by Noelle Adams
He smiled against her lips. “All for us.”
She wrapped one arm around him and held him down to deepen the kiss. And as they kissed, she freed his erection from his underwear with the other hand. He fumbled to line himself up at her entrance, and she wrapped her legs around him as he sank inside her.
She was so hot and wet and tight without the condom. She was so everything. All he’d ever dreamed of. His body was moving of its own accord, thrusting, rocking, moving with hers, taking what he needed.
What both of them needed.
She was with him all the way, gasping and making pretty little grunts as things started to feel good for her. He could feel the tension building in her body, even as it was building in his. He moved harder, more urgently, starting to grunt loudly as the pleasure built up.
“Phil,” she gasped. “Phil, I’m gonna come again.”
“Yes. Yes, baby. Oh yes.” He was fucking her so hard now the bed was shaking, her soft body was shaking, everything was shaking. He could feel her tightening around him.
Then she was crying out as an orgasm shuddered through her, and Phil’s vision whited out with pleasure as the last thread of his control finally snapped.
He roared as he came, pushing into her clumsily, feeling the release well up and burst out as he came inside her.
He was hot and exhausted and completely sated as he collapsed on top of her when he’d given her everything he had. She stroked his hair and his back. Her legs were still wrapped around him. His whole body was softening.
He loved her, and she was his.
“I love you, Phil,” she said hoarsely against his ear.
“I love you too, baby. So much.”
“So much.”
“I’ve loved you since you were sixteen years old.”
“Not that long.”
“Yes, that long. You’re the only woman I ever loved. And I think I loved you all the time we were apart. I just was afraid to let myself. But I’m not afraid now.”
“I’m not afraid either. I’m going to start taking what I want, and the first thing I want is you.”
“Then you have me.” He made himself roll off her since he knew he’d start getting heavy. But he kept his head turned to meet her eyes. “For as long as you want me, you have me.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m going to want you forever.”
“Forever sounds about right to me.”
THEY WENT TO SLEEP shortly afterward, and Phil woke up the next morning, happier than he could ever remember being.
They drank coffee and then made love again, and then Rebecca went with him to the pier at seven to fish.
She didn’t fish the whole time. She walked around after a while and bought them a couple of donuts. But she was clearly serious about learning to fish—more serious than she’d been before.
And it meant something to Phil.
It meant she cared about what was important to him.
And so it was right and fitting and perfectly symbolic when, at 9:43 that morning, she caught her first fish.
They took a picture and then let it go, and Rebecca was beaming with excitement the whole time.
Phil might have been beaming a little bit too.
Epilogue
FOUR MONTHS LATER, it was one week before Christmas, and Phil and Rebecca were back at Holiday Acres.
Rebecca had been in cooking school for two months, and she had two more months to go after Christmas, so they hadn’t been able to help out at Holiday Acres this year as much as she would have wanted to. But everyone insisted that cooking school was more important, and she was having such a good time she had to agree.
But she and Phil were going to spend the next two weeks at home, and she was incredibly happy about that.
She’d missed her sisters and Tommy. And the staff. And even Russ and his acerbic attitude.
Plus it was Christmas, and that always made her happy.
At the moment, the family was gathered in their private living room in the upper floor of the farmhouse. There was a fire blazing in the fireplace, and they were eating snacks she’d made and drinking hot cider and spiced wine. Russ was here, and even Scott had deigned to come after Phil had asked him four different times. Olivia wasn’t happy about Scott’s presence. She kept shooting him cool, resentful looks which Scott kept smugly ignoring. But otherwise everyone was happy and in a festive mood.
Things were better, Rebecca realized as she looked around the room from her seat near the fire. It felt like family. Not like the broken remnants that had been left of their families seven years ago.
It was proof that healing was possible. Hard and long and sometimes wrenching—but possible.
Phil had been talking to his brother across the room, but now he came over and scooted her over so he could fit in the seat beside her. It was snug and overly warm, but she had no complaints in the world.
She leaned against his familiar body. “Is Scott doing okay?”
“He’s okay, I think. I think it actually helps that Olivia doesn’t like him. It gives him something to think about rather than feeling uncomfortable being here.” Phil had wrapped an arm around her, and he squeezed her with it as he nestled against him.
“Good. I hope he hangs out with us a little more. I don’t like us holding on to all that resentment.”
“I don’t like it either. I still can’t get Kent out of his cabin, but I’ll keep trying.”
Rebecca exhaled and relaxed against him. She felt so good, so warm, so incredibly pleased with the world. It was so hard to remember who she’d been six months ago.
They sat together for a few minutes, looking around at their families. Then Phil cleared his throat and said, “I have something for you.”
She glanced up at his face. “What do you have?”
His expression was oddly stiff as he stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out of a wad of blue fabric. “I was going to wait until Christmas, but I can’t wait anymore. I’ve always thought that hoping for something good would mean I’d end up getting crushed, but I don’t think that anymore. I want something good, and I don’t want to wait for it.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but she recognized the fabric in his hand. “Hey, that’s my scarf. I wondered what had happened to it.”
“I kept it.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. But I’m giving it back now.”
She was bewildered by the urgency in his expression, but she accepted the scarf he handed her. It was soft and thin, and through the fabric she felt that there was something inside the folds.
She opened it to discover a pretty ring in the fabric. A gold band. An emerald-cut diamond solitaire.
She stiffened dramatically, her breath caught in her throat.
“I was going to wait until Christmas,” Phil said again. “But I can’t wait anymore.”
She kept staring down at the ring.
“Rebecca,” he murmured. “Will you marry me?”
Her eyes blurred over. Her heart was so big it constricted her chest. She opened her mouth to respond but couldn’t say anything.
“Is that a yes?” he prompted, his expression flickering slightly.
“Yes!” she burst out, far too loudly for a crowded room. “Yes!”
She clenched her fist around the ring and scarf and threw her arms around him.
The others in the room heard her answer, and it didn’t take them long to figure out what had just happened in the chair by the fire. So the private moment wasn’t exactly private.
But Rebecca and Phil were too happy to care.
IF YOU ENJOYED Stranded on the Beach, be sure to check out the rest of the Holiday Acres series, which will be coming out later this year. An excerpt from Stranded in the Snow, the second story, can be found on the following pages.
Stranded on the Beach (Book 1 about Rebecca and Phil)
Stranded in the Snow (Book 2 about Olivia and Scott)
Stranded in the Woods (Book
3 about Penny and Kent)
Stranded for Christmas (Book 4 about Laura and Russ)
Excerpt from Stranded in the Snow
AS SOON AS SCOTT GOT behind the wheel of his SUV, he started to worry.
The snow was still coming down hard. Harder than he’d realized. The roads were going to be bad, and people in this area weren’t prepared for snow like this.
“Maybe we should wait,” he said when Olivia settled herself in the passenger seat. “It looks pretty bad out here.”
She shot him an impatient look, but he was used to that and knew it wasn’t prompted by what he’d said. “You think so?”
“I don’t know. Look at the roads. What do you think?”
“I think it’s going to get worse if we wait. You want to spend the night here tonight?”
Scott always tried to keep his mind and body under control when it came to Olivia, but he was hit with a visual of himself in bed with Olivia—her lush, naked body beneath his, her long legs wrapped around him, her face twisting in pleasure.
The visual wasn’t good for his state of mind. He tightened his hands on the steering wheel as his body reacted.
“I promise the floor of the barn isn’t all that comfortable,” Olivia added tartly. “But if you want to stay, you’re welcome.”
He took a deep breath and controlled himself. “All right. Let’s do this then.”
The parking lot was covered with snow, but it had been driven on and was mostly slush. And the private road that ran from the buildings and through the tree farm was straight and perfectly flat so he had no trouble driving it, despite the amount of snow piling up.
“I thought this snow was supposed to be only a few inches,” Olivia said after a minute. She was sitting very stiffly in the passenger seat, and Scott didn’t know if it was because she was nervous about the snow or because she disliked him so much. “This is way more than that.”
“And you believed the weather forecast?” He didn’t actually feel like banter at the moment since he was focused on the snow-covered road, but Olivia would expect it from him, so he tried.
“Not always.” She obviously wasn’t in a particularly argumentative mood right now either. Her tone was subdued. A bit tense. “But it seems like they should have known a snow like this was coming. It would have been nice to be prepared.”
“Yeah. I’ll only be a few minutes in the cottage. Then I’ll get you back.”
“You might be sleeping on the floor of the barn after all if the snow keeps up like this.”
Scott should have disliked that idea, but he didn’t.
Anything that kept him in the vicinity of Olivia excited him.
It always had. Ever since he’d been a shy, skinny fifteen-year-old with no social skills, and she’d been the prettiest, most popular girl in his class.
He’d never been foolish enough to hope in that direction, however. Not back then and not today.
He might believe Olivia was the best thing God had ever created, but she’d never believe the same about him.
When he realized she was still waiting for a response to her comment, he said, “I’ve slept in worse places.”
“I’ll bet you’ve slept in all kinds of places.”
He slanted her a quick look and saw a faint scowl on her face. “You interested in all the places I’ve slept in?”
“No. Definitely not. I’m sure I don’t have room in my mind for the enormous number of beds that would entail.”
Scott chuckled at that, although his eyes were once again focused on the road in front of him. “I’m not sure it’s as many as you think.”
STRANDED IN THE SNOW will be initially published as part of the Snowed-In for Christmas anthology along with novellas by Samantha Chase and Zoe York. You can find more information here.
About Noelle Adams
NOELLE HANDWROTE HER first romance novel in a spiral-bound notebook when she was twelve, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. She has lived in eight different states and currently resides in Virginia, where she writes full time, reads any book she can get her hands on, and offers tribute to a very spoiled cocker spaniel.
She loves travel, art, history, and ice cream. After spending far too many years of her life in graduate school, she has decided to reorient her priorities and focus on writing contemporary romances. For more information, please check out her website: noelle-adams.com.
You can find a printable version of a complete book list for Noelle Adams here.