Brothers of Paradise Series

I can’t help but smile at that. “Yes, I do.”

“What are they?”

I brush her hair back. “I want to be the person you tell your fears and hopes to. I want to support your dreams. I want to spot you when you lift weights and get to know your daughter and help both of you grow. I want to be your safe harbor.

“But I also want you to tell me off when I’m doing something wrong and to argue with me and to never, ever be afraid of me, because I’ll never be him. Hurting you would be to hurt myself. I can’t promise I never will, because relationships are messy. But I will never do it deliberately.”

“I know,” she breathes.

I kiss her cheek, closing my eyes against the emotions. “You were my first crush and you’re my greatest love. Just let me be with you forever. Here, in our home, with our families. That’s what I want. The rest? We’ll figure all of it out. Including the voices in your head.”

Jamie kisses me, a soft brush of her lips against mine that I seize on. I pull her firmly against me and feel like I can finally breathe again after more than a week of fear. And when she gets cold, when we should leave the marina but can’t bring ourselves to, I dig out the spare sweater I keep in the hatch and she pulls it on.

I tug her against my side. “You see me,” I murmur, “in a way no other woman ever has. From the very start, all those years ago, you looked at me and you kept looking.”

Not once had she thought the surface was all there was to me, and as long as I keep her clear gaze in my life, I’ll be the luckiest man alive.

JAMIE

“Catch,” Parker says.

“Wait!” I say. He doesn’t, and I’m forced to jump to grab the rope.

He grins. “Nice.”

“You’re supposed to teach me!”

“People learn best under pressure,” he says, moving along the deck to me. His footsteps are sure on the wooden deck of the Atlas. “And now what do you do?”

“I secure it here,” I say, bending at the waist. I fasten it around a hook and focus on the knot he’d shown me last weekend. Up, and over, and across…

“Yeah, that’s it,” he says. “Tighten?”

I tug on the end of the rope and it slots into place beautifully, like a puzzle done right.

“Perfect,” he says. “You sure you haven’t been training in secret? Do you have another sailing boyfriend somewhere?”

I stick out my tongue at him and Parker’s grin widens. The mid-October sun kisses his hair, tousled from the wind, and behind him the sail stretches taut. Without the motor on, the only sounds around us are seagulls and the waves cleaving beneath us.

“I’ll make a sailor out of you yet,” he says, and catches me around the waist.

“Aye-aye, Captain.”

He rolls his eyes and kisses me. Once, twice, trailing along my cheek. I wrap my arms around his neck and breathe in the scent of him and salt and ocean spray.

“I’m so glad we took today off,” I say.ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

“Mmm,” he murmurs. “One of the many, many perks of working for yourself. I’m glad we both do.”

“Sure you don’t miss me waitressing?”

He chuckles. “Yes, even if having you around daily was a little bit distracting. But I still appreciate the shifts you take when someone calls out.”

“I like doing it, every now and then,” I say.

He shifts us to the seat, pulling me down beside him. The cushions here are waterproof and large and newly refurbished. “How are the websites coming along?”

“Great. I should be done with the one for your old colleague next Friday,” I say.

My main job now is freelance web design. I’d showed Parker my own overhauled website a month ago. He said he’d send it to everyone he knew, and I thought he was exaggerating until I got three separate calls from small-scale law firms who needed an overhaul of their ageing websites. After a conversation with Ben of the Paradise Gelato Shop, I’m building them a website, too.

Four projects, and a job that lets me spend mornings with Parker in the gym, take Emma to school, and still be there to pick her up in the afternoons.

“Mmm. As long as you don’t forget to check in with your first client.”

I grin. “It’s very hard to, when I’m also in love with him. Your newsletters will always come first.”

Parker presses a hand to his heart. “That’s my love language, baby.”

Lily had talked our ear off about love languages last week at dinner, explaining a book she’d just read in minute detail. She’d asked a frustrated Hayden, an amused Parker and me, mostly confused, what our languages were.

It made for an interesting dinner.

“I think I’m learning a new dialect in mine,” I say, grinning.

“Oh? What is it?”

“Long trips at sea.” I touch his jaw with my lips. “Who knew this was so nice?”

He chuckles darkly and curves his hand around my hip. “I did.”

I rise up on an elbow. “Is this your move, then? Bring your girlfriends out on the boat with you?”

“This feels like a trick question,” he says, still grinning.

“So you’ve done it before?”

“Yes, but it was a long time ago, and it was never anyone I cared for a lot. And it was never on my own boat.”

“Good answer,” I say.

He chuckles. “I’m learning what your love language is.”

“Would you say that boats are your happy place?”

“In a way, sure. Although my happy place is where you are.”

“Another good answer,” I say. I scoot away from him on the bench and back up to the flat of Atlas’s deck. The wood is well oiled beneath me, in perfect shape after all the afternoons Parker’s spent on refurbishing her. Emma has been along on more than a dozen occasions.