Kisses After Dark (51 page)

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Turn the page to find out about our amazing
Kisses After Dark
contest and enter to win a trip to the 2015 Reader Weekend in Rhode Island!

How Well Do You Know Your McCarthys? Take our McCarthy Series &
Kisses After Dark
Quiz to Enter to Win a Trip To 2015 Reader Weekend!

You’ve read all twelve books and the Chance for Love novella, so you’re a McCarthy expert! Take our short 20-question quiz to see how you well you know your McCarthy trivia. Make sure you’ve read
Kisses After Dark
first as 10 of the questions will focus on the new book. Act FAST! This contest is ONLY available through
Sunday, October 5, 2014
at midnight EDT. Everyone who takes the quiz will be entered into a drawing to win a trip for two to 2015 Reader Weekend, June 26-28, 2015 in Newport, Rhode Island. Reader Weekend includes a Friday night Tiki Bar reception and a Saturday trip to Block Island (weather permitting), the real-life inspiration for Gansett Island. On Sunday, June 28, attend breakfast with Marie with a Q&A about upcoming books and a book signing.
Find out more about Reader Weekend.

One grand prize winner will receive a trip for two to the 2015 Reader Weekend in RI including:

Round trip airfare for two to Providence, RI

Hotel accommodations for two nights at the Newport Marriott for the weekend
A signed copy of
Kisses After Dark

A map of Gansett Island and other fun swag

Second place:

$250 gift card for the book retailer of your choice

Gansett Island prize pack: Sticker, hat and sweatshirt!

Third place:

$100 gift card for the book retailer of your choice

Gansett Island prize pack: Sticker, hat and sweatshirt!

You DO NOT have to get all the answers correct to be eligible to win but you do have to submit your answers to be enter the contest.

Click here to take the quiz!

Turn the page for a sneak peak at the first two chapters of
I Saw Her Standing There,
book 3 in Marie’s Green Mountain Series, out on November 4, 2014.

I Saw Her Standing There

Book 3 in the Green Mountain Series

By: Marie Force

Sugarmakers in Vermont feel a bit tender about the weather this winter, what with memories of the heat wave in March last year that choked off the sap runs. In response, we decided to start tapping earlier than ever, on February 6. What’s two weeks? It sounds insignificant, but it feels akin to moving Christmas Day up to December 11.

—Colton Abbott’s sugaring journal, February 11

Colton Abbott had never considered himself a particularly private person—that is, until he had something big to hide from his loving but overly involved family. His six brothers, three sisters, two parents and one grandfather were
dying
to know how he was spending his weekends lately, and Colton was
loving
that they had no idea. Not the first clue.

A smile split his face as he drove across Northern Vermont, from his home in the Northeast Kingdom town of Butler to Burlington, where his family owned a lake house and where his “secret” girlfriend would be meeting him in a couple of hours. He wanted to get there early and hit the store for supplies so they could relax and enjoy every minute of their time together.

Colton had big plans for this weekend, the sixth one he’d spent completely alone with her. During that time, they’d talked about nearly every subject known to mankind, they’d kissed a lot, fooled around quite a bit and last weekend, they’d even gone so far as to take each other all the way to blissful fulfillment. But they’d yet to have sex.

He intended to fix that this weekend before he lost his mind from wanting more of her. He’d tried to respect her wishes to “take things slow” so they didn’t “get in over their heads” when they lived so far from each other and had so little time to spend together. Of course he’d heard people say for years that long-distance relationships sucked, but until he’d experienced the suckage personally, he’d had no idea just how totally the situation sucked.

It got worse with every weekend they spent together when he was left wanting more and having to wait a full week before he could see her again. They’d been lucky so far. Other than the weekend he’d stayed home for the funeral of his sister Hannah’s dog Homer, they’d had six weekends with no other commitments to get in the way of their plans, but he knew reality would interfere eventually. They both had busy lives and families and other obligations that would mess with the idyllic routine they’d slipped into over the last month and a half.

They’d met halfway the other times, and this would be the first time that she’d come to Vermont. Since he wasn’t quite ready to expose her to the austere life he led on his mountain, he’d asked his dad for the keys to the lake house.

And what an odd conversation that had been the day before . . . With time to think about it during the two-hour ride across the state, Colton had the uncomfortable suspicion that the one person he wasn’t fooling with his secret romance was his dear old dad.

Colton had planned his attack stealthily, coming down off the mountain on a rare Thursday to see his dad at the office. Waiting until most of his siblings had left for lunch—except for Hunter, who never seemed to leave the office for any reason except a fire alarm—Colton had sat in his truck and watched his dad step out of the diner and head back across the street to the office above the family-owned Green Mountain Country Store in “downtown” Butler, if you could call Elm Street a downtown.

Colton had emerged from his truck and followed Lincoln up the back stairs that led to the offices where he and five of Colton’s siblings ran the store. Colton kept his head down as he walked past Hunter’s office and knocked on his dad’s door.

“Hey,” Lincoln said with obvious pleasure. His father was always happy to see him, which was one of the many things in life Colton could count on. “This is a nice surprise. Come in.”

Colton shook his father’s outstretched hand and took a seat in one of his visitor chairs.

“To what do I owe the honor of a rare midweek visit from the mountain man?”

“I needed a couple of things in town, so I figured I’d stop by.”

“Everything okay up the hill?”

“It’s all good. Quiet and relaxing this time of year, as always.” Colton thought of early summer as the calm that followed the storm of boiling season, during which he produced more than five thousand gallons of the maple syrup that was sold in the store. After nine years of running the family’s sugaring facility, his life had fallen into a predictable pattern governed by twenty-five thousand syrup-producing trees.

“I’m glad you stopped by. I was going to come up to see you today or tomorrow.”

“How come?”

Lincoln rooted around on his desk, looking for something in the piles of paper and file folders. “Ah, here it is.” He pulled out a light blue page and handed it over to Colton.

As he scanned the announcement of a trade show in New York City, he skimmed the details until he realized what he was reading. “What the hell, Dad?
Pleasure aids and sensual devices?
What’s that got to do with me?” He nearly had a heart attack at the thought of his father thinking he needed such things to move the relationship no one was supposed to know about forward.

“I’m considering the line for the store, and I’m looking for someone to send to the show. Since this is your off-season, I thought you might be able to make the trip for us.”

While trying to wrap his mind around the idea of “pleasure aids and sensual devices” on sale at their homespun country store, he tried to keep his expression neutral. Though he was slightly appalled at the reason for the mission, the location appealed to him very much.

In the interest of keeping his big secret a secret, he kept his reaction casual and indifferent. “What do the others have to say about that product line?”

“I haven’t exactly mentioned it to them yet. I figured I’d let you check it out first and see what you think before I bring it to them.”

“Why me?”

“Why not you? Everyone else is up to their eyeballs in work and life stuff, so it seemed to make sense to ask you now that your busy season is over for the time being.” Lincoln shrugged. “But if you’re not up for going—”

“Never said that.” He’d be a fool to pass up a chance to spend a whole week with her. “I’ll do it, but with the caveat that I think this product line has no business in our store.”

“So noted.”

“And I think you’re in for yet another battle royal with your kids over it.”

“I live for a good row with my kids,” Lincoln said with a grin that made his blue eyes twinkle with mirth.

“Don’t I know it,” Colton muttered. The latest row had involved the website designer Lincoln had hired behind the backs of his children, who’d made it clear they had no interest in taking their store online. Then Cameron Murphy had come to town and won the hearts of the entire Abbott family, especially Colton’s older brother Will, who was now madly in love and living with Cam as she designed the website for the store. Lincoln Abbott had a way of getting what he wanted, and Colton and his siblings had learned to be wary of their father’s motivations.

In this case, however, Colton couldn’t care less about his father’s motivations. Not when he was looking at a full week with his lady.

“Talk to Hunter about getting you registered,” Lincoln said, clearly pleased with Colton’s capitulation.

“I will.” Colton folded the flyer into a square, with the images on the inside, and stashed it in his pocket. “Since you now owe me a favor, I was wondering if I could use the lake house this weekend.” When his father gave him an oddly intuitive look, Colton added, “I feel like doing some fishing.”

Lincoln didn’t move or respond for a long, uncomfortable moment.

Colton had begun to sweat under the steely stare his father directed his way.

“Of course, son,” Lincoln finally said, withdrawing a set of keys from his top desk drawer and handing them over. “You remember the code, right?”

Since the code was his parents’ wedding anniversary and had been for as long as they’d owned the house, Colton nodded and stood. “Thanks.”

“Have a good time.”

“I will.”

“Are you taking the dogs with you?”

“I thought I would if that’s okay.”

As Lincoln Abbott was the biggest “dog person” Colton had ever known, he wasn’t surprised when his dad said, “Of course it is.”

Now as Colton drove to the lake with his dogs, Elmer and Sarah, asleep in the backseat, he pondered the odd look his father had given him when he asked to use the lake house and wondered what it had meant. He thought about the bizarre conversation with his older brother Hunter, who’d questioned what in the hell their father wanted with pleasure aids and sensual devices in the store, before he begrudgingly registered Colton for the trade show that would take place in New York in two weeks.

Colton had merely shrugged and refused to engage in the war of words that would no doubt take place between his father, the CEO, and his brother, the CFO. Let them duke it out. No way was Colton going to get in the middle of their dispute when he’d been handed a free pass to a week in New York.

He couldn’t wait to tell her the good news.

An hour later, he pulled up to the lake house that was one of his favorite places in the world. Made of timber and beam and glass and stone, the house sat on the shores of Lake Champlain, right outside Burlington. His parents had gotten a sweet deal on it about ten years ago when it was sold at auction after the previous owner defaulted on the mortgage. The Abbotts had enjoyed many a good time there in the ensuing years.

In fact, his older sister Hannah would marry her fiancé, Nolan, at the lake house in a few weeks.

The house was stuffy and hot from being closed up, so he walked straight through the massive living room to open the sliding door to let in the breeze coming from the lake. He never tired of that view of the lake with the mountains in the distance. Late on this Friday afternoon, a handful of Jet-Skiers and water-skiers were enjoying the warm sunshine and the all-too-short Vermont summer.