Desired: A Love Letters Novel
Page 12
“That’s right.” Michael frowned. How did Ariel know? She did practically nothing to keep up with the local news.
“Even though he deliberately shot Lily.”
Discomfort squirmed through Michael.
“Twice.”
Discomfort transformed into an ice shard and lodged in Michael’s chest.
“In front of multiple witnesses, including her daughter.”
The shard pierced his heart. Michael sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and ground his teeth. The photographs that had plastered across the internet and print media seared into his mind.
He squeezed his eyes shut. What would it take to purge the image of Lily slumped against the wall, her hand pressed to her chest? Crimson stained her white sweater. Her other arm wrapped around her blood-splattered two-year-old daughter, who screamed and clung to her.
“Like I said,” Ariel continued. “Gutsy. If I were her, I’d stay the heck away from Portsmouth and the Falconer boys who ruined her life.”
“The Falconer boys who what?” Michael’s jaw dropped. “What does this have to do with me?”
Ariel made a rude sound. “Let me know how she’s doing, okay?”
“Me? How would I know how she’s doing? She’s not going to want to see me.”
“Men…” Ariel sighed. “It’s a wonder why God gave the dominion of the Earth to the clueless half of our species.”
“Entertainment value, I bet, but why would Lily come to see me?”
“Why else would she return to Portsmouth?”
“If I knew, do you think I’d call you?”
“Awww, man. And all this time, I thought it might have been because you loved me.” Ariel’s whine gave way to a serious tone. “I’m going back to bed. You be nice to her, okay?”
“What do you mean ‘nice to—?’” The flat beep told him his sister had hung up on him.
Michael frowned. His sister had not lost her ability to confuse the heck out of him. He turned the key in the ignition. His grip tightened on the steering wheel before he pulled his car away from the curb.
Lily was coming home.
Damn it to hell.
Continue your journey through Love Letters with ENSNARED.
Love Letters
ADORED
Gratefully divorced and not looking.
Well, okay, maybe just peeking.
Single parenthood to a two-year old toddler and a full-time job doesn’t leave me with any time to find Mr. Right. Not that he exists. But when a sexy male escort walks into my volunteer clinic for his annual checkup, I’m startled—okay, fine, tempted—into accepting his invitation.
Rowan Forrester’s model-gorgeous looks are the least of his attributes; he’s like no other man I’ve ever known. His single-minded attentiveness boosts my shaky confidence. I know better than to believe his interest is genuine, but his easy sincerity is irresistible. his fantasy can’t last—after all, he’s an escort—but I can’t turn away from someone who adores my daughter and makes me believe in love again.
But when the truth of his past finally catches up with him…with us…it crushes my fragile hope for a future together. And it’s entirely up to me if I’m going to allow it to destroy our love...
BETRAYED
I can turn every man’s head…except his.
I command attention on the haute couture catwalks of Milan, Paris, and New York, but whenever I’m face-to-face with Drew Jackson, I feel like a gawky thirteen-year-old again—in love with a superstar who will never see me as anything more than his younger brother’s ex-girlfriend.
I tell myself Drew’s no longer a superstar. A long-ago car accident shattered his knee and destroyed his football career. What is he compared to the celebrities who whirl me through one-night stands or Tyler, the brilliant and witty social media maverick who is determined to win my love?
Drew’s just…Drew. All logic and rationality aside, I want him.
When betrayal knocks me off my supermodel pedestal, it’s a long way to the bottom. Will my tenuous friendship with Drew survive my career, my fame, and the rocky transition to love?
CRUSHED
I need a hero…but not him.
Losing my job wouldn’t have fazed me.
Losing my brother and then my job almost broke me. I’m down to my last hundred dollars and ready to accept help in any shape or form when Cody turns up on my doorstep with a job offer. And not just any job offer.
My dream job.
I can’t accept. I’m not that desperate.
Because I know Cody.
He’s the daredevil black sheep of the esteemed Hart clan, and should never have made it to his twenty-fifth birthday. What he probably hadn’t counted on, though, was his best friend dying instead of him.
His best friend. My brother.
I’m out of options, but nothing on Earth could possibly entice me into the arms of the man who killed my brother.
DESIRED
I want a divorce. And I don’t know why.
“The Plan” we made twenty years ago as naive seventeen-year-olds is on track. Married. House with a white picket fence. Two matching BMWs. Two kids. And Gabriel is on track to becoming a partner in his law firm.
How can one have everything and still need something more…something different? How do I tell the man I married that he’s practically a stranger to me now?
“The Plan” is about to go completely off track. Far worse, I’m not sure if it’s his fault…or mine.
ENSNARED
They were named for the archangels. They should have come with warning labels.
The two Falconer boys, Raphael and Michael, were named for the archangels. I know they are anything but. At twenty-two, I married Raphael, the first Falconer boy. By twenty-five, I was divorced. I traded my wedding ring for two near-fatal bullet wounds—and it was the best damned trade of my life.
Now it’s time to go back to the place where it began, where Michael, the second Falconer boy, waits; his life on pause ever since I married his brother.
He’s convinced I’m there to destroy his life.
He’s not wrong….
FLAWED
I’m out of dreams. He’s full of them.
I wanted to be an actress. I got as far as waiting on tables while waiting for the call backs that never came. Disillusioned and burned-out, I head out on a lavish, all-expense-paid vacation before facing up to the fact that life has dealt me a big flat zero.
And then I meet him, and our mutual attraction is immediate and scorching. Jake Hunter is a professional beach volleyball player with gold in his sights. Olympic gold.
And perhaps another kind of gold. He thinks I’m something I’m not.
Rich.
No amount of attraction is going to survive those false impressions and clashing expectations. I’m not going to make it out of this summer fling with my heart intact.
And neither will he.
About the Author
“Heart, Humor, Heat, and Happiness…”
At 4 a.m., when her husband and three sons are asleep, Kristen Blakely weaves unforgettable characters into unexpected stories.
Love Letters, starting with Adored, features Kristen's contemporary romance series, which proves that, at the very least, she knows how to alphabetize books.
Kristen's devious plan for world domination begins with making all her readers as sleep deprived as she is.
LOVE LETTERS by KRISTEN BLAKELY