Bachelors In Love

by Jestine Spooner

  He sighed. He was definitely sick of this scene. It was the same thing over and over again. Girls who were too young and too drunk. Dudes that were too pompous and too drunk. Throw in a whole lot of machismo, a dash of residual aggression from the sport, and a lot of pent-up sexual energy, and you got an NFL party.

  It was not Jay’s bag. There were some days he truly regretted not being born a dolphin. What he wouldn’t give to be out on the water right now. Even the dead black, frozen, January water that beckoned to him from outside. He could always smell the ocean.

  Jay reached the glass doors and slipped out onto the balcony. He was greeted by the crisp air and utter silence. Thank god. He could smell snow on the air and he wasn’t mad at it. He liked when the weather acted like the season they were in. Jay was quite familiar with the hole that humankind had dug itself into with carbon emissions. The threat of global warming hung over his head constantly. But in general, he tried to fret less and do more. Which was why he worked at a non-profit that was working to raise awareness and combat climate change.

  Well, he admitted to himself in the privacy of his own head, he also worked there because of her. Mari. His mystery woman. She was an eco warrior just like himself. And somewhere in the back of Jay’s mind, he thought that it might increase his chances of finding her again if he tightened his sphere a little bit. If he worked in the same world that he knew she worked in. Though he didn’t know which city she lived or worked in.

  Jay leaned forward onto the rail of the balcony and looked past the lights of the city to the thin strip of ocean that adorned the bottom of the sky.

  If he let himself, he could get so unbelievably frustrated right now. But that wasn’t good for him. For his heart or his body. She was gone and he probably would never see her again. All he could do was take each day as it came. And move on.

  Jay let out a slow breath and turned back to face the party. He watched all the glittery, dressed up people milling about. Chatting, dancing, sipping champagne. Everyone looked the same. Had the same expression on their face.

  Except one woman. She wore a muted black dress, almost boyish in its cut. Her black hair was straight down her back and she wore no jewelry that he could see. He couldn’t see her face but she stood away from the party. She didn’t seem bored. No. She seemed like she was observing.

  Something skated up and down Jay’s spine before he ruthlessly leashed it, yanked it back. There was no hope, he told himself. It wasn’t her.

  It wasn’t her.

  Just then, a foghorn sounded from a barge on the ocean and it’s deep bellow made it all the way to the balcony where Jay stood. The sound always reminded him of his time in the Bahamas, the week after the hurricane. The noise of a foghorn was both uplifting and depressing to him. It reminded him of his time with Mari and it reminded him that she was gone.

  The melancholy call from the sea must have been audible from inside the ballroom as well. Because the woman who he had eyes on straightened up, turned toward the sound.

  Jay froze solid on the balcony, his hands tightening on the rail behind him. The woman, sadness rising in her eyes as she looked toward the ocean, shook her hair back and turned back toward the party.

  But not before her face had shot electricity straight through Jay. Not before Jay had seen her. Not before Jay’s life ended and began in the same moment.

  It was her.

  It was Mari.

  She was here.

  It was her.

  PART TWO: Jay

  PROLOGUE

  Present Day

  For the first time in five years, Jay Brady was looking at the love of his life. Her hair was black as ink down her back. Her equally black dress was simple, unadorned, slightly boyish. He’d almost forgotten how little she was, barely over five feet. God, he wanted to eat her alive.

  She was so gorgeous that something deep in his gut cried out to her, ached.

  He knew he was going to have to move in a second. He was frozen solid on a balcony in the middle of a Maryland winter.

  His hands gripped the railing behind him as his eyes lasered in through the glass doors separating him from the swanky party in full swing.

  All Jay had to do was move. Step forward, call out to her, and for the first time in five years, he’d hear her voice. Maybe even taste her lips. But he had to give his heart a second to restart.

  He’d been sure he’d never see her again. She’d vanished from his life like smoke, like a ghost. She’d become nothing more than a memory that he couldn’t stop dreaming about. He swore that if he ever saw her again, he’d never let her go. He wouldn’t give up the miracle twice in his life.

  It was with that word in his heart that he took the first step toward her across the balcony.

  Miracle.

  She was standing, bored, on the edge of the party. He couldn’t get over seeing her in a dress. He’d only ever seen her in a bathing suit. A tank top. His brain could hardly reconcile what he was seeing. His woman, the love of his life, the person by which he’d judged all other people for five years, was just standing in a room, at a party, with a bunch of other people.

  He took two more steps toward her. He was just going to open that glass door, say her name and she was gonna see him. She’d come out here. And then whatever was going to happen would happen.

  A foghorn sounded on the ocean behind him and Jay froze in place, she looked up again, out toward the water, a look of sadness and regret on her face.

  He knew that the sound of a foghorn would make her think of him. Just like it made him think of her. It made him think of her flavor, her breath, the tight clasp of her strong arms around him.

  Her eyes swept across the balcony and out to the thin black stretch of ocean behind him. And then they swept back to him. She stared at him.

  Even from fifteen feet away, he drowned in the startling green of her eyes. So light they were almost yellow. They glowed against her golden skin. The way they always had.

  Jay. He saw her lips say his name as she blinked and blinked at him, as if she were willing herself to see clearly. As if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  And that was about all he could take. Seeing her name on his lips snapped something inside of him. Something he hadn’t known was in danger of breaking. He strode forward, three quick steps, and flung open the glass door to the balcony.

  And then his arms were completely full of her.

  Mari flung herself at Jay, her arms around his neck and her face buried in his shoulder. She’d hit him with so much force that he stumbled backward onto the balcony.

  His arms banded around her midsection and he knew he was holding her too tight. There was nothing he could do. He’d lost her once because he hadn’t held on tight enough. She was gonna have to get used to being held like this.

  “Mari,” he croaked her name into her ear and her body trembled against his, shook with one, pained sob.

  Her fingers gripping his hair painfully, Mari slid down his body and landed her feet on the ground. She was a foot shorter than he was. And their height difference suddenly created a whole lot of space between them that neither of them wanted.

  Her fingers, still tearing the hell out of his blonde hair, ripped his head down toward her.

  “Jay,” she breathed his name against his lips before she smashed their mouths together.

  He felt her legs buckle and she tugged both of them to their knees. Jay’s hand fisted in the material of her dress, his other hand tangled in her hair.

  She was here. In his arms. He could taste her tears on her lips as she savagely kissed him. It wasn’t a kiss of sensual passion. It was a kiss that said everything inside her was exploding with relief and joy and all the pain the last five years had caused both of them.

  “Miracle,” he said again against her lips.

  Neither of them were aware that two other people had stepped out onto the balcony. Jay’s best friends, Marcus and Eli. Best friends since birth, and neither of them had eve
r seen Jay act this way. Usually, he was calm, collected, controlled. But here he was, tears streaming down his face and practically rolling around with a woman in public. A very attractive woman, sure. But still. They exchanged startled glances.

  Jay smashed her body to his as another sob wracked through her. He lowered them down even more so now she sat in his lap, her small body fitting perfectly against his.

  “Miracle,” he said again, knowing there was a good chance his grip was bruising her. He tried to loosen his fingers.

  “You’re alive,” Mari sobbed against his lips. “You’re alive.”

  Jay pulled back in shock. In all the five years he’d pined for her, it had never occurred to him that she’d think he was dead.

  “I hoped,” she said as she managed to pull her lips an inch off of his. “But I was never sure. I looked and looked for you. But so many people had died. They could barely keep track of them all. And you were in such bad shape. Oh, god. Jay. You’re alive.”

  Her flavor exploded into him as his tongue swept into her mouth. There was passion there, five years worth. But this kiss was about proof. It was about life. It was about holding one another after they thought they never would again.

  His tongue pressed against hers and proved just how alive he was. And hers pressed right back, tangling just the way he remembered. It amazed Jay how well he’d remembered her. Every second, every scent, every breath, every texture was exactly the way it was in his memories.

  She tore her mouth from his and began kissing every inch of his face. The corner of his mouth, his ears, his brow. And especially his nose.

  “Your dumb, big nose,” Mari half laughed, half cried. “I never thought I’d see this dumb, big nose again.”

  Jay laughed too, and forced his eyes to open. He couldn’t miss a second of this. And the second his eyes hit hers, she pulled back just a little.

  “Your Sinatra blues,” she whispered. It was what she’d called his eyes.

  “Paul Newman face with Frank Sinatra’s eyes,” he echoed her old words back to her.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I can’t be held accountable for what I said under such dire circumstances.”

  He gripped her even tighter, an emotional grin spreading across his face. There she was. His Mari. His delightful, dry-humored, realistic, tough little woman. His woman who somehow felt so much but still didn’t see the world through rose-colored glasses.

  “You look just the same,” Jay said, brushing away tears on her cheeks with the back of his hand.

  “Hopefully less sweaty, thirsty, and panicked than I did then,” she replied dryly. She brushed his tears away the same way he had for her. Her hands fell to his shoulders, tightened reflexively. And then she looked down at the way they were sitting. Her nestled into his lap, intimate, lover-like. Something tightened across her expression and Jay felt a corresponding dip in his stomach.

  “Mari?” a man’s voice said from behind her.

  Jay’s eyes tore from Mari’s face and blearily focused on the three other people on the balcony. Marcus and Eli stood there, looks of stunned amazement on their faces. There was a third man, stepping through the balcony doors and closing it behind him, as if he wanted to keep all the partygoers away from the scene in front of him.

  To Jay’s extreme dismay, Mari untangled herself from him, rising back up and straightening her dress out. She held her hand out and hauled Jay up to standing as she wiped the rest of her tears from her eyes.

  “What’s going on?” the man asked, his brow furrowed. He wore an expensive suit and his brown hair was carefully styled to look artfully messy.

  “A reunion,” Mari answered, her voice still rough with emotion. She reached out and squeezed Jay’s hand. “I haven’t seen Jay in years. I thought I might never see him again.”

  Jay looked back and forth between Mari and this douche in a suit. Marcus and Eli wordlessly stepped around to Jay’s sides, perhaps they knew what was coming before Jay even did.

  “Linc Cavanaugh,” the man in the sharp suit said, reaching over to shake Jay’s hand. Jay had to drop Mari’s hand to do it, but the second the shake was over, he brought his hand back to Mari’s elbow, wanting, needing at least one point of contact with her.

  That contact was ripped away from him when Mari moved away from Jay and to the side of the douche in the suit.

  “I’m Mari’s fiancé,” the man said.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Five Years Ago

  “Fuck,” Jay muttered to himself as ocean water lapped at his feet. He was damn near at the center of the island. The storm surge alone was indicating that this was gonna be a much bigger storm than predicted.

  Cursing, he dropped to his knees into the brackish water as a full tree branch rolled and danced across the air, the leaves shimmying in the wind like a lady’s skirts. He got back to his feet, stumbling in the wind. He was forced to admit that this time, he’d waited too long to evacuate. And now he was going to have to find a place to bunker down and wait it out.

  He turned and looked behind him at the small, uninhabited island. It was mostly jungle. He’d been camping on the beach along with a few other surfers who’d traveled out this way to catch what were supposed to be legendary waves. The combination of the reef and the weather patterns had created epic surf this past week. But when the weather had started to turn, everyone else had evacuated back to Grand Bahama.

  Jay sighed. No use crying over spilt milk. All he could do was try to find shelter and hope the whole island didn’t sink like a rock in a pond.

  He’d heard that there was an old abandoned resort that stood in the middle of the island still. Though some of the other surfers he’d seen over the last week had gone off to explore it, Jay had had no interest. Man-made structures held no appeal for him. Not when the whole cerulean ocean had spread out before him.

  Jay scrubbed his sun bleached hair off his forehead and set off at a light jog, his bag bobbing on his back. He said a prayer of thanks to his mother, who always insisted that he carry emergency supplies whenever he did anything like this. Thanks to her, he carried three bottles of water, a water filter, a first aid kit, an emergency cell phone, a space blanket, sunscreen, and a hell of a lot of Clif Bars.

  Jay just hoped he lived long enough to thank her in person.

  The wind howled around him as more branches cracked and swayed. Leaves swirled through the air like dead birds. He was beyond relieved to see that the center of the island was at an incline. At least a twenty foot increase in altitude. And as he took the incline at a sprint, the creeping ocean was soon left behind him. As long as he could find that resort, he should be fine. He’d hunker down for a day or two, probably go out of his mind with boredom, but he’d be alright.

  He just wished he’d brought a book or something.

  A few minutes later, Jay stumbled out of the thick jungle and onto an overgrown clearing. The old resort stood like the last rotten tooth in an old mouth. It was crumbling in every way possible, and the jungle had obviously attempted to reclaim the land that had been cleared to build it. Vines crept up the plaster walls of the resort and tall grass turned silver as it laid flat against the wind.

  Jay’s lip involuntarily curled as he surveyed the dilapidated building. It was gonna be gross as hell in there. But, he looked back at the darkening sky. It was gonna be a hell of a lot better than getting swept out to sea. And at least the hotel was five stories tall.

  There was no way the water would rise that high. He’d be safe from flooding.

  Ducking debris, Jay covered his head and sprinted toward the building, straight into the moldy lobby area that had been almost completely reclaimed by the jungle. Golden, gilded woodwork peeked out, tarnished and depressing, from behind vines that climbed the walls. He took a second to smile down at the carpet. It must have once been red. But now it was covered over almost completely in moss. Most of the windows and doors had been broken or pulled off the hinges, so the area gave very little cover from the
weather.

  Jay jogged toward what he correctly assumed to be the stairwell. He yanked it open and took the stairs two or three at a time. The roar of the wind and rain was immediately quieted behind him as the door slammed shut. The second floor wasn’t quite high enough for comfort, and, feeling that he’d better be safe than sorry, he bypassed the third floor for the same reason. Jay pushed through the door marking the fourth floor and found himself looking out on a dim hallway. Doors to the hotel rooms, painted a color that used to be white, glowed in the dim light. Filtered, stormy light strained in through the dirty window at the end of the hallway.

  Jay looked around, tried a few of the hotel room doors and found them locked. With an internal shrug, he tossed his bag onto the hallway floor. The hallway was probably a safer place to kick it than the hotel rooms anyway. There were fewer windows and fewer things to get tossed around by the wind.

  Jay paced the length of the hall toward the dirty window and peeked out. He was high enough to see over the trembling green canopy of trees. Out to the steel gray ocean that grimaced back at him, white lipped and furious.

  Shit. That was an angry-ass storm. He felt a shiver of regret skitter down his spine. He shouldn’t be here. He wasn’t about to bend over and kiss it goodbye quite yet, but he knew enough to know he should have respected Mother Nature a little bit more this time.

  Jay turned back from the window just in time to see a shadow flick across the hallway. It could have been his eyes deceiving him, but he could have sworn the shadow was person-sized. And had disappeared through one of the hotel room doors.

  Cautious and curious, Jay padded silently down the hallway. His soaking wet tennis shoes made almost no noise against the old carpet. He treaded carefully, all his senses sharpened and vibrating with tension.

  He wasn’t scared, but if he wasn’t alone, he wanted to be completely prepared.