From Thailand with Love

by Camilla Isley

  “I’ve got it covered, Logie Bear,” he says. “Go!”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  As I turn and run, Archie calls after me, “And try not to screw it up this time!”

  I race through the concourse like I’m twenty years old again and playing football. The drive is on, the end zone, gate 46. The gate gallery is my open field. I break into it, dodging travelers with luggage in tow, toddlers escaping their mothers, airport electric carts… I scamper yard after yard, the ball is my heart, winning Winter back will be my touchdown.

  I look up at the gate signs, numbers flying by.

  Gate 25. I’m halfway there!

  The momentary distraction almost makes me crash into a family of four assembled outside a newswire, but at the last second, I skim left and avoid smashing the teenage son to the ground by a hairbreadth.

  I run on.

  Gate 31.

  Gate 37.

  While I run, I scan the crowds for a white-blonde head.

  By gate 42, I’m winded hard. I’m really not twenty years old anymore. But I summon the last dregs of energy and force my legs to pump forward.

  When I finally reach gate 46, there’s a long line of passengers waiting to board the plane. The flight attendants are already letting people in.

  Panic strikes.

  Panting hard, I search the queue for Winter while my pulse speeds out of control, both from the physical effort and the fear that I’ve missed her again.

  But then her unmistakable blonde hair waves at me like a signal flag in-between two tall, athletic types, who, judging from the breadth of their shoulders, could be real NFL players.

  “Winter,” I call. But the sound comes out half-strangled and not nearly loud enough for her to hear me.

  Hands on my knees, I take a few deep breaths until my respiration goes back to almost normal.

  “Winter,” I shout again. “Winter, wait!”

  I walk up the line until I’m right beside where she’s standing.

  “Winter!”

  Her head finally turns, and her eyes go wide as they meet mine.

  Twenty-three

  Winter

  Fatigue has officially fried my brain, because I’m hallucinating. I see Logan standing next to me in the boarding queue. But that’s impossible.

  “Winter, wait… Don’t get on the plane,” phantom Logan pants, visibly out of breath. “I have to talk to you.”

  Only his voice sounds real, and he looks real, and other people are staring at him, too, so… he must be real!

  I gently push past the two hunks behind me and exit the boarding line. “Logan? Where did you come from?”

  He bends over slightly, still panting. “Bar… Other side of the airport.” He points backward. “Dude behind the counter said you’d just left…”

  “Mark?”

  Logan nods. “Made a run for it on no sleep, no food, but I had an espresso so I guess I’m okay.”

  He’s finally stopped panting, but, curiously enough, now I feel out of breath.

  I take a step toward him. “Why?”

  “To say what I should’ve told you in Bangkok.”

  I wait for him to elaborate. Let’s see if this time he can come up with something better than “Let’s keep in touch.”

  “Being with you,” Logan starts without preamble, “is like playing football—and not just because I had to make a drive through half of JFK to get to you. When I’m with you I feel like I felt in the tunnel before a game, waiting to run out on the field… so nervous and scared I wanted to puke…”

  I startle at that. “You’re saying I make you want to vomit?”

  “Yes, but in a good way.”

  A man in the crowd calls, “Let the man say his piece!”

  I glare at the audience trying to scare the busybody into silence and then turn back to Logan.

  “The wait in the tunnel is dark,” he continues, and I really hope he has a point, because so far this isn’t going any better than the I-don’t-have-your-phone-number debacle. But I keep my mouth shut and, as the kind spectator suggested, let him say his piece. “You can hear the crowd buzzing outside, shouting, the commentators making their pre-game remarks while you wait, and the tension mounts and mounts. Then the speaker calls your team, and suddenly you’re running in the light with the boom of sixty thousand people cheering you on and butterflies exploding in your stomach. It’s an exhilaration like nothing else I’ve ever felt in my life… until I met you.”

  There’s a general “Awww” from the crowd, who apparently find us more interesting than, you know, boarding the plane that’s about to leave. Even the gate attendants are staring.

  A little air pocket bursts in my stomach, as if the ground has just disappeared from beneath my feet. I can see now why the tunnel analogy is a good one.

  But Logan isn’t finished. “Yesterday,” he continues, “thinking I’d lost you… it was like being trapped in the tunnel forever… because being in love with you has been the best run in the light of my life.”

  There they are. Those words I was dying to hear and was starting to fear would never pass his lips. I smile as tears of joy stream down my cheeks. I close the distance between us and push a strand of hair behind Logan’s ear. “You’re in love with me?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” He scratches the back of his head, looking sheepish. “Guess I should’ve just come out with it and told you yesterday.”

  “Yep.” I nod. “You really should have. Good thing I’m a very understanding woman…” Then I grab him by the collar of his shirt and pull him down into a kiss.

  And we could really be in a stadium, because everyone around us starts clapping and cheering.

  Self-consciously, I break the kiss and hide my face against Logan’s chest.

  “Attention, passengers,” one of the gate attendants says over the boarding booth’s speaker system. “As much as we all love a little airport romance, I still have to ask you to continue the boarding process so that we can ensure a timely departure for our flight.”

  The cheering stops, and all my fellow passengers get back in line to have their passports and boarding passes checked.

  “Don’t leave,” Logan pleads. “Come to San Francisco with me!”

  I wish I could… but… “I can’t,” I say. “There’s someone I need to see at home.”

  Logan frowns.

  “My sister,” I explain. “I want to tell Summer I forgive her.”

  Logan nods. “Okay. I’d come to LA with you, but work… I have to…”

  “I know, don’t worry.” I let him off the hook.

  “But as soon as I’ve given my reports,” Logan continues. “I’ll hop on a plane and meet you in LA.”

  A pang of fear pulls at my chest. “And then what?” I ask. “How are we going to make this work?”

  “Our jobs are flexible,” Logan says. “I can be in LA when I don’t have lectures—I only teach one semester a year—and you can be in Berkeley when I do… And we can try to make our work trips coincide. And when we can’t manage that, well, those months will suck, but we could…” He pauses for a second. “I don’t know… talk over the phone?” He flashes me a playful grin. “Assuming you’ll ever give me your number.”

  I smile at that, shed a few more tears, and kiss the man again. He can have my number, he can have my heart, he can have my everything…

  “Attention, passengers, this is the last call for American Airlines flight 171 with direct service to LAX. Boarding will close in five minutes.”

  Reluctantly, I pull away from Logan. I’m the only passenger left at the gate.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  Logan pushes a lock of hair away from my face, saying, “All right,” and then kisses me on the forehead.

  He walks me to the entrance and waits with me while the flight attendant scans my boarding pass and checks my passport. Then it’s really time to say goodbye.

&n
bsp; Logan cups my face, giving me a gentle kiss on the lips. “I’ll see you soon.”

  I rise on my toes so I can whisper in his ear, “I love you, too, by the way.”

  And before I change my mind, I turn and run down the tunnel onto the plane, ready to fly home. Eager to make peace with my sister, and then be free to embark on the biggest adventure of my life yet… loving Logan and being loved by him.

  Note from the Author

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed reading From Thailand with Love. If this is the first book in the First Comes Love series you’ve read, you can go back to Book 4, To the Stars and Back, to meet Lana and her celebrity boyfriend Christian. You can also catch up with the first three books in the series in this special box set edition, First Comes Love Books 1-3.

  If you’re a series aficionado, thank you for following me on this entire journey. Now, I have a bit of an announcement. I know I’d promised you a small-town romance about city-girl Samantha Baker and a local cowboy in Sweet Love and Country Roads. And I still plan on writing that book—only, it’ll now be book 7 in the series instead of book 6. This is happening because, sometimes, book characters can be really naughty and a certain sweet Viking, Mr. Archibald Hill, really snuck under my skin while I was writing this novel. I developed a writing crush on him and decided he deserved his own book. I also felt another one of my characters was being left a bit forsaken. So far, Summer Knowles, Winter’s twin sister, has been the villain, the girl we all hate. The cheater. The other woman. And, like Winter, it took me almost two novels to warm up to her again and even begin to consider she might deserve a happily ever after, too. So I thought to myself, mmm… what would happen if these two, Archie and Summer, were ever to meet? And—little spoiler—what better occasion for a meet-cute than Logan and Winter’s wedding? So the idea for the next book in the series came along, and I’m already working on this new title: You May Kiss the Bridesmaid, which is already available to pre-order. You can read the blurb on the next page.

  I hope you won’t mind the switch in plans, and that maybe you developed enough of a crush on Archie to want to follow him in another story.

  Now I have to ask you a favor. If you loved my story, please leave a review on Goodreads, your favorite retailer’s website, or wherever you like to post reviews (your blog, your Facebook wall, your bedroom wall, in a text to your best friend…). Reviews are the best gift you can give to an author, and word of mouth is the most powerful means of book discovery.

  If you’re craving more romance, you can turn the page for a sneak peek from Let’s Be Just Friends, the first book in my new adult college romance series Just Friends, which is absolutely FREE to download at all retailers. This series is slightly different from my romantic comedies. The characters are younger and a little more prone to drama. As a disclaimer, I want to let you know that Book 1 has some cheating in it, in case it’s a reading pet peeve of yours. I know many readers dislike stories with affairs, and me writing one isn’t in any way an indication that I support any kind of cheating. I just think that betrayal is a sad reality of some relationships and, writing about love and romance, I wanted to challenge myself with a story with a bit of a darker side, exploring my characters’ flaws more in-depth.

  I hope I haven’t bored you too much with my babbling… Thank you for your constant support!

  Camilla, x

  You May Kiss the Bridesmaid

  Archibald Hill is handsome, single, and he’s going to his best friend’s wedding ready to make a conquest or two. After all, everyone knows weddings are the perfect setting to get lucky.

  Summer Knowles used to have a life—friends, family, a sister who’d do anything for her—until she blew it all away with a terrible mistake. Now, attending her twin’s wedding as the party’s undesirable number one seems like more than she can handle. So, when a tall stranger with smoldering ice-blue eyes offers her a therapy of seven nights of no-strings-attached fun, she might even ignore that he has a beard and accept.

  Problem is, Summer has never been good at keeping sex and feelings separated…

  Pre-order now!

  Sneak Peek – Let’s Be Just Friends

  One

  Rose

  Something woke Rose with a start. She tried to pinpoint the source of the noise, but it stopped before she could. A quick peek at the alarm clock sitting in silence on her bedside table told Rose it was only 9:00 a.m. Good. At least two more hours to sleep.

  The noise started again just as Rose was beginning to drift off. Already half-awake, she managed to identify the sound clearly this time. It was Tyler’s phone ringing in the distance. But, where? Not in the adjoining room where Rose assumed he was sleeping. No, the sound seemed to be coming from farther away, somewhere on the lower floor of Tyler’s townhouse.

  Curled under her soft covers, Rose waited for the sound of his quick footsteps down the stairs, but it never came. He must’ve been fast asleep, in which case she doubted the faint noise of his ringtone would be enough to wake him. Tyler was a heavy sleeper ordinarily, and he’d been out all night, or at least until three this morning when she’d gotten in. She guessed he wouldn’t wake up until at least noon.

  Rose waited for the phone to stop ringing so she could go back to sleep. But Tyler’s vintage MC Hammer ringtone started playing again almost immediately. Can’t touch this…

  Throwing the blankets away from her, Rose sat up and swung her legs off the side of the bed. What the hell! Who was so eager to talk to Tyler this early on a Saturday morning?

  Georgiana! The name popped into Rose’s mind. She was the only person who’d obsessively binge-call him on a Saturday morning and not get the message people wanted to sleep. Even Tyler’s mom would’ve given up after two missed calls. Why was Georgiana so desperate to talk to him? Did they have a huge fight? Did he finally ditch her? No, that would be too good to be true; they probably just had some kind of argument.

  Rose sat on the edge of her bed, tense, listening. The phone had gone quiet again. She waited to hear if it was going to ring again and began twisting her long brown hair into a side braid. Sure enough, after a few seconds, she heard the same familiar tune. Can’t touch this…

  Irritated, she hopped off her bed, threw open her door, and stepped out onto the landing.

  Tyler’s door was shut. Rose pressed her right ear to the wooden panels. She heard the faint, regular breathing of someone sleeping. Listening more closely, she tried to make out the sound of a second person breathing, but she could only hear Tyler. It seemed he was alone.

  Rose stepped away from the door, disappointed. So the argument had not been about Tyler cheating on Georgiana with some other girl. Rose was surprised—and a little annoyed—that Tyler had been faithful to Georgiana for as long as he had. Not that she supported the cheating, but she was eager for Georgiana to be out of their lives, and Tyler had cheated on every girl he’d ever been with. It was maddening that the one girl he’d decided to be faithful to was an obnoxious Regina George type.

  The house fell silent again. Standing there in the hall in nothing but a turquoise tank top with a frilly trim and matching shorts, Rose shivered. Boston always seemed too cold compared to Texas, no matter the season. She would’ve preferred to wear an oversized sweater to bed, but last night she’d had no other choices. Busy with her Summer Academic Fellowship for Harvard Law, she hadn’t bothered to do laundry in weeks. Her Victoria’s Secret PINK set was the only clean thing left at the bottom of the sleepwear drawer. It was either that or two drops of Chanel number five.

  Rose massaged her arms with her hands to warm herself up as she turned around, away from Tyler’s door and toward the bathroom. Might as well, since I’m already up. She finished her business and was about to exit the bathroom when she caught herself in the mirror. Her mini-pajama fit her well. Yes, not bad at all. Pity she turned into a popsicle when she wore them.

  Rose moved her gaze up to her face. Her eyes were such
a dark brown as to be almost black, and her skin tone made her look constantly tanned. Not like Georgiana with her impossibly white skin, long licorice-black hair, and startling blue eyes. Did Tyler prefer blue eyes? Over the years, he hadn’t shown any particular trend in his women. Tall, short, curvy, androgynous, brunette, blonde, redhead—it didn’t matter to him. As long as they were attractive.

  Tyler’s phone began ringing again downstairs. Like an angry cat, Rose hissed at the mirror. How was she supposed to sleep if that damn thing was going to go off every five minutes? She exited the bathroom and ran down the stairs, the carpet muffling her steps.

  After a quick scan of the living room—no phones in sight—she eventually located the phone in the kitchen: a shiny rectangle lying innocently on the table—lifeless. Rose looked at its black screen accusingly just as it started ringing again. Georgiana’s smiling face greeted her. So it was her calling. Rose grabbed the phone, turned it to silent, and put it back down, relieved. Georgiana’s face remained lit for a few more seconds and then disappeared.

  With the phone neutralized, she could go back to her peaceful sleep-in day. But as she turned to leave, a speech bubble popped up on the screen. The temptation was too strong; Rose snatched up the phone and read it.

  I’m sorry, ok? Can you please pick up?

  So they definitely had an argument. And it looked like it was Georgiana’s fault. What could she have done? Nothing too bad, Rose was sure. Georgiana was all sweetness with Tyler. She acted nasty only when he wasn’t around, during the rare times when Georgiana and Rose were alone together.

  Georgiana was jealous of her. That was the only explanation. The sentiment was strong and reciprocated, too. Georgiana didn’t like the idea of her boyfriend living with his attractive female best friend. As for Rose, she didn’t appreciate Georgiana’s intrusion into their friendship—or the intrusion of any of Tyler’s girlfriends, for that matter.

  And Georgiana was more annoying than most of the girls he dated. She went to Harvard Law with them, meaning she imposed not only on their free time, but on their school time as well. In class, she sat with them—Rose on one side, Georgiana on the other, and Tyler sandwiched in the middle. At lunch, she ate with them. When they were studying, she followed them to the library. And she was at the house so often that Rose wondered if she was trying to move in without Tyler noticing. Georgiana being beautiful and rich didn’t help. Nor the fact that she was the daughter of one of the most powerful and recognized lawyers in Boston, Bradley Smithson.