Her Last Best Fling (15 page)

His hand curved around her hip, and he drew her nearer. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her tight.

“This is home,” she said against his chest.

He kissed her mouth, her cheek, behind her ear. “Yes, that’s the way I feel. It doesn’t matter where we live, as long as we’re together.” He went back to kissing her lips.

“I’ve got to tell you something, Blake, so just listen, okay? You don’t have to say anything.”

Blake tensed.

“I mean it. Just listen to what I have to say.” She poked his chest as she glanced up at him. “I need to do this before I chicken out.”

“Okaaaay,” he said slowly.

She met his eyes. “I love you, Blake Michaels. And I want it all.”

As her words sunk in, a slow smile split across his face.

“That’s a good thing, since I love you and I want it all. In fact, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.”

“Wait.” She lifted her head. “What are
you
saying?”

He gave her a sheepish grin. “I’ve been making a lot of changes over the last few weeks. I wanted to tell you, but it wasn’t until a few days ago that I knew everything was going to fall into place the way I wanted it to. As long as you’re all right with what I’m about to ask.”

What was he talking about? What kind of changes? “You can ask me anything,” she said honestly.

“How would you feel about Harley and I moving here full-time?”

Uh, it would be a dream come true. She slugged his arm. “How do you think I’d feel?”

“Hey, no need for violence.” He rolled over and pulled her on top of him.

“I can’t believe you were making all these plans and didn’t tell me. I’ve been devising all these scenarios trying to figure out how I can split my time between here and Texas.” She sat up straighter, fully aware that he was hard as a rock underneath her.

“So you like the idea.”

She laughed. “Of course. It’s what I’ve wanted all along, but I didn’t feel right asking you to give up everything you had there to move here with me.”

“If you’d asked, I would have done it. But a couple of weeks ago when you were so sad, I realized I didn’t care if you wanted me to be here or not, you needed me. I’d do anything for you.” He took her wrist and brought her forward and kissed her.

“I want and need you,” she whispered, “more than you will ever know.”

“Trust me, I do know. I’ll have to go back and forth for a while. J.T. will help me out. I’ll be based here, though. And it’s good timing, too, for the security business my friends and I have. We’re thinking of expanding and opening an office here. Besides my financial duties, the guys want me to take charge of implementing the new ideas we’ve got going and do a forecast for a possible office here. It’s a lot, but as soon as I made the decision to be here with you, it all fell into place.”

She kissed him, lightly at first, and then she deepened the kiss, putting everything she had into it. “I’m so glad. And what about you know who?” she asked.

He twisted one of her curls around his finger. “You know who will be happy having us and her toys. At some point we should maybe consider trying to find a house outside the city, but there’s a great dog park not far from here. She loved it.”

“You really have thought of everything.”

Something was still making her nervous, and she realized it was because she was so happy.

“You don’t think it’s too soon for us to cohabitate?” he asked, his expression serious.

She shook her head. “You know it isn’t. Like you said, there may be some bumps along the way, but if you’re riding over them with me, we can cruise through life together.”

“That was a terrible metaphor.” He laughed.

“Yes. Yes, it was.”

“Have I mentioned how much I love you?”

She glanced at the nonexistent watch on her wrist. “It has been a good ten minutes since the last time. I was beginning to wonder.”

Growling, he reversed their positions.

She smiled, and put her hands on either side of his face to hold him close. “Show me, Blake,” she said, “show me how much you love me.”

Capturing her lips in a long and passionate kiss, he left her breathless. Just from the kiss alone she was ready for him.

“Not so fast, sweetheart,” he said as he nuzzled her neck. His mouth paid equal attention to each of her breasts. As he moved down, kissing all the way, she cried out. Having him here with her meant everything to her.

He caressed her, tempted her, touched her exactly as she wanted to be touched. He was amazing, so strong and also so tender.

Her orgasm was searing and swift. She felt it from her head to the tips of her toes. It made her shudder and call out his name.

“Now,” she said, shutting her eyes, anticipating him.

“No.” He teased her into yet another orgasm. This one robbed her of all control. “Blake, Blake...” she whispered.

He stroked her thighs, moving onto his knees. The intensity of passion in his gaze was enough to make her shudder again.

He entered her slowly, carefully, filling her, completing her.

“Yes,” she said, matching the intimate movement of his hips.

As they raced to the edge together and leaped, he kissed her thoroughly. Every bit of love he felt for her was in that kiss, and she returned it.

He was her marine, body and soul.

19

H
ARLEY
BARKED
AS
Santa passed by the window. Blake’s mom clapped, and the woman wrapped in his arms laughed so hard he couldn’t help but smile. They were all in Macy’s office enjoying the parade.

J.T. shook his head in wonder. “How does she know it’s Santa?” he asked.

“Who knows? But she does have a thing for presents and toys,” Macy answered.

They laughed.

“Dear girl, that parade was too exquisite for words,” Blake’s mom said. “So much better in person and beyond anything I could imagine. I am surprised that even with all the snow on the sidewalks, so many people showed up.”

“Yes. It was fun and nice to be able to watch it here in my office where it’s warm and comfortable. More snow is expected later this afternoon. I’m just glad the skies cleared a bit so they could have the parade. It would have been awful if you came all this way to see it, and then it didn’t happen.”

His mother pulled her out of Blake’s arms and hugged her. “Macy, sweetie, we didn’t come for the parade. We came to see you. No one should be alone on Thanksgiving. I’ve had a few too many of those myself, and I didn’t want that for you.” She kissed Macy’s cheek. “Let’s roll, J.T., we’ll take Harley for a walk. You two be back at Macy’s place by one so we can eat.”

She paused in front of Blake and touched his hand. “It’s wonderful to see you so happy, son. It’s about time.”

He held his mom’s hand and squeezed. “Mom, you are the absolute best. I love you.”

“Love you, too, son. Don’t be late for dinner.” She followed J.T. and Harley out the door.

Blake sat on the edge of Macy’s desk. She pushed his legs apart and slipped in between them. He leaned toward her and she put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“This has been on of the best days of my life and it’s still early.”

He held her close. “I agree. Are you sure you’re okay with my family invading your space unannounced?” He’d kept an eye on her throughout the morning. It was almost as if she were afraid of offending someone or saying the wrong thing. He didn’t want her to feel that way.

“Blake, I so appreciate what your mom and brother have done for me this Thanksgiving. It’s been great. I’ve never felt like—I was a part of a family. Years on my own, well, you know how it’s been. Now that I see what I’ve been missing out on, I want to make up for lost time. So there’s no invasion. I’m ecstatic that you and your family are here.”

He kissed her nose. “Good. Because my mom is very excited about shopping tomorrow. I was hoping I could count on you to handle that one.”

Macy laughed. “Always with the ulterior motives. I should have known. But if I’m going out in the wilds of Manhattan and facing all those shoppers, then seriously, you’re coming with us.” She tugged on his arm and they left her office.

“I had a feeling you’d say that.” At the elevator, he helped her on with her coat. He thought about that and all the other things in future that he would want to help her with. Big and small. He planned to spend the rest of his life loving this woman.

She was his everything.

One day he’d ask her to marry him, but not until he knew she was ready. The year ahead represented a lot of change for her. He’d be there for her. He wanted her to achieve her dreams. In fact, he couldn’t think of anywhere he’d rather be.

“Hey, Mr. Deep Thoughts. What’s going on in that brain of yours?” She was standing in the elevator, waiting for him.

No more living day to day, wondering if it might be his last. From now on he and Macy lived in a world of possibility.

“I’m thinking about the interesting things I can do with you after everyone leaves tonight.”

Her cheeks turned a bright shade of pink as she yanked him into the elevator. “Now that’s all I’m going to think about during dinner.”

He waggled his eyebrows. And then he kissed her.

This was only the start of a long and happy life together.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from DRIVING HER WILD by Meg Maguire.

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1

S
TEPH
PAUSED
AT
THE
BOTTOM
of
the steps, gym bag in hand, and gave the space a long study. Wilinski’s Fight
Academy.

It wasn’t how she remembered it from her last visit, in
November.

It looked like a bomb had exploded.

The cardio equipment and mats and the boxing and octagonal
rings were crowded to one side, the other half overtaken by milling contractors
and stacks of cinder block.

In the fighters’ corner—the sounds of gloves whacking and men
grunting, the bass din of the hip-hop that fueled their drills.

In the workers’ corner—shouted questions and directions, the
squeal of a band saw or sander from inside the space that would become a second
locker room in a couple weeks’ time. A thick sheet of rubber flaps hung over the
would-be door, but dust still escaped.

Sweat and concrete—the scents of laboring men.

Steph had sampled enough of each to last a lifetime. The next
time she got close to a guy, she hoped to heck he smelled like a gentleman.
Whatever gentlemen smelled like. Cedar, maybe, or citrus or leather, or that
stuff from Hermès that she’d bought for her older brother one Christmas. Robbie
had taken one sniff and made a face, so she’d snatched it back, promising to get
him Bruins tickets instead. Now the bottle lived in her bedside drawer, and
occasionally she spritzed it on her pillow and pretended it was evidence of her
incredibly urbane boyfriend, out of town in Brussels, attending a convention for
surgeons or dignitaries or CIA operatives—any job that came with really
sophisticated Christmas parties, so she’d have an excuse to wear heels and curl
her hair.

Someday. Somehow.

For now, here she was in a gym, construction dudes on one side,
fighters on the other, a big old buffet of the kinds of guys she used to date.
Perfectly nice ones, likely. Good, hardworking men like her dad and brothers and
her friends and exes from Worcester. But she was in Boston to start a new
chapter, one that might feature a boyfriend with soft, strong hands and a
college degree and a knowledge of Scotch.

And one who wouldn’t be embarrassed to introduce her, saying,
“And this is my girlfriend, Steph, the retired cage fighter.”

Yeah, good luck with that.

She toed off her sneakers and tucked them in one of the cubbies
by the door. Giving the construction chaos a wide berth, she headed for the
workout area, scanning for a familiar face. She found one, its owner busy
leading a group in kickboxing drills.

Rich Estrada. She’d met him at a big event in Vancouver the
previous spring, and she ought to sue him for emotional distress, for hoisting
her hopes up to such dangerous heights.

The first time she’d laid eyes on him, he’d been dressed for a
press thing, sauntering around in a suit. He didn’t have a fighter’s face—not
yet—and she’d been intrigued. The kind of sophisticated guy she
never
crossed paths with. The event had been held at a
huge casino, and she’d assumed he was some jet-set high roller visiting from the
Riviera or someplace. She’d been in for a shock the next day when she glanced to
her side and found him whacking a heavy bag in the gym. And when they’d
spoken—that accent. He sounded like every guy she’d known growing up, dropping
all his R’s and sticking extra ones where they didn’t belong. The most elegant
man she’d ever seen, and he winds up being Boston disguised as Barcelona.

He called a water break now and she caught his eye, waving.

“Penny! Hey.”

She winced. She’d been fighting as Penny for ages, a nickname
from when her baby brother hadn’t been able to pronounce “Stephanie.” It had
stuck because her hair was red as copper, and she’d competed as Penny beginning
with her preteen karate days. Since then it had followed her through her first
true love, judo, then jujitsu, then on to mixed martial arts. It was time she
put her foot down. Here and now she’d quit being the person everyone imagined
she was, and start being who
she
wanted to be.

“I prefer Steph,” she reminded Rich.

“Sorry, I knew that. Steph. Welcome home.”

She looked around, nodding. “This’ll do.”

“Don’t say that. You’re here to help us haul this dungeon out
of the dark ages. Make Wilinski’s into Bahstan’s premieh gym for mixed mahtial
ahts,” he said, making fun of his own accent.

“I’d have thought that was your job, Mr. Celebrity.” She
sighed, frowning her commiseration. “Sorry about Rio.” He’d lost his title to
Vicente Farreira a couple months earlier in Brazil, under suspect circumstances.
“If the organization doesn’t run a doping investigation on Farreira, they’re in
for a shit-storm. Nobody’s build changes that much—not dropping
down
a weight class.”

Rich shrugged. “The controversy’s been good for me. Got a match
in August with a payday that’ll keep me from bitching about pretty much
anything. And months to prepare.”

“Nice.” Steph could appreciate how luxurious that must feel.
The female side of MMA wasn’t nearly as popular, and with fewer major events,
she’d often taken offers with less prep time than was ideal, not wanting to miss
an opportunity. But now she was retired—from the stress of the road, if not the
sport. At the moment she felt relieved, though she knew in time she’d probably
miss the focus that came with a match on the horizon. Though not as much as
she’d come to miss feeling grounded the past couple years.

She’d be thirty in less than three weeks, and was ready to
start working toward goals that hadn’t mattered until recently—a place of her
own, a taste of real dating, a relationship, a family down the road. Her
aggressively autonomous twenty-three-year-old self would’ve laughed, but Steph
apparently had a biological clock. And it had begun to tick, if softly. A rough
loss and a stress fracture had officially cooled her commitment to the pro life.
She’d managed to never break anything worse than her nose and a few toes all
these years, and for the first time ever, she realized she might like to keep it
that way.

Rich whistled to call the members back from their break. “Get
in on this, if you want,” he told her.

“Just let me change. Am I still in the lounge?”

He nodded.

“’Fraid so. But until our female membership takes off, you’ll
practically have that new locker room all to yourself once it’s finished. Though
I’ll warn you, it’s tiny. You wouldn’t believe the loopholes we had to squeeze
through to even get planning permission to retrofit it.”

“I’m sure it’ll do.”

She crossed to the room beside the gym’s office and closed the
door. There was no lock, so she pushed her bag against it, rooting through her
workout clothes, swapping her winter coat and jeans for warm-ups and a jog bra.
She tugged on the latter, untwisting the straps as she dug for a top. Then—
bonk.

The door was shoved in, whacking her in the nose.

“Ow, Jesus!”

No matter how many times she took a punch there, the startling,
white pain of it never got easier. She cupped her hands to the spot as she
straightened, suddenly face-to-face with one of the construction guys. His
recognition dawned slowly.

“Oh, sorry. Did I just thump you in the head?”

“Yes.” She drew her fingers away. When his blue eyes widened,
she glanced at her palm, covered in blood.

“Holy shit. I’m sorry. Uh, here...” He muscled his way through
the half-open door, toppling the contents of her gym bag, tools from his canvas
belt clattering and clanging against the metal frame. He unbuttoned his flannel
work shirt, offering it to Steph.

Not wanting to drip blood on her own clothes, she wadded it
against her nose.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t know anybody’d be in here.
I’m supposed to wire your new TV.” He nodded to a big box leaning against the
wall, splashed with a picture of a flat-screen. “I’m the electrician.”

Preoccupied with pressing her bridge, scouting for a break,
Steph didn’t reply.

“Should I get on with it, or...?”

She abandoned her nose, spreading her arms to showcase the
rather obvious fact that she was dressed in her bra. “I’m kind of changing,
here.”

“Oh jeez. Sorry.”

“Never mind.” Steph wasn’t modest. She’d changed in far less
private venues than this, and once a warm-up banished the January chill from her
muscles, she’d be back down to her bra for training. “Just shut the door and get
on with it.”

He did, sidestepping the mess he’d made of her clothes. “I
won’t look,” he assured her, busying himself with the box. “Just pretend I’m not
here.”

She checked to make sure the bleeding had stopped, then tugged
on a long-sleeved compression top. She cast her hapless assailant a glare as he
crouched to organize TV components on the carpet.

He looked like every guy she’d taken shop class with in high
school, the very epitome of Massachusetts working-class guyhood. Sandy brown
hair that managed to look messy despite its short cut, caramel-colored Carhartt
pants, work boots, a forest-green tee whose front Steph was positive would bear
the logo of a contracting company. The cotton was pulled taut between his broad
shoulders, but she was through being seduced by such sights.

She knew this guy too well already. He’d have a truck parked
along the curb outside with a Sox decal on one side of the rear window, Pats on
the other. He grilled a perfect burger and owned a large, happy dog, and played
touch football with his buddies on the weekends, come rain or snow. His name was
Ryan or Mike or Pat or Brendan. Brendan Connolly, Doyle, McCarthy, McAnything.
Sully, Smitty, Murph. His hands felt like sandpaper and his skin smelled of
Lever or Zest.

She knew these things, because she’d already dated this guy ten
times over. Guys as comfortable as a broken-in pair of sneakers, but Steph
wanted something more. She wanted to be swept off her feet, not pulled onto the
couch for an afternoon of
SportsCenter,
with
Coors-flavored makeout sessions during the ads.

“My name’s Steph, by the way,” she said, angling to learn
his.

He kept his eyes on his task. “Sorry again, about your nose,
Steph.”

“I’ve got a shirt on now.”

He turned and got to his feet, the promised logo from J.T.’s
Contracting greeting Steph. He was tall, six feet or so, and had a handsome,
honest face, the kind that advertised a man’s every emotion. Strong jaw behind a
couple days’ stubble. And those blue eyes were so...
blue
. Steph wanted to slap herself for even noticing.

The guy frowned, squinting at her nose. “It’s not broken, is
it?”

She shook her head and tossed him his button-up. “Just a
nosebleed. I’ve had worse.” Though usually she at least got paid for it.

His eyes rolled back with relief. “Oh good. I mean, not good.
But you know.”

“I know.” She cocked her head at him. “What’s your name?”

“Patrick.”

Of course it is.
“I’ll see you
around, Patrick. Maybe next time you’ll knock.”

“I will, don’t worry. Again—sorry. Seriously.”

He wore the guileless look of a scolded puppy, and Steph felt
some annoyance lift. She offered a half-assed smile and turned away, tucking her
gym bag in the corner.

Rich spotted her as she approached the mats, dark eyes
widening. “Jesus, what happened to your nose?”

“Your electrician punched me in the face with a door.”

“You punch him back?”

She smirked. “Thought I’d save that for the ring.”

“Is it broken?”

“No. Just tell me if it starts bleeding again.” Steph could
sense the well-groomed professionals forming an orderly queue outside the gym,
just dying for a chance to woo such a glamorous woman as she.

Rich asked her to take the lead on grappling drills and she was
relieved to find Patrick gone from the lounge when she went to pull on her
gi
. Wilinski’s didn’t have a proper jujitsu program
yet—her arena, now—but she did her best with the ragtag group of uniformless
members.

If the guys were feeling weird about having a woman in their
ranks, they didn’t show it—no leering, no skepticism. Some men could be royally
macho pricks, but on the whole, fighters were a sensitive group. Theirs was a
humbling, emotional sport, most of the bravado reserved for the cameras.

She’d had better offers than Wilinski’s, money-and
profile-wise, but there was something appealing about the challenge. She could
step in as it went co-ed and feel like a part of the evolution, feel invested
and valued. Feel
rooted
to something after way too
many years of going wherever the fights were. Stability, after all that
transience.

Once the lunchtime sessions wrapped, Rich showed her around the
office and the computer system.

“Mercer’s better with this crap,” he said, frowning as he
clicked through folders on the laptop. Mercer was the gym’s general manager.

“His wife owns the dating service upstairs, right?” Spark—a
slick-looking operation whose glass-fronted office shared the foyer with the
gym. The most mismatched neighbors in small-business history.

“His fiancée,” Rich corrected, managing to find and print the
form he’d been looking for. “Jenna Wilinski.”

“Wilinski?”

“Her dad opened this place in ’82. She inherited both
floors.”

Her brows rose. “The plot thickens.”

“She nearly gave the gym the chop, but luckily Mercer managed
to seduce her away from reason.”

“I’d have thought that was your job.”

He grinned. “I know, right?”

“Doesn’t your girlfriend work up there, too?” If memory served,
the woman was refreshingly down-to-earth, compared with all the glammed-out
girlfriends-of-fighters Steph had met over the years.