it on you.” He took the necklace from the case and gave her an adorable look until she turned around for him. His fingers were warm against her nape as he did up the clasp. He leaned in and brushed a kiss there, which sent shivers of desire down her spine.
“If I thought you were ready,” he whispered in her ear, “I would have bought you a diamond ring.”
She turned and glared at him.
He smiled back. “You’re not ready. But you’ll come around eventually. I just have to keep telling you how much I love and admire you.”
He was right about that. It wasn’t his money or his name that she loved. It was him. He was kind and good. And she should let him buy her pretty things because it gave him joy.
He gave her his arm, and she walked into the yacht club, where Granny was waiting, beaming as if Jessica had finally done something right for the first time in her life.
Which was annoying in the extreme. Her inner rebel didn’t want to do anything that might please the grumpy old woman.
But when Topher took her in his arms and danced her around the ballroom, letting her lead because his left side was still weak, she knew that she’d made the right choice.
Even if Granny agreed with her.
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Did You Miss the Start of This Wonderful Series?
Jenna Fossey’s life is about to change. An unexpected inheritance and the chance to meet relatives she never knew existed has her heading to the charming little town of Magnolia Harbor. But as soon as she arrives, long-buried family secrets lead to even more questions, and the only person who can help her find the answers is her sexy-as-sin sailing instructor.
Please turn the page for an excerpt from The Cottage on Rose Lane.
Chapter One
Was this her father’s boat? The one he’d been sailing the day he died?
Jenna Fossey stood on the sidewalk, shading her eyes against the early-September sun, studying the boat. It was small, maybe fifteen feet from end to end. It sat on cinder blocks, hull up in the South Carolina sunshine, its paint blistered and cracked. Much of the color had faded or peeled away, leaving long gray planks of wood. Even the boat’s name had bleached away; only the shadow of a capital I on the boat’s stern remained. Some kind of vine—was that kudzu?—had twisted up the cinder blocks and crawled across the boat’s hull, setting suckers into the wood and giving the impression that only the overgrown vegetation held the pieces together.
A thick, hard knot formed in Jenna’s chest. She held her breath and closed her eyes, imagining the father she’d never known. In her thirty years on this planet, she’d imagined him so many times. In her fantasies, he’d been a fireman, a detective, a handsome prince, a superhero, a scoundrel, a bastard, and an asshole. That last role had stuck for most of her life because, before she died of breast cancer three years ago, Mom had refused to talk about him. In fact, by her omission, Mom had made it plain that Jenna’s father had been a mistake, or a one-night stand, or someone Mom had met in college but hardly knew.
And then, one day out of the blue, Milo Stracham, the executor of her grandfather’s will, arrived at her front door and told Jenna the truth. Her father had been the son of a wealthy man, a passionate sailor, and he’d died before she was born.
She took another breath, redolent with the tropical scents of the South Carolina Low Country. Musty and mossy and salty. This was an alien place to a girl who’d grown up in Boston. It was too lush here. Too hot for September.
She shifted her gaze to the house where Uncle Harry lived. It was a white clapboard building bristling with dormer windows and a square cupola on top. Its wraparound veranda, shaded by a grove of palmettos at the corner, epitomized the architecture of the South. She stood there listening to the buzz of cicadas as she studied the house, as if it would tell her something about the man who owned it.
At least Uncle Harry didn’t live in a big, pretentious monstrosity like her grandfather’s house on the Hudson. She would never live in her grandfather’s house. She’d told Milo, who had become the sole trustee of her