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
EPILOGUE
WINNING HER HEART
EMMA KINGSLEY
Copyright © 2018 by EMMA KINGSLEY
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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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
EPILOGUE
THANK YOU
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Also by EMMA KINGSLEY
CHAPTER 1
NICOLE
Nicole’s calves ached in protest, and her shoulders burned from the Florida sun’s intensity, but she ignored everything painful and worrisome in the world. Crouched behind a tree, on the edge of the freshwater marsh, nothing existed but the animal two yards away from her.
The rabbit hopped once, pushing its nose against a clump of grass. It was a miracle that Nicole had seen it at all. With approximately no more than a hundred and fifty Lower Keys Marsh Rabbits in the area and with it being her first week interning, running into a rabbit in the flesh seemed like nothing short of a miracle.
Nicole stayed where she was, frozen and pressed against the tree’s bark. Was she breathing too loud? Could the rabbit smell her?
The animal lifted its head, stretching its neck toward the sky. Its nose wiggled as it smelled the air, probably looking for both food and predators.
Nicole’s fingers itched to pull her phone out of her back pocket and take a picture. She wasn’t moving until the rabbit was gone, though. Hopefully, the cameras she’d come out to check were getting the whole event.
“You’re beautiful,” she found herself whispering.
The rabbit lowered its face, getting back to searching for whatever meal it had come out to enjoy.
Nicole smiled to herself. She could do this all day long: hunker down in the sun and watch animals, look for tracks, enjoy the peace and the picturesque world broken only by the occasional bird call or rustling in the trees.
Maybe the rabbit would leave behind a clump of fur or some droppings. With such an endangered creature, anything was of use.
Not that Nicole was in charge of anything actually scientific. As an intern, her tasks for the NGO mostly involved grunge work. But she wasn’t complaining, and she never would.
Suddenly, the rabbit lifted its head—this time with a new immediacy. Its ears twitched and Nicole could feel the alarm floating off of it. Something had changed.
She glanced at the sky, looking for predatory birds, yet found nothing but a clear, blindingly blue blanket. At the same time, heavy, fast-paced bass broke the marsh’s quietude.
The rabbit bolted, taking off into the brush it had emerged from. Nicole inhaled sharply and stood up. The music grew louder and she turned to see a white SUV come around the bend in the dirt road. Anger filled her chest and she crossed her arms. The area was technically open to the public—at least the part that she was in—but that didn’t mean people needed to blast their music and disturb the entire ecosystem.
As she stood still, the SUV slowed down and came to a stop behind the company pickup she’d driven there. The music died. The passenger window rolled down and a smiling young man about her age gave her a wave.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello,” she answered through tight teeth.
“Are you familiar with this area?”
“You scared it away.” She frowned.
She hadn’t meant to snap at him like that, but it was as if the words were coming out on their own. She had been feet away from one of the most endangered species in the country. Who knew when that would happen again—if ever?
“Scared what?” the man asked.
“The rabbit.” She looked past him. There was a second man in the car, the one driving, but he had his face down and was typing away on his phone.
“Oh, sorry.” His face crumpled in confusion. “Hey, do you know if there are any good hiking trails around here?”
Heat flooded Nicole’s face. She needed to answer. She needed to be nice to him. At that moment, though, her primitive side was getting the best of her. There was a reason she tended to spend more time with animals than with people.
“I don’t know,” she replied dryly.
“Huh. Okay.” He turned to the driver. “She doesn’t know. Let’s get out of here.”
The driver’s door opened and the second man came around the front of the SUV.
Without meaning to, Nicole locked gazes with him. It was like all the air had been sucked from her lungs. The marsh around her blurred. The dirt road. The brush. The sky. It was all gone. Only the man standing in front of her remained.
Nicole struggled to breathe, struggled to look away. Those smoldering dark eyes held her own in place, though. Reaching up to run his fingers through his black hair, the man tilted his head at her in question.
“Isn’t that a trail behind you?” he asked.
Nicole turned to look. Indeed, it was a trail, winding close to where the rabbit had disappeared off to. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
She really didn’t want anyone to go down that walking path. But what could she do? It was open to hikers. Maybe once she reported back to the office, something could be done. Maybe Florida Keys Conservation would be able to convince the state to shut down this portion of the park. It shouldn’t be that hard. Other than NGOs, the state parks were more invested in conservation than anyone else.
“The rabbits have suffered enough,” she mumbled to herself.
The dark-haired man’s brow pinched. “What was that?”
A new wave of heat hit Nicole’s cheeks. She hadn’t meant to talk out loud.
The first man came to stand next to the dark-haired one, and Nicole saw how different they were. One was short and stocky, with blond hair and a round face. The other was tall, with breathtaking features and perfect teeth that sparkled as he smiled at her. Nicole couldn’t help but notice how his broad shoulders filled out his plain white T-shirt impeccably.
“You guys shouldn’t be playing music that loud out here,” she said, forcing herself to focus on what was important. “You scared away a Lower Keys Marsh Rabbit. Do you know what that is?”
They shared a quick look.
“Uh…no?” The blond man narrowed his eyes in confusion.
Nicole’s inhale burned her nose and she bent to pick up her backpack. She’d accomplished wha
t she came out to the park to do. The cameras were still in working condition. Since she wasn’t a park ranger, there was nothing she could do about noise pollution. It was time to get back to the office.
She headed to the truck, but the tall man stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “Hey, hold on. Did we upset you?”
His voice was smooth and deep. Like velvet. Or dark chocolate…if chocolate made a sound.
Nicole tightened her fingers around her backpack straps. “No. It’s fine.”
He frowned slightly. “It doesn’t seem like it is.”
She glanced over his shoulder, at the waiting truck. Since he was being so persistent, why not tell him the truth? Maybe he’d be more careful next time.
“Your music scared the rabbit away,” she stated blandly. “It’s a very endangered animal and I’m helping study them. This was the first time I got to see it in flesh.”
“Oh, I’m really sorry.” He seemed to genuinely mean it, and for a second Nicole almost told him it was all right—but then she remembered that, no matter how nice and cute he was, the disruption was certainly not all right.
“Will you just try to keep it down?” she asked.
“Of course.” He nodded, his gaze raking over her face in a way that made her skin tingle. “We’re not from around here. We’re visiting from L.A.,” he said, like that explained everything.
“Okay.” Nicole glanced at the truck again. The fact that the man was having such a strong effect on her made her even more eager to get out of there.
“I’m Aidan,” he said, “And this is Mikey.”
Aidan. Of course that’s his name. It’s as cute as he is. Nicole smiled tightly, doing her best to ignore that last thought. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’re a scientist?”
“No.” She shifted her weight around. “I’m an intern…and I really need to be going. Try to keep the noise down, please. And drive slower. The Lower Keys Rabbits are endangered partially due to humans.”
He opened his mouth like he was about to say something else, but Nicole shot him a hard look and made a wide curve around him. Without so much as a glance his way, she jumped into the truck and tossed her backpack on the seat next to her. Gaze firmly over the steering wheel, she started the engine and drove off.
Just before the dirt road’s curve, though, she couldn’t resist taking one quick look in the rearview mirror. The blond man was busy taking pictures of a tree with his phone, but the other one—Aidan—still stood where Nicole had left him, his eyes on her truck as he watched her drive away.
CHAPTER 2
AIDAN
A knock on the trailer door made Aidan groan and drop his head into his hands.
“Again?” he said in a low voice. “I already tried the entire line on.”
Mikey shrugged and went to open the trailer door. Instead of someone from wardrobe, Aidan’s dad walked in.
“How are we doing?” he asked, clapping his hands together in excitement.
“Okay,” Aidan answered. “Are they set up for the first shot?”
His dad rubbed his jaw. “Almost. They ran into some kind of issue with the camera. Did you get to makeup yet?”
“Yeah.” Aidan leaned back into the couch. “The makeup girl just left.”
“Let me see.” His dad squatted and peered intently at Aidan’s face. “That’s a lot of foundation.”
“Not for the camera, I don’t think.”
“No.” He shook his head forcefully. “It’s a lot. I’m going to get her in here. Don’t go anywhere.” He looked over at Mikey. “What are you doing?”
“Um, contemplating humanity’s existence as a whole?”
Rick grunted. “Did your dad get back yet about my idea?”
Mikey briefly glanced at Aidan. “Not yet.”
Rick nodded, moving his jaw around like he chewed on a thought itself. “It’s a good one.”
“Yeah,” Mikey said in such an unenthusiastic way Aidan had to work to stop himself from laughing.
“It’s a good idea,” Rick reiterated, turning away. “A great one.”
He stomped from the trailer, closing the door behind him.
Mikey looked at Aidan. “So I always suspected this, but now I know it to be absolutely true. Your dad only puts up with me because my parents are movie producers.”
“Uber-successful movie producers,” Aidan clarified.
“Exactly.”
Over the last year, Aidan’s dad had been full of ideas, one of the latest being that, in place of his ended tennis career, Aidan could pursue a career in acting. He’d come up with a movie idea that involved Aidan playing some coach who inspired a team of inner-city kids by teaching them tennis.
As derivative as that idea was, even by Hollywood’s standards, Aidan wasn’t surprised at all that Mikey’s dad hadn’t returned a call about it.
“I don’t want to be an actor,” Aidan said.
“I know.”
Aidan nodded. Being good friends with Mikey for almost six years meant he didn’t have to explain much. They’d met at a house party, bonding over the fact that they were the only two people there who wanted to go swimming in the pool rather than get drunk out of their minds.
Mikey sipped from his paper coffee cup, eyes wide. “I fear for that makeup artist. No way is she prepared for the wrath of Rick Coleman.”
“Yeah,” Aidan muttered, his mind already drifting to the girl he’d met the day before. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since she got into her car and drove away.
With a heart-shaped face, big, hazel eyes, and long bangs that almost touched her eyelashes, she’d been pretty in the way that only a girl who doesn’t know she’s beautiful could be. Even when he closed his eyes then, he could see her. He could hear her voice, feel her gaze on his. But it wasn’t her cuteness that put her on his mind—though that couldn’t be denied.
It was the fiery spirit she’d displayed that caught his attention. She’d been irritated and she hadn’t been afraid to show it. No one, other than his closest family and friends, ever really showed their true feelings to Aidan. In his world, everyone was too busy doing their best to please the celebrity rather than getting to know the real person behind his star status. But not that girl. She didn’t seem to care about who Aidan was or what he wanted.
“Earth to Aidan.” Mikey waved his hand in front of Aidan’s face. “Did you hear me?”
Aidan looked up at him from the couch. “Huh?”
“What do you want to do tonight? I mean, provided the shoot is actually only eight hours.”
“Um—I don’t know.” He tried to think back to the small bits of Haven Sound he’d seen in the few days they were there, but couldn’t come up with much. The coffee shop downtown. That girl. The sandy beaches. That girl. The comic book store Mikey had freaked out over. That girl.
“What do you think her name was?” he asked.
Mikey sat down on the couch next to Aidan and started flipping through one of the sports magazines the production had put on the tiny coffee table. “Who? The makeup girl? I think I heard someone call her Audrey.”
“No. The girl from yesterday. At the park.”
Mikey scrunched his face. “The rude one?”
Aidan hesitated. “Well, she had a point. I guess in her eyes we were the rude ones.”
Mikey shook his head. “I don’t think she wanted us to know her name,” he answered, going back to drinking coffee and browsing the magazine.
“I wonder if she lives around here. Did she say the name of the place she worked for?”
Mikey slowly looked up from an article about running shoes. “What’s going on here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on, man. Don’t play with me. You think I can’t read you like a book?” Mikey made a face. “That girl made it pretty clear that she didn’t like us. She didn’t even seem to care that you were— you know, you. I highly doubt she wants to see either one of us ever again.”
<
br /> “That’s what makes me want to see her. She didn’t care that I’m famous.”
“Or she didn’t know you are.”
Before Aidan could answer, the door opened again and his dad came in, followed by the makeup girl and the assistant director.
“It’s too much foundation,” his dad said, waving his hands all around. “He’s going to look like a clown up there.”
The makeup girl obediently began pulling wipes from her bag, and Aidan gave her an apologetic look. His dad could be intense. Aidan himself had learned to deal with it years ago, even before his dad became his manager, but he felt sorry for anyone who unwittingly found themselves in Rick’s crosshairs.
The touch-up done, the assistant director began going over the schedule for the day. It was Aidan’s first shoot with Fresh Wear Athletics, part of a two-year promotional deal. He’d be shooting three commercials and four still-photo shoots. After that, the potential existed for further partnership.
Aidan hadn’t cared about doing the campaign, but his dad had really wanted him to do it. ‘It’s money,’ he’d said. And, ‘It’ll keep your face out there.’
Aidan had more money than one person could ever need and he didn’t quite get why his face needed to stay ‘out there.’ He was twenty-seven now. His career had ended a year ago. Even if it hadn’t come to such an abrupt halt, his time in the tennis world would have petered out eventually.
“And then we’ll be done for the day,” the assistant director said, closing his binder with a snap. “By the way, I want to say it’s an honor to be working with you. My daughter is a big fan. That year at Wimbledon—Wow!”
Aidan’s chest tightened, but he tried to ignore the constricting feeling. Instead, he stood and shook the man’s hand. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
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