Yours, With Love: A Sweet Contemporary Romance (Finding Love Book 5)

  Yours, With Love:

  A Sweet Contemporary Romance

  (Finding Love, Book 5)

  by

  Delaney Cameron

  ©2016 Delaney Cameron

  Photo courtesy of: IVASHstudio

  Used under license from Shutterstock.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this e-book can be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without the written permission of the author.

  This book is fiction and its characters are purely a manifestation of the imagination of the author. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, and events is entirely coincidental. (18)

  Other books by Delaney Cameron:

  Team Mom: A Sweet Contemporary Romance (Finding Love, Book 1)

  Stealing His Heart: A Sweet Contemporary Romance (Finding Love, Book 2)

  Love of a Lifetime: A Sweet Contemporary Romance (Finding Love, Book 3)

  Dare to Love: A Sweet Contemporary Romance (Finding Love, Book 4)

  Dream of Me: A Sweet Contemporary Romance

  Finding Allie: A Sweet Regency Romance Novella

  For updates or to sign up for my newsletter, please go to:

  delaneycameron.weebly.com

  Prologue

  By virtue of keeping her ear to the door of her sister’s room and being short enough to hide behind the couch in the living room, Ellen knew most of what was going on in Bethany’s life. For instance, she knew her sister was failing geometry, had quit her part-time job, and was cheating on her boyfriend. Only the last one was of any real concern to Ellen.

  It made her blood boil to think that Bethany could do something so unkind to someone as wonderful as Quinn Phillips. Ellen knew he was different right from the start. He hadn’t ignored her like Bethany’s other high school boyfriends. He came right up to where she sat - skinny legs dangling from the limb of the oak tree in the front yard - and introduced himself. She’d been so shocked by this unprecedented action that she’d been unable to say a word for at least thirty seconds. But he just kept talking and gradually her heart rate slowed down enough to allow her brain to form an answer.

  More impressive to her than his dark hair, gray eyes and teasing smile was the fact that he listened to what she said. She knew this because over the years she’d perfected the art of being able to tell when someone was merely pretending to listen. It was the reaction she received from most people including her loving, but very busy parents. Was it because they didn’t think she had anything important to say?

  A car horn brought her thoughts back to the present. It also scared the sleeping dog in her lap.

  “It’s all right, Sugar,” she said in a low, soothing voice.

  She usually did her thinking and planning in the tree, but today she’d been too agitated by the knowledge of her sister’s treachery. How could Bethany prefer that red-haired giant with the cold eyes and wandering hands to Quinn? What was so great about him anyway? Bethany had gone on and on about him being the captain of the wrestling team, how great his car was and the fact that he ‘kissed like a dream’. Being just thirteen, Ellen had only the vaguest idea what that last comment meant, but she refused to believe that any kiss from Quinn wouldn’t be dreamy.

  But all of this was beside the point. What was she going to do with this information? She couldn’t bear the thought of Quinn being hurt and yet to let him go on thinking everything was fine didn’t seem right either. If only she was older, taller and beautiful like Bethany! Then maybe she could offer herself as a substitute. A picture of her and Quinn sitting side by side on the porch swing deprived her of rational thought for several minutes.

  The sound of Bethany’s voice floating down from upstairs brought her back to earth with a thud. What was she doing? Now wasn’t the time to consider her wants. Quinn needed to know the truth. She just wished she wasn’t the one who had to tell him.

  All of this was Bethany’s fault. If she wasn’t so boy crazy this would never have happened. Ellen’s brows puckered into a frown. The hesitation she felt wasn’t brought on by concern for her sister. In her mind, Bethany was getting what she deserved. Her trepidation was that in telling Quinn she would be forever linked in his mind with something terrible. Would he dislike her by association?

  She hoped he’d believe her words without needing proof. But if he didn’t, Ellen had the necessary evidence on her phone to show that Bethany and Dalton were more than friends. There wasn’t much time to make a decision. From the one-sided conversation she heard while Bethany was painting her nails, Quinn was coming over after he got off work at Grease Monkey. It was almost six now. Even allowing for the time it took him to go home and take a shower, he could be pulling into the driveway any minute.

  The sick feeling in her stomach rose to lodge itself in her chest. Could she do this?

  The distinctive sound of a defective muffler reached her ears. Quinn obviously hadn’t saved enough money to get it fixed. Here was a possible bright side to this dismal situation. If he was no longer dating Bethany, (who by her very nature was an expensive girlfriend), he’d be able to buy a new muffler.

  Ellen watched the late model Honda turn the corner of their street. Any second now the dreadful moment would be upon her. Taking a deep breath, she lifted Sugar off her lap, placed him in the basket by the screen door, and slowly rose to her feet. A moment of panic seized her. On legs that seemed to be filled with lead, she stepped off the porch and approached the faded green vehicle parked behind what everyone in her family affectionately called her mother’s mid-life crisis: a black Mercedes. The door of the Honda opened and out he came, a smile tugging at his mouth when he caught sight of her.

  “What’s this? A welcome committee? I’ve only been gone a week.”

  Ellen was now so nervous she could feel her knees knocking together. “I…I need to talk to you.”

  He laughed. “You are talking to me, freckles.”

  A tiny smile touched her lips. A nickname she’d hated for most her life had become tolerable when spoken in his deep voice. “I mean in private.”

  “We’ll have to make this quick. The movie starts in forty minutes.”

  Ellen rolled her eyes. “You’ll never make it. Bethany is still putting on her makeup. You know how long that takes.”

  Quinn nodded, his eyes rising to the second floor window as if expecting her to appear. “That’s okay. I’m used to it.”

  “Let’s go over to the side of the house.”

  He followed her through the gate and leaned against the wooden privacy fence. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  She shot him an indignant glance. “Of course not. This isn’t about me.”

  “Am I in trouble?” he asked with a grin.

  Ellen briefly met his eyes and then looked away. “No. It’s Bethany. She went out with Dalton while you were gone.”

  His easy smile disappeared. “It’s not nice to make up stories.”

  “I do not make up stories. I saw him kissing her with my own eyes.”

  Quinn straightened to his full height, the anger in his face making Ellen wish she hadn’t said that last part. “You saw them? How did you manage that?”

  “I was standing at my bedroom window when they came home last night. They didn’t get out of the car at first, and I…well, I…sort of watched them.”

  He ran his fingers agitatedly through his hair. “I don’t believe it. She told me she couldn’t stand Dalton.”

  Ellen felt a spurt of anger. Was it always going to be like this? Would no one ever take her seriously? Pulling her phone from her pocke
t, she pushed with sharp jabs at the screen and then held it out to him. “Here! If you won’t believe me, see for yourself.”

  Quinn took the lime green case and stared at the screen. His face paled and his lips tightened, but the stream of angry words she expected never happened. Instead, he handed her the phone and walked away. For a few seconds, Ellen was too stunned to do anything but watch him. Then as the enormity of what she’d done began to sink in, she took off after him.

  “Quinn!” she yelled.

  He didn’t turn his head or acknowledge her at all. He just kept walking to his car. Without a word, he got inside and drove away.

  What, if anything, he said to Bethany, Ellen never found out, but she did know he hadn’t divulged how he came to know about Dalton. Her actions might have saved Quinn further pain, but they also severed the only link she had to him. Later she learned he left St. Marys to attend college in Texas. For all intents and purposes, he might as well have gone to Mars. Their paths didn’t cross again.

  Chapter One

  Quinn closed the chart and dropped it on top of a stack of similar folders. As he stretched aching neck muscles, he glanced outside the window of his office at the fading light of an autumn evening. The quiet of the room was soothing after a long, busy day spent dealing with sick children and worried parents.

  There had never been any doubt that he’d follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Becoming a pediatrician was his destiny. His eyes moved to the picture on the bookshelf behind his desk. He couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. Over the Superman pajamas that he’d practically lived in, he wore a child-sized lab coat. A plastic stethoscope hung around his neck; clasped in his fingers was a Fisher-Price medical bag.

  A faint smile broke through the solemn cast of his features. He’d bandaged up anyone that would let him get close enough. Waldo, the family dog, was the one who put up the least resistance so he was the usual victim. Quinn loved it when his father took him to the brick building downtown and let him peek inside the examining rooms. That’s when he got to see the real instruments that were so much cooler (and sometimes a little scarier) than his.

  He closed his laptop and put away the glasses he only used for reading. As he shut off lights and exited the room, he was already anticipating the weekend. This would be his first opportunity to work on the ‘69 Chevelle he recently purchased. He remembered the look on his brother’s face four days ago when the tow truck delivered the rust-covered pile of metal resting on four flat tires.

  “Is there a car hidden in there somewhere?” Jase had asked.

  “There will be by the time I’m finished with it,” he’d told him.

  Quinn’s fascination with muscle cars had begun in high school when he started working part time at Grease Monkey. Located adjacent to the regular service garage had been another building. Behind the tall steel doors lay a veritable treasure trove for the car enthusiast. His boss, Mr. Gleason, had owned not one, but five fully restored cars. Quinn had been hooked from his first ride in the prize of the collection: a ’65 Pontiac GTO.

  His Chevelle was a long way from being any kind of prize, but already he could see the finished product in his mind’s eye: dark orange paint, black vinyl top, leather interior, and a new V-8 396 engine that would sound intimidating even when it was idling. It would take time to perform this transformation, but Quinn had plenty of that now. His once busy and exciting social life was no more.

  As he drove along the familiar streets of the city in which he’d spent most of his life, his mind slipped back to another Friday evening in late October.

  “Just tell them you can’t go,” Avery said tearfully. “They can get another doctor to take your place.”

  “I can’t do that, darling. This has been in the works for over a year. Long before I met you.” He bent his head to kiss her, his disappointment at the thought of leaving as great as her own.

  “So much can happen in six months,” she mumbled into his chest.

  “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Quinn had been wrong about that just as he’d been wrong about so many other things. In life there were no guarantees. The only certainty was that when things changed all bets were off. There were a new set of rules to play by.

  * * * * *

  Ellen regarded the heavy bandaging on her ankle with a wry smile. Not only had this freak accident cut short her trip to Atlanta for the Fall Bridal Expo, but it also confirmed a growing fear that all wasn’t as it seemed with her boyfriend. She’d tried to ignore the inconsistencies in Mark’s behavior over the past few weeks, but her inability to reach him since returning home made that nearly impossible.

  The ringing of the doorbell interrupted her turbulent thoughts. It rang several more times before she made it to the door. Mark’s glance went from her somber expression to the crutches tucked underneath her arms.

  “Baby, what have you done to yourself?”

  In spite of her frustration and disappointment, the sight of him moved her. She didn’t want to believe that he’d been lying to her. That the time they’d spent together didn’t mean anything. “I wasn’t watching where I was walking and ended up falling off one of the elevated platforms.”

  “You poor thing.”

  As he leaned toward her, Ellen turned her head just enough that his lips landed on her ear. She didn’t want his kisses right now; she wanted answers. Ignoring his frown, she returned to the couch and waited for him to sit down. “It happened the first night. The worst of it is I couldn’t even drive home which meant Frank had to leave, too. His girlfriend followed us in his car.” At this disclosure, Mark began to look uncomfortable. He reached over and clasped her hand. She just stopped herself from flinging it away.

  “I feel terrible about not being here for you. After you left on Thursday, I got a chance to spend a few days playing golf with Rob in Hilton Head. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

  His words and expression seemed genuine, but Ellen wasn’t convinced. That in itself was unusual because she wasn’t a suspicious person by nature. She liked to believe the best of everyone. Sometimes to her detriment. In this case, Mark’s actions were beginning to settle into a pattern that could no longer be ignored. “Were you too busy to return my calls?”

  “I accidently turned off my phone. I didn’t realize you’d been trying to reach me until today.”

  This pathetic excuse was beneath a man as shrewd as Mark and akin to a verbal slap in the face to her. “That’s not even a good lie. You’re on your phone constantly, and yet you want me to believe you went two days without calling or texting anyone?”

  He leaned against the back of the couch. “Maybe I wanted a break from the office and everyone else.”

  “Does everyone else include me, too?”

  “If you want the truth, then yes. It wasn’t convenient for me to talk to you.”

  If she wanted the truth? Why would she want anything else? “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect an explanation for that remark.”

  Mark sighed heavily. “I wasn’t with Rob in Hilton Head. Now do you understand?”

  A lump worked its way into Ellen’s throat even as her heart plummeted to her feet. This was one of the instances when she hadn’t wanted to be right. She’d wanted her Cinderella romance badly enough to overlook all the glaring signs of Mark’s waning interest. Had she honestly believed the two of them would go riding off into the sunset? They had little in common, and he’d admitted as much within minutes of asking her out.

  Mark possessed movie-star quality looks and had the charm and charisma to match. His intelligence was rivaled only by his drive to succeed. He was always on the hunt for some new adventure, some new challenge to meet. Having seen a few of his former girlfriends, she couldn’t help but be flattered by his interest in her. She should have known it wouldn’t last.

  Ellen was a simple girl with simple tastes. She liked curling up with a g
ood book on a rainy afternoon, cried when she watched sad movies, and believed there wasn’t anything chocolate couldn’t make better. Like thousands of other women, her features fell somewhere between beautiful and plain. Her shoulder-length dark hair had to be coaxed to curl, and the freckles she’d been teased about growing up still adorned her cheeks and nose. Worst of all, her thin, boyish figure hadn’t suddenly blossomed into the proportions of a swimsuit model. Her only claims to beauty were her eyes which were large, thickly lashed and vividly blue.

  “Why did you wait so long to tell me?” she asked, breaking the tense silence that had sprung up between them. This question elicited nothing but a look of astonishment. “Did you really think I was that easy to fool? You didn’t meet your new friend last week or even the week before. You’ve been seeing her for some time.” His cheeks reddened with what she took to be anger. Mark wasn’t used to being questioned. The shoe was usually on the other foot.

  “You knew and never said anything? What were you waiting on? To catch me in the act?” he finished heatedly.

  “I was waiting for you to tell me and hoping I was wrong,” she replied quietly.

  His eyes fell from hers. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Ellen. I didn’t plan for this to happen. It was just one of those things.”

  One of those things? Was that all he could say? She bent her head, hoping her hair would hide the tears in her eyes. “No one ever plans to break someone’s heart, do they? Would you mind leaving? I want to be alone.”

  As she listened for the click of the door, a range of emotions from bitterness to anger swept through her. There went four months of her life she’d never get back. She could now add ‘being cheated on’ to her dating resume along with the knowledge that she was well on the way to earning the title serial dater. That hadn’t been on the list of things she wanted to do when she grew up.