by J. S. Scott
“I love you so damn much, Jade,” he grunted.
Those words flowed over my shaking body and invaded my soul.
“I love you, too,” I said on a sharply drawn breath as my core spasmed so hard I could barely breathe.
He roared incoherently as I milked him to his own powerful orgasm.
Eli stayed buried deep inside of me for a moment, and then scooped my limp body up and sank into one of the dining-room chairs.
“I’m fucking hopeless,” he said in a graveled voice. “I could never survive without you anymore, sweetheart.”
He held me like I was his most precious treasure, and I could feel the emotion emanating from his body.
“You don’t have to,” I said in a voice husky with postorgasmic satisfaction. “I’ll always be here.”
He kissed me softly, lingering over my lips tenderly.
“Damn good thing,” he answered. “But you really have to stop bending over stuff. You’ll give me a heart attack.”
I smiled against his shoulder. There was something sinfully appealing about the fact that I could bring a powerful man like Eli to his knees. And he trusted me enough to let me know it.
“God, I’m sore,” I shared as I stood up slowly and stretched.
He frowned. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“I didn’t want to stop.”
He stood. “Hot tub. Now.”
“I don’t have a hot tub,” I informed him.
“Then it’s a good thing I own the house next door that does have one,” he said with a grin.
I smiled back at him, utterly happy that Eli had made that purchase that I’d once found to be crazy extravagant.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
CHAPTER 31
AIDEN
I tried to stand through the tuxedo fitting patiently, but I wasn’t the type of guy who had an easy time standing still.
I can do this for Jade.
My baby sister was getting married at the end of the summer.
Brooke had been first.
And now Jade was tying the knot with the man Seth and I had just partnered with to amass what we hoped would eventually be the biggest building-and-real-estate business in the world.
Truth be told, I liked Eli Stone and so did Seth. But I wasn’t crazy about being part of the wedding party.
Best man.
I’d gotten the supposed honor of standing up for Eli since most of his close friends were out of state. The majority of them were planning on attending, but couldn’t be around for all of the other festivities.
“Ouch!” I said grumpily as another errant pin stuck me in the ass.
“Sorry, Mr. Sinclair. Almost done,” the female who was altering the monkey suit said in a remorseful voice.
“Not a big deal,” I grumbled, feeling bad that I’d bit her head off.
But I wasn’t exactly in a serene mood.
My gaze was drawn to the other side of the room for about the hundredth time since I’d arrived at the tailor’s.
As usual, my eyes locked onto the hottest blonde I’d ever seen. Actually, I’d done far more to the woman’s body years ago than ogle it. I’d once been deep inside her virginal form, and my dick wasn’t ever going to let me forget it.
Skye Weston, Jade’s bridesmaid, had once been the only woman I wanted.
Now, she was the only female I wanted to forget.
“All done, sir,” the seamstress said. “If you can take it off carefully, I can get it altered.”
“Yeah. Got it,” I told her as I strode back into a dressing room, and then breathed a sigh of relief once I was back into a pair of jeans and a sweater.
I’d spent my entire adult life working as a longline commercial fisherman, sometimes working fourteen to eighteen hours a day for trips that could last over two months.
I wasn’t exactly into tuxedos and cocktail parties, even though I was, through some damn miracle I still didn’t completely accept, a billionaire.
Somehow I knew I’d probably always be a fisherman at heart. Maybe I’d clean up well, but I’d never quite be as casual in a tux as somebody like Eli Stone.
I exited the dressing room just in time to see Skye coming out of hers in a pair of jeans and a green sweater that I already knew matched her eyes.
Get over it, Sinclair.
My relationship with her happened a long time ago. It had been almost a decade. But for some reason, she was the only woman I wished had stayed.
Maybe I was still pissed that she left me while I was out on a long-haul trip. If I wanted to be reasonable, it wasn’t easy dating a guy like me. I had been at sea more than I was home, and I’d made shit for money. But the funds I’d taken in had helped raise my siblings, so I couldn’t ever regret doing it.
Just talk to her so you can both be civil for Jade’s wedding.
Not a single word had passed between me and Skye since she’d moved back to Citrus Beach from San Diego. Strangely, she’d appeared to be just as angry as I was, and had dissed me every time we ran into each other.
I stopped next to her instead of going for the door. “Hello, Skye,” I greeted her cautiously.
Her face looked tense as she stared at me. “Aiden,” she acknowledged.
“Look, I know that we have an unpleasant past, but can we just get along until Jade’s wedding is over?” I asked huskily. “Our relationship was over a long time ago, and we’ve both moved on.”
Christ! I’m such a liar.
Honestly, I really wanted to take her and shake her until she told me why the hell she’d married another guy, a man who had evidently put her and her daughter through hell. Shit! I would have been a better choice, even though I’d been poor. At least I wasn’t part of an organized-crime ring. And I’d cared about her.
She turned her head, her eyes darting away from mine. “I’m not over it, and you know why,” she said in a sharp tone I’d never heard her utter. “But I have no problem trying to be civil for Jade’s sake. Now I have to go. I have a daughter to pick up from school.”
“What in the hell did I do?” I asked in an angry voice. “You left me, remember?”
“Obviously you have a memory problem,” she answered as she put on her lightweight jacket. “I’ll see you at the wedding.”
I gaped at her as her shapely ass marched out the door.
“What the fuck?” I said under my breath.
She has no damn reason to hate me. I didn’t replace her with another woman. She dumped me while I was out to sea.
If there was one thing I knew, it was that Skye was a realist. And she wasn’t prone to drama. At least, she hadn’t been.
Something’s not right.
I strode to the door and exited just in time to see the back of her car as she drove away.
Why the fuck do I care?
Skye Weston was nothing to me anymore.
I put my hands in the pockets of my jeans, determined that I wasn’t going to give a shit about why she seemed to blame me for our breakup.
But as I headed for my vehicle, I knew damn well I was lying to myself.
Skye had haunted me for years, so I was going to figure out exactly what she was thinking. I just wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to do it.
EPILOGUE
JADE
Three months later . . .
“Eli, are you seriously considering this project?” I asked him as I went through a prospectus on a large research facility that was less than five years old and failing.
I hadn’t yet snagged the job of my dreams, even though I’d interviewed for several over the last few months. Some of them had been out of the area, a move that Eli wasn’t particularly happy about. But he was so supportive that he offered to have dual headquarters if I was interested in any of the opportunities.
Honestly, I didn’t want to go anywhere. San Diego and Citrus Beach were home for both of us. And even though I knew he’d do anything for me, I knew he didn’t want to live on the opposite c
oast, and neither did I.
I was still getting used to the fact that I was marrying Eli. We spent the weekdays in his San Diego home, and the weekends in Citrus Beach. I was still helping him out in his office every day because he insisted that he needed me, but I knew it was just an excuse for both of us to work together every day.
I was getting better and better at handling some things at Stone, but I was mostly still vetting the opportunities that came up on a daily basis.
“I really don’t know,” he said nonchalantly from his desk. “I thought I’d leave that one up to you. It’s not in my area of expertise.”
I looked up from my position on the couch across the room. “You have experts,” I reminded him.
“I’d rather have you take it,” he answered.
I went back to my laptop and finished going through the information I had. Finally, I said, “It looks like they took on way too many projects, and didn’t have the money to fund them.”
It was a state-of-the-art genetics lab, but it was poorly managed.
“If I decided to buy, I think it would make an excellent facility to do genetic conservation research for wildlife,” he said.
It took me a moment to take in what Eli was really suggesting.
The facility was enormous, and could accommodate several areas of study. Since it was already built, there would be minimal changes needed, but overall it was perfect.
“The facility is amazing, but do you realize what it costs to keep a nonprofit like this going?” I asked. “It would take an enormous amount of continual fund-raising.”
He turned his head and grinned at me. “I kind of know a guy who’s pretty good at that. And I have some donors already lined up. Most of them are Sinclairs, but it wouldn’t be hard to find more.”
My mind started to spin as I thought about all the good that could be done with this facility. “I need connections worldwide for sample swaps and field research.”
“I’ll get you the numbers,” he said confidently. “And you’ll build those relationships, sweetheart. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
My eyes welled up with tears as I thought about getting back into the lab to find solutions for dwindling populations of wildlife. I’d need to build a strong team around me. But it could be done.
Never in my life had I believed I could do something that could have so much impact on conservation. And being offered the opportunity to do that made my heart feel like it was being tightened in a vise.
“So you already called in the troops to donate?” I asked softly.
“Didn’t have to,” he replied. “Your brothers and Brooke were on board immediately, and then the rest of the family got in line to sign up for it. They all know how passionate you are about conservation, and they all truly believe you’ll be doing important work. It’s a cause everybody can get behind, sweetheart. The only one who can stop it is you.”
I’d gotten in my own way many times in my life, but I wasn’t about to do it now. “I want it. I really do want it,” I said as I rose to my feet with tears trickling down my face.
I raced across the room, and Eli was already standing with his arms wide open.
He caught me, just like I knew he would.
“I love you,” I said happily and I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed him as hard as I could. “How did I ever get lucky enough to be marrying somebody like you?”
“I was thinking the same thing, but for the life of me, I can’t figure it out,” he teased. “For some reason, you think I’m somebody special, and I’m not about to clue you in on the truth.”
I laughed as I punched his arm playfully. Eli had made my causes his, too, and he’d always kept my spirits up when I couldn’t find the job I wanted.
“You basically built this job for me,” I accused.
“No, I didn’t. You’re fucking brilliant, Jade. And if anybody can save some animals that are headed for extinction, it’s you. You honestly need your own facility, and it doesn’t hurt that you have a huge family of billionaires. That opportunity was there for you all along. I just wasn’t sure it was what you wanted.”
“It never really occurred to me, Eli. I’m not a big-picture thinker.”
“Only because you’ve never had the opportunity to think big,” he said huskily. “Now you do. I propose that you name it the Sinclair Institute for Wildlife Conservation.”
“The Sinclair-Stone Institute,” I corrected. “I’m not going to be a Sinclair much longer. And you made this all happen, Eli. Thank you.”
What else could I say to the man who had already given me the world, and then offered me even more? There weren’t really words to describe how much he meant to me, not because he was rich, but because he was Eli.
“I didn’t really do that much. I found the opportunity, and I’m buying the facility. But there wouldn’t be a research center if you weren’t the most intelligent and driven person I know.”
“I’m going to be busy,” I warned him.
“I have to negotiate and purchase the company first,” he said. “And I don’t care if you’re busy, as long as you always come home to me.”
“I can do some things once we own the rights, and then build a team and decide on projects once we get back from our honeymoon.”
Eli was taking me to Australia, another one of my dream destinations. A place I wasn’t even sure I’d ever visit because I thought I’d be paying off student loans for decades.
“What did you decide about the DNA match?” he asked. “Are you going to tell your family?”
I’d never heard back from whoever had matched my DNA. And months had passed now. If I told my siblings, I knew they wouldn’t have any idea which one of them was responsible. “I’m not sure it would do any good. My brothers obviously don’t know, or they would have been with their child. I don’t know if it’s better or not to burden them if we don’t know who it is.”
“I’m willing to do some digging,” he offered. “I can probably get to somebody who can give me some information.”
The fact that I had a niece somewhere in the world had been bothering me, and Eli knew it. “Yes, please,” I answered. “I’d like to know her if I can find out where she is. And my brothers are in the position to help now. If I can get anything about her, I could probably figure out which brother is the father.”
“Now that Aiden, Seth, and I are starting up the new corporation, I spend a lot of time with both of them. Maybe I can get something out of them without spilling the beans.”
I rolled my eyes. “Good luck with that. All of my brothers are pretty closemouthed about their love lives, even if they don’t have a problem jumping into mine.”
“They’ll have no choice but to back out of it now,” he said drily. “I’ll be damned if they’re going to stand guard over you. That’s my job now.”
“It’s nobody’s job,” I retorted. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. And speaking of that, what can I do to take care of you, Mr. Stone? Since you’ve just made my dreams come true, I really want to do something for you.”
“You know the only thing I ever want is to get you naked,” he said huskily.
I smiled at him and tightened my arms around his neck. That was not the only thing Eli wanted, but he did think about it an awful lot. Maybe as much as I did.
“I want to make you happy,” I told him.
“Way too late for that, Butterfly. I’m already happier than I could have ever imagined.”
He’d changed so much in the last few months, and he seemed much more content with who he was now. Eli talked openly and often about Austin, and there were pictures of his brother everywhere in his home.
Although he still did some dangerous things, they weren’t as outrageous as his previous pursuits. I was learning to rock climb along with him, but I drew the line at auto racing. I had bitten my fingernails to the quick when he’d done a celebrity racing event for charity last month, but I’d gotten through it.
The guy had a thing for fast cars, but I could live with that.
I was just glad he’d cancelled the challenge to swim the English Channel and the insanely dangerous multiskill race across the wilds of Patagonia.
Eli kept the crazy going for charity, but he was doing only the things he personally enjoyed.
“I love you,” I said, the declaration coming from the depths of my soul.
He nodded. “I know. That’s why I’m so damn happy. Because I love you, too, Butterfly.”
I kind of feel like a butterfly.
He lowered his head and kissed me, and I spread my wings a little further.
I’d come a long way from the woman I’d been just months ago, and it had nothing to do with my inheritance.
Eli had slowly pried me out of my shy, unconfident cocoon of confusion. Maybe I’d taken a few missteps along the way, but the night I’d agreed to let Eli show me his world had sealed my fate.
Even then, when he was a noncommitment kind of guy, I’d still instinctively trusted him.
I threaded my hands through his hair and kissed him back.
As long as I had this man who loved me so fiercely, I knew I was always going to keep flying higher.
We’d always be soaring side by side.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Once again, my thanks to my incredible team at Montlake Romance. This entire journey has been amazing, and I’m so grateful to be sharing it with the Montlake team, who make every one of my books as good as it can be.
A huge shout-out to my extraordinary editor, Maria Gomez. Thank you for everything you do for me and for my books.
As usual, I’m incredibly grateful for my KA team and my street team, Jan’s Gems. I’m not sure how to express my thanks to all of you, so I’ll just go with my usual . . . you rock!
XXXXX Jan
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2013 by Carrie Herzog
J.S. “Jan” Scott is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of numerous contemporary and paranormal romances, including The Sinclairs series. She’s an avid reader of all types of books and literature, but romance has always been her genre of choice—so she writes what she loves to read: stories that are almost always steamy, generally feature an alpha male, and have a happily ever after, because she just can’t seem to write them any other way! Jan loves to connect with readers. Visit her website at www.authorjsscott.com.