Ticket Home (8 page)
Authors: Serena Bell
Tags: #Romance, #Contemporary, #Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages)
She’d never heard him that hesitant. A tiny smile bloomed in her chest, grew into a grin and a laugh of pleasure. “I’m coming home. I’d already made up my mind.”
She saw from the widening of his eyes that he hadn’t known, hadn’t been at all sure of his reception. He looked past her for a moment, out the window, and she realized he was trying to steady himself, to collect himself. Her Jeff, her bossy medieval guy, hadn’t been sure.
“We could get on one of those cross-country trains.” Strength gathered in his voice. “We could do some leisurely exploring. I don’t want this to end yet.” He gestured around them, and she knew he meant more than just the train ride. He meant the small secret world of the two of them.
She couldn’t talk. He seemed to understand, because he took her hands and held them tight in his. Then he let go with one and reached into his pocket, and she knew, absolutely knew what was going to be in his hand when he pulled it out—
Only instead of a ring box, it was his cell phone.
He held it out. Put it in her palm. “Would you do the honors?”
She looked from the phone to him, puzzled.
“Come with me,” he said, rising. She tottered down the aisle after him. He pulled the door open, and they walked into the swaying vestibule between cars.
“You could get in trouble for this,” she warned him.
“The MTA already thinks I’m a terrorist. This can hardly lower their opinion of me.”
“You want me to throw your phone out there? I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can.”
She took a deep breath. All this time, she’d been afraid that if she asked anything of him, demanded anything of him, she might turn out not to have been worth his sacrifice. That she’d wake to find he’d left and taken breakfast with him.
I want to be with you. Really be with you.
She clutched his arm with the hand that didn’t hold the phone. Looked up into his smiling face, his eyes filled with love and conviction. There was no doubt, no hesitation there. Nor was there any in her voice or her heart when she spoke. “I love the idea of a cross-country train ride.”
“I know you love your job.”
She shrugged. “I like my job. I love
you.
And I want to be with you too.
Really
be with you. I should have been clearer about that. I never said it. I thought I said it, and maybe I did once or twice, but I never told you to hang up the phone or come home or pay more attention. I was afraid. That you’d—” Her voice broke. “I was afraid you’d say no.”
“I wouldn’t have.” His voice was ragged.
“I know. I know now. I should have had the courage to tell you I needed you. More of you.” She shook the phone for emphasis. “I need more of you.” She made herself meet his gaze. “All of you.”
His eyes shone. “You have me. All of me.” He reached for her with both arms, but she held back a moment.
She reached out and touched his cheek, rough from a day and a half’s neglect. She drew her thumb across his cheekbone, and he leaned his head into her touch. He closed his eyes, his lashes casting long shadows, darker than the shadows under his eyes. Then he opened them and looked at her, but he seemed to be looking through her, at something in his own head. “I don’t know when I decided that I was the only thing standing between Streamline and disaster,” he said quietly. “But when I told Porter I wanted to bring in a management team, it felt like the weight of the world got lifted off me. I didn’t realize what I’d been carrying around.”
She let her hand touch his shoulder before resting it on the hard muscle of his arm. “I did. I just didn’t realize I could ask you to put it down.”
He leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. “Amy.” That was it, just her name. And he rested there for a moment, his breath brushing her face, mint and Jeff. She wrapped her arms around him and dragged him closer, bringing the hard wall of his torso against hers with a jolt that she felt to her toes. They stood there for a long time, swaying with the motion of the train.
Then he straightened and pulled away. He drew the exterior door of the train open and they looked out together at the embankment, flying past, a blur of dirt and scrub and litter. He reached out his hand, and she laid the phone in his palm. With one smooth motion, an abbreviated baseball windup, he hurled it out the door. It bounced out of their vision immediately, gone, just like that.
“The leave of absence has officially begun,” he said.
“All your data, though? What if someone finds it?”
“I can wipe it remotely,” he confessed. “Does that ruin the gesture?”
She was laughing and crying. “No. Not in the slightest.”
He pulled the door shut and took her in his arms and kissed her, hard and fierce. “You come first with me. Always. Okay?”
He led her back to their seats, the two of them wobbling all the way and dodging the odd passenger who had stood to claim an overhead item. She sat, but before he did, he reached into his other pocket, and there it was in his palm, a black velvet box, and he snapped it open and said, “Amy, will you be my seat mate for the rest of my life?”
The rest of my life.
He was serious. He had thrown away his phone and was hiring new people to run his company, and he wanted her to spend the rest of her life with him.
“Oh, Jeff… Oh, Jeff!”
“Holy Mother of God,” said a gruff, Brooklyn-accented voice from the seat in front of them. “If you don’t say yes, I will personally reach over the seat and strangle you both. I can’t
take
any more.”
There was laughter from the seats around them, and Amy laughed too, through her tears, and nodded her head as hard as she could, while Jeff removed the ring from the box and slid it onto her finger. It was too big, but she wouldn’t let him take it off, just clung to it, and then clung to him while he kissed her and kissed her and the train pulled into the station with a squeal that might’ve been her own squeal of delight.
Jeff took her hand.
They watched out the window together as passengers disembarked and new passengers climbed aboard, their ebb and flow part of the train’s pulse. The train pulled out of the station, and she turned to him, smiling, and he smiled back, and squeezed her hand.
The train gathered speed, a purr of contentment, a race of excitement, the beginning of the rest of their travels together.
About the Author
Serena Bell writes stories about how sex messes with your head, why smart people do stupid things sometimes, and how love can make it all better.
Bell wrote her first steamy romance before she was old enough to understand what all the words meant and has been perfecting the art of hiding pages and screens from curious eyes ever since—a skill that’s particularly useful now that she’s the mother of two school-aged children.
For a while, Bell took a break from penning love stories to explore the world as a journalist, where she spent time shadowing and writing about a cast of fascinating real-life characters, including a midwife and home-birth advocate, one of President Obama’s key advisers on health care reform, and a U.S. Senator with a pivotal role in the 2010 mid-term elections.
When she’s not writing or getting her butt kicked at Scrabble by a six-year-old, she’s practicing modern dance improv in the kitchen, swimming laps, talking a long walk, or reading on one of her large collection of electronic devices. You can find her at
www.serenabell.com
, by email at
[email protected]
or on Twitter
@serenabellbooks
.
Two hearts converge…until fear runs love off the rails.
Tight Quarters
© 2013 Samantha Hunter
A
Strangers on a Train
Story
In the years since a horrific car accident left her with a long list of phobias, Brenna Burke has overcome them all except one. Crippling claustrophobia—not a good trait for an aspiring travel writer.
With an interview for her dream job looming, Brenna forces herself to board a train for a weekend tour through New York State…only to find her berth has been double booked.
Retired NYPD detective Reid Cooper isn’t happy about the mix-up, or his attraction to his petite, sexy roommate. But as their up-close-and-personal weekend progresses, something remarkable happens. Being with Reid makes Brenna feel normal, unafraid of anything.
After one passionate night, both are thinking beyond a mere weekend fling. But when Brenna’s last phobia pounces at the worst possible time, she could miss the last boarding call for happily ever after.
Warning: This book contains a hot-to-the-touch hero and sizzling sex at high speeds.
The last train of the night might just be the start of something good.
Thank You for Riding
© 2013 Meg Maguire
A
Strangers on a Train
Story
Stung ego or not, Caitlin’s relieved her fizzling relationship is over, even if she’s just been unceremoniously dumped between the copier and a dead ficus tree. At least she has an excuse to ditch the lousy office Christmas party in time to catch the last subway home…to her cat, and early-onset spinsterhood.
Instead of a lonely, chilly ride, she gets an unexpected holiday treat in the form of a nearly familiar face—a handsome stranger she encountered last week at the blood drive.
At the end of the line, neither can seem to let their chance meeting end—until their extended flirtation finds them facing the prospect of spending a frigid winter night locked in an unheated subway station. And they wonder if keeping each other warm is merely a delightful form of rebound therapy…or a memorable first of many more dates to come.
Warning: Contains dorky, harmless flirtation that heats up into some spicy, third-base action.
Ticket Home
Serena Bell
Is that a cell phone in his pocket…or is he just happy to see her?
A
Strangers on a Train
Story
When Amy Moreland left Seattle, she never expected to see her workaholic ex-boyfriend again. Encountering him on her Connecticut-to-New-York-City commute is the surprise of her life. He seems hell-bent on winning her back, but every time his cell phone rings, it’s a painful reminder of how he failed to put her first.
Jeff Havers can’t help that his phone keeps interrupting his carefully composed apology speech, but having Amy sic the Metro North security team on him is a bit much. Once he talks his way out of handcuffs, he focuses on coaxing Amy to talk about the fears that drove her away.
As the train ride takes them through the landscape of their lost life together, sparks fly and remembered heat reignites. But if they’re not brave enough to overcome the still-fresh pain of old wounds, it could be too late to pursue what really matters—their ticket home.
Warning: This book contains steamy train-car action, sex on the stairs, and a hero determined to give his velvet-and-heels-clad woman
exactly
what she’s looking for.
eBooks are
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They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
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 construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Ticket Home
Copyright © 2013 by Serena Bell
ISBN: 978-1-61921-434-7
Edited by Anne Scott
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: April 2013
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