by Avery Flynn
She leaned in close to him, lowering her voice. “You okay?”
“Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “Everything’s fine.”
“Weird” didn’t begin to cover this. After a year of spending nearly every non-working moment with him, she’d pretty much pegged all his moods. This one, though, was totally new.
“If you want to concede, we can totally do that.” She gave his thigh a comforting squeeze, then glided her hands up about as high as possible, considering her entire family was out on the patio with them. “That would mean we could sneak off to the cabin sooner.”
“No,” he said, the single word coming out sharp as a firecracker. “Sorry. I just really love Scrabble.”
Okay then, nothing to see here at all. Just her boyfriend passing on hot cabin sex for a game involving wooden square tiles. Letting out a sigh, she turned back to the board, her shoulders slumped with disappointment. So much for that whole honeymoon, can’t-get-enough-of-each-other period.
PawPaw laid down the first word. Marry.
“Really? You couldn’t have gone for more points than that? You wasted an M on a square that didn’t even have double points?” Aunt Louise rolled her eyes. “I should have partnered with the dog.”
“Oh yeah?” PawPaw shot back, his question sounding oddly practiced. Of course, after decades of the siblings needling each other, how could it not? “What do you have that’s so amazing?”
Aunt Louise’s cheeks turned red. “You have no idea how painful this is for me.”
Then she laid down a single E beneath the M.
“A whole two points.” PawPaw let out a low whistle. “That’s really going to win us the game.”
“And this is why you two aren’t allowed to partner up during family game night,” Adalyn said as she stood at the end of the table messing with her phone. “Great-Grandma always said you have been bickering like this since you were kids.”
“We know how to work together when it matters,” PawPaw grumbled.
His knee still going a million miles an hour, Will laid down an O and a U going down from the end of the word “marry.”
For someone who loved Scrabble more than orgasms, it was a really disappointing point total. Judging by the way his jaw was clenched tight, he was none too happy about it.
“Don’t worry,” Hadley said, injecting an extra dose of chipper into her tone. “I’ve had those kind of tile choices before, too. We’ll catch up.”
Surveying her tiles, she was trying to work out how to use the W so it would land on a multiple-point square when Will snagged her tiles.
“I got this.”
What the hell? Slack-jawed, she stared at him as he laid down the tiles, usurping her turn as if she wasn’t sitting there.
“That’s not legal,” she said, looking to PawPaw and Aunt Louise for backup. “You can’t just play my tiles for me.” She glanced down at the board and realized that he hadn’t even connected his four-letter word to the others already played. “And you can’t have a disconnected word.” Turning back to Will, she sucked in a breath. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow and his jiggling knee was going fast enough to launch them into hyper speed. Something was definitely wrong. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He nodded toward the board. “Read it.”
She glanced down at the sorry excuse for a Scrabble board. The whole thing—even if the last word counted—couldn’t add up to more than twenty points.
“Marry. Me. You,” she said, going in the order that they were played. “Your word doesn’t count.”
“It really does,” he said, sounding more like his usual cocky self.
“That goes against the rules and—” Her brain finally caught up with what was going on, and she lost the ability to talk as her heart double-timed it in her chest.
Will stood up, pulled a ring box out of his pocket, and then got down on one knee. “Hadley Donavan…” He opened the box, revealing an antique ring made up of square-cut diamonds surrounded by rubies that screamed out “old money” the same way his scuffed-up Justin boots said “ranch ready.” “Will you marry me?”
It took all of her effort to put together a three-letter word from the jumble of ecstatic emotions making her feel like she’d swallowed every bubble in a champagne bottle. “Yes.”
Everyone cheered loud enough that it set off an answering howl from Lightning out there somewhere in the dusk. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Adalyn no longer trying to disguise the fact that she was recording the whole proposal on her phone. Hadley’s attention, though, was focused on the man who’d driven her crazy before stealing her heart.
“Thank God you said yes.” He slipped the ring on her finger and gave her a sly wink. “Otherwise the rest of this game was going to be extremely awkward.”
“We’re finishing the game?” The question slipped out before she remembered all of this was being recorded and, knowing her siblings, it would be played at the wedding reception.
One side of Will’s mouth lifted in a grin that did stupid things to Hadley’s knees. “I’m sure your family will understand if we don’t.”
“We concede, PawPaw and Louise,” she hollered, not even bothering to look back at the picnic table because there was no looking away from the man she loved.
“Because we already won.” He picked her up in his arms. “At least I know I did.”
“Believe me,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. “We both did.”
He dipped his head down and kissed her, a quick brush of his lips that promised a forever of mores and carried her off to their cabin so that forever could start immediately.
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Acknowledgments
First of all, I have to thank the readers who’ve generously decided to spend their precious free time with me. Thank you! None of this would be possible without you. Also, I couldn’t have ever gotten this book from idea to completion without the help of the good people at Entangled. The fact that they haven’t poisoned my coffee by now always amazes me. Thank you, Liz, Jessica, Bree, Elizabeth, Curtis, Stacy, and everyone else who went above and beyond. Y’all are the absolute best. As always, a huge thank-you to my family (those in Nebraska and on the East Coast) for putting up with me when I’m on deadline and hangry. I promise next time, I’ll remember to eat lunch.
Xoxo, Avery
About the Author
USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling romance author Avery Flynn has three slightly wild children, loves a hockey-addicted husband, and is desperately hoping someone invents the coffee IV drip. She lives with her family (including the dogs Gravy, Pepper, Tater Tot, and Eggnog, who are either sleeping or guarding the house from squirrels as well as the cat, Dwight, who is totally plotting world domination) outside of Washington, D.C. She loves to chat with readers. You can email her at [email protected] and join her reader group, The Flynnbots, on Facebook!
averyflynn.com
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Chapter One
Cora Cabot knew three important things about Australia:
1. The men were hotter Down Under (Chris Hemsworth, Hugh Jackman, the other Hemsworth…)
2. It was hot. Period.
3. Pretty much every animal could kill you.
Okay, so maybe not every animal could kill you. But a country that prided itself on having the deadliest snakes in the world was not a country to be trifled with. Add to that spiders—of the hairy and poisonous variety—sharks, stingrays (RIP Steve Irwin), all kinds of creepy crawlies, and Cora knew she would have to be on high alert at all times.
But standing outside a slightly run-down yet utterly charming house surrounded by huge, swaying trees whose leaves rustled in the dry, sea-salted air made Cora instantly under
stand why Aussies put up with their infamous critters. It was truly beautiful here.
She walked up the unfinished driveway, careful to avoid the dozens of small, podlike things littering the ground. Her suitcase bumped behind her, wheels rattling and lock jangling with each step.
So what was a dyed-in-the-wool city girl—a New Yorker, no less—doing thousands of miles from the nearest Saks?
Healing…escaping.
It sounded a little melodramatic, sure. But Cora wasn’t exactly opposed to a little melodrama. After all, one did not grow up with a mother famous for her daytime television relationship therapy segments without developing a passing interest in the theatrical and over the top. But right now, Cora needed to get as far away from that stuff as possible. A whole hemisphere away, in fact.
Pausing at the front door, she sucked in a breath. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of airports and immigration lines and endless road, she was here. Alone. The sound of nature enveloped her—birds and leaves and wind and the ocean creating a soothing cacophony that melted into her bones.
This was exactly what she needed.
Cora slipped a carefully folded piece of paper out of her bag and flipped it open.
Dear Cora,
I am so excited for our house swap! Seriously, thank you. You’ve saved my butt. I had no idea how I was going to afford to rent a place in Manhattan for a month without going totally broke. Anyway, my little place isn’t anywhere near as fancy or glamorous as yours, but I hope you find it comfortable. A few things:
The bathroom pipes rattle terribly. Give them a second to run and the noise will eventually stop. If they’re too annoying, let me know and I’ll have my brother come by to work on them.
There’s a cockatoo (noisy white bird with a gold crest) who likes to pop in. I call him Joe and keep some bird feed by the back door. He’s very friendly!
Print this email out because reception is terrible, and you’ll need the access code to get the key. There’s a little box under a red pot. The code is: 2513.
Now get to work on your novel! When you become a famous author, I’m going to rent this place out as a tourist attraction and charge people a fortune to visit the creative retreat of the great Cora Cabot, literary genius.
Love, Liv.
Cora cringed. Why had she even told Liv she was working on a novel?
Maybe it was a moment of giddy excitement at typing those fabled words: The End. But clearly she should have curbed her enthusiasm long enough for her literary agent father to cut down any delusions of grandeur. He’d called her book unpublishable, her lead character unsympathetic.
And then he’d declined to represent her.
Of course the feedback wasn’t intended to hurt her feelings—she knew that. Her father had a black belt in tough love, and his criticism was meant to help her grow and improve. To make her a better writer. And she absolutely intended to rise to that challenge.
But right now, she had more pressing concerns…like liberating the front door key from its hiding place.
“Please, please, please don’t be hiding anything more than a key,” she said as she crouched down, reaching for the pot described in Liv’s email.
Cora felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Only instead of lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! it was more like snakes, and bugs, and poisonous, hairy, eight-legged freaks of nature waiting to suck your blood like B-movie vampires.
Too squeamish to pick up the pot, she nudged it over and hoped nothing would scuttle or slither out. Thankfully, the only thing underneath was a plastic box containing the key. The simple gold thing didn’t look secure enough to protect much. Cora’s New York apartment had a twenty-four-seven doorman, a concierge, swipe key, and two physical keys to get inside.
But maybe around these parts, people trusted one another. What a thought.
Cora unlocked the front door and dragged her suitcase inside. The house was in the middle of renovations, as Liv had previously warned. On one side there was a kitchen, gleaming and modern with white subway tiles and a soft-white granite countertop with pretty silver and charcoal veining. The family room, on the other hand, was older-looking and well-loved with a heaving bookshelf and big couch in faded blue.
There was a section of floral wallpaper. It looked vintage, but not in a good way. More like in a “grandma was a pack-a-day smoker” kind of way.
But her friend Liv had thrown her own joie de vivre onto the weary canvas, with a collection of colorful mismatched cushions on the couch, quirky wall hangings and photos of her family dotting several surfaces. This was a house with love embedded in the walls and floors and shining in through the windows.
A real home.
Liv had been worried it might not be up to Cora’s standards, but frankly, luxury furniture and expensive art handpicked by New York’s best interior designer hadn’t made her happy. And it had become painfully obvious that the fancy handbags and red-soled shoes her mother had taught her to covet were a poor substitute for the things that actually mattered in life. Cora would trade it all in for the real deal: a loving husband, a family who supported one another, a career that made her soul sing.
“Oh, bloody hell!”
Cora jumped and whirled around, pressing her palm to her heart. “Who’s there?”
“Bugger off!”
The noise was coming from the kitchen, where a window facing the back of the property was totally open. Gee, they really didn’t worry about security here. A white bird sat on the windowsill, staring at her. Its golden crest fanned out above its head, demanding her attention.
“You must be Joe,” Cora said, narrowing her eyes. So much for friendly. She was pretty sure being told to bugger off wasn’t a nice thing in this country. But she also understood that it was easy to say something you didn’t mean if you were “hangry.” It happened to her all the time. “You want something to eat, little guy?”
The bird squawked, as if offended at being called little. But then he bobbed his head in this strange boppy dance, and Cora couldn’t help but laugh.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
It took her a few minutes to locate a sack of bird seed, which had a note taped to it: 1 x small handful. He’ll eat from your hand, or scatter into the backyard.
Cora looked at the bird’s curved, pointed-tipped talons—the damn things looked sharp enough to carve a Thanksgiving turkey. So that was a hard pass on the hand feeding. Joe chattered away, clicking and chirping and making all kinds of funny noises while he waited for his lunch.
“All right, mate! Who’s a pretty boy?”
In spite of her trepidation and emotional exhaustion, Cora found herself feeling lighter than she had in weeks. Hell, maybe in months.
Don’t fool yourself—it’s been years. You don’t get this messed up without a solid foundation of BS from way back.
Her snarky inner voice was cut off when Joe whistled at her in a way that sounded a whole lot like a catcall. Now who had taught him to do that?
“Sorry, little guy, this vacation does not include a fling. I’ve only got eyes for fictional men right now. Book boyfriends all the way.”
She tossed the seed through the window, and it scattered across the grassy area behind the house. Joe immediately flapped his wings, swooping down to collect the bounty and trying to intimidate a couple of smaller birds looking to join the meal. He puffed his chest out and stomped around, claiming the territory.
“You guys are all the same, only after a free lunch,” she said, shaking her head.
Being wealthy wasn’t uncommon in Manhattan, not by a long stretch. Coming from a famous family wasn’t, either. But that didn’t stop the opportunists and users from piling up.
Warning: Traffic conditions in Cora Cabot’s life are dire. A collision containing one ex-fiancé and one narcissistic mother have created untenable conditions
in New York City. Watch out for the ego spill on Fifth Avenue. Get out while you can.
For the next month, Cora would forget all about her fame-hungry mother, her string of failed relationships, and her unfulfilling job. She was going to enjoy being away from the drama and having a beautiful location to work on achieving her dream: producing a novel worthy of publication.
Right now, that was the only thing that mattered.
Cora’s nose wrinkled at the smell of something unappealing and, with horror, figured out it was her. Looked like her grand life reset would have to wait until after a very long, very hot shower.
…
Trent Walters’s ute navigated the winding, overgrown road to his sister’s house. Although calling it a road seemed a little generous. More like a root-infested, teeth-rattling, wild, life-dodging driving “experience.” Why his adorable, social butterfly baby sister had chosen to purchase a home so secluded was beyond him.
But Liv had her own house and he didn’t, so who was he to judge? Being a builder by trade and a general handyman by hobby, Trent wanted the perfect house with the perfect view. Unfortunately, despite securing the ideal block of land upon which to build his dream home some time ago, he’d yet to make a start. Too many other commitments kept getting in the way.
To make matters worse, his best mate had decided to move his girlfriend into their shared house, and the nightly squeaking bedsprings and cries of “yes baby, do it harder” had finally become too much.
All of that was to say, Trent’s living situation was…fluid. For now, he would camp at his sister’s place while she was away. It was the perfect opportunity to get some extra work done on her renovations without her standing over his shoulder. First up: fix the shitty plumbing. The old pipes rattled like that angry, chained-up ghost in The Muppet Christmas Carol. It was like the Ghost of Bad DIYs Past. How Liv put up with the sound, he’d never know.