Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (Eight Fun, Romantic Novels by Eight Bestselling Authors)

by Violet Duke

  Haley stood in front of Eddie, staring straight ahead, eye level to his muscular chest, her fingers tightly clutching the ceramic plate she was holding. As he took a step towards her, closing the distance between them, he reached up, brushing a stray hair that had fallen in her face behind her ear.

  “You look nice,” he said before his hand once again fell at his side. On its path down, his fingers lightly touched the strap of her dress tied around her neck. “Is this new?”

  Haley’s lips were numb and a large knot had formed in her throat. “Yes,” she spoke softly as her eyes lifted to meet his.

  “Do you have a hot date tonight?” Eddie asked in a low tone.

  Only you.

  *

  “IF YOU CONSIDER babysitting a hot date, then yes.” Haley’s shaky voice made Eddie’s blood even hotter than it already was. He was about a second away from reaching out, threading his fingers in her silky blond hair, and kissing her until neither of them remembered their names.

  Eddie fisted his hands at his sides. He needed to step away. Get out of touching distance before he did something he couldn’t take back. Hell, he needed to leave the house entirely.

  He knew that logically. Unfortunately, his body and his brain did not seem to be communicating with each other right now. That might be partly due to the fact that, since Haley had walked into his house in a blue cotton summer dress that showcased her slim waist, long legs, and ample cleavage, causing his mouth to water and sweat to form on his brow, all of the blood his brain needed to function had rushed to the head that was located below his belt instead of the one that sat on his shoulders.

  Arousal coursed through Eddie’s veins as he stared down at Haley. Her crystal blues shined up at him, the black of her pupils dilated. A flush rose on her cheeks as her full lips parted and her breaths came in shallow pants.

  Eddie had known for a while that Haley had a crush on him. Even before she left for college, he’d suspected as much. He knew that all it would take was one move from him and he could have her in the one place he wanted her most—his bed.

  Everything in his body was screaming for him to do just that. A plan quickly formulated in his brain. He could take Emily to his sister’s, ask her to keep her overnight, come back here, strip Haley out of that dress, take her to bed, and keep her there until neither of them could move.

  No! He had to stop that kind of thinking.

  Taking a step back, he reached up and ran his fingers through his hair. His phone buzzed, alerting him that it was time for him to go. He knew he should. Claire was waiting for him.

  Instead of grabbing his keys and heading out the door, Eddie heard himself say, “Sit. I’ll make you a plate.”

  A flash of confusion crossed Haley’s beautiful face. Her brow knitted as she nodded, handing him her plate. His eyes ran down the graceful slope of her arm. The pads of his fingers grazed the soft skin on the back of her hand, causing his jeans to tighten even more as he took the ceramic dish from her.

  He couldn’t take his eyes away from her as she slowly walked to the kitchen table, pulled out the chair, and then gracefully slid into it.

  Damn. He could still feel the heat on his skin from where their hands had made contact. The tingling sensation of where he’d touched the silky skin of her hand rocketed his arousal into the stratosphere. It made him imagine what the supple skin of her inner thigh would feel like, if she would shiver beneath his caress as he ran his hands slowly up from her knees, spreading her legs as he…

  “Daddy, can I watch Transformers with Haley?” Emily called out from the stairs.

  “Yeah, but you have to take your bath first,” he answered.

  “Okay,” his daughter chirped back happily. He heard her little feet running up the stairs on the way to the bathroom.

  There was absolutely no reason that Em had to take a bath before the movie. The only reason that directive had come out of his mouth was to buy him a little more alone time with Haley.

  What the hell is wrong with me? I must be a masochist. That was the only plausible explanation.

  After filling the plate, Eddie reached into the fridge, pulled out a pitcher of iced tea, and poured Haley a glass. He didn’t drink iced tea. Emily didn’t drink iced tea. But since the day he found out that it was Haley’s favorite drink, there’d been a fresh pitcher of iced tea in his fridge.

  Eddie set down the full plate and glass in front of Haley and deliberately moved to the opposite side of the round wood table to take a seat. It was safer that way. Distance was his friend.

  “Thanks.” Her pink lips turned up in a smile as she immediately grabbed the glass of tea and brought it to her inviting mouth. Sighing, she licked her lips as she set the glass back down in front of her then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Eddie really wished that he were the back of her hand right now. Never in his life had he been so consumed with wanting someone. Not even Lacey.

  Sure, he’d wanted Lacey, but he’d had sex with her before they were even a couple. So he couldn’t compare it to the way he felt for Haley.

  His desire for Haley was…intense. Too intense. And it seemed to be growing every day. Every hour. Every minute. Every second.

  “How’s the Martin job coming?” Haley asked as she took a bite of the mac and cheese.

  It amazed Eddie that Haley always kept up on the names and details of the projects he was working on. “Almost done. Looks like we have two more weeks.”

  “You sound like that guy on The Money Pit,” Haley laughed. The sexy sound washed over him like a cool breeze.

  “Wasn’t that movie before your time?” Eddie asked, trying to give himself a much needed dose of reality. Of course, he was a huge Tom Hanks fan and had probably seen the movie over twenty times. It was a classic. But he didn’t think Haley had even been born when it had come out.

  “I’m not that much younger than you.” Haley lifted her gaze to him, blue eyes sparking and her voice holding a hint of challenge.

  Those eyes, clear blue like the Mediterranean Sea, haunted his dreams. Every night when he closed his eyes, he saw them. He could easily get lost for hours in her eyes.

  Clearing his throat, he brought the subject back to much safer ground. “I should wrap up right around when Em gets out for summer break.”

  Eddie was going to talk to Jason, who was now the president of Sloan Construction since his dad Bob, had stepped down last year, about working jobs closer to home this summer so he could spend more time with Emily. The last three builds he’d been on were in the Chicago area, and the commute could take up to two hours one way.

  Luckily, he’d always had a lot of help with Emily. The Sloans were a huge resource. He’d been best friends with Riley Sloan since grade school. Now since Riley had married Eddie’s sister Chelle, a couple of years ago, he was actually his brother-in-law. But it wasn’t just Riley, Chelle, and Haley who helped out.

  Nope. Riley’s brother Jason (who was Eddie’s boss) and his wife Katie, the oldest Sloan brother Seth and his wife Amber (who was Haley’s boss at Bella), Alex and his wife Jamie (whose son Joey was one of Emily’s best friends), and the youngest Sloan boy Bobby (who also worked at Sloan Construction) and his wife Sophie were like Eddie’s family, and they certainly treated Emily as one of their own.

  And Emily felt like part of their family. She called them all ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’. There was rarely a weekend that there wasn’t some kind of Sloan family function. Whether it was a birthday or just a barbeque, the Sloans knew how to throw a party and they always included Eddie and Emily.

  Which was just one more reason that he needed to keep his distance from Haley. Their lives were totally intertwined. He couldn’t risk things going wrong with them. It wouldn’t be fair for either of them or, most importantly
, for Emily.

  “That’s great. She’s been missing you lately. We all have.” Haley’s confidence seemed to wane as she ducked her head down. Her cheeks flushed red as she moved her food around her plate with her fork.

  Eddie had to hold in a groan. She was killing him.

  It was a slow and painful death. She was the perfect woman. Smart, sexy, sweet, talented, funny, honest, trustworthy. The only problem was…she was Haley. Haley Sloan. If being with her only broke one rule or even two, he wouldn’t bat an eye. If being with her even had an equal number of pros and cons on the list, he’d consider it. But she not only broke all of his rules; the list of why they would be a bad idea was a mile long.

  Which was why he had no idea why he was asking, “Who’s all?”

  Her blue eyes shot up to meet his. “What?”

  “You said, ‘we all.’” For some reason, Eddie just wanted to hear her say it. He wanted to hear her say that she missed him.

  “Oh, well, I just meant”—Haley cleared her throat and then surprised him by sitting up a little straighter—“that I miss you.”

  There it was. What he’d wanted to hear. They silently stared at each other across the small wooden table for what felt like forever before Eddie felt his phone vibrate once again in his pocket.

  Shit.

  Standing, he said, “I should be home by midnight. Is that okay?”

  Haley smiled but there was a hint of sadness Eddie knew hadn’t been there a moment before. “I’ll be here.”

  He nodded and grabbed his keys off the counter. Just before he made it to the front door, he turned back around. “Hales.”

  “Yeah?” She looked up at him, still seated at his kitchen table.

  “I miss you, too.”

  He quickly turned and headed out the door, but not before he’d seen the shock that had immediately covered her face. What the hell was wrong with him? He should kick his own ass for saying that. He’d always been so careful not to give anyone the wrong idea. He’d learned his lesson early on that giving a woman false hope ended badly for both parties involved.

  So what had he been doing asking her a question to try and get her to reveal that she missed him and telling her that he missed her too?

  He jumped in his truck and turned the key in the ignition, making sure that the air conditioning was on full blast. As he pulled out of the driveway, he decided that the more time he spent with Haley, the more his resolve was crumbling like a house of cards.

  If he was going to keep his hands and other, more insistent, parts of his body to himself, then he needed to distance himself from her. No more sending Em to clean her room, take a shower, do the dishes, or any other of the hundred tasks he’d sent his daughter on to get a few precious moments of alone time with Haley Sloan.

  That all needed to stop. Now.

  If it didn’t, Eddie wasn’t sure he would be able to stop himself from doing something he couldn’t take back, something that would change not only his and Haley’s life, but Emily’s too.

  He wouldn’t let that happen. No matter how tempting it was.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ���DO YOU HAVE a boyfriend?” Emily’s soft voice snapped Haley out of her obsessive replaying of Eddie’s parting shot. “Hales, I miss you too.”

  He does?!

  She still wasn’t completely convinced that those five words hadn’t been a figment of her overactive imagination. The more she played it over in her head, the more it seemed like a very un-Eddie like thing to have come out of his mouth. And even if he had in fact uttered those lovely words, what did that mean exactly? Missed her how? Did he miss her like he missed Emily or his sister Chelle? Oh lord, she hoped not.

  “Do you?” Emily asked again, her tone more insistent.

  “Oh sorry, sweetie. I was zoning out for a minute.” Haley took a deep breath as she continued running the brush through Emily’s wet hair, which hung to the middle of her back. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend. Do youuu?”

  Emily whipped her head around and looked at Haley like she’d just bit into a lemon. “Eww, no. That’s gross!” Then, turning back around, Em pulled her knees up to her chest and focused her attention back to the movie that starred transforming cars.

  Haley bit back a smile. She remembered exactly what it had felt like to think boys were gross. In fact, she’d stayed in the boys-have-cooties stage much longer than all of her friends. Which was sort of odd because she was very much a romantic, always had been.

  Part of her late blooming had had to do with the fact that Haley had what everyone had always referred to as an ‘old soul.’ When she was growing up, her favorite pastimes were reading and shopping for antiques. Not a whole lot of crushing usually happened during those activities. With the exception, of course, for book boyfriends. She’d had—still had!—a serious thing for Gilbert Blythe. The summer of her sixth grade year, she’d read Anne of Green Gables at least twenty-five times.

  That same summer, she’d also spent every weekend trying to convince someone to take her antique shopping. Not that she’d had any real money to spend. She’d always just loved being around antiques. She would make up stories in her head about the furniture, knick knacks, and jewelry. Where it had been. Who its previous owners were.

  The other reason that she seemed to have skipped the pitfalls of a boy-crazy adolescence was because she’d been raised side by side with five older male cousins. The boys had really been more like brothers to her. Growing up, she’d had a front-row view of all the disgusting things boys did. Seth, Riley, Jason, Alex, Bobby, and their friends had given her a look behind the curtain and it was not a clean, sanitary place, to say the least.

  Not only had she seen firsthand how smelly and dirty boys could be, her dating life had also been hampered by the fact that her cousins intimidated the crap out of all the boys that had shown even a slight interest in her. It wasn’t as bad for her three little sisters since three of her cousins had gone into the military right after high school. She had definitely received the lion’s share of the overprotective-older-brother treatment.

  After using almost an entire bottle of detangler, Haley was finally able to pull the brush easily through Emily’s hair. “Do you want a braid, Em?”

  “Yes please!” Emily bounced up and down with excitement as she clapped her hands together.

  Haley’s heart filled to the brim with love. She felt so honored to be able to share these little moments with Em. It was the little things—braiding her hair, doing their nails, tucking her in—that caused Haley’s heart to swell. Those were the moments that Haley treasured the most. The day-to-day routine stuff.

  “Did your mom used to braid your hair?” Emily asked, her voice edged with a little sadness.

  “Sometimes.” Haley smiled at the memory even as her heart broke for the little girl sitting between her knees.

  Lately, Emily was having a tough time dealing with the fact that she’d never met her mom. She’d been asking Haley a lot of questions about what it was like to have a mom. Also, she’d asked if Haley had known Emily’s mom Lacey.

  Of course Haley had tried to answer her as honestly as possible—without putting in her own narrative on what kind of a person Lacey was—and basically just be there for Em when she needed someone to talk to. But lately, the “mom” topic had been coming up more and more, and Haley thought that it was probably time to let Eddie know. Haley at least needed to find out how he wanted her to handle the dreaded ‘Lacey’ questions.

  Haley’s fingers twisted and wrapped a ponytail holder around the bottom of Emily’s braid. “All done, sweetie pie.”

  Emily’s hand immediately reached back and her slim fingers ran down the center o
f her braided hair. Then she excitedly turned and looked up at Haley with big brown eyes, asking, “Can I braid yours now?”

  “Of course,” Haley agreed happily as the two switched places. Haley now sat crisscross-applesauce on the floor in front of the couch with Emily perched on the cushion behind her.

  As they watched the movie and Emily brushed out Haley’s hair, her mind wandered to what Eddie was doing right now. And who he was doing it with. She knew that logically she should feel upset, and of course there was a small part of her that wished he were here with her instead of out there with…whoever he was with. But that had more to do with the fact that she missed him, not that she was jealous over his hook-up.

  Her sisters (who were the only people privy to her long standing love-slash-crush-slash-infatuation of Eddie Thomas) made some valid points in their argument that she shouldn’t be wasting her time wishing things could be different between herself and Eddie. But Haley had finally come to the conclusion that she couldn’t reason with her heart. And even if Eddie never returned her feelings, Haley didn’t regret the years she’d spent loving him. Because she knew it was true love.

  Her cousins might have given her a front-row view of how disgusting boys could be, but she’d also had a great seat as she’d watched all of them fall in love with their significant others. Oh boy, had they fallen and fallen hard. Luckily to amazing women—one of whom was Eddie’s sister Chelle, another was Haley’s boss Amber. All of the women seemed to return her cousins’ love, having fallen equally hard themselves.

  Sure, Haley wished that she had what her cousins had, that her true love loved her back. But the way she looked at it, it had taken Jason and Katie over twenty years and Riley and Chelle over ten to make it to their happily-ever-afters. Maybe she still had a shot.