“I love you, Maine,” she whispered, looking down into his face.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, though every cell in his body tingled and told him she was telling him the truth. “I mean, I can believe it, but I can’t.”
She smiled that wonderful warm smile she had and leaned down to touch her lips to his. Maine thought he’d experienced the greatest kiss of his life under that waterfall on the island, but he’d been wrong.
This one with the woman he loved—and who loved him back—was a thousand times better.
“She’ll be here any second,” Orchid said, pacing from the front windows back to where he sat on the couch. Until her father had texted a few minutes ago, Maine had been holding her and kissing her and telling her about his meeting with Walter Germaine, the owner of the Orcas. He’d asked to be kept off the trading list, and if the Orcas ever found they didn’t want him to play for them anymore, he’d retire.
Simple as that.
He loved his football career, but it wasn’t going to be the focus of his life forever, and he knew that.
A moment later, the front door opened and a little girl burst through it. “Mama!” she called, coming to a stop a few feet later. “Oh, there you are. Look at this.” She thrust a piece of paper at Orchid while Maine stood up from the couch.
The blonde girl looked a lot like Orchid, but her hair was much lighter and she had the eyes of her father.
“You’re Maine Fitzgerald,” she said, those eyes widening. “You came to my school today.”
He had gone to an elementary school that day, as part of the team’s community outreach program. “Hello,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound stupid. He knew how to deal with his nephew, and he hoped Tesla could be talked to like normal person.
Orchid flinched and looked up from the blue piece of paper her daughter had given her. “This is great, Tesla. You’re moving on to level three.”
“Right?” Tesla asked, looking back at Orchid. “What’s he doing here, Mama?”
“He was stranded on the island with me,” Orchid said. “Remember Aunt Ivy told you that? He’s the quarterback.” Orchid moved over next to him and laced her fingers through his. “Tesla, he’s also my boyfriend. Maine Fitzgerald, this is my daughter, Tesla Stone.”
“Boyfriend?” Tesla’s eyes got really big then. She gestured for Orchid to come back over to her, and she exchanged a glance with him before she did. She bent down and got on Tesla’s level.
“Do you kiss him?” she whispered, but it was definitely loud enough for Maine to hear.
He chuckled as Orchid stage-whispered back. “Yes, Tesla. I kiss him.”
“Gross,” Tesla said with a giggle. She skipped the few feet to him and said, “Nice to meet you,” and stuck out her hand.
Maine took it and shook it, this little girl creeping right into his heart. “And you, Tesla. Your mother’s told me a lot about you.”
“Yeah? What did she say?”
“She taught me that chickens can’t swim,” he said. “Because of a science…thing you did.”
“Report,” Orchid supplied for him, but Tesla had grown animated again.
“They can’t swim. I mean, they can, but not for very long.”
“Yeah, we saw that on the island,” he said.
“Were you scared on the island?” she asked, and Maine crouched down in front of her.
“You know what, Tesla? I was. It was frightening sometimes. But I wasn’t alone, and I learned a lot about how to take care of myself and what to put first in my life. So yes, I was scared. But I’m actually glad it happened.”
She searched his face, and then turned back to Orchid. “Can I go get my report to show him?”
“Sure, sweets,” she said, and Maine straightened and met her eye.
“Sweets?”
She shrugged. “I kinda like the nickname.” She smiled at him and tipped up onto her toes. “She likes you, Mister Famous Quarterback.”
“How can you tell?” He slid one arm around Orchid’s waist and kept her close to him.
“I just know.”
“Hmm.” He kissed her, pulling away before he would’ve liked when little girl feet sounded in the hall behind him.
Six Months Later
“You have the ring?” he asked Tesla for probably the fifth time.
“I have it, Maine,” she said without looking away from the window.
He was so nervous, but he couldn’t wait another day. He’d already put off his proposal a few times now because of nerves, and he wasn’t doing it again. Christmas would be here soon, and he wanted to celebrate with his fiancée.
“All right,” he said, pulling up to the office building that had a huge Petals & Leis sign above it.
Orchid had put in her two weeks notice and today was her last day at the company. In January, she started back to school full-time. Maine’s season had ended, and the Orca’s hadn’t made the playoffs for a fourth year in a row. He wasn’t surprised, actually. They had some good new blood coming in, and maybe next year would be different.
“So we’ve got the cake and the ring,” he said. “We should be set.” He’d enlisted Tesla’s help with the proposal, as he and the girl had been getting along so great in the afternoons when he picked her up.
“Do you think my mom will say yes?” she asked, finally looking at him.
“I sure hope so.”
“What if she doesn’t? Will you stop picking me up?” Tesla looked at him with a hint of fear in those pretty eyes.
“She’s not going to say no,” he said, confusing even himself. “She’ll say yes.”
“So you’ll be my dad.”
“I hope so,” he said again. “You want that, right, Tesla?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I want that.” She smiled at him. “So we’ll just make her say yes.”
He chuckled, his nerves getting the best of him. “That’s not how it works.” Reaching for the door handle, he added, “Come on. Let’s go ask her.” He collected the cake from the back seat, and they went into the building together.
Orchid’s cubicle was up on the fourth floor, and he and Tesla rode in silence. The fourth floor was in full party mode when they arrived, and he put the cake on the table and kissed Orchid hello.
“There you are,” she said. “I wondered when you’d get here.”
“Here we are,” he said, looking around for the source of the music. It came from a laptop on a nearby desk, and he stepped over to it and turned it off. “Everyone,” he said, his voice strong despite the war currently raging in his gut. “I have something to say about Orchid.”
“Oh, no,” she moaned, but she had a flirty, fun smile on her face.
He waited for people to turn toward them and quiet down. “Well, it’s not really a toast,” he said, trying to find where Tesla had run off to. “But a question.”
She appeared and handed him the ring box. “Thank you, sweets,” he said to her. “Orchid, Tesla and I have a very important question.” He met her eye, but she dropped her gaze to that little black box in his hand in the next moment.
“Maine,” she warned.
“I love you,” he said. “And I want us to be a family.” He took a step toward her, glad when Tesla came with him. “Will you marry me?”
“Say yes Mama,” Tesla said, looking between them. “Maine, you didn’t even show her the ring.”
“Oh. Right.” He opened the box and held it up. “Will you marry me?”
Orchid started crying and nodding, and Maine’s joy shot through the roof. “Yeah? Is that a yes? I can’t quite hear you.”
“Yes,” she said, placing a sloppy kiss on his mouth. A cheer went up from her co-workers, and Maine turned back to all of them. “She said yes.” He bent down and grinned at Tesla. “She said yes, sweets.”
“She said yes!” Tesla started dancing around the office.
Maine turned back to Orchid, who wiped her cheeks. “I love you,” he said, holding her close and kissing he
r properly.
“I love you, too,” she whispered amid the chaos, and he hoped he could have moments exactly like these for the rest of his life.
Read on for a sneak peek at the next book in the series, STRANDED WITH THE COWBOY BILLIONAIRE to see if Ivy will be able to make a love connection with an Internet ad that takes her to a deserted island…
Woo hoo! I’m glad Maine and Orchid found a way to make their relationship work! If you are too, please leave a review here.
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Sneak Peek! Stranded with the Cowboy Chapter One
Ivy McLaughlin bustled around the boutique, the new maxi-dress coverups tempting her. If she bought one, the money would come right out of her paycheck. She’d barely even miss it. Of course, she’d bought that crop top last week and a new pair of boyfriend jeans just yesterday. At the rate she was going, she’d be lucky to even get a paycheck on Friday.
So the swimming suit coverups went on the rack, despite her desire to take a size small in black to the dressing room and see how it looked with her newly bleached hair.
Everything about Ivy was new and improved. It had to be now that she was back on the market after a long relationship with Brooks Dentin—which had ended last week.
And she’d been so sure he’d asked her to the fanciest fish house on the island to propose. But he’d gone all Legally Blonde on her and broken up with her. Ivy wasn’t in a sorority, nor did she have any inclination to go to law school.
She just needed a new manicure. A new haircut and color. A new pair of jeans—check—and a new outlook on life.
Then she’d be fine.
Never mind that all of her sisters had now found love with some great guys. Eden and Holden were married now, as were Iris and Justin. Orchid and Maine would have an “event of the century” on the island by the end of the year, and Ivy was happy for all of them.
Honestly, she was.
She just wanted her own knight in shining armor. Or a football helmet. Or a Navy SEAL uniform. Or whatever. Since she’d been dating Brooks so seriously, she hadn’t been calling in favors like she usually did to keep her social calendar full.
And now that she had access to the starting quarterback of the Orcas, she found she didn’t want him to set up a date for her.
She wasn’t sure what that meant, as Ivy was usually the life of the party. The star of the show. The one who turned heads, who could flirt with anyone with a Y-chromosome, the one who never stayed in on the weekends.
Now, she didn’t even want to go out.
She felt broken inside, and she had no idea what to do about it.
Her phone rang, and she swiped on the call from her sister. “Heya, Eden,” she said. “How’s life in the glass building?”
“Just grand,” Eden said, an edge to her voice that Ivy usually didn’t hear unless Eden had good news.
“What’s up?” Ivy turned toward the door as a chime sounded and watched two women walk into the shop.
“I have some exciting news,” Eden said.
Ivy knew what her sister was going to say before Eden’s voice landed in her ears. “Holden and I are expecting.”
So maybe Ivy hadn’t put those exact words in that exact order. A shriek had already started building beneath her vocal chords, and she let it out for just a moment. There was nothing better than being an aunt.
“I’m so excited for you guys,” she gushed as the women came closer. If her boss was here and found her talking on the phone while there were customers in the store, he’d be furious. “Look, I have to go, but I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
“Okay,” Eden said, and Ivy hung up.
She approached the women. “Hey, ladies. Can I help you find something today?”
“She needs a new bathing suit,” the brunette said.
“I do not,” the other woman said. She threw her friend a scandalous look and tucked her regular brown hair behind her ear.
“Something sexy,” the brunette said without missing a beat.
“Shannon.”
“What?” Shannon asked. “You do. She’s going to meet a guy out on this deserted island, and she wants to look hot for him. Hot. H-O-T.”
“Stop it,” the other woman said, actually reaching up and covering Shannon’s mouth with her hand. “Just a regular bathing suit. I like a solid color. Black or red—”
“A solid color?” Shannon gasped as if her friend had just committed a fashion crime. She flipped a few more hangers on the rack in front of her, which didn’t even hold swimming suits.
“We have some great one-shoulder stuff back here,” Ivy said, hoping to draw the friend away from Shannon. “I’ve got solids and stripes.” She really wanted to hear more about this deserted island. Maybe there was a singles event going on she hadn’t heard about.
She’d been out of the singles scene for so long now, and part of her didn’t want to get resubmerged in it. But summer had just arrived in Getaway Bay, and that brought a lot of vacationers out to the beaches.
Not only that, but summer was the best time to meet a new man, and Ivy felt some of the scales she’d been carrying for a while fall from her eyes. She could find a new boyfriend. She could.
She just didn’t want to.
The island had plenty to do in the summer, and as she pulled a black suit off the rack and held it out to the woman, she asked, “Where are you going to meet this guy?”
“Haven’t you heard?” Her blue-green eyes sparkled with a secret. “There’s this crazy billionaire who’s put out an Internet ad.” She rolled her eyes like the very idea was stupid. And yet, she was going to buy a sexy swimming suit to meet him. “He bought an island, and—”
“A deserted island,” Shannon inserted.
“A deserted island,” the woman continued. “And he wants someone to come live on it with him for three months. See if they can fall in love.” She sighed like it was the most romantic thing in the world.
Ivy’s heart started pulsing in her chest. At first, the sensation felt strange, as she hadn’t felt anything like this in a while. Even while dating Brooks these last few months—which should’ve been a dead giveaway to her that their relationship wasn’t going to last.
“She’ll try that teal bikini too,” Shannon said, and Ivy got it down amidst protests from the other woman.
“Come on, Kari,” Shannon finally said. “You’re going to meet this guy on his island. You can’t show up in Bermudas and a T-shirt with a popsicle on it.” She all but shoved her friend into the dressing room, another fistful of very revealing swimming suits in her hand.
Ivy smiled at the pair of them, their banter and back-and-forth so much like hers and Iris’s. A pang of missing hit her hard when she thought of her twin. No, they couldn’t stay together forever, but Ivy had always been so close to Iris, and she had Justin now.
The retired Navy SEAL worked for an app company now, and Ivy wondered if maybe he knew some single guys she could go out with.
Nope, she told herself as she picked up her phone from the check-out counter. She wasn’t going to ask for help to get a date. Not this time.
No, this time, she was going to look up this crazy billionaire who’d bought an island and put out an ad for a companion. After all, money could make up for a lot of things. Maybe even a little bit of mental instability.
#
That evening, Ivy sat at her computer, the cursor blinking in the empty chat box in front of her. She’d read all about Mason Martin and his scheme to find someone to spend his life with.
His words, not Ivy’s.
He claimed to be from Texas, and his proposition was clear. Come to Long Bar Island, about two hours south of Getaway Bay, and spend three months there with him. See if a love connection could be made.
The end.
He wouldn’t be compensating anyone, and the only way he’d send out pictures was if someone messaged him and asked.
> So Ivy sat in front of the chat box, ready to ask. Any time now. “Any minute,” she muttered to herself. Beside her on the desk, the small guinea pig she sometimes took out and carried around with her lay curled into a ball.
If she went out to Long Bar Island, she’d have to figure out what to do with Tommy.
“He’s a guinea pig,” she told herself.
She’d been talking to herself all afternoon since looking up the email order bride scandal that had Getaway Bay in a twitter. She wouldn’t miss anyone’s birthday. She wouldn’t miss Orchid’s and Maine’s wedding. And Eden had said she wasn’t due until the first week of January.
Ivy had her job at the boutique, but honestly, it was exactly that—a job. Not a career. If things didn’t work out with this Mason fellow, she’d come home and find something else to do.
She couldn’t believe she was even considering this. There were singles cruises and beach parties right here on the island.
“Hello,” she said as she typed out the words. “My name is Ivy McLaughlin. I’ve read your proposal, and I think I might be a good fit.”
She read over the words again, and then again. She didn’t want to ask for a picture of him right up front, though she could admit that looks were important to her. What if he was some sort of Quasimodo, and she didn’t know it until her boat landed on the island?
“It’s not all about what he looks like,” she reminded herself, her hand hovering above the mouse, which already sat on the send button. She wondered how many people had sent him messages. Did he walk around the island? Maybe she could meet him that way.
Because this just felt ridiculous.
Her doorbell rang, and she jumped. Her knees hit the pull-out tray that held her keyboard, and her hand hit the mouse.
Moving quickly, she got up and hurried to the front door, adrenaline streaming through her now. “You ordered sausage and anchovies?” The guy standing on her porch with her pizza couldn’t be more than sixteen.
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