After college, Rory Finn left behind the familiarity of her quiet, picturesque hometown to pursue a professional career in the city. With her sights firmly on the future, Rory pressed on in hopes of forgetting the past until a jarring bit of unwelcome news forces her to confront it.
Her first love, the one she'd tried so hard to forget, is about to marry someone else. That pang Rory feels isn't envy, it's not even regret. It's love. But Rory can't be that girl. She won't. But if she doesn't, she'll never know what could have been. She'll never have another chance to tell him how she feels.
As she embarks on an impulsive, desperate bid to win him back, her mission turns into an unexpected and emotional journey of rediscovery. HAD TO BE YOU explores a history of love from its tentative beginnings to what may just turn out to be its final bittersweet end, as Rory ignores her head and follows her heart.
PROLOGUE
Moonlight framed the inky patch of sky out the port window, illuminating silhouettes of pale shadows. Overhead, halyards clapped softly in the breeze, keeping time with the creak of lines as the boat shifted, gently rocking in the waves.
Tiny thrills of heat shivered through her body, thrumming with warm electricity. One moment it felt like she was flying, and in the next, melting away into a dream. His body was hot and hard, his kisses so soft and deep. Her lips parted in a quiet moan as his tongue slipped past, tangling with hers in a delicious slow slide, the surrounding ocean luminous and shimmering in the quiet summer night.
Her breath quickened, the wind like a whisper of cool silk against heated skin as his mouth moved down her neck, tongue tracing the hollow of her throat. She trembled with longing on every soft caress as his skilled hands curved around her hips, smoothing warm paths down the small of her back. They found their rhythm, the ebb and flow, bodies moving together in perfect waves of passion, a hot undercurrent of pure lust running beneath this deep well of feeling and emotion.
Mindlessly, breathlessly, she gasped his name in a hot, hungry plea. He responded with a soft groan, a jolt of pure desire.
She bit her lip to mute her cry, clutching at his broad shoulders, grasping at the taut muscles in his arms, anything to hold onto as she began to feel weaker and weaker against that relentless ache of need. Each roll and push of his hips was a pure revelation of sensation, filling her again and again. Her body arched, breasts crushed against the muscled wall of his chest.
The pleasure was indescribable, waves of ecstasy building in intensity. Heart beats raced between shallow breaths and quiet gasps as she tightened around him. Soft, thrilling declarations of love burned in his kisses, murmured into her neck, whispered past her ear as he stroked her hair. Yet he never had to say it at all; she felt it everywhere. This feeling, this exquisite, endless ache, wasn’t just him inside her body but inside her heart as well, bursting with the diamond brilliance of the starlit sky.
After, feeling thoroughly sated yet somehow still weak from want, she settled into his arms. She could feel the thunderous pounding of his heartbeat gradually soften and slow through his warm skin as the boat bumped against the mooring, floating on an aimless current. A sleepy smile lifted the corner of her lips as he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“You’re going to marry me someday,” he said in his usual joking way, though with a husky edge to it. “Just so you know.”
“I’ll consider myself forewarned,” she replied and closed her eyes.
They couldn’t stay here too long. She would have to go soon. But right now her whole world consisted of this place of pure contentment and perfect happiness, wrapped inside a fleeting moment in time.
About the Author
A lifelong New Englander, I divide my time between the North Shore and Cape Cod. My favorite things are beaches, boats, books, bars, the Boston Red Sox and boys, but not necessarily in that order. Consequently, you’ll probably find that these are the things I write about, too.
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