Given (Give &Take)

To families in their many shapes and forms.

As the Give & Take series rounds out with
Given
and
Take This Man
, I’d like to extend my sincerest gratitude to a wonderful editor, Lauren Plude, who reached out to me with enthusiasm when
Taken
was in its infancy and had the vision and guidance to see Rachael and Merrick’s story through two more novels and two more novellas. Because of Lauren, Amy Pierpont, and Emmanuelle Morgen, I’ve had one of the most thrilling experiences of my life so far: seeing my books on bookstore shelves. Thank you for that! It’s been a pleasure working with the Forever team on the Give & Take series.

The biggest champions an author can have are book bloggers and reviewers. I’ve had the amazing opportunity to meet so many crazy, book-loving, dedicated women who blog for the sheer joy of interacting with other readers and authors. These women give up time from family and friends to spread the love of books. In August 2013, I was a host and organizer of The Naughty Mafia Rocks Vegas, and I was blown away by the bloggers who pitched in to help set up and make sure the signings ran smoothly. Four
bloggers who joined in the planning and organized their own signing as part of the events deserve more than thanks for everything they do for the reading and writing community: Christine with Shh Mom’s Reading, Holly with I Heart Indie Books, Jennifer from Wolfel’s World of Books, and Ellie with Love N. Books. We couldn’t have done it without you guys! A special thanks to Andrea Gregory for running the Facebook group for attendees, answering Facebook messages, and being the Café Press shopkeeper—these are huge jobs to take on and we appreciate your help a ton! Aimee Pachorek, Keelie Chatfield, and Susan Sunderlin, thank you for always being supportive and wonderful! Chasity Jenkins and Donna Soluri, I’m excited to see what the future holds. Onward and upward!

Being an author is very similar to strapping in on the world’s biggest roller coaster. There are highs that are insanely high, and lows that make your stomach bottom out. One constant is the support and encouragement of my family. I couldn’t write without my mom who thinks I can do anything and rushes over to give me pep talks when I need them; my dad whose words in college when I was working two jobs, interning for free and going to classes full time, “Buck up and do it,” have stuck with me and become my motto; my sister who’s always ready to rush in and face an army of adversity for me if she has to; my husband who instinctively knows when to give hugs or tough love (a.k.a. a kick in the ass); and my two funny, quirky, amazing kids
who are old enough now to understand why they can’t read mom’s books and are still proud of me anyway!

My biggest thank you goes to you, the readers who have reached the end of Rachael and Merrick’s story with me. There will be new characters and stories to come and I hope you enjoy them as much as the Give & Take series.

S
leep wouldn’t come to me. I was no stranger to insomnia, but this was different. This was sleeplessness due to frustration and worry.

Countless hours had been spent racking my brain—where was Nadia? I’d left my daughter several messages and hadn’t heard from her in at least a month. All I wanted to do was make sure she was okay and taken care of.

I padded down the grand staircase, barefoot, into the open, three-story entryway of Turtle Tear Hotel. Moonlight lit upon the wall murals, wavering with shadows from the trees outside the windows. It made the painted birds seem to move in that eerie, hallucinogenic way of sleepless midnights.

I should be in bed, curled up against Rachael. It wouldn’t be long before she woke and came looking for me. Causing her worry was something I hated, but staying in bed, staring at the ceiling, had driven me mad. I had to get up and move.

Taking quiet strides down the hallway, I exited through the patio door. The fountain gurgled. Water fell from the
conch shell the stone mermaid held in her hands. Frogs called from the banks of the island. I’d love nothing more than to feel the cool grass between my toes and breathe in the breeze off the water, but I knew it was too risky to walk that close to shore at night in the Everglades.

Sitting in one of the wrought iron patio chairs, I slouched down and looked up at the moon. It was hard to believe that not long ago, I stood in this very spot—the hotel behind me still in ruins—and was the loneliest man on the planet. Now that I had Rachael and my family, my son, Nadia’s twin, MJ, nothing was going to take them away from me.

I took a deep breath and held it in, fighting off the foreboding feeling that this happiness was fleeting. As I blew it out, the soft, deep notes of a cello reached my ears from the direction of the boathouse.

I chuckled. Beck playing the cello was as likely as Beck becoming my best friend, but there it was—both recent facts. Lately, everything that had once seemed absurd and impossible was happening.

I threaded my fingers behind my head and listened, admiring the cloudless, starry sky. Beck was pretty damn good.

Just as my mind cleared of worry and the anxiety wafted away on Beck’s smooth strings, footsteps shuffled behind me, bringing me back to reality. I turned my head to find Joan, my ex-assistant and Beck’s girlfriend, walking toward me.

“I didn’t know you were here this weekend,” I said, a little more than surprised to see her. I did my very best to avoid any time alone with her, even though I knew Rachael was secure in our relationship. I didn’t need to give her any reminders of our rocky beginning when she perceived my past romantic relationship with Joan as a threat.

“I got in late tonight by boat.” Her eyes were lost in the trees, summoned by Beck’s strings. “He’s good,” she said, stopping beside my chair.

“Exceptional.”

The two of us listened silently until the melody ended. Then Joan turned to me. “You know he’s wasting his talent being here.”

My shoulders tensed. “Why do I hear accusation in your tone?” I had never had an indication that Beck wanted to do something other than work as crew foreman for Rocha Enterprises. I wasn’t holding him hostage. Beck was a grown man. He could do whatever he wanted with his life. His choice. He certainly didn’t need another man telling him what he should be doing.

“He feels obligated to you. He doesn’t want to leave you high and dry here.”

I scratched my chin, running my short nails through the stubble. “This project is over. Has been. Why does he feel he needs to stay?”

“Now that you sold off all of your properties, making Rocha Enterprises all but extinct, and you and he have become good friends…” She shrugged.

“It’s his way of being supportive or something? Showing loyalty?” Jesus, I didn’t sell all my properties by choice—my bastard father would’ve taken them from me if I hadn’t. There was no way I’d let my hard work fall into those conniving hands. The last thing I wanted was to be an obligation, like someone’s decrepit old grandparent. “He doesn’t owe me anything.”

“It’s not about owing you. It’s about standing by someone he thinks of like a brother. With everything going on—losing the company, MJ, Nadia—he won’t leave Turtle Tear. And now there’s the Weston Plantation. MJ will need him as foreman there.” She shot me a challenging look, lifting a brow, and I knew what she was saying. What she was asking.

I nodded and turned away, trying to block out thoughts of the conversation I’d have to have. She stood for a moment longer before padding to the gate and heading off toward the boathouse in a golf cart.

I stretched my arms over my head before standing and inhaling a deep breath of lime-scented air. It was late fall, and Mr. Simcoe and I had cleaned up the overripe key limes from the orchard floor, but their sweet, pungent scent still lingered in the earth below the trees.

From now until the day I died, this would always be what I identified as the scent of home. This island, this hotel, Rachael. The awareness of home was something I’d never known before. Experiencing it gave me a heady feeling as I blew out a breath and turned toward the patio
doors to find Rachael lingering in the entryway watching me. Her hair hung down past her shoulders to touch the lace trim on the top of her silky tank. Her matching pajama shorts clung to every curve. She was a sexy angel standing there beckoning me to her.

“Come back to bed,” she said, holding her hand out. “Let me help you get your mind off things.”

I took her hand and kissed it. She radiated sexual heat and emotional warmth. Two things I could never live without. Only from her. My Rachael.

My home.

It wasn’t the first night I’d been stricken by the thought, tying her in with my base needs and desires. Over the months we’d been together, it was clear that I never wanted to be without her. I had to make sure she knew, she felt the same.

Soon. I’d do it soon.

I trailed my eyes from hers, down over her lips, neck, and to the spot on her collarbone where I knew I could make her sigh by kissing it.

Very soon.

Y
our hands should be illegal,” I whispered between moans of ecstasy. I grasped his wrist and tried to pull his hand away. I’d already had two orgasms and he was showing no sign of relenting. “I’m supposed to be taking
your
mind off of things.”

Merrick chuckled against my breast and flicked his tongue across my nipple. “You have taken my mind off of things, just not these things.” He sucked my stiffened peak and delved his fingers inside me deeper. My eyes rolled up to the ceiling, recalling a time when I wouldn’t let him touch me.

Never again. I wanted his hands, his fingers, his mouth on me until my last breath. I’d given myself over to him and never once looked back. He was my life. Existing without him would be no existence at all.

The telltale quaking of my legs paired with the heat igniting in my center told me I was on the brink of my third mind-blowing climax of the night. “Please,” I whimpered. “Merrick—I need…” I pulled on his shoulders, desperate to have him inside me. “Please.”

He kissed his way up my chest to my neck, allowing me
to wrap my legs around his waist. “You never have to beg me, Rach, but I like it when you do.”

I arched my back, loving the sensation of my sensitive nipples rubbing against his chest, and reached between us to wrap my hand around his long, hard penis. He groaned and I took his mouth with mine, sucking his lips and sliding my tongue against his.

I guided him to my opening. He barely thrust, entering me only an inch or so. I raised my hips, eager to take more of him in. “Slow,” he whispered, threading his fingers with mine and raising them above my head. “Let me make love to you slowly.”

I slid my legs down his, wrapping my ankles around his calves, feeling the length of his body pressed against mine, hot and heavy.

He rocked into me, pushing himself in a little at a time. The sensation—the waiting—was overwhelming. It brought tears to my eyes. I loved him so much, sometimes I couldn’t keep it all inside. I felt like I’d explode with it.

I rocked with him. He looked down into my eyes and I blinked back the tears. “Why are you crying?” He kissed my forehead and each eyelid.

“Happy tears,” I said. “I love you so much it hurts.”

Merrick lowered his head and kissed my chest over my heart. “You have my love forever. I promise you. You believe that, don’t you?”

I nodded. Fat, wet tears slipped down the sides of my face onto the pillow. “I want forever.”

“Good,” he said, following the salty trail of my tears with his tongue, down below my ear. “Because you don’t have a choice.” He thrust hard and deep, making me gasp and squeeze his hands. I tightened around him, wanting to give back the sensation he was giving me. He let out a low groan and leaned his forehead against mine.

I stared into his eyes as I rose up to meet each of his torturously slow and controlled thrusts. He ground his hips against mine, rubbing and circling his pelvis, hitting all the right spots inside and out. I whimpered and closed my eyes, knowing I wasn’t going to last long. Merrick nuzzled my nose with his. “Open,” he whispered. “I want to be looking in your eyes when I take you over the edge.”

I did what he asked, locked in to his deep, dark, endless eyes. A rush of heat flushed my body. I tried to free my hands, wanting to grip his hair, pull him closer, but he wouldn’t let go, only held my hands captive above me even tighter. “Come with me,” I pleaded. “It’s so close. Merrick…”

A tightening pulled behind my navel, spread through me, contracting around him.

“God, Rachael,” he whispered.

I felt him throb inside me and I shattered with him.

Both breathless and sated, he collapsed on top of me for a moment, capturing my lips in a lingering kiss before rolling off and wrapping his arms around me, pulling me into him. “I love you. You’re everything to me.”

My heart jolted and swelled. I kissed his chest, savoring
the salty flavor of sweat, and nestled down into his arms. “I love you, too. No matter what.”

He glanced down at me; his serious expression took my breath away. “Promise me,” he said.

“I promise you. Forever.”

He traced his finger over my eyebrows, down my nose, and across my lips. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“Promises should be sealed with a kiss.” I kissed his fingertips, then lifted my head to reach his neck, his soft stubbled chin, and finally his lips, which I could never imagine getting enough of.