Maria laughed, feeling light headed all of a sudden. “They don’t want to retire.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand that, but if that’s what they want, then so be it. I just want you to know that they are safe.”
Looking into his eyes, she could barely breathe, not sure why he was telling her this. “Why would you do that for me? For them?”
He came around the countertop. “Because I want you in my life. I want to marry you and have kids with you. I want all of our kids to grow up with Ollie and throw tennis balls for him on the beach.”
“He won’t chase after them now unless they are thrown by that flipper thing.”
He smiled, but took her hands in his. “I’ll get more flipper things for him.”
“You spoiled my dog.”
He chuckled. “I want to spoil you. I want to be with you. I want to share my life with you.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was so different from what she’d been expecting only twenty-four hours ago. Good grief, even twelve hours ago! “So…what does that mean?”
He reached into his pocket. “I know we’ve only known each other for a short time, but Maria, will you marry me?”
Maria stared at the beautiful antique diamond, but after a moment, she couldn’t see it any longer. Tears were blurring her vision. Blinking, she wiped at the tears, trying to see the ring.
But then she looked up at him. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. You don’t have to marry me. I cleared out all the other issues so that you won’t feel obligated. I love…,” he couldn’t finish because she’d just thrown herself into his arms.
Maria laughed and cried, not sure what to say. “Is that a yes?” he asked as he wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her up and kissing her neck.
Ollie barked and both of them turned around to see the mutt wagging his tail.
“I guess he’s answering for you,” Sloan said as he lowered her feet to the floor. Taking her hand, he slipped the ring on her finger. “I love you, Maria. Now that you know who I am, have seen the best and worst of me, will you spend the rest of your life challenging me, making my head spin with your smiles and popping a bottle of champagne simply because the sun came out for the day?”
Maria laughed, but Ollie barked again. “Yes. I love you too,” she said. She might have said something more, but he was kissing her. And well, when that happened, she lost track of time.
Epilogue
Sloan looked out the window, watching his pregnant wife as she and his mother walked along the beach, Ollie running along as well.
“You getting any sleep?” Wyatt asked.
Sloan turned around and looked at his brother, smiling slightly. “A little.”
Wyatt looked out at the scene. “I can’t believe you’re going to be a father in a few months! What a rush! Do I get to teach him how to drive? What about how to…”
Sloan grimaced. “No!” he answered immediately, not even wanting to hear what Wyatt might want to teach his son. “No way! You’re going to have to get your own son to do all that with.” He turned to look out his window once again. “I’m going to be around for a long time, teaching my own son how to drive and,” he turned to glance at Wyatt, “respect women. Better than you,” he admonished.
Wyatt chuckled, feigning offense. “Hey! I respect women! I love them! I don’t know what I would do without all the lovely ladies who come in and out of my life!”
Greyson snorted. “You mean, mostly out of your life, don’t you?”
Logan walked over to the window, looking out at the beach as well. “Maria is beautiful,” he said. “And you’re going to be a dad. What’s it like? Are you nervous?”
Sloan watched his wife dip her feet into the surf, Ollie barking, then licking Maria’s toes, causing his wife and mother to laugh. “It’s going to be amazing,” he finally said.
Another woman walked down the beach, Maria smiling at the newcomer while her feet sank into the wet sand.
“What’s with Katie?” Alexander asked. “Is she…”
“Back off,” Logan snapped, frowning at his youngest brother testily.
Four sets of eyes turned away from the scene on the beach to survey the second oldest in their clan. Grey was the first to speak up. “Woah, big bro! There’s something there, isn’t there? You and Katie?”
Wyatt chuckled. “All you had to say was that the lovely, green-eyed minx was off limits. We’d respect that.”
Logan sighed and turned back to watch his sister-in-law interact with Katie. “Yeah. She’s off limits.” He contemplated what he might say next. “Just…”
“Don’t interfere,” Grey filled in. “Got it.”
Sloan understood and slapped his brother on the shoulder. “She seems nice.”
With that, Wyatt walked over to the fridge and pulled out more beers. “A toast!” he announced, handing one to each of the brothers before lifting his own up into the air. “The first to fall and take the pressure off the rest of us.” He saluted Sloan. “Thanks for taking one for the team!”
Sloan rolled his eyes, but he took a long sip with the rest of them. They’d learn, he thought as he watched Logan’s eyes drift back to the beach. Back to Katie. Some might learn a bit more quickly than the others, he thought.
***
For more stories by Elizabeth Lennox, go to:
http://www.elizabethlennox.com/books/
To subscribe and receive articles, introductions to each new release and stories that are only available to subscribers, go to:
http://www.elizabethlennox.com/subscribe/
Or follow Elizabeth Lennox on Facebook!
www.facebook.com/Author.Elizabeth.Lennox
For more information about Elizabeth Lennox, check out the pages in the back of this book.
***
Keep reading for more Anderson Brothers!
Logan’s Story by Noelle Adams
Her Reluctant Billionaire
Chapter 1
Katie Ross was on the phone with her sobbing client for the twenty-five-minute drive from her downtown office to her little house in the mountains of Asheville.
She’d been a divorce attorney for three years, and each month that passed added more bitter, heartbroken clients to her list. Marla Hollis’s husband of thirty-five years had been supporting a mistress in her own condo for a decade, and even so Katie was having trouble getting around the most outrageous prenup she’d ever seen to win Marla a settlement even close to her due.
By the time she had pulled into her long, winding driveway, Katie was having trouble fighting a few tears herself.
She was a good lawyer, and she worked hard to maintain a professional attitude toward her clients. But she hadn’t been doing this for very long—she was only twenty-seven—and sometimes the stories she heard from women so completely broken by their marriages still got to her.
She blinked when she saw a dark blue Mercedes in her driveway and wondered what Logan Anderson was doing here. She hadn’t expected him for another hour at least.
Trying to wrap up the call, she got out of her own small SUV, juggling her bag, her phone, and her travel mug of lukewarm green tea.
Logan was sitting on one of the Adirondack chairs on her porch, working on his phone, but he grinned as she approached, jumping up to take the mug out of her hand so she could unlock her front door.
“I know it feels terribly unfair.” Katie was talking on the phone as she stepped inside and dropped her bag in the entryway. “But this is the way the process always goes. We have many, many more cards to play before we even think about folding. Just hang in there, and I’ll talk to you—”
Marla interrupted, still needing to vent some more, and Katie gave Logan an apologetic smile and nodded toward the bottle of Merlot on the kitchen counter to indicate he could help himself.
As Katie listened to Marla from a stool at the kitchen bar, Logan opened the wine, poured two glasses, and set one down on the
counter in front of her. He took a sip from his own glass and flipped on the kitchen light. When it didn’t come on, he flipped it a few times and then went to get the stepladder out of her laundry closet.
Katie was half smiling as he started to change the light bulb for her.
That bulb had been out now for more than a week.
Katie’s best friend, Sarah, and Logan’s best friend, Chad, had gotten married four years ago. That was how she’d met Logan, and they’d been thrown together a lot during the year of their friends’ dating and engagement. They’d eventually become good friends themselves, and as Sarah and Chad became the parents to twins and fell deeper into domestic life, Katie and Logan had spent more and more time together.
Katie was close to calling Logan her best friend now instead of Sarah—although the fact that she’d known Sarah since childhood made her reluctant to switch labels, even in her own mind.
Her eyes rested on Logan’s body as he stretched up to unscrew the light bulb, and for some reason she was hit with the recognition of how good-looking he was.
He was a few inches taller than her own five eight, and his body was lean and compact. She didn’t normally think about him physically, but she couldn’t help but focus on the strong lines of his shoulders, the flatness of his abdomen, the firm contours of his ass. He had thick, wavy brown hair that always needed cutting, so it was impossible to keep neat. He also had a five-o’clock shadow, as he normally did at this time of day.
For a few seconds as she listened to Marla crying on the phone, Katie blinked in surprise as the sight of him screamed “Hot Man!” instead of just “My Friend.”
It was rather disconcerting, but she reassured herself it was natural.
Logan was a man. While she hadn’t been particularly blown away by his appearance when she’d first met him, perceptions like that were bound to change. It was surprising to have this response so powerfully out of the blue, but it wasn’t anything out of the bounds of normal.
It was nothing to worry about.
When the light bulb was changed, Logan returned the stepladder to its place and sat down on the stool next to Katie, pulling up email on his phone while she finished the conversation. She had to force herself to concentrate on her client instead of Logan’s warm presence beside her.
She hung up after ten more minutes and let out a loud sigh as she dropped her phone on the counter. “Remind me never to get married,” she said. “It might start with hearts and roses, but it always ends with custody battles and revenge plots.”
“There are kids with this one?” He took a sip of wine, and his brown eyes were sympathetic.
“Pomeranians.”
She smiled when he chuckled. Logan was one of the smartest people she knew—she suspected he could be classified as a genius—so it always felt like a victory when she could make him laugh.
“Since you haven’t dated in years,” Logan said after a minute, “I doubt I’ll need to remind you about your no-marriage rule.”
“It’s not a rule. It’s just a… a decision.” It had been years since Katie had dated. Three and a half years to be exact.
Despite her words, she had never actually made an intentional decision against dating or relationships. She’d had a few boyfriends in college and law school, but nothing had worked out. Then during her last semester of coursework and bar-exam prep, she’d been too stressed and busy to think about dating. And then she’d had the pressure of her first job. Then her mother had died, emotionally devastating her. And then the progression of bitter clients had started to get to her until she wondered if marriage was even worth it.
Hopefully one day she’d get to the point where she didn’t take all the relational angst she dealt with personally, but right now she wasn’t about to give her heart to a man who—ten, twenty, forty years from now—would just grind it into pulp under his heel in a divorce.
Her parents had divorced when she’d been eleven. She’d cried every night for months about it. It had utterly destroyed her.
She still had trouble remembering it without a sick feeling in her stomach.
“I guess it’s hard for you to think about romance when you’re surrounded by the ruins of relationships every day,” Logan said, breaking into her thoughts. “I can understand that.”
Something about Logan’s tone struck her as strange, like he was having to make excuses for her in his mind. It bothered her. “I told you it’s not a rule. It’s just where I am right now. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
She frowned, hoping he wasn’t thinking she was needy or pitiful somehow. “I’ve had plenty of chances to date, you know.”
“Have you?”
“Yes. I get asked out all the time.” That might have been a slight exaggeration, but she did get asked out somewhat regularly. Some of the men she might have been interested in if she’d been in a dating mood.
“Do you?” His frown deepened. “You’ve never mentioned anyone to me.”
“Am I supposed to tell you about every random guy who comes on to me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Aren’t we friends?”
“Of course we’re friends, but I don’t tell my friends every time I get asked out.”
She said the words automatically, but after she did, she realized they weren’t exactly true. She did tell Sarah almost every time someone asked her out, if only to giggle about it. She never told Logan though. She had no idea why.
His mouth was still turned down and his brows pulled together. “How many guys ask you out?”
“Oh, at least ten. Nearly every day.”
When Logan’s eyes widened, she burst into laughter. “I’m teasing. At the most, it’s maybe once a week. Why are you surprised I get asked out? I know I’m not your type, but I’m not that unattractive.”
“Unattractive? What are you talking about? You’re gorgeous!”
Her lips parted. When she’d processed his blunt words, she experienced a deep flush of pleasure. There was no way to disbelieve him. The words had burst out of him, clearly not planned.
“I mean,” he said, clearing his throat and taking an unusually large swallow of wine, “I’m not surprised guys ask you out all the time. You’d just never mentioned it before. So you’re not tempted to accept any of them?”
She shook her head, thinking about poor Marla, fatuously believing her husband had been faithful when he’d been screwing a mistress for years and was now trying to take her treasured dogs away, purely out of spite. “Not even a little.”
Logan’s eyes were now focused on his wineglass. “Oh.”
It still felt like something was going on in his mind—something he wasn’t telling her. She didn’t normally feel defensive around Logan. So often he seemed to understand her, even when she couldn’t articulate herself well. But right now she felt the need to explain herself further. “I didn’t have a very good example of a marriage, growing up.”
He nodded, something softening in his face. “I know you didn’t.”
“My parents fought all the time—for the whole time I was growing up. And then, when they finally got divorced, they still fought all the time.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I can’t even imagine.”
“So it’s not just my job. It’s… it’s deeper than that. And I’m perfectly happy as I am. Why should I mess my life up when I have everything I need as I am?”
“I don’t think you should mess your life up. Why are you trying to defend yourself to me? I said from the beginning I get it.”
“It just feels like you don’t really get it.”
He met her eyes evenly, held her gaze without wavering. “Katie, this is me. Getting it.”
After a moment, a spark of amusement broke the strange intensity of their shared gaze, and Katie’s mouth wobbled slightly with suppressed laughter.
He smiled too, and the weird tension relaxed. She gave Logan a friendly nudge a
nd asked, “What are you doing here so early?”
“Oh. Carl’s father had a heart attack, so we closed the office early.”
“Oh no! Is he all right?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard an update.”
Carl was Logan’s business partner. Just after college, the two had started an online tourism-and-hospitality service—originally for people to rent out rooms to travelers in different parts of the world but soon growing to encompass a variety of lucrative tourism opportunities—and it had become a huge success. A mind-blowing success.
Katie wasn’t exactly sure of the extent of Logan’s wealth, but he was richer than anyone else she knew. He didn’t live like it though. He worked hard and wore normal clothes and had a nice house but not a mansion.
He wasn’t an ostentatious person in any way, despite the money he had coming in.
“What are you doing next weekend?” Logan asked, surprising her by the change in subject.
“Next weekend? I don’t know. Why?”
“Do you want to come to the beach with me?”
She knew he was talking about visiting his family, who lived in Wilmington and also had a house on Wrightsville Beach. She’d gone with him a couple of times over the past few years when he was going home for a visit and she’d wanted a few days at the beach.
“I didn’t know you were going. Is your family okay?”
He had a large family. Both his parents were still living, and he had four brothers. When the whole family was present, it was a very full house.
“They’re fine. This club I was part of in high school is having a reunion thing, so I thought I might go.”
“What club?”
He slanted her a wry look.
“Tell me!” she demanded playfully, giving him a poke on the shoulder. “What club? The audio-visual club?”
“No.”
“The comic-book club?”
Billionaires On the Beach: The Anderson Brothers Page 9