Nightingale

  Nightingale

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Expansion by Kate Canterbary

  Famine’s Homecoming by Laura Thalassa

  Queenside by Skye Warren

  A Little Surprise by Katee Robert

  Aveke by Tijan

  A Summer in Paris by Jennifer Probst

  Daddy’s Little One Night Stand by Honey Meyer

  Old Money by Amelia Wilde

  It Started in Paris by Meredith Wild & Chelle Bliss

  Doing It Right Prequel by Harloe Rae

  Last Second Chance Prologue by Robin Covington

  Menace Has A Beautiful Face by Jenika Snow

  Never Too Late by K.A. Linde

  Bonus Epilogue from Boyfriend Bargain by Ilsa Madden-Mills

  Our Story by Melanie Moreland

  Professor Platonic by Lucy Lennox

  Royal Elite Bonus Epilogue by Rina Kent

  She’s the One by Helena Hunting

  There is NO HOLE in Kindness by L.B. Dunbar

  The Dance by Kandi Steiner

  Always and Forever by Dylan Allen

  The Perfect Distraction by Piper Rayne

  ‘Beard In Hiding’ Extra Scene by Penny Reid

  The Whitney by Alta Hensley & Livia Grant

  Trauma by Julia Kent

  Unstoppable by Brittney Sahin

  A Feather in the Flames by Brenda Rothert

  Homecoming by Rebecca Yarros

  Asher Black: A Bonus Scene as Told by Asher by Parker S. Huntington

  Dear Delaney by Kelsey Clayton

  SEALing His Future by Susan Stoker

  Every Piece of You by Terri E. Laine

  If Only They Saw the World Like You… by A.L. Jackson

  Hard Score by Rachel Van Dyken

  I Wanna Be Yours by Xio Axelrod

  Love Letters by Jay Crownover

  The Rematch by Sienna Snow

  Twisted Bonus Scene by Ana Huang

  Hacker in Love by Lauren Rowe

  Morning Coffee…and Stuff with Hook and John by Gina L. Maxwell

  Paper Ring by C. Hallman & J.L. Beck

  Protected by Rebecca Zanetti

  Rescue Me by Samantha Chase

  A Beaumont Family Christmas Epilogue by Heidi McLaughlin

  Zodiac Academy: The Shimmering Springs by Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti

  Royal Oath by T.K. Leigh

  Smolder by Aly Martinez

  The Blessings of Ethan Blackstone by Raine Miller

  Taken by Moonlight by Pepper Winters

  The Last Ward Wedding by Karla Sorensen

  The Night We Met by Susannah Nix

  The Procedure by Katie Ashley

  Through Her Eyes by Kelly Elliott

  Truce by Willow Aster

  Wolf Ranch Legacy by Vanessa Vale & Renee Rose

  A Little Bit in Love With You by Willow Winters

  Post-It Notes by Debra Anastasia

  Constellations by Catherine Cowles

  Dirty Crazy Bad by Siobhan Davis

  Gravity by Aleatha Romig

  Just One Spark by Carly Phillips

  Love You the Most by Carian Cole

  Movie Night by Roni Loren

  Our New Forever by Claudia Burgoa

  Playhouse by Amo Jones

  Pucks, Sticks, and a New Barn by Toni Aleo

  Room Enough for Two by Sara Ney

  Sweet Temptation by A. Zavarelli & Natasha Knight

  The Match by Natalie Wrye

  The Offering by Shantel Tessier

  Copyright

  Expansion

  Kate Canterbary

  Chapter One

  Will

  “That counteroffer can choke on my dick.”

  I pressed a fist to my mouth to hold back the grin forming there. Even after eight years, the shock of those words from this petite redhead hadn’t worn off.

  If it hadn’t happened yet, it wasn’t going to.

  “No, I understand you’re not going back to the agent with that as the only response, Tom.” Shannon pulled her bag onto her lap, diving through the contents as she continued speaking to her chief of staff. “If that’s how they want to play, we’ll take our ball and go home. We don’t need this property nearly as much as they need to unload it. Are they under the impression there’s a shortage of 1880s brownstones in the Back Bay? Because there isn’t. I could buy up every available property and keep us busy for the next decade. I don’t need this one. If they can’t recognize a fair offer when one comes their way, I don’t have the time to dick around with them.”

  My wife didn’t relax too often.

  I pointed at the parking garage ahead. “Wrap it up, peanut. You’re going to lose him in a minute.”

  She batted my hand away. “Ignore the counter. We don’t entertain that kind of douche waffling. Okay? Good. Call me when they lose their shit and ask to backtrack to the original offer.”

  She ended the call as I pulled up to the garage’s automatic gate. I waved our access badge at the keypad before glancing back at her. When the gate opened, I held out my hand. “The phone, Shannon.”

  “I’m not handing over anything until we touch down on the island. I need the entire morning to work,” she replied. “I have two more purchase and sale agreements to revise for Sam, several million dollars to move, and a delicate situation with one of Matt’s properties to look after.”

  “These fucking guys.” I headed toward an empty parking spot. “Matt doesn’t need a babysitter and Sam’s problems can be pushed down to your legal assistants. Or Tom. Put these people to work, Shannon, and hand over the phone.”

  “First of all, no, and second, how would you like me to delegate these requests of yours without my phone?”

  Getting my wife to unwind usually required brute force. It didn’t come naturally to her. Not without putting up a good fight. If I wanted her to chill the fuck out—which I absolutely did—I had to fight that fight and play a serious game of keep away with all the devices that kept her on her bullshit.

  “I’d like your brothers to recognize that you’re leaving the country for two weeks. I’d also like them to realize they’ve known about this for approximately four months. That should have been fair warning to them that it was time they sort their issues without your help.”

  I shifted into Park while my wife glared at me. That didn’t bother me. I knew her glares. I understood her glares. Hell, I liked her glares. I loved that she got out of bed every morning with this kind of firepower locked and loaded.

  “I expected to work on the flight.” She gestured toward the small terminal in front of us and the pair of private jets on the tarmac. A small mountain of lingering snow glinted back from the edge of the runway. Such was March in New England. “Is there a reason I can’t do that?”

  I blinked at the runway. This was the first time in five years that we were vacationing without the kids. There’d been long weekends here and there but nothing more than that. Even our honeymoon had been nothing more than a weekend away in Montauk. It was also the first time since that Montauk trip that my wife wasn’t pregnant or nursing a baby.

  We had fourteen nights on a private Caribbean island ahead of us and I wasn’t about to give up a single second of this vacation for anything.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said in response to my silence. “So, I’m going to—”

  “The phone, Shannon.” I plucked it from her hand. “Just because they need you doesn’t mean they’re entitled to you.”

  She watched while I powered down her phone and tucked it into my pocket. With a chilly stare, she said, “I’m the only one who can move millions of dollars.”

  The best thing about my wife—the thing very closely related to her complete inability to relax—was that nothing stopped her. Nothing stood in her way.

  Not even common sense.

  “Let’s negotiate,” I said.

  She grinned like I was inviting myself to my own funeral and it was cute. Almost cute enough to make me forget that I knew enough about her work to know Tom could tee up the money and her brother Patrick could sign off on the transaction.

  “Is this a hostage situation?” she asked.

  I dragged a gaze over her torso, along the line of her legs. I wanted to pull down her turtleneck sweater and suck on her skin just to remind her that, as fun as this argument was, it was also futile. “Do you want to play a kidnapping game? I do have a private jet waiting for me.” I glanced at the back seat. “I’m sure I have a zip tie around here somewhere.”

  She tapped her finger against her lips as she murmured to herself. “I don’t really want to be tied up and tossed in the luggage compartment. I get the impression I’d be cold and dirty by the time we land in Mobile to pick up Jordan’s mom and her boyfriend, and that just seems like too much to explain. She’s so excited about Jordan and April finally getting married this weekend. We should let her have that without involving her in our little games.”

  I shrugged. My business partner’s mother had seen stranger things. I was sure of it. Aside from that, I didn’t play games that left my wife cold or dirty in ways she didn’t want to be. And she knew that.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a steady stream of mimosas while I empty my inbox. I figure I’ll be finished before I reach the bottom of the champagne bottle.” She fussed with her ponytail long enough to distract me from the task at hand. “Champagne makes me quite pleasant but I’m hearing this is still a problem for you.”

&n
bsp; Champagne drunk Shannon was an undeniable favorite of mine. She was putty in my hands when she started in with the giggles and hiccups. I’d asked her to marry me when she was champagne drunk.

  “I keep the phone,” I said. “You keep the laptop until”—I held up a hand when she turned those emerald green eyes on me—“until we touch down in Mobile. Then, you’re done for the next two weeks.”

  She responded with an impatient jerk of her shoulders. “If there’s a disaster, I’m—”

  “There will not be a disaster.”

  “If there is,” she said pointedly, “I’m logging in.”

  “I’ll allow for the possibility of disasters if you acknowledge they are unlikely to occur.”

  She reached for her purse, set it on her lap. Sawed her teeth over her bottom lip. “Fine.”

  I felt the shift between us like a change in the wind. We were finished negotiating, finished sparring. I’d used all the brute force she’d tolerate. The walls were down, the armor disintegrating. All that remained was the way she bit that lip.

  “You know, peanut, they’re going to be fine with my parents. The girls are going to swindle them for everything they’re worth and we’re going to come home to find three little warlords running the place, but they’re going to be fine.”

  She nodded, saying, “I know” with just enough of a wobble for me to know she was working very hard at keeping herself from crying.

  “My parents will call us every day,” I said.

  “I know.” She looked out her window as if I couldn’t see her blinking away tears in the reflection. “But Amalia’s teeth are still coming in and Abby’s been having such a hard time with speech therapy and—”

  “And they are going to be all right,” I said. “I’m going to miss those little terrorists too. We haven’t been away from them in forever and I don’t even know how to sleep without tiny people between us, but I know they’re in capable hands with my parents.”

  She dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. “It sounded like such a good idea to go to this wedding and stay on the island after but—”

  “It is a good idea. That hasn’t changed.”

  “I know but—”

  “Shannon.” I dropped my hand to the back of her neck. She wasn’t ready to look away from the window but that didn’t matter. She was allowed to have the space she wanted, even if she didn’t need that space from me. “Our babies are going to have the time of their lives. They have a Navy Admiral and a combat nurse waiting on them hand and foot. They have your sister and her doctor husband never more than twenty minutes away. They have all your brothers, all your sisters-in-law a phone call away. You trust all of those people, right?”

  “Of course I do,” she snapped, her words sharp and watery all at the same time.

  I circled my thumb along the tight cords of her neck. “Then trust yourself, peanut. Trust that you are an incredible mother and you’ve done all the right things for our babies. Trust that they will be safe and cared for—and extremely spoiled—while I spend the next two weeks caring for and spoiling you. Neither of which I’ve done in a long time because there’s always a child or two attached to you, not to mention needy-ass brothers blowing up your phone every five minutes.”

  “I don’t need you to do any of that.”

  “Believe me, I know. You don’t need a damn thing. But I need it. I need to get you away from everything so I can have you all to myself.”

  She was silent for several moments. I went on rubbing her skin while quiet breaths shuddered out of her. Then, “I think I asked for a steady stream of mimosas and there are no champagne flutes in my hands right now.”

  I tipped my chin toward the tarmac. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Two

  Shannon

  “Good morning, Mrs. Halsted. Welcome aboard. I’ll take that coat for you,” the flight attendant said as I stepped onto the plane.

  Behind me, Will said, “My wife needs some champagne with a splash of orange juice before takeoff.”

  “Of course, Mr. Halsted. Right away. And anything for you?” she asked.

  Will steered me toward two pairs of seats situated on either side of a shiny mahogany table. “All I need is for you to keep my wife’s glass full for the next three hours.”

  “Right away,” she repeated before marching toward the back of the cabin.

  I shot him a smirk. “Eager to fulfill orders, are we?”

  He dropped into the spot across the table from me, his broad shoulders spanning the full width of the luxurious seat. Dressed in dark jeans, a gray t-shirt, and a half-zip pullover, he held up his hands and let them fall to his lap. “My wife wants champagne, my wife gets champagne. Can’t penalize me for getting the job done on time.”

  There was something about the golden scruff covering the line of his jaw that made me smile. It reminded me of our blonde babies, not a single one of them born with even a shimmer of red in their hair. And that reminded me of the way he held them to his chest, their heads tucked just under his chin and their little fingers always fisted around his shirt. As if he’d ever let them go.

  They’d be fine with Bill and Judy. They’d be fine. I knew that. I believed it as thoroughly as I believed anything. But that didn’t stop the pangs of worry. All the years spent looking after my siblings, all the time I’d taken up the role of stand-in mother had prepared me not at all for the real deal. I had three little pieces of my heart walking around outside my body now. Everything was different. Everything.

  Except for Will.

  There were moments when I thought fatherhood had changed him or maybe the domesticity of working primarily from a home office or even living outside of Boston—and it was possible those shifts had stretched him, filled him out a bit.

  But he was the same man he’d always been.

  He was exactly as pushy and rude and steady as he’d been when I met him the night before Matt and Lauren’s wedding. The same man who’d dismissed the orgasm he gave me as insufficient and then broke the bed trying to do better. The same man who knew all of my secrets and kept them under lock and key for me. The same man who saw straight through me and liked that chaos enough to stay.

  And that was the thing about my husband that made my heart beat in my throat. He’d seen me at my worst and never looked away. I couldn’t scare him off, couldn’t overwhelm him, couldn’t even intimidate him. He knew me. He saw me. He understood me. And he chose me.

  I pulled out my laptop while Will watched. I really needed to move some money around this morning. Actually, I should’ve done this yesterday but one of Riley’s projects received a stop work order from the city and I lost control of the day trying to right that ship. Patrick was able to approve payroll expenses and sign off on the purchases we had lined up, but he’d also collapse like a cheap tent if I asked him to manage something outside his usual scope of work. Tom could handle most of it though he had a million other things on his plate before he and Wes departed for the wedding tomorrow afternoon.

  Once we were in the air, Will leaned forward and asked, “What would they do without you?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “I’m just wondering,” he went on, “how your brothers would function if you didn’t take care of everything for them.”

  “We know how they’d function. We’ve seen it play out every time we have a baby. They survive well enough the first month, they start dropping by more frequently in the second month, and the office more or less migrates into our dining room in the third and fourth months.” I glanced at him over my laptop screen. “Until you scare them off, that is.”

  “I’ve been scaring them off for years and I’m not about to stop,” he replied, looking quite pleased with himself. “That’s why they lost their shit when you finally told them about me. They knew they were living on borrowed time.”

  I scoffed at that. “You’re giving yourself a fair bit of credit, don’t you think?” Before he could respond, I continued. “And they didn’t lose their shit. I don’t even think I told you what happened that day. It was just”—I glanced out the window as I thought back to that Monday morning meeting—“it was a lot. As are most big conversations around that table.”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “Tell me now. I want to hear it.”

  The flight attendant stopped by with a fresh mimosa for me and coffee for Will. Once we were alone, I said, “There’s nothing you need to hear.”