by Force, Marie
“I put my phone on vibrate when I was watching Hailey, and I never put the ringer back on.” She glanced at him. “They’ve really got him?”
“They really do. The state police are coming over to pick him up tomorrow. His bail has been revoked twelve hours after he was released.”
“Some people never learn, do they?”
“And others do. They learn what really matters in life, and they do everything in their power to protect it.”
Daisy reached over to try to bring some order to his messy hair.
He turned his face, leaving a trail of hot kisses on her palm and wrist.
“Want to know when I first realized I loved you?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“When you sent me the lilies. You heard me when I said I loved them, and that touched me so much. I knew I was in big trouble after that.”
“Want to know when I first knew?”
“It wasn’t today when you thought Truck had found me?”
He shook his head. “That was the final nail in my coffin.”
“You make it sound so romantic,” she said, laughing.
“It was when you made it your mission to feed me. You showed me every day how much you cared, and I wanted to be around you all the time.”
“Now you can be,” she said, still trying to believe this was really happening.
“Now I can be.” He raised himself up on one elbow. “Is this okay?” he asked as he hovered above her.
“Very okay, but it could be better.”
His lips curved into a smile as he kissed her softly at first but with increasing urgency as she responded enthusiastically. As he came down on top of her, it never occurred to her to be worried or afraid or anxious, because this was David. Her David, and he loved her.
The emotional day fired their passion for each other, and Daisy couldn’t seem to get close enough to him. She tugged at the towel around his hips as he helped her out of her dress and ogled the second bra and panty set she’d bought from Tiffany—this one light blue with lacy trim.
“I want to kiss you everywhere,” he whispered against her ear, setting off a flurry of sensation throughout her body.
“Next time,” she said, still not quite used to saying what she wanted in bed.
“Is someone in a big rush tonight?”
“Very big.” She took hold of his erection and stroked him. “And getting bigger.”
David sputtered with laughter that quickly turned into a groan. He caressed her breasts through the silky bra and ran his hand straight down the middle of her, pushing her panties down her legs. When he was positioned between her legs, he gazed down at her, his heart in his eyes. “Is this okay?”
“Could be better,” she replied with a coy smile, raising her hips to show him what she wanted.
He bit his lip to keep from laughing as he entered her, teasing his way in by giving her small increments before backing away and starting all over.
“David! Stop!”
He froze. “Are you okay?”
“I meant stop teasing me.”
“Oh, okay. You scared me for a second there.”
It mattered so much to her that he cared about frightening her. “I’m absolutely fine. I’ve never been better, and I want you right now.”
Keeping his eyes open and fixed on hers the entire time, he gave her exactly what she wanted, taking her on a wild ride that sent her flying more than once before he pushed hard into her the last time, letting go with a cry that came from his soul.
He collapsed on top of her and rested quietly for a second before he seemed to realize what he was doing and started to move off her.
“Don’t go,” she said, tightening her arms around him.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m very sure.”
“So how was that?” She felt the smile on his lips as he kissed the slope of her breast.
“Couldn’t have been better.”
“Oh, we’ll see about that.”
Daisy shivered with delight and anticipation of all that was ahead for her and her sexy doctor.
* * *
Turn the page to continue with Meant for Love, Alex and Jenny’s story!
Chapter 1
The dream was always the same, the last perfect moment before life as Jenny Wilks knew it ended forever. She and her fiancé, Toby, in their cozy New York City apartment, enjoying breakfast, the morning paper, the news on TV, talking about everything and nothing. He’d asked about their dinner plans, and she’d reminded him her parents were coming the next day, so they needed to clean their apartment.
He’d groaned in protest, and she’d laughed at him, as she always did. She was a neat freak, and he was a certified slob. She loved him anyway, even when she had to pick up after him. Every time she had the dream, she tried to recall those final minutes, wanting desperately to know what they’d said to each other.
It was the one thing she couldn’t remember, and the one thing she needed to know.
Toby got up to leave for work in Lower Manhattan, leaning in to kiss her the way he did every morning. He looked gorgeous and successful in the suit that had been cut just for him, as he rubbed his freshly shaven cheek against hers. “I’ll—”
A roar of noise startled her out of a sound sleep, setting off a panic deep inside where the lingering trauma still resided. An engine, close by… In a cold sweat despite the oppressive heat, she launched out of bed and ran for the window to find a shirtless man standing on the back of the biggest lawn mower she’d ever seen. At—she glanced at the clock on her bedside table—5:45 a.m.! Was he serious?
Next to the clock was a framed picture of Toby that brought back the dream in startling, vibrant detail that made her eyes swim with tears and sparked fury that had her running for the lighthouse’s spiral staircase. Down she went to the first floor and then one more level below to the mudroom and out into the pearly predawn, where the air was thick with heat and humidity.
She burst into the yard, screaming as she went, “Hey! Hello! Do you know what time it is?”
The dark-haired man wore a bulky headset over his ears and couldn’t possibly hear her over the roar of that…thing…he was driving. It was massive—and very, very loud. His skin glistened with sweat as day three of the heat wave from hell began on Gansett Island.
Jenny looked around for something, anything she could use to get his attention and zeroed in on the bumper crop of tomatoes that had begun to ripen on the vines she’d planted earlier in the summer. Without giving a single thought to what she was about to do, she grabbed a handful of pulpy tomatoes and began flinging them at the man’s bare back.
The first two went wide, missing the target, but the third one hit him square between the shoulder blades, splattering on contact. Excellent.
Recoiling from the direct hit, he cut the engine on the beast, threw off the headset and jumped from the platform, spinning to face her. “What was that?” Looking around, he noticed the remnants of the first two tomatoes on the ground next to him. “Are you throwing tomatoes at me? What the hell?”
“I could ask you the same thing! Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Ah…five something?”
Despite her rage, she couldn’t help but notice a muscular chest and belly, dark chest hair, tanned skin and khaki shorts that hung from narrow hips. He wore work boots with dark socks that peeked out the top of them. “Five forty-five. In the morning!”
“Thanks for clarifying. Do you mind leaving me alone? I’ve got a long day ahead of me, and you’re the one who complained to the town that we hadn’t been out to cut the grass. Well, we’re here to cut the grass.”
“Not at five forty-five in the morning you’re not.”
“Ah, yeah, I am.”
She took a step closer to him. “No, you’re not.”
He took a step in her direction. “Yes, I am.”
The fourth tomato in her hand went sailing toward his head.
He ducked at the last second, avoiding a direct hit. “Are you completely insane?”
As he looked her up and down under the cover of sunglasses, Jenny realized she was wearing next to nothing as she faced off with the angry lawn guy. The lighthouse didn’t have air-conditioning, and the heat had been unbearable, thus the short nightgown she’d worn over tiny panties. She crossed her arms over her unrestrained breasts.
“Look, lady, I’m sorry if I woke you up, but I need to get back to work if I’m going to keep this already screwed-up day on schedule.”
“You’re not turning that…thing back on at six o’clock in the morning! I thought I was being attacked or something.”
“Right. Attacked. On Gansett Island, where it’s so unsafe.”
Jenny knew what it was like to be attacked in a place where she’d always felt safe, a thought that brought back the images from the dream, reminding her of what she’d missed out on thanks to the roar of his lawn mower.
Who knew when or if she’d have the dream again? It had been more than a year since the last time Toby had “visited” her slumber. “You never know when a safe place can become unsafe.” As she uttered the words, her chin quivered and her eyes swam with tears.
“Oh my God. You’re not going to cry!” He tipped his head for a closer look at her. “Are you?”
“No, I’m not going to cry.” She really had no intention of crying, but having that particular dream threw her out of sorts for days every time it happened. Being blasted out of a sound sleep on top of it was a recipe for emotional overload.
“Good.” He ran his fingers through straight, silky, dark hair, a gesture that made his muscles tighten and bulge, not that she was looking or anything, and then he lifted his sunglasses to swipe at the sweat on his face, revealing dark brown eyes. She couldn’t help but notice how exhausted he looked. “Listen, I’m sorry I woke you up,” he said in a more conciliatory tone. “I wasn’t thinking about someone actually living here. I need to get this done while I can. Since you’re already awake, would you mind if I got back to it?”
The exhaustion that radiated from him had her softening, too. Slightly. “And you won’t show up here again at this hour?”
“I won’t show up here again at this hour.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.” He treated himself to another good look at her barely covered body before he stalked back to his Sherman tank of a lawn mower and fired up the beast.
Damn, that thing was loud! Jenny covered her ears and headed into the lighthouse, kicking the door shut behind her because that made her feel like she’d gotten the last word on the matter. She went up the spiral stairs to the kitchen and poured a glass of ice water that she ran over her face, hoping to cool her fevered skin. This heat was unbelievable and heading into another day with no end in sight.
Trying to ignore the impossible-to-ignore sound of the mower, she took the ice water with her when she went up another level to her bedroom and stretched out on the bed. She turned on her side so she could see the photo of Toby and stared at his boyish grin, wishing she could go back to sleep and return to the dream, back to the last minute in time when everything was still right in her world.
What had he said to her before he walked out of their Greenwich Village apartment into a crystal-clear September day and disappeared off the face of the earth? If only she could remember. At times over the last dozen years, she’d considered hypnosis to jog her memory, but she’d never taken it that far. The dream did this to her every time. It made her start to wonder again, which tended to set her back a few steps in the never-ending cycle of grief.
It was less raw and gritty now than it had once been, but it was always with her, as much a part of who she was as the dark blonde hair that refused to grow past her shoulders or the tiny mole next to her upper lip or the brown eyes that were too close together, in her opinion. Toby used to laugh at her inventory of “flaws.” He said she was the most beautiful creature on the planet, and he was the luckiest guy in the universe because she loved him. How exactly did one “move on” after experiencing the all-consuming love of a man like that?
She’d been trying to move on lately, accepting dates with guys her well-meaning friends had fixed her up with. So far she’d been out to dinner with the very nice—and very tall—Gansett Island fire chief, Mason Johns. They’d had a good time together, but there’d been no real spark. She almost hoped he didn’t call her for another date so she wouldn’t have to turn him down.
Linc Mercier, the Coast Guard officer who ran the local station, had called to ask her to dinner tomorrow night, and she’d accepted his kind invitation. She’d met Linc a few times through her friends Mac and Maddie McCarthy and newlyweds Tiffany and Blaine Taylor. Linc seemed like a nice enough guy, and he was certainly handsome, but again, she didn’t look at him and think, wow, the way she had the first time she met Toby at Wharton when they’d been MBA students together.
Maybe she’d never feel that particular emotion again. Maybe she should accept that she’d been lucky to feel it once, which was far more than some people ever got. She stared at the photo of Toby and thought of the phone call he’d made after the plane hit the South Tower. He’d said he was so sorry to do this to her and that he wanted her to be happy, that her happiness was the most important thing to him.
She blew out a deep breath, mad at herself for wallowing in the past as she had far too often in the last twelve years. Toby was gone. He wasn’t coming back. She’d accepted that a long time ago. Now it was time to get busy seeing to what he’d most wanted for the rest of her life—true happiness. It was out there somewhere, and she was determined to find it, if for no other reason than she owed it to him.
* * *
If Alex Martinez was looking for further proof of how totally his life had gone to shit, Exhibit A could be the sticky remnants of flying tomatoes drying on his back in the sizzling heat. He’d have full-blown spaghetti sauce ready to eat by the time he finished cutting the grass.
As he rode the biggest mower they owned over the acres of land that surrounded the Southeast Light, the sun beat down on him relentlessly. He guzzled the last of the water he’d brought with him. The scorching heat wasn’t doing much for his already surly disposition. He’d gone from cultivating new breeds of orchids and other exotic plants at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, DC, to cutting grass on Gansett Island, regressing to his former life as a sixteen-year-old.
He’d left the respect of his colleagues, along with his ascending career in horticultural sciences, to come home to help his brother, Paul, run their family business on Gansett and manage their mother’s rapid plunge into dementia. A year ago, she’d been running the business their father started on the island more than four decades earlier. Now he and his brother were doing their best to keep the business afloat while dealing with their mother’s illness, too.
At times Alex felt like his head was going to explode from thinking too much about the staggering array of demands on his time, as well as the overwhelming challenge of trying to care for their mother within the confines of the small island they called home. If they’d lived on the mainland, he and Paul would’ve investigated long-term residential facilities by now, especially after their mom strolled out the front door of their home recently and walked miles into town on bare feet.
That incident had scared the hell out of both brothers and brought home the very real need for more qualified medical care than they could provide, even with the amazing support of Dr. David Lawrence, the island’s doctor.
If one good thing had come from the tomato-chucking incident, he’d discovered that he was, in fact, still a man who could be moved by a sexy woman, even when she was spitting nails and hurling tomatoes at him. That was one hot lighthouse keeper, he thought, remembering the way she’d looked in the baby-doll nightie that barely covered all her most important assets. Too bad she was so unfriendly. He might’ve been interested in getting to know her better—as if he had time for such
frivolous pursuits. Who was he kidding?
God, he was overheating, and he was only halfway done with this massive lawn. Thinking about the way she’d looked in that barely-there nightgown wasn’t doing much for his temperature. Filled with frustration and unable to remember the last time he’d had sex because it had been so long ago, Alex shut off the mower and crossed the wide expanse of lawn he’d already cut to the lighthouse, where a hose lay coiled on the grass.
He turned on the water, let it run until it went cold and then stood under the spray until he began to cool off. While he knew he should get back to work, he stood there for a few extra minutes, relishing the refreshing shower. So little about his life was enjoyable these days that he had to take pleasure where he could find it, and this cold shower was feeling pretty damned good.
Alex pushed wet hair back from his face and startled when he saw the lighthouse keeper watching him take a shower under her hose. She’d put on a skimpy tank top and short-shorts that did awesome things for her legs. She was staring at him as if she’d never before seen a half-naked guy take a shower under a hose.
He expected her to chew him out for helping himself to her water, but then she licked her lips and something in him snapped. He dropped the hose, and his stride ate up the space between them until he was standing right in front of her.
Big brown eyes widened with surprise, but she held her ground as she gazed up at him.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“Not a damned thing. What’re you looking at?”
He zeroed in on her lips, which were moist and very appealing. The entire package was very appealing. Well, except for the tomato incident. But he wasn’t thinking about tomatoes just then. Strawberries came to mind as he stared at her ripe lips and wondered if they’d taste as sweet as they looked. “Nothing.” Alex took another step that put him right in front of her.