The Reluctant Romantics Box Set (The Fall, The Mind, The Heart)

THE FALL
Dallas
He was the beginning of my heart . . . and the end of it.
I was only fifteen years old when he claimed it and twenty when he took it with him.
They say what is meant to be will find a way. But when you have changed to the point of no return, how can anything ever be the same?
Seven years later, Dean Martin waltzed back into my life in hopes of resuming what I had fought so hard to forget, but he was in for a wake-up call.
I was no longer the naïve woman he had left . . . and I was no longer his.
I met the love of my life and my soul mate when I was fifteen. I knew that; he knew that. He wanted that girl back. I wanted to forget she ever existed.


Dean
What I thought was my pre-destined path was very much an illusion. Living seven years with regret, I realized too late that I was broken, and that I only had myself to blame.
I thought love could wait . . . but it didn’t.
We’d had it all those years ago, and then I foolishly left it behind.
She was all that mattered. She was all there ever was.
There was no life without Dallas, no reason . . . except her.
No matter how hard she tried to convince me, I knew I had to once again make her mine, to make her remember . . . the fall.





THE MIND

We fell in love in a lightning strike, a sudden anomaly in a sea of lost people.
He knew right away, yet I was hesitant. I could have never prepared myself for a love like ours.
No one could.
As a child, I had conjured an amazing story in my mind. It was a story I could retell about a man that would move me like no other; a story about the way we met and how he had swept me off my feet. But, the ending to that fairytale was so far from the reality.
No one will want to hear that story now, but for Grant, I will always tell it.


THE HEART
Jack

For the last ten years, I've roamed the globe, captivated by the world around me. I've seen the seven wonders and admired sunsets from every continent. I'd lived and loved and that was enough for me. It would have to be.

I was content, satisfied with my collection of experiences . . . until a phone call led me down a road less traveled.

If I'd known my fascination would pique and be forever quenched only a few hundred miles from where my curiosity had been born, I may have never set sail.

Rose

Stripped of the future I'd planned with the love of my life, my family and my career were now all that mattered. I'd lived and loved and that was enough. It would have to be.

I struggled to move forward, to discard the part of me that held out hope for my obliterated heart. But I was bred a romantic, so it was easier said than done.

The chances of being struck by lightning are 1 in 960,000.

The odds of being struck twice are 1 in 9 million.

I risked those odds every minute, often cursing the dark sky, praying for static and a rumble of thunder, but it never came.

No, that second bolt hit me on a clear day.