by Jillian Neal
“Gypsy.” Sienna chuckled.
“Yes. Is it okay for me to say that?”
“Of course.”
Sienna seemed shocked over her worry, but Arley didn’t want to offend the one woman on earth that she could see herself actually being close friends with. Arley was a natural-born loner. She’d had childhood friends, but she was always far more interested in studying them than anything else. She wanted to know what made people do the things they did. What made them tick? She wanted to understand them. Sienna fascinated her. She was so authentic. She didn’t do drama and had no interest in the snobbery that Savannah loved to bask in like a lazy dog in the afternoon sun.
“Well, a lot of people around here talk about Gypsy magic and things like that. But, I mean, the wishing well, and the bookstore, and the Gypsy lore, all of that is kind of for the tourists, right? Or it’s only for people of Roma heritage? Not for people like me.” She realized how utterly stupid she sounded with every word that egressed her lips. She clamped them shut to keep from burying herself deeper in her own absurd hope.
Sienna reached across the table and gently grasped her hand. “Arley, something brought you here, didn’t it?”
Arley’s head rose. Her frightened eyes sought solace in Sienna’s kind expression. “You weren’t planning on coming here. You called and made a reservation just a few hours before you showed up. John hadn’t been planning on coming either. He called Ryan the day before. Something happened with one of his clients. He felt like he let her down, and it was all because of a crooked judge. It killed him. John’s still lost, Arley, but something conspired to bring you both here together at almost the very same moment. My Nana always said there was no such thing as a coincidence. Gypsies don’t believe that anything happens haphazardly. The entire universe works to give us what we need, and we fight against it tooth and nail. John’s going to fight it. It’s who he is, but I’ve never seen him happier. Ryan’s never seen him happier, and they were college roommates. Everything has to happen in its own time, but I can tell you this, the Gypsies of Gypsy Beach are rooting for you two, and they haven’t let me down yet. We just have to have faith.” With that she cradled her still-flat stomach with her hands again.
That evening, John and Arley joined most of the John’s crew, tourists staying on Gypsy Beach, and a few of the residents of the tiny town for a huge beach fire hosted by the Montgomerys.
Arley giggled as Evie raced headlong into John’s lap while they were seated on one of the quilts near the fire. She wiggled until Arley was out of her way and she had her godfather’s full attention. John and Arley shared a quick knowing grin. “Well, hey, sweet girl, you having fun?”
Evie nodded and then turned and clung to his neck. Ryan started to call her back to their quilt, but John shook his head. He’d been so enamored with Arley he hadn’t spent enough time with Evie.
“Ms. Copeland?” Hope from Bandana Books hesitantly approached. “I’m so sorry to interrupt. I just wondered if I could introduce you to our book club.” There were three women with Hope that looked bewildered to be in Arleys’ presence. John grinned, very pleased with this turn of events, especially after Savannah’s audacity this afternoon. Arley stood and beamed at the ladies.
“It’s so nice to meet you.”
“I’m a huge fan.”
Eleven
“I know she misses him, but she’s not great for romance.” Ryan wished he could think of a way to get Evie to leave John and Arley alone. A beach fire provided one hell of a romantic setting, but not if a four-year-old was demanding all of your attention.
“We’ll take her in in a little while.” Sienna’s smile was forced. Something was off.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” Ryan wrapped his arm over his beautiful fiancée. He longed to make her his wife. Impatience was eating at him.
“Nothing. I’m just so tired lately. Little nervous, I guess.”
Ryan’s heart thundered out of rhythm. He cradled her closer. “Baby, I think it’s time to stop accepting reservations at the Inn until next summer, or at least limit them to close friends. No more last minute guests. No more running it at full capacity. I think it’s time to focus on you, and me, and on our family. I want you to relax. I’ll take care of everything.” He gently rubbed his hand over her midsection. By sheer strength of will he kept from brushing by her fevered breasts. She’d never had much in the way of cleavage, but in the last week her breasts had swollen to nearly twice their natural size.
She lifted her head and stared into his eyes.
“I love you, Sienna Rose. More than life itself. You know I will always be here right beside you, no matter what.”
“I know.” She melted into him, finally allowing him to shoulder her fears and uncertainty.
Arley listened to Hope and her friends expound on their favorite scenes in her books. She was thoroughly embarrassed but very excited that they loved her characters almost as much as she did. Truthfully, Hope’s slight distraction intrigued her more than the talk of her novels. Arley followed Hope’s hesitant glance to a group of Ryan’s subcontractors. They were laughing, and cutting up, and seemed to be having a very good time.
Suddenly, one of the men noticed Hope’s timid gaze. He offered her a broad, beaming grin and a slight wave. She returned the gesture, but Arley could tell there was more to this than a friendship.
Newly budding love always made Arley deliriously happy. Her mind spun with an entire story of how they might achieve their own very happy ending. “What’s his name?” She whispered.
Hope ripped her eyes away from the extremely well-built roofer’s chiseled pecs and sexy features. “Oh, that’s Brock Camden. He works for Ryan. We went to school together.” Her friends laughed at her outright. Arley hoped she hadn’t forced a covert secret from Hope, but her friends seemed to know about her crush.
“She’s had a crush on him forever, but she keeps insisting they’re just friends.” One of her friends tattled.
“No need to rush it. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to.” Arley defended her adamantly.
Hope beamed. “That’s what I think, too. Kind of like Steve and Laurie in Heated Nights.”
Arley chuckled. Her fourth novel, Heated Nights, was about a highly intelligent but somewhat mousy woman that found her own sexual prowess with Steve, a firefighter she’d had a crush on most of her life that introduced her to the kinkier side of sex. Ultimately, they live happily ever after.
Maybe her novels were important. Maybe in offering people an escape she was able to instill a little confidence and curiosity that led them to a life they’d always imagined. Maybe her work helped women explore their own sexuality and bolstered their confidence, or maybe it just made them smile. Either way, what she did was important, no matter what her family thought.
Eventually, John carried Evie Grace’s sleeping form up to her bedroom. She hadn’t left his arms the entire evening. Ryan had apologized profusely. John had no idea why it seemed to upset both Ryan and Sienna so much. It was just a beach fire. Why were they so hung up on it? He felt badly that he hadn’t spent more time with Evie.
The next morning, John and Arley decided to get breakfast at Mac and Molly’s coffee shop. Ryan was manning the kitchen. Sienna looked rather green and wasn’t up to cooking. She’d barely managed to make coffee when Ryan had insisted that she return to their room to lie down. As John had experienced Ryan’s cooking a few times in college, he wasn’t too interested in having it ever again, and he wanted to get out of Sienna’s hair.
“Maybe we should go on to your condo, if you don’t mind. I don’t think Sienna’s up to running the Inn just now.” Arley tried to politely invite herself to his condo early.
John chuckled. He wrapped his arm around her. “I was thinking the very same thing, baby doll.”
As they walked past her Corolla on their way to the coffee shop, John’s face fell. “You have a flat tire, sweetheart.” He pointed to her car. Arley whimpered. How was she supposed to
get to Atlanta on a flat tire?
“Baby, how long have you been riding on these tires? They should have been replaced months ago.” John leaned down and studied her car.
“I know. I just didn’t have the money to replace all four of them.” It seemed everything lately was going to be one step forward and several dozen back.
“When we get back from breakfast, I’ll put your spare on. You’re not driving to Atlanta on those. I’m having it towed back to Birmingham, and we’ll deal with new tires when we get there.”
“John, you’ve done enough for me. That would cost a fortune. Maybe if I get some of my inheritance money, I can get new tires, but I cannot let you pay for any of that.”
“Arley, you will not drive on those tires on my watch. Do you understand me?”
As much as she loved his commanding ways in the bedroom, she wasn’t so sure she cared for him ordering her around now. She sighed and forced herself to be honest. She loved that he wanted to take care of her. He soothed the deepest wells of insecurity and worry that she’d carried with her for her entire life. It was her ego that didn’t care for his plan.
“Fine. If I get to pay you back after I have my inheritance.”
“No.”
“John!”
Fire lit her eyes, and John’s groin was suddenly on high alert. He tried not to smirk at her irritated scowl. “Baby, please listen to me. I make an obscene amount of money. It’s ridiculous, but divorces are unending and I’m the top guy at my firm that isn’t actually a partner, meaning that the partners make a shit ton off of me, but they still have to pay me well for what I do. I’m their go-to guy, and I’m a damn good attorney. Please, please let me take care of you. I cannot let you drive that car all the way to Atlanta, especially on a flat. I would be sick with worry over you.”
She melted. He knew she wasn’t accustomed to being taken care of, but he’d never been with anyone that he wanted to spoil so thoroughly.
When they returned from their breakfast, John explained that they were going to head on to Atlanta. Ryan didn’t argue, letting him know that they’d made the right call. He phoned a tow truck and headed outside to change Arley’s tire before it arrived.
Arley pretended to read on the front porch while she watched John adeptly use the jack she didn’t even know was in her trunk to raise her car. Ryan had offered to help, but John had waved him off with instructions to go take care of Sienna.
He’d whipped off his shirt and set to work. Arley fought not to drool. Somehow, she’d not only met the world’s most perfect guy—by her own estimations, anyway—but she’d gotten him to fall for her. He could talk Proust and hated Hemingway. He loved what she did for a living and fought to help her. He made her laugh and took her to the absolute extremes of ecstasy in bed. They could talk forever and never run out of things to say. He could even change a tire. She’d just stupidly forgotten to add into her fantasy that the guy needed to actually believe in love, and in forever, and in … them.
Arley spent a few long minutes trying to reorder her world as she watched John load her luggage into his sleek Porsche. She was going to Atlanta and not back to Birmingham, and she was going to be riding in a Porsche. How had her life changed so completely in one week? She rubbed her fingers over her father’s leather bag like a child that had been handed her security blanket.
She’d relinquished her suitcase, but needed her laptop and the bag to be in the seat with her. The feeling that this was all somehow more than she would ever deserve kept nervous tension surging through her veins. Something was bound to go wrong. It always did. The hearing over the will tumbled through her mind again. Charlotte had called to inform her that her mother’s health had worsened and that she was refusing to leave her room. She’d then dutifully explained that Savannah was no longer speaking to Arley. None of this information was particularly concerning, but the sum total of all that she’d been through left her anxious and uncertain. Living with the constant knowledge that John had no intention of staying with her—or anyone else—forever left her no peace. She never wanted it to end, but she was beginning to wonder if not knowing when the end was coming wasn’t worse.
“You okay, baby?” John offered her his hand and his wickedly sexy grin. She swallowed down another round of ceaseless questions, told herself to simply enjoy it while it lasted, and took his hand. The restless murmurs of her mind wouldn’t quiet, though. She knew she was lying to herself. She just had no plans to stop.
“I feel badly about my car, and staying with you, and everything.”
“Hey,” he pulled her forward and caught her in his arms. “You act like this is a one sided deal. I love spending time with you. You drive me wild in every possible way. I never want to let you go. I even like your freaking freezing-cold feet on my legs in the mornings when we wake up. Let’s just have some fun. I promise my condo is not some kind of torture chamber where I’m going to lock you away, unless you’d really like me to.” He winked at her.
She laughed and followed him to his car. He opened the door for her and they were off.
*****
“Ryan, I’m just not sure they’re ready to go back to life yet. Arley’s in love with him.” Sienna was still fretting over John’s decision to leave early. She blamed herself. Ryan sighed and wrapped his arms around her.
“Baby, you, and Mac and Molly, and Hope, and everyone agree that they’re meant to be. Even Evie asked me this morning if Arley was going to be her aunt. I’ve never known Gypsy magic to be limited by location. It brought you back to me all the way from California and got me up here from Atlanta.”
Sienna’s sweet grin lit his soul. “I know. I just have a bad feeling. John’s not seeing what’s right in front of him.”
“Well, if worst comes to worst, I could beat some sense into him.”
She giggled and leaned up on her tiptoes to brush a sweet kiss along his jaw. “Thank you.”
Arley had her feet up on his dash, re-reading one of her favorite romance novels. John had never heard of the author before, but, according to Arley, she was one of the queens of the industry.
He had his right hand propped on her thigh, and his cock constantly prompted him to slide it further up her leg.
When the sun went down, she came back to him from the fictional world she’d been so beautifully involved in. He’d had to force himself to keep his eyes on the road. He could have watched her read for hours. Her eyes reflected the twists and turns of the story, and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip when something happened that worried her. Her cheeks would take on a slight pink heat and she ran her fingers absentmindedly through her hair when she read a love scene. The book absorbed her entirely. He knew the feeling all too well.
“Want to get something to eat, sweetheart?” he asked as they came into Augusta.
“I’m sorry. You’ve been driving the whole time, and I didn’t even talk to you. I didn’t mean to read for so long.”
“It’s not your job to entertain me, baby doll. I’m fine. I like watching you read.”
“John, can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“You said that The Man from Wellington was your favorite book that my dad wrote and that you have four copies. Why is that one your favorite?”
That book meant so much to her. She watched her father’s process with that book. She’d finally decided that she wanted to be a writer come hell or high water when she was fifteen. She was going to do it. She already had dozens of notebooks hidden in that ridiculous hope chest in her room. Her mother thought she was depositing trinkets of the life her mother was methodically crafting for her inside its depths. Arley shoved the tea sets, books on etiquette, doilies, quilts, and serving pieces passed down from her aunts and grandmother in the back of her closet. She filled her hope chest with manuscripts. She wasn’t certain she ever wanted a fancy house, or a husband, and she was quite sure she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. No, what she wanted was to write.
When
The Man From Wellington had awoken her father in the middle of the night demanding to be written, Arley had snuck down the stairs and sat outside of his office listening to his fingers rhythmically work the typewriter. When he paused, her heart would lurch, but would settle when he began again. He worked day and night, a slave to his muse. He’d taught her that her muse must work for her and never the other way around. She knew that was true, but occasionally the muse rises up and demands to be heard. Her father normally worked each day from eight to five then played with his daughters until he put them to bed. He would return to his work then and put in another few hours, but with The Man From Wellington, he worked endlessly at all hours, unable to stop.
If John had exaggerated about his love for that book, it would be very hard to take, though she knew she shouldn’t hang so much hope on that one thing. He had read all of her father’s work. They’d discussed each book ad nauseum.
“I do have four copies of that book. If I ever stumble upon a first edition, I’m buying that one, too. I carry one with me in my briefcase, and I have one in my office at work.”
“I have the handwritten notes he did on that novel and the typed copy he sent his editor. I’ll show them to you when we get to my apartment. The editors changed the story a little. I thought it was better the way Daddy first wrote it. You can read the original.”
“Are you serious?”
Arley nodded. She was very pleased that she could finally offer him something as repayment for all he’d done for her.
“I would be honored. Thank you.” He sounded as if she’d just offered him the entire world.
“But why is that one your favorite? He won his Pulitzer for Hero County.”
“Hero County was good, but …” John glanced over to her. She watched the lights of the passing cars flash in his eyes. They’d taken on their darkest blue, a reflection of his soul. She waited patiently for him to continue.
