Contents
Title Page
Bonus Scenes
Unsaid Things 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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Coping Skills “Hello
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
False Assumptions 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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
A Very Marycliff Christmas 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
Epilogue Dear Reader
Book Club
About Jerica MacMillan
Other Titles on Amazon
Players of Marycliff University Box Set, Books 4–7
Jerica MacMillan
Copyright © 2016, 2017, 2020 by Jerica MacMillan
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Coffee and Characters
Click here to download free bonus scenes that go along with these books!
UNSAID THINGS
CHAPTER ONE
Bras, check. Underwear, check. Jeans and T-shirts for six days, check, plus a couple of nice outfits just in case. Okay. Big toiletries in the suitcase, deodorant, toothbrush, travel toothpaste, and birth control pills in my carry-on.
“You ready, Abby?” Lance’s voice carried from the living room where he was packing up their electronics and chargers.
“Yeah! Be right there!” Abby zipped her suitcase closed, pulled it off the bed, and locked the handle in place to roll it out to the living room. Lance appeared in the doorway, a smile on his stubble-roughened face despite his tired eyes. Four a.m. was way too early to wake up, and Abby knew she looked just as sleep deprived.
He stepped into the room and dropped a quick kiss on her lips before snagging her suitcase from her hand. “Let me get that for you.”
Following him into the living room, she felt the need to clarify one more time. “I can get my own suitcase, Lance. It rolls. It’s not that hard.”
He didn’t bother to answer except to laugh and pull on his favorite Dallas Cowboys hat, the worn and dingy fabric covering his dark brown hair. When he looked at her, his chocolate brown eyes held warmth and affection. “You say that every time I do something for you. And my answer is still the same. I know you can. I want to anyway.” Pocketing his keys, he tugged the backpack strap off her shoulder, dropping it on the floor, and wrapped his arms around her. “I like doing things for you, Abby. That hasn’t changed in the last six months, and it isn’t going to. You might as well get used to it.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but he covered it with his own, kissing her deeply, his favorite way to forestall anything he didn’t want to hear her say. When he pulled back, she narrowed her eyes at him. He gave her a big grin and took the first suitcase out to the car. She let him load the car without protest, instead helping by putting the next suitcase and his backpack by the door, not wanting to start their trip with a stupid argument that she wouldn’t win, ending with them both pissy the whole way to Texas.
And she definitely didn’t want to meet his family for the first time right after having a stupid fight with him.
Lance made the small concession of letting her carry her own backpack. She knew he saw it as a concession from the slight tightening of his mouth when he looked over his shoulder at her following him to the car. But he let it go, taking her backpack to put in the trunk while she climbed into the running car, glad to get out of the cold December air. Lance had already scraped most of the frost off the car windows when he brought out the first suitcase, and the defrost blew full blast, warming up the car and melting the remnants left at the edges.
A gust of cold air followed Lance into the car, and Abby shivered. They both wore sweatshirts, not wanting to deal with heavy coats on the plane since they wouldn’t need them in Denton. There’d be no white Christmas for them this year. The forecast predicted highs in the fifties and sixties the whole time they’d be there. She had a couple of other sweaters in her suitcase, but she didn’t need her warm coat with those temperatures. But getting to and from the airport in Spokane before dawn this time of year meant shivering until the car warmed up all the way.
Lance backed out of the parking spot. “Let’s get coffee on the way. I don’t want to wait until we get through security. Hell, the way I’m feeling, I might need more by then.”
“Sounds perfect.”
Abby rubbed her arms as they drove, apprehension and excitement flowing through her veins, the sleep deprivation amplifying her feelings. She’d talked to Lance’s mom, Elizabeth, a few times during their weekly phone conversations, and she seemed cool. Excited that they were coming for Christmas. Lance’s sister Gabby said she couldn’t wait for them to get there.
Abby envied their relationship. She hadn’t heard from her own brother, Aaron, in over a year. She had no idea where he was or what he’d been doing in that time. As far as she knew, her mom hadn’t heard anything from h
im earlier. They never talked about him. So to witness how well Lance got along with his mom and sisters, though he didn’t talk to his older sister Marissa as much as Gabby, made Abby’s heart ache with longing.
She would never have that kind of relationship with her family—her mom more of a dependent than a parent, her brother incommunicado, and her sperm donor long gone. She used to wish that her dad would contact her, send her a letter, call her on the phone, or better yet, come back. But he never had. And over the years she stopped thinking of him as her dad, instead thinking of him just as a biological contributor to her existence. He’d left before she turned three, and she had no memory of him except for some faded photos her mom still kept around for some reason. Abby used to get them out and look at them when she was a little kid, when she still hoped he’d come back. She wanted to be able to recognize him when he did. But that hope had faded somewhere between her eighth or ninth birthday, when Aaron had grown tired of her talking about their dad and told her that he would never come back, so she should just forget about him. Aaron had never lied to her, so she believed him. She stopped talking about their dad, stopped looking at his pictures, and soon stopped thinking about him except for when she had to answer questions about her parents.
Lance pulled up to their favorite coffee stand, no line this early in the morning. He glanced at her as he rolled down the window, letting in more frigid air. “Your usual?”
She nodded. “Make it a large.”
He grinned, turning to the barista who seemed far too upbeat for this godawful time of day, and gave him their order. Lance passed Abby her coffee, setting his own in the cupholder next to him, and pulled back onto the road, heading for the airport. “You’re quiet this morning.”
“I’m just tired.” She took a sip of her coffee, closing her eyes as the rich mixture of caramel and espresso washed over her tongue. Mmm.
“Keep making noises like that, Abby, and we might miss our flight.”
She opened her eyes, grinning at Lance with his heated brown eyes and a naughty smirk pulling at his lips. “I think your mom would kill you if that happened.”
He grunted, his eyes going back to the road, and shifted in his seat. “No more moaning about your coffee. It makes me jealous.”
She laughed, and he smiled.
“Good. Now tell me what’s going through your head.”
She smiled to herself and shook her head once. Lance knew her too well, seeing through her flimsy excuse. “Well, I am tired. But I’m nervous too. I’ve never done the whole meet-the-family thing before, and we’re going halfway across the country to do it. What if your parents hate me?”
His hand fell to her knee, squeezing and stroking, the gesture every bit as comforting as he meant it to be. “They’ll love you, Abby. You have nothing to worry about.”
She shrugged. “So you say. It doesn’t make me less nervous though.”
He squeezed her knee again before returning his hand to the steering wheel, needing more control on the icy roads. “It’ll be okay.”
She knew he wanted to be reassuring, and she appreciated it, but it didn’t do anything to help the nervous churning in her belly. And that made her not want her coffee, which was a treat she didn’t splurge on often, so she pushed aside thoughts of meeting Lance’s family and decided to focus on something more exciting. “So, can I guess what you got me for Christmas?”
Lance’s low chuckle warmed her, and did more to dispel her nerves than any reassurance he could offer. “Sweetheart, I’m not going to give it away. Don’t you want to be surprised?”
“Of course. But I also like to guess. It’s a win for me either way. If I guess right, then I get to be right. If I’m wrong, then I’m surprised.” She pursed her lips and tapped one finger against them. “Hmm. Is it bigger than a book?”
Lance laughed again, shaking his head. “Books come in a lot of sizes. What kind of book are we talking here? A large textbook? Mass market paperback? Standard hardcover?”
Abby stuck out her tongue at him, even though he wouldn’t be able to see it driving in the dark. “Fine. I’ll go with standard hardcover. Is it bigger than a standard hardcover book?”
He shook his head again. “I’m not telling you anything, Abby.”
The blinker click-click-clicked, and they pulled off the freeway, surprising Abby at how fast their drive to the airport had gone by. She gulped the rest of her coffee, not wanting to deal with it in the shuttle from the long term parking lot. “Well, at least tell me it’s not something crazy expensive.”
Lance glanced at her, not answering until they’d made it to the parking lot just outside the airport. When he turned off the car, he turned to look at her, his face serious in the glare from the light shining through their window. “Abby, I’m not going to give you any hints about your present. Not the size or the cost.” He reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear, his hand resting on the back of her neck. “And I’ll damn well spend as much money on your Christmas present as I want. I don’t care how independent you like to be. It’s a gift, and you’re not allowed to complain about how much you think it cost. Got it?”
“But—”
“No buts. Promise me you won’t complain about how much your present costs when I give it to you.”
That meant that it was definitely expensive. If not, why bother extracting this promise? She stared at him for a minute, trying to come up with some way to hedge her way around making the promise, but his stare remained hard and unflinching. There was no arguing with him when he got like this. She knew him as well as he knew her. With a heavy sigh, she relented. “Fine. I won’t say anything. And just so we’re clear, I realize that means I’ll probably think it’s too expensive. For someone who isn’t going to give anything away, you just gave me a big clue.”
A grin flashed on his face for a moment before he pulled her in and kissed her. “You might think so. Either way, we gotta go. Come on.”
With that he got out of the car, went around the front to open her door, then popped the trunk and pulled out their bags. She gave him a cheeky grin as she grabbed the handle of her suitcase and started for the waiting shuttle before Lance could say anything.
Their conversation about Christmas presents hadn’t done what she’d hoped. She was still nervous about meeting Lance’s family, more so now that they were on their way. And now she had to worry about how much he’d spent on her present, and if he’d be okay with the digital photo frame loaded with pictures of the two of them that she’d gotten for him to keep on his desk at work. Would she embarrass herself on Christmas morning with his family when she opened something extravagant from him and all she gave him in return was something simple?
CHAPTER TWO
Lance let out a low growl when he reached Abby and took her suitcase from her before she could load it into the shuttle. It was all for show, though. Yes, he liked doing things for her, and sometimes he got frustrated when she wouldn’t let him. Today, though, he was glad that she was acting like her usual self. He knew this trip made her nervous and that she’d been nervous since the first time it came up back in October. But his mom had been pestering him about bringing Abby down for a visit since he moved back to Spokane in August, and he was lucky enough to work for a company that gave him two weeks of vacation time during his first year. He’d been able to make it so he only had to use a few days, using the holidays and weekends to make their trip last a week, and still have a few days at home with Abby before having to go back after New Year’s.
They got checked in and through airport security with minimal fuss. This early in the morning, the lines weren’t too long. Flying always felt like a series of hurry-up-and-wait. Hurry to get to the airport early. Wait for an hour to board. Hurry up and get to your seat to make sure you got overhead bin space. Wait for everyone else to get on before takeoff. Hurry to get off the plane and to your next gate. Wait to board the next flight.
The flight to Seattle went fast with barely time for the
drink service before they started their descent, and they only had an hour layover before getting on the plane to DFW. Lance had been concerned that they might miss their connection if they were delayed out of Spokane for any reason, but the weather was clear and cold, no storms brewing to slow them down. They had just enough time to grab a couple of breakfast sandwiches and more coffees before their flight started boarding.
Lance took the middle seat, allowing Abby the window and braving whoever scored the aisle. She settled in, flipping through the in-flight magazine, her Kindle in the pocket of the seat in front of her. He pulled out his iPad and headphones before stuffing his backpack in the overhead compartment, wanting as much legroom as possible. Shifting to get comfortable, he leaned closer to Abby in an attempt to keep his shoulders from encroaching on the seat next to him. With a smile for him, she pushed up the armrest between them before resting her head on his shoulder, her strawberry blonde hair falling over his arm.
He nuzzled her hair. “Tired?”
Her head moved against his shoulder as she nodded, a yawn stretching her jaw too wide for her hand to cover. He smiled to himself at her sleepy cuteness. He loved how open and unguarded she’d become with him. Once upon a time, she would’ve insisted she was fine and sat upright regardless of the fact that she’d only slept a few hours, not wanting to show anything that could be perceived as weakness. He settled in further so she could get comfortable and kissed the top of her head. “Take a nap. We’ve got plenty of time.”
She yawned again. “I should, but with the coffee we just had I don’t know if I’ll be able to.”
“Is it the coffee?” he asked gently, “or are you still worried about everything?”
Sitting up, she turned to him with wide blue eyes. “Well, now it’s both. You think I should be worried?”
He couldn’t suppress the laugh that came out as he brushed her hair away from her face. “Of course not. But I know you.” He ran his thumb over the furrow between her brows. “You worry about everything. If it’s not my parents, then it’s your mom. My mentioning it doesn’t make it any more or less real.”
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