Chance at Love on Mystic Bay (Island County Series Book 6)

  Chance at Love

  on

  Mystic Bay

  (Island County #6)

  Karice Bolton

  Copyright © 2017 Karice Bolton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any printed or electronic form, or stored in an unauthorized retrieval system, or transmitted in any form without permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, incidents, and events either are the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover: AdobeStockPhotos: ©WavebreakMediaMicro

  Interior: B&B Formatting

  Adobe Stock: ©beaubelle

  ISBN-10:0-9978787-8-9

  ISBN-13:978-0-9978787-8-3

  Contact Karice Bolton

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  BOOKS BY KARICE BOLTON

  LUKE FLETCHER SERIES

  HIDDEN SINS

  BURIED SINS

  REDEMPTION

  MIA

  V MAFIA SERIES

  BLAKE

  DEVIN – Coming Soon

  JAXSON – Coming Soon

  ISLAND COUNTY SERIES

  FINDING LOVE IN FORGOTTEN COVE

  LOVE REDONE IN HIDDEN HARBOR

  TANLGED LOVE ON PELICAN POINT

  FOREVER LOVE ON FIREWEED ISLAND

  TEMPTING LOVE ON HOLLY LANE

  CHANCE AT LOVE ON MYSTIC BAY

  IRRESISTIBLE LOVE AT SILVER FALLS- Coming Soon!

  BEYOND LOVE SERIES

  BEYOND CONTROL

  BEYOND DOUBT

  BEYOND REASON

  BEYOND INTENT

  BEYOND CHANCE

  BEYOND PROMISE

  BEYOND the MISTLETOE

  AFTERWORLD SERIES

  Afterworld: Zombie RecruitZ

  Afterworld: Zombie AlibiZ

  Afterworld: Zombie UprisingZ

  THE WITCH AVENUE SERIES

  LONELY SOULS

  ALTERED SOULS

  RELEASED SOULS

  SHATTERED SOULS

  THE WATCHERS TRILOGY

  AWAKENING

  LEGIONS

  CATACLYSM

  TAKEN NOVELLA (A Watchers Prequel)

  Dear Readers-

  Thank you so much for reading Chance and Maddie’s story. I hope you have as much fun reading about them as I had writing them. Holly’s sister definitely needed her own book. She’s been through a lot, and she’s held many secrets tight to her chest.

  As many of you know, I loved getting to write about Jake in Forever Love on Fireweed Island, and as I typed away about Jewels and Jake, I realized Jake’s brother, Chance, really needed a story of his own.

  Chance’s loyalty, humor, and sexy confidence matched his brother’s, and I had an absolutely fabulous time getting to write about Chance and Maddie’s adventures. I really hope you enjoy reading Chance at Love while I finish plotting away on Irresistible Love at Silver Falls, which will be the next release in the Island County Series.

  Again, thank you so much for reading Chance at Love on Mystic Bay. It means a lot that you’ve chosen to read one of my stories. I really hope you love it and I look forward to hearing from you.

  Warmest wishes,

  Karice

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Beyond Control Excerpt

  Contact the Author

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “She made the front page.”

  The sound of a newspaper crinkling in the other room made my chest constrict even tighter. I was my hometown’s Sunday Morning News, and my own aunt was eagerly flipping the pages trying to absorb her niece’s infamy.

  My shoulders sank and I shook my head in disbelief. Only in a town of five thousand residents would I make the paper commemorating the worst day of my life. I didn’t even know how they could’ve printed the story quickly enough to deliver it by this morning.

  My mom sighed in the kitchen as my aunt rattled off more details from the disturbing article, and I stared hopelessly at the burgundy wallpaper with tiny gold rosebuds while listening to the sound of the riding lawnmower my father was aimlessly driving around the yard.

  My sister and I were sitting at the dining room table of our childhood home, unwrapping the wedding favors, and popping the pastel-colored M&Ms in our mouth three at a time.

  “It says here, he never even showed up at the church,” my aunt continued.

  It wasn’t like my mom didn’t know what just happened.

  She lived it.

  We all lived it.

  My entire family got front row tickets to watch my entire world unravel. I shook out another organza bag of M&Ms in my palm and tossed ‘em back.

  Mark Minchester thought he was so clever deciding on M&Ms for our party favors so we didn’t needlessly spend extra money on engraving our initials on candy. All we had to do was order the colors and forgo the printing costs. Not that the cost mattered to his pocketbook. My poor parents paid for the wedding and the reception that never happened.

  I was looking forward to when we could eat them all and hide the evidence that there was ever an M and an M who had such poor taste in color choices.

  Who wants salmon and lime green anything anyway?

  Apparently a man who was afraid of commitment.

  I let out a quiet groan.

  Maybe Mark knew all along he had no intention of greeting me at the altar.

  My chest tightened and another wave of nausea slammed into me.

  How did I not see this coming?

  Oh, yeah. I was too busy being in love.

  I was such a fool.

  “We’re going to get through this,” my sister said softly.

  I glanced at Holly. Her blonde hair was matted and neither of us had had a shower yet. I think we were both still in shock. This time yesterday, we were excitedly getting our makeup done and drinking champagne to celebrate the day.

  Her brown eyes fastened on mine and she continued.

  “You deserve better.”

  “But it still hurts even if I do deserve better.” I pressed my lips together and nodded.

  “It will hurt for a long time.” Holly twisted her lips into a pout. “But then it will get better . . . and a little better after that.”

  “Why didn’t he just tell me?” I shook my head, trying to go over the events from the last few weeks
.

  “He’s a jerk,” she said simply.

  “What signs did I miss?” I honestly didn’t think there were any indicators. He even met me at all the last minute wedding appointments. Whether it was the florist or the baker, he showed up, offered opinions, hugs, and accepted congratulations.

  “Nothing.” She sat back in the chair.

  “This whole fiasco makes me rethink lots of things. . .” My heart sank with a gloominess I didn’t recognize. It carried such a strong bitterness I could almost taste my sorrow.

  I didn’t understand how someone could be so cruel and thoughtless. Why not just tell me?

  Last night, I’d crawled into my childhood bed upstairs after I learned that the locks on the condo Mark and I had shared had been changed.

  At first, I was certain it was the key. I was still in my wedding dress, my veil blowing in the wind, and my white satin gloves pulled up to my elbows as I furiously worked the key into the lock.

  But after about five minutes of trying and failing, I saw a little bit of movement from behind the curtain.

  The jerk had been watching me and didn’t have the cojones to tell me to my face that it was over. I guess not showing up for our wedding was good enough.

  “You’re going to get through this.”

  “I know.” I sighed.

  As if getting left at the altar wasn’t bad enough, my family was woken up early this morning by the sound of the doorbell.

  When I flew out of bed, I honestly thought it was going to be Mark at the front door begging for forgiveness and offering an elaborate excuse for his behavior.

  Instead, it was an envelope from Minchester Bank, one final kick to the gut to send me on my way to single life.

  “I just don’t get it.” I shook my head and sucked on a few more M&Ms as my aunt and mom came into the dining room.

  “How are you holding up?” my mom asked, clutching my hand, not letting go.

  “I’ll survive. He may not, but I certainly will.” I grinned wryly, even though I didn’t feel much like smiling.

  My sister chuckled and my mom nodded in agreement.

  “I’m so proud of you,” my mom told me. “You’ve held your head up high despite the circumstances.”

  “Thanks, mom.” I bit my lip and glanced at my sister. “I’d say at least I still have my home and business, but. . .”

  “You can stay here as long as you need.”

  The words were meant to offer comfort, but it just made the failures worse. How could everything come crashing down around me all at once?

  One thing was for sure. I would never let myself stray from my goals again. I needed to get my life back on track far away from here.

  But first I had to start completely over.

  “You’re a pretty girl. You’ll find someone else who appreciates your quirkiness.” My aunt patted my shoulder, and I satisfied her with a slight smile before she wandered out of the dining room.

  My mom whispered a quick apology and all I could do was laugh.

  The compliment might have boosted a normal person’s morale, but I wasn’t typical.

  No, siree.

  I’d just let that compliment sit there and marinate for a while.

  Obviously, I’d lost my way in this whole mess of a relationship. I’d lost myself. I let someone else take the reins of my life and steer me in the wrong direction.

  I mean who lets their wedding colors be salmon and lime green?

  I straightened up at the table and looked at my sister and mom.

  “No matter what, I will win. I will come out of this better, happier, and with more strength than ever before.” The back of my throat clenched, and I pushed down a painful swallow.

  “I know you will.” My sister reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You didn’t need a dirt bag like him to hold you back.”

  “Exactly.” I nodded, crunching on another M&M.

  “Love you, honey.” My mom kissed the top of my head and left my sister and I to quietly stew over yesterday’s events.

  “I don’t know why his family showed up if they knew he wasn’t going to walk down the aisle,” my aunt huffed.

  Both women were back in the kitchen.

  “Maybe they didn’t know,” my mom offered.

  “They had to know. There were quotes in the article. This whole thing could have gone away quietly, but it was front page news.”

  She had a point.

  “At the church, I heard his mom say Maddie was too much of a dreamer.” My aunt’s voice lowered, but I still heard every single word.

  “At the wedding?” my mom seethed. “I never liked Mark, but at least I kept that to myself.”

  I brought in a deep breath and shut my eyes to keep in the tears. Mark might not have married me, I might have lost the home we shared, and his family might have stripped me of my business loan, but there was one more thing the ordeal took from me far worse than anything else, and I’d carry that final secret with me to the grave.

  Mark’s mom was right about one thing.

  I did have dreams, and I’d never let a man get in the way of them again.

  Chapter Two

  I hovered my nose over the tin and took in a deep sniff. An orange aroma swirled around me, and I was immediately transported to heaven on earth. This vanilla and orange tea blend would be our next winner for the tea shop.

  I could feel it.

  I secured the lid back on the tin, turned up Salt-N-Peppa’s Shoop, and let the music from the nineties take me away as I danced my way to the chamomile to concoct another tea experiment.

  There was something about this song that always made my hips move. It also happened to be the song I had my first ever make-out session to when I was back in junior high.

  I chuckled to myself thinking about what a fiasco that had been as I scooped some chamomile onto the scale. In hindsight, I think all of my relationships with men have been a wreck.

  What needed to be done was simple. I needed to understand the male brain. I needed to get close enough to someone to see how a man thinks.

  Definitely. That would open a world of possibilities for me.

  Next year would be the year that my view on men would change. Although I did say that last year and the year before, but I needed baby steps. First, I needed to prove to myself that not all men were created as equally bad as my ex-fiancé. Maybe if I befriended one, I could learn to trust the opposite sex again.

  Perfect!

  I had a plan.

  The next man who walked into my shop would be my trial run. If I could handle a platonic friendship and get inside his mind then I might really have a shot at understanding what made men tick.

  Then I might be able to step my toe into the dating world the following year.

  I hummed to the song filling my tiny workroom and felt the joy of the Christmas season fill me up to the brim. I didn’t need Christmas songs to make me happy. After all, how often does a girl get to listen to songs from the nineties doing something she loves?

  Not nearly often enough.

  Moving to Fireweed Island had been the best decision of my life. I was able to leave everything behind in Illinois and never look back. The fact that my sister joined me on the island made my little cosmos perfect.

  My only hope was that my sister, Holly, would never bring up why I left our perfect little town of five-thousand residents, minus me. There were reasons I fled to a tiny cluster of islands clear across the country, and my hope was that those reasons would stay where they belonged.

  Tightly packed in a tangled web of bad memories and lessons learned.

  I shivered at the thought and turned my attention back to enjoying tea.

  The store was closed for the evening, and I was just waiting for Dorinda, a local courier, to bring some lavender from the next island over. Dorinda had a daughter on Fireweed and a son on Hound Island so she did a lot of the delivering for free rides on the ferry. It was a great business opportunity for her sin
ce ferry rides could add up.

  My little tea shop had been way busier for the holidays than I ever imagined, and I only had enough lavender for one more batch of our Snuggle Time tea. At this rate, we wouldn’t have enough to get us through Christmas, and I liked to be ahead of the game, ready to face any challenge that presented itself long before it appeared.

  I walked out to the storefront to look at the next day’s orders that had come through online and sighed as I continued to wiggle the mouse back and forth, waiting for the computer internet connection to come to life.

  I might have a successful tea shop, but my ability to keep my wireless going was an entirely different story.

  Grumbling to myself, I leaned under the counter and began wiggling wires and unplugging cords from the router and my computer.

  “Maddie Wildes?” A deep, masculine voice called into the tea shop.

  I smacked my head on the counter and let out a groan as hurried footsteps landed on the other side of the counter.

  “Are you okay?” The stranger’s voice sounded concerned.

  And sexy.

  A shadow circled around me from above as I pulled myself out from under the counter with a grunt, stunned to see the man hovering over me holding a package.

  “You’re not Dorinda,” I said, my voice cracking as I thought about the vow I’d made only minutes earlier. It was a bad idea.

  “Nope.” His tousled blond hair and bronzed skin looked like he belonged on a sunny beach somewhere, not bouncing between a rainy chain of islands delivering packages. His square jawline, full lips, and beautiful blue eyes made my stomach do a flip and a dip.

  Or maybe it was the way he was looking at me. It was like this guy knew me from somewhere, but I knew that was impossible. I would remember him even if I only saw him across the grocery store.