“This case has extenuating—”
“I don’t care. You have to fake this for one more night.”
Will put his arm around Jocelyn and guided her past the awkward exchange, keeping her tucked close to his side.
“Promise me we’ll never fight,” he said.
“Never? I make no such promises. But promise me you’ll never drive a screaming-red Porsche.”
“Never? I make no such promises.”
They laughed, looking at each other and slowing just enough to share a kiss.
“C’mon, Joss,” he murmured. “Let’s blow this thing off and go hit fungoes at the field.” He dragged his hand down her waist and over her backside. “I have a key to the clubhouse now.”
“Ah, the powers of a volunteer high school coach,” she teased. “Who needs a hundred-thousand-dollar sports car when you can do me against the varsity lockers?”
He grinned. “I love the way you think.”
“Behave, Will Palmer,” she warned as two uniformed porters welcomed them and opened the doors to Casa Blanca’s creamy, dreamy lobby.
Will kept his hand on Jocelyn’s back as they scanned the crowd. There were mainly unfamiliar faces but a few were friendly, like Gloria Vail, who’d agreed to work in the salon against her aunt’s wishes. The guests were busy checking out the elegant North African mosaic work along the registration desk and reading informational pamphlets about Casa Blanca’s all-organic spa, which Lacey and Jocelyn had decided to call Eucalyptus.
The staff and subcontractors chatted in small groups wearing expressions of pure satisfaction. They’d done it. They’d made the deadline. Lacey’s delivery date had become the de facto “end date” for the last six months, and the ever-growing crew of construction, hotel, restaurant, and spa staff had worked nonstop to get the resort ready before its owners brought baby boy Walker into the world.
“Where is everybody?” Jocelyn asked Will.
“And by everybody you mean Lacey, Tessa, and Zoe.”
“And Clay.” She glanced around, but none of the people she most wanted to see were there.
Suddenly the henna-glass spa doors shot open and Ashley burst out, looking more than a little panicked. When she spotted Jocelyn, Lacey’s daughter looked like she’d cry with relief.
“Aunt Jocelyn! We have a problem.” She grabbed Jocelyn’s arm and pulled her close, her eyes moist with tears. “My mom’s in labor. It’s happening so fast. Clay took her into the spa and we called nine-one-one and they’re headed over the causeway, but, oh my God, I think she’s gonna have the baby any second!”
Will and Jocelyn looked at each other, a silent communication instantly exchanged.
“I’ll get that doctor,” Will said. “Go be with Lacey.”
Will rushed off and Jocelyn wrapped an arm around a very shaken Ashley. “Don’t worry. She’s going to be fine.”
“I don’t know. She’s in so much pain.”
“She’s having a baby, Ash. There’s pain.” They hustled through the doors, running as fast as feasible on the heels. Jocelyn barely noticed the Marrakesh silver mirror she’d hung that afternoon or the Moroccan berber rugs they’d just imported for the opening.
Eucalyptus was an exotic, inviting, luxurious spa, but not the ideal place for a baby to be born.
Jocelyn took a deep breath, fighting the old urge to control everything. She sure as heck couldn’t control this.
Ashley pushed open the massage-room door, where the lights were as low as they would be for a client but the woman on the table was anything but relaxed. Tessa and Zoe’s backs blocked her view of Lacey, but Jocelyn heard the long, low, harrowing cry of her friend’s agony.
Ashley froze, then put her hand to her mouth. “Mom!”
“Shhh. Ash. Relax.” Jocelyn came around the table to stand next to Clay, who looked as pale as his stepdaughter. He held Lacey’s hand, and from the looks of it she was squeezing the living hell out of his fingers. Lacey’s beautiful periwinkle silk dress was soaked with sweat, and something else. Her shoes were off, her legs up, her hair a wild coppery gold mess.
“There’s a doctor coming,” Jocelyn said, taking Clay’s other hand. “He’ll be in here in one second.”
“He better hurry the hell up.” Lacey ground out the words and slammed her other hand on the massage table, her distended belly heaving with each gasp. “Because I have to push. I have to push now!”
“Don’t do that, Lacey,” Zoe said.
“Why not?”
“Because in the movies they never want you to do that.”
“I can’t… help…”
The door shot open and the man from the parking lot barreled into the room, instantly taking over the small space with an aura of calm, commanding control.
“Clear the table,” he ordered.
Everyone backed away, except Zoe, who stood stone still, ghost white, and speechless.
The doctor stood at the bottom of the makeshift bed and fired questions at Clay. How long, how many, how often, how bad.
Clay answered as Tessa put an arm around Ashley. “Let’s get you out of here, hon.”
“No, my mom needs me.”
Her mom let out a howl of pain.
“Your mom needs you to leave,” Tessa ordered with more force, ushering Ashley to the door.
“Can you deliver a baby?” Jocelyn asked the doctor, who was already getting into position to do just that.
“I went to medical school,” he said dismissively. “Get me gloves and a sterilized pair of scissors.” He put his hands on Lacey’s knees while she endured the next contraction. “And towels.”
“Help me get that,” Jocelyn said to Zoe, relieved that the doctor seemed so competent.
But Zoe remained rooted in her spot, still staring at the man.
“C’mon, Zoe,” Jocelyn urged.
At her name the doctor looked up from his patient, seeing Zoe for the first time. His eyes widened exactly like hers did and, in that second, Jocelyn knew where she’d seen him before.
Oliver. The doctor who’d had Zoe dodging for cover all those months ago. The one whose practice they’d passed in Naples.
“Zoe?” he asked, obviously as stunned as she. “What are you doing here?”
Lacey grunted and annihilated Clay’s hand. “For the love of God, I have to push!”
Will appeared with the gloves and scissors, thankfully more focused than Jocelyn was. Jocelyn turned and opened a cabinet, yanking out a stack of fresh towels.
“You can leave now,” the doctor said as he pulled on the latex gloves. “I only need the baby’s father.”
Will gathered both of the women and led them out, having to nudge Zoe a little harder than Jocelyn. In the small vestibule designed for clients to meditate before and after their massages, Tessa stood with both arms around Ashley.
“He’s going to deliver the baby,” Jocelyn assured them as much as herself. “He seems like a really good doctor.”
Zoe snorted.
They all just looked at her, but Will said, “Actually, he’s an oncologist. His wife just let me know in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t here to work.”
Zoe closed her eyes, turned, and walked down the hall away from the group while Tessa continued gentle words of assurance for Ashley.
“C’mere.” Will took Jocelyn’s hand and tugged her out of the vestibule.
She glanced over her shoulder at the closed massage-room door. “I want to wait here,” she said. “It could be any minute.”
“We’ll be right around the corner. I need something.”
At the serious tone in his voice, she followed him into the facial room, completely dark and cool and smelling vaguely of mint and lavender. In the center of the room, a simple bed with clean sheets awaited the first facial… or…
She smiled at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m dead serious.”
Laughing, she put a hand on his chest. “Let’s take it to the villa later.”
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Will’s eyes flashed dark blue as he came closer, wrapping his arms around her. “Don’t worry, we will. To celebrate.”
“The new baby?”
“Life’s curveballs.”
“So says the catcher.”
“I’m serious.” And he was. There was no smile on his face, no humor in his expression. “Shit happens, fast and unexpectedly.”
“Yes, it does.”
“So, Joss, let me ask you a question. What are you prepared to die for?”
She blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“That’s the question you asked me once, when you were life coaching. You said it told you what was important to someone.”
“That was really just a rhetorical question I used to ask clients to get a conversation going.”
“I know what I’m prepared to live for.” He got closer, stealing her air and space and any last shred of sanity as he walked her toward the middle of the room. “You.”
She kind of melted, letting him dip her back on the facial bed. “Likewise.”
“So why are we waiting for the right time?”
“I know you hate to wait now,” she teased, but it was hard to joke in the face of all this certainty. Determination. Focus.
“I don’t want to wait another day or night or minute.”
She closed her eyes and dropped backwards, the words and the man sweeping her right off her feet. “I’ve created a monster who refuses to wait for anything.”
He laughed a little, kissing her throat. “So, when?”
“Right now, right here?” A shiver of anticipation and desire shot through her, control slipping away as he trailed his tongue along her jaw and settled her deeper onto the bed.
“Maybe next week.”
She gave him a little nudge away, to see his face. “Next week?”
“We can’t get everything together before then.”
“You don’t mean for sex.”
“No, I mean for marriage.” He cupped his hands over her face. “I love you so much, Jocelyn. I want to know we’re in this together, forever, as one.”
“Oh, Will, I love you, too. You know we’re together.”
“I don’t know anything except I love you.” He kissed her, still holding her face, tenderly like she was his prize. “I love your heart.”
She put her hand on his chest. “You’re the one with the big heart, Will. You’re all heart.”
He rocked against her. “Not all.”
“Okay, and some soul.”
He nestled against her, kissing his way to her ear. “Let’s make this official then. Jocelyn Mary Bloom, love of my life, girl of my dreams, mother of my future—”
The door popped open and they froze as Zoe stood in stunned silence, taking in the scene. “Seriously, guys? Now?”
Will held Jocelyn firmly on the bed, ignoring the intrusion with an unwavering gaze. “I was just proposing,” he said.
“Oh,” Zoe whispered. “Well, what’d she say?”
“I don’t know yet.” Will gathered her a little tighter as more footsteps came toward the room and Tessa’s happy laughter floated in.
“We have an audience,” Jocelyn whispered.
“I don’t care. Where was I?”
“Something about love, girl, dreams, motherhood…” She closed her eyes as happiness clutched her heart. “It was all good.”
“Say yes, Bloomerang.”
“Dying here,” Zoe sang from the doorway. “Just say yes.”
“Yeah, just say yes, Aunt Jocelyn,” Ashley added.
Jocelyn looked into Will’s eyes and called, “Tess, what’s your vote?”
“Go for it, girl. Break that damn shell around your heart.”
She took a deep breath, savoring the word she was about to say, the commitment she was about to make, and the life she was about to live.
At just that moment, Elijah Clayton Walker let out his very first cry and they all yelled out at the same time. “Yes!”
The women in the doorway instantly disappeared, leaving them alone for a better drama.
“You said yes,” Will whispered.
“I screamed yes.”
“Even better.” He gave her that slow, sweet, sexy smile that turned her entire body to mush. “So guess what I finally have?”
“A fiancée?”
He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, and put his lips against hers to whisper the answer. “I have… everything.”
Zoe Tamarin never stays in one place for too long, earning her the nickname “The Tumbleweed” among her friends.
But when The Tumbleweed rolls into Barefoot Bay, she finds herself face-to-face with the one man she most hoped she’d left behind…
Please turn this page for a preview of
Barefoot in the Sun.
Whoever invented the expression “the heat of a thousand suns” must have been sitting right here, in a top-down convertible on the black asphalt of Naples, Florida, in the dead of summer. Boiling. Frying. Sizzling like a piece of bacon. Surely no single sun could generate the amount of heat blasting down on Zoe Tamarin’s head as she closed her eyes and tried to gather the nerve to do what she’d come to do.
She dug deep for inner Zen, came up with nothing, and melted some more against the burning leather seat of her rented 4x4.
Come on, Zoe. Get out of the car and face him.
She slid a glance across the wide boulevard that cut a swath through the exclusive business district of the beachside city, studying the two-story Spanish hacienda–style building. Between her and that destination, heat shimmered off the road like burning coals.
I’d walk across fire for you.
Yeah, right.
Inhaling some soggy, humid air, Zoe lifted her hair and fanned her face and neck with her other hand. She had to do this. What was a little humiliation, heartbreak, or pathetic desperation between old friends, right? Zoe had been raised on the altar of “signs from the universe,” and last night the universe had smacked her over the head with a billboard.
While all her closest friends celebrated the stunning drama of a baby’s birth, arriving in breathtaking style during the Casa Blanca Resort & Spa grand-opening party, Zoe merely reeled from the sight of the man who’d materialized to deliver Lacey and Clay Walker’s baby.
She’d never forget the shock of looking up from Lacey’s makeshift delivery table to see the “doctor” who’d swept into the room to help bring a healthy baby into the world.
By the time the paramedics whisked mother, son, and proud papa off to the hospital, the doctor—who’d been a party guest—had disappeared. From the stretcher, holding her little bundle, Lacey had called him “an angel.”
Au contraire, my friend. That man was no angel. Quite the opposite. And right now it was time to make a deal with the devil, who happened to owe Zoe, and owe her big. Because if he thought they were “square” when he blew in and delivered Lacey’s baby in an emergency, he was sorely mistaken.
They weren’t even close to square for what he’d done to her, and it was time to collect.
Fired by that thought, she yanked the keys out of the ignition and jumped out, heat immediately singeing through wafer-thin sandals as she hit the pavement. Squaring her shoulders, she pinned her gaze on the double mahogany doors and jaywalked to find out her destiny.
Would he or would he not…
He had to.
At the door, she took a shallow breath and ran her fingers over the elegant gold lettering that announced exactly what went on in this unassuming building tucked between an art gallery and a frozen-yogurt shop in the ritzy medical district of one of the world’s wealthiest cities.
Dr. Oliver Bradbury
Oncology
There was only one way to—
Both doors popped open, shoved from the inside, forcing Zoe out of the way. A woman strode out, stopping to blink into the sun and throw open a giant bag covered with some designer’s initials. She whipped out a pair of sunglasses
with the very same initials on the side.
But before she got them on, Zoe saw her face.
And her heart fell right onto that sizzling sidewalk and fried.
A phone followed the sunglasses, thrust under silky black hair that brushed her shoulders. “Thank Christ,” she said, an amazing amount of sultry in the sarcasm. “It’s done.”
Zoe stood frozen and mesmerized. As if the woman was suddenly aware that someone was staring, she turned, her eyes hidden by the sunglasses but her glare powerful nonetheless. Zoe still couldn’t move as she drank in the stark beauty of the woman’s face, the aura of wealth that clung like a spritz of Chanel, and the condescending attitude of dismissal.
She knew that face, of course, thanks to the power of Google and a few glasses of wine. Small consolation that Oliver’s wife didn’t look quite as perfect without benefit of photo shop.
“Excuse me,” Zoe said, reaching for the door.
“Of course, dear.” Adele stepped aside, switching the phone to the other ear. “No,” she said into the phone as Zoe went inside. “That was no one. I’m listening.”
No one? Zoe spun around, but the door closed, blessedly shutting out the sun and the sight of the woman who’d married the only man Zoe had ever loved.
Inside, cool air settled over Zoe like a perfectly chilled martini as she took in the room’s snow-white walls and icy marble floor. She took a moment to let the sensation work its magic, looking around at a reception area that was like no doctor’s office she’d ever been in. No mess of magazines on a cheap coffee table for Dr. Bradbury. No impersonal glass panel that slid open and closed like a confessional, either. No worn leather chairs, cheesy art, or canned video presentation.
Nothing but old money and elegant sophistication.
So, Mrs. Bradbury must have decorated the offices.
“Can I help you?”
Zoe turned to a striking redhead with a tiny headset in her ear, seated at a glass table with nothing but a tablet computer in front of her. Her smile matched the surroundings, cold and impersonal, just like her Arctic-blue eyes.
“I’m here…” Zoe’s voice cracked like a teenage boy’s. She cleared her throat. “I’d like to see Dr. Bradbury.”