Love You Now

Book 4: Love You, Maine

by Julia Kent

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Military Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Ana DaSilva is looking for a palate cleanser. A one night stand. A reboot.

Instead, she got fireworks, sparks, chemistry, and the perfect guy. No one wants to meet Mr. Right when he should just be Mr. Rebound, but Mr. Right is so, so right.

But then he went from Mr. Right to Mr. Never, because when she learns she’s pregnant three days after that wonderful night with Dennis, she realizes her sleazy drug dealing ex not only left her with the legal mess she knew about, he gave her a life-long present.

One that means ignoring Dennis’ texts and phone calls, no matter how much she wants to answer.


Dennis Luview wants to escape his pain. Coming back to his hometown of Luview, Maine - the cheesy tourist trap where every day was Valentine’s Day - means facing a past he left behind twenty-four years ago.

Yes, his family is loving, and sure, he has roots that go bone-deep in the small town community where people step up for each other.

But the naive eighteen-year-old who left to serve his country is now a retired Special Ops vet with a heavy entourage of ghosts and PTSD. No woman deserves all the baggage he’s lugging around.

Including Ana, who clearly wants nothing to do with him, no matter how intense their one haunting encounter really was.
It's one thing to have ghosts, and quite another to be ghosted.

Which is why six months after that hot night, he’s stunned to find her in his hometown, at a bridal shower, her ripe, pregnant belly swelling under a gorgeous yellow sundress.

A public confrontation turns into a very private reunion, and as Dennis pursues Ana she opens up, but is he crazy to want her — and what turns out to be another man’s baby — to settle down and find stability and love?

Or is he deluding himself that he’s remotely worth the happiness an instant family could offer, after his terrible past?

 

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Release date: February 28, 2023

Print pages: 406

Sample

Chapter 1

Dennis

The kitten’s plaintive cry stopped him dead in his tracks.

And made him groan.

Dennis Luview was a just-retired Special Forces fighting machine, an Army veteran who couldn’t talk about his work even if he wanted to–and he didn’t want to–but there was one defining weakness that cut through his elite combat skills, his experience in taking out terrorists, and his stone-cold soldier’s mind:

Strays.

When the service door at the end of the hallway to the kitchen snicked shut, he realized the kitty must be outside, in the alley.

In January.

In Boston, Massachusetts, where the poor thing would be a frozen catsicle in no time flat.

Looking ahead, he teetered. The hotel’s carpet had a dizzying pattern that forced him to stop in place, firmly plant his feet on the ground, and get his bearings. After thirteen straight hours of travel from Germany, he’d checked in at his hotel, taken a much-needed shower, shaved, and dressed in what he assumed passed for normal, informal, hotel-bar attire.

He was now a freshly minted civilian on his way to have a few drinks, cobble together dinner from bar food, do pretty much anything except–

Deal with a stray cat in distress.

“Haven’t even had a single damn drink yet,” he muttered, then pivoted to go down the hall. Garlic wafted through the air like a temptress, basil joining in to make his stomach growl.

He’d landed at Logan Airport too late to pick up the new truck he’d ordered and drive up to his hometown of Luview, “Love You”, Maine–the tourist trap where every day was Valentine’s Day. And it was just as well.

A man needed a night of transition before facing all that sickening happiness.

As he approached the hotel’s exit, he was keenly aware of his surroundings, his back vulnerable to attack. A door to the left led to the kitchen, the one straight ahead letting in sour notes of dumpsters and furtively smoked cigarettes.

Dennis knew his way around an alley. Spent more than enough years working in them.

Pressing the door bar, he opened it and–

“Mew.”

He froze. Blessed–or cursed–with extraordinary hearing, he knew he’d been right. The sound was too soft. Too weak.

But where was the kitten?

“Sweetie,” said a woman’s voice, muted as if she were buried under the mound of black trash bags that reeked to high heaven. “Come on. I have a special treat for you.”

She spoke like she was talking to a preschooler.

His shoulders dropped.

Whew. Not a stray. Not his job.

“Come on, kitty. Let me help you. You look so lost.”

Ugh. Yes, a stray.

Not your job, he chided himself. Go away and leave it. Don’t get tangled in someone else’s mess.

“Pffft!”

Standing on tiptoes, he looked across the top of the overstuffed dumpster and saw the tiny tabby, faced away from him, giving quite the butthole show. The kitten was barely off mother’s milk, so small that he could fit it in his shirt pocket.

“How did you get here?” the hidden woman asked the cat, as if it would answer. Her voice was tinny, with an echo that made Dennis stare harder.

Responsibility was Dennis’s strong point and his greatest weakness. This mystery woman he couldn’t see had the situation under control. No need to interfere. The cat would be fine; she obviously cared.

In fact, it was probably hers, and he’d just complicate things, so he should turn around and–

“I can’t help you if you don’t let me!” the woman said, her voice beginning to shake, as if she were about to cry. The sound of plastic being shuffled around filled the air, and it dawned on him that she must be in the dumpster. “I just want to feed you and make you warm and safe!”

Besides stray animals in need of rescue, there was one other thing Dennis couldn’t handle.

And that was a crying woman.

Checking the ground, he found a small bucket full of sand and cigarette butts and used it to prop the heavy metal door open. Experience taught him that these big exterior doors often locked from the inside. No need to start his retirement from rescuing people being the object of a rescue.

There wasn’t much of a moon tonight, but floodlights gave everything a gritty glare.

His jacket, an afterthought when he’d left his hotel room to head down to the bar for dinner, was turning out to be a saving grace. Pulling his arms out of the sleeves, he readied it.

“What’s your cat’s name?” he called out, jacket in hands, spread wide to protect from kitty scratches.

“AIIIEEEE!” the woman shrieked, a sudden thump on metal followed by a major curse word. The kitten, scared half to death, shot backwards, giving Dennis a chance to reach up and grab it in his makeshift blanket, sparing him from shredded forearms.

“Ow! Who is that?”

With a firm hold on the frantic kitty in his arms, he peered over the edge of the dumpster, breathing through his mouth to manage the odor. On tiptoes, he looked down to find her inside, obscured by darkness, but not for long.

Because he got a gorgeous view of her ass as she started to climb out.

Then slipped.

“Ow!” she shrieked again, her hand coming back up to grip a small bar near a sliding plastic door on the other side.

“You need help?”

“NO!”

Snowflakes began to float down on them, lazy and new. He still couldn’t see her face, but her huffing and puffing included a few more curse words.

Salty woman. He liked that.

“You know,” he joked, “my brother found his wife in a metal charity-donation box. When he hears this, he’ll think I’m trying to one-up him.”

The woman paused with one leg out the plastic door, the other still inside the dumpster, her shapely figure making him smile.

Then she was through.

“Is there a deep-seated psychological problem in your family that manifests with men seeking out women in unsafe situations involving discarded items and abandoned debris?”

As he tried to process that, she tore around the corner of the dumpster, holding her hand on the top of her head, glaring at Dennis like he was there to mug her.

When he was younger, he’d have been offended. Now?

Now he just snorted.

Wrestling the bundle of claws in his hands was easier than managing that glare.

“What are you doing to that poor kitten?”

“Calming her down.”

As the woman entered the light, he felt something other than his jaw clench. Glossy brown hair, long and straight, fell on either side of a fine, elegant neck. Below her strong bangs were bright red lips and eyes that were open and warm.

Skeptical, though.

Of him.

“See?” Under the jacket, the kitten was slowing down, Dennis using one hand to pet it through the fabric. “If you’d been successful, she’d have shredded you.”

“Is it your cat?”

“Huh? No.”

“Then how do you know it’s a she?”

“I don’t.”

Silence rested between them, the only noise emanating from the kitchen. A little further away, whooshing sounds came from the busy highway, heavy trucks occasionally vibrating like minor chords of modern music.

The quiet they shared should have been awkward.

It wasn’t.

“What are you going to do with her?” the woman finally asked, brushing her hair behind her ears. Gold hoops, small but striking, hung from her lobes. Those warm eyes were a rich, dark brown, with long eyelashes and bands of white around the irises. A fierce, probing look rounded out his partner in cat recovery.

If Dennis were in the mood to date, she’d be his type.

But tonight was off limits. He needed tonight to find his bearings before going home.

And completely changing his life.

“Don’t know.” Pulling the bundle close to his chest, he felt the kitten relax. Intuition made him open the fabric a bit, hoping the little thing didn’t pee all over his coat in a panic.

One sniff made it clear that hadn’t happened.

Yet.

The tiniest of pink noses poked out from an inverted-V opening in the cloth.

The woman broke off a corner of what looked like a piece of cheese and reached out to the kitten, who took it eagerly, then disappeared back into the cave of Dennis’s jacket.

“What were you planning to do with her?” Dennis asked as he felt the cat chewing, knowing that taking it out now might still

mean a clawfest.

He had no interest in showing up back home with rake marks all over him. Oh, the jokes his brothers would make about his first night as a free man…

“I wasn’t planning at all. I came down the hallway looking for a bathroom. I heard the poor thing mewling and came outside, but then the door snapped shut on me and I was trapped out here in this nasty alley.” She smiled at him, demeanor changing, her eyes darting to the propped ashtray bucket. “You were smarter than I was.”

“Training,” he said, regretting the word the second it was out of his mouth.

“Training? You work here?”

There were lots of ways Dennis could answer that question. The easiest would be to lie, give her the cat, and disappear.

Something about her made him never want to lie.

“No.”

Her hand went to the top of his coat, caressing the cat through it. The back of her hand was filthy. Surprisingly, her clothes were fine, without a single spot on them.

But those hands reminded him of the Army. Hard work. Dirty work. The kind that gets stuff done but goes unacknowledged.

“Looks like you weren’t afraid to dig in and find her,” he commented. The woman’s hand lifted up, fast.

“Oh, sorry! My hands are disgusting and I just touched your jacket!”

“I’m sure the kitten’s done worse to it by now.”

She looked up. Way up, because Dennis must have been a solid foot taller.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Dennis.”

“Hi, Dennis. I’m Ana.”

She pronounced it AH-na, but had no discernible accent.

“Nice to meet you, Ana. What should we name this little bugger?”

She giggled, holding her hands gingerly before her, looking around. “I don’t know you well enough to be naming animals we find together. I think that’s Step Four in dating.” Her hand went to her mouth to cover it, as if shutting herself up, but then she grimaced in disgust as she realized what she had done, touching her lips.

Big, loud laughter rumbled out of his chest, of a kind he hadn’t heard from himself in years.

It scared the cat, who struggled in his arms.

“We’re terrifying the poor thing,” she said.

“You brought up dating,” he replied with a wink. “Not me.”

Maybe tonight wasn’t off limits for the right woman.

“Excuse me? I did not… oh!” She laughed, the sound contented and self-assured. “You’re right. I did say the D word. Sorry. My bad.”

Before Dennis could respond, the metal door was pushed wide open, slamming hard against the brick wall, and a kid no older than ten stood on the threshold, breathless and upset.

“My kitty! Has anyone seen my kitty?”

Dennis’s ears began to ring.

Damn it.

The kitten jumped out of his arms and ran straight for the kid, whose face lit up like exploding ordnance.

“PILLOW!” he screamed, voice cracking, the kitten snuggling up against the boy’s shoulder as Dennis’s heart rate skyrocketed. Grateful young eyes met his.

“Thank you, mister! You found him!”

“Him,” Ana said with a laugh, then gave Dennis a concerned look.

Every molecule in his body was ringing. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from that kid.

“Are you okay? What’s going on?” Ana asked, her hand going to his forearm, which was covered by the long sleeve of his Henley shirt. Striking red fingernails made the hunter green knit seem festive.

Christmas-like, even.

It was the first week of January, and they were in an alley in Boston, but Dennis didn’t feel the cold. Transported to the opposite extreme, he was in sand and heat, a place where the hot wind stole a piece of your soul every time it decided to blow.

“Kieran!” A mother’s shrill voice pierced the air. “Did you lose that kitty again?”

“I didn’t lose him! He ran away.”

A very harried woman in a white kitchen uniform, splattered with an assortment of red and orange-colored foods, came to a sudden stop when she saw Dennis and Ana.

“Oh! My goodness. I am so sorry. Are you guests here at the hotel? Did my son rope you into helping him?”

The fear in her voice cut through Dennis’s triggered state, the world narrowing slightly.

“No,” Ana said calmly, pressing her hand harder against Dennis’s skin, as if she knew it grounded him. “Your son didn’t ask. I heard the kitten mewing when I was trying to find a bathroom, and then I found it in the dumpster.”

“Poor Pillow! In the dumpster? That’s where I found him!”

Kieran’s mom, who wore a name tag that said Lainey on it, pressed her lips together and took what appeared to be a patience-gathering breath. Whether it worked or not wasn’t easy to discern, but Dennis joined her.

The ringing in his ears did not lessen.

“Maybe he was just trying to find something to eat,” Ana said, her charm turning up as she talked to the boy. Then she frowned, apparently thinking of something new. “You said you found him in the dumpster?”

“Uh huh.” Kieran eyed the pile of trash bags, shivering in the cold Boston night. “A few hours ago. It was empty then. If we didn’t find him when Mom’s shift started, he could have gotten buried in there alive! Or frozen!”

Buried.

Alive.

Kid.

Dennis’s skin suddenly felt covered in bugs, his eyes unable to focus, ears doing their best to double as fire alarms. Ana nudged him, looking up, studying him.

“You need a drink,” she said, turning him back into the hotel.

He was in no condition to argue.

“And I need to wash my hands,” she added. “Ewww.”

“Here,” the mother said, opening the door to the kitchen. Dennis watched as Ana went straight to a small hand washing station right next to the door, her messy hands and forearms clean within a minute as she scrubbed with determination, all smiles when Lainey spoke to her.

“Sir?” the little boy said, looking up at Dennis with a worshipful gaze. “Thank you.”

“Welcome.”

“Me and Pillow are best friends. Mom’s letting me keep him.”

“Nice.”

“I would do anything for Pillow. Anything.”

Ana and Lainey reappeared, both of them struggling to center themselves but for different reasons.

Ana plucked his jacket from his hands and shook it lightly, sniffing it.

“You’re in luck,” she said brightly. “Pillow didn’t desecrate it.”

She wrapped it around her own shoulders, shivering.

“Hmmm,” was all he could manage, but it was more than a moment ago, and that helped.

“Bye! Thanks!” Kieran called as Ana guided Dennis over to the door leading to the service hall and then to the main thoroughfare. A right turn there would take them to the bar.

“Ma’am? Sir?”

The pleading tone made his throat tighten. They both turned around to find Lainey standing in front of the now-closed exit door, her face an uncomfortable mash-up of emotion, hand on Kieran’s head.

Possessive.

Motherly.

“Um, please don’t tell management? He’s a good boy. Comes straight here from school now–we don’t have the money for him to go to the after-school program since the budget cuts for the Boys and Girls Club, and sometimes I have to work nights like this. We don’t normally find strays, and this one is distracting him.”

Dennis cleared his throat and stopped her.

“Won’t say a word.”

Her shoulders dropped with relief.

“Thank you! What room are you in? If you order room service, I’ll add something to it.”

Dennis waved her off, his tongue thick, his eyes dry.

“Take care of Pillow.”

“Thank you!” Kieran said as someone hollered in the kitchen, Lainey skittering back in through the swinging door.

Every lightbulb sang to him.

Each line in the rug’s pattern became three dimensional.

And Ana’s hand on his forearm was the only thing keeping him in this world.

“You can tell me,” she said softly, standing on tiptoes, her body warm as she moved closer.

“Tell?”

“You’re quiet. Too quiet. And frozen.”

“It was cold out there. Of course I’m frozen.”

Gently, she offered him his jacket back. He took it, folding it over his arm where her hand had just been. Ribs unlocking, they let him take in a deep breath, the image of Kieran superimposed over a very different boy clearing from his headspace.

One step. Then a second. Soon, he walked with purpose toward the hotel lobby, Ana at his side.

She turned with him. They both stopped and looked at each other.

“Have a drink with me?” he asked, the words coming out of him as if some unseen hand reached in and typed them out for his tongue to speak.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Of course I don’t have to.”

“Dennis, I need to ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“Are you… a bodyguard? Security of some kind?”

“Why?”

“You seem out of place.”

“I’m always out of place.”

“Add the word babe to that line and you’re a smooth operator.”

The clink of silverware on plates, the murmur of private conversation, and happy laughter were the background for his own surprised chuckle.

“Are you feeding me pick-up lines?”

“The last thing I want tonight is to be picked up, Dennis.” Ana was smiling, but with a twisted look that said she had a story to tell, too. “But I’ll take you up on that drink. You buy the first round, I’ll buy the second.”

“That’s quite a commitment for a woman I found in a dumpster.”

“I wasn’t really in the dumpster. More like on the dumpster.”

“You have a tender heart.”

“Says the man who cuddled a feral kitten in his jacket.”

“Never said I wasn’t a pushover for strays.”

From the way she jolted, he knew he’d touched a nerve.

Chest rising and falling faster with each breath, she worked hard to stay even-keeled. Dennis recognized her response.

This woman was trained to stay focused and calm.

“Is that why you’re asking me for a drink? Because I’m a stray?” she finally asked, voice tight.

“How the hell did you get from the kitten in the garbage to that conclusion? Who hurt you so badly that you got that out of my comment, Ana?”

The look on her face made it clear he wasn’t just touching a nerve.

He was tap dancing on it while pouring roofing tacks on top.

“Nice meeting you, Dennis,” she said, chin up, hand out to shake.

Dismissed.

He was being dismissed.

Fingers pressing into hers, he was taken with how soft her skin was. His eyes combed over her. Plenty of women were available back on base, and his work had put him in more than enough situations that involved opportunities, but something about Ana made his body respond.

“Can we reboot?” he asked, holding her hand for longer than was socially acceptable for a kiss-off handshake.

“Reboot?”

“Start over. Start fresh. I meant it when I offered you that drink. I could use some company.”

“Plenty of company in a hotel bar,” she said with a snicker, her meaning obvious.

She wasn’t going to sleep with anyone tonight.

Good.

Dennis wasn’t looking for a quickie. Easy lays were just that–easy romps that meant nothing the next morning and more often than not, left him with an emotional hangover.

Not that he’d had a long string of them, but he’d had his share.

Ana interested him. Something deeper and more intuitive rested in those warm brown eyes.

“Not the kind I’m interested in,” he finally said as he released her warm hand, his thumb remembering the pulse of her wrist.

“And what kind is that?”

“The kind who goes out of her way to rescue a little kitty who needs some help.”

“You’re looking for a little kitty, are you?” Sly and bold, the innuendo made his blood rush.

“You are unpredictable.”

“Hah!” The laugh was unexpected, brash and unfiltered. “Nope. I’m the opposite. Criticized mercilessly for it, too.”

“You’ve been told you’re too predictable?”

“Yes. And that’s boooring.”

“Who’s been saying that?”

“Someone I don’t want to talk about.”

His inner radar pinged again.

Rebound.

Ana was on the rebound.

“We don’t have to talk about your ex in order to share a drink.” He eyed her, purposely obvious about it, until she began to smile.

“What?”

“You’re a mule.”

“Excuse me?”

“Moscow mule.”

“You’re trying to guess my drink?”

“I’m very good at it.”

“Not this time. Dead wrong.”

“Then what?”

“Caipirinha.” The way the syllables flowed off her tongue was beautiful, mesmerizing and sweet.

“You’re Brazilian?”

“Second generation.”

"Não falo Portugues muito bem,” he replied.

A mishmash of confused reactions covered her face, Dennis’s explanation–in Portuguese–that “I don’t speak Portuguese very well” bemusing her.

The squeaky wheel of a room service cart caught his ear, and he and Ana both took a step to the right as a uniformed service worker walked by, well within earshot.

“How can you say you don’t speak Portuguese very well in such a perfect accent?”

“It’s basically the only phrase I know, other than ‘Me ajude, meu amigo levou um tiro’ and ‘Não, obrigada, não preciso de uma boa hoje à noite.’”

“That’s ‘Help, my friend has been shot’ and ‘No, thanks, I don’t need a good… screw… tonight.’”

“Except it’s not the word screw.”

She began to sputter.

“You live a colorful life.”

So she spoke Portuguese, or at least understood it. His intrigue meter clicked up another notch.

“Make it even more interesting and have that caipirinha with me?” Head spinning, he was wooing her, compelled by a warm, intense feeling that he couldn’t shake.

Didn’t want to shake.

In the bar, live piano music began, a jazz melody that added to the glow inside him. If being around her made him feel like this–even without a beer–what would an hour or two of her undivided attention do?

“I don’t have drinks with strange men in bars,” she said, but one corner of her mouth curled up, making it clear he was an exception.

Better act like one, then.

“Why don’t we up the ante and make it dinner, then?”

“I get the sense you up a lot of antes, Dennis. So what do you do for a living?”

“Before I answer that question, you need to answer mine. I didn’t hear a firm yes in there.”

“You like things firm, too?”

And that was when he knew.

Knew that tonight, there were no limits.

 

Chapter 2

 

Ana

---

What was she saying?

WHAT WAS SHE SAYING?

You like things firm, too? Did she really make that double entendre?

Walking down that hallway, she’d been lost in her quest for a bathroom before heading to the hotel restaurant for a sad little “Party of One” display. Her plan didn’t include getting filthy in a dumpster, outmaneuvered by a teeny little kitten.

Then he arrived.

Dennis was the size of an action movie star, with shockingly smart eyes and a closed-off demeanor that belied his sweet, tender manner with that little kitty.

He was nothing–nothing–like her type.

Then again, dating her type had gotten her into her current mess: dumped, absolutely suckered, and being interviewed by the DEA.

“What am I supposed to say in response to that?” Dennis teased as Ana went to war with herself, convinced her instincts regarding men weren’t just bad.

They were so flamingly awful, she should be banned from dating.

“I–I don’t know!” she giggled, too caught up in her own thoughts to keep the banter going. “I’m definitely not at my best tonight.”

“I think you’re fine.”

“You don’t know me.”

“We’re practically besties. Completed our first mission just now.”

“Mission?” Aha. Her radar was right. Military dude.

“Rescue mission. Subject found unharmed and returned home safely. ...