Chapter One
At seven on a Tuesday morning in June, both the waterfront and the adjacent marina in Stoneport, North Carolina were quiet.
Pre-dawn fishing expeditions must already have departed, while the more tourist-oriented charter trips and sailing classes didn’t get under way until a little later. Sierra Taylor walked from her nearby hotel, passed a café called Tides, open for breakfast, and decided she’d go back there and wait over coffee if the office at Garrett Marine was unattended at this hour.
On edge about the coming confrontation with Ty, she almost hoped it would be.
No such luck, she soon discovered.
Ty Garrett had always been an early riser, which must have been an asset in his business success. Through the glass door she saw a woman behind the main desk frowning at a computer screen, and when Sierra dipped the handle the door swung inward, jangling a nautical bell.
“Good morning!” The woman was young, twenty-two at most, and her voice sounded impossibly perky at this hour. Behind her head, a blonde ponytail swung through the hole in her baseball cap, keeping time to the music of her words. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Garrett.”
“Are you booking a sailing class? Already booked? Questions about our boat rentals? Give me your name, and—”
“Actually, no, it’s personal.”
“Well, give me your name…” This time she enunciated slowly and clearly, as if she dealt with too many people who weren’t all that bright.
“Sierra.” No point in fighting over it.
“Last name?”
“He doesn’t need my last name.”
“O-kay.” Miss Perky Ponytail shrugged and sashayed off down a short, dark corridor in the direction of a closed door.
She moved as if she was climbing around the deck of a sail-boat on a sunny day, and she didn’t knock at the door—which must surely lead to Ty’s private office—but peeled off into another room, from which Sierra soon heard various clinking and gushing sounds which suggested that coffee was being made.
She took a couple of careful breaths, reining in emotions that were too strong and too complex to fully make sense after so long. Why so much ambivalence? Why shouldn’t this be easy? She’d driven the six hundred miles from Landerville, Ohio, primed for this moment and coolly determined. She really hadn’t expected to feel so messed up about it.
Trying to center herself, Sierra leaned her elbow on the high desk. Her gaze idly wander over the desk’s surface, taking in a pile of glossy printed brochures, a pen and a box of mints. And then she saw it—the magazine that had brought her to Stoneport—right there at an angle in front of her.
Ty’s face grinned up at her from A-list’s front cover—tanned, sheened with sun screen and faintly dusted with salt, handsome as a Greek god. His dark hair begged for a woman’s fingers to tidy its wind-swept waves. Behind him, a brightly colored spinnaker sail bellied against the breeze, while the glimpse of a sun-bronzed shoulder at the bottom of the frame strongly suggested he was shirtless.
Even though she’d seen it countless times now, the image and the four words that captioned it in bold red letters still made Sierra catch her breath with shock and self-doubt, a healthy dose of anger, and something else that she didn’t want to put a name to.
“Bachelor Of The Year!” trumpeted A-list’s banner headline.
As for the three-page feature article inside, Sierra knew it almost by heart.
It catalogued Ty’s business success here on the Stoneport waterfront. It painted in dramatic colors the story of how he’d rescued a young couple from a stricken sail-boat during a spring storm, how he’d kept the unconscious husband alive, delivered the wife’s premature baby, and saved both mother and child. It quoted local residents and Garrett Marine staff praising him in extravagant terms, and guesstimated his growing wealth in the tens of millions.
Finally, just in case the front cover had left any woman in America in any doubt, it included several more photos that proved his good looks and stunning physique were not merely the products of clever lighting and heavy use of an air-brush.
You’d have to be pretty mean-spirited to suggest that Ty Garrett hadn’t earned the Bachelor of the Year label.
Sierra had only one small problem with it, herself.
She was already married to him.
Miss Ponytail had made the coffee. With a big, milkless mug of it in her hand, she finally reached the closed door and knocked. Then, without waiting for an answer, she called, “There’s another one, Ty.”
Sierra heard his still-familiar voice through the door. “Early bird.”
“Says the worm.”
“Yeah, already squirming. Does she want a class or a charter?”
Miss Ponytail opened the door a crack, leaned in and dropped her voice, but didn’t drop it low enough. “No, she’s going with the ‘It’s personal’ angle. Won’t give her last name. Thinks that’s an original game plan, just like the other forty-seven women who have tried it.”
“And is she pretty?”
“You be the judge.”
“So what’s the first name?”
“Sierra.”
Thick silence.
Sierra discovered she’d stopped breathing.
“Here’s your coffee, by the way…Oops!” Miss Ponytail said.
Appearing in the doorway, Ty had almost made her spill it, but they both recovered in time. He didn’t take the hot beverage, however. Instead, his gaze arrowed over Miss Ponytail’s head and reached Sierra. Lord, in the flesh he was better looking even than in the professional photos, she realized at once, as she took in a long, slow drag of air. Better than all of her memories.
He wore a white polo-neck shirt that set off his tan the way whipped cream set off chocolate mousse, and baggy navy shorts that ended just at the hard knots of muscle above his knees, and he looked at her as if he’d half-expected her but didn’t fully believe she was here, all the same.
“Sierra,” he said.
“Got it in one.” Her tone came out flip and unnatural.
The tension in the room sang like wind through a sailboat’s metal stays.
“You haven’t changed so much in eight years.” His guarded expression didn’t telegraph his opinion on any of the changes that had occurred.
“You have, Ty,” Sierra blurted out.
He’d filled out his strong frame over the past few years, and success and maturity had given him a confidence of bearing that made his jaw look as strong
