Cowboy Romance
The Cowboy’s Bride: What should Austin Bliss do with an enemy like Brooke Carson? Marry her. Or at least try.
Small Town Romance
Single Dad’s Waitress: Ryder isn’t looking for love, but he can’t help falling for the waitress serving him pancakes in his brand-new town.
Never His: The dangerous bad boy from Addison's past is coming home. He can claim her for his own…or leave her forever.
Military Romance
Before She Was Mine: Dayton Nash survived the war, but he might not survive falling in love with his best friend’s little sister.
Copyright Information
© 2021 Amelia Wilde
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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For more books by Amelia Wilde, visit her online at www.awilderomance.com
Bonus Epilogue
Poseidon
Vacationing with three separate families is a pain in the ass until the moment you’re actually on the private island. After that, it’s not terrible.
I’m willing to admit it now that we’re all here, and I’m sitting in a beach chair with the baby napping on my chest and Buddy napping on the ground next to me. I gave Hades and Zeus such shit about my wedding for months afterward, but they were right. It’s easier to hold the baby. Babies are also good for chasing away past memories that swim up from the depths and set your teeth on edge. Something about the smell of baby shampoo forcing the brain to release helpful chemicals. I don’t know.
The door of the house bangs open behind me. “Brigit!” Zeus yells for her across the yard and across the sand. She’s in the water in a bikini, very pregnant and finally at peace now that she’s not in the helicopter.
“What?” she shouts back.
“Do you want an iced tea?”
“Obviously I do.” She tips back her head with a dramatic sigh that echoes over the water. The sea moves in a slow current around her. It’s trying to make her feel better. I don’t think it’s going to work.
Zeus goes back in, and Ashley comes out. She folds her arms over me from behind and kisses the side of my neck. “Where’s Hades?”
Just then, Hades and Persephone emerge from down the beach with Conor. They’re both in bathing suits, and Hades is laughing. “You have to learn how to swim better than that,” he says to Persephone.
She shakes her head, tucking herself close to his side while she rolls her eyes. “You threw me. That’s enough to make anyone drown.”
“I would never let you drown.” He runs his fingertips from her shoulder to her wrist, and Persephone shivers. Then he spots Ashley and me on the shore.
“She’s in the side yard with Artemis,” Ashley says before he can ask. “I can see them from the kitchen window.”
Hades and Persephone come up onto the lawn. “You have to stop bothering Cook,” Persephone tells Ashley. “You’re going to force him into retirement.”
I snort. “That’ll be a cold day in hell.”
Cook comes to be our private chef on these vacations because it’s easier to pay him quadruple his salary and not have to explain all the rules and preferences to anyone else. He pretends to do this grudgingly, but I know he’d rather die than let anyone else cook for Ashley. He’s been coming along since the three of us bought the island and had the house built to our specifications the year Artemis and Daisy turned one.
It still seems fucking impossible, the three of us owning an island together and visiting it at the same time. And not killing each other. Hades and Zeus haven’t come to blows, even as a joke, in two years now. Or is it three?
Ashley kisses me again and goes back inside. Hades and Persephone go in to change, and I’m alone with the sea and the baby. The sea has questions. I let them whisper over my skin. There’s time to answer later. This baby’s too young to swim. He’s just old enough to dip his feet in, if it’s warm enough.
Buddy stirs in the grass beside me but doesn’t wake up.
Daisy and Artemis come to the sand from the side yard, both of them shrieking. They’re six this year, and most of what they do is scream and plot. Artemis is a younger version of Brigit with Zeus’s eyes. She carries a miniature bow and arrow with her everywhere. The arrows are soft-tipped and non-lethal, but in a few years she’ll be dangerous as hell with that thing.
And Daisy looks just like her father. She’s blonde, like him, though her eyes still have more blue than his did when he was six.
Though looking at her now—
She pauses in the sand, head turned toward the sea. I can’t see her face anymore.
“Daisy,” Artemis shouts, and Daisy turns her head back a beat too slow. Then they’re both running up and down the sand again. The baby stirs and I pat his back.
Zeus flops down in the chair next to mine. He watches Brigit in the ocean and sighs. “Fuck,” he says. “She’s gorgeous.”
No one is as gorgeous as Ashley, but I don’t make the comment because I’m still watching Daisy and Artemis. Daisy’s definitely getting slower, her footsteps slightly out of time.
“Zeus—”
He’s already sitting up in his chair, back straight, eyes on the two of them. “Fuck,” he says under his breath, and then he’s up and running. The iced tea he brought for Brigit tips over and spills into the grass.
My pulse pounds.
Sand flies behind Zeus as he runs, and he goes to one knee next to Daisy with inhuman speed. He sweeps her hair back from her face with one big hand and braces her with the other half a second before she’s sick. Zeus lets her lean against him, saying something I can’t hear. She’s sick again, and then Daisy throws her hands over her eyes and dissolves into tears.
Brigit’s out of the water now, her arm around Artemis, who is watching with wide eyes. Her bow dangles from her hand, completely forgotten.
I stand up to get Hades at the same moment he comes running out of the house, as fast as Zeus. Faster than Zeus. He has a bottle of water, and when he reaches Daisy, he shoves it into Zeus’s hands and gathers his daughter in his arms. The breeze catches his voice and carries it to me. “—all right,” he’s saying. “We’ll go inside.”
Zeus pulls a narrow pill bottle out of the pocket of his dock shorts, tips one into his palm, and offers it to Daisy with a grin, like it’s fucking candy. She doesn’t want to smile back at him, but she does. Daisy puts it on her tongue and swallows, still trying to shade her eyes with one hand. She sips some water. The bottle looks huge in her still-pudgy hand. Then she pushes it back to Zeus. “I don’t want to go inside.”