Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady) (48 page)

She said yes, but he didn’t seem to hear. He went on, “We could leave Robyn with my mother for a while, go back to Green Island for a couple of months. We’d have the plane, and— well, we might spend a lot of time in the bedroom, so you wouldn’t see too much of the island.”

She giggled. “Just the bedroom ceiling?”

“And me. I could give my notice. We might just have enough time on the island to let Jenny and Jake do that documentary.”

She pushed back from him. “Lyle, I don’t think I was right to try to get you off the lighthouse. I don’t want to pressure you, and—”

“I’ve been working towards it for the last couple of years, honey. I’ve been putting all my extra money into a helicopter company on Vancouver Island. It’s a small company, but I’ve got enough in it now that I could leave and we could move down there. The fellow I’d be partners with is a single man. He’d take the overnight jobs and I could stay close to home. It’s not far from my parents’ place. You’d like them, and they’d love you. We could find a small place in the country, room to let the kids run. We—”

“Lyle?”

He fell silent, although his hands couldn’t stop their gentle caresses, drawing her closer as they spread on her back.

“Kiss me?” she asked huskily.

He laughed, but he was already moving closer. “There’s a very interested young girl watching from the other side of the room,” he warned her.

She glanced back and saw Robyn’s new friend Marg’ret watching them with an eager smile.

She turned back and slipped her arms around Lyle’s neck. She whispered, “All I asked for is a kiss. The rest is for later. When we’re alone.”

He kissed her.

Then he took her away, where they could be alone.

Turn the page for

Information about the author,

and a sample of Vanessa Grant’s

After All This Time

About the Author

Vanessa Grant

Vanessa Grant’s love affair with writing fiction began during a protracted illness at the age of twelve when she decided to write a novel of her own, sitting up in bed and using the typewriter she’d been given for her birthday. Not a computer, not an electric typewriter, but a then state-of-the-art manual typewriter. The story ground to a halt on page 50 but Vanessa never forgot the excitement of bringing her own characters to life. In her twenties, she wrote three unpublished novels, developing her skills as a writer while living in a remote lighthouse, during what she thinks of as her baby-making, basket-weaving, beach-walking days.

She now has over ten million books sold and has been translated into fifteen languages. She has also written what one critic has described as, “by far the best writing book I’ve ever read.”
Writing Romance
, published by Self Counsel Press, won the Under the Covers Best Writing Book award, and is currently in its third edition.

Vanessa lives with her husband and their two Australian shepherds on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Connect with Vanessa online through her website at
www.vanessagrant.com

AFTER ALL THIS TIME … by Vanessa Grant

Carrie Brooke fell in love with her employer, Charles Kantos, the first time she saw him, but she’d always been careful not to let it show. Now she’d ruined it all, and when she woke up in bed with him the morning after his best friend’s wedding, she knew there was only one thing to do – run.

But Carrie was Kantos Holdings’s best acquisitions specialist and Charles wasn’t letting her quit.

Turn the page to read the first chapter of AFTER ALL THIS TIME

AFTER ALL THIS TIME

Chapter One

All around Carrie the mood was soft, the room drifting. Through wispy dream clouds, her lover's song drew her, melody surging and echoing. Deep inside, his voice pulsed, trembling with desire.

Music for lovers. Dancing for lovers. Breathless. Intimate

She sighed softly and turned… reaching… seeking warmth against soft sleepy flesh… clinging… images… submerging in the dream

Music. The dance. Arms around her.

Charles… holding her close, moving with the dance. Charles… anger… something driven in his eyes… confusion and… Charles… away… everything gone… floating on sensation and loving.

His lips… his mouth… drowning… falling… down and down and his arms, his kiss, the dizzy pulsing… sensation and need and throbbing emotion… her own throat, her voice crying out and he was touching her, loving her … holding… taking… taking him into herself forever

The cry… echoing on heavy night air… sinking, losing all… floating… his arm heavy and warm over her hip… music… fading… silence and intimacy and the world a warm absence

The music had stopped. Even its echo was gone, as if it had never been. No love song rose softly. No words pulsed on the night air

Carrie lay very still. Around her, silently, the night shattered.

Panic spun through her darkness. Silence here, but in the dream

Soft, slow breath against her shoulder. And sensations. An echo of the dream, that warm heaviness on her hip. Deep inside her own sleep-drugged body, she felt the slow shadow of heat from the place she had been.

A man. Breathing. Holding her close

What had she done?

The wedding. The rest had to be a dream, but the wedding her mind gripped desperately for the certainty of concrete memory. Yes. The church. Alex and Sarah, warmly wrapped with happiness. Carrie had watched them with unwilling envy in her heart.

Charles, too, had watched. Then later, at the reception… watching… dancing with No, not with Charles. Charles never danced.

Charles' arms, hands soft and shattering, moving and caressing and possessing. Charles' voice in her ears, his body tangled so closely with hers that It had to be a dream! Of course it was a dream! She would never be so stupid!

She reached desperately for the reassuring image of the person she had learned to be. Carrie Brooke. Sophisticated. Practical. Short, dark hair carefully groomed. Deep brown, intelligent eyes. Clothing designed to project an image of competence and efficiency. Not the kind of woman to make stupid mistakes. As Charles himself had said many times, she was one hell of a smart lady

She opened her eyes. Her own bedroom. Her bed, faint light flowing in from the windows. Slowly, she turned her head towards the warmth.

His face was smooth in sleep. He looked younger without the mask of control that was always there when he was awake. She had never seen him asleep before, blonde hair tousled over his forehead, those penetrating blue eyes hidden by the vulnerability of closed eyelids. There was no tension in him now, only soft intimacy as his body moved against hers to the rhythm of his breathing

Charles. In her bed!

Every detail of her heated sleep was real. His touch, his heated possession, her own voice husky on the breathless night. She closed her eyes tightly, tore them open again. Was he awake? Would he open his eyes and look at her with the blue gone cold and hard? She had seen that look in his eyes before, when he looked at women who demanded too much. It was the same look she had seen one other time, when a very powerful man had tried unsuccessfully to destroy Charles