Third Strike
Page 21
“I’m not fucking marrying you in a courthouse. This is my one and only wedding.”
She quirks her brow as if to say “Really?”
“That wasn’t a wedding. That was a necessary evil in order to protect an innocent child. Besides, it no longer exists, so this will still technically be my first.”
“And last,” she says softly with a smile.
“I wouldn’t want it any other way, mini Ross.”
She scrunches her nose and shakes her head, her lips twitching. “Hey Drew?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“You were right.”
“Yeah?” I ask as she shifts her head. She’s all I can see, all I ever want to see.
“Forever and always.”
“You better fucking believe it.”
Ashley
As a teenage girl, I had dreams of a white knight swooping in to save me from a life of expectations. My family loved me, but with power and wealth comes responsibilities. Sometimes we really don’t want to take those on.
My white knight didn’t come in the form of Prince Charming or even a bad boy wannabe rebel. He came in the form of the six-foot-two, dirty blond, cocky, sometimes arrogant, mostly honest Drew Peters. My brother’s best friend, the man my family adopted as if he was our own. The man I fell for at first sight. He was my first love, my first lover, and after walking down the short makeshift wedding aisle in our backyard, surrounded by friends and family, I know he will be my last.
Our journey to become the us we always should’ve been—the us I knew we would become eventually—was never an easy one. It was lined with uncertainty, secret trips and rendezvous, hidden truths and undeclared feelings. It may have taken Drew almost fourteen years to tell me he loved me, but I knew the moment he kissed me in the moonlight as we danced to “You and Me.”
I trusted in us. I trusted in the man I knew and the woman he helped me become. And I trusted in the last piece of advice my dying mom said to me.
“Drew will never be an easy man; he will never be a simple man. But he’s a man that’s simple to love and easy to be loved by.”
When I was seventeen, I fell in love with a man who was still very much a boy. When I was thirty-two, I fell in love with the daughter that grown man made with me.
Annabelle Valerie Peters, named after Drew’s mom, arrived exactly two days after her cousin, Nina Gabrielle Ross, in the hospital room next door.
That’s the day I lost another piece of my heart to Drew Peters, but considering he gave it to our Annabelle, I’ve decided he can keep it for as long as he likes.
I never do these, mainly because I forget to, but this series is one that will stay with me long after Third Strike is published. I may have written many books, in romantic suspense and romantic comedy, but the Chances series was my first foray into angsty, ‘rip your heart’ out writing. Although it challenged me, pushed me to my limit, and had me doubting every word, every character, and every decision they made—be it good or bad—I would not have wished it any other way.
Thanks must be said to my betas for this series—Donna Cooksley Sanderson, Donna Wright, Ashley Cestra, Tarsh Smerdon, Amy Cortez Rangel, Lauren Firminger, Lisa Kuhne, MJ Fryer and Karin Gesell-Miller.
To my editor, Lauren “McStellar” Clarke, thanks for writing the word repetition ten million times in three books and making me a better writer with every single book we’ve done together.
To my very patient and forgiving formatter, Tami Norman at Integrity Formatting. Thank you for putting up with me and all my changes.
To Ena and Amanda at Enticing Journey Promotions, you two are amazing.
To Sarah and Tania at Hershman Rights Management, thank you for everything you’ve done and continue to do for me and my books.
To Jana, Raine, Liv, Stylo, KM, Simone, Lililana, Rachel, Kristy, Lesley, Chelle, and Ariadne, thank you for just being you and helping me in all the ways you do.
And to the readers, THANK YOU for continuing to support me. It’s YOU that keeps me going, keeps me striving to make my next book better than the one before, to keep creating characters and stories and worlds that you want to read. It’s the circle of book-life and it’s all because of YOU.
BJ Harvey is the USA Today Bestselling Author of the Bliss Series. She also regards herself as a smut peddler, suspense conjurer and a funny romance thinker upper. An avid music fan, you will always find her singing some hit song badly but loving every minute of it. She’s a wife, a mom to two beautiful girls, and hails from what she considers as the best country in the world—New Zealand—although she currently resides in Perth, Australia.
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Romantic Comedy
Bliss Series (Interconnected Standalones)
Temporary Bliss (Bliss #1)
True Bliss (Bliss #2)
Blissful Surrender (Bliss #3)
Permanent Bliss (Bliss #4)
Finding Bliss (Bliss #5)
The Game Series (Bliss Series Spin Off)
Game Player (Game #1)
Game Maker (Game #2)
Game Saver (Game #3)
Game Ender (Game #4)
Game Breaker: The Loop (Game #5)
Game Planner (Game #6)
Contemporary Romance
The Chances Series
One Shot (Chances #1)
Second Chance (Chances #2)
Third Strike (Chances #3)
The Sovereign Series
Touch (Sovereign Part One)
Taste (Sovereign Part Two)
Feel (Sovereign Part Three)
Holiday Romance
Stranded
Romance Suspense
Lost in Distraction (Lost #1)
Lost For You (Lost #2)
Lost Without You (Lost #3)
Erotic Suspense—Standalone
Crave
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