“You were behind her?” She could figure the basic geography as well as anyone. He and Charlotte were on the road heading into Miller’s Pond. Not away from it.
He nodded. “I was coming back.”
For a moment she couldn’t breathe. “Did you forget something?”
“Yeah.” He stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’ve got a great dog. I had to come back for him.”
“Man’s best friend,” she agreed.
His smile was gentle and intimate. “And I have a job offer.”
“A job? In Miller’s Pond?”
He nodded.
“That’s good, too.”
“But most of all, I was coming back for you.”
He kissed her and she leaned into him. Then she said, “Make sure you negotiate lots of holidays in this new job of yours.”
“Holidays?”
“Yes. I’ve got a pretty reliable physician who’s promised to cover for me when I’m away. He knows the patients very well since he used to be the doctor here.”
“You don’t say?”
“I do say. If a person were planning say, to swim with dolphins, or hike the Grand Canyon, I know he’d be happy to take over the practice.” She huffed in a shuddery breath. “I was going to call you tonight and tell you I’d be joining you as soon as I could get away. I want to do all of those things on your list with you.”
He cocked his head suddenly. “Do you hear that?”
She had no idea what she was listening for. She could hear the baby suckling, the usual sounds of a hospital, beeping machines and muffled voices in the halls.
He was laughing down at her. Then he pointed to the window. “It’s raining.”
Still holding her hand, he turned to Charlotte. “Good luck with everything. Goodbye little Evan.” And then he pulled her out of the room and down the hall.
When they got to the main floor he dragged her outside. She was laughing, even as the rain began to pelt her. “I don’t have a coat or an—“ He stopped her protests by kissing her. Long and deep. She melted into him, put her arms around him. She felt the rain plopping onto her hair, felt it wet on Evan’s leather jacket.
“I did it,” he said at last. “I kissed a girl in the rain.”
TWO WEEKS LATER
“Evan?” She yelled from the kitchen.
“What?” He bellowed back. He was trying to train the dog to use the cat door. Henry wasn’t too interested.
Since he’d called the dog Homely for so long, it would only answer to similar names. She put her foot down on calling a living creature Homely. They tried Homer, but the dog turned up its nose. They tried Tony. The dog yawned and put its head in its paws.
“How about Howie?” she’d suggested and Cleo had made exactly the sound a cat would make if it could laugh its ass off.
Finally, she called, “Henry,” and the dog trotted over, wagging its tail.
“You can’t call a dog Henry,” Evan protested. “All the other dogs will make fun of it.”
“Unlike Homely,” she said drily.
She got her way, of course.
Now, she was standing in front of the list taped to her fridge. It was titled: Evan and Caitlyn’s Amazing Life List. Over the past couple of weeks they’d both added to the list. She’d added a felucca trip down the Nile with a stop to see the pyramids. He’d scrawled in Everest base camp. She suspected he was trying to impress her.
But the thing that had her yelling for him was that she’d removed the scrawled, much annotated piece of foolscap from the fridge and typed it up on her computer, printing out a neat copy. And Evan had scrawled all over her neat work.
“Can you come in here?”
He strode into the kitchen and the sight of him made her heart trip. She had a feeling it always would. “What is it?”
“You made a mess of my neat list.”
“First, an Amazing Life List is a fluid document. It’s not instructions on how to remove a gall bladder. You don’t need numbered subheadings.”
“But surely, Zanzibar is a sub-heading for climbing Kilimanjaro, since you’d do both on the same trip.”
“Stop organizing the damn list!” he yelled.
“Fine.” She grabbed a pen. A pen! “Fine.” She penned an item at the bottom of the page. “Have a baby.” Perhaps she didn’t want a child right this second, but it was a definite goal on her part of the Amazing Life List.
He crossed the room and plucked the pen from her hand.
Before her astonished eyes, he crossed her entry out.
“What do you think you’re doing? If I want a baby, I’ll have a baby. Nobody’s asking you to be the daddy.” Except that she could not think of another man who she’d want for the job.
He was busy with the pen and didn’t answer. Then he stood back and let her look.
“I’m not going to be like my hippy parents,” he said. “I want to do things in the right order.”
Where he’d crossed out Have a Baby, he’d penned in Get Married. And under that, he’d rewritten the words, “Have a baby.”
She turned to look at him and saw everything she’d ever wanted staring right back at her.
“This list was a great idea.”
“And it’s going to be an amazing life,” he promised her, coming closer and pulling her into his arms.
“It already is,” she said as she raised her face for his kiss.
The End
If you enjoyed KISS A GIRL IN THE RAIN,
take a look at these other books in the Take a Chance series:
IRIS IN BLOOM
Take a Chance, Book Two
Iris Chance is turning 33. She’s an independent woman, the owner of the Sunflower Coffee and Tea Company in Hidden Falls, Oregon. Hidden Falls boasts clean air, natural beauty, good neighbors. The only problem is that there are zero interesting single men and Iris wants a baby. She’d love the whole package -- the love story, the sexy romance with a hero who will sweep her off her feet, but she doesn’t have time to wait for Mr. Right. He may lose his way and never show up. She decides to start a family with the help of a sperm bank, knowing she’ll have her large family to support and encourage her as a single mom. When the new High School English teacher, Geoff McLeod, walks into her café and into her life he seems perfect. There’s only one problem…
Geoff McLeod never imagined his wife would end their six- year marriage with a text message. Reeling from her betrayal, he moves to Hidden Falls to teach English and Creative Writing. He’s got zero interest in women or dating until he meets Iris Chance, the intriguing woman who bakes the best Morning Glory muffins he’s ever tasted. He can’t imagine starting his day without stopping in on his way to work for coffee and a muffin and to see the sexiest woman who ever donned an apron.
Iris is oldest girl in a family of eleven kids. She’s always been the stand-in mother to her younger siblings. She’s got so used to looking out for other people and listening to their problems that she’s become the confidante and unofficial therapist of half the town. She can see that the new English teacher has some emotional baggage dragging along behind him. He looks like he can use a friend and Iris has never been able to turn away from someone in pain. She’s prepared to be his friend, but she would never get involved with someone who is still officially married.
When her matchmaking mother invites the new English teacher to her birthday party everyone begins to wonder whether this will be a friends to lovers tale.
In this contemporary romantic comedy about a small town girl who longs for a family, but has never entirely trusted she deserved a happy ending, two lonely people learn that sometimes love comes when you least expect it.
A sexy, humorous, contemporary romance, Iris in Bloom is the perfect beach read, or a romance novel to while away a rainy afternoon.
Iris in Bloom is the second book in the Take a Chance series, but the books can be read in any order.
BLUEPRINT FOR A KISS
Take a C
hance, Book Three
You can design a perfect life, then a woman comes along and messes it all up!
Prescott Chance is the go-to architect for the wealthy and famous, which has made him more wealthy and famous than he's ever wanted to be. He turns down more commissions than he accepts and is extremely private. Holly Legere is barely making ends meet between rent and student loans. As an assistant to Alistair Rupert, the notoriously difficult industrialist, she works night and day for slave wages, hanging on in hopes of a promised promotion in his huge organization. When Alistair Rupert's wife decides she wants a Prescott Chance designed house, and Prescott turns her down, it's Holly's job to make the choosy architect change his mind. And Holly is a very determined woman. In this modern romantic comedy, she'll go to any lengths to get him to design her boss a house, including pulling in his huge family for support. This is the third book in the Take a Chance series, though the books stand alone.
CHANCE ENCOUNTER
Take a Chance, Prequel
Daphne and Jack meet on a Greyhound bus heading north from California. The year is 1976 and Daphne is a pregnant teenager. Jack is a guy in search of a future. For these two lost souls, this is a ride that will change their lives and begin a dynasty. This is a prequel to the Take a Chance series about the eleven kids Jack and Daphne will collect over the years and the paths each member of this very untraditional family, will take as they, in turn, fall in love.
Other Books by Nancy Warren
Border Collie Christmas
A Romance in Four Seasons - Book One
When Erin Nash hears a baby crying outside her door on a cold December night, the baby she discovers is a lost puppy with a red, and very wet and dirty, Christmas bow still hanging around its neck. When she attempts to unite the dog with his owner, she meets Jared a man trying to raise a-five-year old daughter, Sadie, alone. Jared begins to rethink the wisdom of getting his daughter a puppy for Christmas. She’s already lost her mother, what if she lost the puppy as well? As Erin and Jarad get to know each other, one small Border Collie with a big personality and no name, begins to unite two hurting people.
A Dog Named Cupid
A Romance in Four Seasons - Book Two
Jared Gardiner has an engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket and Valentine's Day is the date he's chosen to propose to the woman he loves, jewelry designer Erin Nash. When the dog who brought them together, a puppy appropriately named Cupid, gets sprayed by a skunk, Jared discovers that's not the worst thing that can happen to a man on Valentine's Day.
Erin Nash is in love with a wonderful man, has a design business that is thriving and realizes that after some tragedy in her life, she’s found contentment. Trust a man to screw that up!
Why can’t Jared leave things as they are?
When Jared’s six-year-old daughter Sadie hears that Erin isn’t going to be her stepmother after all, she decides to take matters into her own small hands. With some help from the canine Cupid.
A Midsummer Night’s Wedding
A Romance in Four Seasons - Book Three
It's summertime in the small town of Kaslo, Washington and Erin Nash and Jared Gardiner are getting married. It's only going to be a small wedding, forty guests, and a tiny wedding party: Erin, her step-daughter to be Sadie as the flower girl, Cupid the Border collie as the ring bearer and Jared and his best man. What could possibly go wrong?
Erin might have ideas about her ceremony, but her mother has much bigger plans for her only daughter’s wedding. If she can’t move the wedding to the Waldorf Astoria in New York she’ll do her best to bring a Waldorf type wedding to Kaslo including 150 extra guests.
Suddenly, Erin has a wedding planner she never hired, a husband-to-be acting strange, and she and Sadie are rewriting fairy tales about wicked stepmothers.
Don’t Miss the Next Installment:
A Kaslo Thanksgiving
The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home
Long time widow Sandy Forbes is breaking out this Christmas. In her 71 years on earth she has stuffed and cooked 55 Christmas turkeys, baked hundreds of pies, turned out thousands of shortbread cookies and hoisted enough pine trees in her living room to reforest the Amazon.
Her family love her. They come to her for every occasion, eating, drinking, squabbling and then leaving her with a mass of dishes and crumpled holiday wrap. But this is the year everything changes. When she wants someone else to take over for one year, the family lays a big guilt trip on her and Grandma rebels. Sandy’s giving herself a gift this Christmas. She’s running away from home for the holidays.
About the Author
Nancy Warren is the USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty novels. She continues to write for Harlequin Blaze as well as writing Indie books. Nancy is known for her sexy, humorous stories. She lives in the Pacific Northwest though she tends to wander. She is an avid hiker, a lover of good chocolate, good wine, and good stories.
Sign up for Nancy’s Newsletter to keep up with her new releases and insider information she shares only with her newsletter subscribers. Subscribers also receive the chocolate chip cookie recipe from The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home.
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