by J. Saman
“But this is pretty spectacular.”
I nod against him, enjoying his warmth as the sun sets and wondering if life could get any better when he says, “I got you an anniversary present.”
“What?” I laugh the word, twisting around and giving him a sideways glance. “It’s not our anniversary.”
“You sure about that, baby?”
I open my mouth to say that I am in fact sure, but then I realize that I have no idea what our actual anniversary would be.
“Today is Elena’s birthday.” It is. We got her this really cool riding pony thing that I saw with her in the store and eventually had to drag her off of to get her to leave. They’re in Sweden right now, because that’s where Greta’s father is from, otherwise I think we would have delayed our trip out here until after her party. “One year ago, today, we got back together. That makes it our anniversary.”
“Yeah,” I say a little lost in that. “I never really thought about it. Christmas Eve was always the day I associated with us getting together.”
He kisses the side of my head, shifting his weight so he can pull something out of his pocket and hand it to me. “I know it is, which is why I won’t be upset that you didn’t get me anything.” I laugh, elbowing him once again. “Hey, quit that already and open your present.”
He hands me a small, square black velvet box and my heart picks up a few extra beats. He’s silent. No getting onto one knee or professions of love so I don’t think this is the box. And when I pry it open, I feel both disappointed that it’s not and bemused with what’s inside. It’s a folded sheet of paper, and I wonder why he went to the trouble to put it in such a small box. Taking out the piece of paper, I find a reservation for a hotel and spa up in Napa. “Wow,” I exclaim, surprised. “This looks amazing. When do we go?”
“Tomorrow,” he says softly, kissing along my jaw line. “Do you like it? Greta suggested it, which means it’s probably over-the-top nice. I even talked your father into letting us fly up there in his jet.”
My eyes widen and my mouth pops open. He really put some serious thought into this, and I feel awful for not realizing what today meant to him. For not getting him anything to show him how much I love him.
“This is perfect,” I say with a big smile I can’t help, rolling over so I can snake my arms around his neck and kiss him. “You’re perfect. Thank you, Jameson. This is just what I need. What we need. I can’t wait to go.”
He smiles that boyish smile and then leans in, kissing my lips, softly at first before deepening it. “Are you hungry?” he asks into my mouth. “Dinner should be ready.”
I nod, rubbing our noses against each other’s as I do. “Starving. What did you make me, oh romantic one?”
He chuckles into my mouth, nipping on my bottom lip. “A salad with all the things you like in it and lasagna because that’s what I know how to make.”
“Yum,” I hum. “Let’s go.” I stand up and he rises after, taking my hand and intertwining our fingers, the last vestiges of the sun making the pink twilight that much prettier. Making this moment more special. “You’re making me look like an awful girlfriend,” I say only half-kidding, but any further comment I had gets lodged in my throat when he opens the slider door for me, letting me enter first.
Candles. Oh my God, there are candles everywhere. Some in lanterns. Some on candle sticks. Some fat ones just set up on the table next to the bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket and two flutes. Multicolored rose petals are scattered everywhere. Across the table, the floor, the kitchen counter and beyond. There are no overhead lights on. The entire room is glowing by candlelight with the sounds of the ocean behind us. It’s the most beautiful, magical thing I’ve ever seen. My hand comes up to cover my mouth as tears threaten the backs of my eyes.
“Maybe that’s because I’m hoping you’ll be more than my girlfriend,” he says, squeezing my hand and spinning me around just as he lowers himself onto one knee. And those tears that were threatening are now freely rolling down my face.
“Lyric, from the moment I first saw you over twenty years ago, I knew you were special. I think I must have loved you even way back then, because when I look back on my life, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love you. We’ve come so far this year. Experienced so many changes and grown so much as a couple. Where you go, I go. You’re my tide. The glue that holds me together, and I can only hope that I’m that for you. I’ll always be here for you. I’ll always take care of you. And I’ll love you until my last dying breath. It’s only you, Lyric. Will you make me the luckiest man in the world and marry me?”
“Yes,” I practically scream, but the sound gets muffled in my tears. “Yes,” I say again, laughing with it this time. He stands up in an instant, enfolding me in his arms and lifting me off the ground as his mouth covers mine. “A million times yes,” I say into him. “I love you so much. But it’s so much more than that, Jameson. It’s the way you make butterflies erupt in my stomach every time you look at me. The way you make me feel like I’m home no matter where we are. The way you love me. I love the way you love me and that’s exactly how I plan on loving you for the rest of our lives.”
He kisses me like he’s discovering my flavor in a whole new way. Like there is no more him or me, there is only us, and there is nothing that can divide us again. Nothing that can pull us apart. Jameson kisses me so hard I lose my breath. His tongue sweeps across mine one last time and then he sets me down, taking my hand and sliding a large, round-cut diamond in a platinum setting onto my finger, both of us admiring the way it sparkles against the flicker of candlelight.
“I can’t wait to marry you, Lee. I can’t wait until your last name is my last name. Until I can call you my wife. I can’t wait for all of it with you.”
EPILOGUE TWO
Jameson
Two years later
* * *
Lucky Bastard 101: Don’t fuck up. Unfortunately, it took me four years apart to learn that lesson. But I am a man who learns from his mistakes and losing Lyric is never an option again. I married her in our Malibu beach house four months after I proposed, surrounded by only close family and friends. It was small, simple, and us. Utterly perfect. Just like my girl.
Before Lyric came into my life—as an adult, I mean—I often wondered if there was something wrong with me. If the loss of my mother at such a young age and my father marrying my wicked stepmother changed me. Made me incapable of truly loving someone. And then after seeing Lyric again, after that first morning in class when I asked her to study with me on a whim, I knew I just hadn’t found the right person yet.
“You wanna know a secret?” I whisper in her ear as I hold her body against mine, her back to my front as my hand splays across her still mostly flat belly that’s growing our child.
“Sure,” she mumbles, already half-asleep even though it’s not all that late.
“I never actually needed your help studying finance. It was my best subject.”
I can practically feel her smile as she sinks back into me just the smallest amount. Just enough to let me know that she likes that secret. “Then why did you ask me?”
“I told you that morning. Don’t you remember what I wrote to you? What my first truth was?”
She’s quiet for a beat, contemplating her answer as she thinks back. “Not really,” she giggles lightly.
“I told you that you were even prettier than you were in high school.”
“Ah, yes. Now I remember.”
“But that was sort of a lie. I mean, you were prettier, but it was more that I had forgotten just how pretty you were from the start. I asked you to study with me for the simple reason that I wanted to spend more time with you. Needing an A in the class just felt like a good excuse.”
“I didn’t want to like you,” she admits and a chuckle rumbles from my chest. “I knew you were a player and I was afraid of getting sucked into your vortex and becoming one of the girls you left behind when you grew bored.”
> I kiss her in that dip between her neck and shoulder. I love this spot. Probably because she shudders every time I press my lips into it. “I could never grow bored of you. I think I told you that. You’re still the only girl I never got tired of being with.”
“Let’s hope that changes,” she says and for a moment, I pause, trying to fully understand what she’s saying. And when I think I have it figured out, I roll her partially onto her back and stare into her eyes in the darkness.
“A girl?”
She nods. Smiles. “You had to leave the ultrasound early this morning to get to your meeting. I asked after you left.”
“A girl?” I laugh, a little louder and a lot excited. “Holy shit, Lee.”
“Are you mad that I asked?”
“No, baby. I’m so fucking happy.” And I am. I don’t think in the history of the world a man has ever been this happy before. Because I have Lyric and soon, I’m going to have a baby girl. I kiss my girl. Both of my girls, my lips pressing into Lyric’s beautiful belly. “A girl,” I muse. “How incredibly awesome is that?”
**The End**
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End Of Book Note
Hey everyone! This is the part where I get to talk to you all about this book. But before I can get to that, I have to thank a couple of people. Francessca Wingfield made this incredible cover for me. Monique-theedittrix - did the editing for the book. Also, the incredible Connie Lafortune (author - check her out) was a beta. Oh, and of course my loving and supportive family. They rock!
Okay, people, so if you’re a J. Saman fan, you might be scratching your heads. I mean, no crazy twist? No darkness or death? No love triangle? No obscure life situation that makes Jameson breaking up with Lyric understandable?
NO! This one came to me in a dream. No joke. I literally woke up one morning, grabbed my phone because it was the closest thing to me and started writing shit down. And then, like literally the next damn day, we left for freaking Disney Word. Meaning, I had zero time to write.That didn’t stop me. I spent a few sleepless nights taking notes on my phone and writing down scenes, because I just had to get it out.
Anyhoo, this one turned out to be a traditional romance and I hope you still liked it. It might be a trope. It might follow formulary lines. But damn, I felt this story. I felt Lyric and Jameson. I wrote this story in 3 weeks. It flowed out of me and even though I kept second guessing my lack of twist or darkness, I stuck with it.
Because I came to a realization. Sometimes people genuinely fuck up! People make mistakes. People say the wrong thing. People let the love of their life go because we’re all inherently stupid. So Jameson made an epic mistake. And it cost him years with Lyric. And then, maybe, Lyric gave in quickly. (I debated that one too).
But then, I put myself in her shoes. And I thought, if I really loved this guy, even after all these, even after he broke my heart, then would I really keep putting getting back together with him off if he was devoted and trying to show me just how much? Truth? I couldn’t answer that. I seriously, could not. And I felt for Lyric. I felt her confusion and her struggle and her turmoil.
So I went with what felt right. Some of you might say that Lyric gave in too soon. But I’m prepared for that. Because love doesn’t make sense. There is no perfect timeline for it. We can sit on the outside and look in and judge what we feel someone else should do, but in the real world, when we’re engrossed in the emotion, it doesn’t actually work like that. We follow our hearts and not logic. I think that’s what I was trying to show. And I hope you forgave Jameson. I did. And then I didn’t. And then I did, so…
Anyway, I hope you liked it. It was seriously a labor of passion and love. If you are a fan of mine, then you might have caught Gia Bianchi’s (the midwife who delivered Cane and Greta’s baby) cameo. You know I like to throw in characters from other books and that opportunity just felt too sweet to give up. I have another book coming out this fall sometime. Zero idea as to what date, but probably late September if I can get my stuff together, because that seems to be my schedule of things. If you keep reading, you’ll get the first chapter. Starting very early next year, I’m going to be releasing a new series (I already put the fist chapter at the end of Beautiful Potential). I’m also going to be part of a big box set of contemporary romance. I’ll be sure to let you know about everything. Especially if you’re part of my newsletter.
Subscribe to my Newsletter - as mentioned above, you get a free book and my latest updates as well as promotions, freebies, etc. Find me on Facebook, Goodreads, Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter. I love talking with you. Oh, and PLEASE leave me a review!! I’m an indie and I need all the help I can get with those. Keep reading! Like I said, first chapter of my next book!
Touching Sin
This is not edited so do not judge typos, grammar or whatever else!
* * *
Chapter 1
Mia
* * *
The smell of burning oil is suffocating. Even with all the windows down and the vents blowing in outside air, it’s unbearable. The smoke billowing from the hood of my car is even more alarming. I need to stop. Probably now. I know what this means. It means I’m stuck in the middle of…where the hell am I?
I realize suddenly I have no idea and that thought terrifies me.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a town or anything other than flatland, dessert and mountains.
All around me is dark. Not just dark, pitch black. So black that I can’t see anything other than the narrow, meager glow my ancient headlights struggle to let off. It’s like two flashlights shining out of the front of my car, only illuminating what they touch. Useless.
I can’t even run away right. Can one person be this pathetic?
The smoke is most definitely getting thicker now, as it blows directly into my face through the vents in the car and the open windows. I can’t breathe or see through it and whenever I do, it burns my throat and eyes. It would be ironic to asphyxiate on the fumes from a stolen car when I could have taken my mother’s Mercedes. It’s just been sitting in the garage since she died. Embrey wouldn’t have noticed it missing. At least not for a while. But it’s outfitted with tracking, as are all our cars are, which is why I left it and went for the gardener’s clunker.
The car makes a sputtering noise before it jerks and then jerks again, the steering wheel shimmying to the point where I can barely maintain my grip on it. Now I’m out of options. The internal lights flash on and off, on and off again and suddenly, the engine dies and I’m forced to roll to a stop at the side of the road.
The completely vacant road.
Shit.
Well, I certainly didn’t plan on this. I’d laugh if it wasn’t so tragic. At least it’s summer and warm enough out.
I have no idea how far I am from the nearest town. I left Dallas yesterday and went west. I definitely went west because for a while I was following signs for Flagstaff and then Las Vegas and somehow I allowed myself to get distracted, and now I’m here.
On the road to nowhere.
The car is dead. It makes the worst sort of grating noise when I try to turn the key over. Like metal against metal. The smell is even worse than the noise and I wonder if I can even stay in the car.
What if it catches on fire?
Do cars actually do that or is that the sort of thing that only happens in movies? I have no idea. But nothing about this situation is reassuring. I need to think.
Patting along the soft fabric cushion of the passenger seat, I find my purse. I can’t even see my hand in front of my face, that’s how dark it is in here. Digging through it, I find my new cell phone and press the button. It illuminates, showing me the home screen. No service. I wonder if that means that I won’t have internet either.
The search engine shows a gray screen that says no inte
rnet service.
What the hell am I going to do now? Tears prickle the back of my eyes and it has nothing to do with the toxic smoke. How could I have let this happen? I should have payed closer attention to street signs instead of obsessing over all the ways my life has gone wrong. I refresh the internet page again with the same results.
No cell or internet service. No working car. No idea where I am. No food or water either. Not even a goddamn blanket. Not that I could stay in this car anyway. I’ll probably asphyxiate if I try.
This. Sucks.
My hands slam into the plastic steering column as I belt out the shrillest shriek I can below past my smoke clogged lungs. It does nothing to help. Peering around, searching everywhere I can out the open windows, I come up empty. No moon. Just stars that shine nothing on nothing and no one.
Just as I’m about to get out and walk, bright lights flood the glass of my rearview mirror, temporarily blinding me. My eyes squint reflexively and I turn away before I realize that they’re headlights. Oh, thank God. It’s too dark to see the car approaching, but at this point, I don’t care. Unless it’s the police. That wouldn’t be so good. Anyone else is fine.
That is until I notice that it’s a big truck, high off the ground and so loud that everything vibrates with its power.
But all I can see of it are those headlights.
On the one hand, I’m glad they stopped. On the other, I’m a young woman alone in the middle of nowhere, suddenly at this person’s mercy. They could rape and kill me before dumping my body in the brush. Right. There’s that scenario. Not a whole lot I can do about that now other than see how this plays out and hope for the best.
Why didn’t I bring a gun. I’m from freaking Texas. We had guns all over the goddamn house and I didn’t think to bring one. Then again, knowing me and my luck, I’d probably shoot myself instead of any potential assailant. Especially since I have zero idea how to actually shoot one.