“Embarrassed about what?”

  “Can we go inside and talk?” Jake drank in the sight of the man who was the only family he’d ever known. Stocky, balding, but still in good shape for a man his age. He had a lot of years left in him.

  Joe shook his head. “She’s not mine anymore.”

  “The bank foreclosed?”

  “Nope, I sold her.”

  “Joe!”

  “Don’t look so distraught, Jake. It’s just a building.”

  “The bar and grill is your life. You’ve been in business for twenty-five years.”

  “And tied down twenty-four seven for twenty-five years.”

  “But...but...I thought you loved the place.”

  “I do. Did. It got old, though. Especially once you were grown up. I kept her for as long as I did because you enjoyed coming back here from your adventures. But when the economy turned and customers started staying home to drink beer and barbecue in their backyard, it was a sign for me. I’m not getting any younger, kid, and if I want to have a few adventures of my own before I die, I realized the time is now.”

  Here he’d been thinking losing the business was going to break Joe’s heart, but he seemed happier than Jake had ever seen him. “But you were so upset when you told me you were going to have to sell.”

  “I’m not saying it didn’t hurt. Growth always hurts. But you can’t move forward until you let go of the past. I’m ready to step into a bright new future. What about you?”

  Jake told him then. About Liu and the amore orchid. About Madison. About the mess he’d made in Costa Rica. When he was finished, a smile tipped the corners of Joe’s lips. “This funny to you, Joe?”

  “Not funny.” Joe’s eyes danced with amusement. “Inevitable.”

  “Inevitable that my recklessness would lead me to trouble?”

  “Inevitable that you would fall in love.”

  “Nah...” Jake shook his head. “Yeah?” He nodded. “You think?”

  “Only one thing could make you take a hard look at your life and reevaluate it to this degree. And when you talk about her, your entire face lights up. Buddy boy, you’re stone-cold in love.”

  * * *

  Madison had always assumed that finding the amore orchid would be the greatest moment of her life. It wasn’t.

  She took no joy in it because for some cursed reason, all she could think about was Jake. Yes, he’d duped her. Yes, he’d had bad intentions. But he hadn’t stolen the orchids.

  That’s because you caught him before he had a chance.

  She remembered the way he’d looked in the jungle, standing before her completely bare and vulnerable, begging her forgiveness, and a lump of despair scaled her throat. She believed him. Believed he’d recognized that he’d made a mistake, admitted it, and was truly remorseful. But she’d been so hurt that she hadn’t been able to get past her own pain and offer him the forgiveness he had clearly wanted.

  She’d been back from her trip for two weeks, teaching the second half of the summer school session for Hampton. He was still in Costa Rica, soaking up the glory for having discovered the amore, barely giving her any credit at all beyond mumbling to the press that her calculations about soil nitrogen levels in that region led him to the area. What had she expected from a raging egomaniac?

  Men. She was sick of the lot of them.

  “Hey, Ms. Garrett,” one of the male students said, yanking her distracted thoughts back to the present.

  She blinked at the small group of summer school students seated before her. “Yes?”

  “I heard on the news this morning that a Taiwanese billionaire was charged with hiring orchid smugglers to steal rare orchids from around the world.”

  “Oh? I hadn’t heard that.”

  “What do you think about the practice of orchid smuggling? Honestly, what’s the big deal? I mean come on, it’s just a flower. It’s not like it’s drugs or anything.”

  Madison launched into a lecture on why the illegal trafficking of orchids was detrimental on so many levels, but in the back of her mind, she kept considering what the student had said.

  When the class was over, she dismissed the students and bent to collect her things to get out of the way for the next class. She heard footsteps in the auditorium, but she figured it was just a student coming back for something they’d forgotten.

  Until a deep masculine voice said, “How you doin’, Maddie?”

  She whirled around, her heart suddenly pounding. When she saw Jake standing there looking deadly handsome and uncharacteristically serious, she felt her grip loosen on the books and papers in her hand, felt them tumble to the floor. She stood frozen, unable to move to pick them up, pinned to the spot by Jake’s wistful gaze.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked sharply.

  “I came to see you.” He sauntered toward her.

  “Well, I don’t want to see you. I thought I made that clear enough in Costa Rica.”

  “You did.” He nodded, coming up onto the lectern with her. “But I can’t stay away. I know I hurt you, and I’m sorrier than words can ever say. I hope you’ll give me a chance to make it up to you.”

  “Why should I?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest in a desperate bid to protect her melting heart. “I’ve already made a start.”

  “You turned Liu in.”

  “Yes. Someone taught me the importance of protecting the orchids. I understand now how inconsiderate I’ve been. She also taught me something else.” With his eyes holding hers, he reached out to take her hand, interlacing their fingers.

  “What’s that?” she whispered, wanting so badly to believe him.

  “I’m never going to find joy gallivanting around jungles.”

  “No?”

  “Joy comes from the heart, Maddie. And my heart is here.”

  Her pulse leapt. “What are you saying, Jake?”

  “These kinds of feelings don’t come along every day, and I think we owe it to ourselves to see where it might lead.”

  “I’m sorry, but I promised myself I was never going to get involved with any more ne’er-do-wells. And poaching is a big deal to me.”

  “Then you’re in luck.”

  “Oh?”

  “From now on, I’m going to be an always-do-well. I’m doing my best to make amends, and I hope you’ll give me a chance to prove it to you.”

  “You’re going to change, just like that?”

  “I’m going to try. I’ve taken a regular job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Eco-tourism. I’ll be working for a company based here in New York that sends out experienced guides to lead conservation-minded individuals interested in doing their part in preserving endangered species. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

  “You’re really going to do that?”

  “Maddie, I’d do anything to redeem myself in your eyes. You’ve shown me the error of my ways, and I’m praying you won’t walk away from what we could have because of my mistakes.”

  “I guess there’s no sense in being a hard-ass,” she whispered, wanting so much to forgive him. “I think I can give you another chance.”

  Relief crossed his face, immediately replaced by the impish grin she knew so well. “Hey, I need a hard-ass to make me toe the line, but from what I remember, your fanny is not too hard, not too soft, but just right.” He reached out to splay a palm to her backside. “You keep me on my toes, Madison Garrett, and it’s one of the things I love most about you. I need someone like you in my life.”

  “And you keep me from being too much of a pointy-headed intellectual.”

  “Who knew,” he murmured, lowering his head to steal a kiss, “that the daring adventurer and the calculating professor would turn out to be the perfect match?”

  “Who knew?” she echoed and kissed him back.

  “Now about that heart-shaped birthmark you teased me with.... It was too dark in the jungle for me to find it that night we made love. Are you ever going to show it to me in the light of day?”

  She glanced toward the door, saw they were alone, then coyly raised her shirt and inched down the waistband of her pants to reveal the birthmark.

  “I spy with my little eye something very, very sweet.” Then Maddie took him back to her apartment, showed him her bedroom postered with photographs of the amore orchid she’d taken in Costa Rica, and there with the smell of passion in the air, they made love all night long.

  And then there were two.

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  Readers are an author’s life blood and the stories couldn’t happen without you. Thank you so much for reading. If you enjoyed Her Alpha Nerd, I would so appreciate a review. You have no idea how much it means to me!

  Please turn the page for an excerpt of the next story in the One Sultry Summer series, Her High School Crush.

  If you’d like to keep up with my latest releases, you can sign up for my newsletter @ https://loriwilde.com/subscribe/

  To check out my other books, you can visit me on the web @ www.loriwilde.com.

  Much love and light!

  —Lori

  Excerpt: Her High School Crush

  Emma comes face to face with the one that got away....

  “You’ve brought me of the ends of the earth to die,” Emma Jacobs accused her best friend Izzy Montgomery.

  “Ends of the earth? What are you talking about?” Izzy said. “It’s just Colorado.”

  Emma—who was a city girl through and through—stared at the vast expanse of trees and sky and land and water. No taxis honking. No smell of hot dog carts. No crowds jostling. No smog. No hot asphalt. Nothing to remind her of home.

  “Come on,” Izzy urged. “Stretch your wings. Try something different. Don’t be afraid to expand your horizons. That’s what I was telling Hunter before we left New York. His girlfriend broke up with him.”

  “I’ve been in the wilderness before,” Emma grumbled. “Had a couple of bad experiences there. I went to summer camp when I was a kid, and it was awful.” She’d been stung by angry bees and broken her arm falling off a ledge during a hike. “Speaking of awful, I’m sorry to hear that about Hunter. He’s a nice guy. One of the few.”

  “He’s better off without her. She kept complaining about the amount of time he spent at my apartment. She couldn’t get it through her head that Hunter and I are just friends.”

  “Well, I understand where he’s at right now—that just-broken-up hell. I’m still hurting over Ryan,” Emma said.

  “Hey, you told me you wanted to go somewhere you’d forget all about Ryan. Well, there’ll be no sign of him here.”

  Ryan Andrews. The guy she’d met on a Bahamas cruise last year. The same guy who’d broken things off with her because he’d found someone he liked better.

  Emma gritted her teeth. Izzy was right. Okay, so this place was a godforsaken wilderness, but there was absolutely no chance of running into metrosexual Ryan in these rugged parts.

  “You’re thinking about Ryan,” Izzy said.

  “How did you know?”

  “You’ve got this expression on your face like you’ve been eating lemons.”

  Emma blew out her breath. “I’m totally over him,” she said. “I view him as a necessary speed bump on my road to stop romanticizing every relationship the way I’ve done since...”

  Well, since Trent Colton.

  She thought of how he’d looked at eighteen, cocking a deadly grin and leaning in to steal a kiss from her in the hallway of her high school in Tarrytown, New York. There were some things a girl never forgot. Her first kiss, her first love, the first man she’d ever slept with. Trent had been all three. Emma gulped, feeling her cheeks color as she remembered her youthful mistake. It had all started with Trent—her tendency to romanticize love. If she could go back in time, she’d do a lot of things differently.

  “C’mon,” Izzy said, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. “Let’s get registered.”

  Izzy started for the small log cabin situated at the end of the road where the bus had dumped the group, joining the four other women headed in the same direction. This particular tour was advertised as women only. The point was to get out in the wilderness, hike some mountains, raft some white water, and learn a few survival skills.

  When Izzy had first posed the trip while Madison and Bianca were off jetting the world and falling in love, Emma had been all for it. She’d needed something to take her mind off the fact that as a librarian, she didn’t possess the funds for flying off to Brazil or Costa Rica.

  Plus, she’d wanted to get as far away from the opposite sex as she could. But now that she was here, she wasn’t so sure. Where were the comfy hotels? The spas? The room service?

  “Ah,” Izzy said, taking a deep breath and then expelling it. “Smell that crisp, pine-scented air? It’s a good twenty degrees cooler here than in Manhattan.”

  It was, but that wasn’t a selling point. Emma liked heat. As soon as the temperature dipped into the sixties, she hauled out sweaters and jackets.

  “At least we’re not going to have to worry about the bet while we’re out here,” Izzy remarked, slowing down so Emma could catch up with her. “No hunky guys around to distract us from our goal.”

  “Which is?” Emma asked, mincing carefully around a collection of rocks that had fallen from the rise onto the path.

  “To become stronger women.”

  “Oh, yeah, that goal.”

  “Did you wear your special lingerie?” Izzy asked.

  “Of course, I did,” Emma replied, shifting her mental focus to the lingerie she had on underneath her jeans and T-shirt. “Madison and Bianca are monitoring us. But shh, please don’t call it that in public.”

  “I’m going to win, you know,” Izzy said smugly.

  “Not likely. I don’t jump into bed with guys the way you do.”

  “Ouch, the kitten’s got claws.”

  “Okay, sorry, that sounded mean, but come on, Izzy, you have been with a lot of guys.”

  “Which is why I’m sure I’m going to win the bet.”

  “I’m not following you. If you have trouble controlling your libido—”

  “You’re the one who has issues. You fall in love with every guy you sleep with.”

  Guilty as charged. She’d slept with three guys in her twenty-seven years, and she’d fallen in love with all three of them. Trent hardest of all.

  “I know that I can go without sex, but I don’t know if you can go without falling in love.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “We’ll see,” Izzy said. “May the best woman win.” With that, she opened the door to the log cabin and stood aside for Emma to go in first.

  The other four women who’d been on the bus with them were chattering like bees in a hive. Excited, intense. In contrast, Emma was depressed, a bee without wings. She was not looking forward to this vacation. She’d just wanted out of the city, away from places she’d visited with Ryan.

  “Hi!” greeted a cheery woman in her mid-thirties. She had short dark hair and a perky way of bouncing on her toes. “I’m Selena. I just got divorced, and I’m ready for the next chapter in my life. How ’bout you?”

  “I’m Emma, I just got out of a relationship, too.”

  “Married?” Selena asked.

  “No.”

  “You dodged a bullet. Stay single.”

  “Um...thanks for the advice.”

  Besides Selena, there were Deanna and Jessica, traveling companions from Ohio. They shared a house in Cincinnati and loved taking active vacations together. They’d been wanting to take a white-water rafting trip for years, and they were “so enthused to be here.”

  Emma guessed them to be in their late thirties or early forties. And there was Myrtle, sixtyish, slim. She was recently widowed, and her daughter had bought the trip for her. Myrtle’s mood seemed to match Emma’s. Unsure about the whole thing.

  Behind the desk, a young woman Emma estimated to be about five years younger than her was checking people in. The girl was vaguely familiar, but Emma couldn’t place her. As she and Izzy waited their turn to sign in, a truck rumbled to a stop outside the door.

  Emma didn’t pay much attention. She was wriggling around, trying to get the lingerie unbunched from around her waist without being obvious about it. The cabin door opened. Emma tugged. The women in the place let out a collective sigh. Emma shifted her backpack and finally glanced up.

  All the air left her lungs.

  A man stood in the entrance of the place that was supposed to be for women only. A tall, dark, ruggedly handsome man in scuffed hiking boots and a battered straw cowboy hat, looking for all the world as though he’d stepped from the set of an Old West movie.

  Emma’s stomach lurched. Not just because he cut a powerfully sexy image, but because she’d know that face anywhere. Had dreamed of it many a night. Her shoulders tensed. Her thighs tingled. Her hands curled into fists.

  Trent Colton in the flesh, looking a hundred times sexier than he had been ten years ago.

  Izzy nudged her in the ribs. “See, I told you I was going to win the bet.”

  Excerpt: The Billionaire’s Secret Summer

  At dawn on the first day of June, Wyatt DeSalme stood on the bow of the ferry watching the mist-shrouded island that lay just off the coast of Northern California slide into view.

  The churning engines vibrated up through the deck floor, and he tasted salty sea air. Seagulls chattered like gossiping biddies, and the excited voices of the young men and women surrounding him, nursing their gourmet coffees and noshing on free pastries, grew in tone and tempo as the mist parted.

  Suddenly, the jagged, double-barrel bluff known as Twin Hearts jutted straight up from the middle of the island, glistening in the jubilant glow of morning light.

  This was it.

  His destination.

  The strangest feeling passed over him, a feeling that said, If you do this, you’ll never be the same.

  An uneasy knot settled in the pit of his stomach.

 

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