All I Ever Need Is You
Read All I Ever Need Is You Online
Authors: Bella Andre
~ The Sullivans ~
Adam & Kerry
© 2015 Bella Andre
*** MOBILISM ***
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Seattle architect Adam Sullivan is well known for his brilliant historic building restorations—and for having absolutely no interest in love and marriage. He’s happy for his siblings and cousins who have found true love, but though they’re clearly hell-bent on seeing him settled, his family is just going to have to accept that Cupid’s arrow will be skipping this Sullivan. That is, until he meets Kerry Dromoland…and suddenly Adam starts to question everything he once believed to be true about falling in love.
As one of the top wedding planners in Seattle, Kerry has been waiting her whole life to find her own true love. So even though Adam makes her heart race and her body heat up every time they’re together, she knows better than to think he could be “the one.” Still, knowing he’s Seattle’s biggest player doesn’t make it any easier to resist his breathtaking kisses and wicked caresses…or the fact that he makes her smile more than any man ever has.
But when Kerry desperately needs Adam’s help—and he comes through for her without the slightest hesitation—she begins to realize that there just might be more to the man she can’t resist than she’d previously thought. Can the bad boy with no interest in being reformed—and the woman who has no interest in reforming a bad boy—find forever together?
I know this will come as no surprise to those of you who have been reading my books for a while, but I have a thing for bad boys. Especially when the bad boy falls head over heels in love when he least expects it!
Which explains why I had the best time ever writing Adam Sullivan’s story. As the resolutely single Seattle Sullivan—and the last of his siblings to find love—how could I pair him with anyone but a wedding planner who has been waiting for true love her whole life? What’s more, the sparks between Adam and Kerry are so hot that I may have gotten scorched while writing
All I Ever Need Is You.
If this is your first time reading about the Sullivans, you can easily read each book as a stand-alone—and there is a Sullivan family tree available on my website (
http://www.bellaandre.link/TheSullivansFamilyTree
) so you can see how the books connect together.
I hope you love Adam and Kerry’s book!
Happy reading,
Bella Andre
P.S. The New York Sullivans are coming soon! You will be meeting Drake, Alec, Suzanne, and Harrison in this book. Drake will be the next Sullivan to fall in love, this time in New York, and I’m really excited about his story. Please be sure to sign up for my New Release newsletter (
http://www.bellaandre.link/NewsletterSignup
) so that I can let you know as soon as new books are released!
How had it come to this?
Adam Sullivan couldn’t believe he had a meeting with a wedding planner in a few minutes. Clearly, the universe was in the mood for a good practical joke.
His brother Rafe and his future sister-in-law Brooke were getting married on the beach at Lake Wenatchee in the Cascade Mountains in five weeks. When they’d initially told him their plans months ago, he’d been picturing hot dogs grilled over a campfire, hanging out in bathing suits on the beach, sailboat races, and a weekend of hiking through the surrounding mountains with his favorite people. But then, suddenly, they were working with some wedding planner, and Adam’s visions of a relaxing weekend wedding had been shot to hell.
Wedding planners meant ties that were too tight, matching suits dyed ridiculous colors that no guy would ever willingly choose to wear, and endless toasts.
But when Adam walked into the foyer of Dromoland Weddings & Events, he was impressed despite himself. From the flowers on the reception desk to the painting on the facing wall of a glowing bride in a flowing white dress, laughing as she tossed her bouquet toward her bridesmaids—every detail of the office spoke elegantly of wedding dreams come true. There wasn’t a single element he would have changed—something that rarely happened for an architect and builder who was always mentally tweaking the buildings and rooms he entered.
Both Rafe’s and Brooke’s work schedules had heated up just as they were in the crucial final planning stages for their wedding, and Rafe had been worried that Brooke might lose out on making her dream day come to life if they blew things with the wedding planner by bailing on another meeting with her. Adam hadn’t thought twice before offering to step in on their behalf. Even though, as far as he was concerned, there had already been a heck of a lot of Sullivan weddings in the past couple of years. First Chase, Marcus, Gabe, Sophie, and Lori—his San Francisco cousins—had all tied the knot. And then Rafe, Mia, Dylan, and Ian, his three brothers and sister, were all either engaged or married now, too.
Love and marriage had taken over the West Coast Sullivans one by one, like an amusement park game where the goal was to fell the targets one after another. Only instead of winning huge stuffed animals, his cousins and siblings had ended up with rings on their fingers.
For all Adam’s jokes, though, they all knew that he was happy for them. Truly happy that they’d each found someone they wanted to be with for the rest of their lives.
That didn’t mean, however, that he was anywhere near that frame of mind himself. Women, he’d always believed, were to be enjoyed—for as long as the enjoyment lasted. Fortunately, the women he dated had always been of like mind, probably because he wasn’t the kind of guy a girl looked at and thought,
Now, there’s my forever.
And he was okay with that. More than okay. He had plenty of nieces and nephews to play with thanks to his cousins, and likely his siblings soon, too.
Sure, Adam knew what everyone was saying about him. He couldn’t quite manage to block out the endlessly repeating refrains from the lovestruck. According to them, he just hadn’t met the right woman yet. They said he didn’t know what he was missing. And, evidently, he hadn’t yet realized how love would change everything for him.
Adam’s laughter rang out against the marble floors at the absurd thought of some woman walking into a room and changing his life forever. He’d never come close to feeling as if a lightning bolt had hit him, the way his brother Ian had with his fiancée, Tatiana. He couldn’t imagine falling in love at first sight the way his brother Dylan had with his wife, Grace, and her son, Mason. There’d never been anyone he’d pined over for years the way his sister, Mia, had for her husband, Ford. And he couldn’t think of anyone he’d known from childhood whom he would ever fall in love with the way Rafe had with Brooke.
Nope, his family was just going to have to accept that Cupid’s arrow would be skipping this Sullivan.
On a recent business trip to the East Coast, where he’d met up with some of his Maine and New York cousins, he’d warned them that they were next, because he was officially passing the falling-in-love torch to them. He’d paid the bar tab that night out of pity for the poor suckers who had no idea just what was coming for them soon. All those gooey looks. The perpetually up-and-down emotions when the road to true love wasn’t at all smooth. Not to mention the way they went a little crazy—more than a little crazy, actually—when they thought they’d lost the guy or girl of their dreams.
He’d seen all of that, and more, happen to his siblings and San Francisco cousins. But he was confident that it wasn’t going to happen to him. That it
couldn’t
possibly happen to him. In fact, he needed to get this meeting rolling soon or he’d be late for his date tonight with—
“Adam Sullivan?”
He turned at his name, and as he set eyes on the woman standing in front of him, he actually forgot how to speak for a moment. His brain turned into one big blank space, and his eyes went wide before he could stop it from happening.
Even when he gave his head a hard shake, he could still hardly believe his eyes. She was exactly what he’d imagined a high-gloss, high-class wedding planner would be. Perfect silk shirt and pencil skirt, heels that he knew his sister, Mia, would kill for, and not one strand of her long dark hair or makeup out of place. She was the polar opposite of the kind of woman he was normally attracted to.
And yet, only one thought would form in his whiplashed brain:
Where the hell had she been all his life?
* * *
By the time five o’clock rolled around, Kerry Dromoland had already had a long day, meeting with four current clients and a prospective client, as well. As a wedding planner, she was used to days like this—ones that started at five in the morning with no clear end in sight. But all day today, she’d been a little keyed up.
Rafe Sullivan and Brooke Jansen had asked her if one of Rafe’s siblings could meet with her today due to business commitments that, unfortunately, couldn’t be canceled. She’d assured them that it was perfectly fine. She often met with the sister of the bride or groom if they couldn’t be present, and had been expecting them to send his sister, Mia, to meet with her. In the end, though, they’d let her know that Rafe’s brother Adam would be meeting with her this afternoon.
Kerry hadn’t needed to pull out the Sullivan family photo they’d given her to remember what Adam looked like. She’d been able to visualize, all too well, just how good-looking he was—the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome. His grin in the photo was super-sexy and so appealing she’d had to tear her gaze away before Rafe and Brooke caught her gaping like a fish at their brother.
All day long, whenever her heartbeat would kick up at the thought of him, she’d remind herself that she’d been around good-looking men like him zillions of times and had never had any trouble keeping her wits about her.
Only, now that he was standing in front of her, staring at her so intensely, she felt her knees actually go weak. Something that had never, ever happened before.
Something she’d been certain could
never
happen to her.
Then again, thankfully, Kerry had enough presence of mind to realize that she’d never seen a more beautiful or more sexual man live and in the flesh. One glance was all it took for her to know that he was everything most women fantasized about. Wild. Rugged. Sex personified.
But Kerry had never fantasized about men like Adam Sullivan. She’d never believed the romantic myth that reformed players made the best husbands. Not when both her mother and her sister had shown her just what a terrible, painful myth that was.
“Promise me you’ll wait for Mr. Perfect,”
was what her mother, Aileen, had made Kerry vow again and again in the years after their father had left them alone, a mother and two small girls with no money and no prospects. Nothing but unpaid bills and desperation. Kerry had been too young to remember much about her father, but according to her mother, he’d been Seattle’s bad boy. One Aileen’s own mother had warned her to stay away from, but had been foolishly unable to resist.
What Kerry did remember was how hard her mother had worked to give her and her sister, Colleen, a great childhood in one of the best neighborhoods in Seattle. Her mother had taken back her maiden name of Dromoland and started Dromoland Weddings & Events twenty-five years ago with a laser-focused purpose: to build the best wedding-planning business in Seattle. But even back when she’d been scrambling for new clients, Kerry’s mother had refused to work with any couples who she didn’t believe were actually in love. She never wanted anyone to end up in a marriage like hers, where one had loved and the other had played. As a result, out of all the weddings her mother had planned during the twenty years she’d run the business, it was amazing just how few divorces there had been among her clients.
And yet, even though Kerry had never been the slightest bit tempted to break her vow to her mother, here she was fighting the urge to drool over the gorgeous player standing before her.
Especially when he smiled and said, “That’s me. Are you Kerry Dromoland?”
He said her surname perfectly—Drum-
oh
-land—as if he’d spent some time in Ireland, and also managed to infuse it with searing heat. It was, she had to admit, an impressive feat. Even to a woman like her, who refused to be impressed or to fall for his sexy game.
“Yes, I’m Kerry.” She forced herself to smile and move toward him with her hand outstretched. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
He quickly ate up the distance between them with his athletic stride. He clasped her hand in his at the same moment that he said, “Your eyes...”
Had anyone ever looked at her so closely?
“They’re not emerald. Not jade, either.” The longer he looked, holding on to her hand all the while, the drier her mouth became. “They’re so much prettier than either stone could ever be.”
More than one person had complimented her on her green eyes before, but never quite like that. She wouldn’t have called his words poetry. How could she when there was such an unabashed sexual undertone to them? But at the same time, she couldn’t dismiss the surprising eloquence of them. If only she could stop herself from blushing, her pale skin giving away the effect he was having on her.
Carefully drawing her hand back—she couldn’t allow herself to be rude to her client’s brother—she said, “Please join me in my office.”
As she led the way, with every step she took she could feel his dark eyes on her. She’d been taught by her mother at an early age how to look elegant in every situation. But despite the fact that she hadn’t intended her outfit to come across as sexy, she was suddenly extremely aware of the slightly translucent nature of her silk shirt, the way the waist dipped in to accentuate the flare of her hips, and the fact that the height of the heels she preferred wasn’t at all modest.
Her office was a large, bright room with a plush seating area, a glossy, round mahogany-topped table with three chairs, and her desk. It had never felt too small.
Until today.
When she was tempted to put a little space between them by sitting behind her desk rather than joining him on the couches, Kerry decided enough was enough and gave herself a silent talking-to. She was just in a weird mood, likely because she’d stayed up way too late watching bad reality TV the previous night and had started the day before the sun had even risen.
“Can I get you anything to drink? Coffee? Tea? A glass of wine? Or a beer?”
“You’re prepared for everything, aren’t you?”
For everything but you.
“That’s my job,” she said with a smile that she hoped masked her uncharacteristic nerves. “As is guessing that you’d probably go for the beer. I’ve got a locally brewed pale ale or a Guinness.”
“It’s five o’clock,” he said with a grin, “so why not? And since I’m always up for celebrating my Irish roots—and yours, too—I’ll have a Guinness. Have you visited Dromoland Castle in County Clare?”
“It’s on my bucket list,” she said with another smile before she got up to get him his drink. Again, she felt his gaze follow her across the room. She brought one for herself as well, even though she wasn’t planning on having more than a sip.
He lifted his glass and once she’d raised hers, he said, “To Rafe and Brooke.”
His simple, and very sweet, toast to his brother and his brother’s fiancée made her smile. It also made her forget to keep her guard up as she clinked her glass to his, saying, “And to giving them a perfect wedding.”
The drink was refreshingly cold in a room that had gone too hot from the moment he’d stepped inside and sent her every sense reeling in a way she’d never experienced before. The one small sip she’d planned to take wasn’t nearly enough. Not when she could definitely use something to take the edge off.
Still, she put down her glass and picked up her tablet from the side table. “It’s very nice of you to come to meet with me in Rafe and Brooke’s place. I don’t know how much they’ve told you about our wedding plans?”
“They’ve told me plenty.”
His tone made it clear that he had clearly hit wedding-discussion fatigue. Working to keep from smiling at his obvious discomfort, she said, “I’d appreciate it if you could let them know that everything we’ve already discussed is well in place for their big day. However, there is one additional element that I would like to incorporate into the vows and then the reception.”
She swiped her finger across her tablet and pulled up a picture she’d drawn of a gazebo, with the blue lake and green mountains behind it and climbing vines up the sides. “I’m envisioning having this structure in the middle of the beach for their vows. And then for the reception, I would like to move it off to the side as a perfect place for their guests to have photos taken that will be ready for them to take home at the end of the night in their gift bags.” When he didn’t say anything, but just continued to stare at her drawing, she added, “If you’re worried about the added expense, please don’t be. I know a good, reasonably priced carpenter who can build the structure—”