I opened my eyes and squinted at the morning light filtering into the room. At first I couldn’t figure out where I was. This wasn’t the morning light that filled my Manhattan apartment. For one thing, I had blackout curtains, and I always remembered to close them before I went to sleep.
And for another, the air smelled different—heavy and wet, like the ocean. Plus, there were unfamiliar sounds, a sort of clanking—which wouldn’t have been unusual in Manhattan on garbage day. But farther off, there was a rhythmic whooshing.
What was making the whooshing? And whose satiny-soft gray sheets were these? And whose aggressively masculine digital alarm clock was that on the nightstand that said it was 8:05 in the morning? Who even had a digital alarm clock anymore, when everyone else had cell phones with alarms they could set to tell them to—
I sat straight up in bed, clutching the satiny-soft gray top sheet around me, since I’d realized I was naked. I was naked, sunlight was pouring in through floor-to-ceiling glass windows all around me, and I was in Will Price’s bed.
The whooshing sound was ocean waves, washing up against the shore of Will’s private island, and the clanking sound, I realized, as soon as I’d pulled on my clothes from the night before and stumbled into his kitchen, was Will, wearing only a pair of boxers, cooking breakfast.
“Oh, hullo,” he said cheerfully, when he saw me standing in the doorway. “You didn’t have to get up. I was going to bring you breakfast in bed. Coffee?”
I leaned in the doorway, trying to figure out if what I was seeing was real or still some part of a hallucinogenic dream I was having from the night before. Had Kellyjean put something other than essential oils in the diffuser in my room?
Then I realized how tender the skin along my face—and other places—felt from where Will had raked it with his lips. Beard burn.
Oh, no. This was real, all right.
Besides, Chloe’s dog, Susie, was panting at Will’s feet as he cooked, hoping for a bite of dropped bacon or something. I would never hallucinate a dog. Or sore lips. Or sore other parts. Wonderfully sore. Deliciously sore.
“Do you like your eggs scrambled or fried?” he asked. “I assume you like eggs. You seem to like everything else. There isn’t one thing I haven’t seen you put in your mouth—”
“Okay!” I sprang from the door and made a beeline for the Jura. “I will take you up on that coffee. Want one?”
“I’ve had two already. I’m an early riser. You?”
“No. Not at all. Not a morning person.”
“That’s a shame. And we’re so compatible in every other way.”
I snorted. “Where do you keep the—”
He caught me around the waist as I was reaching for a coffee cup, pulled me to that strong, broad chest against which I’d cried out so many times the night before in pure joy, and planted a hard, confident kiss on my mouth.
And every bone in my body melted, just as it had last night.
“Hello,” he said, grinning as the bacon on the eight-burner Viking range behind him sizzled.
“Hi.” I couldn’t keep from grinning back. “I think your bacon’s burning.”
“Let it. I like it crispy.”
“Well, I don’t. What, exactly, is all this?”
“What’s what?”
“This?” I gestured at the breakfast tray he’d been making for me, set with a yellow cloth napkin and a vase full of bougainvillea he’d clearly snipped from the vines out by the pool. I recognized the explosive pink. “Is this all because you still feel guilty about what you said to that reporter about my books?”
“Well,” he said. “No. This is because I think you’re very good in bed, and I’m hoping that if I keep you well fed, you’ll continue to have sex with me.”
“Interesting. What about The Moment, then?”
He raised an eyebrow. “The Moment?”
“Yes.” I hopped up onto the kitchen counter. “I found a copy last night when I was on my way to the bathroom—you do seem to have an awful lot of copies of your own books in this house. Have you ever considered donating some of them?—so I finished it.”
Now he raised both eyebrows. “And?”
“And I can’t believe you finally gave one of your books a happy ending.”
He switched off the burner beneath the bacon, then regarded me seriously. “I didn’t intend to. I wanted to kill Johnny. He deserved to die.”
“Did he? I don’t think so. What did he do that was so wrong?”
“He killed the thing that Melanie loved most in all the world.”
“No,” I said. I realized we weren’t actually discussing Melanie and Johnny anymore. “He only thought he did. And he didn’t mean to. And he was very sorry for it, and he tried to make it up to her as best he could. Maybe that’s why, in the end, you let him live.”
“Maybe.” Will gave me a piece of bacon. It was hot, but it was delicious.
“And in the end, Melanie forgave Johnny.”
“Yes, but only after it was revealed that not only was her husband alive, he was also an abusive brute.”
“True. But Johnny was the one who helped her see that. She escaped him all on her own.”
“She did.” Will began tracing a line with his finger down my collarbone and toward the opening of my jumpsuit, sending delighted shivers down my spine.
“Do you really think my eyes are like twin blue ponds, fathoms deep?”
“Yes, but they’re not the parts of you I’m most interested in. Do you remember when you screamed at me in front of everyone I know for not allowing my characters to have happy endings?”
I scoffed. “Of course I remember it. It was yesterday. And I didn’t scream at you.”
“I don’t know what other word to call it. In any case, that’s when I began to realize that you were quite unlike any other woman I’d ever met, and that I was, in fact, more than simply physically attracted to you. I’d have felt resentful about it if you hadn’t been right—and if you didn’t have such a nice arse.”
He then illustrated his affection for this part of my body by cupping his hands around it and scooping me up by it.
It took a long time to make—and eat—breakfast, because we kept stopping for kisses—and other things. It was revolting (not the breakfast. Naturally, he was an amazing cook), but the way we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I wanted to throw up at how juvenile we were behaving. Which eventually reminded me:
“When is your sister coming home from her sleepover?” I asked, a few hours later.
“That’s an odd thing to be thinking of at this particular moment.” We were back in bed after having showered together. We’d both made sure we were squeaky clean on all areas of our bodies. “And why would it be so terrible? Chloe loves you.”
“I know. But I mean, I wouldn’t want her to walk in on us. That would be awkward.”
“Oh, she won’t be home for hours,” he said, with a casual glance at the aggressively masculine digital clock. “She’s got the—” He broke off with a curse and sprang away from me.
“What?” I sat up in alarm. “What is it?”
“The festival.” Will began tearing around his bedroom, throwing on clothes—and tossing my own clothes at me. “I forgot. We’ve got to get to the book festival!”
