(Emerald Creek Series, #3)
Publication date: June 12th 2024
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Synopsis:
Two broken hearts. Ten years apart. Can one small town bring them back together?
Ten years in the military might have changed me, but it didn’t change the reasons I left Emerald Creek. Back for a short visit to my family after a decade away, I’ll do everything to keep my stay painless.
It will be short.
There will be no trips down memory lane.
There will be little to no reconnecting with locals.
One thing is certain: I won’t run into the girl who broke my heart. She’s long gone, married away.
Or so I thought.
All it takes is a pulled muscle, a massage tent at the town fair, and some not-so-subtle interventions from my friends for me to suddenly be alone with her—with me flat on my back on the massage table and her kneading me like I’m a stranger. Like what we had back then meant nothing to her.
She won’t even talk to me? Fine. I’m ready to bolt anyway.
But when the townies engineer another close encounter and I find out what she’s trying to hide from me, it’s Operation Get Her Back.
Excerpt
My mouth goes dry. “What are you doing here?” I pick up Damian. “Are you okay, kitty?”
“He’s fine,” Ethan says, “but we need to talk.” He drops my box on the kitchen counter. “Care to explain yourself?”
My heart beats hard, and I squeeze Damian for comfort. Protection. But the fiend jumps off me and runs away.
“How did you get in here, and how dare you snoop through my things?”
Ethan lifts his hands as if to plead innocent. He looks like nothing innocent right now. Tall and menacingly handsome, his eyes raking over my body like he could consume me right here and now, his breathing heavy with… desire?
Ohmygod, here I go again. Making stuff up. “Answer me,” I snap.
“I came to do a job. Fix your closet door.”
“I didn’t ask you to!” I shriek.
He shakes his head and lowers his hands. “I know you didn’t. Lucas did.”
“Lucas?” I did see Lucas’s truck outside. And it was Lucas who called me at the spa to tell me his “worker” had called about Damian.
“Look, the point is, I didn’t snoop through your things. Your cat threw the box almost literally at my feet. I was picking it up and… well…”
He’s at a loss for words and so am I. This is so embarrassing.
“You need to go,” I say.
He crosses his arms. “That seems to be your go-to phrase when it comes to me.”
What does that even mean? “Just leave,” I snap.
“Nope.” He reaches over, his heat and scent invading my space in a way that agrees way too much with my lady parts. “Not until we talk about this.” He snatches the box.
I try to grab it from him, but he lifts it over his head, holding it in just one hand. I jump to get it and only achieve bumping into his hard, wide, warm chest.
Screw this. “Give it to me,” I hiss, and from the look on his face, I’m pretty sure he feels the anger coming at him the way I feel it seeping from me.
“Fuck, but you were always even more beautiful when you were angry. You haven’t changed a bit where that’s concerned.”
My mouth gapes. What? What is he doing? “Give it to me!” I yell and punch his chest with a closed fist.
He backs up, the box still over his head. “Are you trying to turn me on? ’Cause it’s working.” He backs into the bedroom.
I storm after him, speechless.
“Now that I think about it, I’m always turned on by you.”
“Ethan!” I seethe.
“But now, maybe more than usual.” He circles the bed until he’s on the other side of it.
“Give. Me. The. Box.”
“Come and get it.”
I jump on the bed to try and reach the box. Now two feet higher, I lunge at him. He grabs me by the waist and turns me around, pinning me against the wall. The feel of him against me is so good and so wrong at the same time. I want it to last forever, and I wish it had never happened. Closing my eyes, I lean my head against the wall.
His hand leaves my waist and takes my wrist, pinning it above my head, lifting my breasts until they graze his chest. “Look at me, Grace.”
Flitting my eyes open, I trail my upward gaze to take in his corded neck, his stubble, the pulp of his bottom lip—
“Look me in the eye.”
I exaggerate the tilt of my head back to reach his gaze. Round my eyes on him. Pretend I’m choking because he’s so out of reach.
He nudges his knee between my legs, forcing my thighs apart. What is he doing? God it feels so good. I resist the urge to rub myself against him. Ohmygod, Grace, get a grip.
His knee reaches my clit, and he makes a soft stroking motion. I’m losing it. I swear I’m going to lose it. Then he slowly lifts his knee higher…slowly…until my pubic bone is fully resting on it, the pressure making me throb, and then he continues lifting, slowly, slowly, my body straddling his thigh, my feet leaving the floor, lifting until my eyes are level with his.
He doesn’t show sign of any effort. “Better?” he asks.
I swallow loudly.
A small smile plays through his beautiful blue eyes. He throws the box behind him, and it lands with a soft thump on the bed. With his free hand he grabs my other wrist and places it next to my face. Both his thumbs stroke my palms. His smell of fresh sweat hits me right below the ribcage, making me pant.
My mouth is dry, my breathing labored. The itch between my legs is unbearable.
“So tell me,” he says in a low rumble. “What’s with the jersey?”
“The—the what?” Why is talking about his jersey? Did he not see everything else that’s in the box? Did he forget what everything in the box means to us—to me?
“Why do you have a jersey from when I was a kid when I gave you… at least three more.”
Now he’s upset not to find other stuff? I’m so confused right now. “What?”
His eyes trail down to my neck, and he tilts his head slightly as if to kiss me right there. His breath tickles me to my core, making me squirm. “You know…” he starts, then interrupts himself, takes a deep breath that lifts me higher against him. “I got grounded a whole week for losing that jersey.”
I blink. I don’t know what to say about that. I’m sorry, I guess? I stole his jersey, okay? I was eleven. Can I get a pass? I remember that weekend vividly. There’d been a snowstorm, sudden, unpredicted. Lynn had called Mom and asked if her kids could crash at our place instead of making the uncertain trek back up the mountain to their farm. I’d had trouble falling asleep, my heart beating too hard at the thought of Ethan right on the other side of the wall. So when I’d found his jersey in the bathroom, I’d rolled it into my own clothes. “Do you want me to confess to your mom?” I say snarkily.
“Mmm…” he says, trailing his gaze down to my breasts, the rumbling of his voice almost making me come against his thigh. “No. What I’d like to know is where are the other jerseys. Those I actually gave you.”
I shut my eyes.
He tightens his grasp on my wrists and jerks his leg up, sliding me lower against him. “Answer me.” His mouth caresses my hair. “What did you do with the other jerseys?”
I shut my eyes and focus on my erratic heartbeats and his ragged breathing.
Like that’s going to calm me down.
“Lemme guess. There’s one under your pillow?”
I gasp. “You did not. You did not look under my pillow.”
He laughs softly. “Just a wild guess.” He rubs his chin over my temple. “And the others? Where are the others, Grace?”
I rotate them. There’s one in the wash and one with my lingerie. Jeez! We’re quite the pair of pervs. “Does it matter?” I whisper.
“No. We’ll get to that later.”
Now he’s sort of freaking me out. “What do you want?”
There’s a little fantasy playing in my head where he answers, you, Grace, I want you and then he kisses me passionately and we make savage love and we walk into the sunset together, happy forever.
Instead, he lowers his knee, his heat ceding place to cold solitude. “I want answers,” he says as he drops his hold on my wrists and steps away from me.
Now he’s going to drop me? “You had no business snooping through my stuff!” I yell as he turns his back on me, leaving the bedroom.
“And you had no business pretending I mean nothing to you,” he answers over his shoulder.
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