Five Alarm Donuts: Donut Day Collaboration Read online

  Five Alarm Donuts

  Winter Travers

  Dear Reader, June 1st is National Donut Day. To celebrate this amazing dessert, a baker’s dozen of authors have come together to create thirteen new stories that are sugar-free and donut contain carbs! Each story is a complete standalone. They vary in theme and heat levels. We hope you enjoy the donut day collaboration and that we bring you a little something to help satisfy your sweet tooth. Please consider reviewing to help your authors. Enjoy! With love and sprinkles, Donut Day Authors

  Copyright © 2018 Winter Travers

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduction, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) utilization of this work without written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  For questions or comments about this book, please contact the author at [email protected]

  Also by Winter Travers

  Devil’s Knights Series:

  Loving Lo

  Finding Cyn

  Gravel’s Road

  Battling Troy

  Gambler’s Longshot

  Keeping Meg

  Fighting Demon

  Unraveling Fayth

  Skid Row Kings Series:

  DownShift

  PowerShift

  BangShift

  Fallen Lords MC Series

  Nickel

  Pipe

  Maniac

  Wrecker (Coming July 29th)

  Powerhouse MA Series

  Dropkick My Heart

  Love on the Mat

  Black Belt in Love

  Black Belt Knockout

  Nitro Crew Series

  Burndown

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Satisfy your sweet tooth

  About the Author

  Coming Next

  1st Chapter of Loving Lo

  1st Chapter of Downshift

  1st Chapter of Nickel

  1st Chapter of Dropkick My Heart

  Eat more donuts.

  Chapter 1

  Karen

  I blindly reached across the bed, and was met with crisp, cold sheets.

  Ugh. Crisp, cold sheets were all I was going to be feeling for the next four mornings. Blake was back at the fire station, and I was back to being alone. All of the time.

  Milton jumped on the bed, and sat by my feet. He meowed three times, and laid his head down.

  I guess I wasn’t completely alone. I had Milton to keep me company by demanding to be fed all of the time. “You ate before we went to bed. How are you hungry already?”

  He meowed again, telling me he was hungry, and jumped off the bed. I had a good minute before he would be back in the bedroom pawing at my feet to get out of bed. I had never meet a more demanding cat in my life.

  My phone dinged on the nightstand, and I grabbed it to see Blake had messaged me.

  Morning, beautiful.

  Cue my sigh. The man melted my insides with just two words. Morning, sparky. So, my nickname for him isn't as romantic.

  Shit. Gotta go.

  My phone fell from my hand, and I flopped back on the bed. This was the now recurring story of my life.

  Three nights with Blake, then four days of sporadic texts and calls. Most of those calls and texts ending with Blake having to run because he had to be an everyday superhero saving the residents of Mark’s Corners.

  I closed my eyes. “Stop being so whiny, Karen,” I ordered to the empty room.

  Milton meowed from the kitchen. “For God sake, you too, Milton. No whining!”

  I blindly reached for the pillow Blake used, and flopped it over my head. “God damn,” I mumbled into the pillow.

  Of course, the damn thing was going to smell like his cologne.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the man when he wasn’t here.

  We had been hooking up, and casually dating for over two months. While it was great, I felt like I wanted more. No, I needed more from him. While I couldn’t think of anyone but him, I had to wonder if he was the same. Was I what he thought about when he fell asleep every night at the station? Did he count the minutes till he was off work and headed over to my apartment like I did? Did he ever miss me?

  Gah. I could get the answers to all of these questions if I would just ask him. But what if I asked him, and he didn’t have the answers I wanted to hear?

  Losing Blake wasn’t something I wanted to happen, so I clung to the time I had with him, and decided not to rock the boat.

  The time Blake gave me I wasn’t going to give up. Now I just had to make it through the next four days without him.

  Boo.

  *

  Blake

  “You tell her yet?”

  I hung up my bunker gear and shook my head. “Nah.”

  “What the hell do you mean by nah?” Abe asked.

  I shrugged and leaned against the wall with my arms crossed over my chest. “Nah means no.”

  Abe flipped me off. “No shit, donkey breath. I mean why the hell haven’t you nailed her down yet?”

  A smirk spread across my lips. “Oh, believe me, I’ve nailed her down plenty of times.” So many times I had forgotten about anyone before Karen.

  “Yeah, I know you two got that down, I mean why the hell aren’t you two doing more than that?”

  I pushed off my locker, and made my way over to the stairs. “Just because you moved Brynn in with you faster than a tornado in Texas doesn’t mean I have to do the same thing.”

  He shrugged. “It was the smart thing to do. She was at my place most of the time when she wasn’t at the bakery, so why not rent out the apartment above the shop?”

  I climbed the stairs, and took a left at the top of them into the sprawling kitchen and living area above the station. “I still don’t know how you managed to convince her to move fifteen minutes away from the bakery when before she had to walk down a flight of stairs to work.”

  Abe grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl, and tossed it at me. “‘Cause I’m just that good. You should take some pointers from me. You wouldn’t be stuck in the hook-up zone if you did.”

  He was right about the hook-up zone, but not about taking pointers from him. “I’m pretty sure you just got lucky when it came to Brynn. She was in love with you before you guys even went out.”

  “I do have a boyish charm about me that she just couldn’t resist.”

  I rolled my eyes, and pulled eggs and bacon from the fridge. It was my turn to cook breakfast, and I wasn’t known for making extravagant things. You got the basics when I was cooking. “Yeah, well, you think we can get back to talking about me and Karen? I don’t need to think about your boyish charm or anything like that.”

  “You know when I say boyish charm I’m talking about my dick, right?” Abe held his hands out in front of him a foot apart. “It’s huge, dude.”

  Jesus. I turned my
back to him, and grabbed a huge bowl to start cracking eggs into. “You know, the more you tell people that bold faced lie, the less credible it becomes, right?”

  “It’s not a lie if it’s the truth.” Abe’s phone rang, and I heard him talking to Brynn. I glanced over my shoulder to see him head down the stairs we had just climbed. Thank God.

  “Saved by Brynn,” I muttered under my breath.

  I knew what I wanted from Karen. I didn’t need Abe breathing down my neck asking if I had gotten the balls to talk to her. Every time I was with her, we were too consumed with each other, and when it was time for me to leave we were both exhausted. And, Karen was normally sleeping.

  I had been seeing her for over two months, but we had never settled into anything more than hooking up. At least, that was what it felt like. We had been on one date, and that was it. Since then we had never left the apartment together. It was like after the four days of not seeing each other, we took the next three days to get acquainted physically again.

  I finished cracking two dozen eggs into the bowl, dumped them into a large fry pan, and grabbed the large electric griddle from the cabinet.

  As the bacon fried up, I did the same thing I had done for the past eight weeks while I was working and not fighting a fire. I thought about Karen and talked myself up to finally ask her to be with me.

  We were together, but I wanted to hear from her lips that she wanted us to be exclusive. If I really was honest, I wanted to do the same thing Abe had done with Brynn. Move her sweet ass into my house, and know that she’s all mine.

  *

  Chapter 2

  Karen

  “I need a shit ton of holes tomorrow.”

  Brynn lowly lifted her head from the cake she was decorating. “Um, what?”

  “Holes. I need a shit ton of them.”

  “Is that how you wrote it on the order? A shit ton of holes?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, I actually put donut holes and twenty dozen.”

  “Shit,” Brynn winced. “That is a shit ton of holes.”

  Now she got it. “Yeah, that’s what I said. You want me to help start getting ingredients ready for tomorrow?”

  Brynn nodded. “Yeah. As soon as I finish this cake I can jump in and help.”

  I grabbed an apron from the bin under the counter, and ties it around my waist. “Did you hear from Abe today at all?”

  Brynn hunched back over the cake, and continued to pipe the border. “Um, I talked to him this morning, and then he texted me a little bit ago. Why?”

  I shrugged, and pulled the rolling bin filled with flour out from under the counter. “Just wondering.”

  “You hear from Blake.”

  “Just early this morning. He sent a quick text, but had to go right away because they got a call.” And I haven't heard from him since. This was my problem. For three days I was with Blake, and then it was like he disappeared. One or two texts a day wasn’t cutting it for me. Although, when you were just a booty call to a guy, were you entitled to more than a few texts?

  I grabbed the old scale Brynn used, and set the weights for two and a half pounds on one end. I mindlessly dumped flour into the container on the other side, and tried not to think about Blake.

  “Um, Karen?”

  I dumped one more scoop full, and looked at Brynn. “Yeah?”

  “That’s like six pounds you have there.”

  I looked down at side of the scale I had been dumping on, and saw it was bottomed out. “Dammit.” I dumped the container back into the bin and started again.

  “Are you okay?”

  I glanced up to see Brynn was still watching me.

  “Yeah.” I carefully dumped a little more flour on to the scale until both sides were balanced evenly.

  “You might want to try to lie a little better than that.”

  I dumped the flour into the mixing bowl Brynn would use in the morning, and rolled the flour bin back under the counter. “There isn’t really anything wrong. I’m just thinking too much.”

  “About?”

  I grabbed the bin full of sugar. “Blake. Me. Us.”

  “I didn’t know there was much to think about. What’s going on?” She looked back down at the cake she was working on, and spun it around.

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  She glanced up at me. “You really aren’t making sense.”

  Tell me about it. Brynn wasn’t hearing all the crazy thoughts rolling around in my head. I had something good going with Blake, but I wanted more. More that I wasn’t sure he was willing to give me. “Do you love Abe, Brynn?”

  “Uh, I thought we were talking about you and Blake.”

  “We are.” I grabbed the recipe card for the donut holes, and realized I needed to quadrupole the recipe. I hauled the flour back out and weighed out more. Blake had me so tied up in knots that I didn’t even know what I was doing. “Quadrupole this, right?”

  “Uh, is that four or five?”

  I laughed and shook my head. “That’s four.” I stopped, and looked up at Brynn. “At least I think it is.” We both cracked up laughing.

  “Do it times five. That way we’ll have enough for the case tomorrow too.”

  Brynn finished the cake she was working on, and started folding a box to hold it. “I love Abe. A lot.”

  “How did you know?”

  She stopped folding the box, and stared at me.

  “What?” I swiped at my face. “Do I have flour or something on me?”

  “No. Well, yes, you do, but that isn’t why I’m looking at you.”

  I finished up the flour, dumping the rest that I had just weighed out into the giant mixing bowl. “Well, then tell me why you are looking at me.”

  “Why do you want to know how I was in love with Abe?”

  I ducked my eyes. “It’s just a question. No reason behind it.”

  Brynn came to stand next to me, and put her arm across my shoulders. “Are you trying to figure out if you love Blake?”

  “How can you love someone when you aren’t in a relationship with them?”

  She held up one finger. “Bon Jovi.” She raised another finger. “Tom Cruise.”

  “Uh. What?”

  “As much as I fooled myself into thinking either of those guys would ever have anything to do with me, I loved them.” She smirked. “Bon Jovi I still totally love.”

  “That isn’t the same, Brynn.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s not, but it is. And last I checked you have rounded the bases numerous times with Blake, while Jon Bon Jovi and I haven’t ever crossed paths.”

  “Are we really having this conversation?”

  She finished folding the box, and carefully set the two layered cake she had decorated with teal and orange into the box. “I’m always serious when the words Bon Jovi leave my mouth.”

  “Were you drinking back here while I was out front slinging donuts and cakes?”

  Her light laugh tinkled around me. “That would be a no.” She put the lid on the box, and set in on the rack that we would roll into the cooler once we were done setting everything up that she would need for tomorrow. “To be honest I have no idea where I was going with the whole Bon Jovi thing. ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ was playing before you came back here, and I may or may not have been having a little daydream going on.”

  “Wait until I tell Abe the next time I see him.”

  Brynn laughed. “That’ll be months from now since the only time you would see him is when he’s not working, and you basically disappear when Abe and Blake have off.”

  “Hey,” I protested. “I still come to work.”

  “That you do, but I can tell you are chomping at the bit to get back to Blake who is at your place warming your bed.”

  I set down the scoop. “I don’t have to put up with this.”

  “You wouldn’t hear a peep out of me if you would just tell Blake that you want him.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Tru
st me, he knows that I want him.”

  “He needs to know you want him in more than your bed, Karen.” She pointed her spatula at me. “I don’t know why the heck it is so hard for you two to get on the same page about this. I know that man wants you, but he can’t seem to get the words out.”

  She was right about that. Although, she was more sure of the fact that he actually did want me. I on the other hand was unsure of anything.

  “Three more days, and then you don’t let that man leave your apartment until you two figure your shit out.”

  While Brynn started to help with setup, I finished up gathering and weighing everything she would need for the donut holes.

  An hour later everything was set up and pushed into the cooler. Brynn closed the large door and leaned against it. “Done.”

  I wiped my hands on my apron. “For another day.”

  “You set me up for extra donuts tomorrow, right?” she asked.

  I nodded my head. Tomorrow was Thursday, and that always seemed a busy day for donuts of every variety. “Enough for five dozen of each type.”

  A mischievous smile spread across her lips. “Perfect. We have a delivery we need to make tomorrow.”

  “Really?” I was in charge of organizing all the orders and deliveries. There hadn’t been any for donuts tomorrow. “Did I miss that?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not in the books. Now, let’s get the hell out of here. You still up for dinner?”

  Every Wednesday for the past two months Brynn and I had taken at least one night a week to hang out. That day normally fell on one of the nights the guys were working.”

  “Miguel’s has two big ass margaritas and a shit ton of tacos with my name on it.” I needed good food and a bottomless glass of booze to fog up my mind so I didn’t think of Blake so much.

  Brynn hooked her arm through mine. “Then let’s go. You can park your car at my house, and we’ll get an Uber.”

  Tacos and margaritas here we come.