The first surfing trip that he’d done in Westport as a trial run with Lance, Chris, and, surprisingly, Daniel Carter had completed the transformation. It had happened right after the end of the semester, so she’d gone on the trip too, along with Abby, Megan, and Elena. Hannah had been worried about it being awkward having Daniel with them, but he’d been just as cool about everything on the trip as he had when she’d explained that she couldn’t date him because she was still in love with Matt that night at Megan’s show. And Daniel and Elena seemed to spend a lot of time together. When she’d asked Elena about it, she’d brushed it aside, saying that it was impossible for them not to pair off together since everyone else was a couple. But her protests seemed a little more emphatic than necessary.
After drinks with her coworkers, she and Matt headed back to the house he still shared with Chris and Megan. They’d all been gone off and on since Chris had graduated and gotten drafted by the Washington Mountain Lions. Megan and Chris had taken a trip to celebrate, just the two of them, then they’d all been in Westport, and everyone had started to look for new places to live. Chris needed a place in Seattle soon, since preseason training for the rookies started in July, and they were also looking for a place for Megan to live for the next year.
“What do you think about you and Elena moving into the house with me?”
Hannah turned to look at Matt, a little startled by the question. He’d been quiet since they’d gotten in the car after leaving the restaurant, and it struck her as funny that his thoughts had been so closely aligned with hers.
“You want Elena and me to move in with you?”
He shrugged, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye and navigating a turn before answering. “You and I could take the master bedroom once Chris and Megan move out next month, and Elena could have our room. It’s a good house, and my name’s already primary on the lease, so it would be easy to just switch Chris and Megan off for you and Elena when we renew it.”
She was silent for a moment. “I thought you couldn’t wait to move out on your own.”
He shrugged again. “That was before.”
A smile tugged at her lips, but she suppressed it, curious to see what else he would say. “Before what?”
He glanced at her again, a smirk on his lips, like he knew what she was doing. “Before you. Before I decided to go crazy and start my own company—and I’m still scared shitless that it’ll fail and I’ll be left with nothing, by the way.” He paused, but she didn’t fill the silence. “So, what do you think? Do you want to talk it over with Elena?”
She waited, staring at him while he drove, making the last turn onto his street, which might soon be their street, and pulled into the driveway. He parked his truck, killed the engine, and turned to look at her, his face both wary and hopeful.
“Matt. Do you realize that you haven’t actually asked me to move in with you? Like, I mean, yeah, you kinda just did. But that was all about practicality and stuff and you asked my roommate and I to move in with you, assuming I’d just share your bedroom. What if I want my own room?”
He opened his mouth, his eyes wide and horrified. “What? But you already spend almost every ni—”
She shook her head, cutting him off. “It doesn’t matter, Matt. No girl wants her boyfriend to ask her to move in like that and just assume everything. Ask me properly and you might get a better answer.”
At least he had the grace to look a little sheepish. He took a deep breath and reached for her hand, looking into her eyes, an earnest expression on his face. “Hannah. I love you. Can we find a place to live together? I don’t care if it’s here,” he gestured toward the house, “or somewhere else. I want you in my bed every night, and when I’m away on a trip, I want to know that you’ll be there when I come home. I hate the nights when you stay at your apartment because you have to get up early or you feel guilty leaving Elena alone all the time—which I don’t think she minds all that much, by the way. Say you’ll move in with me, and we’ll figure out the other details later.”
She fought it for as long as she could to make him squirm a little longer, but her grin spread across her face. “Of course I want to live with you. Let’s figure out where to live together.”
He growled at her smile, pulling her close and kissing her. “That’s not nice, Hannah.”
She laughed. “Oh, come on. You love it when I bust your balls like that.” She kissed him and pulled back, pitching her voice low. “Besides, it always gives you an excuse to spank me afterward, and we both know that’s your favorite thing.”
His eyes flashed, his pupils dilating with arousal, and his eyebrows went up. “Oh, it’s my favorite thing, is it?”
She nodded, shivering at the rasp of his words in her ear.
“From the way your body reacts, I’m pretty sure it’s your favorite thing, too.”
She didn’t deny it, just kissed him back. His plan did sound like a good one, her and Elena moving in with him here. They’d even have an extra room to make into an office for Matt, since she and Matt would share a room. She was pretty sure Elena would say yes since rent would be cheaper than what they paid at their apartment.
But she would talk to her about that later, finish making plans afterward, because right now, Matt was dragging her out of the pickup and up the steps into the house where she knew he’d have his way with her in the best way possible. And she couldn’t be happier.
* * *
Box set 2: The series continues in the Players of Marycliff University Box Set 2!
Unsaid Things: Lance and Abby face new challenges as their relationship grows.
Coping Skills: Can Daniel’s patience and love heal Elena’s broken heart?
False Assumptions: Layla’s avoided Evan, and guys like him, for years. But what if she’s got him all wrong?
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Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for reading the first half of this series!
I hope you’ve fallen in love with these characters as much as I have. Getting to see them, even if it’s just little cameos, again and again throughout the series is so enjoyable for me. The good news is that it’s not over yet! There are four more books to go, and you can get them all in one volume if you click here.
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Thanks again for reading!
Until next time,
Jerica MacMillan
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Jerica MacMillan has been reading romance since she stumbled into the paperback section of the library as a middle schooler. And it's been an ongoing love affair ever since!
You can frequently find her sipping coffee out of snarky mugs while dreaming up stories and trying to bring them to life on the page. Join her Book Club at www.jericamacmillan.com/book
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Players of Marycliff University
Summer Fling
Close Quarters
Always You
Unsaid Things
Coping Skills
False Assumptions
A Very Marycliff Christmas
Songs and Sonatas Series
Double Exposition
Development
Recapitulation
Broken Chords
Counterpoint and Harmony
Overtones
Reverb
The Arrangement
Cataclysm
Anything You Need
Shouldn’t Want You
Everything I Want
Just For Now
Anyone But You
Keep reading for a sneak peek of Unsaid Things!
Chapter One
Bras, check. Underwear, check. Jeans and T-shirts for six days, check, plus a couple of nice outfits just in case. Okay. Big toiletries in the suitcase, deodorant, toothbrush, travel toothpaste, and birth control pills in my carry-on.
“You ready, Abby?” Lance’s voice carried from the living room where he was packing up their electronics and chargers.
“Yeah! Be right there!” Abby zipped her suitcase closed, pulled it off the bed, and locked the handle in place to roll it out to the living room. Lance appeared in the doorway, a smile on his stubble-roughened face despite his tired eyes. Four a.m. was way too early to wake up, and Abby knew she looked just as sleep deprived.
He stepped into the room and dropped a quick kiss on her lips before snagging her suitcase from her hand. “Let me get that for you.”
Following him into the living room, she felt the need to clarify one more time. “I can get my own suitcase, Lance. It rolls. It’s not that hard.”
He didn’t bother to answer except to laugh and pull on his favorite Dallas Cowboys hat, the worn and dingy fabric covering his dark brown hair. When he looked at her, his chocolate brown eyes held warmth and affection. “You say that every time I do something for you. And my answer is still the same. I know you can. I want to anyway.” Pocketing his keys, he tugged the backpack strap off her shoulder, dropping it on the floor, and wrapped his arms around her. “I like doing things for you, Abby. That hasn’t changed in the last six months, and it isn’t going to. You might as well get used to it.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but he covered it with his own, kissing her deeply, his favorite way to forestall anything he didn’t want to hear her say. When he pulled back, she narrowed her eyes at him. He gave her a big grin and took the first suitcase out to the car. She let him load the car without protest, instead helping by putting the next suitcase and his backpack by the door, not wanting to start their trip with a stupid argument that she wouldn’t win, ending with them both pissy the whole way to Texas.
And she definitely didn’t want to meet his family for the first time right after having a stupid fight with him.
Lance made the small concession of letting her carry her own backpack. She knew he saw it as a concession from the slight tightening of his mouth when he looked over his shoulder at her following him to the car. But he let it go, taking her backpack to put in the trunk while she climbed into the running car, glad to get out of the cold December air. Lance had already scraped most of the frost off the car windows when he brought out the first suitcase, and the defrost blew full blast, warming up the car and melting the remnants left at the edges.
A gust of cold air followed Lance into the car, and Abby shivered. They both wore sweatshirts, not wanting to deal with heavy coats on the plane since they wouldn’t need them in Denton. There’d be no white Christmas for them this year. The forecast predicted highs in the fifties and sixties the whole time they’d be there. She had a couple of other sweaters in her suitcase, but she didn’t need her warm coat with those temperatures. But getting to and from the airport in Spokane before dawn this time of year meant shivering until the car warmed up all the way.
Lance backed out of the parking spot. “Let’s get coffee on the way. I don’t want to wait until we get through security. Hell, the way I’m feeling, I might need more by then.”
“Sounds perfect.”
Abby rubbed her arms as they drove, apprehension and excitement flowing through her veins, the sleep deprivation amplifying her feelings. She’d talked to Lance’s mom, Elizabeth, a few times during their weekly phone conversations, and she seemed cool. Excited that they were coming for Christmas. Lance’s sister Gabby said she couldn’t wait for them to get there.
Abby envied their relationship. She hadn’t heard from her own brother, Aaron, in over a year. She had no idea where he was or what he’d been doing in that time. As far as she knew, her mom hadn’t heard anything from him earlier. They never talked about him. So to witness how well Lance got along with his mom and sisters, though he didn’t talk to his older sister Marissa as much as Gabby, made Abby’s heart ache with longing.
She would never have that kind of relationship with her family—her mom more of a dependent than a parent, her brother incommunicado, and her sperm donor long gone. She used to wish that her dad would contact her, send her a letter, call her on the phone, or better yet, come back. But he never had. And over the years she stopped thinking of him as her dad, instead thinking of him just as a biological contributor to her existence. He’d left before she turned three, and she had no memory of him except for some faded photos her mom still kept around for some reason. Abby used to get them out and look at them when she was a little kid, when she still hoped he’d come back. She wanted to be able to recognize him when he did. But that hope had faded somewhere between her eighth or ninth birthday, when Aaron had grown tired of her talking about their dad and told her that he would never come back, so she should just forget about him. Aaron had never lied to her, so she believed him. She stopped talking about their dad, stopped looking at his pictures, and soon stopped thinking about him except for when she had to answer questions about her parents.
Lance pulled up to their favorite coffee stand, no line this early in the morning. He glanced at her as he rolled down the window, letting in more frigid air. “Your usual?”
She nodded. “Make it a large.”
He grinned, turning to the barista who seemed far too upbeat for this godawful time of day, and gave him their order. Lance passed Abby her coffee, setting his own in the cupholder next to him, and pulled back onto the road, heading for the airport. “You’re quiet this morning.”
“I’m just tired.” She took a sip of her coffee, closing her eyes as the rich mixture of caramel and espresso washed over her tongue. Mmm.
“Keep making noises like that, Abby, and we might miss our flight.”
She opened her eyes, grinning at Lance with his heated brown eyes and a naughty smirk pulling at his lips. “I think your mom would kill you if that happened.”
He grunted, his eyes going back to the road, and shifted in his seat. “No more moaning about your coffee. It makes me jealous.”
She laughed, and he smiled.
“Good. Now tell me what’s going through your head.”
She smiled to herself and shook her head once. Lance knew her too well, seeing through her flimsy excuse. “Well, I am tired. But I’m nervous too. I’ve never done the whole meet-the-family thing before, and we’re going halfway across the country to do it. What if your parents hate me?”
His hand fell to her knee, squeezing and stroking, the gesture every bit as comforting as he meant it to be. “They’ll love you, Abby. You have nothing to worry about.”
She shrugged. “So you say. It doesn’t make me less nervous though.”
He squeezed her knee again before returning his hand to the steering wheel, needing more control on the icy roads. “It’ll be okay.”
She knew he wanted to be reassuring, and she appreciated it, but it didn’t do anything to help the nervous churning in her belly. And that made her not want her coffee, which was a treat s
he didn’t splurge on often, so she pushed aside thoughts of meeting Lance’s family and decided to focus on something more exciting. “So, can I guess what you got me for Christmas?”
Lance’s low chuckle warmed her, and did more to dispel her nerves than any reassurance he could offer. “Sweetheart, I’m not going to give it away. Don’t you want to be surprised?”
“Of course. But I also like to guess. It’s a win for me either way. If I guess right, then I get to be right. If I’m wrong, then I’m surprised.” She pursed her lips and tapped one finger against them. “Hmm. Is it bigger than a book?”
Lance laughed again, shaking his head. “Books come in a lot of sizes. What kind of book are we talking here? A large textbook? Mass market paperback? Standard hardcover?”
Abby stuck out her tongue at him, even though he wouldn’t be able to see it driving in the dark. “Fine. I’ll go with standard hardcover. Is it bigger than a standard hardcover book?”
He shook his head again. “I’m not telling you anything, Abby.”
The blinker click-click-clicked, and they pulled off the freeway, surprising Abby at how fast their drive to the airport had gone by. She gulped the rest of her coffee, not wanting to deal with it in the shuttle from the long term parking lot. “Well, at least tell me it’s not something crazy expensive.”
Players of Marycliff University Box Set, Books 1–3 Page 69