Gansett Island Boxed Set, Books 1-16

by Force, Marie

  They moved toward each other, him working against the crowd, dodging families, suitcases and even a dog on a leash to get to her. He picked her right up off her feet and crushed her to him, drawing a squeak of surprise and then laughter from her that was smothered when he kissed her, mindless of the people all around them or that her hat had flown off her head.

  What did he care about any of that when he finally had her back in his arms where she belonged?

  He could’ve stood there all day kissing her, but she pulled back from him, looking up with laughter dancing in her gorgeous eyes. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Bending to retrieve her hat, he said, “How was the flight?” He’d worried endlessly about her being afraid without him there to calm her.

  “Half a Xanax and first-class service took the edge off.”

  “Told ya.”

  “How’re things here?”

  He’d taken great pleasure in relaying the details of the prank gone wrong to her on the phone the night before. “Tensions were running high at breakfast. The guys are contrite, and the women are determined to make them suffer.”

  “They have it coming.”

  “I gotta say I agree with you in this one case. Normally, I’d side with my bros. This time, they got what was coming to them. I’m just glad you weren’t here yet, so I wasn’t tempted to participate.”

  “You’d be sleeping alone for a long, long time if you did that to me.”

  “Good to know.”

  Slim took her suitcase handle in one hand and wrapped his free hand around hers to lead her out of the terminal to the resort shuttle. The heat of the late-day sun was in stark contrast to the air-conditioned building.

  “Oh wow,” Erin said, taking in the blue sky, the palm trees, the heat. “Doesn’t that feel good?”

  “Nothing beats the Caribbean when it’s snowing at home.”

  The driver took her bag to put it in the back while they got into the vehicle.

  Slim kept his arm around her, his lips sliding over the silk of her hair. “I thought today would never get here.”

  “Me, too. I’ve been on pins and needles.”

  “Because of the flight?”

  “That was only a small part of it. The rest was you. I couldn’t wait to see you.”

  Slim raised his hand to her face and turned her toward him so he could kiss her again. This, right here… This was love, as pure and as simple as anything had ever been. Over the last few years, as his friends had fallen like dominoes, he’d had cause to wonder what the hell was wrong with them. Why would they shackle themselves to one woman when they could have all the women?

  Well, he got it now. He couldn’t imagine ever again wanting to hold or kiss or make love to any woman but the one currently in his arms. And the thought of her with any guy but him made him positively murderous.

  They barely came up for air on the ride to the resort. The poor driver was probably used to it with all the honeymooners he transported, but Slim couldn’t be bothered with caring what the driver thought. Not when he had the woman he loved back in his arms. He had no idea how much time they’d have together. Would it be just this week, or would she take him up on his offer to come to Florida? Not knowing what the future held made him even crazier than he’d been for the last week spent waiting to see her again.

  A lot was riding on this week. More than she knew. He was determined to make a go of this relationship, and he wasn’t leaving this island until she was on the same page.

  * * *

  He’d swept her off her feet—literally. The breathless giddy feeling had never been stronger than when he greeted her at the airport and kissed her all the way back to the resort. Upon arrival, they’d gone directly to his room, walking along beautifully landscaped sidewalks that she barely noticed as she struggled to keep up with his long-legged stride.

  That he was in an all-fired rush to be alone with her only added to her anticipation, which was already off the charts. Her OCD had been epic this week, while she waited for something to go wrong, to disrupt the excitement his invitation had stirred in her.

  Like in Philly, the second the hotel door clicked shut behind them, he had her pressed against the wall, devouring her with deep, drugging kisses. Erin was so happy to be with him again that she surrendered completely, willing to go anywhere he wanted to take her. And apparently he planned to take her right there.

  “Another wall,” she said, gasping as he lifted her skirt and ripped her panties in his haste to get them off.

  “Can’t wait,” he said, sounding as desperate as she felt.

  Then he was inside her, filling her so completely that she could barely breathe, let alone speak.

  “God, I missed you,” he said gruffly, his lips brushing against her ear and setting off a chain reaction of sensations that she felt everywhere, especially in the place where they were joined.

  With her arms around his neck, she held on tight as he took her on another wild ride. “Missed you, too. So much.”

  “Gonna be quick.”

  “Fine by me.”

  He reached down to coax her to the finish line, right ahead of him. His head dropped to her shoulder while he tried to catch his breath.

  Erin ran her fingers through his hair, soothing him as their bodies quaked with aftershocks.

  “Just when I think it can’t get any better…”

  “Mmm,” she said, laughing softly. “If it gets any better, I might not be able to walk.”

  “I was rough with you.”

  “And I loved every single second of it.”

  Raising his head, he looked into her eyes for a long moment before he kissed her softly and withdrew, setting her down on her feet and waiting to make sure she was steady before letting her go. Then he began unbuttoning her dress, until it fell into a billowing cloud of fabric at their feet. Her bra soon followed, leaving her naked before him.

  He kept his gaze fixed on her as his shirt, which was covered in palm trees, disappeared over his head. He took her by the hand, led her to the bed and turned down the covers for her, kissing her when he tucked her in. “Be right back.”

  After he disappeared into the bathroom, Erin took her first look at the gorgeous room that had been decorated in shades of white and tan. It included a kitchen, sitting room and deck that overlooked the crystalline blue water. But the view had nothing on him when he emerged from the bathroom, having removed the rest of his clothes.

  She took a greedy, hungry look at his muscular body, and the cock that was hard and heavy once again.

  He crawled into bed and reached for her. They came together in the middle of the king-size bed, arms and legs intertwined, lips hungry for more. “What’ve you done to me, Erin Barton?”

  “The same thing you’ve done to me,” she said, smiling up at him.

  He kissed her everywhere, reducing her to a quivering mess of nerve endings—all of them on fire for him—before he made slow, sweet love to her while watching over her with the eyes that saw her in a way no one else ever had.

  Afterward, they lay on their sides, facing each other as the sun set over the Caribbean in a fiery ball. He ran a finger from her shoulder to her hand and then back up again.

  She had so much she needed to tell him, so many things she wanted him to know, and the long days of counting down the minutes until she could see him again had made her realize that the time for hedging was over.

  “The last time I saw my brother,” she said, breaking a long silence, “we had a rare argument. Mitch and I had rented a place in the Hamptons for a weekend with Toby and Jenny, two weeks before Toby died. Mitch was asleep on the beach—well, passed out, I should say. Jenny had gone to shower, and Toby asked me to take a walk with him. We went down to the water and walked along the shore, talking about law school and his job and his and Jenny’s wedding, which was a month and a half away. And then he told me he had something he’d wanted to say for a while by then—that I could do better than Mitch.” She paused
before she continued. “I was so angry with him for saying that, for putting those thoughts in my head, because he knew how important his opinion was to me. I was more furious with him that day than I’d ever been before. I’d gone out of my way to make Jenny feel welcome in our family, which was certainly no hardship. I loved her from the first time I met her, and I thought he owed me the same courtesy.”

  Slim continued to stroke her arm as he listened to her, watching over her as she shared her pain with him.

  “I’d just moved in with Mitch and had made this huge commitment to him, and here was my brother, my best friend, the most important person in my life, telling me I’d made a mistake.”

  “Did he know you were pissed?”

  “Uh, yeah,” she said with a laugh. “He knew. I walked away from him, and he ran after me. When he caught up, he took me by the arm to keep me from storming off again. He said, ‘Mitch is not a bad guy, but you can do better. Don’t settle for him, Erin. Hold out for something better.’”

  “Yikes. That must’ve gone over like a fart in church.”

  She smiled at his choice of words. “You could say that. Things were tense between us for the rest of the weekend. Mitch asked me what was up. Jenny asked. But I never told them, and I don’t think he did either. And when it came time to leave on Sunday, he hugged me, told me he loved me best of all and that he didn’t want me to leave mad. I said if he didn’t want me to be mad, he should’ve kept his opinions to himself.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He laughed and hugged me again as tight as he had in years, and he said, ‘Someday, you’ll know exactly what I mean, and you’ll thank me.’”

  “Cocky bastard, huh?” Slim said, grinning.

  “Not usually, but in that case, yeah, seriously cocky.” She linked their hands and looked up at him. “Every time I’ve thought about that weekend since then, I’ve been annoyed with him for trying to sabotage my relationship with Mitch, but now I know he was one hundred percent right. Now I know exactly what he meant, and I’m indeed thanking him.”

  “Yeah?” he said, his brows raised in question.

  She nodded and took the plunge. “My Toby was telling me to wait for you, and as usual, he was right. I love you, Tobias Fitzgerald Jackson Junior.”

  He blinked a couple of times, as if trying not to cry, before he reached for her, bringing her close enough to kiss. “Marry me,” he whispered gruffly against her lips.

  Erin gasped. “What?”

  “You heard me. Marry. Me. Erin. Please, marry me. Be my wife, my love, my everything. I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone. Will you please, please, please marry me and let me teach you how to fly in every possible way?”

  She was so stunned that she could barely think.

  “We could have it all, baby. Winters in Florida, summers on Gansett. Together every day. Maybe even a little Slim or Erin tossed in there, too, if we get really lucky. You’re the only thing I need to be happy. You’re it for me. Say yes.”

  She loved him, her parents loved him, her friends loved him, and she had no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that her beloved brother would’ve loved him, too. What was left to think about? Absolutely nothing. “Yes.”

  “Really?” he asked, his expression priceless.

  “Really.”

  “Oh my God,” he said on a deep exhale. “You’re really going to marry me?”

  “I really am, and I’ll let you teach me how to fly, too.”

  “I’d love to.” He kissed her then with a kind of desperation he’d rarely shown her, and she returned the desperation, the intensity, the desire. “I need to get up for a second, but I’ll come right back.”

  Erin reluctantly released him, and true to his word, he returned a minute later and put a stunning diamond ring on her left hand. Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “W-what? When… When did you get this?”

  “The day before I left West Palm. I hadn’t planned to blurt out a proposal the second you arrived, but after what you just told me about Toby… It was the perfect time, the perfect woman.” He kissed the back of the hand where his ring now resided. “If you don’t like it, we can return it.”

  Laughing through her tears, she said, “I love it. We’re not returning it.” She was filled with every kind of emotion possible, including one she’d never expected to experience so fully again—joy. “Who’d have thought that spraining my ankle and getting a flat tire on a dark road would turn out to be the best thing that ever happened?”

  “I did. I knew from that first night that you were going to ruin me in the best way possible.”

  “You did not know then!”

  “Yes, I did. I really did. And you know how I knew?”

  “How?”

  “Me, who made a career out of never, ever spending a night with a woman, slept in that uncomfortable chair in your living room so I could be there if you needed me during the night. That was the first sign of trouble where you were concerned.”

  “Trouble, ha! I haven’t been any trouble to you.”

  “Are you kidding me? You’ve been nothing but trouble to me, disturbing my focus, plaguing my dreams, keeping me awake at night, forcing me to jack off in the shower more than I have since I was a kid. If that’s not trouble, what is it?”

  Laughing at his recitation, she said, “It’s love.”

  “Yes, it is, and I want all the trouble you can dole out for the rest of our lives.”

  “You got it. Thank you so much for taking on all my issues and helping me find a way to be happy.”

  “Baby, being happy with you is like breathing—the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

  Epilogue

  There had been a time, not that long ago, when Grace Ryan had been convinced she’d never have a boyfriend, let alone a husband. Lap-band surgery had transformed her body, but Evan McCarthy’s love had transformed her soul. Seeing herself through his eyes, she felt beautiful for the first time in her life, and standing before the full-length mirror in the resort’s bridal suite, she took in the sight of herself in her wedding dress and could see for herself, for once, that she was indeed beautiful on the most important day of her life.

  From one of the most embarrassing incidents ever had come the love of a lifetime. Sometimes it seemed like minutes rather than more than a year since the night she’d been abandoned by a date on Gansett Island and rescued by Evan, who’d been playing a gig with Owen at the McCarthy’s marina.

  Evan had taken the time to find out why she was sitting by herself, crying. The guy she’d come to the island with had taken off on his boat with her purse, her money and her clothes, all because she’d refused to have sex with him after finding out their “relationship” had been yet another in a series of jokes about the “fat” girl.

  She refused to think about him. Not today. She’d much rather focus on the man who’d taken her home to his parents’ house, put her up for the night and paid for her ferry ticket home to Connecticut the next day. The single best thing she’d ever done in her entire life was return to the island the following week to reimburse Evan for the ferry ticket. He hadn’t wanted her money, but much to her surprise, the handsome, sexy, ridiculously talented musician who could’ve had any woman in the world had wanted her. They’d been together pretty much ever since, and she’d ended up giving her virginity to a man who truly loved her and always would—her first and only boyfriend, the love of her life.

  A knock on the door drew her out of the trip down memory lane. “Come in.”

  The door opened, and in came Linda McCarthy. She shut the door behind her and crossed the room to Grace. “Oh, honey,” Linda said, her hand over her heart. “You’re stunning. Evan won’t know what hit him when he sees you.”

  “Thank you,” Grace said, fortified by her soon-to-be mother-in-law’s reaction. Her hair was long and shiny thanks to the efforts of the resort’s salon. She wore the same makeup she wore most days, which wasn’t much, and her dress,
which her friend Tiffany had helped her to special order, was a simple white, floor-length gown with a beaded bodice and a long, flowing skirt. The bicep curls Grace had been doing every day for six months had brought new definition to her arms that she was damned proud of.

  She would carry a bouquet of red and hot pink tropical flowers and had a red hibiscus bloom tucked behind her right ear.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” Linda asked.

  “I think I’m good. You can send the girls in if they’re ready.”

  “They’re outside. I’ll get them for you, but before I do… I just wanted to say, Mac and I are so thrilled to welcome you into our family. If we could’ve handpicked the perfect partner for Evan, we couldn’t have found anyone better suited to him than you are. Thank you for making him happier than he’s ever been.”

  “Oh, Linda, don’t make me cry.” Grace reached for her hand. “Your son is the finest man I’ve ever known, except for maybe your husband, and it’s the greatest honor of my life to become a McCarthy. All this time, in the back of my mind, I think I’ve been waiting for something to go wrong. Something always goes wrong.”

  “Not today, sweetheart. Today will be perfect, and at the end of it, you’ll be Evan’s wife and he’ll be your husband. Just the way it was always supposed to be.”

  Grace risked wrinkles to hug Linda. “Thank you so much for coming to check on me. It means so much to me to know you and Mac are happy for us.”

  “We’re delighted. We love you both very much.” Linda hugged her, carefully, kissed her cheek and stepped back. “I’ll send your girls in.”

  “Linda.”

  She turned back, her brow raised in inquiry.

  “Thank you for knowing that I could use a little mothering right now.”

  “Of course, honey. This mother is available to you any time you need her.”

  “I’ll probably be needing her a lot.”

  “That’s fine with me.” Linda left her with a smile, closing the door behind her.