Beach Reads Boxed Set

by Marie Force

  She studied the faded picture for a long time that night. “I think I’m ready to find out if you meant it, Michael. I miss you so much that sometimes I worry I’ll go crazy if I don’t see you soon. For what it’s worth, I like myself a whole lot better than I did a year ago, so I hope you’ll forgive me for waiting this long to keep my promise.”

  The next day, she gave the salon two week’s notice. It was time to find out if he’d meant what he said.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Juliana left Baltimore early on New Year’s Day with even fewer possessions than she had taken to her place in Fell’s Point. She had found out over the last year that she could live without a lot of the things she used to think were essential.

  Driving through the pre-dawn mist in her new car, she thought about how yesterday would have been her first anniversary with Jeremy. But she wasn’t thinking about him today. No, today she was thinking about Michael and how proud of herself she was for taking this last year to get her life in order. Wondering if she had waited too long to keep her promise, her stomach fluttered with nerves. Because she had given herself the time she needed to heal and to grow, she knew that no matter how this day turned out, she would be okay. She had proven to herself that not only could she survive on her own, she could thrive.

  The road was deserted, so she gave the new car a workout and was in Connecticut in just under three hours. Remembering Michael’s horror at the way she had driven his car gave her the giggles. She didn’t believe in wasting time behind the wheel. That was something he would just have to get used to if they were going to be together. Don’t jinx yourself by thinking that way.

  It seemed to take forever to get through Connecticut, but she finally made it into Rhode Island around noon. She had used the computer at the salon to get directions to Newport, but once there she’d be relying on memory to find the place she had been to only once—and in the dark.

  The view from the Newport Bridge was different in the wintertime than it had been in autumn but no less striking. She took the Newport exit, and as she drove along America’s Cup Avenue she remembered Michael comparing Newport to Annapolis. Taking a right onto Lower Thames Street, Juliana’s heart began to beat fast with the knowledge that she was within blocks of him—and everything she wanted.

  She drove slowly along Lower Thames until, all at once, she recognized his building and pulled into the first available parking space on the street. Without giving herself even a minute to get nervous, she freshened up her lipstick, tucked her purse under the seat, and got out of the car. She locked the car and with her shaking hands tucked firmly into her coat pockets, she set off down the street, stopping only when she reached the sidewalk outside his building. The glass to the right side of the door was still covered with paper, but painted on the left-hand window in gold script were the words, “Michael Maguire, Attorney at Law.”

  “Good for you, Michael,” she whispered, her heart swelling with pride. “You really did it.”

  With a deep breath for courage, she pushed open the door. Once inside the vestibule, she was surprised to find the lights on in his office even though it was a holiday. She opened the office door, where again his name was painted on the glass. It was exactly as he said it would be—a comfortable waiting area, a reception desk, and his office in the back. Nothing fancy but it suited him. The receptionist looked up and gasped. Michael’s sister Mary Frances got up to come around the desk.

  “Juliana.” She hugged her. “Lord, is it really you?”

  “It’s me,” Juliana said, returning the warm embrace.

  “Oh, is my brother going to be happy to see you!”

  “Is he?” Juliana’s spirits lifted. “Is he really?”

  “You have no idea. Come in. Let me take your coat.”

  “Is he here?”

  “No, he’s downtown at the police station, but I expect him back any minute. We came in for a few hours today to deal with a few clients whose New Year’s Eve celebrations landed them in jail.”

  The phone rang, and Mary Frances excused herself to answer it. “Michael Maguire’s office. Yes, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, he’s still out.” She rolled her eyes at Juliana. “I’ll give him your messages as soon as he gets back, but he’s going to tell you the same thing he told you the last time Fifi got locked up. You have to keep her on a leash.”

  Juliana giggled at the look on Mary Frances’s face as she got rid of Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

  “There are great clients and then there are high-maintenance clients.”

  “Let me guess,” Juliana said. “Fifi’s owner is high maintenance?”

  “The highest.”

  The phone rang several more times in the next few minutes, and Juliana was delighted to realize his practice was busy. “I’m sure he loves having you here with him,” Juliana said between calls.

  “I share the job with Shannon and Maggie. We work every three days, but with all our trading of days, Michael complains that he never knows which one of us will be here in the morning. He calls it one of life’s little mysteries.”

  Juliana smiled, knowing how thrilled he must be to have his sisters working with him.

  The phone rang again. “Sorry,” Mary Frances said. “The world goes mad on New Year’s Eve. Why don’t you wait in Michael’s office? He should be here any second.”

  “Okay.” Juliana wandered into his office, which looked an awful lot like his office in Maryland—organized chaos. A framed photo on the credenza caught her eye, and she went behind his desk to get a closer look. She gasped when she realized it was the photo of them taken by the resort’s roving photographer in the Bahamas. They’d been sad to realize they forgot to pick it up before they left. In the photo they wore big smiles and had their arms around each other, looking for all the world like a couple madly in love.

  “It took me two months to track that down.”

  She spun around. “Michael,” she said, dumbstruck by the achingly familiar sound of his voice and the sight of him wearing a shirt and tie and leaning against the doorframe. She feasted her eyes on him. “You let your hair get long again.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t have anyone to cut it for me.”

  She returned the photo to the credenza. “I can’t believe you have this.”

  “When it occurred to me that I didn’t have a single picture of you, it became my mission in life to track down that one. You ought to try dealing with Bahamians by telephone sometime.” His eyes danced with amusement and what appeared to be joy. That he seemed happy to see her was an enormous relief. “It was quite an experience.”

  Reaching into the back pocket of her jeans, she carefully withdrew the folded newspaper photo. She let it fall open so he could see it. “I’ve had my own photo to keep me company. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to him over the last few months. He’s a very good listener.”

  Michael smiled. “And what have you been telling him?”

  “That I miss him more than I’ve ever missed anyone. That I love him, I never stopped loving him, that I was a fool to ever let him go, and I hope he meant it when he said he’d wait for me.”

  Michael came around the desk to her. “I think I can speak for him when I say he meant it.” He lifted her into a fierce embrace. “God, I missed you, baby. You really had to take the full year, huh?”

  Juliana chuckled as she clung to him, reveling in the familiar scent and feel of him. “I was so afraid too much time had gone by and you would’ve forgotten about me.”

  “I could never, ever forget about you.” He brushed his lips over hers. “I kept having these visions of you back together again with Jeremy.”

  “To borrow a line of yours, I’ve come to realize I spent ten years killing time with him.”

  “Until what?” he asked with a smile.

  “Until I found you.”

  He hugged her again. “What about your mother?”

  “She died in September.”

  “Oh, baby. I’m so sorry! I wish I’d known.”


  She shrugged off the burst of grief. “We were lucky it didn’t happen sooner, but it was still hard. She had been doing a lot better. I’d started to feel almost close to her for the first time.”

  “I’m glad you had that time with her.”

  “Me, too.”

  He took her hand. “I’ve got things to show you.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “You’ll see.” In his outer office, he said, “Mary Frances, I’m taking the rest of the day off. Tell the drunks to call another lawyer.”

  “You got it, counselor.”

  “Go ahead and call Mom, too. I know you’re dying to tell her that Juliana’s come home.”

  A guilty look crossed Mary Frances’s pretty face. “I already did.”

  Michael and Juliana laughed as he hustled her out the door into the vestibule. “Okay, close your eyes.” He led her across the hall to the other retail space and flipped on the lights. “You can look now.”

  Juliana opened her eyes and gasped when she saw mirrors and chairs and sinks and gleaming hard wood floors and a reception desk. He had built her a salon, right across the hall from his office. “Oh, Michael.” With her hand over her heart, she looked around in disbelief. “Oh my God.”

  “Wait, you haven’t seen the best part yet.” He walked over to the window and pulled off the brown paper that covered it from the inside. Written backwards in the same gold paint as the sign on his window was “Juliana’s Salon.”

  Tears streamed down her face as she struggled to absorb it all.

  He put his arms around her. “If you had any doubt that I knew you’d eventually find your way back to me, I hope you don’t anymore.”

  “After what I did to you.” She shook her head with disbelief. “After what I did, that you could still love me this much astounds me.”

  “I love you this much and so much more. I have since I first looked over and found you sitting next to me in the airport, and I always will.” With his hands on her face and his thumbs skimming her jaw, he finally kissed her the way she had dreamed about during the long year without him.

  The kiss went on for what felt like forever until she pulled back to gaze up at him. With her palm resting on his face, she kissed him again. “Thank you, Michael, for all of this and for all the faith you’ve always had in us. I wasn’t worthy of it before, but I think I might be now.”

  “You were always worthy of it, silly. You could’ve saved me a lot of sleepless nights if you’d skipped over your whole Zen phase and come home to me sooner.” He took her hand again. “Let’s go upstairs. There’s more I want to show you.”

  He gave her a tour of all the improvements he had made to the second floor since she was last there, including a new kitchen, remodeled bathrooms, and a fresh coat of paint in every room.

  She recognized most of the furniture from his house in Maryland, including his big bed. On the bedside table was another copy of the photo from the Bahamas.

  He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “You ever think about the last night we spent in that bed?”

  Her cheeks burned. “I’ve never forgotten it.”

  “I’ve relived it a few thousand times myself. Maybe we can have a reenactment tonight?”

  She snuggled into his embrace and kissed him. “Do we have to wait that long?”

  “No.” He laughed against her lips. “We definitely do not have to wait that long. Come see the third floor. I’ve done the most work up there.”

  She followed him up the stairs. “Oh, it looks wonderful!” He had torn out the kitchen and knocked down walls to make four more big bedrooms.

  “They’d make for good kid rooms, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe when they’re older.” Juliana ran her hand along the smooth wall and then turned to him. “When they’re babies, I’ll want them downstairs with us.”

  He blinked back tears and shook his head as if to convince himself this was really happening. “Yeah?”

  “Uh huh.”

  He took her hand and put it over his heart. “Feel that? My heart hasn’t pounded like that in more than a year.” With his arm around her, he led her over to the window seat and brought her down on his lap the way he had on a long-ago autumn night. “Remember the last time we were right here?”

  She rested her head on his shoulder and nodded.

  “I wanted to be the first guy to propose, but I’ve since learned that sometimes being last is much better than being first.”

  Juliana chuckled.

  “So what do you say? Will you marry me, Juliana?”

  Raising her head to meet his blue eyes, she said, “Yes, I’ll marry you, Michael Maguire.” She pressed her lips to his. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  With his fingers buried in her hair, he kissed her senseless and then tugged the chain out from under his shirt and tie.

  Her heart skipped a beat when she saw that the ring was exactly where she had left it. “All this time you’ve kept it right there,” she whispered, amazed.

  Unhooking the chain, he freed the ring. “Right where I said it would be until you were ready for it.” He slid it onto her finger and left a lingering kiss on her hand. “Now it’s right where it belongs.”

  “And so am I.”

  Epilogue

  Later that night…

  “I thought they’d never leave,” Michael said of his family, who’d invaded after they heard Juliana had come home. The gathering had turned into a party when Mary Frances ordered pizza and wings from Nikolas Pizza, and Michael’s brothers-in-law arrived armed with twelve-packs of beer.

  “It was so good to see them,” Juliana said. “I only met them that one time, but I thought of them often while we were apart.”

  “Are you sure you’re ready to take on the mob known as the Maguire family?”

  She slid her arms around his waist. “Do you come with them?”

  “You know it.”

  “Then I’m in.”

  He kissed her the way he’d been dying to for hours now while he shared her with his family. Knowing how desperately he loved her, his family had been almost as overjoyed to see Juliana as he was. When he’d walked into the office earlier and Mary Francis told him she was there, his heart had nearly burst from his chest with excitement and joy and more love than he’d ever felt for anyone.

  Of course, he’d known that Juliana’s year of exile had ended as of New Year’s Eve, but he hadn’t known for sure when or if he’d see her. Now he knew he had forever to spend with her, and nothing had ever made him happier.

  She was his dream come true, and he’d never let her go again.

  “I need to get my stuff out of the car,” she said, her lips damp from his kiss.

  He wanted to drag her to his bed and keep her there for days. In fact, he’d told his mother and sisters not to call him for the next three days. His sisters could handle the office while he handled Juliana. After all the time they’d spent apart, they deserved some uninterrupted time alone together. “I’ll get it for you.”

  She left his embrace to retrieve something from the pocket of the coat she’d hung over a chair earlier. Returning to him, she handed him her car keys.

  “Did you get a new car?” he asked, examining the keys.

  “I did. My first-ever brand-new car. It’s a silver Honda Accord with Maryland plates, and it’s parked on the next block down.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “If you grab my purse from under the seat and the black suitcase from the backseat, I’ll have what I need for the night.”

  “Coming right up.” He started to walk away but then spun around to kiss her again. “Are you really here, or did I dream this day?”

  “I’m really here.”

  “And you’re staying?”

  “For the rest of my life, if you’ll have me.”

  “Oh, I’ll have you—again and again and again.”

  Her smile lit up her face. “Hurry.”

  While she waited f
or him to return, Juliana went into the bathroom to take a quick shower. She loved what he’d done with the upper floors of the building he’d bought with his grandfather years ago. As she put her hair up in a bun to keep it dry, she took note of the marble countertop, the white cabinets and the double sink. Everything he’d done had been with her in mind. While she’d been off remaking herself, he’d been making a home for them both, as well as the family they would have together.

  He’d never had a minute’s doubt about her, and knowing that made all the difficulties they’d gone through to get to this day worth it.

  The shower felt heavenly after the long drive. She stood under the hot water, letting it work the kinks out of her muscles. Her departure from Baltimore seemed like days ago rather than only that morning. So much had happened during that momentous day that it would take some time to process it all. The work he’d done to the house, the salon he’d built for her, the plans he’d made…

  Her eyes filled with tears as she thought about everything he’d done while he waited for her to take the time she needed. His faith in her—and in them—had never wavered.

  The bathroom door opened. “Just me with your bag.”

  She ducked her head outside the glass door. “Michael…”

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you join me?”

  “Um, gee, let me think about that…” His shirt flew over his head as he removed his shoes.

  Juliana laughed at the way he kicked off his pants and left his clothes in a pile on the floor as he came toward her, the body she’d spent so much time thinking about over the last year even more honed and muscular than she recalled.

  He stepped into the shower and reached for her, taking a long perusing look at her. “Mmm. Even better than I remembered, and my memories were pretty damned good.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.” She ran her hands over his chest. “You’ve been working out.”

  “I had a lot of time to kill and frustration to work off. The gym seemed like a better choice than a bar.”