Spin (23 page)

“Yep,” he said, very breezily.

I made a snorting sound. “Such as? Besides a
new career, because that is a perfectly reasonable thing to be
scared about,” I told him.

He eyed me a moment, then said
“Spiders.”

“Ha.”

“Snakes.”

“Well—”

“Horses. Bars, taverns, and watering
holes.”

I was silent.

“Bullies.”

Then I added, “Spreadsheets,” in a quiet
voice. “Accounting. History lessons. Things that take a long time
to wrap up. Food used as foreplay.”

“That wasn’t foreplay, babe.”

“Any of that ‘back door’ action,” I
continued.

He laughed. “You didn’t seem scared.”

“Missing a plane. Catching a plane. Running
out of gas. The cost of gas. Second chances.” I looked down at the
river glinting sunlight back up at me in a blinding way.
“Rivers.”

He didn’t look worried at all by this
expansive list that wasn’t even close to done. He looked happy. At
least, he was grinning.

“Want to take the river off your list?”

“Well, I mean, sure,” I said with all the
certainty of a frightened person. ’Cause who wouldn’t want
that?

Then, even though I was wearing a very
expensive sundress, he reached up and yanked me right off that rock
and into the river.

I almost shot back into the air, it was so
shockingly cold.

He pulled me against his chest and laid his
lips over mine. “Can we take the river off your list now?” he
asked, and kissed me. And me, fool that I was, let him.

“Oh, that’s cold,” I said when we were done,
my feet scissoring through the water.

“It’s not that cold.”

“No, sir, your actions are cold, very cold.
And you will pay,” I vowed.

“Swim,” he suggested, pushing away from me,
out into the middle of the river, into the sunshine. “It’ll keep
you warm. And from being swept downriver.”

“
Downriver?
” I almost shrieked.

He laughed. “I’m kidding. I won’t let you
get swept downstream.” He held out an arm. “Come here.”

I swam to him, partly to keep warm but also
because of the exhilarating rush now coursing through my blood
after the cold plunge. I followed him until we were both in the
middle of the bright river, treading water.

“It’s not that strong of a current,” I said,
feeling emboldened now that I knew I wasn’t going to be swept over
some icy falls downstream.

“Nope.” He reached for my fingers and pulled
me over to him. “Not this time of year.”

I spread my arms out in front of me,
swirling them out and back, my feet kicking, getting used to the
feel of it. The last time I’d been swimming was….

I inhaled a big, hard breath. The ocean. The
last time I’d been in the water was that day in the blue, blue
ocean, on the wave.

“What?” Finn said.

“I was just remembering the last time I went
swimming. It was a long, long time ago.”

“Do you forget how?” he asked, his hand
going at once to my hip.

I shook my head. Wet hair dragged over my
shoulders. “No. I don’t forget anything. Don’t,” I said of his hand
going to help hold me up in the water. “No. I’ve got it.”

He grinned and nodded, then kicked onto his
back and started for the far shore.

The water was cold, but it glinted and
sparkled like it was alive. My legs kicked, my arms moved, my skirt
floated up around my waist, and I felt not scared but…amazing.

“This isn’t so bad,” I called out to him. “I
think I’ve got it.”

“I know you’ve got it.” He’d scrambled up
the cliff on the far shore and was hauling the rope to him. “Come
try the rope.”

“You are out of your ever-loving mind,” I
told him firmly. Enough was enough, after all. He laughed and
grabbed the rope and swung out, then let go, the fool, and plunged
into the river with a huge splash about thirty feet away from me. I
clapped when his head popped above the surface.

“V-very b-big splash!” I chattered
admiringly.

He swam over, slicing through the water.
“Cold?”

“L-little.”

His body ranged up against mine as he cupped
my bottom, his hand hot and slippery against my underwear as he
pulled them aside. “I’ll warm you up,” he murmured into my wet
hair.

“I’m freezing.” I draped my arms around his
shoulders and hooked my knees around his hips.

He tipped forward and started swimming us to
shore. His knees and my bottom bumped the earth as we neared the
bank, and it was all over. My underwear was off in seconds, my
dress a tangled heap on the dirt.

“We’ll get started on the rest of your list
tomorrow,” he promised, his mouth moving down my neck.

I hung on to his shoulders and let my head
hang back. The sunlit river buoyed me up and flowed around us, and
I lifted my body into his, felt him push deep inside me.

That’s just where I wanted him, in every
way.

I couldn’t believe how turned around I was
from where I’d started.

I used to be a shooting star with only one
thing in mind. Now I was down in the river, having sex with the
pawnshop guy who my father used to rough up in his jail cells,
barefoot, howling to the sun.

It almost looked like I’d done a three-sixty
and was right back where I started from. But I was light years from
where I used to be. I could cite a dozen reasons, from how I knew
it hadn’t been ambition fueling me, but fear. How my up-and-at-’em
spirit had been turning me into a steamroller. How I’d starting
hating the people I was helping, and what did that make me?

But I didn’t need reasons. Because I didn’t
care how it looked to anyone else.

And that was the biggest proof.

I was still going to be a human motor of
getting shit done. But now, I was going to start driving my own
car.

And if I needed him, Finn was going to
help.

Because my list wasn’t even close to being
done. I was going to find a way to spin every one of those fears,
starting right here, with Finn’s eyes on me, his body deep inside
me, on a riverbank, unleashing the genie that got stuffed back in
its bottle all those years ago.

Because that was one hundred percent magic,
and I totally believed.

The End

(Pretty much)

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Dare ©

Bella Love

JANE MACINNEE HAS been through the fire. She faced
her worst fear and lost the career she spent her life building. But
in the process, she found the man of her dreams and a second chance
at happiness. Now all she has to do is reshape everything,
absolutely everything, and carve a new path in the world.

How hard could it be?

Finn Dante has no intention of letting Janey take the
easy way out. He knows what she’s capable of, the best and the
worst, and he intends to help her face her mountain of fears by
pushing her way past her comfort zone, and testing every limit
she’s got, in bed and out of it.

What could possibly go wrong?

But when Jane’s biggest test becomes Finn’s worst
nightmare, she has to decide what really matters, and how far she’s
willing to go to get it.

And Finn isn’t interested in waiting around for a
woman who’s not up to his dare.

Excerpt

Nothing But Trouble
(tentative title) ©

Bella Love

THE MOMENT NICK Murphy heard his assistant’s voice on
the phone that morning, he knew it was going to be a bad day.

“We don’t have the Renoir.”

“Sorry?” He driving through dense forest and
reception wasn’t good. He couldn’t have heard that right.

“Beck never picked up the Renoir the other
day. It’s not in our storage.”

Beck never picked up the Renoir the other
day
. The pick-up truck bounced over the rutted roads as Nick
repeated it to himself a few times, to make it sink it. With each
jarring rut, it sunk further.

He muttered a curse then moved into action.
“Call Pete Sandler-Ross,”
the ass
“and tell him I’m coming
for it. Today.”

“Texted him yesterday. He said that you
could come for it anytime.” A pause. “How far away are you? Want us
to go?”

Nick looked down at his hiking boots, which
were sitting on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and shook
his head. “No. I’ll go. I want to be looking in his face when he
tries to explain why he never told us Beck didn’t show up the other
day. And call Beck. Tell him he’s fired.”

As partner and co-co-owner of Swampyre,
their high-end pawn business, his brother Beck couldn’t technically
be fired, but that was beside the point. He could be killed, which
would have the same effect.

No, actually, killing him would be
better.

“He’s in the Caymans, meeting about that
investment,” Jason’s voice was garbled for a moment, then cleared.
“He said he’s sorry.”

“Not yet he’s not,” Nick muttered as his
truck shot out of the trees and into the blazing sun. At ten a.m.
it was already hot. By noon, it would be brutal. By four, when he’d
hit Destiny Falls, it would be smothering.

“I could ask Finn to go pick it up,” Jason
ventured.

He didn’t bother replying. They both knew it
was a bad idea to put Finn, his other co-owner, in the same room
with Peter Sander, the ass. They had a history. It involved a
woman. It wasn’t a good history. Nick spent a moment envying Finn,
with this default way out. Then he moved on.

“Tell Johnny I’ll text him when I’m closer
and he can meet me with the SUV.”

“Sounds good. Sorry buddy,” Jason said, his
voice crackling under the strain of poor reception. “You took a day
off, and now, this.”