"Take care of business, babe," I said. "Then I'm taking you home with me. It doesn't matter who hears the pull-out bed squeaking tonight."

  Jory snorted as he tapped his phone. "I'll remind you it's a school night and I'm going to crash real soon."

  "Then I'll give you the little spoon treatment instead. Either way, I'm winning."

  Part V

  Summer

  9

  Jory

  "I can't believe this is it," Mallori said. She grabbed a fleece blanket from one of Max's laundry baskets and folded it in half, and then folded it again and again until it formed a small rectangle. "I'm going to miss you guys so much."

  Moving day was finally here. School was out, I had a couple of weeks before the STEAM collaborative kicked into gear, and we had a bunch of friends coming to help us cart our things to our shiny new Jamaica Plain apartment. The one that was not subterranean, not shared with an anal-retentive demon, and not filled with small children.

  "I wouldn't spend too much time with that blanket," Max said as he piled a rainbow of running shoes into another laundry basket. It seemed boxes were not his preference. "I can't tell you the last time it was washed and it's seen a thing or two." He watched as she ran her hands over the nubby fabric. "By a thing or two, I mean penises."

  I snorted out a laugh as Mallori dropped the blanket to Max's pull-out bed. We liked to snuggle under that blanket while we watched television. It came in handy when the kids came bounding down the basement stairs without warning.

  "Oh my," she grumbled.

  "Don't worry," I said to her. "I washed it last week."

  Max glanced up from his shoes to shoot a wink in my direction. "Last week was a good time."

  "I might not miss this part," Mallori said under her breath. "Will you guys come visit? Promise me you'll visit."

  "Of course," I replied as I rolled my ties into neat coils.

  "Yeah," Max agreed. "Why wouldn't we leave our sunny new apartment with non-dungeon-y bathrooms and all that unnecessary privacy to come here and get psychoanalyzed for an hour? Don't know about you, Jory, but I can't think of a single reason."

  Mallori shook her head but Max didn't notice. He'd moved on to packing the shirts hanging in his closet.

  "I know, I know," she said. "You want your space. You deserve that. I get it."

  "We will miss you too." I caught her eye from the opposite side of the room and nodded as reassuringly as I could manage. "I mean it, Mal."

  No exaggeration there. I'd lived much of the past two months in the garden apartment—as I preferred to call it—and with that came more time with Mallori. I still wasn't comfortable in anyone's home but my own, though this place had come to feel like a place where I belonged. It was also a serious upgrade from my apartment with Claude. I hated paying for something I didn't use, but life was less stressful when I woke up beside Max.

  Even if I woke up to the sounds of children screeching at each other over control of the television remote at six o'clock on a Saturday morning.

  Even with my things scattered across two apartments, two cars, and my classroom.

  Even when all of this upheaval and transition was hell on my anxiety.

  "The kids are going to miss you too," she continued.

  "The kids are going to miss cockblocking me," Max muttered from the closet.

  Mallori rolled her eyes at that and crossed the room, an empty box in hand. "Jory, what am I going to do without you?"

  "You're probably going to have to talk to your husband again," Max said. "You remember him, right?"

  "When did you get so mouthy?"

  He pointed at me. "It's all his fault."

  True facts. No sense disputing this.

  Mallori circled the room and surveyed our work, her arms folded over her torso as she nodded at each stack of books and boxes. After a considerable pause, she asked, "What am I going to do with this space now?"

  Max looked up from his work of folding shirts. "What do you mean?"

  She waved her hands between us like that explained everything. "You're not moving back. That's obvious. You're always welcome here, don't get me wrong, but you're with Jory now. You have your first place together, and eventually you'll find another place, and someday, you might decide to get married and—and you're leaving, Max. I'm feeling a whole lot of things about that, but most of all, I'm proud of you." She snatched a pillowcase from one of the laundry baskets and used it to mop the tears from her cheeks. "And you too," she said to me. "I'm so happy it's you. I'm happy you found each other."

  I watched Max as a rush of emotions played out on his face. "I guess you're right. This…this is it, huh?" He glanced toward me, a wide, cheeky grin lighting up his face. "You're stuck with me, babe."

  Mallori blotted a fresh round of tears, saying, "I'm just going to head upstairs and pack some food for you to take. I don't want you to worry about finding a local grocery store or figuring out which restaurants deliver tonight. You have enough happening. I can take care of this for you."

  She continued rattling off a list of reasons she needed to ply us with food, but neither Max nor I were listening.

  "Is it real now?" I asked.

  He rubbed a hand over the nape of his neck. "Yeah."

  "Good-real?" I asked as I approached him. "Or scary-real?"

  He leveled me with an impatient glare that said I wasn't to doubt him. "Amazing-real. Totally fucking amazing. I get to start the rest of my life with you. This is it. This is the next adventure, babe. When we look back, we'll talk about the year we dated. Before we moved in together. And just like Mal said, we'll have this first place, and then a second place, and as many others as there are after that."

  "And then we'll differentiate between before you married my ass off and after."

  He reached for me, locked his arms around my waist, and shoved his hand under my shirt. Just because he could. "That's right."

  "What do you think about two summers from now? Not next year, but the year after? That will give me plenty of time to get my ass in shape to be married off."

  He shifted his hand down, cupped my backside with a harsh, possessive squeeze. "Are you proposing to me, Hayzer?"

  "Only if you're saying yes." Since I couldn't keep anything from this perfect man, I continued, "I thought about it, and the next year will be too busy. I'll be doing the STEAM collaborative, and we'll be figuring out how to live together, and we won't have time to plan a quality party."

  "Which is essential," he mused, still grabbing my ass.

  "Very. And we need to save money for this party. Plus, our friends and families need plenty of notice. I don't intend to compete with anyone for the ideal wedding date." I pressed my lips together to conceal a wicked grin. "And I like the idea of a long engagement."

  "Why is that?"

  "Because I want to enjoy this time, this slice of after dating and before marriage time. I want to have so much fun choosing our venue and sampling cakes and letting everyone gush over us. I want to love every minute of planning the party that will lead to the next part of our life together. And I want everyone to toast us with champagne for months and months."

  Max leaned down and pressed his lips to mine. It was a gentle, patient kiss that warmed me all over. "Yes," he whispered. He kissed me again, both hands on my ass now and his shaft rubbing against mine. "I'll marry your ass off, and I'll wait two years to do it because that will make you happy."

  "I love you."

  "Love you too," he replied. "I have since that very first day. Decided I wanted to keep you close and keep you mine the minute I saw you on that sidewalk."

  "And look what you did," I said, waving a hand at the boxes around us. "You made it happen."

  He nodded, his nose skimming over mine. "I know."

  "Should we tell Mallori? The part about us getting engaged, not that you had some big, confident feelings last summer."

  "Let's keep that to ourselves for a few days," he said. "We can't have her crying into all of our pillowcases."

  I nodded. "I can agree to that."

  Max blinked away, humming to himself. "I guess it's a good thing I saved that lady's card."

  "Which lady's card?"

  "The one from the pumpkin patch," he said, as if that made total sense. "The one who wanted to shoot our engagement photos."

  There it was. The teeny, tiny reasons that added up to the enormous mountain of reasons why I loved this man. "Yeah, Max," I said as my eyes filled, "it's a good thing."

  An Excerpt from Professional Development

  They really hate each other.

  This would be fine except for the issue of them sharing a job title

  …and an office

  …and now a five-hour-long drive to a conference their boss has made mandatory to resolve their issues.

  I couldn't remember whether there was a coffee shop in the hotel lobby. I hadn't paid much attention when we'd arrived last night.

  After hours in a confined space with Drew, the only thing I'd cared about was getting away from him. The entire situation was bad enough but after we'd stopped at a sandwich shop for a quick meal, he'd rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows and drove the remainder of the distance with bare forearms.

  The audacity of that fucker. Really.

  But, with respect to coffee, I knew hiking around downtown Albany was a possibility. I shrugged on my coat, hoisted my bag to my shoulder, and headed toward the door. I didn't mind leaving the hotel this morning, considering I'd be closed up in a windowless ballroom for the next eight hours and—

  —and I walked straight into Drew freakin' Larsen.

  "Oh my god, what are you doing here?" I cried, stumbling back against the door and slapping a hand to my galloping heart.

  He responded with a slow blink and a scowl that told me he wasn't concerned with the fact he'd scared ten years off my life by lurking outside my room.

  He extended his arm toward me and it was then I realized he was holding two cups of coffee. "Here."

  I took the cup and examined the order label on the side. Large almond milk latte with extra cinnamon sprinkle. My exact wintertime order. "What—how—I mean—thank you?"

  He shook his head as if my gratitude was annoying. Typical. Leave it to Drew, with his impeccably pressed trousers and dress shirt that fit like skin, to blow off the one pleasant word I said to him. If there was justice in the universe, Drew Larsen wouldn't have made clothes look this good.

  "Everything about that order sounds terrible," he said, taking off in the direction of the lobby.

  I followed but refused to match his near-sprinting strides. We had plenty of time and I required all of it to figure out how he knew how I took my coffee. "And yet you still ordered it."

  "Only because I wasn't going to risk arriving late because you require specialty coffee." Drew glanced over his shoulder and realized I was several paces behind him. He stopped, waited for me to reach him. He raised his paper cup before continuing down the hall. "Black."

  "Congratulations," I replied. "Unfortunately, the only prize for drinking bitter, boring coffee is the hollow sense of self-importance. I hope you enjoy it."

  "You could've just said thank you," he grumbled.

  "I did. It was the first thing I said."

  "No, you screamed like I was holding a decapitated head rather than a cup of nausea-inspiring coffee," he replied.

  "Perhaps I screamed because you were lurking outside my door and that shit is creepy. You could've knocked or even texted me."

  "I was waiting for you," he snapped. "I didn't want to bother you."

  "Oh, so you'd prefer to give me a heart attack first thing in the morning? How kind of you."

  "There is no winning with you," he murmured.

  "With me? You're out of your damn mind if you think I'm—"

  Drew edged into my space, his hand hovering over the small of my back but never actually touching me as he shuffled me around a corner.

  Completely unamused by this morning's antics, I leaned back against the wall and took a sip of my coffee. Cinnamony perfection. He watched me for a second, so damn perturbed by my refusal to take his bullshit seriously.

  With his hand flattened on the wall over my shoulder, he leaned down to meet my gaze, his chest nearly brushing mine. "Say thank you."

  I arched a brow. "I already did."

  "Say it and mean it."

  We stared at each other for a moment, the scents of coffee and cinnamon swirling around us.

  We hated each other, that was fact. But there were instances like these where I wondered if I understood the full spectrum of hate.

  Maybe there were corners of hate that were more than wanting someone to burst into flames or, less fatally, never be able to find a phone charger when they needed it. More than wanting to beat them at every game.

  More than any of that, maybe hate wasn't hate at all.

  "Tara," he whispered, edging even closer. At this range, I could see the flecks of gold and amber in his eyes and imagine the texture of his dark, close-cut beard. "Say it."

  "Thank you for the coffee." There were ten sarcastic, cutting jabs waiting on my tongue but I held them all back as he watched the words moving over my lips like they had shapes and forms he could distinguish from thin air. "Thank you for remembering what I like."

  "You're welcome." He stared at me with those dark eyes of his, as if he could see inside me and page through my thoughts. Except he didn't, he couldn't. I didn't allow it. He saw only what he chose and only the worst of me. "We should go. I don't want to be late."

  Professional Development is now available.

  Tara Treloff and Drew Larsen hate each other.

  They really hate each other.

  This would be fine except for the issue of them sharing a job title

  …and an office

  …and now a five-hour-long drive to a conference their boss has made mandatory to resolve their issues.

  And they would’ve been able to muddle through all of those matters but a major snowstorm is heading their way

  …and there’s only one bed.

  An Excerpt from Missing In Action

  Find out where it all started with Tom and Wes in Missing In Action

  G.I. Joe was barefoot and shirtless.

  And wagging a knife at me.

  And didn't remember meeting me before this charmed encounter.

  When the reasonable part of me thought about it, I could forgive him. It had been a wedding with free-flowing liquor, and it had been more than five freaking years ago.

  But when the vain part of me thought about it, I wasn't as forgiving. The vain part of me was my entirety and I wanted to be memorable. I didn't care if that made me petty and self-centered, and I wasn't sticking around to hoard scraps of his bare-chested attention. I shifted toward the front foyer, giving him a tidy view of my ass in this flawless suit and one more chance to dust off his memory.

  And my ass was juicy in these trousers. Ripe-peach juicy.

  I was unconcerned with the knife in his hand and the fact he continued wagging it in my direction. He wasn't going to hack me to death or throw it at me, or whatever it was these military types did. But the scar running down his flank and the brace on his arm, those were certainly consequential. I'd heard from Shannon that her brother-in-law was staying with her and Will while he recovered from an assortment of injuries incurred while overseas. I'd heard specifics on neither his wounds nor his previous location.

  Wes stared in my direction—specifically, his gaze shifted to my very juicy ass—for another moment before dropping the knife to the marble countertop beside him. The clang of steel on stone vibrated between us.

  "Wait. You're not leaving yet." He sounded irritable, as if him forgetting me was my problem. "Who are you again?"

  I shifted back to face him but couldn't tear my gaze from his body. He was amazing. A real, live G.I. Joe with scars and fresh wounds and unbuttoned jeans and…no shirt hiding that glorious tuft of blond chest hair.

  No shirt.

  No! Shirt!

  Dammit, I was trying to be aloof. He didn't remember a damn thing about me yet I was salivating over his abs and dreaming about pulling on that chest hair while I sat on his face. Why did I do this to myself? Really, why did I turn into a heart-eyed puddle every time a brawny beefcake blew me off? Because that was the situation now…and always. I got nothing and kept getting in line for more of it.

  "Like I said," I started, busying myself with the files in my bag to keep from drooling, "I'm Tom. We've met before. I work for Shannon and I'm dropping off some documents for her." I slapped a purple file folder on the counter. "No need to brandish any weapons on my account, sweet pea."

  "Then it's a good thing I don't have any others," he replied, tipping his chin toward the arm encased in a brace. "I should probably start hiding some in here."

  In spite of myself, I barked out a laugh. "What is it with you Halsteds and arming yourselves to the teeth? Last I heard, your brother was working on a trebuchet."

  "It's the in-depth knowledge of the evil lurking beyond the peace and quiet of this happy suburban town."

  His words were easy, almost matter-of-fact, but there was nothing easy about the hard glint in his eyes. And those eyes, they shone like an endless night. Deep enough that I almost fell in and drowned as we stared at each other.

  I blinked away, cleared my throat. "Right, well, I need to be in Marshfield before two and—"

  "Will you come back?" he asked.

  "What?" I laughed to cover my surprise.

  "What?" he repeated, his brows quirking. He looked sad. Oh my god, if he didn't knock that off immediately, I was going to papa bear all over his ass. "I just meant, I don't know, I thought you might be coming back and—"

 

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