by Jill Shalvis
Only there was something on it. A graphic design in bright primary colors with words blocked out . . .
T . . .
Will . . .
You . . .
Marry . . .
Me . . .
Her heart started pounding heavily in her headset, boom, boom, boom, so that she couldn’t hear anything but the blood whooshing through her veins. Because the billboard appeared to be proof that he hadn’t planned on walking away from her at all . . . “Dylan,” she whispered, unable to tear her gaze off the words. “What—”
The helicopter jerked as they abruptly changed directions and she lost sight of the billboard. She gripped the dashboard and twisted to look at Dylan. “What—”
“Hold on.” His face was still carefully blank as he worked the controls. “We’re going back.”
Because she’d taken what she now realized had been his nerves as him no longer wanting to be with her. She was an idiot. “Dylan—”
“Your sister’s in labor and needs you.”
She sucked in a breath. “Is something wrong?”
He didn’t answer, just concentrated on flying them back.
“Dylan—”
“Mick called and got Penn. Said we needed to get to the hospital right away.”
“Hurry,” she whispered.
“Roger that.”
Thirty minutes later, they were on the ground and racing toward the hospital in his truck. She was filled with fear and panic.
Still concentrating on the road, Dylan reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’ll be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispered, her throat thick with tears.
They hit the maternity ward at a dead run and Tilly grabbed onto the counter like it was a lifeline. “Quinn Hennessey,” she managed. “She’s in labor and—”
“You Tilly?” the nurse asked, standing up.
“Yes.”
“Finally.” The nurse took her at a brisk near run down the hallway and shoved a pair of scrubs at her. “Quickly now,” the nurse said and then had Tilly wash up before leading her into a labor and delivery room.
Quinn was in the bed, hunched over her bent knees, huffing and puffing like a locomotive. Mick was at her side. A doctor was telling Quinn to keep breathing.
Both Mick and the doctor looked beat to hell.
“I am breathing!” Quinn yelled. “And the next person to tell me to keep breathing is going to die!” She caught sight of Tilly in the doorway. “Took you long enough! Get over here and hold my damn hand. I needed to push an hour ago!”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m not doing this without you!” Quinn huffed and puffed and grabbed onto Quinn’s hand with superhuman force, threatening bones and ligaments. “I’m sorry. I know I’m yelling but I can’t stop! Mick, get down there with the doctor to catch this baby because she’s coming in hot!”
Tilly brought Quinn’s hand to her chest and squeezed. “You’re okay?”
“Hell, no, I’m not okay. I’m about to push a bowling ball out my hoo-ha!” she yelled, and then she began pushing.
Chapter 10
Dear Heart, please stop getting involved in everything. Your job is to pump blood, that’s it.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
An hour later Tilly was sitting in the chair beside Quinn’s bed, holding the newborn with marvel and more emotion that she wanted to admit to. “Baby Ashlyn,” she whispered. “Wow. I can’t believe you’re here.”
And then she burst into tears.
Quinn looked at Mick, who was on the bed with his wife, holding her against him.
Mick got out of the bed, bent to kiss his wife, and left them alone.
“What’s up?” Quinn asked.
“She’s just so beautiful,” Tilly sobbed.
“She’s patchy and blotchy and bald,” Quinn said. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”
Tilly laughed in horror at Quinn’s description. “She’s your baby.”
“And I love her more than I can say, but she’s not why you’re crying like your heart’s broken.”
“I think I blew it with Dylan,” she managed.
“You couldn’t possibly. He loves you, ridiculously.”
“I misread some cues.” Tilly drew a deep breath and tried to get ahold of herself. “I assumed he was going to take off again, only it was the opposite.”
“Are you speaking in English?” Quinn asked. “I was in labor for twelve hours and haven’t slept in over twenty-four. I’m also starving and sitting on a blown-up doughnut. So you’ve got to cut right to the chase for me.”
“She’s trying to tell you that I’d planned a proposal, which she somehow took for me dumping her,” Dylan said from the doorway.
Tilly’s heart stopped at the sight of him. So far today, she’d panicked on him, assumed the worst, let him get her here, and then ditched him without a backward glance.
He didn’t look mad though.
He glanced at Quinn in question and was nodded in. He moved straight to Tilly and looked down at the baby with a warm, genuine smile that softened the features of his face.
“Do you want to hold her?” Tilly asked and when Dylan nodded, she rose and gently set the baby into his very capable arms.
Dylan bent low and said something soft and inaudible to the baby and then gently handed her back to Quinn. “I need to borrow your sister a moment, do you mind?”
“Does it have anything to do with the ten proposals we’ve had in town since you put up the billboard?” Mick asked, coming back into the room, slipping his phone into his pocket.
“What?” Tilly asked in shock.
“Yeah.” Mick sent Dylan a head shake and a low laugh. “Do you have any idea how many T’s live in Wildstone?”
Dylan stared at him for a beat and then laughed. “Sorry. I didn’t expect it to go down like that.”
Mick glanced over at Tilly. “I’m guessing no one did.”
“Someone needs to tell me what the hell’s going on,” Quinn said. “Because I can go back to yelling. Don’t think I won’t!”
“I’ve got this,” Mick said to Dylan, referring to Quinn and the baby. “If you want some privacy—”
“No privacy!” Quinn yelled, her voice a little hoarse. “I just pushed this baby out my hoo-ha—”
“Please,” Tilly said, slapping her hands to her ears. “I’m begging you, stop saying that!”
“I’ll stop saying it when you and Dylan stand right here at my bedside and figure your shit out.”
Tilly started to shake her head but Dylan came close and took her hand. “I’m willing,” he said.
“You’re my favorite,” Quinn told him. “Keep talking.”
Dylan drew a deep breath and met Tilly’s gaze. “I had plans for today. Plans that went awry.”
There were a lot of words about to escape her, but she felt a little too fragile and exposed so she squeezed her lips together and nodded.
He nodded back and paused, clearly thinking she’d want to speak. When she didn’t, he let out a low, mirthless laugh. “Still me. Okay.” He drew a breath. “You thought it was over?”
“I . . .” She broke off and bit her lower lip.
“You did,” he said, clearly shocked. “You really thought it was over, that I’d changed my mind about you, but that I’d still take you up in the air to what . . . be a dick?”
She bit her lower lip.
He gave a disbelieving head shake. “You did. You actually believed that in the hours since I’d worshipped every single inch of your body that I’d somehow decided to walk away, that it was over.”
She closed her eyes. “In my defense, that is what happened last time.”
“Tilly,” Quinn whispered, horrified.
Dylan just inhaled a deep breath and let it out slow and controlled. “It is what happened last time. But it was a long time ago,” he said with quiet steel. “I was a stupid, reckless kid who had no idea
how to hold on to what had turned out to be the very best thing in his entire life.”
“Oh,” Quinn breathed and used Mick’s shirt to blot her tears. “Don’t mind me. It’s baby hormones.”
Tilly’s eyes had filled too and she didn’t have baby hormones to blame.
Dylan pulled her into him. “Let me start over,” he said. “This is long haul stuff. Clearly, I’m not perfect. I’m going to mess up—”
“Well, you’re not alone there,” she managed.
A very small smile curved his lips. “Good to know. But I’m never going to leave you again. Ever.”
As he said it, she felt her heart click back into place as the reality washed over her. He was real, they were real, and neither of them were going anywhere.
Dylan dropped to a knee in front of her.
Quinn gasped and burst into tears. “I’m sorry! Ignore me! Carry on!”
There was a small smile on Dylan’s mouth as he looked up at Tilly. “We were supposed to be hovering in front of the billboard for this, but life with you is never going to be that predictable, is it?”
She gave a shake of her head. “I don’t think it will be,” she whispered. “Are you really asking me to marry you?”
“I’m trying.” He pulled a little black box from his pocket.
Before she could say another word, she dropped to her knees too. Mostly because hers didn’t want to hold her up anymore. “Yes.”
“But he didn’t ask yet!” Quinn said.
“Shh,” Mick told Quinn very gently and then kissed her, probably to ensure she’d stay zipped.
“Yes,” Tilly said again, in case Dylan hadn’t heard.
He smiled. “I had a speech all prepared in my head.”
“Does it go something like ‘I love you, I’ve always loved you, and I’ll never love anyone other than you’?” Tilly asked, throwing her arms around him. “Because that’s how I feel about you. I messed up your first proposal—”
“Actually, technically,” Mick said helpfully from the bed above them. “That was my wife who messed it up.”
“My point,” Tilly said, ignoring their audience, her voice shaking but her heart steady for the first time all day. “—Is that the least I can do is ask you. Dylan . . .” She smiled through her tears. “You’re it for me. And I’m it for you. Will you marry me?”
He grinned. “Yes,” he said and kissed her to seal the deal just as baby Ashlyn began to wail.
“Do you think Tilly meant it when she said she’d babysit any time?” Tilly heard her sister ask Mick. “Because now would be good.”
“I’ve got you,” Mick told Quinn and Tilly assumed he took the baby because she stopped crying. Which was good because Tilly would do anything for Ashlyn, anything but take her lips off Dylan’s anytime soon.
Acknowledgments
To Coop The Poop, who was the inspiration for Leo and also a failed foster pup turned forever fur baby by my oldest daughter.:)
Announcement to Rainy Day Friends
Keep reading for a peek at Jill Shalvis’s next full-length women’s fiction novel
RAINY DAY FRIENDS
Six months after Lanie Jacobs’ husband death, it’s hard to imagine anything could deepen her sense of pain and loss. But then Lanie discovers she isn’t the only one grieving his sudden passing. A serial adulterer, he left behind several other women who, like Lanie, each believe she was his legally wedded wife.
Rocked by the infidelity, Lanie is left to grapple with searing questions. How could she be so wrong about a man she thought she knew better than anyone? Will she ever be able to trust another person? Can she even trust herself?
Desperate to make a fresh start, Lanie impulsively takes a job at the family-run Capriotti Winery. At first, she feels like an outsider among the boisterous Capriottis. With no real family of her own, she’s bewildered by how quickly they all take her under their wing and make her feel like she belongs. Especially Mark Capriotti, a gruffly handsome Air Force veteran turned deputy sheriff who manages to wind his way into Lanie’s cold, broken heart—along with the rest of the clan.
Everything is finally going well for her, but the arrival of River Brown changes all that. The fresh-faced twenty-one-year old seems as sweet as they come . . . until her dark secrets come to light—secrets that could destroy the new life Lanie’s only just begun to build.
On Sale June 2018!
An Excerpt from Rainy Day Friends—Chapter 1
Chapter One
Anxiety Girl, able to jump to the worst conclusion in a single bound!
Most of the time karma was a bitch, but every once in a while she could be surprisingly nice, even kind. Lanie Jacobs, way past overdue for both of those things, told herself this was her time. Seize the day and all that. She drew a deep breath as she exited the highway at Wildstone.
The old Wild West California town was nestled in the rolling hills between the Pacific Coast and wine and ranching country. She’d actually grown up not too far from here, though it felt like a lifetime ago. The road was narrow and curvy, and since it’d rained earlier, she added tricky and slick to her growing list of its issues. She was already white-knuckling a sharp turn when a kamikaze squirrel darted into her lane, causing her to nearly swerve into oncoming traffic before remembering the rules of country driving.
Never leave your lane; not for weather, animals, or even God himself.
Luckily the squirrel reversed its direction, but before Lanie could relax a trio of deer bounded out right in front of her. “Run, Bambi, run,” she cried, hitting the brakes, and by the skin of all of their collective teeth, they missed one another.
Sweating, nerves sizzling like live wires, she finally turned onto Capriotti Lane and parked as she’d been instructed.
And went completely still as her world darkened. Not physically, but internally as her entire body braced for all hell to break loose. Recognizing sign número uno of an impending anxiety attack barreling down on her like a freight train, she gripped the steering wheel. “You’re okay,” she told herself firmly.
This, of course, didn’t stop said freight train. But though she’d been plagued with overactive fight-or-flight preceptors, all of which were yelling at her to run, she couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.
Not this time. Which didn’t stop the dizziness or sudden nausea, or make her lungs work properly. And that was the hardest thing about these attacks that were new to her this year, because it was always the same fears. What if it never stopped? What if someone saw her losing it and realized she was broken? And the worst part . . . what if it wasn’t an anxiety attack? Maybe this time it was a seizure or a brain aneurism.
Or a stroke. Hadn’t her great-aunt Agnes died of a stroke?
Okay, stop, she ordered herself, damp with sweat now and doing that annoying trembling thing where she shook like a leaf. Breathe in for four, breathe out for four, and hold for four.
Repeat.
Repeat again, all while listing the meals she’d had yesterday in her head. Peanut butter toast for breakfast. Tuna salad for lunch. She’d skipped dinner and had wine and popcorn instead.
Slowly but surely, her pulse slowed. It’s all good, she told herself, but because she wasn’t buying what she was selling, she had to force herself out of the car like she was a five-year-old starting kindergarten instead of being thirty and simply facing a brand-new job. Given all she’d been through, this should be easy, even fun. But sometimes adulthood felt like the vet’s office and she was the dog excited for the car ride—only to find out the destination.
Shaking her head, she strode across the parking lot. It was April, which meant the rolling hills to the east were green and lush and the Pacific Ocean to the west looked like a surfer’s dream, all of it so gorgeous it could’ve been a postcard. A beautiful smoke screen over her not-so-beautiful past. The air was scented like a really expensive sea-and-earth candle, though all Lanie could smell was her forgotten hopes and dreams. With wood chips crunching unde
r her shoes, she headed through the entrance, beneath which was a huge wooden sign that read:
Capriotti Winery, from our fields to your table . . .
Her heart sped up. Nerves, of course, the bane of her existence. But after a very crappy few years, she was changing her path. For once in her godforsaken life, something was going to work out for her. This was going to work out for her.
She was grimly determined.
The land was lined with split-rail wooden fencing, protecting grapevines as far as the eye could see. The large open area in front of her was home to several barns and other structures, all meticulously maintained and landscaped with stacks of barrels, colorful flower beds, and clever glass bottle displays.
Lanie walked into the first “barn,” which housed the reception area and offices for the winery. She was greeted by an empty reception counter, beyond which was a huge, open-beamed room containing a bar on the far side, comfy couches and low tables scattered through the main area, and walls of windows that showed off the gorgeous countryside.
It was warm and inviting and . . . empty. Well, except for the huge mountain of white and gray fur sleeping on a dog bed in a corner. It was either a Wookie or a massive English sheepdog, complete with scraggly fur hanging in its eyes. If it was a dog, it was the hugest one she’d ever seen, and she froze as the thing snorted, lifted its head, and opened a bleary eye.
At the sight of her, it leapt to its four paws and gave a happy “wuff!” At least she was hoping it was a happy wuff because it came running at her. Never having owned a dog in her life, she froze. “Uh, hi,” she said, and did her best to hold her ground. But the closer the thing got, the more she lost her nerve. She whirled to run.
