Be Mine: Valentine Novellas to Warm The Heart

by Nicole Flockton

  Luca stepped out from behind the guitarist, who began softly strumming a love song while Luca pinned her with his come to bed with me gaze. One hand was hidden behind his back as he knelt on one knee.

  For one insane moment, she feared and prayed and hoped it meant what she thought it did. Her breath stalled in her throat. Was tonight the night?

  “Serena, this past year with you has been the best of my life. Ti amo, mi amore. Piu di quanto le parole possano dire.”

  I love you. More than words can say. Thrilling as it was to hear the words, she knew without doubt he meant it. Luca was a man of action and he’d shown his love for her in so many ways.

  “I was waiting for a very special delivery and now it’s here . . . There could be no better night than tonight, a night made for lovers, to ask you—marry me?”

  He opened a jeweller’s box. Inside, a white gold ring gleamed beneath a Princess-cut diamond set diagonally above the band.

  Soft music floated behind Luca from the trio. They were playing the same bars over and over, as though waiting for her to answer.

  “Yes, si. Oh, si, mi amor. With all my heart.”

  The music rose, nearby diners clapped and shouted “Auguri, tanti auguri”, but all that faded into the background as Luca’s lips claimed hers.

  Tonight was theirs, only theirs, and then—forever.

  About Susanne Bellamy

  Born and raised in Toowoomba, Susanne is an Australian author of contemporary and rural romances set in Australia and exotic locations. She adores travel with her husband, both at home and overseas.

  Her heroes have to be pretty special to live up to her real life hero. He saved her life then married her.

  She is published with Harlequin Mira/Escape, and has written several self-published rural series. A popular guest speaker, she presented the keynote address at the Steele Rudd Pilgrimage, and has been invited to speak in libraries, book clubs, and to community groups.

  Social media links

  Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/susanne.bellamy.7

  Twitterhttps://twitter.com/SusanneBellamy

  Websitehttp://www.susannebellamy.com/

  Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/susannebellamy/

  Bookbubhttps://www.bookbub.com/authors/susanne-bellamy

  Find out more about my rural series and other stories:

  Website: http://www.susannebellamy.com/books-by-susanne-bellamy.html

  Also By Susanne Bellamy

  Hearts of the Outback (6 book series)

  Just One Kiss http://bit.ly/1Oq3KAX

  Heartbreak Homestead http://amzn.to/1nqc9hc

  Long Way Home http://amzn.to/28taN8Y

  Winds of Change http://amzn.to/2drvVGt

  Wild About Harry http://amzn.to/2rt5Ekt

  The Cattleman’s Promise http://amzn.to/2Ae67ey

  Home to Lark Creek

  A Promise of Home https://amzn.to/2J4gjb1

  Hard Road Home https://amzn.to/2p28Hg0

  Turn Left for Home https://amzn.to/2suMlWk

  Bindarra Creek Romance

  Second Chance Love http://amzn.to/1Owl3Wd

  Pearls and Green Beer https://amzn.to/2QjKNvf

  In the Heat of the Night (August 2019 release) https://amzn.to/2L2QRXv

  Through Escape Publishing

  Starting Over (Mindalby Outback Romance) https://amzn.to/2yKAERu

  Engaging the Enemy http://amzn.to/1wrYGHQ

  Her Christmas Kisses (Christmas 2019) https://amzn.to/2Px49yk

  Contemporary romance:

  White Ginger http://amzn.to/MiDjVr

  Romantic suspense:

  The Emerald Lei (The Emerald Quest) http://amzn.to/1wrYGHQ

  High Stakes http://amzn.to/2Ek44Y4

  Novellas:

  A Taste of Christmas (in A Season to Remember) http://bit.ly/1ynJsTZ

  One Night in Tuscany http://amzn.to/1dKLyX6

  Second Chance Café (anthology) http://bit.ly/1QlViZl

  Romancing the Holidays https://amzn.to/37QtGXy

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, thanks to Shirley Wine for her insightful feedback and help in meeting deadlines. So grateful we are friends and critique partners!

  I’d also like to acknowledge Ebony, whose energy and passion motivated us, the authors of this anthology, into action. Thanks for your vision and drive.

  And thank you to my wonderful husband who took me on my first trip to Italy, and the stunning Amalfi Coast. Can’t wait to return there with you!

  Be My GRL

  Heidi Wessman Kneale

  Setting:

  Perth, Australia - uses Australian English spelling.

  Heat rating - two chillies

  About Be My GRL

  Ros Wilson had only meant to return a mis-posted package to the original sender. She never meant to have her demisexual world shaken by the thought of a hot, sweaty man, where his T-shirt clung ever so--

  No. Enough of that. Sex was never her thing. She never had a crush, she never got all hot and bothered over a celebrity, she never had a single stirring in her loins. Ros was content with her job, her foster kittens and her lack of sex life. (Or was she?)

  Then she met Everett Pak, with his exquisitely carved wooden boxes and delightful candy hearts. While it was nerves/lust/love? at first sight, Ros thought she'd never see him again, until her housemate texted him a flirty picture of Ros. (Honestly!)

  And he replied most favourably. Maybe this flirting thing wasn't so bad. But flirting led to dating, and dating led to a relationship, and a relationship led to...

  Was Ros ready for this? Was she ready to give over her heart? Could she give more? Or would her own hang-ups ruin what promised to be the best thing to ever happen in her life?

  1

  The remains of a package greeted Ros as she came home from work. Scraps of cardboard--an overturned shipping box--lay scattered over the entry's polished wooden floor like misshapen confetti. Packing peanuts were spread from one wall to the other. "What the--" One corner of the box, not quite destroyed, failed to hide the culprit. "Rascal!"

  Her voice startled one very guilty cat. Rascal shot out from the box and headed down the entry, to disappear into the back of the house, his hind claws scrabbling across the floor.

  "Soli!" Ros shouted. "The cat got out again!"

  No answer. Was her housemate out? "Soli? Soli?"

  Fine. She'd deal with the errant cat. As a foster, he was NOT allowed free reign of the house, not that that stopped him. He'd learned to open the bathroom door, so Soli had taken to literally locking him in the laundry. That would only work if she had bothered to lock the door. Wouldn't surprise Ros if she'd forgotten.

  Leaving the mess in the entry, Ros moved into the kitchen. No cat in sight; he'd gone to ground.

  On the other side of the kitchen was the laundry room door, uncharacteristically ajar. Great. Ros peeked her head through, in case Rascal had retreated here. Nope. No cat.

  Out of habit, Ros closed the door. It bounced against the doorframe, swinging open once more.

  That was strange. Ros closed it again, only it wouldn't stay closed. She looked closer.

  The laundry room door was still "locked", in that the handle would not turn, and the stop plate that should have been screwed to the wall had come loose, to hang on the extended bolt. Two screws lay on the floor where they had fallen. Great. Now the cat had learned how to use a screwdriver.

  "Soli!" Ros shouted, though she knew her efforts would be useless.

  Of course, no answer. Ros picked up the screws and investigated the doorframe. It did indeed look like he'd unscrewed the plate, for there was little damage to the wood. Should be a simple matter to fix.

  After checking that Rascal was not nearby plotting his next escape, Ros slipped out of the house to the garage out back, and the toolbox. A Phillips-head and maybe a touch of glue would set things to right.

  Outside, she found her housemate Soli, clad in a maxi dress and big floppy hat, distracte
dly pulling weeds from the garden. Soli loved her veggie patch, and she nurtured it every other day, or maybe once a week. Soli had a habit of getting distracted. Routine was not her thing. If it wasn't for every cat's natural stomach-clock, she'd forget to feed the little critter as well.

  "Hey Soli, Rascal got out again."

  Soli's hands stopped and she sat up. "Did he? How? I could have sworn I locked the door this time."

  "You did. He picked the lock."

  Soli wrinkled her nose at Ros.

  Ros held out the two screws in her hand.

  Soli leaned over, as if she'd never seen wood screws before. "Huh. I wonder how he did that?"

  Ros sighed. "Dunno, but I'm happy to fix him--er, it."

  At this, her housemate leaned back on her heels. "Rascal is already fixed."

  "Man, we should change his name to 'Houdini'," Ros muttered.

  At this, Soli stiffened. "We can NOT name a foster cat 'Houdini'!"

  Ros blinked. "Why not?"

  "Nobody will adopt a cat named 'Houdini'."

  She repeated her question: "Why not?"

  "What was Harry Houdini famous for?"

  "Escaping."

  "Yeah. No one's going to adopt a cat named Houdini for just that reason."

  Good point. But then, "You named him 'Rascal'. Doesn't that also have a negative connotation?"

  At this, Soli shrugged. "Have you ever met a cat who wasn't a rascal?"

  "Yeah." Ros's mother's cat was a fifteen-year-old puddle of black fur that did nothing but eat, poop and lay about in the same three spots on the floor, depending on where the sunshine was hitting. Until she'd moved in with Soli, Ros had completely expected all cats to be as sessile.

  Then she entered the foster system. Great idea, in theory, giving house space for shelter cats to ease the burden on the shelters, but also to socialise them enough to be successfully adopted to their Forever Homes. Practice, however, was a different story.

  Rascal was but the most recent in a long line of active foster cats. However, he was the most troublesome, even more than Oscar, who was the exact same colour as the floor. Poor kid got stepped on more than once.

  Soli rose and knocked the dirt off her hands. Her skirt, caked in mud where her knees had rested, she ignored. "I suppose we'll have to put a deadbolt on that door if he did too much damage."

  They could see later. "You want to sweep up the mess while I fix this?"

  That brought a frown to Soli's face. "What mess?"

  "Rascal found a box in the entry way."

  "Oh." Then Soli's eyes widened. "Oh! Oh no, your poor box."

  Mine? thought Ros.

  "It only came today."

  Of course. It had been a shipping box from Australia Post. Ros hadn't given it a second thought beyond the mess that Rascal had made. "I wasn't expecting a box." She'd not ordered anything online recently. Or... "Wait. Did you order me 'toys' again?" She made quotation marks with her hands.

  Soli was a thoughtful housemate for the most part, sometimes extending to a little intrusive. Being raised by hippie parents in Fremantle would do that to a girl. Last year when Soli had learned that Ros considered herself a demisexual, instead of the ace that Soli had feared her to be, she thought she'd gently help Ros in her "sexual awakening", as Soli had put it, and had bought her--discreetly, of course--a variety of sex toys for her to try.

  It hadn't helped that when the box addressed to Ros had arrived, she had opened it when they had a house full of friends for the monthly games day, including some of their underaged children.

  Since then, Ros treated every package addressed to her with suspicion and great caution.

  At the accusation, Soli's hand flew to her bosom. "Me? Not this time. It was as much a surprise to me as to you. It showed up, I signed for it, and left it on the table by the door," where Rascal had found it. The little guy loved boxes, as many cats did, but instead of taking the if-it-fits-I-sits technique, he took it upon himself as a personal quest to dismantle the box into its component bits. Maybe instead of a scratching post, they should have gotten him a chew toy.

  Her curiosity piqued, Ros headed back into the house, screws forgotten, to see what further disaster Rascal had wrought.

  The remains of the box were scattered across the floor, and the half that Rascal had hidden under. In that, she found a finely-carved wooden box, just big enough to fit between both her hands. The craftsmanship was exquisite! The top of the box featured an array of five-petaled blossoms and leaves, and the side of the box were done with vinework. As she tilted the box, several somethings clunked about inside.

  Soli, having divested herself of most of the garden dirt, came into the entry. "I see what you mean," she remarked when she saw the snowfall of box remains. Then her gaze caught the object in Ros's hands. "What's that?"

  Tilting the box further confirmed it wasn't just the box itself that was the prize, but something inside as well. Ros found the latch and freed it.

  Inside the box was a layer of folded paper. Under this, when Ros lifted it up, she found the box full of little candy hearts.

  Candy hearts.

  The world fell away as she looked upon those candy hearts. Somewhere, someone knew.

  These hearts were bigger than the ones she was used to. Would they taste the same? She selected a pink heart and lifted it to her lips. She inhaled, before popping it on her tongue, taking in its artificial strawberriness. It was as good, if a bit chalkier, than the ones from overseas.

  Ros loved candy hearts. While her mother had not the same affinity, she and her father looked forward to the package every year.

  Each Valentine's Day, her grandparents in New York would send her a box of American candy hearts. It was a family tradition with special meaning. The story went that her great-great grandfather proposed to her great-great grandmother with a candy heart. Apparently, it was in public and rather scandalous, if she recalled the story correctly. Since then, the whole family tree had had an affinity for the little seasonal candies. Even after her father had moved to Australia and married her mother, a Perth girl, this never stopped the rellies from annually reminding Ros of her family roots.

  Only, those hearts were small and came in a cardboard box. These were large, and ornately packaged. Plus this was November.

  Who sent these? "Soli, was there a ‘From’ address on the box?"

  Her roommate shrugged. "Didn't look too closely." She fell to her knees and sorted through the scraps.

  Ros joined her and together they put back the jigsaw pieces of the box, in hopes of uncovering a clue.

  "I found it," Soli crowed, then her countenance fell. "Oh. Sorry. It's the ‘To’." She handed over a scrap of the address. While the house and street were correct, the name did not say, "Rosanne Wilson", but "Livvie W--" something-or-other.

  The package was not hers. How disappointing. Ros's heart ached as she looked at the ornate box in her hands and the candy hearts inside. These belonged to someone else, not her. "Who's Livvie?" Would this Livvie forgive her if she had just one more heart?

  Soli continued to sort scraps of box. "Livvie? Oh, Olivia Walsh. Yeah. She lived here a few years ago. Moved out because she got some job somewhere back East or overseas. I can't remember."

  "So, no forwarding address?"

  Soli had no answer to that.

  Shame.

  "Oh, here we go." Soli gently shepherded a few scraps together. "Tyler. Okay, that makes sense."

  Ros had to prompt her for the rest of the story. "Tyler was her boyfriend in high school. She kind of moved on, but he never did." Soli pulled out her mobile phone and snapped a picture of the assembled address. Then she gathered up scraps of box and packing peanuts in her filthy skirt for disposal.

  Rascal was nowhere to be seen.

  Once the entry was clean, Soli forwarded the picture of the address to Ros. After all, if the box wasn't meant for her, and they couldn't forward it, it would have to be returned to sender.

  Ros didn
't know if she liked that idea.

  Tyler, Livvie's old boyfriend, lived about a fifteen-minute bus ride away. Soli knew him from her connection with Livvie and vouched for him. Of course, he wasn't a stalker, Soli reasoned. If he was, he would have known exactly where Livvie was, and would not have sent the box to the wrong address. This assuaged Ros somewhat, if chilled her a little on how Soli knew so much about stalkers. Also, it had been several years since Livvie had lived here.

  "Now I am curious," Soli had said, before she hustled Ros off to the bus stop. "Why send the box now?"

  Good question, well asked.

  As Ros bounced along on Transperth's latest eco-bus, her hand brushed over the floral carving on the box. This had to have been expensive. She'd seen similar boxes up in Bali. For a holiday destination known for its bargain prices, even those boxes were expensive. She turned it upside down, to see if there was a label she missed.

  Nothing resided on the bottom.

  Ros couldn't resist. She opened it and peeked inside at the candy hearts.

  The piece of paper that rested on top fluttered as she lifted the lid.

  Wait, was that... writing?

  It was a note. How had she missed that before? Perhaps she shouldn't be reading other people's mail. Who knew what kind of intimate things they might have written? Then again, Soli said Tyler wasn't creepy. But maybe Ros should check just in case?

  Unfolding the paper, she read the pencilled words inside.