Harlequin E New Adult Romance Box Set Volume 1: Burning MoonGirls' Guide to Getting It TogetherRookie in Love

by Jo Watson

  We went for coffee after the play and worked out that his brother was the graphic designer who’d made the poster for A Mother’s Jealous Tears—obviously the reason for the green water—and that he’d been given a free ticket and felt obliged to go. During our initial conversation, we established that he was an accountant (very professional), his family belonged to a country club (very respectable), he owned his own house (very upwardly mobile) and we enjoyed several of the same hobbies, TV shows, music and movies. We also seemed to have the same ideals: he also wanted marriage and kids and dogs and a big house.

  He was perfect. He checked off all my boxes. He crossed all my Ts and dotted the Is. It was even better when everyone said they liked him. So when he’d started playing golf with my dad and my brothers, I knew I was in love.

  And Michael said he felt the same way, too.

  The funny thing, though, the thing I can’t wrap my head around, is that our relationship had been perfect. We never fought, conversation was always easy and we fell into a predictable, comfortable daily routine. So what had happened?

  I’d played our entire relationship over in my mind, looking for the telltale signs of dissatisfaction. But I couldn’t find any. Unless I was missing something? Stormy Rain had said something to me once that was suddenly reverberating in my ears, “You know, if a guy’s not getting it, he’s going to go looking for it somewhere else!”

  My blood ran cold. Had it been unreasonable of me to expect him to abstain for so long? He was a red-blooded male after all, and one who could probably get sex a million times a day with a million different women. Hot, thin women. It’s not like we weren’t sexual, though, we’d done everything else but the actual deed. God, my mind was spinning, my thoughts were going haywire and once again I was overcome with an urge to phone him. I needed to speak to him.

  I reached for my phone and realized it was off. I suspected that my friends and family were panicking by now and had probably sent out search and rescue helicopters and sniffer dogs, so I dropped them all a reassuring message.

  And then I logged onto Facebook, went straight to his page and scanned. Nothing.

  Twitter. Nothing.

  Instagram. Nothing.

  I dialed his number and it immediately went to voicemail, and hearing his voice made me feel sick.

  My heart started pounding and I broke into a cold sweat. A sick feeling was washing over me in waves.

  I dialed again. Voicemail.

  I dialed again. Voicemail.

  Again. Voicemail.

  Should I leave a message? But what would I say?

  Hey Michael, it’s me, Lilly. I was just calling to ask WHY THE FUCK YOU LEFT ME AT THE ALTAR YOU BASTARD ASSHOLE JERK-FACE? Anyway, love you and chat soon, bye.

  I was relieved when I heard a knock at the door, and I decided to take it as a sign that I should leave well enough alone. I was still wet from my bath and opened the door in my towel, just as Damian was coming up the stairs.

  “Good evening.” A man in a black suit greeted us both. “Your dinner is ready.”

  “What dinner?”

  “The romantic dinner on the beach that Mr. Edwards…” he turned and looked at Damian now, “that Mr. Edwards organized for your wedding night.”

  “That sounds great, I’m starving,” Damian said.

  “No, I don’t think so!” My tone was fierce and the man in the suit looked surprised.

  “But it’s all arranged, and it’s very beautiful.”

  I was torn. The very mention of the word food made my stomach growl and mouth water. But the idea of a romantic dinner with Damian on the beach, well, that was just weird.

  Damian jumped in; he was making a habit of that. “Would you mind giving us five minutes?”

  The man in the suit left and Damian stepped forward.

  “But aren’t you hungry?” he asked.

  “I am but…” I tried to pull my towel up so it covered as much of my body as possible. I wished I was wearing a burka.

  “It’s not like I’m going to play footsie with you under the table or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  God, I was torn! I started mentally making a list of pros and cons, but my stomach wasn’t having it. I was starved. Oh, what the hell, I guess. Besides, maybe I could get someone to take a picture of us and post it on Instagram with a soft-focus romantic filter and make him jealous.

  “Ok, give me a minute to get ready.”

  * * *

  There’ve been a few moments in my life when I’ve been overwhelmed by something so beautiful that it literally took my breath away. Like when I tried on my wedding dress for the first time, or met my baby niece for the first time. And right now was one of those moments. Looking around, I could see that this location had been carefully planned, manipulated and manufactured for optimal romance.

  The actual setting was magnificent: the dinner was laid out on a table for two on a sandy embankment. You had to walk through warm, ankle-deep water to get there. In the middle of the embankment, in the middle of a heart made of candles placed on the sand, was a tent-like structure. It was open on all sides and draped with thin white curtains that were waving rhythmically in the warm breeze. The small table was scattered with pink flowers and more candles and was flanked by two chairs also draped in white fabric. All in all, it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen.

  It was stunning, and the feelings that it evoked in me were very overpowering; it simultaneously stole my breath away, while reaching deep inside and tickling every one of my senses. It really was…it was…well, it’s really hard to describe, I don’t even think I have the adjectives to do it justice. In fact, feel free to insert them yourself.

  It looked like a (insert adjective), and it made me feel like (insert adverb), etc.

  I hope I’ve painted this picture accurately enough, because it’s important for you to visualize it correctly in order to understand why my next reaction was so surprising. Because all I could do was look at it all and laugh.

  And, oh, how I laughed. I laughed like a cackle of hyenas.

  My shoulders shuddered as I struggled to get enough air into my lungs, gasping in between the shrieks. This was not a normal laughter either—this was hysteria. And I wasn’t able to stop it. In fact, the more I tried to control it, the worse it got. The laughter escalated until I had tears rolling down my face and was whimpering—at some stage, I think I heard myself snort. My ribs hurt, my stomach and my mouth hurt. I looked up at Damian—expecting him to be backing away from me with a look of terror on his face, clutching a fork in case he needed to stab and subdue me—but he wasn’t. He was also laughing, and then he said something that made me realize that he got it.

  “I was about to say something witty about irony, but I see you’ve saved me the trouble.”

  And then we both laughed.

  There’s that corny saying about laughter being the best medicine. But it really is, because when our laughter had finally tapered off, I felt better than I’d felt in days! But I was bloody hungry, too. However, after reading the menu several times, it soon became clear to me that I had absolutely no idea what they were trying to serve us.

  The menu claimed the dishes were “An adventure in molecular gastronomy,” and the kinds of foods listed included seared tuna on a bed of deconstructed salad, served with a ginger mousse. I kept reading and the word deconstructed appeared three more times, along with other confusing phrases such as sweet and sour tangerine veil, lychee bubbles and edible sand, sea foam.

  “Um…” I looked up at Damian, hoping he was feeling the same way and that I wasn’t just some uncultured slob with no appreciation for the art of modern cooking.

  “Is it me or is this a little…” I was searching for the words.

  “Disdainfully avant-garde, a pretentious!”

  “Wow, you don’t pull any punches.”

  “Well, I have very strong feelings about this type of food.” His face was totally serious when he said t
his.

  “Pray tell,” I was intrigued again.

  “Well, my parents love this kind of cooking. It’s expensive and denotes good taste and culture, you see,” he said this last part in a very posh sounding accent, which made me laugh. “We once went to this restaurant in France where they actually served crab ice cream.”

  “No they didn’t.”

  “It’s true, you can Google it.”

  We smiled at each other and our eyes locked for a few seconds. I felt the strangest feeling rush through me, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it and as I was trying to, Damian broke eye contact.

  “Hi.” He waved his arm in the direction of the waiter. “Hi, please can we have your other menu.”

  “I beg your pardon.” The confused waiter looked at him blankly.

  “You know, the one with the normal food on it.”

  I tried to hide my snicker. I certainly didn’t want to offend anyone.

  But still the waiter gave him a blank look.

  So he tried again, “Let me put it this way. Can I get a hamburger with chips and, Lilly, what do you want?”

  “The same, thanks.”

  The waiter, although thrown, smiled cordially and walked off, splashing through the water as he went, and finally disappearing over the beach and into the hotel.

  And then I realized we were totally, I mean totally, alone.

  Alone.

  In the most romantic place in the world.

  I shuffled in my seat a bit. We exchanged a few awkward smiles, drank a bit of champagne and moved our serviettes around on the table lot. At one stage I picked up a flower and smelled it…

  And then something terrible happened…

  A warm gust of wind suddenly came out of nowhere, knocking several candles over. One went flying into my lap, instantly burning a little hole in the fabric of the white, vintage, knee-length dress I was wearing. But that wasn’t the problem. The real problem was that the beautiful cream ribbons around the neckline caught fire. Who knew ribbons were so damn flammable?

  I was on fire!

  I jumped up and started swatting myself frantically. The look on Damian’s face was pure horror, and I’ve never seen anyone get out of his seat so quickly.

  “Oh my God, Lilly, you’re on fire!” Damian rushed at me with a napkin and started slapping.

  “Ow!” I shrieked. “That hurts!”

  “Would you rather I left you to burn?” Damian shouted back at me. The whole scene was very dramatic.

  The little flames were getting higher and higher and heading directly for my face.

  “Take it off! Take it off!” Damian shouted.

  “What? My dress? Are you kidding?”

  “Jesus, Lilly, this is no time to be prudish, just take it off. It’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”

  I flushed hotter than the creeping flames.

  “I knew it. You watched me get undressed at the airport, didn’t you?”

  “It was an accident, I didn’t mean to.”

  I was mortified and put my face in my hands, temporarily forgetting about the impending incineration. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “It’s getting worse.” He pointed at the dress as the other ribbon went up in flames. I could feel the heat now. It wasn’t burning me yet, because the ribbons weren’t attached directly to the dress, but it was only a matter of time.

  And then I felt two strong hands on my back and…

  Splash.

  Everything went wet.

  Wet and sandy.

  Damian had pushed me face-first into the water.

  I emerged spluttering, my face and mouth full of sand.

  “What the hell?” The initial shock at being thrown into the water quickly turned to anger. “I can’t believe you did that. I can’t believe you did that!” I was seething at the nerve of it!

  “Hey, I might have just saved your life, Lilly, and this is the thanks I get?”

  I paused and thought about it. What would I have done if I’d been in his shoes?

  Yup, I would have done the same thing.

  “Look, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll do it, too.”

  And then there was another huge splash as Damian threw himself face-first into the water right next to me.

  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “I’ve heard that one before,” he said, flashing me yet another one of those wicked smiles that gave him his dangerous-looking edge. I looked straight back at him this time, and got that same strange feeling I’d had before.

  What the hell was it?

  It’s not like I liked this guy, or was even attracted to him.

  So why on Earth did I suddenly have butterflies?

  It was my turn to break eye contact.

  Chapter Six

  The warm, shallow water felt amazing, and neither of us got up; instead, we just sat there together in the moonlight, looking up at the night sky, our shoulders almost touching.

  “You see that bright light over there?” Damian pointed and my eyes followed his finger.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a galaxy called Andromeda, and there are one trillion stars in it. Can you imagine that? The sheer scale of it? Kind of makes you feel insignificant, really.”

  I turned and looked at Damian, he was engrossed in the night sky, with a look on his face that can only be described as awe, and for the first time ever, he looked vulnerable. Every time I thought I had this guy figured out, he threw me a curve ball. In fact, all of his actions seemed to contradict this hard exterior he projected to the world—not that I’m some kind of Sigmund Freud—but it seemed pretty obvious to me.

  The moonlight was illuminating his face, and I took the opportunity to study him through this new lens. Strands of dark wet hair fell into his face. His features definitely didn’t belong to that of a pretty boy, but they worked. He had a certain intensity to him; it was present in the way he spoke, the way he moved around with such confidence and in the way his smile lit up his dark black eyes.

  “How do you know so much about this stuff? Space?” I asked.

  “I studied astrophysics at university,” he said, without the slightest hint of playfulness in his voice. He sounded serious.

  “No! You’re kidding, right?” He had to be joking—only mathematical geniuses like Stephen Hawking studied astrophysics.

  “Nope,” he said casually. “I have my master’s in it. I wrote my thesis on dark matter and dark energy. I’m a big old nerd that way.”

  I looked at the tattoos running up and down his arms, at the faded T-shirt with a biohazard symbol on it and his old, dirty sneakers. Damian was definitely a complicated puzzle that I was nowhere near solving. And if I ever did solve it, there would probably be a missing piece, anyway.

  “So, astrophysicist, with really rich parents, backpacking the world with no bank card. How did that happen?”

  He shrugged, “I decided I couldn’t work in a career studying what lies beyond our planet when I knew so little about it.”

  “That’s so deep!” I said in my best stoned-hippie accent.

  He smiled his sideways smile at me, “I can be deep from time to time.”

  A silence settled in; only the sounds of the tiny waves gently lapping around us could be heard.

  “And you, what’s your story?”

  Oh God, I hate questions like this, they’re so open-ended that I never know where to start.

  “Ask me something. What do you want to know?” I said, secretly hoping he wouldn’t.

  “Okeydokey”, Damian said, folding his legs and turning to face me. The movement caught me off guard, and apart from that taxi ride, this was the closest we’d ever been. I suddenly felt very awkward and quickly busied myself by running my hand through the warm waters, picking up the sand and letting it gently fall through my fingers.

  “So I know you’re a lawyer. Everyone in the airport heard you shout that out. So why law?”

  I was relieved he’d chosen an e
asy question, and not something existential and profound about the meaning of life or something. “I love it,” I replied. “It’s so black and white. Simple. Everything has a place. It’s either right or wrong. No grey areas.”

  Damian looked at me curiously. “You really believe that? No grey areas? Don’t you think the world is a little more complex than that, Lilly?” he said in a voice that seemed to challenge me.

  “No, I think that everything can be boiled down to one or the other. Black or white. Right or wrong. Left or right,” I replied, confident that I was right.

  Damian turned away. His eyes glazed over and he suddenly looked very distant.

  “My sister died when she was five,” he said in a hushed tone that was almost inaudible. “She was beautiful. She had this pitch-black hair, with pale skin and the bluest eyes you ever saw. We all called her Snow White. She was so curious and full of energy; she never stopped, like a little Energizer bunny. One day, ten years ago, she was riding her bike on the street. We lived in a quiet suburban road at the time, so it wasn’t dangerous; we used to do it all the time. This guy, Brian, was driving down the street, driving under the speed limit, even, when his car hit a jagged rock and his tire burst. He lost control momentarily and hit her. And even though he was going slowly, she died instantly. The doctors said that had she been older, she would’ve survived. But she was so tiny.” Damian’s voice quivered, and I could feel his pain.

  “Brian jumped out of the car and tried to resuscitate her. Eventually he picked her up in his arms and started running to the hospital. He must have run a mile before someone helped. He took her to the emergency room but…like I said, she was already dead.” He paused and looked down at the heart-shaped tattoo on his wrist. “It was a freak accident. The wrong place, at the wrong time. There’s no one to blame, no right or wrong, no justice. And I’ve wanted to blame someone so badly, but the fact is, I feel sorry for Brian. I feel sorry for the guy who killed my sister. Talk about a grey area. He still sends us a card and flowers every year on the anniversary. He’s a good guy, and it was a terrible thing that happened, for him, too. He struggled with the guilt, he still does, and eventually fell into a deep depression and his girlfriend left him. So you tell me…Right? Wrong? Simple? Life is far, far from simple and sometimes things are very grey.”