Romance Me (Boxed Set)

by Susan Hatler

  “What word is that?”

  “Yes.”

  In an instant, Ethan swept Sadie up into his arms and crossed the office space in a few short steps. He dropped her onto the couch, then followed her body with his, pressing his weight, his heat, onto her, melding with her as he took her mouth with his. The kiss spiraled her upward, sending her into the velvety blackness of the universe. She was hovering, halfway between reality and ecstasy, when he pulled his mouth off hers to speak.

  “I love you, Sadie.” The words came out jagged, raw. “I never believed I could have love, but I found it in you. And I’ll never stop believing.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. He loved her, and she believed him—believed in him.

  Believed in them.

  Believed in forever.

  Epilogue

  Sadie’s entire body tingled. A strange lightheadedness swept over her. She looked down at her four-inch heels, the toes just peeking out from underneath the hem of her dress, making sure her feet were still under her. She shifted. The light in the family room of The Cottages sent warm, glowing tones over her dress, making the white silk appear brushed with iridescent gold dust.

  “How’s my ass look in this tux?” Theo asked Chessie, pulling up his tuxedo jacket to show off his rear. His comment earned him a quick smack from Chessie, but sent Sadie laughing.

  Outside by the cabana, a harp and violin sounded the first hauntingly beautiful notes of the processional. With a flourish, Theo kissed the top of her head, then grabbed Chessie’s arm and hauled her off through the patio door to a petal-strewn path. Fortunately for Chessie, she’d slipped off her shoes earlier, or else Theo’s euphoric pace would have knocked her off her feet.

  Lia moved to stand beside her for a moment. “You are so beautiful,” she whispered, entwining her hand in Sadie’s, bringing a brilliant smile to her friend’s face.

  “C’mon.” Jack’s low voice sounded as he pulled Lia from Sadie’s side. “Time for us to go.” Lia eagerly grabbed his arm. Sadie noticed Jack’s gentle and loving smile as he bent low to whisper something in Lia’s ear.

  And suddenly Sadie was alone. Tingles twirled around inside her tummy. Outside, her family and friends waited. Her parents sat in the front row—her mother sorely disappointed Sadie had chosen not to have her hair professionally styled, and her father too busy checking emails on his phone to notice he wasn’t needed to walk his daughter down the aisle. But she’d wanted to walk to Ethan by herself—her strong, independent self.

  She brushed a few invisible folds from her dress, a sheath draped with filmy lace and delicate seed pearls. When the music changed tempo, she picked up her bouquet and stepped outside. The rose petal and lavender bud-strewn path wound its way from the patio to the fountain at the far side of the lawn, leading straight to Ethan.

  The crowd parted. At the end of the path, Sadie could see her friends standing in the dappled sunlight. When Ethan stepped out from the shadows, their eyes caught and held, their shared look speaking more loudly than words. Sadie began her walk to the altar, to her man. There, Ethan caught her hands in his and the tingles disappeared, replaced by that warm wave she knew now to be love.

  “This is just the beginning,” he said, leaning forward to touch her forehead with his. “We’re at our beginning.”

  “No,” she whispered as he smiled down on her. “It’s our forever.”

  THE END

  Trusting the One (Meadowview Heat series, Book 2)

  When Lia Sawyer realizes she's ready to move beyond her abusive past and start dating again, there's just one problem: she's still afraid of being touched by a man. Because of that, rumor around town is that she's frigid. Her solution? Ask her friend Jack Gibson for help. After all, he's one of her best friends-a man she's always trusted.

  Jack fell in love with his best friend's younger sister years ago, although he kept that to himself when she married her high school boyfriend. But Lia's been a widow for two years now and it's time he asked her out. When she comes to him with a bizarre request-give her lessons on how to be touched by a man so she can date one of Meadowview's hot firefighters-his entire plan is thwarted.

  Reluctantly, Jack agrees to Lia's plan but secretly creates one of his own: during the course of their “lessons,” he'll make sure she falls in love-with him. But it will take fire and ice to break through Lia's emotional barriers, and Jack is running out of time…

  About the Author

  Rochelle French

  ROCHELLE FRENCH is a romance novelist and the author of the Meadowview Heat series. Her books feature contemporary characters falling in love in small town settings. She currently lives in Northern California in the same small town where she grew up, where she spends her days writing, wrangling her teenaged twins, or hiking in the woods. She loves to hear from readers at www.rochellefrench.com and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

  Titles by Rochelle French

  The Meadowview Heat Series

  Forever the One

  Trusting the One

  Claiming the One

  Tempting the One

  Finding the One

  Always the One (coming March, 2015)

  Bedding The Wrong Brother

  by

  Virna DePaul

  Prologue

  Dalton's Magic Rule #1: Never reveal your secrets.

  “Hey, Ladybug.”

  Fourteen-year-old Melina Parker's hand jerked at the sound of Rhys Dalton's voice, causing the lizard in her palm to scamper away. Standing, she frowned to hide the sudden flight of butterflies in her stomach. “Darn it, Rhys. It took me almost an hour to get that one to come to me.”

  Rhys, who even at sixteen towered over Melina's petite frame, rolled his eyes. He was an identical twin, and it was hard for Melina to believe there were two gorgeous guys with that same shade of honey-colored hair and light green eyes walking the earth.

  “Your mom said to tell you to stay clean.” The left side of his mouth quirked up, revealing the slightest hint of a dimple. “Guess it's too late for that.”

  Melina glanced down at the dust covering her jeans. Grimacing, she slapped at the dirt and groaned. “She's going to kill me. She's already mad that I wouldn't wear the dress she bought me. You should have seen it, Rhys. It had polka dots. I mean, me in polka dots. Can you imagine?”

  “Oh, come on, it makes sense. Plus, I think you'd be cute in a dress.”

  At the quiet words, Melina's head jerked up. He couldn't have meant—

  No, of course not. He'd been so distant lately. He wasn't even looking at her. Instead, he was staring down at a playing card in his hands, folding it. Nothing strange about that. Like their parents, Rhys and his twin brother, Max, were always fiddling with some kind of magic trick. He was particularly fond of making coins disappear. Sometimes she wished he could make her crush on him disappear just as easily, but first she'd have to admit it to him. That was so never going to happen. She'd seen the types of girls he and Max were attracted to, and plain, chubby tomboys need not apply.

  At least he didn’t call her “Four-eyed Porker Parker” the way some of the boys at school did. In fact, when Rhys had heard Scott Thompson called her that, he’d tracked Scott down and given him a warning. Now whenever Melina got close, Scott couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

  Nudging her glasses in place, she moved closer, trying to see what Rhys was doing. “Um. So, have you heard from Max?”

  His hands paused briefly before continuing. “Just that he doesn't hate football camp nearly as much as he thought he would. Might have something to do with the girls camp next door.”

  She snickered. “Bet you're wishing you'd gone to camp when you'd had the chance, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  His gaze met hers. Unlike Max's, Rhys's pupils had a slight amber ring around them. She'd read somewhere that differing eye color in identical twins was extremely rare. The subtle difference fit Rhys's personality.
While Max was almost always carefree and playful, Rhys had a quiet calmness about him—as if part of his mind was someplace else, someplace no one else could go.

  He shrugged. “Time at home is rare. You know that.”

  Melina nodded. She did. It was the hardest thing about being friends with the Dalton twins: the amount of time she had to spend missing them. Unless Rhys's folks were working up a new act, like now, they spent their time traveling and performing. Still, despite having to be schooled on the road by tutors, Rhys and Max always seemed to enjoy going to new places. She certainly envied their chance to see more than this small, university town she called home.

  “Poor baby,” she teased, plucking a blade of grass from the ground and twirling it. “Getting to see the world with your famous parents must be a drag, huh?”

  He frowned, then shook his head. “No, you're right. It's great.” He thrust his hand toward her. “Here. To replace the one I scared away.”

  Dropping the blade of grass, she reached out and took the card. Looking down at it, she gasped. He'd folded the card into a shape that clearly resembled a lizard, with one spade as its eye. A smile split her face, and she actually squealed. “It's so cute!”

  She looked up, happy to see that his frown had disappeared. A hank of hair had fallen over his eyes, and her fingers itched to push it back. She wouldn't have thought twice about it if he'd been Max, but with Rhys? She couldn't risk revealing how she felt about him. Next thing she knew, he'd pat her on the head and stop talking to her altogether, and that would kill her.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged again. “I got this book from the library—”

  A movement behind his shoulder made her eyes widen. “Max?” She looked at Rhys, whose expression stiffened. “It's Max!”

  Running past Rhys, she threw herself at Max. He laughed and lifted her, twirling her around before setting her on her feet. Even to an outsider, the differences between him and his brother would be obvious now. He was tanner, and his hair had grown longer, almost touching his shoulders. She reached out and flipped it. “What's with the girly hair?”

  He narrowed his eyes and flicked a finger over her nose. “Still playing in the dirt, are you?”

  She slapped his hand away. “You're home early. Rhys said you were having fun at camp.”

  “I was. But I wanted to see what Mom and Dad were up to with the act. They're really pushing for something unique for the European tour. Your parents are here helping them?”

  “Every day for the past week. Some kind of mechanical thingy.”

  Max grinned and flung an arm around her shoulder. “Cool. Let's go check it out.”

  “Okay. But first look at what Rhys made me.” She lifted up the paper lizard even as she turned to Rhys. “It's so cool. Rhys, let's—”

  Rhys walked past her, nodding at his brother and slapping him on the shoulder. “Come on, dude. You're gonna love it. It's huge. I mean—”

  As they walked in front of her, the two of them laughing and shoving, Melina frowned. She watched them, the easy way they had with each other, and hesitated. They'd be back on the road in another few weeks, and then it would be just her and her parents in their quiet little house, all of their noses immersed in books. No one to call her Ladybug or practice tricks on.

  No one to dream about.

  Which was silly, anyway. Her parents said things came to fruition through research and application, not dreaming. And they were right about everything.

  Except polka dot dresses, she amended.

  With a sigh, she carefully pocketed the paper lizard and scrambled to catch up with them. “Hey, guys! Wait up!”

  Chapter One

  Dalton's Magic Rule #2: Continually challenge yourself.

  “Listen to this,” Lucy Conrad said, waving Melina's magazine like a red flag. “98.9 percent of all women sometimes wish their lovers would just grab them, throw them down and fuck the holy hell out of them.” Tossing the magazine on the sofa, she pointed a finger in Melina's direction, her short and spiky red hair fairly vibrating. “You know what that means, don't you?”

  “That women like to feel wanted?” Melina guessed, handing Lucy a pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream before dropping into the chair across from her. Sitting cross-legged, Melina adjusted her glasses, then scooped out a bite of Chunky Monkey from her own carton. It had been exactly seven days since she'd allowed herself this taste of heaven. When the cold confection touched her tongue, she closed her eyes in appreciation. “Hmm,” she purred. “Gotta love Girls’ Night In.”

  “You can say that again.” The soft but impassioned reply came from Grace Sinclair, who sat in a chair next to Melina. Melina held out her spoon and Grace delicately tapped it with her own. Grace, a career counselor in the university's humanities department, was class and calmness personified. While Lucy was Cherry Garcia—cherry ice cream with cherries and fudge flakes—Grace was Ben & Jerry's Crème Brǔlée—sweet custard ice cream with a caramelized sugar swirl. Blond and willowy with cool porcelain skin, Grace spoke with just a hint of a Southern drawl. “All we need is a Viggo Mortensen movie and I'd be halfway to heaven.”

  “You already tried that, remember? Even with Viggo's voice playing in the background, you couldn't get off.”

  Grace squinted at Lucy while waving her spoon. “Now don't you go blaming that on Viggo. I could hardly hear him with all the grunting noises Phillip was making.” Grace wrinkled her nose. “I swear, the man had the nicest table manners, but in bed…” She gave a mock shudder.

  Melina giggled as Lucy thumped on the magazine she'd been reading from.

  “Seriously,” Lucy insisted. “This does not mean women like to feel wanted. It means they settle for fantasies instead of focusing on what they really want at the beginning of a relationship. Which is exactly what you're doing, Melina.”

  Sighing, Melina forced a smile. The last thing she wanted was to have another argument with Lucy about Professor Jamie Whitcomb. Unfortunately, despite the dusting of freckles that made Lucy look more like one of her students than a tenured professor, Lucy was a bulldog when it came to protecting her friends—even from themselves. “And exactly what should I be focusing on?” she asked.

  “Passion,” Lucy fired back.

  Of course. Passion. Lucy's favorite word. “And by passion, you mean…”

  “Pure, animalistic chemistry. The kind that makes you want to rip each other's clothes off and do it against a tree if you have to. The kind of passion you don't feel for Jamie.”

  The kind of passion she'd never felt for any man, Melina thought. Any man except Rhys, that is. But thinking of Rhys only made her sad, and being sad while she ate Ben & Jerry's was just wrong. “Ahh,” Melina said softly, trying not to sound too bitter. “You mean the kind of mutual passion that leads to love and lifelong happiness and is about as real as unicorns or flying dragons.”

  “Rarity isn't the same as fantasy,” Lucy exclaimed. She stood, her face all flushed and her hands gesturing wildly. “That's what women have been taught nowadays. That passion and true love and friendship, all rolled into one, is impossible. So they settle.”

  “Lucy does have a point,” Grace admitted. “Passion must be a basic female need. Otherwise, why would such a huge percentage of women be craving it?”

  “Maybe,” Melina said, trying to be the voice of reason, “because 98.9 percent of guys aren't the throw-a-woman-on-the-ground type.” Her eyes automatically shifted to the pictures of Max and Rhys on her bookshelves. She had a feeling they were the exception, but they didn't exactly represent the average male. “Women want passion, but if it's not in a man's true nature to give it to her, then what's the point in wishing for it? Compatibility. Respect. Even love. That's what matters.”

  “So then what's with all these?” Lucy pointed to several books on Melina's coffee table. The Joy of Sex rested prominently on top of the stack.

  Melina shrugged prosaically, pretty sure Lucy already knew the answer. “G
uys like sex. Jamie's a guy. Thus, part of getting and keeping Jamie is giving him sex.”

  And not just any kind of sex, Melina thought. Mind-blowing, can’t-live-without-it, I'll-never-look-at-another-woman-for-fear-you-won't-give-it-to-me-again sex. The kind of sex she apparently didn't know how to provide, but was going to master this time even if it meant renting every porno she could find on the Internet.

  “You like sex, too,” Grace pointed out. “Do you factor into this equation at all?”

  “Of course, I do. I have no doubt that Jamie can give me what I want.”

  Lucy harrumphed and narrowed her eyes at her. “Well, I'm glad your wants are still in the picture. At least Brian didn't totally squash your sexual confidence when he hooked up with his little co-ed.”

  No, Melina thought, he’d squashed her confidence long before then. Every time he’d hinted she needed to lose a few pounds. And he hadn’t been the only one of her boyfriends prone to doing that. But insecurities aside, she knew she was healthy and reasonably attractive. That just wasn’t enough for some men. The key was finding the man who’d love her for who she was.

  And who she could learn to be in bed.

  “True passion isn't about technique, Melina,” Lucy insisted. “You can't manufacture it by reading about it.”

  Melina nodded. “I get that. But I've never been overly passionate, anyway. After Brian, I was sure I was through with men for good. But then Jamie approached me. He's smart and kind and funny. I think I could be happy with him.” She heard the hesitation in her voice but charged on. “I just need a little extra insurance that I can make him happy, too.”

  Snorting, Lucy shook her head. “If you're talking about making him happy in bed, there's no such thing as insurance. You'll just have to take the plunge, so to speak.”

  “Not necessarily,” Grace drawled. “As my mama always said, practice makes perfect, right?”