Love Everlasting (Isle of Hope series Book 2) (9 page)

Ignoring his hand, she popped up a lot quicker than he had the night she’d kicked him out of her car, a hint of her Irish temper flaring for the very first time. “No-no-no-
no!
” she said in a near hiss, emphasizing each word with a hasty pluck of papers, one batch at a time. “Don’t force me to get a restraining order, Cunningham, because I will.”

She took a stab at grabbing the final bunch in his hand, but he snatched it away, his mouth dropping open when he realized what it was.

Love Everlasting

A novel.

“Oh my gosh,” he said with a chuckle, speed-reading the first page, “you’re writing a
romance
novel?”

“Give-me-that-
now
!” she said, her words clipped while she jump-shot in the air, trying to snatch the papers he held over her head.

“‘
True Love.
An oxymoron if ever there was,’”
he read in a sappy voice, continuing on with a chuckle while she clobbered his chest. “‘Olivia Brighton issued a rare grunt as she stormed up the stairs to her apartment, desperate to get inside before anymore tears leaked from her eyes.’”

Shannon whacked him hard, leaving an impression of her fist to match the holes from her heels. “Give-me-those-papers-right-now-or-so-help-me-I will-knee-you …”

He backed away a healthy distance, laughing as he waved the papers. “I’ll tell you what, Angel Eyes, for the sweet and shy twin, you sure are feisty.” He rifled through a few more pages, his grin growing with every line. “Whoa … and sexy, too, you little vamp! Who knew?”

That apparently did it. Hurling her backseat door open, she yanked out a bat, chasing him around the car till his sides ached from laughter. “Your knee caps are in trouble, mister, if you don’t give that back right now.”

“Okay, okay,” he said with a grin, taking great precaution in handing the manuscript over. “But I sure never figured you for writing a …” He paused, face in a scrunch as he tried to remember what Jazz called the racy books she read with bare-chested men on the covers. He snapped his fingers. “A bodice ripper, that’s it.”

“It is
not
a bodice ripper,” she muttered, stuffing the papers back into her backpack. “It’s a sweet romance where people are fully clothed. And it’s not mine.”

He squinted at her, hands low on his hips. “You didn’t write it?”

Her mouth compressed.

“
Ah-ha!
You
did
write it, but you don’t want anybody to know, do you?”

She expelled way too big of a sigh for such a little girl. “I’m a ghost writer, okay? But I signed a secrecy clause and nobody knows, so you can’t breathe a word.”

A grin inched across his face. “Nobody?”

She tossed the backpack into her back seat and closed her back door, peering up with a plea in her baby blues. “My family knows I freelance as an editor for a publisher friend of mine. But they
don’t
know I’m actually
writing
a romance novel for one of my publisher’s most important authors who has run into some health issues. So you have to promise not to say a word.”

He gave a lazy shrug, butting a hip to her car. “No prob, Shan. After all—what are friends for?”

Her pretty pink biker tank rose and fell in relief before she slid into her car, the tension in her face easing into a weary smile. “Thanks, Sam, I really appreciate it.”

“Sure thing, kiddo, mum’s the word.” He closed her door and leaned in, arms folded on the open window. “Glad we sealed the deal.”

Her hand froze on the gear shift. “What deal? We don’t have a deal.”

He traced a finger down her arm to rile a little fire in her. “Sure we do, Angel Eyes—my silence for your coaching.”

She slapped his hand away as her eyes narrowed. “Blackmailer on top of a stalker and player? Gee, Doc, you get better by the moment.”

“I know.” He tapped on her door with a waggle of brows. “Just imagine how good I’ll be after you’re done?”

She groaned and dropped her head on the wheel.

“Cutter’s Point, Wednesday at four.” He pushed away from the car and gave her a dazzling smile. “I need you, Shan,” he said, hands over his chest in true drama, befitting his nickname. “My heart’s sick over Jazz, so I’m in a really bad way.”

“I know, me too.” She jerked the car into gear, and he jumped back for safety while she glanced in the rearview mirror. Broiling him with a look, she gunned the accelerator and tore out of the lot, her final words making him grin. “Only mine’s indigestion.”

Chapter Twelve

“Uh-oh, Jack’s gonna toss somebody in the drink …” Sprawled across Shannon’s bed with a bowl of nuts, Cat popped a peanut in her mouth as she laid on her side, elbow cocked and head in her hand. “But it’s definitely worth the swim, Shan. I’m jealous.”

“It’s
not
a date,” Shannon emphasized, her clenched response sounding far more like Cat than herself. “It’s coffee at Cutter’s, for pity’s sake, just to talk.”

Cat wiggled her brows. “You mean he actually uses those luscious lips for other things?” she teased, her comment warming the blood in Shannon’s cheeks.

Lacey snatched a handful of peanuts from Cat’s bowl and scooted against the headboard, knees to her chest. “I don’t care, Shan,” she said while Shannon pinned her hair in a haphazard messy bun designed to discourage male attention. “Jack’s gonna blow when he finds out. If he’s told me once, he’s told me a dozen times he doesn’t want Sam anywhere near you or Cat.”

“Which kind of ticks me off,” Cat groused, “because I’m twenty-six, and the last thing I need is two mothers.”

“Jack won’t find out if you don’t tell him, Lace.” Shannon glanced at her sister-in-law in the mirror, grateful she could trust Lacey to keep her secret. “Believe me, Jack has
nothing
to worry about because the last thing I need—
or want
—right now is to spend time with Sam Cunningham. I’m up to my eyeballs in edits on several books my publisher’s been waiting for, so all I really want to do is cozy up with my manuscript, not some pushy player looking for advice.”

Lacey zipped her mouth. “My lips are sealed, Shan—you have my word.”

Cat’s husky chuckle drifted from the bed. “But I’ll bet Sam’s won’t be …”

“And trust me,” Shannon continued, not even validating Cat’s remark with a response, “I don’t want Dr. Love anywhere near me either, but it’s just one time so he can pick my brain on how to win his girlfriend back.”

“Your brain?” Lacey pursed her lips in a sweet smile. “You mean you actually have one? After all, you did say ‘yes’ to Sam Cunningham.”

“For heaven’s sake, it’s a cappuccino in a public place for maybe an hour,” Shannon stressed with a stronger tone than usual, more to convince herself than her sister and sister-in-law. “Then I never have to talk to the man again.”

Cat sighed. “That’s okay—that’s one guy where talking is overrated. I’d just want to look at him.” A dangerous grin slid across her face. “Well, maybe not just look.”

“I’ll take a picture for you,” Shannon muttered, slipping a tank top over her head.

A peanut halfway to her mouth, Cat paused with a serious look as if she couldn’t believe her luck. “Gosh, Shan—would you?”

“
Please
tell me you’re wearing a blouse over that,” Lacey said, nodding at Shannon’s form-fitting tank—the loosest one she owned with the least amount of cleavage.

Shannon shimmied on an old pair of jean shorts. “Oh, for crying out loud, Lace, it’s almost 90 degrees, and I’m wearing my grungiest shorts, beat-up athletic shoes, and not a stitch of makeup, so doesn’t that convince you I have no interest at all?”

“No, because you’re one of the few girls who can pull it off, Shan—a natural beauty.”

“Why, thank you,” Cat said, preening with a pose in the mirror.

Rolling her eyes, Lacey refocused on Shannon, mouth swerving sideways as she popped a peanut. “And trust me, Shan, when it comes to Sam Cunningham and women,
nothing
is for ‘heaven’s sake.’”

“I don’t know,” Cat said with a sigh, rolling over on her back to stare at the ceiling with a dreamy smile. “Sounds like heaven to me …”

“Oh my gosh, when on earth did you get so guy crazy, Catfish?” Lacey launched a peanut, bouncing it on Cat’s head. “Are we going to have to lock you up after dark?”

Cat picked the nut out of her hair and aimed it right back. She heaved a heavy sigh, lips in a pout. “Don’t have to, ‘Mother.’ Between Mom’s eagle eye and Jack’s Rapunzel mindset in keeping me away from his friends, I’m trussed up tighter than Fort Knox.”

“That’s because to Jack, you and Shan are pure gold and always have been. He loves you and wants to keep the wrong guys away, so sue him.”

Cat halted to squint at Lacey, peanut in hand. “You think I can?”

Lacey grinned and fired another peanut.

Blasting out a heavy sigh, Cat stared at the ceiling, melancholy tingeing her tone. “Shan and I will probably die lonely old maids because there sure aren’t many guys around here.”

“Not lonely,” Shan affirmed, rifling through her wallet to make sure she had money. The last thing she wanted was for Player-Boy to buy her anything. “Happily accomplished and content—at least me.” She slipped her purse over her shoulder and sat down on the edge of the bed next to Cat, grabbing a few nuts. “You? You could be settled with babies and a white picket fence in the next three years if you’d just give the guys at Hope Church a chance.”

“Yeah,” Lacey piped up, “both Luke Calloway and Jordan Murphy have asked you out, but you just blow ’em off, Cat. So why is that?”

Cat scrunched her nose. “Don’t be ticked, Lace, but I’m looking for a little more excitement in my life right now, and somehow, I don’t see it at Hope Church.” She tossed a peanut in the air, snapping it with her mouth. “I guess I have this thing for bad boys, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Lacey said with a wry twist of lips. “That’s what worries me.”

Cat rolled on her side like before, head propped. “Yeah? Well, welcome to the club, Carmichael, because you sure put us through the wringer before you got religion.”

“What about Chase?” Shannon asked as she slipped a sock on her foot, thinking the good-looking associate pastor at Hope Church was just what her sister needed. “He’s the best of both worlds, Cat—a bad boy who found religion, just like Jack.”

“Yeah, he’s hot, no doubt about that.” Her face screwed in a frown as if she were contemplating the option. “But pastor types like Chase have such strict policies, not to mention preaching at you all the time, and I want to have some fun for a while. Call me crazy, but right now I’d trust a bad boy way before a preacher because at least he’s looking for fun, too.”

“Call you crazy?” Lacey grunted. “You
are
crazy, O’Bryen. I should have Jack fix you up with a psych major.”

Cat glanced up, a sparkle of excitement in her eyes. “Ooooo … you think he would?”

Shannon chuckled to deflect her worry over a sister whose interest in spiritual things was on the wane. “Then you’d be locked up for good, sis, once he finds out how crazy you are.”

“Yeah, crazy fun,” Cat said with a gleam of trouble in her eyes.

Shannon pinched her sister’s waist, Cat’s slow spiritual decline at the top of her prayer list these days. “Uh, you do remember the pact we made with Jack way back when, right? Where we promised to wait until marriage for certain kinds of ‘fun’?”

A heavy sigh blustered from Cat’s lips. “Yeah, yeah, just another example of Jack’s lock and key, Shan, but don’t worry. I’ll do my best to honor it because I love you both.”

“And God?” Lacey asked, a sobriety in her eyes despite the smile on her face.

“Yes, Mother, I love God, so you can tuck your sermon back in your pocket.” Cat sat up, as is she were ready to flee any conversation that included spirituality. “I just don’t have to
like
Him a lot right now, that’s all.”

Shannon’s heart constricted. A ‘dislike’ that had clearly been deepening over the last few months.

Since Daddy died.

“So don’t go all gloomy on me, guys,” Cat said quickly, all humor suddenly depleted in both her tone and her voice. “God and I are just taking a break from each other for a while till I can hash out a few things in my mind, that’s all.”

“He’s real good at hashing things out, Cat,” Lacey said quietly, “but not if you don’t talk to Him.”

“Yeah, well, I’m still a little ticked over Daddy, Lace, so maybe it’s better I wait.” She hooked an arm around Shannon’s shoulders. “Besides, you have bigger problems right now since the sweet and spiritual twin has a date with the dangerous Dr. Love.”

“I keep telling you—it’s
not
a date!” Shannon insisted, unlatching Cat’s arm when she bent to put on her shoe. “You guys already know I have a strict no-dating policy, so I guarantee it won’t be this twin giving anyone any problems.”

Lacey nudged Shannon’s hip with her foot, her tease laced with warning in spite of the grin on her face. “It better not be, Shan, now or ever, because Jack and I have enough trouble on our hands keeping your evil twin in line.”

“Ha!” Cat said, rising from the bed with a lazy stretch. “I’d say Shan’s the one with trouble on her hands because according to half the nurses at Memorial, Sam Cunningham is an addiction without any cure.” She bent to press a kiss to her sister’s head before tweaking her neck. “So stay on your guard, sis, because I’d sure hate to see the good twin go through a nasty withdrawal.”

Shannon huffed out a sigh, bending to tie her other shoe.

Join the club.