Wild Lover Complete Series
Read Wild Lover Complete Series Online
Authors: Natalie Wild
Copyright © 2014 by Natalie Wild
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Table Of Contents
Mia Tennyson was a girl’s girl. She liked shopping and spinning classes, white wine and fro-yo, yoga and book club reads. She was a first grade teacher, for goodness sake. Mia didn’t really believe other women when they claimed to like watching football and drinking craft ale. She thought those chicks were all hiding People magazines behind their copies of
Sports Illustrated
and beer mugs in an attempt to impress their boyfriends. She stubbornly clung to her girly-ness, until Jeff started complaining that they didn’t have much in common. Since Mia hoped that their two-year relationship would soon become an engagement, she decided to throw Jeff a bone. She couldn’t have predicted that Jeff would chuck that bone right back in her face.
Somehow she found herself standing on a fishing dock in the blazing South Florida sun on a June morning. She stared at her phone. She couldn’t believe, given the circumstances, what she was reading.
Sorry, Mia. I just really think our relationship isn’t going anywhere.
Are you kidding? I booked this fishing trip so I could learn to do something you like
to do!! I paid $300!! Now you’re breaking up with me… and via text??!!
I’m really sorry, but you know I’ve been unhappy. But maybe you’ll like fishing. Take
care of yourself. Let’s get coffee sometime and I’ll give you back the stuff you’ve got at my place.
Fuck you, Jeff. Seriously. FUCK YOU.
“Miss? Are you Mia? Mia Tennyson?”
Mia’s eyes welled up behind her sunglasses. She turned toward the deep, masculine voice.
The speaker had some kind of foreign accent. Maybe Jeff’s unfathomable behavior had caused her to lose her mind, because it seemed like someone had plunked her down in the middle of a Ralph Lauren ad.
The man with the English-or-Australian accent stood on the prow of the blue and white center console fishing boat in the slip before her. The boat’s name, “Wanderlust,” was emblazoned on the side in red letters. The man wore a pair of khaki shorts and a gray polo shirt. He had thick, wavy dark hair that stuck up in a way that would have been silly in an office but was charming on a boat. He was barefoot. Every inch of his exposed skin was tan, except for the white rings around his blue eyes when he removed his glasses.
Mia stared at him, agog, as if she were one of the fish he was supposed to teach her to catch. He tried again, “Mia Tennyson?”
She nodded.
“Are you coming with me… on this charter? We can get going. You’re my only
client
today.”
Mia opened her mouth to say something like, “I’m sorry, but I’ve had a change of plans and I really can’t go fishing today. I have to grade a bunch of book reports, or write up report cards.” None of her usual teacher-
ly explanations would work, however, because for one thing, it was summer. For another thing, she meant to start talking, but instead she started crying.
“Whoa!” said the boat guy. He jumped onto the dock. “Whoa… are you okay?”
She nodded and sobbed and nodded again. “I—yes, I’m fine—but I… I hate
fishing
!”
He grabbed a blue towel from the boat’s railing. “You hate fishing? I—well…I thought you were supposed to go fishing with me.”
“I am!” Mia said. He looked at her as if their respective uses of English had suddenly turned into German versus Mandarin Chinese. “I am supposed to go with you. But I booked this trip because my boyfriend wanted us to spend more time together doing the kinds of stuff he likes to do. But now… he… he…”
Boat-Man
rubbed his scruffy square jaw. “He…”
“He broke up with me! He sent me a text and broke up with me after two years!”
Mia buried her face in the towel.
“Ouch,” said Boat-Man. “That’s horrible.”
“I can’t believe it…I just can’t.”
“So I guess you don’t need to go fishing anymore.”
She shook her head.
“Damn,” he said. He sighed, and even through her fog of hurt and shock, Mia
noticed the fullness of his lips. “I prepped the boat. The lines—“
She sniffed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about all that. Guess I thought we just
hopped into the boat and you stepped on the gas.”
He smiled at her. “There’s no gas pedal.”
“Oh. Well, if you don’t mind refunding my deposit…”
“Technically I don’t have to, but given the circumstances…” He shrugged. “Can’t take advantage of a lady with a broken heart.”
Mia slung her beach bag over her shoulder. “Thanks,” she said. She watched as the boat guy climbed back onto the Wanderlust. He stretched his arms over his head. The muscles in his back pushed against his polo shirt. She swallowed. “I appreciate you understanding. Sorry for wasting your time.”
“It would have been a waste of time to take you out, anyway. If you hate it so much, you never would have been any good.”
Something about that dismissal irked Mia. “It can’t be that hard.”
He shrugged. “Guess you’ll never find out.”
Mia held out her hand. Jeff thought she was a wilting daisy, and obviously this English-or-Australian Boat-Man did, too. She wasn’t going to be dismissed twice in one day. She decided in that moment to show them both. “Maybe I will find out. And maybe I’ll be the best fisher-woman in South Florida.”
Boat-Man
laughed. “Maybe, Miss Tennyson.” He took her outstretched hand and helped her aboard the Wanderlust. “Welcome. My name is Blaine Daniels.”
*
Blaine was right. Mia was no good at fishing. She managed the thirty-minute boat ride offshore with ease, but after ten minutes of aimless floating in the open ocean due east of Fort Lauderdale, Mia felt the creep of nausea. It picked up pace quickly, and before she knew it, she was hanging over the side of the boat.
She didn’t know what was worse: her hurt pride, her embarrassment, or the fact that her stomach seemed determined to lodge itself in the back of her throat. Blaine offered her a Dramamine, but she couldn’t keep it down. Once she’d thrown up everything in her stomach, she lay on the bench seat in the rear of the boat. Blaine propped a towel under her head. He wiped her hair away from her face. “Are you okay?”
She tried to smile, but she failed at that, too. “Yes—no. This is the worst day of my life, honestly.”
“I’m sorry. It didn’t go as I planned, either. When I saw you on the dock, I thought it had potential to be an amazing day.”
“Why is that?” She wiped her eyes.
“I usually take men out on the water. Not gorgeous brunettes.”
She blushed through her pallor. “Thanks. You’re just trying to make me feel better. “
“Are you kidding? Those big brown eyes? Those legs? Those—” He cleared his throat, but she thought she caught him glancing at her breasts, the cleavage pushed into prominence by her position on her side. ”You’re not my typical charter customer.”
“I’ve been a crying mess the whole time you’ve been with me. A crying mess, and a—” She couldn’t say it. It was too mortifying to think of Blaine listening to her gag over the side of the boat.
“Don’t worry about it, Mia. How old are you?”
“Twenty-six,” she said.
“You’ve got plenty of time to learn to fish. I didn’t start until I was your age. Ten years, later, look at me now.” He flashed her a blindingly white smile. Whoever said the English had bad teeth had never met Blaine Daniels. “You ready to head back?” he asked.
She nodded. She closed her eyes and listened to the hum and whir of the boat’s engine. He didn’t gun it the way he had on the way out. She sensed he didn’t want to jostle her too much. The cool air blowing over her skin made her feel a bit better. After a few minutes, she sat up and tugged her cover-up closer to her chest. Her nipples had perked up, too. She didn’t want Blaine noticing. She’d had enough embarrassment for one day.
They pulled into the slip and Blaine helped her gather her belongings. “How are you feeling now?” he said, as she stepped onto the dock.
“Much better,” she said.
“Coffee might help,” he said. He pointed at the marina’s little restaurant. “I don’t have anything else on the agenda today. Want a little caffeine?”
“Sure,” Mia said. She followed him into the restaurant, but made a break for the bathroom while he found a table. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. “Oh, my god,” she said aloud. Her eyes were like two teabags. Her complexion, red spots on pasty white. She’d braided her hair, and the pieces that had escaped during her puking session and on the ride back to the marina had formed bird nests around her face. She swallowed lingering nausea, but now she didn’t know if the disgust was over her equilibrium or her appearance.
She did the best she could with the bit of makeup and hairbrush she had in her purse, and she brushed her teeth and gargled with mouthwash. She looked at her phone for the first time in over two hours, and the blank screen squeezed her heart. Her F-you message to Jeff was the last text she’d received. She’d hoped to find an apology, or a retraction, or at least an acknowledgement. His silence couldn’t have been more hurtful.
She returned to the table. “I think I should go, actually,” she said. “I’m exhausted, and I still don’t feel well. And I have a lot on my mind.”
“Okay,” said Blaine. He stood. “I got you a chai tea. It always helps me when I’m feeling peckish.”
She smiled at him and took the hot cup. “Peckish. That’s so English. You are English, right?”
He nodded. “Born and bred.”
“Where are you from? London?” She poked her tongue into the tea to gauge its temperature. It was still too hot to swig. “Sorry. It’s probably annoying when Americans assume London is the only city in England.”
“Somewhere around there.”
“How did you end up here?”
Blaine ran a hand through his hair. She had the urge to touch it. Jeff had been losing his hair since she’d known him. He always kept his head shaved. She hadn’t felt a man’s hair curl around her fingers in years. “It’s a long story. I’ve ended up in a lot of places.”
“Like where?”
“Didn’t you say you have to go?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah, right.” His dismissal flustered her. “I did say that.”
He headed toward the door and again she followed him. “I hope you feel better. Both here—” Blaine pointed at his stomach. “—and here.” He pointed at his heart.
She searched for a reason to keep talking, because something suddenly told her that she shouldn’t let Blaine Daniels walk away without at least connecting with him on social media, or getting his number. Blaine, however, seemed on a mission to get back to his boat.
“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “you’re boyfriend is an idiot.” Blaine clipped down the steps toward the rows of boats. Mia watched him go until he disappeared into the Wanderlust’s cabin, and then she got into her little hybrid car and drove home.
*
Mia woke up the day after her fishing disaster with no plan and a looming day of aloneness. Normally she didn’t mind being along at all, if anything she relished time to herself. Without the option of seeing Jeff, however, her solo Saturday took on a sad connotation. Jeff still didn’t reach out, and she refused to contact him. She met a couple girlfriends for lunch, and then drove to her parents’ house to commiserate with her mother. Her mom, a Cuban immigrant who would give you the shirt off her back and just as quickly dole out her opinion on your personal life, hadn’t been surprised by Jeff’s behavior. “That man,” Mama Maria said, with narrowed eyes. “Something about him I never liked. His mouth was twitchy and his bald head was too shiny.”