by Amelia Wilde
In the living room, Summer is over by the window, speaking softly to January. “It’s all right to rest, sweetheart. You can go to sleep. I know it’s dark out, but we’re all here, and you don’t have to stay awake anymore. Go to sleep, go to sleep…” I step on one of the old creaky floorboards and she turns her head. There are dark circles under her eyes. She’s stressed. She hasn’t slept, clearly. “Day.”
I plant a kiss on her forehead and take January from her arms, standing straight and tall. There’s no pain in my leg at all, or anywhere else. Being a little tired? I can handle that.
Summer stretches her elbows over her head, then holds out her hands for the baby.
“Are you kidding?” I laugh softly, swaying from side to side. In my arms, January blinks slowly, her eyes fluttering. “I’ve got this. Go to sleep.”
“Are you sure?” Her face is a picture of concern. “What if—”
“If she gets hungry, I’ll bring her to you. Go to sleep. Sleep as long as you want.”
“Dayton—”
“Sunny.” She rubs the back of her hand across her eyes. “You know you can count on me for this, right? For everything?”
“I know.” Summer rises on tiptoes and kisses my cheekbone. Relief radiates off her. She’s been trying so hard to make this easy on me. I’m going to out-do her. She steps around me, heading for the hallway.
“Sunny?”
“Yeah?” She comes back a few steps, eyebrows knitted together with worry. “Do you need something before I go? I can get you a blanket, or—”
I clear my throat. “I wanted you to know something. That’s all.”
“What?” Sunny stands in front of me, rocking back and forth like she’s still holding January.
“What I mean is that you can count on me always. Forever.” I slip the ring off my pinky finger and hold it out to her with my free hand. In my arms, January coos once and closes her eyes. “I’d get down on one knee, but she’s just falling asleep…” Summer squints at the ring and I laugh a little. “Marry me.”
Her face lights up. “Yes.”
“That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“The baby just fell asleep,” she says, a warning tone in her voice.
“I won’t wake her up.” I lean down to kiss Summer, the warm bundle between us sound asleep.
Summer pulls back abruptly. “Wait.”
“What?”
“Wait here.”
She dashes for the kitchen counter. There’s a rustle of a paper bag, and she’s back in a few moments, holding out a ring. A ring we picked out what seems like a million years ago. “Dayton,” she says, voice trembling. “Will you marry me?”
It’s a sheer joy, having her ask me that question. I’ll never tell her how much I like it. “Fucking A, Sunny, I thought you’d never propose.”
“Shh!” She scolds me with the lightest frown. “Watch your language. Our daughter hears everything you say.”
“Sorry.”
We both lean down, one by one, to kiss January’s forehead. Her skin is so soft. Summer slips my ring onto my finger and lifts her face to mine. A few heartbeats in and the heat in the kiss is growing, growing—
She pulls back, putting her fingertips to her lips as if they’ve been burned.
“I had a baby two weeks ago.” Summer waves a finger at me. “Cool your jets.”
“You know,” I tell her, keeping my voice even and soft, not daring to wake the baby, not daring to take another moment of precious sleep from Summer. “Before you were mine, I never would have—”
“Before?” She laughs, the sound low and sensual. “There was no before. I’ve always been yours.”
Epilogue
Summer
My wedding day was supposed to go off without a hitch.
For one thing, it’s a spring wedding, which means we had to have it inside. You can’t predict the weather in April, so my mom didn’t get the big outdoor gala that she wanted. We settled on a reception hall in the city that has huge windows, though. Everything is flooded with natural light. Weather? No problem.
I didn’t count on the teething.
January is seven months old and an absolute wreck.
Five days ago—yes, five days ago—she started fussing. I had no idea why. No matter what I did, she fussed and fussed and fussed, until finally Dayton snapped. He took work off and took her to the pediatrician. When I got home, he was sitting there with a perfectly healthy baby.
“What’d they do?” I asked him, wonderingly.
“Told me to give her some Tylenol. She’s teething.” He smiles, rolling his eyes.
“Teething? She’s only seven months old?”
He’d pulled me into his arms and kissed me. “What, did you think she’d wait until she’s two?”
“No. But the wedding—”
“Tylenol,” he said firmly.
The thing about Tylenol is that it only works if you give it to the baby. My parents did a nice thing for us last night and took January to their house so we could finalize some last minute wedding details and, shall we say, work out our frustrations. It was perfect.
Until my mother delivered a cranky baby to me who’d already drooled through her back-up outfit.
It’s fine, really. January is clad only in a diaper, since I’m not putting on her fancy dress until the last moment, and we’re still waiting for the emergency Tylenol to kick in. She’s so uncomfortable that I don’t want to put her down. That should only make it slightly more difficult when it comes time to put on my dress.
The stylist looks at us both in the mirror. “Can you tilt your chin up a bit, honey?”
I tilt my chin up and try my best to watch January in the mirror. She’s calming a bit, leaning back in my arms and gnawing at a teether shaped like a strawberry. She catches sight of me in the mirror and smiles a big, gummy grin that warms my heart.
“Hi, boo boo,” I tell her in the glass, and the stylist laughs.
Hitch over.
Except—
“It’s quiet in here.” I look around at the bridal suite as much as I can without moving my head. “Where’s my mom?”
“She probably went to get another glass of wine from the caterer,” the stylist says. “Helps to calm the nerves.”
“What nerves?” Everybody else is made up, dresses on. I’m the last to get my hair done. Then we have half an hour for pictures before the ceremony. How did the morning go by so fast?
I entertain January, playing little games with the teether, and then the stylist is done. “How’s that?”
“Honestly, I’m a vision.” It’s true—my makeup is flawless. My hair is on point. This is happening. The solid weight of January in my arms is all that’s grounding me. Today is the day I marry the love of my life. Today.
The doors to the bridal suite burst open. In the mirror, I see my mother and turn to face her, standing up with January in my arms. “Thank God, Mom! We’ve got to get me in this dress.” She’s followed closely behind by my maid of honor, Whitney—”obviously,” she’d say if you asked her about it—and Hazel, who still works with me at Heroes on the Homefront and is thrilled to be a bridesmaid. The three of them exchange a look.
“Oh, no,” I say, trying to keep my smile in place. Trying to keep my cool in place. “What’s the look for?”
My mom opens her mouth and shuts it again, eyes welling with tears.
“Mom? Did something happen?”
“You—” She presses her lips together and shakes her head. “You look absolutely gorgeous, Sunny.”
“Thanks, Mom, really.” I can’t help glowing with a little bit of pride. All of this has been crazy to put together with a new baby and both of us working. I’m surprised we pulled it off.
Or maybe we haven’t.
“There’s a slight issue,” Whitney says. “With your brother.”
“With Wes?” I rack my brain for any possible issue he could be having. He came to the city a few days ago for Day’s
bachelor party, said he had some things to do, and checked into the hotel attached to the reception hall. Day hasn’t texted me about anything going wrong this morning, but— “What’s wrong with Wes?” He’s the best man. He’s got the rings. He knows where he has to be.
“We can’t find him.”
Letter to the Reader
Dearest reader,
My heart is still pounding. What about yours?
Here’s something you should know: Before She Was Mine was originally going to be a standalone novel.
As you might have guessed, that’s not the case. There are too many stories here for one book. This calls for a series.
Are you wondering what happened to Wes?
Good news! You don’t have long to wait to find out.
The series continues with After I Was His, featuring two of our favorite characters from Before She Was Mine. Summer and Day have had their happily ever after…but what about Wes?
I can tell you this much: there’s more to him than meets the eye. His book will be available on Amazon in April 2018.
If you want to get the inside story on After I Was His, sign up now for my exclusive mailing list. You’ll only receive information about After I Was His…and you’ll get the first chapter now, just for signing up.
Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/AIWHchapterone!
Watch for the cover reveal during the first week of April…and teasers as soon as I have them!
Thank you, endlessly, for reading my books!
<3 Amelia
P.S. As a thank-you to my readers, I’ve included some additional steamy reads, beginning with Reckless Kiss. It’s a billionaire romance full of secrets and intrigue. Read on to enjoy!
Reckless Kiss
A Billionaire Possession Novel
Prologue
Dominic
What is everyone else getting out of this?
The heated thought scorches itself into my soul like the tropical sun that’s beating down on the white sand beach, and I shift in my lounge chair, shaded by an elaborately patterned umbrella. Turquoise ocean waves lap rhythmically at the shore. I lift my feet from where they’ve been buried in the sand underneath the chair and brush them off. I feel like an idiot in this pair of bright lime green swim trunks, one of ten bathing suits my staff stocked in the master suite closet of my elaborate vacation home.
I’m not going to go swimming. Odds are, I’m not even going to take off the white t-shirt I’m wearing with the trunks.
I take another bite of what’s supposed to be lunch. It’s something delicate and fruity—the chef is one of the best in the British Virgin Islands, if not in the world—but every bite I put in my mouth reminds me of chewing Hawaiian Punch–flavored cardboard.
My phone sits silently on the table. I’m supposed to be on vacation from Wilder Enterprises for three whole weeks—the first vacation I’ve been on since taking over the reins of my father’s company six years ago, after he made an absolute disgrace of it—and my executives have been strongly encouraged to forget that my phone number even exists for the duration of my stay.
My jaw clenches at the interminable, abysmal silence. I’m already regretting agreeing to take this vacation and issuing that order. Without any emails and texts coming in, I have no earthly idea what’s happening at the company while I’m away, and I need to make sure everything is running smoothly.
Not keeping a close eye on everything, my thumb on the pulse, is the kind of thing that sends businesses right off the rails. It sure as hell happened with my father. He let things lapse. He seemingly disappeared for an entire year, only checking in at the office every now and then it seemed, as he took one expensive vacation after another and started pursuing a bunch of birdbrained hobbies, dragging my mother all across the planet, from one destination to the next, and before you knew it, Wilder Enterprises was hemorrhaging out of control, losing contracts, its reputation, everything he had worked so hard for all these years.
I wind my fingers around a narrow, sturdy glass filled almost to the top with something sweet and light and alcoholic, but I don’t take a sip, instead simply staring at the contents.
“You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself.”
I look up into the pale blue eyes of a lithe blonde woman with enormous tits, and I dismiss her callously before she can speak another word. I can tell by the barely-there bikini, the sarong tied suggestively around her waist, that she’s the kind who wants to weasel her way into my life by promising that it will only be a fling, but then she wants more, and before you know it, you’re calling security to have her dragged off your property. A thousand dollars says she’s renting one of the expensive vacation residences along the beach.
I’m never going to see her again, so I tell her the truth. “I’m not.”
A smile perks at the corner of her lips. It does nothing for me. She’ll be here or somewhere like it, trolling endlessly down a beach, long after I’m gone, looking for a prize. “I could help you with that,” she breathes out seductively.
I give her a tight-lipped smile. “I’m sure you could.” Then I stand up from my lounge chair, taking the glass with me. “I have to go.”
She pouts a little, and her eyes narrow as she looks me up and down. “Stay…with me.” Her hand is moving toward her neck, toward where the bikini is tied in the back, casually, like she’s going to make it look like an accident.
A cold wave of anxiety sweeps through me then, rocking my heart back into place. I can’t stand the silence of the phone, the lack of communications, the creeping sensation that things are slipping out of my grasp, like I might come home to news like I did last time, when my mother committed suicide. I feel like one more false move might send someone else careening over the edge. My father’s the only one I have left. We hardly ever speak, after what he did, sending the company into an abyss so that he could enjoy himself…
Jesus.
Get me out of here.
I turn away brusquely from the blonde, stalking up the beach toward the house, already firing off messages to my driver, to my pilot—an emergency call to get things packed up and moving. I want to leave within the hour.
I’ve been on vacation for three days, but it’s all I can take.
Vivienne
My desk phone bleats from the corner of my desk. Its belligerent tone hammers against the wall of concentration I’ve built, allowing me to focus intently on wrapping up my latest case. I’ve spent a good hour longer than I should have fine-tuning the summary presentation for my boss, but I want it to be perfect. I’m on the verge of accomplishing something great at the FBI, creating a career and a name for myself in the Bureau that my parents will be proud of, but more importantly, one I want so badly I can taste it.
“What’s up?” I say into the phone, still trying to surface from the depths of the summary.
“You working on something?”
“Finishing up the summary for the Christiansen Inc. case.”
“Leave it, and come to my office.”
My boss, Milton Jeffries, clicks off the line without saying another word. My heart beats fast in my chest as I shove my chair away from my desk. The urgency in his voice tells me this is something new, something big, something I could hang my hat on.
When I knock at his door, he’s hunched over his keyboard, as usual, his salt-and-pepper hair impeccably styled and his suit neatly pressed, the very picture of a detective from the old noir films, even though he’s somehow firmly rooted in the present. “Sit down,” he says without preamble, and I drop into the seat across from him. “I need you on a new case. Hand off the summary to somebody else.”
“But—” I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this thing, but I bite back the rest of what I was going to say. Going to battle so I can finish up some paperwork is not how I’m going to climb the ladder here…and I’ve already been climbing at a record pace. No reason to derail my progress now. “What’s the case?”
Milton pushes
a folder across the desk toward me. “Wilder Enterprises.”
“Never heard of it.”
“You wouldn’t have. They deal in energy technology, and they’re like this with the government.” He wraps two fingers around each other in a symbol of tightness. “Sensitive information, going both ways.”
“What’s the deal?”
“Someone’s stealing their tech secrets and selling them out to a contact in China. It might be the Chinese government.”
“Shit.”
Anything involving the illegal transfer of information between someone in the U.S. and the Chinese government would be a big, nasty deal—something way over my pay grade—and I instantly understand why as I scan over the contents of the folder, names and dates rolling along…until I see the picture.
“Who’s that?”
The man stares seriously out from the image, blue eyes blazing even in the still-life picture. That is one cut jaw.
Milton cranes his neck. “Dominic Wilder. He owns the company, and he’s still in the dark about all of this. He has to be, because we don’t know yet if he’s involved.”
I give a low whistle and flip the page, even though I want to keep staring into those eyes for the rest of my life. “Got it.”
“Review the materials and get back to me by the end of the day with any questions. You start early next week as an employee in one of their departments—it’s all in the folder, along with your undercover identity.” Milton says briskly. “And Viv?”
I look into his eyes, my hands tightening on the folder. “Yeah?”
“I don’t need to tell you this, but—”
“This is an important one.”
One sharp nod, and I’m dismissed.
My heart pounds in my chest as I make my way back to my desk. This could be it. This could be the case I’ve been waiting for—the one that will make all my years of hard work worth it, the one that will wipe away all the angry sneers and comments from the men who didn’t want me spending so much time at the office, the one that will make me into the kind of woman who doesn’t need a man for anything.