by Kevin, Lucy
NO OTHER LOVE
A Walker Island Romance, Book 2
© 2014 Lucy Kevin
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Come for a visit to Walker Island where you’ll find stunning Pacific Northwest ocean views, men too intriguing to resist...and five beautiful, close-knit sisters who are each about to find their one true love.
Morgan Walker, makeup artist to the stars, never thought she'd leave New York City to come back to Walker Island. But when she is tapped to headline her own TV makeover show, she decides it's the perfect time to launch her organic makeup line made from flowers and plants grown on the Walker family plot of land. While she's really excited about getting to spend a few weeks with the sisters and grandmother she doesn't see nearly often enough, she's equally worried about the possibility of seeing Brian Russell again. Because even though they broke up seven years ago, she's never been able to forget him. Not for one single day...
When Brian gets the opportunity to work with Morgan on planting her new garden, he immediately jumps at it. Seven years ago, he thought he was doing the right thing by letting her go to pursue her dreams and see the world. But he's never stopped loving her, and now that she's finally back, he's determined to do whatever it takes to convince her that they belong together...forever this time.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
EPILOGUE
BOOKLIST
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
“Oh my gosh, you're Morgan Walker! Can we take a picture with you?”
Morgan had been up at 4 a.m. in her New York City apartment, quickly eating half of a bagel and drinking a cup of scalding coffee before heading out to Times Square to shoot her makeup segment on the morning news show. Shooting had, inevitably, gone longer than scheduled, which always seemed to happen when she needed to catch a plane or train. After a taxi ride through bumper-to-bumper traffic to the airport, a six-hour flight to Seattle, where even her legendary napping abilities had been challenged by noisy fellow passengers, another long taxi trip down to the harbor, and then this ferry ride, Morgan was looking forward to dropping straight into bed when she finally got to her family’s home. But after dreaming her whole life of being a successful makeup artist, she would never complain when people recognized her.
“Absolutely,” she said with a smile for the two teenage girls who were looking at her with stars in their eyes. After they posed for the girl's father, who was taking the pictures, she asked, “Are you going to Walker Island for vacation?”
“We are,” the teen with the cropped red hair said, “but we're worried it is going to be so boring to be stuck on an island for a whole week. Is there anything to do there?”
Morgan smiled, remembering what it was like to be fourteen and feeling like Walker Island was the smallest, sleepiest, most unimportant place in the world. All she'd wanted was to get out and see the world and experience everything. And it was exactly what she'd done. What she was still doing, actually, apart from the next few weeks when she'd be working on the island to launch her own organic makeup line before heading back to New York.
But she didn't want the girls to feel bad about their upcoming vacation, so she told them, “Actually, there's quite a bit to do on the island. Kayaking. Rock climbing. Snorkeling. Painting. Dancing. There's some pretty good shopping on the island, too.” As the long list continued to fall rather easily from her lips, Morgan was more than a little surprised. Had there always been so much to do on the island? Granted, plenty of new businesses had popped up over the years as island living had come more and more into vogue.
Thankfully, both girls now looked a little less depressed about the idea of spending their vacation on an island as one of them asked, “Did you really grow up here?”
“I did.” And for all that she'd longed to get off of the island as soon as she was old enough to escape to the city, now she found sweet memories of growing up on the island slipping through her mind, one after the other. All the times she’d “camped” in the backyard with her sisters as a kid, sitting around making s’mores, then going back inside to her own bed when it got dark enough to scare even Emily. The bonfires down at the caves when she was a teenager, where the local teens would have parties most weekends. And best of all, snuggling up beside Brian Russell on the beach as they watched the whales swim by—
Forcing herself to stop that train of thought as quickly as it had formed in her head, she said, “The island is small and pretty remote, but my family is really great, and I had lots of good friends, too, so it was actually a pretty great place to grow up.”
“But don't you live in New York City now? That must be awesome!”
Again, she nodded. “It's fun living and working in the city.” But sometimes—a lot of times, if she was being completely honest—she wished that she had family there. Or some really good friends, rather than a group of people with whom she enjoyed going out on the town to Broadway shows and the newest, hippest restaurants, but to whom she couldn't quite imagine spilling her deepest secrets.
“Girls,” their father said, “we should leave Ms. Walker alone now.”
Though she let him know she was enjoying their conversation, the girls were already busy posting the pictures online, and soon Morgan was standing alone again on the Walker Island ferry's deck. Turning back to the water, she breathed in the salty air and let the brisk wind blow her blond hair back from her face as seagulls flew and swooped all around the ferry.
The ping of a text coming through on her cell phone snapped Morgan out of her near-doze against the rail of the ferry, and she quickly scanned the message from her assistant, Juliet, who had the fastest texting thumbs Morgan had ever seen.
Hope your trip to the island was good. Having some problems with one of the new island interns. Claims he can't miss football practice at 5!
Not nearly as proficient at texting, Morgan decided to call instead of typing out a message back.
“Hi, boss.” Juliet had the ultra-professional PA thing down perfectly when it was needed, which Morgan greatly appreciated, but she was also glad that Juliet could be easygoing when it was just the two of them. Much like Morgan's oldest sister, Emily, who was incredibly organized and focused, but still knew how to relax and hang out when it was just family. “How do you want me to deal with the slacker intern?”
Morgan laughed. “Football is a bit of a religion on the island, so why don't we simply move the meeting with the interns up to four p.m.? That should solve the problem. And I wasn’t planning anything important for this afternoon, anyway.” Except for a really delicious nap, but clearly napping wasn't in the cards for her today.
“I always forget that you're not a native New Yorker until you go back home for a visit, and we end up having to rearrange your schedule around football practice and whale-watching tours,” Juliet remarked. “In any case, I will let you know immediately if anything
comes through on the revised contract details for your new makeup line.”
After they concluded the call and Morgan slipped her phone back into her bright red Kate Spade carryall, it struck her how different her upbringing had been from her assistant's. Juliet had gone to an exclusive all-girls private school on the East Coast, so it was no wonder that she didn’t have an insight into the importance of Walker High’s football team to the island community. Trying to change the practice schedule would have been like trying to move the planet out of its orbit. And would probably also earn her a talking-to from Emily, if not from their father, both of whom worked for the local school. Emily was the guidance counselor, and Tres was the English teacher who was frequently in Europe during the summer leading literary tours for local teenagers.
A few minutes later, Morgan stepped from the ferry onto the dock. Though she had been back only a month ago for her sister Hanna's wedding to Joel Peterson, Morgan took a few moments to look around at the waterfront. Things on Walker Island, she thought as she looked around her at the boathouse and the bakery and little grocery store that had been there ever since she was a kid, so rarely changed. And while that had often been frustrating for her as a teenager, now that she was an adult, she found that she was glad for the permanency of it—for knowing that there was a solid foundation, and community, that she could always count on being there. No matter what.
She was especially glad that seven decades after her grandfather, William II, had sold the berry-picking business, the Walker family still kept a small, one-acre plot of land in the center of the island. It was that land that had inspired Morgan's new business plan and this trip back home.
As soon as the network had offered Morgan her own thirty-minute makeover show, she had decided it was the perfect time to launch her own makeup line. And because it would need to stand out from the lines that much bigger celebrities brought out seemingly every week, what could be better than the story of heading home to grow the organic ingredients from her family's historic farmland with the help of the local high school students and community?
Plus, after so many years away working around the clock, she'd begun to miss her family more and more. She hoped that growing some of the ingredients for her makeup line on the island would give her plenty of opportunities to come back more often. And if she happened to see Brian from time to time...well, she'd just have to figure out a way to keep whatever feelings had remained for him inside. Because if there was one thing she knew with absolute certainty, it was how terribly painful it was to let yourself fall in love with someone when you knew from the start that you could never end up together.
Morgan wasn’t sure what Brian was doing these days, although admittedly it had taken a pretty big effort on her part not to ask her sisters for updates or to poke around on Facebook to see how his life had turned out since high school. Still, if he’d gotten married, she was absolutely sure someone would have called to mention it. Whether he had a girlfriend, on the other hand…
Morgan gave her head a quick shake. She should be happy for him if he did have a girlfriend, because it would mean he had gotten on with his life, just like she'd gotten on with hers. Because she had gotten on with it, hadn't she? Even if she didn't have a boyfriend in New York and had never felt many sparks fly with any of the men she'd dated in the city, well, it was probably just because she worked such long hours and was often too tired for all the small talk and flirting.
“Ms. Walker?” One of the staff who worked on the docks came up to her. “Your rental car is waiting for you in the lot at the far end of the dock.” The man handed over a set of keys.
Morgan thanked him, but as she stared at the keys in her hand, she couldn't help but wonder what he must be thinking. Maybe that since she’d left the island, she'd become such a big star in her own mind that she couldn’t manage the short walk to her family’s home? The truth was, Juliet never seemed to remember just how small the island was, so of course she'd arranged transportation. Morgan knew she should be thankful that it wasn't a limo with a driver, because she never would have lived that one down...
The sleek red convertible waiting for her seemed to scream, I'm on TV! Clearly, she should have done a better job of explaining to Juliet how things worked on Walker Island, with everything stopping for football practice, artists wandering around with easels under their arms, and marine biologists making up a shifting population of well-educated drifters. All the little things that were so normal and wonderful to Morgan because she'd grown up a Pacific Northwest island girl. Of course, as she slid in behind the steering wheel onto the soft leather seats and the engine started with a soft purr, she had to admit that the convertible did suit the part of her that loved beautiful, luxurious things built for speed.
These were the two sides of her that had always clashed and that she'd never quite been able to reconcile: the girl who loved the beauty and serenity of the island and the woman who thrived in a big city as a makeup artist.
Morgan had been thirteen years old when Grams had passed her the makeup bag before one of her dance school’s productions of Swan Lake and said, “You’re better with makeup than I am, dear. Will you take over?”
Morgan could still remember how much fun she’d had that night. She’d never been able to dance as beautifully as Paige could, but she’d done a fabulous job of turning her sister into the black swan, disguising her natural features so well that people had commented on the makeup almost as much as Paige's excellent dancing.
It was strange, Morgan found herself thinking, that a career that had led to a national TV slot could start so simply. Or that she would find herself back on Walker Island about to embark on the biggest challenge of her life.
Almost as if coming home had always been inevitable...
CHAPTER TWO
Before Morgan stepped into the school's main hallway, she quickly reread her intern's résumés on her phone. She’d gone over them months ago when her sister Emily had sent them over from the school, but between Morgan’s busy shooting schedule and negotiations on her makeup line and TV show, she hadn't had a chance to refresh her memory.
Their grandfather had built the Walker Island school in the 1950s, and it had always felt like a second home to Morgan and her sisters, who had often curled up in the soft chair in their father's office while he graded English papers or worked on planning another school trip. Even now, he was away for a few more weeks with his students, showing them the important literary sites around Europe.
She looked down the long lines of lockers, easily imagining students running off to their classes before the final bell rang. The nearest set looked the same as they had when she had been a student, right down to the stickers the janitor still hadn’t been able to peel off. Again, Morgan found memories moving up through her, the past coming back all too easily. Particularly that night when she and Brian had snuck away from the senior prom, not waiting for the announcement of prom king and queen. It just hadn’t seemed important. Not when all she wanted was to be alone with him, especially when she'd known how close they were to saying good-bye to each other. He belonged on the island and would clearly never be as happy anywhere else, but she knew she'd never truly be happy if she didn't leave and find out what else there was in the world for her.
Even love hadn't been able to change that.
Still, though their relationship had been doomed from the start, Morgan could remember how much time she’d always spent getting ready for school as a teenage girl, fixing her makeup, making sure she looked just right for him. Brian, on the other hand, hadn't had to do anything to look just right. Athletic and tanned with sandy blond hair and a gorgeous smile, he always looked great.
If she closed her eyes, Morgan could almost hear the strains of You and Me by Lifehouse playing in the background, just as it had when they had left the prom that night. The lyrics had seemed like they had been written for her and Brian—two people who couldn’t keep their eyes off of each other, who felt like their hea
rts were spinning around and around whenever they kissed.
Morgan could still remember everything about that night, right down to the decorations they’d used on prom night, a combination of vines and wild flowers that Morgan had helped to grow on the Walker acre of land. It had probably been so cheesy, but at the time it had seemed simply beautiful.
Just like the moment when Brian had pulled her into this space between the lockers and kissed her. Even after all these years, Morgan could still remember the instant that their lips had met. It hadn’t been even close to their first kiss, but it was the one she always remembered when she thought about him. He had reached up to the decorations, breaking off a small section of flower-covered vine, twisting it into a circlet that he had settled onto her head. His own version of the prom queen’s crown. It had been such a simple thing to do. So perfect for the moment. So Brian.
“Forget the prom, Morgan. What matters is that you’ll always be my queen.”
“Always?” Even after I'm gone? she'd thought, but she hadn't wanted to ruin everything by saying it aloud. Not when it would happen all too soon.
But he hadn't paused, hadn't had to think about his answer. He'd simply said, “Always,” and then kissed her again, both of them pouring their entire hearts and souls into the kiss. One that they both knew would be one of their very last.
She had never wanted to hurt him, had even tried early on in high school to keep her distance in the hopes of avoiding an inevitable breakup when her dreams to see more of the world eventually overshadowed everything else. But in that moment on prom night in his arms, all she'd wanted for a few precious seconds was to live the dream where she was his, he was hers, and everything was simple. Where it was so easy to be young and in love and no one had to make hard choices.
She sighed, knowing that for all she'd tried over the past seven years to tell herself that she didn't have any regrets about leaving the island—and Brian—coming back to the places that were special to them made it really hard to keep believing she wasn't lying to herself.
