Maggie Doyle is about to lose her home, her business, and her last grip on sanity unless she comes up with fifteen thousand dollars to pay off the bank. Her only option? Forget the pain of one life-altering night, find the stepbrother she hasn’t spoken to in years and ask him for help.
Everything in Jack Major’s life is going according to plan. He’s rich, powerful, and about to marry Boston’s most successful attorney. There’s just one problem: he can’t seem to forget his first love, the one who left him in college after a whirlwind trip to Vegas with a secret she couldn’t trust him to keep.
When Maggie and Jack meet up at a high-profile charity ball, past collides with present and the sparks fly. But is it too late for a first love to ignite again? And if Maggie reveals the reason she left Jack all those years ago, will he be able to forgive her?
A single night in Boston takes Maggie and Jack from the glittering lights of the ballroom to the windswept city streets and back through the years to relive old memories. Will morning light bring new hope for their future together? Or are some secrets too deep to ever truly overcome?
Excerpt
“Dance with me.”
“What? You’re crazy. No.”
Jack took Maggie’s hand. “Listen, forget about all that, okay? You’re right. It’s over.” He shrugged. “But here we are, and it’s been a long time, so…why the hell not? One dance between old friends doesn’t have to mean anything. Or make up for anything.” He pulled at his collar and looked uncomfortable.
“Oh, hell,” Maggie said. “Fine. One dance. Then will you leave me alone?”
“I promise.”
It was a mistake from the start, and she knew it.
In slow motion she watched as his hand wrapped around hers, as if following a memory that hadn’t died but just slumbered for a long, long time. The music swelled, and they slipped into a space on the hardwood. Mingling into the other couples, they found a rhythm, their rhythm, after a moment or two. I didn’t forget how we fit together, Maggie marveled. I didn’t forget how all our edges match up in the right places. And neither did he. Warning bells went off inside her head, but she ignored them. She’d meant what she’d said—it was over, a long time ago—but it was so easy to slip back into Jack’s embrace, even after all these years. So easy to like the way her chest met his. So easy to remember the way his fingers closed around hers and felt like they belonged there always.
Damn. She lowered her gaze and tried to remind herself what she was doing at the ball in the first place. Dillon, remember? The money. The foreclosure. She counted to ten. She scanned the room, hoping and not hoping to see her stepbrother cross the threshold. But against her will, she leaned into Jack’s embrace and let him carry her to the music. Suddenly, she wondered what moment in the night would be harder: having to leave his arms when she saw her stepbrother, or having to stay there and risk falling back into a place she’d left years ago.
Sylvia Masters, a hot fifty-two year old widow and CEO of her husbands company is challenged by her own instincts, family and friends when the Lieutenant investigating the murder of her ex-fiancee ask her to dinner. After a tumultuous beginning, the
