilities at Scoville Manor as his older siblings, together, they would be able to come up with an awesome dining experience. At least, that was the plan. So far, Basil had shot down all her ideas for a traditional American eatery, and of course, Cayenne didn’t approve of any of Basil’s weird suggestions for food. Molecular gastronomy, with hot sauce caviar pearls and foams? There was no frikkin’ way the people of Bright Star County would go for that.

  She had to admit Basil wasn’t awful. They had their disagreements, but they didn’t exactly fight like Abigail and Clove had. It wasn’t as if he was intentionally trying to offend her, but he did. He was nearly more stuck up than he was handsome. They hadn’t talked more than they’d had to, because every time Basil made conversation with her, Cayenne gave polite responses, as Southern hospitality dictated, but did not engage fully in discussions with her counterpart. Every time he opened his mouth, he managed to stick his foot in it. It seemed as if every time that any of the Quincys had anything to say, he had to one-up them with a story of his own, about his travels. He’d been to more places in a year than most people went in their lives, jet-setting to different countries monthly for weekend trips. After all, he was a Scoville, and the Scovilles had a Viking heritage. They were hunters, explorers, and after the Viking Age ended, traders of exotic spices who hunted them to the ends of the earth. It was said once that there was nothing a Scoville loved more than spicy food except for spicy women.

  The polar bear shifter was one of the heirs to the billions of dollars of the Scoville fortune, even though he was just the future delta of the clan, below even the gamma in the line of succession. The only bear shifter lower than him was Mace, the omega, the one who had nothing to lose. As one of the Scoville heirs, Basil was attending Bonimolean University with Clove and Sage. Sage and Basil would be going back to Bonimolean in the fall for their junior years while Cayenne was going back to her college for junior year. While Cayenne would be doing an internship as part of her studies, as she was a hospitality major, Basil would be doing study abroad, again. That’s right. Basil had just gotten back from Brazil and was sporting a golden tan and suitcases full of stories…while Cayenne wasn’t able to travel at all, given that her program was so rigorous and required that she remain on campus for all but her last semester. She wouldn’t be able to travel until senior year.

  Basil was seated next to Cayenne, who was looking from the aisle seat at the siblings. He noticed her gaze. She looked like she was either bored or deep in thought.

  “Hey,” said Basil, reaching his hand out to gently touch Kai’s arm.

  Cayenne turned and looked down. Basil was touching her. His shifter paws were on her skin. All shifters had marks that denoted their species, and Basil, as a bear shifter, had two marks. The first was the mark on his chest, a mark that Cayenne had never seen. It was called a mate mark. Apparently, it showed up at around age eighteen and would tell a shifter who they were meant to be with. Cayenne wasn’t so sure that was true. It seemed like something out of a fairy tale. The other marks were on his hands. They were on his palms, on the bases of his fingers and over the flat of the palm. The marks were the marks of a bear’s paw. Basil’s hand was framed by his white shirt’s cuffs, linked to a sport jacket by Marsala ruby cufflinks.

  “Can I help you?” asked Cayenne, forcing a smile on her face as she took out her earbuds.

  “I was just wondering if you’d like to swap seats,” said Basil.

  “Why would I want to swap seats?” asked Cayenne warily.

  “Because you look like you want to watch something, and I’m sure the view outside is much more entertaining than the love fest going on between our older siblings, and the fight going on between Sav and Mace,” said Basil.

  “Uh-huh, and you’d rather watch this than that?” asked Cayenne, motioning to the cabin and then to the window.

  “Well, I’ve gotten to take in the view from a lot of airplane windows,” said Basil.

  “And I haven’t,” said Cayenne. “Well, it’s fine, Basil. I’m perfectly happy sitting where I am. Thank you so much for asking if I wanted to swap seats, though. Bless your heart.” Cayenne put in her earbuds. Basil apparently had no clue that ‘bless your heart’ was Southern belle for, well, either truly ‘bless your heart’ or ‘fuck off.’

  Basil sighed and kept watching Cayenne watch her siblings and her future in-laws. Kai looked radiant, even on an airplane. Her other siblings had opted for comfortable clothes, but Kai was wearing a business casual outfit that didn’t hide her curves but was still modest. She had on stretchy black slacks, a pair of black ballet flats, a lavender ruffled top, and a gray cardigan. Her hair was held back in a headband and was loose but still composed. Any hot-blooded man could see that a woman who wasn’t afraid to accentuate her ample bosom with ruffles, who wasn’t afraid to show off her thick thighs in tight pants, was a woman worth hunting for…but it wasn’t Kai’s curves that Basil cared about. They were, of course, amazing, but there was something else about Cayenne that appealed to Basil. He could only describe it as her ‘spice.’

  Cayenne’s scent was overpowering. It was a scent that he was sure he could search the world for and never find again. It was a scent that was more enticing than anything that he’d ever scented before. After all, it was released by the one woman that had managed to capture his heart, who, as much as he wanted her, seemed to want nothing to do with him. Basil thought about that old saying about the Scoville Clan. He had never thought that the saying would apply to him, but Kai was proof that all the world’s spices had nothing on spicy women, especially the spicy, curvy, sassy women of The Feminine Mesquite.

  Chapter One

  Bear Buns: Denver. It was a club unlike any other, well, except for the original club back in Seattle. The large building was brightly lit and stood out against the downtown area of Denver. As the gaggle of curvy women and bear shifters in Cayenne Quincy’s group oohed and aahed over the pageantry, which even the usually possessive polar bear shifters could appreciate, Cayenne was more concerned with how the sexy shifters maintained the club, rather than how they maintained their firm physiques. A hospitality major who had just completed her sophomore year of college, she was interested in how any business in the hospitality sector operated, although her specialty was restaurant management. Plus, by spending her time admiring the inner workings of the club, she could get away from the one man in the group sh
e couldn’t stand: Basil Scoville.

  Basil. He was tall, blond, with blue eyes, like a typical polar bear shifter. While his older brother Herb had taken to flannel shirts and practical blue jeans like a pig to mud, and his older brothers Clove and Sage were wearing what their girlfriends had picked out, Basil had a style all his own. He was wearing designer clothing to a frikkin’ strip club, a male strip club. He was walking and talking with Cayenne’s sisters with the confidence of an alpha male, even though he was the future delta of the Scoville Polar Clan…which is why Cayenne couldn’t escape him.

  It had been such a wild year. At the end of the last summer, Cayenne’s eldest sister, Alice, had been confronted by the eldest Scoville polar, Herbert ‘Herb’ Scoville, the alpha of the Scoville Polar Clan. What the heck had the Norwegian polar wanted with a curvy, sassy girl who was Texan through and through? Well, according to Herb, his grandfather, Morten Scoville, had been the victim of intellectual property theft by none other than their paternal grandfather, Elijah Quincy…and Herb and his brothers had confronted Alice with this accusation at the reading of Elijah’s will. After all, it was at the reading of the will that Alice inherited their grandfather’s small hot sauce company, The Quincy Hot Sauce Company.

  Herb and Alice started as rivals but ended up having a literal Cinderella story. It turned out that they’d met years before and been separated, looking for one another for years. How come they didn’t recognize each other at first sight? Well, they’d met at a masquerade party. Neither one of them had seen the other’s face and Alice had been wearing a perfume that masked her scent. Fate gave that couple a second chance because Alice had challenged Herb to a cook-off, winner takes all (takes all the recipes), and they had tied for first…so Herb had leveraged that into a date with Alice, where he could show her how he felt about her. Once they came clean about their apprehensions, they realized that they were the missing pieces of each other’s lives that they had spent so long looking for. Herb proposed, and that should’ve been the end of it.