Crash Into Me
Page 26
He turned to me, and for a man so confident and sure of himself, I saw a little doubt. “Never had one, but I hope so.”
I walked right into him, my arms moving around his waist. “The way you love me, so completely and unconditionally, I know so.” Then I batted my lashes. “Do you give private instruction?”
I saw the look, because that shit annoyed him, but annoyance gave way to heat. “For you, fuck yeah.”
Even after three years of marriage, and a very healthy sex life, he still could cause those butterflies.
“Let’s finish here, so I can feed my woman.”
We finished up, locked the shack, then strolled up the pier to the small food stand that sold the best seafood stew on the island. “Hey, Ethan. Two large bowls,” I called.
Yes, Ethan had moved to Antigua. He and Sandy lived not far from the hospital, where she worked, and Ethan had found his calling as a cook. His stand always had a line, like the one now, but we never had to wait.
“Family and she’s pregnant. Give me a minute,” he said to his customers. To us he said, “Sit.”
He scooped out two bowls from the huge stainless steel pot he had simmering over an open fire, grabbed the rolls he made special and brought it over to us.
“You’re a little late today,” he said, then glanced at Kade. “Beating the mommies away?”
He placed our food on the table.
“Fuck you,” Kade said.
Ethan laughed out loud. “Yeah, that’s got to be a pain in the ass, all those women falling all over you. Torture,” he said, rolling his eyes and pushing his hands into his pockets.
“Only woman I want falling all over me is already wearing my ring.”
The teasing stopped. “I hear ya, man,” Ethan said. “So did you hear about the case Zac picked up?”
I was happy, I loved my life, but I still got that chill for the hunt because I really did love being a detective. “No, what case?”
“Jewel heist that ended in murder. Victim was from Monaco, a link to the royal family.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah, he was pretty jazzed,” Ethan said. He started back to his customers, calling from over his shoulder. “Enjoy. Oh, and I’m working a new recipe. I need a guinea pig.”
I raised my hand. “That’s me.”
I caught Kade studying me throughout lunch, but he said nothing while we ate. He waited to share what he was thinking when we were heading to our second job. We docked, he turned off the engine, but he didn’t move to get out of the skiff.
“You miss it,” he said softly.
I wasn’t surprised by his comment because the man read me like a book. I was honest when I said, “I miss putting the pieces together, but I don’t miss chasing down meth heads and coming face-to-face with a barrel of a gun.”
His jaw clenched, thinking about my shooting. He pushed his hands into his pockets. “Consult.”
“On the case?” I couldn’t lie; the idea had crossed my mind.
“Yeah. A fresh set of eyes to look over the case file.”
I liked the idea, but I wasn’t sure Cap would go for it. “You think Cap would be okay with that?” I asked.
“I don’t see why not, but it can’t hurt to ask, and if you need to make an appearance from time-to-time, we already visit Manhattan a few times a month to check on my shit, we coordinate our schedules.”
“All the parts of detective work that I like and none of the bad,” I said, not hiding my excitement.
Kade pulled me to him. “We’ll call later.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, my voice going a little soft, because I loved this man so fucking much. “You’re always taking care of me.”
“And I always will.”
He kissed me, hard and fast, and then he smacked my ass. “We’ve got work.”
We walked up our dock, but we didn’t head to the house. We took a path that ran alongside it, leading to a building hidden behind tropical trees. Reaching the big double doors, Kade unlocked and pulled them open. He hit the lights. We were building a sailboat. It was the second boat commissioned, an original Kade Wakefield design. I did more watching than working because he loved it. A man who had once said his life was one of reacting, he was now choosing, and it made me so damn happy.
Then he pulled his shirt off, glanced back and tossed it at me. That was one of my working conditions, he had to work shirtless, just those faded jeans and bare feet. Yeah, I spent more time watching than working.
Kade was making dinner. I was in our bedroom, putting some papers in the safe, and noticed the box. I reached for it, opened the lid. It was the necklace Kade had bought me, that exquisite necklace. I’d only worn it that one time. Bad memories were linked to it. I ran my fingers over the sapphires. It was time to make new memories.
I stripped out of my clothes, secured the necklace around my neck and slipped into my silver Louboutin strappy-heeled sandals. I studied myself in the mirror, my eyes moving to the scar, as I traced it with my finger. I dropped my gaze to my stomach. My hand covered the baby growing there. That’s what life was all about, making new memories.
I walked to the door and called, “Kade, Baby, they still fit.”
He looked over and then did a double take. Those stormy eyes moved down my body and back up again. The pan was pulled from the burner, the heat turned off, and my husband was across the room sweeping me off my feet. “Dinner is going to be late.”
Dinner wasn’t just late, it was ruined, but I’d always liked cold pizza. Sitting on the counter, my husband between my legs, sharing a slice, I loved it even more. Kade had said on our wedding night that I’d crashed into him. That first day, we’d crashed into each other, knocking us off our original paths, so we could find a new path together. Who’d have thought something so ugly would lead to something so beautiful, but it had because we were living the fairy tale.
Brian Gaines won the election to become the forty-sixth president of the United States. At the podium, during his acceptance speech, he held a small gold coin for luck that was given to him by his father, a coin gifted to his father by a woman Brian had never met, Katrina Dent, his mother.
Other Titles
Elusive
I didn’t set out to be a pirate.
Life for me was about surviving the ugliness that people knew existed but didn’t talk about.
I lived in hell.
Then I saw her.
I knew I couldn’t keep her, but for just a little while, I had found heaven.
Eight years later, I can’t get her out of my head.
It is a mistake sailing to her island.
It is a mistake reaching out to her.
She doesn’t recognize me. Or maybe she does.
Closure, it is all I’m after.
Then my past comes back to haunt me.
She’s thrust into my ruthless world. An angel.
A romantic who has a journal that leads to a shipwreck and a lost treasure.
She wants to find the ending to a love story that is over two hundred years in the making.
I want to help her find it.
I didn’t set out to be a pirate.
I didn’t set out to fall in love with an angel.
I did both anyway.
Letting Go
I met Brock Callahan at eleven, fell in love at fifteen and lost him at eighteen.
One moment, one single instance can change the course of your life, but I picked myself up, brushed myself off, and took that first step knowing it would be the hardest.
Years later, tired of existing but not living, I quit my job in Manhattan, sold my condo and moved to a log cabin in Wyoming.
When I wake in the bed of Killian Reid, mistaken for a one-night stand, I never imagined I’d fall for the man.
; But I did.
Not at first; a slow fall, so gradual I didn’t realize I was no longer falling. I’d been given a second chance at a happily ever after.
And then Brock Callahan walks back into my life.
Beautifully Damaged
Ember Walsh is a trusting soul with the quiet beauty of her late mother, who perished in a mysterious car crash when Ember was three. A little tomboyish from being raised by her father, Ember packs a punch when a stranger gets pushy with her in a bar, catching the steely blue eyes of a tall, gorgeous tattooed man—Trace Montgomery. Still damaged from her last disastrous relationship and warned off the bad boy by friends, Ember fights the smoldering heat that Trace sparks in her when he begins shadowing her like a dark angel.
Burdened by a lifetime of horror and heartbreak, amateur fighter Trace doesn’t want to want Ember. His deep self-loathing keeps him from having any meaningful relationships, but Ember is an itch he can’t scratch. The two push and pull, slowly crumbling their walls, seemingly brought together by fate, because the turmoil that haunts their pasts is interlinked in undeniable ways. But can these two fighters finally lay down their arms?
His Light in the Dark
My first memory was of a slap, hard across the face: the sting on my cheek and the jarring of my bones as I slammed back into my bed. It was my dad who had hit me.
I had been four.
Most of my memories were much of the same and no one ever saw, no one ever fought to help, no one ever cared.
Then we moved.
My new neighbor cared, rescued the twelve-year-old I had been from a beating. Always thought I’d suffer the nightmare alone, I was wrong.
Mace Donati saved me that day in all the ways a person could be saved.
And his daughter, Mia, she became the friend I had always wanted, my conscience when my own faltered, the light that led me home when I had lost my way.
The girl who grew into the only woman I would ever love.
But when you realize you’re more like your father than the good people who took you in and gave you a home, the only way to return their kindness is to let them go.
I let them go, got so far lost in the shadows I couldn’t remember who I was anymore. Mia never gave up on me. She fought for me, kept the light on so I’d find my way back.
And when I did, life threw us a curveball. I had to hurt Mia in order to save her.
But when my past comes back to haunt me and I almost lose her, I’m ready to fight for her: fight to find a way back into her heart while keeping the demons from my past from finishing what they started.
About the Author
The Beautifully series...
Beautifully Damaged
Beautifully Forgotten
Beautifully Decadent
The Harrington Maine series...
Waiting for the One
Just Me
Lost Boys series...
Devil You Know
Demon You Love
Shipwreck series...
Elusive
The Ivy Blackwood Chronicles series…
The Gathering
Standalones
Our Unscripted Story
Savage: The Awakening of Lizzie Danton
His Light in the Dark
A Glimpse of the Dream
Always and Forever
Collecting the Pieces
Anthologies
Incognito
Ten Things I Love About You, A Love in the 90s Anthology
Co-written with Anthony Dwayne
Ogg’s Point series…
Unleashed
Standalones
Ring around the Rosey
Incomplete
Secrets
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