by Marie Force
“The message,” he said when he came up for air many minutes later, “is you’re mine. Mine, mine, mine. I don’t want him anywhere near you.”
“You’re being somewhat ridiculous. You know that, don’t you?
“I don’t care. Tell me you won’t go out with him.”
“I won’t go out on a date with him. I will have dinner with him—as a friend.”
“Grace…” He dropped his head to her shoulder. “You can’t encourage him! He isn’t capable of telling the difference!”
“I’ll tell him I’m involved with someone.”
Evan lifted his head to meet her gaze. “Really? Will you tell him who?”
As if the whole island didn’t already know! Nodding, she pushed her lips together to suppress the laughter that she knew he wouldn’t appreciate just then.
“Are you trying not to laugh at me?”
Tears filled her eyes as she shook her head.
“You’re really quite awful.”
“I tried to warn you about that the night we met.”
“It’s a wonder I love you this much when you’re so mean to me.”
She went up on tiptoes to kiss him. “Say it again.”
“Say what?”
“You know what.”
“I love you?”
Nodding, she rested her forehead against his chest. “Does it feel weird to say that?”
“Not to you.” He reached for the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head. “I’ve been dreaming about touching you, holding you, loving you.”
“I have, too.” She unbuttoned his shorts and pushed them and his boxers down over his hips, freeing his erection. As she touched and stroked him, Grace was filled with relief to be back with him again. “I have a surprise for you.”
“What’s that?” he asked as he released her breasts from the sheer bra she’d worn with him in mind.
“I saw my doctor about birth control right after I got home.”
Raising his head, he stared into her eyes. “And?”
“It’s already effective, so no more condoms. If you’re okay with that.”
“If I’m okay with that?” His eyes nearly bugged out of his head, and his voice was oddly high-pitched and strained. “What do you think?”
Grace smiled up at him and helped him out of his T-shirt as he pushed and pulled at her shorts and panties.
“Just for the record,” he said, “I’m totally safe. I had a physical a couple of months ago.”
“Good to know.”
They slid into her new bed together, arms and legs intertwined.
“You feel so good,” he whispered as he sent his hand down her back to squeeze her bottom.
She ran her fingers over soft chest hair and hard belly. His cock surged against her hip, making its presence known.
“I want to touch you and kiss you everywhere,” he said gruffly, “but right now, I just… I need…”
Since she needed the same thing, she shifted onto her back and reached out to him. He came into her embrace and took her mouth in a series of deep, searching kisses as he pressed his cock against her, letting her know what he needed.
Grace cradled his hips between her legs, needing him just as fiercely. “Evan… Now. Hurry.”
He grasped his cock, positioned himself and slid into her, his breath catching. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “That’s unbelievable. Grace, God.”
She tried to breathe past the lump that settled in her throat at the sheer relief of being back in his arms. “Have you done it without a condom before?”
“No,” he gasped. “Never. It’s amazing.” He moved slowly, as if trying to prolong the exquisite torture. Suddenly, he pulled out of her.
“What is it?”
“We never got to do it this way.” He flopped onto his back, reached for her and arranged her on top of him.
Grace sucked in a sharp, deep breath as she took him in.
“Roll your hips,” he said, nearly levitating off the bed when she did it. “Grace…” His jaw pulsed with tension, and his fingers tightened on her hips as she settled into a rhythm that he disrupted when his fingers delved into the place where they were joined to coax her.
With the tension growing to nearly unendurable levels, she looked down to find him gazing up at her with so much love and affection that her heart filled to overflowing.
“I love you,” she said, leaning down to kiss him.
“I love you, too.” He took her hands and held on tight as he surged into her, crying out just as she reached her own peak.
As she came down from the unimaginable high, he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her forehead. Under her ear, his heart pounded out a steady beat.
“Everything is different now that I know you love me,” he said.
“For me, too.”
“I’ve never felt anything like this, Grace.”
“I never imagined there was anything like this. Not for me anyway.”
“It’s all your fault, you know.”
“I know, I know,” she said, endlessly amused by him.
“So you won’t go out with Seamus, right?”
Laughing, Grace smacked his arm. “How can I go out with anyone else when I’m madly in love with you?”
“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” His indignant huff nearly set her off into a fit of laughter from which she might never recover.
She had a feeling that was going to be a regular problem where he was concerned. “Because it’s so much fun to torture you.”
Growling, he rolled them over so he was on top and looked down at her. “I never wanted any of this, and now I can’t imagine a future that doesn’t include you. How did you do that to me?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said with a smug grin.
“It might take fifty or sixty years to figure it out.”
She hugged him tightly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
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Turn the page for a sneak peek at Season for Love, coming in the Summer of 2012!
Season for Love Excerpt
Season for Love
The McCarthys of Gansett Island, Book 6
By: Marie Force
Owen Lawry stood on the porch of the Sand & Surf Hotel to watch the last ferry of the day leave South Harbor for the mainland. He and his van were supposed to have been on that boat. With his obligations on Gansett Island over for the season, he’d planned to be heading for a two-month gig in Boston, the same autumn engagement he’d had the last five years. It paid well, and after all this time, the club owners were friends.
His gaze was riveted to the ferry as it steamed past the breakwater into open ocean, where it dipped and rolled in the October surf. As the sun set on Columbus Day, officially ending another summer season on Gansett, Owen wondered what the hell he was still doing here when he was supposed to be on that boat, leaving for good-paying work on the mainland.
“You know why you’re still here,” he muttered, thinking of the blonde beauty who’d spent the last month winding him up in knots. He was at the point where he wondered if a man could actually die from pent-up desire.
It might’ve been better for both of them if he’d left as
scheduled, if he’d taken the gig in Boston and gone about his carefree existence with the same lack of responsibility that had marked his entire adult life.
What was he doing here pining after a woman who was still married to someone else and carrying her estranged husband’s child? What was he doing spending every waking moment with a woman who’d made it clear she was unavailable for all the things he suddenly wanted for the first time in his thirty-three years? He was driving himself slowly mad. That was the only thing he knew for certain.
Before he met Laura McCarthy, he was perfectly satisfied with his life. He spent summers playing his guitar and singing on the island—the closest thing to a real home he’d ever had—worked autumns in Boston and winters in Stowe, Vermont, playing to the ski crowd. In the spring, he headed for a few months off in the Bahamas. It was a good life, a satisfying life. Watching the last ferry of the day fade into the twilight, Owen had the uneasy sensation that he was also watching that satisfying life slip through his fingers.
He usually felt sorry for guys who allowed themselves to be led around by a woman. His best friends, Mac, Grant and Evan McCarthy, Joe Cantrell and Luke Harris, had fallen like dominoes lately, one after the other finding the women they were meant to be with. Only Adam McCarthy remained untethered and seemed happy that way.
Owen, on the other hand, was stuck in purgatory, caught between the single life he’d embraced with passionate dedication and the committed life he never imagined for himself. He wasn’t with Laura, per se. He just spent all his free time with her. Weeks ago, they’d shared a couple of chaste kisses that had been hotter than the most passionate kisses he’d experienced with other women.
Since then, there’d been nothing but an occasional hand to his arm or a brief hug here or there. He’d also continued to collect her off the bathroom floor each day until the relentless morning sickness suddenly let up as she entered her fifth month of pregnancy.
As he leaned against the railing he’d recently replaced on the hotel’s front porch, Owen realized he actually missed that time with her in the mornings when she’d been so sick and he’d been there to prop her up. “You’re such a fool,” he said to the gathering darkness.
The autumn days were shorter, the nights longer and the chilly air a harbinger of things to come. Shivering in the breeze, Owen questioned his decision to stay with Laura this winter for the millionth time. Did she even want him here? Did she want company, or did she want him? If she wanted him, she was doing a hell of a job hiding it. For a while there, he’d thought they were at the start of something that could’ve been significant for both of them. Now he wasn’t so sure.
She treated him like a platonic buddy when all he did was fantasize about getting her naked and into his bed. Was he sick to be having such fantasies about a woman who was pregnant with another man’s child? Probably. But as she rounded and swelled and glowed, he only wanted her more. At times, he even let himself pretend they were married and the baby was his.
“You’re one sick son of a bitch,” he said to the breeze. Sick or not, he wanted her with a fierceness that was becoming harder and harder to hide from her. One of these days, he was going to grab her and pin her against a wall and show her exactly—
“Owen?”
He sucked in a sharp, deep breath, ashamed to have been caught having such uncivilized thoughts about a woman he truly cared for. Making an attempt to calm himself, he turned to her. “Yeah?”
“Aren’t you cold out there?”
Actually, he was on fire thinking about her, not that he could confess such a thing to her. “Not really. It’s nice.”
Laura tugged the zip-up sweatshirt of his that she’d “borrowed” around herself and joined him on the porch. Even though the oversized jacket swallowed her up, she was still his regal princess. She snuggled into his side, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to slip his arm around her.
Resting her head on his chest, she let out a contented sigh. “It’s so pretty this time of day.”
His throat tightened with emotion, and his entire body ached from wanting her. “Sure is.”
“It’s pretty every time of day. I never get tired of our spectacular view,” she said as a shiver traveled through her.
“You shouldn’t get too cold.”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s a good night for a fire.” Now where did that come from? He’d no sooner said the words that he wanted to take them back.
“Oh, can we? I’d love that!”
Owen wanted to moan as he imagined how gorgeous she’d look in the firelight. With her around to look at all day, every day, he never ran out of ways to torture himself. “Sure we can. Mac inspected the chimney last week and declared us good to go.” Owen had collected a ton of driftwood off the beach that had been drying on the porch for weeks.
“I got marshmallows at the store. We can have a campout.”
Perfect, Owen thought. More torture. Her childlike glee at the simple things in life was one of the qualities he liked best about her and part of what made him want her with a burning need unlike anything he’d ever experienced.
“Will you play for me, too? You know I love listening to you.”
Here, wrapped around him, was everything he’d never known he wanted. And wasn’t it ironic that he couldn’t have her. He would’ve laughed at the lunacy of the situation if his growing ache for her hadn’t been so damned painful. “Absolutely,” he managed to say. “Let’s go in before you catch a cold.”
Was she reluctant to step out of his embrace, or was that just wishful thinking on his part? As he followed her inside, he took a last look at the horizon where the ferry was nearly out of sight and hoped he hadn’t made a huge mistake by letting it leave without him.
Laura’s alarm dragged her out of a deep sleep the next morning. Ever since she’d moved to the island right after Labor Day to manage the Sand & Surf Hotel, she’d been sleeping well again. That was a welcome relief following months of sleepless nights.
Discovering that her new husband hadn’t quit dating after their May wedding had shocked the life out of her—almost as much as discovering she’d been married just long enough to get pregnant. Months of restless nights, mounting anxiety and relentless morning sickness had taken a toll. By the time she arrived to start her new job, she’d been a wreck.
A month later, she was restored, energized, loving her new job and falling more into something with her sexy housemate with each passing day. She thought about the evening they’d spent together in front of the fireplace, roasting marshmallows and singing silly songs and laughing so hard she’d had tears rolling down her face at one point.
What would she have done without his steady presence to get her through these last few weeks? His care and concern had been a balm on the open wound her husband Justin had inflicted on her heart. And while she had no doubt Owen wanted more than the easy friendship they’d nurtured since they met over the summer, she didn’t feel comfortable pursuing a relationship with him when they were on such vastly different paths. Not to mention, she was still technically married, which wasn’t likely to change any time soon with Justin refusing to grant her a divorce.
With her baby due in February, her life would be all about responsibility for the next eighteen years. Owen’s life was all about transience. He loved his vagabond existence. He was proud of the fact that everything he owned fit into the back of his ancient VW van. Other than the Sand & Surf, which his grandparents had owned and run for more than fifty years before their retirement, he had no permanent address and liked it that way.
His world simply didn’t fit with hers, even if she liked him more than she’d ever liked any guy—including the one she married. Despite their significantly different philosophies on life, the chemistry between her and Owen was hard to ignore. She wasn’t immune to the heated looks he sent her way or the overwhelming need to touch him that was becoming almost impossible to resist.
Standing with him on the
porch last night, looking out over the ocean as the sun set, had been a moment of perfect harmony. They had a lot of those moments. Whether it was picking out paint colors for the hotel or discussing furniture options or reviewing advertising strategies, they agreed on most things. And when they disagreed, he usually said something to make her laugh, and she’d forget why she didn’t agree with him.
She turned on her side to look out on the glorious view that was now a part of her everyday life. She’d loved the old Victorian hotel since she visited the island as a young girl after her mother died. Then it had reminded her of an oversized dollhouse. Those summers with her Uncle Big Mac and Aunt Linda had been the best of her life. They—and their island—had saved her from overwhelming grief that had threatened to consume her. The island had saved her from the same fate earlier this year when she’d come for her cousin Janey’s wedding and discovered a whole new life, thanks in large part to Owen.
With Justin fighting the divorce and still unaware he was soon to be a father, Laura should be spectacularly unhappy. As she got out of bed and dragged herself into the shower, she couldn’t deny that the only reason she wasn’t spectacularly unhappy was because she got to be with Owen every day.
She thought about that fact of her new life as she dried her hair and got dressed to meet her Aunt Linda for breakfast at the South Harbor Diner. Maybe it was time she and Owen had a heart-to-heart about what was really going on between them. But how exactly did one broach such a subject? Did she say, “Listen, I know you want me, and you know I want you, but that’s where our similarities begin and end. We can’t build a relationship based on chemistry alone.” Could they?
That question stayed with her as she went downstairs where Owen was sanding the hardwood floors in the lobby. At some point over the last few weeks, her project of renovating the old hotel had become their project, which was fine with her. Everything was more fun with him around to share it with, and besides, his grandparents owned the place, so it seemed fitting to have him involved in the decisions.