Can't Get Over You (Fortune's Island, Book 2)
Read Can't Get Over You (Fortune's Island, Book 2) Online
Authors: Shirley Jump
A Note from Shirley
Dear Readers,
Thank you for choosing to visit the sun-kissed shores of Fortune’s Island again. I can’t wait for you to dive into Jillian and Zach’s long-awaited love story.
The hard truth is that Zach messed up. Big time. (Pro tip: Don’t propose and then avoid setting a wedding date.) Now, Jillian is moving on to wealthier pastures with a handsome new guy. Money can’t buy happiness, though, and Zach is pulling out all the stops to prove that he can be the man she needs. He’s even willing to give up his dreams of being signed to a record label, if it means the dream of being with her will come true.
For her part, Jillian insists she’s done waiting on Zach to catch a clue.
Finito
. We’ve all been there. But, it’s driving her crazy that their wild, electric chemistry is still very much alive – crackling beneath the surface of her skin. How can her heart move on when her fingers itch to touch him just one more time?
I hope you enjoy reading
Can’t Get Over You
as much as I enjoyed writing it. I, for one, can never resist the story of a hero, or heroine, overcoming any obstacle to fight for that one true love. It’s never too little, or too late on Fortune’s Island for those willing to give romance a second chance.
XO,
Shirley
Visit
www.ShirleyJump.com
to learn more about Fortune’s Island.
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Table of Contents
Book One in the Fortune’s Island Series: AND THEN FOREVER
ONE
Secrets were the hardest thing to keep on an island, especially one the size of Fortune’s Island. Jillian Matheson had lived there pretty much all her life, growing up among the small population that stubbornly hung on through the brutal Cape Cod Bay winters. She’d gone to a school that was run out of a converted house, reading
Big Red
and learning the Pythagorean Theorem alongside the same couple dozen kids from kindergarten to graduation.
In the summer, the population of Fortune’s Island swelled, like a pregnant spider about to deliver thousands of beach-hungry babies. As soon as Labor Day drew to a close, the island emptied out, and life settled down again. After Jillian passed the craziness of her early twenties and grew up a little—okay, a lot—she found she craved the quiet, the…space. The miles of empty beach, the lazy shopping trips with shopkeepers more than happy to pass the time talking about the weather, the late mornings snuggled under the blankets while the wind blew angry breath.
It was also easier to find a quiet place to be alone, which was what had brought Jillian to the rocky outcropping at the southern end of the island today. The beach there tapered down to a smattering of sand, where sharp-edged rocks married each other in topsy-turvy angles. Jillian knew, if she picked her way a few feet further down, she could find one large flat rock, as big as a picnic table, and high enough that the incoming tide never did much more than lick the underside of the stone.
She had spread out a blanket, then settled her acoustic guitar across her waist. She’d bought the Ibanez secondhand in a shop ten years ago, with her first official paycheck from The Love Shack, the cozy seaside restaurant her parents owned. Jillian spent hours on this rock, teaching herself how to read music, how to pick out the notes, and then finally, strumming snippets of songs. It had taken almost a year of these stolen moments against the rocky wall before Jillian had taught herself to play “Hotel California.”
She’d moved through the entire Eagles catalog, then the Beatles, then a little Led, before she got the itch to write her own songs. The first few had been the typical unrequited love/misunderstood teen bullshit most high schoolers wrote about. Like Taylor Swift with a bad attitude. But now, her music had evolved, becoming something that filled her soul, exposed the nooks and crannies that she kept hidden from the world.
This summer, she’d finally gotten serious about her dreams and, in the space of a few days, turned her life upside down and inside out. She’d broken up with Zach, her fiancé, and fired off a college application. For the past month now, she’d been taking the ferry over to Boston three mornings a week to study contemporary music composition at the Boston Conservatory. Before work, she’d steal away to her space under the rock to practice her own songs and study for her classes in music history and theory.
Music was her secret, the one thing she had never shared with her best friend Darcy, or Zach, or her brother—not even with her parents. She sat on the rock and she sang, and she held the secret close to her chest. Doing that made it seem more precious, more…hers.
The Conservatory had allowed recorded audition tapes as part of the application process, and Jillian had done just that, sitting here on her rock, letting her iPhone be the only witness to
her singing. Zach would have told her to let her voice be heard, but he’d always been the more outgoing of the two of them. The one who had no problem performing in public.
Zach. He was the last person she wanted to think about. It had been almost three months since she’d given back his ring. After eight years together, he’d let her go as easily as letting the wind catch a balloon. She told herself it didn’t hurt, but it did.
A lot.
So she wrote about it in songs and told herself she was okay. Totally okay.
Thunder rumbled in the sky, and dark clouds moved across the sun, casting the beach in gray shadow. Rain droplets began to sputter, falling onto the white lined paper before her. Jillian gathered up the guitar and her notepad, then climbed down the rocky path. She jogged up the sandy trail to her car, then stowed the guitar in the trunk, put the engine in gear and took a right, heading toward The Love Shack.
The skies opened up just as she turned onto the road. Her cantankerous Hyundai sputtered and coughed, but kept chugging. Jillian patted the dash. “Come on, Sylvia. Hold on for just a few more months, okay? We had a deal. You make it to February and I’ll use my tax refund to fix you up.”
The rain pounded too fast and too hard for her wipers to keep up. Puddles formed in the road, then spread a river across the rutted worn path. She should have stuck to the main road, but this way was shorter, usually faster. Sylvia shuddered, then the engine stammered. Jillian pressed on the gas, urging the car up a little hill, but the water was pouring down faster than the wheels wanted to go, and halfway up the hill, Sylvia died. Not a slow, quiet death, but a herky-jerky, coughing death spiral.
Jillian cursed and steered toward the side of the road, though the car had already stopped moving. Great. She was stuck here, on this remote road, a mile from work, in a Noah’s Ark-worthy storm. She flipped out her cell phone, and too late realized she’d forgotten to charge it.
Damn.
She rooted under the front seats, hoping she’d remembered to stow her umbrella, but all she found was a few old French fries and an empty water bottle. Shit.
Guess that meant she was hoofing it. She cursed again, then got out of the car, hunching her shoulders against the downpour, though it did no good. The rain fell in sheets, soaking her hair, running like a waterfall off the end of her ponytail and down her bangs, then streaming down her face. Within seconds, her tank top and shorts were soaked, and her sneakers were sodden. She was cold and wet and pissed off. It was going to be one hell of a long mile.
She broke into a light jog, though for Jillian, about the only running she did was between the kitchen and the dining room at work. She heard the low rumble of an engine behind her, and spun around, thrusting out a thumb. On the mainland she wouldn’t hitchhike, but here on Fortune’s Island, she knew pretty much every single soul.
Almost as soon as she put out her thumb, she put it back down. The low, dark Mustang was one she knew well. As well as she knew its driver.
Zach.
Jillian spun back toward the road and kept on running. With any luck, Zach would drive right past her. Didn’t he understand that she just didn’t have the energy to deal with him? That every time she saw him, it still hurt like hell?
Just keep driving. Just keep driving.
The car drew up alongside her, and she heard the whine of the power window going down. Damn it.
“Jillian! What are you doing out here?” Zach called to her.
She kept on jogging, never even flicking a glance in his direction. The rain poured into her eyes, made her blink furiously so she wouldn’t trip. “Going to work.”
“It’s raining.”
She scowled. “Thanks for the weather report.”
“Come on, Jillian, get in. Don’t be stubborn.” His voice dropped into those soft, cajoling tones that had always melted her resolve before.
“I don’t want a ride from you.” She kept on going, swiping the rain off her forehead, slicking back her bangs. Her sneakers squished with every step, and she was pretty sure her shorts had gained five pounds of water.
“You’re getting soaked. You’ll get sick.”
“That’s just an old wives’ tale.” She stepped up her pace, even though the car could easily pass her. She wanted to be there already, to see the sign for The Love Shack come into view so she could duck inside and not have this conversation. Maybe she was being childish, but she didn’t care. “Just go wherever you’re going, Zach. I’m fine.”
“You’re drenched. You’re cold. And you’re being an idiot.” He let out a gust. “Get in the car, Jillian. Please.”
She stopped running and pivoted toward the open window. Zach was leaning across the inside of the car, his arm draped over the passenger’s seat. He had big brown eyes, the kind that reminded her of a strong cup of coffee, and a lean, tall frame that still caused her pulse to race. He was smiling at her, that smile she never used to be able to resist, and for some reason, that
just made her madder. Like he thought a grin could change everything. “I don’t need you or your car, Zach. Just leave me alone.”
“Jillian—”
“Don’t Jillian me. And don’t call me an idiot, not when you are the biggest idiot on this island.” All the frustration and anger she’d been bottling up for the past few months spewed to the surface. “I am done letting you talk me into anything again, Zach. And especially done with getting close to you. I don’t care if I’m walking in a hurricane, I don’t need or want a ride from you. Or anything else. Ever again.”
“You’re not letting me talk you into anything, Jillian. For God’s sake, you’re barely talking to me at all.”
She threw up her hands. “That’s what broken up means, Zach. It means I’m no longer at your beck and call, when you want to crash somewhere at two in the morning or bitch about the band over coffee. It means I’ve moved on, and so should you.” She’d done no such moving on in terms of dating, but he didn’t need to know that.
She wanted to move on, she really did. She wanted to forget about Zach, forget they had ever dated, act like the last eight years hadn’t happened. But it was impossible. Her every memory was so entwined with him. Every store she passed, every restaurant she saw, every corner of her apartment, had something attached to Zach. All she wanted was detachment, and that was pretty damned hard considering she saw him four days a week at The Love Shack and he lived less than a mile from her apartment.