by Zoe York
“How are the legs?”
“Hammy’s tight.”
“Both?”
She shook her head. “Just the right.”
“Stretch it out a bit now before you turn around and head back.”
Dean groaned.
“Just ten more, big brother,” Sean said, slapping him on the chest. “And this time, stop slowing Liana down. Let her go ahead if you can’t keep up.”
Liana gave him an apologetic look. “That’s on me. I like running with him.”
When it came to running, Sean didn’t have a lot of room for romance. “That’s not going to work as we get into longer distances. The big guy here can be your pace bunny for the first leg, but we’ll find you fresh bodies to run with for each subsequent chunk. That’s how it’ll be on a race day, anyway. Might as well get used to it. When the training group arrives next week, you’ll get a taste of how a race actually goes, and it’ll all make sense.”
She nodded as she stretched her leg. Then she bounced on the balls of her feet. “I’m ready.”
“Okay. Off you go. I’ll meet you back at Mac’s.”
It would take them forty-five minutes at least, more if Dean slowed down, so Sean had time to stop in on his build site.
He picked up his camp chair and his backpack, and headed for his truck. He’d figured out a bunch of these check points up and down the trail. Their new house was the first one, five kilometres south of Pine Harbour. This spot was the next point, ten clicks out. He could get people started on a run then meet them at each point along the way.
It still blew him away that next week, ten elite athletes would show up for a week of training with him. That they’d all paid good money to have him put them through their paces and teach them more about cross-training.
He’d hired Olivia to manage the logistics that were beyond him now—no reason to induce a migraine if he didn’t need to, and she could do all the cottage booking and catering ordering ten times faster than he could anyway. She’d done all of that for a film shoot two years earlier.
If Hope Creswell wasn’t careful, Sean might just try to steal her assistant away.
He turned north, toward home—their new home, although they only had a foundation so far. And a new lane, properly graded. He drove all the way in, expecting to find the property empty.
Instead, he found his wife’s car parked at the end of the drive, and that was even better.
He didn’t see her, so he grabbed his cane. He didn’t need it for short distances now. He could better anticipate the vertigo and compensate for the disorientation when it happened. But for a longer distance, it was just smart, and if she was exploring the meadow…
But she wasn’t. She was curled up on the far side of the poured foundation, sitting on an outdoor blanket, with a book in her lap.
“This is a welcome surprise,” he said after he spotted her.
“My afternoon was wide open and I thought I might come and see if you were here.” She’d joined the practice in Walkerton as a full partner just before their winter vacation to Florida. Her job still consumed a lot of her days and nights, but the flip side of that commitment to whatever her clients needed was that every so often, she got a day to herself—and because he was the luckiest man on the planet, she chose to spend that found time with him.
“Liana wanted to go for a run.” He gestured south. “They’ll be running past here in ten or fifteen minutes. Do you want to go out for lunch?”
“Sure.” She picked up her book, and her blanket, and they strolled back toward their vehicles together. “The laneway looks good.”
It had been a disaster just a week before, with the excavation equipment and cement trucks tearing it up. But they were done now. The next thing to go in would be a well and a septic tank, and after that, they would be done with heavy machinery and he could grade in the last load of gravel to make the lane smooth again.
He checked his watch then glanced down the trail. A few more minutes, and he’d see them running past. “We can come back here after lunch,” he said. “Come with me in my truck.”
She hopped into the passenger seat, and he turned the truck around, pointing the nose at the trail so he could watch for his trainee.
He was taking this job seriously.
But this was also a prime opportunity to make out with his wife in his truck, which had been on his Sean’s-Getting-Better bucket list for a while.
He turned off the truck again and pushed up the middle seat, that most of the time he kept down as an armrest. He gestured for Jenna to come closer, and she lifted one eyebrow as she did just that.
“What are we doing?”
“A long time ago, I promised myself I’d show you how good it was to make out in a truck.” He kissed her, one hand possessively cupping the back of her neck, the other unzipping her sweatshirt so he could stroke her curves a little as he tasted her mouth.
“It’s really good.” She chased his mouth, her breath hot and alive against his skin. He curved his hand over the barely-there swell of her belly.
A year ago, his world had exploded and he’d thought his dreams of a family with Jenna had turned to dust. She’d had hope enough for both of them, though. His throat got tight when he thought about how close he’d come to losing her.
Their trip to Florida hadn’t just been the official start of his new career. They’d conceived a baby there.
“We might get caught,” he said as he tugged her closer. He didn’t care. Let them tease him for loving his wife this much.
“So?” She grinned as she climbed into his lap. “Remember? Life is short.”
Oh, he remembered. He remembered everything. Bring on the crazy adventure.
THE END
That’s three of the Foster brothers who have found love. Matt’s story is next, in Love on the Outskirts of Town. And be sure to sign up for my email newsletter so you don’t miss any of the Pine Harbour news!
www.zoeyork.com
THE NEXT PINE HARBOUR NOVEL…
Matt Foster has never met a woman he couldn’t seduce into his bed. But when he meets Natasha Kingsley, there’s just one little problem—she’s not alone. Her three-year-old daughter wants a pony ride, an ice cream cone, and help to reach the highest rungs of the climbers at the park. Before he knows it, he’s spent all day with the Kingsley girls. and for the first time in forever, finds himself wanting more.
Natasha doesn’t realize who Matt is related to until he gives her his number at the end of a perfect day. Turning down his request for a second date—with both her and her daughter—is the hardest thing she’s ever done. But her history with his brother, and her firm commitment to living a drama-free life for her daughter, means she can’t flirt with, sleep with, or dream about Jake Foster’s younger brother.
Not even if he makes her daughter laugh.
Not even if he seeks her out again, and shows her just how interested he is in every part of her life—because there’s no such thing as a truly secret affair.
Read more on my website!
ALSO BY ZOE YORK
Explore all my series! Through all of them, you’ll find a similar sweet, steamy heat to this book.
SMALL TOWN ROMANCE
Pine Harbour
Wardham
Camp Firefly Falls
MILITARY ROMANCE
Pine Harbour
Camp Firefly Falls
SEALs Undone
ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Night
Vikings in Space (yes, I write sci-fi sometimes, too!)
www.zoeyork.com
EROTIC ROMANCE (written as ainsley booth)
Forbidden Bodyguards
Frisky Beavers
Billionaire Secrets
www.ainsleybooth.com
www.friskybeavers.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
aka The People Who Make Me Want to Get it Right
This book is way longer than it was supposed to be. So my first grateful thank you note is to my editor,
Kristi Yanta, who rolled with the changes with grace. Because of her, this book is tighter, smarter, and better. I can’t wait to work on the next Pine Harbour novel with her.
Dana Waganer did a very thorough proofreading pass. So many commas in the wrong places. So many typos. Any remaining errors are because I probably changed something at the last second.
I’m also endlessly appreciative of my husband. The Viking not only puts up with my head being in the computer most of the time, juggling work and our kids, dinner and laundry like a freaking pro, he also had to tolerate me writing about an officer this time around—a true hardship for any senior NCO. I’m sorry, sweetie. I’ll be back to the NCOs in the next book.
Finally, a very special thank you to one of my midwives, Diane, who took time out of her busy schedule to have lunch with me and humour my questions about what a midwife who was trained in BC and working overseas would have to do to shift gears and work in Ontario suddenly. That lead to a dozen more questions, and we talked until I had pages of notes to draw from for Jenna.
Getting Jenna right was important to me because midwives are, to me, the most special health care providers.
Nine and a half years ago, my first born arrived seven weeks early because I developed severe pre-eclampsia. I went to the hospital to have some blood work done, and left a week later, a mom to a six-day-old baby I was leaving behind in the NICU. A baby who had been born by c-section and immediately whisked away, who I didn’t get to hold until the day after I left the hospital. Through it all, and the weeks that would follow until he came home, my midwife Jennifer was a wonderful support as I adjusted to a start to motherhood I’d never expected.
Almost four years later, my second was born. He arrived just one week before his due date, and his delivery was night and day compared to his brother’s. Again, I had midwives by my side. Diane and Marie cheered me on and promised me that this time could be different. And because of them, it was. My youngest was born with Feist playing in the background, in a few easy pushes, and after he was delivered, they put him right on my chest and I got to hold him skin-to-skin.
We don’t always get what we want, but we can make what we get something worth wanting. That was the lesson I learned in my second delivery. That was what my midwives taught me. I still got sick in my second delivery. Still had a lot of drugs and interventions. But we fought for some elements of a delivery that mattered to me. None of that is in this book, because this story isn’t mine. It’s Sean and Jenna’s. But the kernel of that lesson I learned still made its way into their story, and I don’t mind that at all.
Finally, to my readers, thank you for loving Pine Harbour. Thank you for coming back over and over again for more of these stories that take me so long to write.
I love you all,
Zoe
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zoe York lives in London, Ontario with her young family. She’s currently chugging Americanos, wiping sticky fingers, and dreaming of heroes in and out of uniform.
www.zoeyork.com
Table of Contents
About This Book
Welcome to Pine Harbour
Dedication
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
The Next Pine Harbour Novel…
Also by Zoe York
Acknowledgements
About the Author
