Treat yourself to the first three books in The Do-Over Series for 2.99 (two days only)! This new boxed set, available in ebook and audio, features Little Miss Perfect, the prequel to Fluffy, along with Perky.
Mallory (Fluffy), Persephone (Perky), Fiona (Feisty), and Hastings (Hasty) come from the small town of Anderhill, Massachusetts, with lives that take sudden turns as they get surprise “do-overs” when it comes to second chance love. Read more →
Shopping for a Highlander (Shopping for a Highlander Book 2)
Available January 11, 2022
Amy
I am standing here in my black cap and gown, wearing my master’s hood, as I graduate with my MBA from UMass Amherst’s Isenberg School of Management, photographers snapping pictures like crazy, and Hamish McCormick’s tongue is in my mouth.
I realize this is a problem half the women on the planet would love to have. He’s a world-famous Scottish soccer–sorry, football to everyone except Americans–player, and my sister is married to his cousin, the billionaire.
Given the fact that Hamish is kissing me in front of my date, though, it’s a little awkward.
“Ahem,” said date says, scratching his temple, adjusting his glasses, and using polite, understated throat techniques to get Hamish off me. Subtlety doesn’t work on Hamish, though. This kiss is anything but subtle. Pretty sure you’d need a crowbar to pry him off me.
Or me off him. The distinction between who is kissing whom was lost long ago.
I see my date, Davis, out of the corner of my eye, and I’m about to shove this two-hundred-pound sack of hard muscle and overconfident heat off of me and slap him, but sweet merciful deity, I swear Hamish’s lips have some kind of magic potion on them that renders me spellbound.
No kiss has ever tasted like this.
Except the last kiss from him.
Six months ago, under the mistletoe at my family’s Thanksgiving celebration. Right before news broke about Hamish screwing his team owner’s daughter, when their sex tape was leaked to the media.
Yeah. That kiss. That kiss tasted like this.
As I try to pull away, Hamish moves along with me, his hands flattening against my shoulder blades, his tongue soft and discreet, caressing me like I’m naked in bed and we have an acre of mattress to explore.
He can round my Cape of Good Hope anytime. He can be the Ponce de León to my virgin territory.
“Hamish!” My mother’s shrill voice cuts through this tormenting fantasy-come-to-life. “How wonderful of you to stop by for Amy’s graduation ceremony!” She’s grinning up at him, arms wide in anticipation of a hug.
Then she looks at my date. “Oh, hi, Davis. I didn’t know you’d be here?” The uptick in her voice, turning it into a question, shows that even my mother, who is the embodiment of the word awkward, realizes this is a social mess.
Air. Suddenly, I can breathe again. There is entirely too much air in the world, and I’m sucking all of it in at the same time. A single breath becomes the atmosphere.
“Marie! How’s yer leg?” Hamish says, giving Mom a big hug, one she enjoys as her eyes close and she squeezes him with genuine affection. Mom’s proud of me, for sure, but it’s the human connection at big events that she really enjoys.
She makes a fist and knocks lightly on her thigh. Mom is perfectly coiffed, her hair recently dyed and cut in a stylish fashion, her blonde a little blonder, her new mink eyelash extensions shaving years off her life. Thick eyeliner that was in style maybe five years ago dominates her eyes, and she’s gone with peach tones for the day, a gauzy, lightweight shirt over cream pants and sensible flat shoes – very unlike her – are a testimony to her injury.
Mom’s had to learn to sacrifice fashion for function, and she doesn’t like it.
“Good as new! I hate to hug and run, but Jason’s waiting for me in the car. He’ll be so sad to have missed you.” Mom gives me a quick embrace. “See you at the party?” she asks me.
“It’s my party, Mom!”
“Of course.” And she skitters off, though her gait is a little off.
“So good to see ye again, Amy. Ma congratulations.” Hamish is staring down at me, ginger hair clipped short on the sides and back but longer across his forehead. It hangs in waves so insolent, they deserve a spanking.
Why am I thinking about spankings?
“Amy.” Davis is using his serious voice, the one he uses when he thinks I’m being ridiculous. We’ve only been dating for three weeks, and he already has a Ridiculous Voice.
You know what Davis doesn’t have?
Magic-potion lips.
“Yes? Oh! Right. Davis, this is Hamish. Hamish, meet Davis.”
Hamish reaches for Davis’s hand and wrings it like he’s working out a muscle spasm in the poor guy’s forearm. I didn’t know a shoulder joint could turn in so many directions.
But Davis gamely tries to match Hamish’s strength, despite being eight inches shorter, a good forty pounds lighter, and viscerally not wanting to be touched by the man I’ve complained about during our entire friendship–and now romantic relationship.
“Hi,” he says, eyes going narrow. “The Hamish?”
I get a saucy look and a half grin from the man who just imprinted his taste on me. “Aye.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask. A tingle of annoyance starts in my toes and creeps up, like it has no intention of stopping until it gets to the crown of my head. “I’m–I’m graduating. This is my ceremony. Of all the places in the world where you could turn up, why here? Why now?”
“And why kiss her like that?” Davis’s words hold a challenge in them, his thick, dark beard hiding how clenched his jaw is. Horn-rimmed glasses encircle dark brown eyes that crowd each other slightly. He’s wearing a graduation gown, like me, with dark, shined dress shoes, men’s wingtips that signal he’s serious about his business career.
I’m stuck in four-inch heels because Mom insisted.
“Ach. The kiss? That was just a bet.”
“A what?” I gasp.
A short, compact man with the busy air of an overgrown hummingbird appears behind Hamish. Short might be an unfair description, because he’s taller than me and about Davis’s height, but compared to Hamish, every man is short.
“Saw it,” he says, clapping Hamish on the back. His accent is English, but I can’t place it. “Jesus, Hamish, you really can find someone to kiss whenever and wherever you want.” He slips Hamish something, hand to hand. “You win.”
“You arrogant piece of work,” I say, moving closer to Hamish, truly ready to slap him. “You bet on me?”
“Ye made it easy.”
“I am not easy!” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Shannon approaching, her face changing to confusion as she spots Hamish. It’s impossible to miss him, a redhead standing a good four inches above most people in the crowd.
Big and burly, with a model’s good looks and a professional athlete’s body, he’s becoming the face of more and more sports-related products. In America, nothing makes you more famous than hawking a consumer product.
The more popular, of course, the better.
The fact that he’s a fairly obscure Scottish Premier League player–obscure in the U.S., that is–doesn’t seem to matter. He’s hot and swoony, an attractive human commodity to promote other commodities.
“Never said ye were. Just that ye made it easy, pet.”
“Don’t call me that!” I shout.
Shannon catches up to us, moving next to me just as my date does the same.
Davis reaches for my arm, hand on my elbow, leaning in. He whispers, “Don’t make a scene.”
Something in Hamish’s expression hardens and I realize, with a sinking feeling, that I noticed the microscopic shift because I track him.
“I’m not making a scene.” I point to Hamish. “He started it.”
A lascivious grin from Hamish turns into something deeper as Shannon frowns.
My sister and I are nothing alike. We got different genetic code from our parents that makes me have Mom’s blue eyes and Dad’s thick auburn hair, while Shannon has light brown hair and Dad’s brown eyes. Shes full-figured, and carries herself with a feminine sweetness people mistake for naivete or weakness.
Unlike me, Shannon has no ambition. I don’t say that as an insult. Happy in life, she’s all about her close circle of family and friends. I don’t mean that she isn’t a hard worker–she is–or that she doesn’t have good ideas–she does.
It’s drive that Shannon lacks.
Marrying Declan McCormick, son of the self-made billionaire James McCormick–founder of Anterdec, one of the biggest corporations in Boston–was Shannon’s smartest move in life.
Of course, love had everything to do with it.
Now she’s vice president of Grind It Fresh!, the regional chain of coffee shops that Declan bought for her as a wedding gift (hello? billionaire husband…), but she’s slowly reducing her hours at work because she wants to be at home with my niece.
And soon, I suspect, more kids.
Shannon’s here to support me on my big day graduating with my MBA, a day that celebrates hard work and determination, but she’s also here to be my friend.
Something just set her off. And it takes a lot to piss off Shannon.
“Davis,” she says through gritted teeth, “what did you just say to Amy?” Her happy energy shifted to seething contempt so quickly, I do a double take to make sure I haven’t confused her with our other sister, Carol, who hasn’t earned a bachelor’s degree on paper but has a life experience Ph.D. in Righteous Fury.
We’re standing in a cluster–Shannon, Davis, me, Hamish, and Hamish’s friend, who has his hands on his hips and fidgets like a little kid stuck in a dentist’s waiting room.
Hamish watches Shannon with glee.
“Aye, Davis. What did ye just say to Amy?” he inserts.
“I told her not to make a scene,” Davis says confidently, looking around. “You, of all people, should understand,” he adds with a quiet grin to my sister, expecting an ally.
“Me? I should understand?” she says back with a deadly, flat expression. Whoa. Declan’s taught her a few tricks.
“You’re experienced in business. You’re a McCormick. Making scenes leaves the impression that one is unstable.” Davis is so matter-of-fact, he might as well be reciting a passage from a management textbook.
One of Hamish’s eyebrows flies up, tongue rolling under his lower lip.
“Who would think that, Davis?” Shannon asks with a head tilt he erroneously takes for agreement.
And suddenly, I get it.
Internal groaning commences.
Davis looks nothing like my sister’s ex-fiancé, Steve Raleigh. Speaks nothing like him. Is the polar opposite of Steve in so many ways–politics, food choices, movie selections, life goals.
But he’s tone policing me. Telling me not to stand up for myself. And in that sense, he’s no different.
Which makes this whole mess worse than I thought.
Because now I have to thank Hamish for kissing me.
Hamish
I’d have kissed her without Harry’s stupid bet, but it sweetened the pot.
Amy’s mouth was more than sweet enough.
Was it brash? Aye. Should I have done it? Naw, but she kissed me right back, so fiercely and with an enthusiastic all-in that made it clear I wasn’t breaking any of her boundaries. So I did it.
And her twee boyfriend didn’t like it.
I’ve nothing against the man. Or, at least, I didn’t, until he made that comment.
What’s so wrong with making a scene? Scenes are just the result of being yourself. If other people watch, then that’s on them.
Davis hasn’t answered Shannon’s question.
“And what’s wrong with being seen as unstable?” I ask, unable to help myself. “Is there a medal ye earn at the end o’ yer life for being stable? Sounds boring, Davis.”
He snorts and shakes his head but says nothing.
Which means he’s either a coward or a prig.
Or both.
Shannon gives Amy a sad smile and says, “Code Raleigh.” I’ve no idea what that means, but it can’t be good, given the way Amy’s face falls.
Tension affects people in different ways. You see it after losing a match, the changing room a sweaty, oily soup of disappointment and blame. But some people can’t handle direct confrontation. They live on the margins, passive-aggressive and snide, unable to say what they mean and mean what they say.
I’m not one of those people.
“I think,” I say, loud on purpose, turning a few heads, “that we’re here to celebrate Amy’s great accomplishment. I never finished university, ye know.”
Something gleams in Davis’s narrowed eyes. Amy edges an inch or two away from him, the movement subtle. Shannon takes a deep breath and searches the crowd, likely trying to find my cousin, her husband.
The billionaire.
“Went for a year, but football was ma future,” I continue, Davis’s look turning to barely-concealed scorn.
Ah! No. Open scorn now.
“The best future!” Harry calls out with a clap. I’d damn near forgotten he was with me.
“Why are you here, Hamish?” Amy asks softly, looking up at me with doe eyes. Vulnerable and quieter, she’s more grounded now. Less angry.
Searching for answers.
“It’s a long, funny story, but it boils down to girls and football.”
Her face sours. “Of course it does. Everything with you boils down to girls and football.”
Harry barks out a laugh and gives me a hearty clap on the back.
“No’ this time,” I say with a wink. “This is literally girls and football.” I let out a sigh. “Fine. Girls and soccer. There’s a big clinic at Amherst College here in town, and I’ve been coaching the nine-year-olds, along wi’ promoting the program.”
“That almost sounds altruistic.”
“Those little lassies are vicious. I’ve nae skin left on ma shins.” I shake a leg for good measure, and she bursts out laughing.
“That’s because you’re shite at football, Hamish,” Harry adds, laughing with such pleasure that even Shannon and Amy join in. Harry’s naught but a bundle of overagitated nerves, but he’s got a goalie’s mindset: Throw yourself in front of whatever obstacle life sends and head butt it right back.
A tight smile, the kind a baby makes when filling a nappy, crosses Davis’s face. “We can’t all be English Premier League soccer players, Hamish.”
Harry makes a very dangerous sound, and I can tell he’s about to correct Davis. The poor bastard doesn’t know the difference between English and Scottish Premier.
Or he does, and he’s doing this to needle me.
See, that’s where Davis and I are different. Because tossing out an insult like that doesn’t do a damn thing to me.
But it reveals everything about him.
“Well,” I say, splaying my hand over my heart, “we can’t all be MBA-toting executives like ye Davis. And congratulations to ye, indeed. Ye and Amy are classmates, aye?”
“We are.”
“And ye have a big job lined up?”
“Yes. Unlike Amy, I’ve secured employment.”
Something pops in Amy’s jaw. I believe her trigeminal nerve is trying to unwind itself, leap onto Davis, and strangle him.
“I’m in the middle of third interviews with Maartensi, Davis. You know that,” she corrects him.
That name sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite place it.
“I do,” he says in a patronizing tone, turning to Shannon. “I tried for a spot at your company, but HR said you’re not hiring. Expansion hit a roadblock?”
“Hmmm,” she says deftly. “HR said that? Funny. We just brought on an assistant marketing director and someone in finance, both with new MBAs.” She gives him back a tight smile filled with more contempt than I knew Shannon had in her. “Sorry.”
A shadow falls over Davis’s eyes. “It’s fine. Every company makes mistakes.” He lets out a little laugh, as if she’s in on his little joke-that’s-not-a-joke.
“If I had an MBA,” I chime in, “I’d work in sports management and financing. That’s where all the money is these days.”
“Entertainment?” he scoffs. “No. No one with any real smarts would ever go into entertainment to make big money in business. Crypto and international banking, that’s where it’s at.”
Amy stiffens. “You know I’m interviewing with Maartensi in entertainment.”
“And you know I think you’re making a mistake.” The guy won’t shut up, but he also looks pained, as if he doesn’t want to argue with her but he can’t help himself. “But if it’s a mistake, at least you’re in with a great company and can transfer to something better in a year.”
“If yer so hot for crypto and international banking, Davis,” I ask, “why did ye apply to work at Grind It Fresh!?”
Davis’s phone buzzes. He looks at the screen, ignoring my question. “My parents are wondering where I am,” he says to Amy. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Mmm,” she says as he gives her hand a light squeeze, then rushes off. Her eyes follow him, her expression somewhere between a wince and a reckoning.
“Mmm,” Shannon says, one corner of her mouth tight.
“You’re right,” Amy says with mild horror. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before.”
“They’re subtle, these guys. Frog in a pot. Steve was like that.”
“Frog in a what?” I ask, moving closer to them as Harry wanders off toward the toilets.
Shannon tilts her head, looking like a brown-haired, brown-eyed version of Amy for a moment. Amy looks just like her dad, but Shannon’s a blend of both parents.
“You know the old adage?” she asks. “How a frog would never jump into a pot of boiling water, but put it in a pot of cold water and slowly turn up the temperature…”
“Aye. Yer saying Davis is like that wi’ Amy? Only the water is his need to tell her what to do?”
“Yes.”
“And how would ye know this, Shannon?”
“Because my fiancé before I met Declan was a controlling, arrogant, manipulative jerk.”
“Let me guess–with an MBA?”
“Bingo.”
“Glad ye found ma cousin, then. He might be a bit closed off, but he’s no arsehole.”
“A ringing endorsement,” I hear from behind us as Declan, holding his daughter, wee Ellie, on one hip, finds our little group. “What the hell are you doing here, Hamish?”
“Teaching a girl’s football clinic in town. Marie found out and texted me. Asked me to stop by.”
Amy’s expression makes it clear the puzzle pieces just fell into place and Marie’s due for a tongue-lashing later.
“You coming to Marie and Jason’s house for dinner?” Declan asks. “There’s a party back in Mendon.” He looks at his phone. “About a ninety minute drive.”
“Naw. Have to get back to the camp. But thank ye.” I eye Amy. “Could have been fun.”
Harry returns. “Your family just keeps expanding!” he says as Declan puts Ellie down.
“That’s how family is, right?” I say, ruffling Ellie’s dark hair.
“Hamish,” she says, her little pre-schooler language skills improving, the H at the beginning of my name distinct now. “Wanna race?”
Last Thanksgiving, I was stuck in the States and spent a crazy day with the Jacoby family at their house in Mendon. Racing little Ellie on the sidewalk was one of the highlights.
Chasing a live turkey out of their backyard was not.
“Not now, lass. But soon.”
Harry tugs on my shirt. “Gotta go, Hamish. You tapped me out of my twenty when you kissed her like that, and dinner starts soon at camp.”
Amy’s face hardens at the mention of the bet.
“By the way, Hamish,” she says loudly, clearly not worried about making scenes now. “Thank you for kissing me.”
Shannon and Declan give us quite the look.
“Yer thanking me now? I thought ye were about to slap me.”
I’ll take the expression of gratitude if it comes with another kiss, though. Can’t say it, but I feel it.
“If you hadn’t done that, Davis wouldn’t have gotten jealous, and we wouldn’t have realized he’s a Code Raleigh.”
A furious look fills in Declan’s features. “Steve Raleigh? He’s here? What’s he doing now?”
“No, not Steve,” Shannon assures him. “Amy saw a different side of Davis today.”
“Oh.” Declan shrugs. “Never met him before. He seemed fine. Uptight, but fine. Networked with me.”
Pain fills Amy’s eyes, which she closes slowly, taking a long, deep breath.
“We were friends for a year. Then we were assigned to a team for a group project. The one we turned in right before Thanksgiving. When we came back from break, he hung out with me more. Asked me out a few weeks ago. I’ve been on guard against people using me for my connections to you,” she says looking at Declan. “But I thought Davis wasn’t like that.”
“We always do, don’t we?” Shannon says with great sympathy. “We always think they’re not like that, because we would never pick someone who is like that.”
“And then I did.”
Amy’s words pierce me. Make me not want to be ‘like that.’
Because I’m damn well not.
“Is it too much to ask to find a guy who doesn’t need my star to shine a little less so his can seem brighter?” Amy goes on, gutting me further.
She’s asking Shannon, but she’s also asking the world.
“No,” Declan answers firmly. “It’s not too much to ask. But guys like Davis are everywhere in business.”
“They’re in sports, too,” I add. “I’m no’ one o’ them, but there’s plenty.”
Amy looks up at me, her face serious, studying me.
“You may have earned your nickname, McWhoremick, and be a playboy, and a cocky jerk, but I will give you that, Hamish: You’re not someone who needs to diminish a woman in order to feel better about himself.”
I flatten my hand against my chest. “Did hell freeze over, Amy? Because I believe ye just paid me a compliment. Sort of.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Harry’s pulling on my shirt. “Now. We’re late.”
Before I can turn to leave, Amy’s at my shoulder, on tiptoes in her heels. She plants a sweet kiss on my cheek, my arm going around her, palm across her shoulders.
“I mean it, Hamish. Thank you.”
“I get a kiss for being a decent guy? How good do I have to be to get a shag?”
Harry’s started walking away but hears it, laughing his arse off.
She pulls back and smacks my chest. “And there you are, back to being the lout. You have to ruin everything.”
“Naw, Amy. No’ everything. But I am who I am and I won’t change for anyone. Remember that. Don’t ye dare let people like Davis make ye feel like ye need to change, either.”
And with that, I join Harry, jogging toward the exit of the stadium, ready for the trip back to Amherst College. I’ll need the miles to burn off the lust she just triggered in me.
Worse? The deeper need.
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Josie was not one to pray, but lately she had begun having whispered, fevered conversations with God.
With her legs up in the air and her husband’s baby paste inside her.
Please let me get pregnant. Please let me get pregnant. Please let me get pregnant.
♥♥♥
Laura turned her head away from the bathroom mirror, her eyes lasered on her smartphone, counting down the timer until she could look at the little plastic stick.
Please don’t let me be pregnant. Please don’t let me be pregnant. Please don’t let me be pregnant.
The timer dinged.
Laura looked.
Closed her eyes.
And had a whispered, fevered conversation with God, too.
♥♥♥
Eternally Complicated is the final (yes, for sure, really, no more books ever, I really mean it…) book in the long-running New York Times bestselling Her Billionaires saga. What started in 2012 as a short novella called Her First Billionaire has turned into an eight-year journey through the lives of Laura, Mike, Dylan, Laura’s best friend Josie and her love, Alex, and so many other characters (including Darla from the New York Times bestselling Random series).
As best friends Josie and Laura wrestle with very different reactions to their pregnancies, they find that one bond endures: friendship.
And with plenty of peppermint sundaes at Jeddy’s Diner, of course!
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Laura
Positive. It was positive.
Laura was positive it was positive because the word positive was spelled out in all caps.
Kinda hard to miss.
Red dye standing out over the white cotton strip in a long oval on a plastic stick that she dipped into her own pee three minutes ago said so.
Positive.
What a ridiculous word to describe a complicated situation. And a judgmental word, too.
Because maybe being pregnant wasn’t positive.
Maybe being pregnant wasn’t positive at all.
The sounds of a one of her children screaming in the back room bubbled up into the bathroom, where Laura sat on the toilet, the door carefully locked, the test in her hands. The wrapper for the test, the instructions, and the cardboard box were all neatly rolled up and stuffed into the bottom of the bathroom trash can, buried there under fresh toilet paper she’d pulled off the roll and wrapped into a bundle to toss on top.
“You stole it!” Aaron screamed in the distance.
“Aieeeeee!” screeched Adam, his twin brother, as Laura’s pulse pounded in her temples.
She knew. She’d known before she’d even peed in the cup and dipped the stick in the positive urine to get the positive test to be in this positively impossible situation.
She’d known being a week late wasn’t part of her menstrual cycle repertoire. A day late, maybe two, sure.
But otherwise, Laura wasn’t the type to have erratic cycles.
Stress didn’t change them. Medications didn’t change them. Even living with a group of women like she had in college hadn’t affected her cycle. If anything, she thought to herself as she stared dumbly at the word positive on the plastic stick of doom, the women around her in the dorm had synchronized their cycles to hers.
Not that she knew with any certainty. Her memory didn’t travel back that far for such mundane details. But when too many days had gone by and none of the typical premenstrual symptoms had emerged – no cravings for Ben & Jerry’s, no flashpoint temper at someone leaving the dishwasher door open – the dull thud of certainty had nestled somewhere between her navel and her pubic bone.
Like a small, polished rock, she carried it around for the twenty-four hours of willful denial she’d allowed herself before finally going to the drugstore and buying the test that she now held in her hands.
Jillian was eight. The twins were five. They’d had half a year of kindergarten, with a peaceful home during the day while all of the children were off at school being taught by people who weren’t them.
Her mind traced back the days to five weeks ago. It was a daytime tryst, the three of them, absorbing the luxury of a silent house.
No nannies, no screaming Adam and Aaron, no demands for apple slices and cheese cut a certain way.
No bored children’s cartoon bingeing.
No protests when the electronics were removed and crayons and paper replaced the power button and the touchscreen.
The three of them—Laura, Mike, and Dylan—had reveled in the silence as much as they had in the deep sanctuary of each other’s bodies. This had been their space again, their time, their choice.
They mattered again.
Frantic sex fit in between children’s schedules and demands had been the norm for eight years, but since the school year had started, all of the demands had been theirs and theirs alone.
She’d spent most of the day five weeks ago naked in bed with her men. When they weren’t using tongues and fingers and cocks to please each other, and when she wasn’t inviting them into her body in all of the ways that felt good and freeing, they’d indulged in a new television series, watching episode after episode of a ridiculous comedy until their sides split with laughter and their hearts filled with the kind of satiety that comes with being twinned with a body.
Bodies, in their case.
When a glance at the clock had reminded them that the school bus was coming soon, they’d showered together. It wasn’t sexual. The ritual cleansing had been a demarcation line, an acknowledgment of what they’d just done together and of what was about to unfold as the reality of the children that they had made poured into the silence.
And neutralized it.
The bridge between the nearly holy time of adults in carnality and intimately casual boundary-less-ness felt strange. A piece of Laura that day had snapped to attention as Jillian sloughed off her backpack, chattering about a girl’s birthday party coming in a week-and-a-half, and as Aaron came home yet again without socks.
Like Jillian’s backpack, Laura had sloughed off her identity as a sexual being, but what surprised her that day was how quickly she could go from the bedroom to the playroom.
Yet how woefully hard it was to go in the opposite direction.
Dylan
The damn drugstore bags were more see-through than Laura must have realized, he thought to himself as a prickly sensation made him stand tall, senses on alert.
He knew what was in that bag.
Dylan watched her walk through the kitchen in a daze, acknowledging no one, walking up the stairs to their bedroom with a worried look on her face. His eyes had flitted to the bag in her hand, the word Pregnancy on the side panel, opaque and startling at the same time.
His gut tightened.
His testicles pulled up, as if they were trying to choke him.
Why would Laura have pregnancy tests?
“Papa!” Aaron said, yanking hard on his hand, the one with the wedding ring Laura had put on his finger three-and-a-half years ago. “I want the green apple, not the red apple,” Aaron insisted.
Looking down, Dylan realized that he held a honey crisp in one hand with the knife in the other, ready to attend to the careful peeling.
One did not simply remove apple skin from an apple for a five year old; one peeled it with military precision, lest a single cell of red peel appear anywhere within fifty feet of the bare apple slice.
Puzzled, he looked at Aaron and said, “You don’t like Granny Smith apples.”
“Yes, I do!”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you—”
Stopping himself, Dylan realized that it was a fool’s errand to get into an argument with anyone under the age of…well, fifty.
“Okay, buddy,” he said, grabbing a green apple and washing it. To his knowledge Laura had only ever been pregnant twice, once with Jillian and once with their twins.
Three times? a voice inside him wondered.
Hold on.
Josie.
Those must be for Laura’s best friend, Josie. Eight miscarriages and counting, Josie and her husband, Alex, had been trying forever.
Relief made his shoulders drop. He had an explanation.
It was Josie.
Maybe Laura was buying them so Alex wouldn’t see them? Hiding the evidence? Maybe it was a surprise?
Or… something.
He didn’t care why. Just as long as it wasn’t for Laura.
Three kids in three years was a blessing from his wife he could never appreciate enough, but three was also enough.
“I want a Granny Smith apple,” Jillian announced, prancing into the room wearing a tiara and Mike’s Patriots jersey, the one he wore when they made it to Gillette Stadium on their once-a-year pilgrimage to the football game. The sleeves flopped down to the ground, and the jersey came to the tip tops of Jillian’s ankle bones.
“Okay,” Dylan said automatically.
“But there’s only one, Papa. The one in your hand.”
He looked down, the thin sliver of green skin the only indicator that this was a Granny Smith apple. Five plump Honeycrisps the size of softballs sat in the wooden bowl on the kitchen counter.
“You can have a Honeycrisp,” he said.
“I don’t want a Honeycrisp,” Jillian sputtered. “I want a Granny Smith.”
“I want a Granny Smith,” said Aaron.
I want a fuckin’ beer.
Uh oh. Did he say that aloud?
The two kids kept fighting. Good. He hadn’t.
A glance at the clock told him that Laura had been upstairs for five minutes. If she was taking that pregnancy test, then she’d know by now.
But that was impossible. Because the test was for Josie, right? She must be buying them for Josie, being a good friend to her.
Carefully slicing the Granny Smith in half, he cored it and then handed each kid a half, reaching for a Honeycrisp.
“You each get half of each apple.”
“I don’t want half! Now it’s cut and it’s broken,” Aaron declared in an outraged tone, as if Dylan had chopped a dog they were fighting over clean in half.
“I’m the apple referee,” Dylan said in an increasingly aggravated tone that even he could hear with his own ears, “and I say you each get half.”
“That’s fair,” Jillian said, nodding sagely as she took a big chomping bite out of hers.
“But now it’s broken!” wailed the little boy, who had no real reason to complain other than the endless work of trying to figure out the world.
“I was gonna cut it into slices for you anyhow, Aaron,” Dylan said, hoping logic would rule the day.
His son’s lips wavered as he suppressed a series of emotions that Dylan couldn’t read or identify, but he could see that they churned through his little mini-me.
“Fine.” The little boy turned on his heel and stormed out of the room. “I’ll eat my half of the Granny Smith apple, but I’m only half happy!”
Shrugging, Jillian ate the rest of hers and tipped her face up to look at Dylan. “If he’s only half happy, does that make him half sad, too, Papa?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said automatically, as Laura’s bare feet made their way into his field of vision. One step at a time she moved down the stairs, slowly. She was wearing yoga pants that hugged all of the best parts of her in all of the best of ways. A loose knit top with embroidery around a V-neck finished the simple look. She’d kicked her boots off in the entryway and hadn’t bothered to put on slippers.
Step.
Step.
Step.
He paid attention to her in a way that he didn’t normally, as Jillian nattered on about apples and fairness. Laura held something in her hands, curled in toward her like cradling a baby. She stopped on the other side of the kitchen counter, drew in a deep, shaky breath, and then smiled at Jillian.
“Hi, Mama!”
“Hi, honey.” A softness in her eyes as she looked at the boys made his stomach drop.
A hard swallow, and Dylan knew. Oh, God. He knew instantly.
It wasn’t Josie who was taking that pregnancy test.
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Sometimes your wildest dreams really do come true…
Laura Michaels sat up in her dark, lonely bedroom, heart slamming in her heated chest, the dream so real she could still taste his mouth against hers, feel hands pressed into her soft curves, sense fingers exploring where she wanted them most in the lush territory of her abandoned body. Yet her bed was empty, as always.
Except for the three cats who thought they owned it.
And the empty ice cream pint, spoon jutting out like it was identifying her in a line-up.
Heart racing, she tried. She really did. She should have calmed down. She should have been able to shake the reverie. She should have let it all fade.
What kept her heart beating so fast, though, was one undeniable fact.
There had been four hands on her in that dream…
This prequel takes Laura, Mike and Dylan from the New York Times bestselling series Her Billionaires and offers a glimpse into their yearning for what was meant to be…
In Your Dreams, is a newly-revised and expanded prequel to the New York Times bestselling series, Her Billionaires. It was originally published in 2014 under the title Before Her Billionaires, but now has more than double the words, is fully re-edited, and has more of the men 
.
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The sound of her steady breath was the only way she could anchor herself as he pressed against her in the silk-covered bed, both of them half-dressed. Moonlight dripped into the room through sheer curtains that billowed in, pushed by a wind so eager to watch what Laura and her lover did under covers and in privacy that it made the cloth tickle her calves, eliciting a throaty laugh as his hands cataloged her, tugging lightly on her long, wavy hair.
He smiled, face in the shadows, thickly-muscled arms tending to her and only her. The muted sound of the city clamored outside, both immediate and distant, a background rumble that seemed necessary, like oxygen. It was there, it was noted, and it was forgotten, imprinted into her. What was new was him—his touch, his taste, his scent.
Him.
“You are perfect,” he whispered, a husky voice darkened by want echoing through the room. Mingled with her quickened breath, it made her feel whole. Richer and more mature somehow, tempered by her own driving, throbbing need. She felt changed, from a woman who felt lucky to be under his attentions to one who was wanted enough to be secure.
Who wanted more.
The shafts of light from the window teased her as they danced across his face, highlighting only the thick, blonde waves she could touch as she felt for his shoulders, fingers playing with his open shirt collar, the warm rush of skin and hair at the back of his neck like an invitation to bury herself there. She inhaled musk and a lightly-spicy cologne, orange and clove and something that staked her in place.
She never wanted to leave.
“And you are amazing,” she whispered in his ear, her hot breath a rasp of lust as he shrugged out of his shirt, wrists unbearably sexy and tight with muscle and tendons that popped as he unbuttoned his cuffs and soon – ah, yes.
Shirtless.
Broad shoulders covered with thick muscle made it impossible to tear her eyes away, the effect of just looking at him so startlingly arousing. Heart beating faster, skin simmering to a heated flush, she took him in with grateful eyes and a desperate pulse that wanted his touch more than anything in the world.
Needed it.
Would die without it.
“Dispense with this,” he commanded, wide, big hands under her shirt, pulling up with a delicate urgency. He unveiled her inch by inch, her bare skin pebbling as the idea of his dark gaze made her breath quicken. Under his watch, she was more than just mortal, the promise of delicious, naughty delights ricocheting through her blood like wildfire, skin flushing with fire.
Her unclothed legs savored the feel of his, the tingle of thick leg hair against her own smooth skin. He was long, muscled, a man who cared for his mind and body in equal measure, and confident as well.
The bed was his playground, and he set the rules.
Always.
A deep breath filled her chest, her throat, her senses with his scent, making her ache to have him inside her in so many more ways. While his musk lingered in the air she inhaled, his fingers made other parts of her shiver, the rush of heat between her legs both welcome and foreboding.
If the mere brush of fingers on her hip could produce such intensity, what would his mouth between her legs feel like? A shudder of anticipation ran through her as his lips made the delectable journey down the path of her torso, moonlight shining on his broad back that begged to be explored by her fingers, his tongue leaving a lazy trail that made her breath hitch, air flow coming in fits and starts as he went down, down, down…
Leaving no question she was about to learn the answer to what she had just wondered.
“Yes,” she murmured, the word unnecessary, her body one big yes.
Her hands plunged into his thick waves, the soft crush of hair in what became clenched fists maddening against the thin skin between her fingers. The texture of him, of his hair, his neck, the nuances of skin and beard and the nape of his neck, so masculine and yet so tender, made her yearn for this.
For more.
For all of it, as if she couldn’t grasp enough in the inadequate time they had to touch.
“Oh, there,” she encouraged, feeling a smile spread his lips as he parted hers. The way he touched her was unbelievable, magical and thrilling, but his full presence was more enticing than what he did to her. In this moment, no one else in the world mattered,
So many words bounced in her addled head, jumbled and incoherent as his tongue found the pulsing center of her sex. Gratitude. Mercy. Delight. Ecstasy. Joy. Abandon.
Home.
“God, you’re so…” she whispered as he tended to her with such care, like a virtuoso of a woman’s body, playing her as if she were a fine instrument only a handful of masters could manage.
“Mmmm,” he groaned against her, one hand cupping her ass and driving under her, up over her hip and onto her belly, lounging there as if it were waiting for something that it knew was coming. “You’re the one who is a goddess,” he said against her thigh, the wisps of air against her vulnerable, exposed flesh making her quiver. “A luscious, beautiful, amazing gift,” he continued, his words arousing her as much as his ministrations to her flesh.
One hand on her belly, one hand’s fingers in her, and then a third hand cupped the soft flesh of her ass, a fourth on her breast, tweaking the nipple where his mouth had just been.
And—wait a minute.
Four hands?
A new mouth kissed her, tasting like wine and spices, different from the earlier man, who’d carried a distinct minty flavor. Her body flushed and her eyes searched the dark room, seeking answers.
How could there be two men?
“We adore you,” said a new voice, deep and filled with a sensual growl that made her entire body shiver, the epicenter of this tectonic shift between her legs. Her hand groped to find the body attached to that voice, encountering hard, rigid muscle, arms with veins that stood out like a rope, like a lifeline she must grab and hold on to for dear life.
And just as her eyes found a shaft of light that illuminated the room just enough to see their faces, to focus on the very man (men!) who gave her so much pleasure, she woke up to a cold, empty room, her heart racing, pulse flying like a supersonic jet, a cold sheen of sweat soaking her breasts, her cleft, her soul.
“No!” she cried out into the chilly silence of reality.
Not again.
Pounding her fists on the unsympathetic mattress, she hit two, three, four times, her thin cotton nightgown stuck to her loose breasts, her hair flying with the force of her anger.
Again.
These dreams invaded her mind most nights, slinking in like a snake, a mist that moved and permeated, filling in the cracks of her subconscious. Heart pounding, clit throbbing, she burst into furious tears, starting an ugly cry that made her ribs ache, her throat hurt so much she thought she was choking, the sound of weeping as intimate as the touch of those warm hands from her dream.
But not nearly as satisfying.
She was so, so lonely. And the dreams were so, so real.
Too real.
It broke her heart every time she woke up, alone.
The glow of the red numbers from her alarm clock infiltrated her brain. 4:44 a.m. It was nearly the same time every night, like clockwork (ha ha). As she took in a shaky breath and her neck stopped spasming, she rubbed her eyes over and over, as if she could massage into them some sort of message that could permeate her brain.
What that message was, though, she didn’t know. Something. Anything. Indistinct and uncertain, it was a message, a subconscious communication that was trying to teach her a lesson. A warning.
A premonition?
The universe was trying to tell her something, and it involved two men, two mouths, four hands, and a lot of need.
All hers.
Sighing, she pulled the tangled sheets off her legs and looked down, pink painted toenails chipped, her feet wiggling with restlessness. A cup of chamomile tea would be her nighttime companion, it seemed.
And not those two men.
Two.
It started out as one, a guy who resembled her ex… boyfriend? Ex-cheater? Ex… something. Ryan had been the guy she’d dated, the guy she thought she would have a future with, the guy who turned out to be married.
Already married.
So was he a cheater, or was she? When he broke up with her he’d flung his marriage in her face, telling her it was her fault she had been with him, that she had made him stray, that she had been at fault for his infidelity. In the warped way that she allowed the world to work sometimes, she’d actually believed him for a short while. She’d apologized.
She’d begged him to forgive her.
If she’d known he was married, she never would have been involved with him in the first place. It broke her heart to know she’d accidentally slept with a married man. Ryan threw that in her face, too, claiming it was proof she didn’t really love him.
No matter what, she was always in the wrong.
Twisting her words, recasting the blame, Ryan had found a way to shame her for his behavior. The sting hung over her, her skin buzzing with it, every part of her marked by his words as if they’d been switches.
And even after her best friend, Josie, had spent a long weekend de-programming her and making her see what a manipulative asshole Ryan had been, she’d dreamed about him, too.
What a slippery animal the unconscious can be. It’s your best friend, your worst enemy, your confidante and your nemesis. The unconscious keeps you going at night and shapes your social instincts during the day.
And deep in the dark hours of the middle of the night, it arouses you to no end with dreams of a love life that would make anyone blush.
“This is crazy,” she muttered to the empty room.
That cup of chamomile wasn’t going to make itself. Heaving herself off the bed, she took a few steps on shaking legs, thighs rubbing together under the thin cotton of her nightgown. The throbbing between those thighs only intensified, a deeply irritating feeling that wasn’t going to abate.
Laura made a mental note to replace the batteries on her vibrator—it had stalled out on her the other night, sputtering to a dead halt just when she’d needed it most, making her cry out with a hoarse sound she’d last made during sex with Ryan, when he’d finished first and rolled over.
And you couldn’t just throw some new D batteries in Ryan and get him going again.
Too bad life didn’t work that way.
One of her cats, Frumpy, rubbed against her legs and purred, the cool feel of the fur brushing against Laura’s ankles with a disjointed sensuality. Gently nudging the cat away, Laura padded into the kitchen, filled the kettle, turned it on and dug out a can of cat food.
Miss Daisy and Snuggles decided to join in the food fest, generating a mewling sound that made Laura laugh.
“All right, all right, it’s coming,” she said, her voice cracking. Living alone meant not talking much when she wasn’t at work or hanging out with her best friend, and by the end of twelve hours of not saying a single word, she found her vocal cords in need of a little stretch. On long weekends she could go all day without saying anything, making the return to work a bit uncomfortable, as if she had to relearn basic social cues all over again.
Laura fed the cats, washed her hands, and set up the tea steeper, spooning her loose tea into the water reservoir. The kettle whistled at just the right moment, she poured the water in for steeping and shut the top—
And promptly burst into tears all over again.
She was a single woman living alone with three cats, making tea in the middle of the night. This was not how her twenties were supposed to be.
Closing her eyes, she willed the dream to come back, to feel the sensual heat of those hands. In her mind’s eye she remembered the forearm that was attached to one of those loving hands, the sandy hair that peppered the tanned skin, the twist of muscle under the taut skin. It was a man’s arm, muscled and tight, with tendons and veins rigid and clear under textured skin.
We adore you.
The man’s words whispered through her like the rush of hot wind on a summer’s night, right before a burst of sweet, steamy rain, the kind you run outside and play in, even as an adult.
You tip your face to the dark, cloudy sky and let the misty rain blanket you like it’s love.
She could feel the imprint of his palm on her thigh. If she weren’t firmly grounded in the world of logic, she’d think he was really here. Right now, in another room in her small apartment, off to the bathroom or back in her tousled bed, waiting for her, warming the sheets and reclined in full, drawn-out nude beauty.
Her hand reached down to touch the expanse of skin that burned from the memory of his touch. A laugh burbled out of her, unbidden and without any pretense. She snorted as her fingers brushed against her own creamy curves, her finger tips sliding from mid-thigh on up.
Quickly, she yanked her nightgown down. Now she just burned with a stupid sense of shame, a cold chill making her shiver as the tea darkened in the clear plastic cylinder she used for steeping.
“Good grief, Laura. Pull it together,” she muttered, as if admonishing herself would actually work.
Not like it ever did before.
What had she done to deserve a life where her only intimacy was her fingers, her battery-powered night-table boyfriends, her cats and these all-consuming dreams? Dream men were fine and all, but they couldn’t bite your nipple at just the right time.
He has to be real, she thought, the palpable change in her skin making her more certain than ever that whatever she had dreamed had been more than wishful thinking. He’s out there, somewhere. He’s real.
He has to be.
Don’t you mean ‘they’? a voice inside her hissed, the trickster who made her doubt, made her insecure and self-deprecating, asked in a disapproving voice.
They.
The second man had appeared with such stealth, yet such prowess, that she blended the two together in her addled mind. They weren’t the same, though. Distinct and heavenly, they were two separate men.
And both wanted her.
She inhaled slowly, fingers curling around the edge of the kitchen counter, her breasts flushed with the memory of how all four hands on her had made her ache.
In the dream, she’d known that ache would soon ease as they pleasured her to release. Too bad life didn’t imitate the mind’s-eye movie she’d invented in her sleep. If it did, she’d hire someone to hack her back into that moment and live out her wildest sexual fantasies.
Pouring her now-too-strong tea, she smiled at the thought. Fantasies. They’re all fantasies, right? The first sip of chamomile made her mouth twist from the concentration, but by her third she was calmer. More centered.
Less dreamy.
Thin strands of the reverie slowly faded away. She tried to conjure an image of the man’s forearm but couldn’t. Then his scent. Cardamon and freshly-cut grass? Mint and orange? Synapses in her brain struggled to put it all together to form the atmosphere in which she’d awoken.
By the time she finished her cup of tea all that remained was the barest hint of memory, of being touched. Of being loved.
Of being cherished.
The actual experience disappeared, though, as the sun made its slow ascent. As if sunlight chased her dream away.
All that remained was her frustration.
Miss Daisy meowed until Laura poured her a shallow dish of milk. Dawn made the sky outside turn a sickly shade of grey. Laura sighed and slumped on her couch, turning on the television to catch whatever was on at 5:11 a.m.
The early morning talk show featured a young woman she’d never seen before and a guy she vaguely remembered from some reality television show where he ate food out of dumpsters for a week as some kind of challenge. They chatted on a boring, beige couch in a studio that looked like something a hotel designer created.
“Bachelor auction!” the woman chirped, turning toward a screen behind them. A shirtless man in a construction outfit appeared, stripper music in the background.
“Can you imagine paying $5,000 for a date with one of those hunks?” the male co-host joked.
“Yes,” said the woman, licking her lips. “I can. He’s a catch,” she added, pointing to a man dressed like a doctor, walking down a fashion runway wearing a white lab coat, jeans – and nothing else.
“Catch? Once you catch him, what do you do with him?” the man asked.
The studio audience laughed.
Click.
Laura wasn’t watching that. First off, who had $5,000 for a date? And second, even if Laura had that kind of money for a charity auction, how awkward would that date be?
Hi, nice to meet you. I paid $5,000 after watching you gyrate shirtless on a stage. I’m Laura Michaels and don’t feel obligated to have sex with me.
She barked aloud at the thought, scaring Snuggles and making the cat hiss, then attack the spider plant that grew for what seemed like miles in a spiral around the living room.
“Sorry, Snuggles.” Even her tone carried a thick blanket of guilt. Laura rolled her eyes. Hot bachelors. Buying a date. If she could catch a guy like that, what would she do with him?
Probably shake with terror and worry he’d point at her and make fun of her.
She was so far out of the league of guys like that. It was like she played a different game in a different language on the wrong planet in a galaxy far, far away.
What would it be like to be with a man… like that? The kind with chiseled features, his chest a relief map of hot flesh? How would it feel to run her hands through his hair, to smooth her palm across a cobra back covered with muscle, to possess him and have full access to touch and tease and enjoy him whenever she wanted?
Even better—to be wanted by a man like that?
One who would burn for her, whose touch would be more sensual than sexual, more primal than functional, a man who couldn’t wait to be with her, to watch her, to touch her.
To own her.
Not just her body, not just her sex, but her heart—mind—soul.
Another smile played at her lips, but this one was wistful. Sad. Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen.
A girl could dream, though.
And, apparently, she had.
Big time.
Hefting herself up off the couch, she let herself indulge in a self-pity sigh, the kind that comes out in a long, slow, tortured outbreath with a little whine at the end.
The kind no one ever admits they do.
The closest she’d ever get to a man like the ones in the bachelor auction would be in her imagination. A shower was what she needed before she headed to work. A shower where her own hands could be those one man’s hands, the shower head could be the second set, and the hot water would help to wash away her tears.
And then she’d start the day fresh, clean, and mostly emptied of the memory of two men she didn’t even have the right to imagine would want her.
Yet she did.
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