by Toby Neal
We go up in the elevator to the top floor. The suite is huge at the top of the hotel, a sprawl of mirrors, satin, and cheesy awesome overblown grandeur.
“I can’t wait to get into the shower,” I say, peeling off my leathers. “I bet they can clean these for us.”
“I’m sure. I’m going to pop out for a minute,” Magnus says. “Scout some shows.”
“Oh good. I want to do the Cirque du Soleil. Find that one for us, will you? I’ll feel a whole lot better with this road grime off.” I’m heading for the bathroom as he heads for the door.
I stare at the crazy, heart-shaped, red satin bed on a raised dais. It has a ceiling mirror above it. I can’t wait to get Magnus up on there and see what I can see.
Magnus still isn’t back when I get out of the shower, but I call downstairs for a cleaning service to work over our leathers, and get into bed to wait for him.
It’s the perfect bed, firm but still soft. I spot a button on the bedside table and touch it. The bed very slowly begins moving, turning in a circle on the raised dais. I look up at myself in the mirror overhead and grin. Oh, this is going to be so good.
I’ll just nap a minute until Magnus gets back. My eyes fall shut and I’m gone.
Magnus
It took me longer than I planned to find what I need, and I’m hoping Pearl isn’t pissed when I get back. She’s been amazing on the trip: never complaining, eager to see everything, fine with hours on the bike, occasionally terrible food, and a series of lousy beds that we make squeak every way there is.
I needn’t have worried she’d be fussy. She’s out cold in that crazy bed, which is slowly turning under the ceiling mirror, a Las Vegas cliché.
I grin at the sight of her, positioned right in the middle of the turning heart, her cap of damp blonde curls darkening the satin pillow. I strip out of the travel-worn clothing I had on under the leathers and hop in the shower for a quick soap. She deserves my best, though again, she doesn’t seem to care whether I come to her clean or dirty, shaved or not.
She’s never said the three little words I can feel vibrating between us, but I can sense them between all the sentences, a layer of intensity that adds depth to the incredible sex we’ve been having.
No, not sex. Lovemaking. Because even whether it’s rough and quick, or slow and tender, with Pearl it’s all making love.
I towel off my hair and body and stalk back into the bedroom, climbing up on that silly bed and lifting the red satin comforter to look at her.
She’s naked under there, of course, stretched out like a centerfold, and as the cool air touches her, those pale pink nipples tighten. I put my mouth on one of them, and she sighs, and opens her eyes, then grins like a Cheshire cat.
“I like the view.”
I cock my head to the side. I can see my big hulking body leaning over hers. The contrasts of our colors, her paleness beside my dark, are nice to look at.
“Mmm,” I say. “How about this bed?”
“Beats the ferns on the side of the road,” she says.
Yeah, the last time we made love was in a patch of dry, crackling ferns under a tree on the border of Utah and Nevada. “I liked the ambience of that spot.”
“I liked how the buzzards came to check us out.” Her smile is so beautiful.
“I love your smile,” I say. “I love you.”
Her smile fades. Her eyes get big. She’s tried to hide it, but I know she’s been afraid I’ll say we’re over. But after I had her that time after Dubai and I knew how she felt in my arms and how totally necessary she’d become, I made up my mind.
She’s not leaving my side. Ever again.
I pull the comforter all the way up over us, making a dim little tent over our heads. “I’ve got something to ask you.”
“What?” Her voice is a thread. Her eyes are enormous in the dim, her lips pale. It scares me, her expression, and my heart feels like a taiko drum. Man up. All she can say is no. My stomach knots at the possibility. I’m not sure I can survive it.
“Will you marry me?”
I have the one-carat Harry Winston rock I bought down at the hotel jewelry store stuck on the tip of my pinkie, the only finger it will even kind of go on. I extend it to her, and even in the dim light, it sparkles.
Pearl covers her mouth with her hand, and those famous, glorious, enormous eyes fill with tears that brim over and run down her cheeks. She throws the comforter off and sits up. “You’re not joking?”
I can’t believe that this amazing woman is afraid I’m going to reject her when I’m petrified she won’t have me—with my horrible past, my battle-ax of a mother, and very shaky prospects for the future.
“Hell no, I’m not joking,” I growl. “You’re killing me here. I love you, damn it, and I want you to be mine in every way there is.”
“Oh.” She frowns. “Are you sure?”
“Holy crap, woman.” I know I sound aggrieved but I can’t take the suspense. “Please. Really. Marry me. I’m pitiful. I’m begging.”
“Okay then. Yes. If you’re really sure.” She giggles through tears at the sight of the ring on my pinkie, and plucks it off. She slides the ring onto the finger of her left hand and admires it. It fits perfectly. “I can’t believe this.”
“I can’t believe you said yes without asking me anything.” I haul her into my arms and kiss her, claiming what’s mine. She gives it right back, pressed down, shaken together and running over.
When we come up for air, she says, “I love you. I love you so much.” It’s the first time she’s said it.
“I know.”
She smacks my chest, sniffling and laughing. “I was trying to be cool. I didn’t want to scare you away.”
“Yeah. One of the world’s seven most beautiful women loves me and is worried about scaring me away—me, an unemployed mercenary who lives with his mother.” I shake my head.
“So that’s what you are? A mercenary?”
“In a manner of speaking. But, like I said, I’m unemployed now.”
“Excellent. Even better,” she says. “I’ll pay for everything from here on out.”
And so she does, from the Bellagio to getting our leathers cleaned, from the Elvis chapel where we get hitched to all the motels along our slow route back to Boston as we honeymoon and see the country on our bikes, happier than either of our dark-hearted souls deserve.
Company confidentiality policy dictates that we have to be married for me to disclose the nature of my work. Three days into wedded bliss, I talk to her about it.
“I was in Dubai on a job,” I tell her. We’re seeing Zion National Park during the day and staying in a little adobe motel on the outskirts at night, chosen for the sturdiness of its bed and thickness of its walls.
“The sheikh.” Her eyes get big with memories of the trauma.
“Yeah. He was some sort of terrorist funder. Anyway, I couldn’t believe it when I saw you there, and then when those guys grabbed you...” I can feel my throat working at the remembered terror.
Pearl puts her fingertips, then her lips, on the beating pulse in my neck. “You saved me.”
“And you saved me.” I bend my head to kiss her, and feel the truth of it to my bones.
Epilogue
Pearl
I’m in the yard at our new house, throwing the ball for Whiskey. It’s been six months since Magnus and I got married and took our epic road trip. By the time we returned to Magnus’s cabin, Efficiency Solutions, who’d refused to accept his resignation, had come up with a proposal: Magnus could “retire” from active duty and be a personnel trainer for their troops. He accepted.
We didn’t want to live close to his mother, so Rafe and Ruby helped find us a nice place with a big fenced yard not far from Magnus’s cabin. We bought it with my modeling money, and he developed his training course out in the forest on his and his mother’s land for working his “boot camp” training program.
Six months later I’m still pinching myself that I get to wak
e up most mornings next to this amazing man and have this incredible life. Sometimes we travel for work, and I don’t ask about where he goes or what he does. When he comes with me, though, we love exploring the cities where I’m doing shows or shoots and I never feel anything but safe and supported with my warrior husband at my side.
I’ve come such a long way from the damaged drug addict I was, all flashy anger on the outside but hurting inside. And this beautiful spring morning, Magnus walks across the grass to join me. Whiskey comes running back, the ball in his mouth.
“Got him tired out yet?”
“He’s a retriever. He’s never tired.”
Magnus throws the ball this time, and it goes much further, the dog a golden streak after it. “I’m going to be at the cabin all this week. Got my trainees survival camping out in the woods. Want to sneak in and rendezvous one of the nights?”
“Can I make it past your mother’s eagle eye?”
“Raven knows better than to say anything. Besides, she’s finally figured out you’re her best bet for grandbabies.” He pats my tummy affectionately.
“Ha. Just because Rafe and Ruby went that way doesn’t mean I’m the parent type.” But even as I say it, I know I’d love being a mother. The thought of a sweet little baby with Magnus’ dark eyes and my curls just melts me.
He shrugs. “We’ve got all the time in the world.” He pulls me into his arms, nuzzles my neck. “Your hair is touching your shoulders now. Those little hairs are growing.”
“I know.”
“Didn’t Melissa want you to keep it short?”
“She doesn’t own me. You do.” I turn and kiss him like I mean it, because my heart is given one hundred percent to Magnus Thorne.
Acknowledgments
Dear Readers:
I think I love writing romance.
First of all, there’s no plotting. As a mystery writer, you have to plot. There are clues, and subplots, and red herrings. It’s a lot of organizing. And then, there’s the research. Half the time I’m writing about something I’ve never heard of before, so there are experts to consult, and Google searches on things like bomb deactivation, arson, and the best blade to dismember a body with.
Not so these stories. I’m a “plotter” going “pantsing” and the freedom and fun are dizzying! I start with the female character. I see her clearly, and her wounds and hopes. I develop her on the page. And then, dear reader, her love appears, and he’s just absolutely right for her. I’m bedazzled by him too. And then complicated stuff begins happening that I never planned or imagined.
It’s kind of like being a magical bartender. I decide on a main liquor, and turn on the blender, and suddenly ingredients start hopping in, and the drink takes on a life of its own as the story emerges. Organic. Emotional. Mystical, almost.
This is how it was with Pearl. She had such a different story from Zoe, from Ruby, and it was totally fun and satisfying to be with her until the happy ending that her wounded heart needed.
Chapter One of Somewhere in California, littlest sister Jade’s story, follows. Happy reading!
With much aloha,
Toby Neal
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Read on for a sample of the next book in the series!
Excerpt Somewhere in California
I can’t grow even another half inch or my life is over. At five foot six, I’m pushing the limits of traditional height for ballet dancers, and standing in front of the judges at their table, my file of history and credits open in front of them, I wish I’d twisted my heavy bun onto the back of my head instead of on top, where it makes me look taller.
I’m dressed in the traditional pale pink of ballet clothing: tights, a leotard, toe shoes, a filmy pale pink skirt, and my own signature touch, a black velvet ribbon tied around my waist.
My waist is tiny. It needs to be. And the black ribbon provides a focal point for the eye when I do my audition.
“Thank you for joining us, Miss Michaels,” one of the judges says. She’s got the slender build and upright posture of a retired pro dancer.
“Jade, please,” I say.
“According to this, Jade, you got started dancing at fourteen. Are you aware that’s late for a professional career?”
“Yes. I grew up in Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands. There was nowhere for instruction where I lived. My family moved to California and that’s when I started dancing.”
“Ah. So tell us what you’re going to be dancing.”
“Just a short piece from the Nutcracker. With adaptations.”
“You are aware this competition is for a television show. Not just classical ballet?” The male judge, a harshly-handsome man crowned with the crest of a green mohawk, jingles an armful of copper bracelets impatiently. I can feel the eye of the TV camera boring into my back, and I ignore the little blinking red light of the camera in front.
“Yes, sir. I said ‘with adaptations,’ didn’t I?” I smile as big and charming as I can. People have told me I ought to smile more, that I’m almost as pretty as my sisters when I smile, but that’s hard to believe.
Still, it seems to help, because the grumpy male judge inclines his head and flicks a finger for the music.
My favorite song, Total Eclipse of the Heart, comes on.
I drop to the ground, folding in tight on myself. I know that song’s a little old now that it’s 1992, but it speaks to me. Speaks to what I long for—a love so big it sweeps me away. In secret, in the studio where I’ve been dancing and giving lessons for the last five years, I’ve choreographed my own routine to it.
As the music builds, I slide my legs out from beneath my tightly-wrapped upper body into full splits, then, pointing my toes in the shoes laced tightly up my legs, using full leg strength I draw my extended legs together, lifting my short upper torso off the ground by main force. I hear a gasp from one of the female judges at this new maneuver, but the music’s changing and now I fling my arms wide and spin, and go into a moonwalk, still up on pointe. From there I segue into the breakdance sequence I taught myself by watching MTV, doing some upper body pop-and-lock, some shuffling with rubber legs, an Egyptian maneuver or two with my rib cage as my ‘heart’ beating in exaggerated twitches beneath my hand, startling another gasp from someone.
But I can’t hope, or think, because next comes the laid-back leap extension, and the pirouette, and the mime-in-the-box followed by the sassy hip shake of my best partnerless cha-cha.
I’m waiting for the buzzer to end my audition. I’ve watched this show in its first season, and auditioners never seem to make it through a full minute of dancing, so I didn’t choreograph more than two minutes.
But the buzzer doesn’t sound, so I dance on, flinging myself into whatever feels right in the moment until finally the music throbs and cries its total eclipse of the heart, and I sink into a deep curtsy, heaving for breath and dripping with sweat.
When I lift back up, the judges are standing.
And applauding.
The eye of the TV camera zooms in on my face, my mouth falling open and tears welling from my eyes, because my heart has just been totally eclipsed by the dance.
“Congratulations,” the mean male judge says, grinning so wide I don’t recognize him. “You’ve got a golden ticket. You’re going to LA!”
Suddenly my legs won’t hold me up anymore. I sink to the ground in a weepy puddle.
Someone comes to help me. He lifts me up underneath the arm, helping me out of the audition area, settling me onto a hard plastic chair.
“Here,” he says. “Jade Star Michaels.” He hands me something soft, an
d I mop my streaming face and blow my nose. “That was amazing.”
“Thanks,” I say, muffled in the material. “What is this?” I feel real cloth, silky and expensive, under my hands.
“Handkerchief. You can give it back another day.”
I look up into the face that belongs to such a kind voice. Oh, he’s handsome, with short dark blond hair, golden hazel eyes, a full but firm mouth, a square chin.
“How did you know my name?”
He holds up a clipboard. “I’m of the producers. My name’s Brandon Forbes.” He seems to be looking at me intently. “And I knew your sister.”
“Which one?” I ask, honking my nose again. I spot his initials woven into the corner of the kerchief. “I have two.” Neither of them, nor Mom, know I’m here in San Francisco at this audition.
“Pearl. She and I dated at one time. Did she ever mention me?”
“No, I’m sorry. We’re not close,” I said.
Brandon’s mouth tightens with a twist that looks to me like old pain. “Well. It was a long time ago.”
“Yeah. She’s married now.” I don’t want to talk about my supermodel sister. I stand up. “Thanks for the help. That was...overwhelming. I didn’t expect to have to dance the whole song.”
“That’s never happened before,” Brandon says, his golden eyes bright. He seems to be really seeing me for the first time. “You were really something out there. How old are you?”
“Nineteen. And thanks.” I want to hand the kerchief back to him, but it’s gross. I’m going to have to wash it before I return it. “What happens now?”
“Here’s your golden ticket.” He hands me a small packet. It’s topped by a gold foil ticket that reads, “You’re invited to the next level of competition in Los Angeles!” Clipped on the back are vouchers for United Airlines, a couple of taxi rides, and a Holiday Inn. “Stick around. Watch the rest of the auditions. And be at Universal Studios in Los Angeles next Tuesday.”