Blake (Found by You Book 6)

by Victoria H. Smith

  Just like his handhold.

  His touch had been just as magnetic as it had all those years ago, and though I hadn’t known what it meant, I let him. I still let him. Every time his family moved away and left us alone it was just autopilot. Like we had to do that, regardless of our stories and backgrounds. I hadn’t seen a spouse on his chart and with the various conversations of his family I found out he wasn’t married or tied to anyone. He hadn’t asked about my current involvements either in our short time together, but I honestly didn’t believe that was what our handholds were about. We were reconnecting.

  We were finding each other again.

  “You saved me,” he said at one point in our conversation, after how I told him how I’d come to work at this hospital. My journey had simply taken me there, something in the back of my mind strong after the divorce I had from my previous husband.

  I think for a long time I knew the decision wasn’t right even back then to go to him and my home, but it took going through that situation for me to learn what it truly felt like to have something special that meant something. I needed to live my own life, be my own person, and I ended up coming to work in the only place I had ever felt that. Blake got me to see so much in such a short amount of time. He’d never truly left me and it seemed I hadn’t left him either.

  Laughing, I felt the rough grooves in his hand. This man worked for a living, always so big and strong.

  “I think the doctors had something to do with that,” I told him, responding to his previous statement, but I helped. I battled with him. “And your strong heart.”

  He’d been the true warrior, his body physically unable to quit and with his wonderful family I knew why. He had so much to live for.

  Blake’s thick fingers played in my palm, like he was holding on to whatever moments he had before his family returned, capturing them. Bringing my hand in, he brought me close. He did something that pulsed pricks of liquid to my eye ducts again.

  He placed my hand on his chest, his big broad chest, which was just as hard and muscular as it’d been that day at the factory, the day I showed him what I always saw inside of him, the depth of the dream so visceral I’d had to share.

  The beats inside this man remained the same, so strong like that big heart I told him about.

  “You saved me,” he whispered again, and I saw something in his eyes now. Emotion in a man I didn’t believe particularly shared his feelings too often. There had been so many tears when his family came in to visit him, even knowing he was okay and would pull through. They shared that emotion for him anyway.

  He shared it for me now.

  Squeezing my hand on his chest, he looked at me, his heat buried deep within my palm. He reached up, touching my eyes when my tears finally fell. I couldn’t help them anymore.

  I finally felt at home.

  “You saved me too,” I said, cupping his hand to my cheek, and even though I knew nothing, didn’t know where we were going or what we were doing from here, I did something just as impulsive as that day.

  I leaned forward and kissed him. His mouth so hot and wonderful I knew this dream to actually be true. Especially when he slid his hand over the back of my head and kissed me with just as much power as he had all those years ago. It’d been during that time he changed my life.

  It’d been the beginning of our wonderful start.

  Colton

  (Blake’s youngest son)

  Today

  Pop had told me about how he and my stepmom met, told us all about the kind woman who had taken care of him after he had his heart attack four years ago. We’d all believed Ann to have just been his nurse at the time, as he’d left out their entire history, the head of our family always so private. My brothers and I never found out the truth of their intricate past until the day our pop and Ann got married. The two revealed everything during their wedding vows at the small chapel not even a year after his heart attack. The two of them spoke about a chance meeting, two people by fate finding something neither of them had been expecting. It’d been so powerful the connection had stayed with them long after they parted ways, choosing other lives and a path they both believed had been destiny.

  I guess they couldn’t have been more wrong because destiny had actually been choosing themselves in the end. They’d been battling an ultimate end, which they both ended up finding out after they came back into each other’s lives four children and two marriages later from that first day. Ann never ended up staying with her husband and my pop, well, things with my mother didn’t work out. Our parents’ fallout had been well before I had memories of it, but from how my brothers made it sound, my pop moving on from Momma had been the best thing for him and as it seemed, he got the best of both worlds. My brothers and I existed because of our mother.

  And in the end he got to have his dream anyway.

  His dream came in the form of Ann and the wonderful business she had been involved in building up, the history of Chandler & Sons, Pop’s furniture company, another surprise to us all. We’d all worked in some form for our pop, my oldest brother, Hayden, the business manager, my older brother Brody a driver, and Griffin both a financial benefactor as well as being involved in the general business dealings. Pop designed the furniture and I’d given him my own artwork for the business branding from time to time, something I dabbled in. None of my brothers knew we ended up playing a part in the creation of the very place where a woman showed a man his potential destiny. The very factory Ann showed him, Pop ultimately purchased, that old shoe factory out in the middle of nowhere. He may have bought it after his heart attack four years ago, but he’d been working toward a down payment for the place well before his heart gave out.

  He’d been working toward it well before his soul mate came back into his life.

  I saw it all the time, how he felt about her, how she opened him up and made him alive in a way I’d never seen. She’d done something to him, well before us and with her history, she told us the same about him.

  Ann explained she came back to Texas to continue living her dream of nursing, but it was only after our pop became her patient did she realize she’d really ended up there for him, hoping, praying one day their paths would cross again in that same town, the hospital she chose only a town away from where my pop grew up. She had coffee in the diner they met in every morning before work, something she told us outside of Pop’s ears.

  Hearing all of this put something in perspective for me, something I’d been privy to watching my brothers create their own relationships and families over the years but never truly resonating until I heard my pop and Ann’s story. It showed me right there, true evidence of what life could truly be like, the power of it and as it turned out, I’d only gotten a sample from my brothers and their various relationships. The true romancer, as it turned out, was the head of our family, our pop, a man once so closed off and gruff I never once thought sharing his life with another was even on his radar, but I’d been so wrong. The love he had for Ann changed him and brought the light out of him that allowed him to be his true self. He finally got to be who he always should have been and love made that possible.

  Nothing but love.

  Empire State Building

  New York City, New York

  Today

  Epilogue

  Ann

  Time could be an unusual thing. It could be tragic. It could be sad but also oh so special. It could turn a young woman whose only value for herself came from pleasing others and shift her into one who took ownership of her own destiny. It could help her find her own dreams and not only discover them but live them. I caught a glimpse into my destiny during a short trip, back in 1985. I’d spent all day on a train and wanted nothing more than for that train to never stop. I wanted it to take me far away and nowhere near my hometown of New York City. I knew fate awaited me there and a life I wanted nothing to do with since I discovered that’s where I’d be headed. How ironic that when that train did stop…

  I n
ever wanted it to keep on.

  I saw my life during that short stop, what I was supposed to be and who I was supposed to be that person with. I think Blake had seen it too, but he’d been scared. He’d been scared to take ownership of it like me.

  We were no longer scared.

  I smelled him in the wind. I felt him around me when so many others ventured along the same touristy road as we were. I had to get him up here to the Empire State Building. I felt in a way, that’s where it all began.

  “Are you cold?” my dear husband asked of me, my husband for nearly four wonderful years. We married not long after finding each other again, no reason to wait.

  Smoothing my hands down his arms, I absorbed him at my core, his arms strong and massive body wonderfully crowding me, keeping me warm and tight.

  Keeping me safe.

  Safety I’d never felt anything short of when it came to Blake Chandler and that safety went beyond the physical. I was literally protected by him in all the ways I could be. I was able to be who I wanted to be and enjoy the life I wanted to have. I didn’t have to live up to anyone else’s perceptions.

  I’d done that long enough.

  I started working at St. Albert’s Hospital years ago in search of what I believed to be nothing at all. I worked at many hospitals up to that point, the life of a nurse my dream, but every opportunity and each new job assignment had never felt right. I was doing what I loved to do and living the way I wanted to live but never felt fulfilled. It wasn’t until I got a surprise offer to move down to, of all places, Texas that things changed, the staff of a new hospital needed for its launch.

  I wondered every day I set foot into work if he’d be there, the man who’d literally changed my life. I wondered if he was at the coffee house where I ventured to get my coffee or would suddenly appear where I filled up my Prius with gasoline. I wondered if we were passing ships in the night.

  I wondered if he’d find me again.

  Blake had a long road ahead of him after his heart attack but each day I was there for him, and after that initial kiss, I waited for him, expecting nothing but everything after that moment.

  I said yes to his proposal the moment he’d asked.

  We’d had a nice wedding at his local church, nothing like what my daddy had set up for my ex-husband and me. No, I hadn’t even planned my own wedding back then, but this, being married to my soul mate…

  We’d remember it forever. We’d remember it because it was us. It was small and special and perfect, his family there and even mine too. They came to Texas for my second wedding, the one that meant something because it was to someone who’d been my choice. He was mine forever.

  And I was happily his.

  I let Blake hold me, smiling when his lips brushed the shell of my ear. His whiskers tickling, I tried not to snicker beneath him. When he told me he sought to cut off his goatee and grow out a full beard, I hadn’t known what I thought about that. I liked his facial hair and wasn’t too keen on it changing. I supported him though and in the end was extremely happy with the decision he made.

  The beard managed to make that man even sexier than he was.

  I saw him before he kissed me, parting my lips open at the top of one of the largest buildings. We’d traveled to my home for a vacation, Valentine’s Day.

  “I could never be cold,” I hummed against his lips, chilled from the wind up here. Pulling back, I cupped his face, those same blue eyes I fell in love with over thirty years ago.

  He’d changed so much but not really. Work and time had changed him, made him older and harder around the eyes, but each day I saw that time leave, his expression and features anew with each passing day.

  I hoped in my heart that had at least a little to do with me. I saw the same changes in myself in front of the bathroom mirror we shared in our country home. He released those same hardships… those same grips of life, which had me as well at one time, the time before him.

  I brushed his blond whiskers. “I have you, you know?”

  His eyes crinkled softly in the corners, his jaw moving before he pushed a hand beneath the blanket I had wrapped around my shoulders and to my hip.

  He squeezed, placing his forehead against mine. We both did that a lot. In fact, every chance we got. It allowed us to center and connect, no words and only peaceful moments between us.

  He danced me slowly to no music on the top of the Empire State Building, no sounds needed, and so lost in our euphoria we barely heard the young man asking to take our picture.

  “I’m from the Times,” he said to us, grinning behind a camera with a large flash above. “I’m capturing the couples up here on Valentine’s Day, wanting to do a feature on them.”

  We both allowed it. Though, I knew Blake could be shy about these things. This still struck surprise in me since he was so large.

  My big Teddy Bear.

  I touched my forehead to his temple, our secret connection and the young man chose that moment to snap his shot, the light flashing around us in the setting evening. If we remembered in the morning we would gather that newspaper. I was sure his family would love to see it.

  The boy thanked us, nodding his head before asking a final question.

  “How long have you two been together?” he asked and I had a response right away, but Blake, well, he managed to beat me to it.

  “Over thirty years,” he said, his deep voice so lazy and handsome. Upon his lips touching my cheek, I smiled and the young man did the same.

  “Major goals,” he said to us, popping his camera up before pursuing a couple not far from us.

  In his absence, Blake and I got back to where we were, not taking any moment for granted. We never did, each passing day one we held on to like the most valuable thing we could possibly have in our possession.

  “You count the time away,” I finally said to him, his arms around me as we stared out at the city ahead. We’d been here several times since we’d been married, as we visited my family a few times a year.

  That was very important to Blake, family, and even though I had been a bit estranged from mine with the history we’d had in regard to the respect they had of my decisions from wanting to be a nurse to my ultimate divorce from my first husband, he urged me to fix those ties.

  “We can’t choose who they are,” he’d said to me one night, the night we’d gotten married. “But we can be the ones to love, to love hard in spite of any and everything. We can be the example. We can be the best.”

  He’d been so right and I lived my life that way from that day, the best, the example and the one to love the hardest.

  Closing my eyes, I waited for his voice. I always counted that time we were away from each other. I always had in my heart but had never said anything. I didn’t know if I expected a drawback or something else entirely. I just hadn’t taken the risk.

  Touching my hand, Blake squeezed, turning me around to face him.

  “You’ve always been mine, Anita,” he said, though was hard pressed to keep my gaze. He could be the worst in the shyness department. His lips twisted into a smile. “It doesn’t matter the time lost.”

  I felt the same way, touching his hand when his fingers reached to brush my cheek. We’d both been asked if we regretted our decisions in the past, if we could have a do-over and choose each other, would we? To that, Blake had answered that to deny our pasts meant we wouldn’t have our current future, his family and even the connections I made in my life. I couldn’t imagine my life without his beautiful children and grandchildren and that… well, that definitely made up for the time. I couldn’t have children, which had been one of the sole reasons my previous husband had been unfaithful to me for many years. If I’d had children, I might not have found Blake again or gotten to be a part of the lives of some amazing men Blake had been blessed to raise. I loved my new family and cherished my husband even more for giving them to me.

  No, things were supposed to be the way they turned out and Blake and I had our whole lives ahea
d of us still, all that wonderful time even without the moments in the middle…

  We still had our wonderful end.

  Hey, readers! Did you enjoy this book? If so, won’t you consider sharing your thoughts by writing a review on Amazon? I’d really appreciate you taking the time.

  Another special thank you goes out to my readers. You all asked me about Blake, so I wrote this novella literally for you! He had so much to say and I’m happy through me he got to tell you how he and his Ann actually met. Ending this, I invite you all to read and enjoy the first chapter about the final Chandler son Colton! His book entitled, Colton: A Found by You Novel, is a full-length story coming your way very soon.

  Happy reading, friends, and thank you always,

  Victoria <3

  Please enjoy this excerpt from:

  Colton: A Found by You Novel

  Coming soon!

  Chapter One

  Cami

  I pushed my way through the grinding bodies, shaking my head at the familiar situation I just lodged myself into.

  He’s going to get the cops called on his ass again.

  A beefy arm came out like a grapple hook from my right and my heels left from underneath me. A startled screech left my throat and I was lodged into the side of a body about seven feet tall to my five foot five. I didn’t know this guy, but he sure acted like he knew me, breathing a cloud of thick yeasty breath in my face. My boss sure hung out with the best.

  Embedding my fingers into my leather bag, I prepared to use it to slap the shit out of the guy who was all hands and no manners, but another guy matching his height with a slimmer physique separated us. Basketball players littered the site tonight. After all, I did work for a basketball player, but at least this was one I could handle.