by Olivia Hayle
Faye locks the car and gestures with her head. Can we start walking toward the dock?
“Erhm,” I say. “That’s good news.”
“It certainly is! The public announcement won’t be made yet, not until this week. We will be in contact on Monday with all the details. I’m sure you have a ton of questions.”
“Yes, I do.”
“But we wanted to let you have the weekend to digest it.” He pauses, voice happy. “Congrats again, Mr. Marchand. We’re looking forward to a great partnership.”
“Yes. Thank you. So am I.”
We hang up. Faye, now staring at me curiously, takes a step closer. “You okay? You look white.”
I grin at her, excitement racing through me. “Well, Miss Alvarez. Think you could handle working together with me again?”
Her eyes widen. “What do you mean?”
I don’t answer for a second, just letting her see my smile. It feels massive—etched on my face. After I sent in the model, I’d almost forgotten about the dates for the jury’s selection. My mind had been occupied with Faye, with getting her back, and then with being with her.
“Henry,” she prompts. “Who was on the phone?”
“The Architecture Society of New York.”
Her arms fall limp at her sides. “No way.”
“Yes. Guess who’s going to be building New York’s new opera house?”
“You will,” she murmurs, her voice weak. “Oh my God, Henry.”
“We will,” I say. “We’re both listed as executive architects.”
And then her arms are around my neck, and she’s laughing, or maybe crying, and I swing her around on the marina parking lot. They chose our design. Out of hundreds of applications, they chose ours. The curving steel and wooden beams we’d labored over in digital detail will become real.
“Yes,” she finally breathes, her smile wide. “I’ll work with you again.”
I kiss her soundly. “Just draw up the contract, sweetheart, and I’ll sign.”
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Ice Cold Boss is book two in the standalone Paradise Shores series.
Read Rogue to discover Lily and Hayden’s epic love story, or turn the page for a short excerpt!
ROGUE
Hayden Cole was everything I should stay away from.
He was my brother's best friend and the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Broken smiles. Dark hair. Eyes that had seen far too much for his age.
We spent a summer together in secret. In the darkness, in the silence, our hearts spoke the same language. Until he left without a word and tore mine right out of my chest.
Ten years later he’s back from the Navy, and he’s demanding a second chance. He’s every inch the rogue I remember—crooked smiles and amber eyes.
But this time I’ve learned my lesson, and I’m staying far away.
Lily Marchand was everything I could never have.
She was the golden child of my uncle’s rich employer and far too good for a guy like me. I’d known it, and I reached for her anyway, and it led to disaster. I had no choice but to leave and break both of our hearts.
But a decade has given me the respectability and money I lacked before. This time I’m not giving up without a fight—not when I know she feels the same.
Her parents might still despise me. Her brothers might want to kill me. But I’d just like to see them try to run me out of town again, because there’s no way I’m giving up on Lily without a fight.
Some people are meant to be together.
Prologue
Lily
You were everything to me, and then you broke my heart.
But I think that part was inevitable. We were destined to love each other. That’s fair, isn’t it, Hayden? At least that’s the way it was for me. I don’t think I ever had a choice, really, from the moment I first laid eyes on you, all those years ago.
Sure, I didn’t know it back then, but that doesn’t make my love any less real. The truth is, you’ve fascinated me since I was ten years old.
I once told you that, remember? And you smiled at me with those amber eyes of yours and asked if I meant fascinating, like how a weird bug is fascinating, and my heart ached at wanting to make you understand just how much I loved you. How much you meant to me.
How much I still love you.
Things could have been so different, Hayden, if you would have just let me in when I asked the first time.
If you had given us a chance.
If you hadn’t left after the accident.
Maybe, just maybe, you’ll let me in this time around. We’re older and wiser. Things have happened that even the best of intentions can’t erase. But some things haven’t changed. Our hearts still understand one another. The distance and the silence hasn’t changed that.
Some love stories are simple.
But ours never was.
Chapter 1
Hayden
Hayden, 11
It’s hard to forget the day you’re saved.
I remember it like it was yesterday; the wind howling in the trees, the sound of heavy rainfall against the tin roof of my uncle’s shabby car.
“They’ve offered me a job,” he had told me. “We’ll get a place to stay, too.”
But the house at the end of the driveway isn’t like any house I’ve ever seen. It’s a mansion. A white, sprawling porch wraps around the front, visible even in the darkness.
“We’re going to live there?”
“No, there’s a house down by the beach where we’ll live.”
“They have their own beach house?”
I can hear the weariness in my uncle’s voice. “Yes. Don’t make this difficult.”
I shrug and turn away from him. I’ve been nothing but easy. Five moves in the past two years, with five different schools, too. I was the poster child for easy.
I haven’t seen much of Paradise Shores so far, but one thing is clear—this is a rich place. People like us don’t stay here, not for long.
“They have children,” my uncle urges. “Mr. Marchand said he had sons. They should be about your age, I think.”
“Uh-huh.”
“This will be good. It’ll give us some stability.”
“Yeah.”
Gary blows out a frustrated sigh. “I’m doing the best I can here, kid.”
“I know.” I bite out the following words, bitter in my mouth. “Thank you.”
One day, I won’t need to thank anyone. I’ll be as rich and as famous as those stars on television, on social media, who could go anywhere and do anything. I’ll own a house like this myself.
“Come on. We can’t stay out here forever.” Gary puts the car in drive and rolls up the wide driveway. His left knee is bouncing.
Gary isn’t usually nervous. I lean forward and try to get a good look at the house. It’s at least three stories with white, wooden paneling. It has blue double-doors and the porch is flanked by well-maintained flower beds. It looks like a house from a commercial, the ones with golden retrievers and blond children with happy smiles.
“Are you really sure this is it?”
Gary scoffs. “Yes, I’m sure, kid.”
The front door opens. A tall man stands silhouetted against the light, a child standing to his right. He has a hand on her head.
“Gary?” he calls. “Is that you?”
My uncle swears and pulls his jacket up around his ears. He’s buzzing with nervous energy.
“Stay here,” he tells me and steps out into the rain. It wets his thin bomber jacket and makes his brown hair stick to his head. It’s so different from my ink-black hair, the color from my father’s side. It’s the only feature I share with him, although he hasn’t been around lately for me to double-check.
I watch as he talks with the man, this Mr. Marchand. The girl at his side is peering out into the rain. She can’t see me,
not through this darkness and the rain. Besides, Gary always tints his car windows.
She disappears back into the house. My stomach growls again, but I ignore it. It’s only a nuisance when Gary hears it.
I hate making him feel guilty.
I hate being a burden.
The girl comes running out of the house, a raincoat hastily pulled on and an umbrella in her hand.
She stops by my door and pushes back tresses of long, auburn hair. She’s younger than me, but probably not by much. “Hello? Are you in there?”
I take a deep breath and double-check the Band-Aids across my right knuckles. Don’t let them see that you’ve been fighting, Gary had said, and shook his head when I’d tried to explain that I was only defending myself.
Then I open the door and set foot in Paradise Shores for the first time.
“Rogue” is a second-chance novel, starring a brooding bad boy looking to win back the girl of his dreams, a fiesty heroine with plenty of opinions, and tons of gut-wrenching feels.
ABOUT OLIVIA
Olivia Hayle writes contemporary romances made out of sugar, spice and all things nice—with a pinch of heat, of course!
She’s a happily-ever-after addict who loves her cups of tea large, her men tall and her chocolate dark. When she’s not knee-deep in creating new book boyfriends, you can find her interacting with fans on any of her social media platforms or with her head in a good book.
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Read more about her at www.oliviahayle.com.
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