He grimaced. “Yeah, I’m a lightweight on drugs but that doesn’t change anything. I’m ridiculously, deeply in love with you, Elle.”

  Oh. Oh, that was good to know, really good. “So you’re not scared of being tied to me?”

  “Oh, I’m terrified,” he said. “You should hold me, Elle.”

  This got a real laugh out of her. “You’re not terrified of a single thing. Not even nearly dying for me.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said seriously. “I’m afraid of plenty. Mostly of being without you.” He gently squeezed her fingers in his. “You’re it for me, Elle. From that long ago night when you looked at me like I was something special to you to when you reamed me out after the squirrels ate the wires to when you so fiercely went to protect your sister, even knowing you could get hurt. You’re it for me, Elle. It’s always been you. Only you.”

  She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “I feel things for you that I can’t even name.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He pulled her into him, carefully, slowly. “But it’s your turn to say it.”

  She hesitated and the smile left his face and he became very serious again. Very serious, very intent, as he withdrew his arm from around her and closed his eyes.

  “No, no, you don’t understand,” she whispered, entwining their hands again. “It’s hard because those words . . . I don’t say them lightly.” She paused. “Actually, I’ve never said them at all,” she admitted and watched as he opened his eyes. “But I do love you, Archer. Always have, always will.”

  For a long moment they sat there in mutual surprise. After all the time they’d waited, they’d both finally come to the table with their feelings.

  Feeling freer and lighter than she had in a long time, Elle smiled up into his serious face and watched his answering smile start at the corner of his lips and spread into his eyes. Then he began to awkwardly and one-handedly fumble through his pockets for something.

  “You deserve better,” he said, “but until I got my hands on you, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Shit.” He turned toward her a little, gesturing with his chin to his right front pocket, which he couldn’t get into because of the sling. “Pull it out for me.”

  “Are you kidding me? We have an audience.”

  He flashed a grin. “I mean the box.”

  She blinked. “Oh.” She reached in and retrieved a small clear plastic box. With a fake ring in it. The kind that came from a bubble gum machine. She stared at it, heart pounding. “Is that—”

  “Yeah,” he said. The band was painted gold with a gaudy green fake stone and she felt her throat tighten as he slipped off the bench to his knees, nearly falling over in the process. “Will you marry me, Elle?”

  She gulped air. “You took too many pain meds, right?”

  “No.” He laughed a little. “You’re killing me here, Elle. Yes or no.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Very. My knees are gone.”

  She dropped to her knees in front of him and stared into his beautiful warm, slightly impatient hazel eyes. Then she kissed him and pressed her forehead to his. “Yes.” Her eyes filled as the horror of the last day overcame her, the horror and her overwhelming love for this man, and she sniffed. “Yes.”

  He cupped her face. “Don’t cry. I promise to get you a better ring. There weren’t any jewelry stores open.”

  Now she was both crying and laughing. “The ring’s perfect. You’re perfect.” She ran her fingers over his scruffy, unshaved jaw. “I love that you couldn’t wait until the stores opened. That’s how I know how much you want this.”

  “You better believe I want this. We fought like hell for it. So let’s stop wasting time and spend the rest of it together.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Great. I can’t get up.”

  Laughing, she helped him back to the bench, where she snuggled into his chest and held out her hand to admire the wildly gaudy ring ten sizes too big on her finger. “Where did you get it?”

  “There’s a lineup of candy machines at the pizza joint on Divisadero,” he said. “And trust me, it wasn’t easy. It took twenty-five bucks in quarters to get the one I wanted. Those fuckers are totally rigged. Spence was ready to buy all of the machines just so I’d sit down. Pru and Willa spent the whole time laughing their asses off and Kylie missed the whole thing because she was flirting with some guy who worked there.”

  “Never tell me you’re not romantic,” she said, and he smiled his trouble-filled smile.

  “Well, you do inspire me,” he said.

  Epilogue

  #HappyEverAfter

  Two weeks later Archer woke up first. Since he was still on light duty, he hadn’t had to get up at the crack of dawn to work out and then get to the job. He’d have gone ape-shit stir-crazy days ago except for Elle. She’d insisted that he, being incapacitated, needed someone to watch over him. She’d appointed herself the boss, demanding he rest and recuperate and recover by sitting on his ass until the doctor said otherwise.

  There weren’t many who’d ever been able to tell Archer what to do. Actually, there’d been no one.

  Until her.

  And the only reason he let her was because when she bossed him around in that sassy tone of hers, eyes flashing, it turned him on, enough that he sometimes gave her trouble just so she’d give him ’tude. She wasn’t onto him, yet, although she’d been practically sitting on him every day, to keep him quiet and still.

  There’d been some noteworthy exceptions of the naked variety. They’d had to be inventive to work around his limitations, but it turned out that, on top of being smart and amazing, Elle was also creative as hell.

  But today was to be his first day back into the office. And yet with Elle wrapped around him like a pretzel, suddenly he wasn’t in a rush to get back to real life at all.

  Unable to wait any longer for her to wake up, he shifted against her. She stirred, smiling without opening her eyes as he gently rolled her onto her back. Covering her body with his, he spread featherlight kisses along her throat, heading south.

  “Don’t you have to go soon?” she murmured, still smiling. Her eyelids fluttered open and her baby blues focused on his.

  He ran his hand across the naked curve of her hip before burying his face in her hair. “I’m calling in sick.”

  She froze and then struggled to sit up, trying to fight his hands to get a look at his shoulder. “I knew it, you pushed yourself too hard and you’re hurting—”

  “Not even a little bit,” he promised, capturing her hands. “I just want you to myself for one more day.”

  She met his gaze and gave the slow smile that never failed to rev his heartrate. “Did you have something specific in mind?” she asked.

  In fact, he did, and he reached for the remote on his nightstand and hit a switch.

  Instantly a fire came to life in the hearth.

  “That’s kind of cheating, don’t you think?” Elle asked.

  He paused, looking over his shoulder at the flames dancing in the hearth, then back to Elle. “It’s a gas fireplace.”

  “I know. But I’d have loved to watch you build a fire with your bare hands.” Her eyes were dancing with humor. “Shirtless.”

  He laughed. “And I suppose I should’ve chopped the wood shirtless too?”

  She let out a little whimper that had him grinning. “Yeah?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Well, you’re the boss.”

  She grinned and kissed him, a really great kiss, a deep, soul searching, body tingly, brain cell destroying kiss. “Say it again,” she whispered.

  He rolled to his back, pulling her over top of him, tugging her face to his. “You’re the boss.” He grinned. “For this one last day.”

  This made her laugh. “Just one more day? That’s it? Then you’re going to take a turn?”

  “Yeah, then I’m taking my turn. Make it count, Elle.”

  She kissed him with such tenderness it made his heart feel like it might burst from his chest. Fisting a hand in her hair, he kissed her back with everything he had, adding a little nip of his teeth and then a glide of his tongue to soothe the ache.

  She laughed softly as she straddled him and rubbed up against him until he couldn’t laugh. Hell, he couldn’t breathe. All he could do was hold on and try to show her with his body how much he loved her. He reached into the nightstand drawer and grabbed a condom. “We’ll double up for now, at least until we figure out the high-chair dilemma,” he said, lifting up to press a kiss over her heart. Then he turned his head slightly and kissed her breast, lingering until she sucked in a breath.

  “I love you, Archer,” she whispered and sank over him until he was deep inside her.

  Flooded with intense pleasure as he rocked up into her, he gripped her tight, almost unable to believe they were finally here, in this very spot, doing what he’d dreamed about every night for years. “Fuck, Elle.”

  “Yes, please.”

  With a choked groan, he slid his hands into her hair, holding her head so that she couldn’t look away as they began to move against each other. He began to drown in her eyes and he reared up to nip at her full bottom lip, taking control, making her melt into him as he buried himself into her over and over, holding her gaze in his, seeing everything she felt for him. He groaned her name, which sent her into a shattering orgasm. She was still shuddering when he thrust into her one last time and followed her over.

  When she caught her breath she lifted her face from the crook of his neck. “I do have one last demand.”

  “Anything,” he said, and he meant it. At that moment he’d have signed over everything he had to her, everything he would ever have.

  “Love me,” she whispered.

  “Forever, Elle.”

  An Excerpt from Lost and Found Sisters

  Did you love Archer and Elle?

  If so, be sure to check out the other books

  in the Heartbreaker Bay series!

  SWEET LITTLE LIES

  THE TROUBLE WITH MISTLETOE

  and the special holiday novella

  ONE SNOWY NIGHT

  Available now from Avon Books and Avon Impulse!

  And read on for an exclusive sneak peek

  at Jill’s first trade paperback!

  LOST AND FOUND SISTERS

  Coming Summer 2017

  Chapter 1

  I walk around like everything is fine, but deep down, inside my shoe, my sock is sliding off.

  —From the mixed-up files of Tilly Adams’s journal

  Here was the thing: Life sucked if you let it. Quinn Wellers worked really hard to not let it. Caffeine helped. For up to thirty-eight blissful minutes it could sometimes even trick her into thinking she was in a good mood. She knew this because it took forty-eight minutes to get from her favorite coffee shop through LA rush hour traffic to work and those last ten minutes were never good.

  That afternoon, she got into line for her fix as always and studied the menu on the wall even though in the past two years she’d never strayed from her usual.

  A woman got in line behind her. “Now that’s a nice look on you,” she said.

  Quinn looked at her. It was Carolyn, a woman she’d seen maybe three times in her life, all right here in line at the coffee shop. “Excuse me?”

  “The smile,” Carolyn said. “I like it.”

  Quinn didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered. She smiled all the time. Didn’t she? Okay, so maybe she forgot to smile lately. “I’m pretty desperate for the caffeine today,” she said.

  “Nectar of the gods,” Carolyn said conversationally. Something about her reminded Quinn of an elementary school teacher with her gray streaked hair pulled back in a messy bun, the glasses perpetually slipping down her nose, expression dialed into sweet but slightly harried. “You’re up,” she told Quinn, gesturing to the front counter.

  Trev, the carefully tousled barista behind the counter winked at her. “Hey, darlin’,” he said warmly, hands working at the speed of light while the rest of him seemed chilled and relaxed. The LA beach bum slash aspiring actor forced to work to support his surfing habit. “How you doing?”

  “Good,” Quinn said automatically. And hey, she didn’t like to brag but she’d totally gotten out of bed today. “How did your audition go?”

  “Got the part.” Trev beamed. “You’re looking at the best fake Thai delivery guy who ever lived. I think you’re my good luck charm. Say you’ll finally go out with me.”

  Quinn smiled—see, she totally did smile!—and shook her head. “I’m off dating right now.”

  He said the words in perfect sync along with her and shook his head. “You’re too young to be in a rut, you know that, right?”

  She wasn’t in a rut. She was . . . not feeling life right now, that was all. “Hey,” she said, realizing he was already working on her coffee. “I didn’t give you my order.”

  He kept moving. “Has it changed? Ever?”

  Well that made her want to order something crazy just to throw him off. Hell, it would throw her off too, but she held her silence because she wanted her damn regular.

  And shit. Okay, she was in a rut. But routine made life simpler, and after the complications she’d been through, simple was the key to getting out of bed and putting one foot in front of the other every day.

  “You should go out with him,” Carolyn whispered. She smiled kindly when Quinn looked at her. “You only live once,” she said.

  “Not true,” Quinn said, beginning to lose her sense of humor. “You live every day. You only die once.”

  Carolyn’s smile slowly faded in understanding. “Then make it count, Quinn. Go hog wild.”

  Hog wild, huh? Quinn turned to Trev, who got a hopeful look on his face.

  “An extra shot and whip,” she said.

  Trev blinked and then sighed. “Yeah, we need to work on your idea of hog wild.”

  When Quinn got to Amuse Bouche, the trendy, upscale restaurant where she worked, it was to find her fellow sous chef Marcel already in the kitchen.

  He glanced over at her, sniffed disdainfully, and went back to yelling at Sky, the new hire, who was chopping onions the way Quinn had shown her.

  “Leave her alone, Marcel.”

  He slid her a glacial stare. “Excuse me?”

  Sky backed away from them both as if they were a live grenade. Quinn squared her shoulders and faced down Marcel the Tyrant, as the staff called him.

  Behind his back, of course.

  “I showed Sky how to chop,” she told him. “She was doing it correctly.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, dropping his fake German accent. “If you work at a place flipping burgers and asking what size fry you want with your order.”

  Here was the thing. Some days Quinn surprised herself with her agility, and other days she put her keys in the fridge. But she was good at this job. And yes, she understood that at twenty-nine years old and quickly rounding the corner kicking and screaming into thirty, that she was young and very lucky to have landed the sous chef position in such a wildly popular place. But she’d worked her ass off, going to a top notch culinary school in San Francisco, spending several years practicing cutting and or burning her fingers to the bone. She knew what she was doing—and had the tuition debt to prove it.

  Oddly, Marcel wasn’t that much older than her—late thirties, maybe. He’d come up the hard way, starting at the age of twelve washing dishes in his uncle’s restaurant not all that far from here, but light-years away in style and prestige. He was good, excellent actually, but he was hardcore old school and as far as she could tell, he resented a woman being his equal.

  Quinn did her best to let it all bead off, telling herself that she believed in karma. What went around came back around. But near as she could tell, nothing had kicked Marcel in the ass yet.

  “You,” he said, pointing at her. “Go order our food for the week. And don’t forget the pork like last time. Also your cheese supplier? She’s shit, utter shit.”

  Quinn bit her tongue as Marcel turned away to brow-beat Sky’s dicing of some red peppers. He jerked the bowl away to prove his point and ended up with red pepper all over the front of his carefully starched white uniform shirt.

  Karma had finally shown up, fashionably late, but better than never.

  On Sunday, Quinn got into the fancy Lexus her parents had given her for her last birthday in spite of her insistence that she wanted a cheaper, more affordable car, and headed to their place for brunch. A command performance since she’d managed to skip out on the past two weekends in a row due to working overtime.

  She hoped like hell it wasn’t an ambush birthday party. Her birthday was still two weeks away but her mom couldn’t keep a secret to save her own life and had let the possibility of a party slip several times in spite of the fact that Quinn didn’t like birthdays.

  Or surprises.

  She parked in front of the two-story Tutor cottage that had been her childhood home and felt her heart contract. She’d learned to ride a bike on the long driveway, alongside her sister who’d been a far superior bike rider, so much so that Quinn had often ridden on Beth’s handlebars instead of riding her own bike. They’d stolen flowers from their mom’s beloved flower garden lining the walkway. Years later as teens, they’d also sneaked out one of the second story windows, climbing down the oak tree to go to parties they’d been grounded from attending—only getting caught when Quinn slipped and broke her arm.

  Beth hadn’t spoken to her for weeks.

  Coming here alone never failed to make Quinn feel hollow and empty. And cold.

  And deep down, she was afraid nothing would or could ever warm her again.

  It’ll get easier.

  Time is your friend.

  She’ll stay in your heart.

  Quinn had heard every possible well-meaning condolence over the past two years and every single one of them was shit.