Rush: A Second Chance Romance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1 - The Line of Succession

  Chapter 2 - The Art of Confidence

  Chapter 3 - Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object

  Chapter 4 - Diametrically Opposed

  Chapter 5 - Give and Take

  Chapter 6 - A New Project

  Chapter 7 - Staying Warm

  Chapter 8 - Sound Advice

  Chapter 9 - Letting Go

  Chapter 10 - Change of Plans

  Chapter 11 - Always By Your Side

  Chapter 12 - Mistakes

  Chapter 13 - Illogical

  Rush

  Ellen Lane

  WARNING: This Ebook contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language. It may be considered offensive to some readers. This Ebook is for sale to adults ONLY.

  © Copyright 2017 - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher.

  All rights reserved. Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Naughty Business

  Top Love

  Saving Hearts

  Certainty

  Trouble

  Prologue

  This was wrong.

  Rhett knew he should have been packing to leave, but he couldn’t concentrate on the empty boxes before him. He kept glancing out of his bedroom window and down the street towards the last roof on their lane.

  He knew she was home. Around this time, she’d be coming home from her part time job to either take a nap or fight Jeb for the remote and catch the latest nature documentary.

  The thought was enough to make the corners of his mouth twitch for a moment before he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

  Packing to leave.

  With a groan, he shoved aside the mess of clothes on his bed to collapse there, face down. What the hell was wrong with him? He should be happy. Ecstatic even. He was finally getting out of the hell hole he’d had the misfortune to call home for his entire life. If anything, he should be all but rushing to get out of his room - out of this tiny nowhere town and into the real world.

  But he wasn’t.

  There was something holding him back - making him wonder if, perhaps, Stanford wasn’t the best idea after all. There was no question that it was the best way out. The school was, without a doubt, a one-way ticket to changing his life.

  But if it meant he had to leave her behind, was it really the best option?

  Jesus, he was being stupid.

  Rhett rolled onto his back to stare up at the same cracked, leaking ceiling he’d fallen asleep to for what seemed like an eternity and reminded himself how much he wanted to get out of here. Georgia held a wealth of bad memories for him. This was where he lost his family - where he lost everything.

  Not that he’d ever really had anything. The only thing that had ever truly belonged to Rhett was...well.

  Crap. This wasn’t how he’d planned to spend his last day here. He was supposed to be celebrating - sneaking the Carters’ wine from the porcelain cabinet downstairs without a care in the world. If he were any other seventeen-year-old boy in the entire world, he would be overjoyed at the life that awaited him!

  Instead, he was pining over a girl.

  That was all it was, Rhett reminded himself, if Cecily Warner was just an ordinary girl. He didn’t know how any ordinary girl could stand having someone like Jeb for a brother.

  While he and the older boy had been close when they were kids, Jeb had grown spiteful and a bit too cruel for Rhett’s tastes as they grew older. As he and Jeb lost touch with one another, however, Rhett and Cece grew closer. Ultimately, he ended up using Jeb as an excuse to see her every time he made his way to the Warner household.

  Cecily was everything her brother wasn’t - kind, patient, funny and bright. When she was knee-high, he’d been annoyed by the way she followed Jeb and him around like she was their shadow. He couldn’t count how many times he’d saved her from breaking her neck or drowning when her brother could have cared less.

  But then, something profound happened: Cece grew into a woman. It was like Rhett just looked up one day, and there she was, all curves and dark brown hair framing that perfect, heart-shaped face. Sometime in the past decade she’d shed the glasses that made her look bug-eyed for contacts and started wearing clothing that drew the eye to certain...interesting places.

  She was gorgeous, and her brother knew it. Jeb did everything in his power to keep any and every guy in the neighborhood away from Cece. It was one of the many ways he liked to lord his power over other people. Cece, however, refused to stay under her brother’s thumb and was constantly finding ways around him.

  Gradually, they had come together.

  Even if their relationship wasn’t quite as physical as Rhett wanted, he found himself content to simply be in her presence. When Cece smiled at him, he forgot about his shitty home life. He forgot his troubles, his woes and everything else in between because goddamn she was beautiful. Just being in the same room as her made the world a better place.

  Or, at least, it had.

  When he got accepted to Stanford, everything changed.

  Of course, she was happy for him. Cece refused to let anyone see her upset. Even when she was mad at the world she still kept a smile firmly in place. The moment he told her he’d been accepted, she was over the moon. There was never a question of his not going. With a full scholarship and dreams of a better future, Stanford offered him everything he could ever need.

  Everything, that was, except Cece.

  She told him he was going - that there was no chance of her holding him back from his aspirations. Though Rhett had tried to come up with any other excuse than her for staying in the suburb where they’d grown up, in the end, all he could do was agree. The way she’d smiled - insisted that it would be the best for him...how could he say no?

  He was supposed to be leaving tomorrow, and all their goodbyes had already been said. Nothing left to do but pack and go.

  So why the hell was he leaving his room?

  Rhett was up before he could stop himself, headed downstairs and out the front door before his foster parents could demand to know where he was going.

  In the last few days of summer vacation every kid in the neighborhood was doing their best to enjoy the nice weather and relative freedom of the
neighborhood. Someone had pried the cap off of a fire hydrant and at least ten munchkins were playing in it, leaving a harried trail of dark footprints across the pavement in their wake.

  Parents too overheated to run after their kids lounged on lawns in need of watering, and the sun blared down from a cloudless sky. Typical Georgia summer weather - the kind he and Jeb used to love to make mischief in when they were young and fearless. Now, he had no idea how Jeb was staying in school. He skipped every other day, his aspirations swinging wildly back and forth between the unobtainable and the purely fantastic. Even Cece had to roll her eyes every time her brother came up with a new get-rich-quick scheme...but if there was anything Jeb hated, it was when he found them putting their heads together to talk about him.

  The fact of the matter was that they both worried - no one more than Cece. She worried that he was going in a dangerous direction, and argued with him every time he tried to lord their three years’ age difference over her. Rhett could only hope he got his head on the right way soon...if for nothing else than to stop chasing guys away from Cece. She deserved to be happy - to have her chance at a summer fling or even a more serious romance.

  Even if it wasn’t him.

  That wasn’t to say the thought didn’t make Rhett’s gut churn with jealousy.

  At the end of the block, Rhett stopped. Jeb and Cece lived in the last house on the left, and if the light in the living room window was any indication, they were watching TV. He knew it would be suicide to actually talk to her, but a last glimpse of Cece couldn’t hurt, could it?

  Feeling a bit like a stalker, he crept past their front gate and around the side of the house. Less than ten seconds and he was right underneath the living room window. Holding his breath, Rhett took a chance and popped his head up above the sill.

  To his surprise, Jeb didn’t seem to be home. Cece lounged by herself on the couch, watching what looked like a nature documentary.

  For a good five minutes, Rhett merely stared.

  She was wearing a thin white camisole and the tiniest pair of shorts he’d ever seen. The entire expanse of her tanned, long runner’s legs was visible, along with an inch or two of her flat tummy. It was clear she didn’t expect a single person to see her this way - and that alone was enough to take his breath away.

  He’d always remember her like this - engrossed in something that she loved, so effortlessly beautiful that she couldn’t have any idea what she did to him and his seventeen-year-old libido.

  The first woman he’d ever loved.

  Chapter One

  ~ Cece

  12 Years Later

  It had been a long day.

  Not only had I been called into work early for revisions on an article that I thought I’d finished a week ago, but I’d had also been forwarded two other articles from my department to look over to ensure my own wasn’t too similar to be printed.

  Nevermind that I turned in my article first.

  Shoving back from my desk, I gazed around the office. It was Friday afternoon and the minutes were literally dragging by. Everyone had to be just as restless as I was.

  I did my best not to look at the clock. Instead, I concentrated on the positive things. It was a method my mother had instilled in me since I was little, and even now, with her eight thousand miles away, I could still hear her chiding me.

  You should be grateful for all the good things in your life, Cecily. You have a job, a roof over your head, food in your belly…

  And a boss that was literally trying to kill me with every additional mundane article he heaped atop my already overflowing workload. Luckily for me, I didn’t really have to think when I wrote something for The Burner. It was all gossip and how-tos, made by a young, horny woman for young, horny women.

  And it was killing me.

  I swallowed a groan before forcing my gaze back to the computer screen. My article - How to Win Him Back When You Think You’ve Lost Him - was still staring me in the face. Taunting me. I’d been through about ten versions at this point and I didn’t know whether Jim would like this one any more than the last one.

  In the past three years that I’d been working for The Burner, the irony of having a man head a women’s magazine had occurred to me more than a handful of times. Hell, it occurred to me near every damned day. Not only was Jim a man, he was a fairly ignorant one at that. Every time I suggested putting something substantial in The Burner’s scandalous pages, he talked me down in a condescending voice that made me want to off myself.

  We must keep the material consistent, Cecily. The gossip columns and how-tos are what our readers know us for. It’s what they know YOU for. You wouldn’t want to ruin the reputation you spent so long building, would you?

  Oh, he had no idea. I would very much like to demolish the entire structure of what I’d built over the last three years and start all over.

  But that, unfortunately, was out of the question.

  According to my mother, I should be thankful that I had a job - and I was. My position at The Burner put food on the table and paid for my apartment. But that didn’t mean I had to like it. After all, I hadn’t gotten a degree in journalism from Emory to be a gossip columnist. I’d always planned to be a reporter.

  A real reporter that worked on real stories.

  I interned at CNN, for God’s sake! With the recommendation I was given, I should have been able to work anywhere...but dreams don’t often go the way we plan them. A year after college, I was so desperate to be out on my own that I took the first job I was offered and now, here I was.

  Still taking it.

  Frowning, I looked over my article one last time. I didn’t think I’d be able to stand it if Jim sent it back to me again, so when I sent it, I turned my computer screen off and made my way to the break room for a cup of coffee. I certainly needed it.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t even have my daily dose of caffeine in peace. The moment I opened the break room door, I paused in the doorway at the sight of Jim taking the last bit of coffee. After watching this little routine for three years, I knew better to think that he would dump the filter and refresh the pot. He was far too self-absorbed for that.

  The tall man tilted the coffee pot near vertically to get the last few drops out before setting the empty vessel back on the coffee maker. I had about two seconds in which to frown before he noticed me watching him. “Ah, Cecily! Just the woman I was looking for.”

  I had been looking for coffee, but I managed to arrange my mouth into some semblance of a smile. “Afternoon, Jim. Did you get the final copy of my article?”

  At least, I hoped it would be the final copy. “I just got back from lunch,” he sipped at my coffee with an indulgent sigh. “So, I haven’t had a chance to look through all the submissions, but I’ll get right on it. After I let you in on your next brilliant assignment.”

  It took everything I had not to turn tail and run. I was still trying to deal with my last assignment, and the next issue wasn’t even due until the following Wednesday. I’d hoped to get through the rest of the day without anything else to stress about, but Jim obviously had different plans.

  “Do tell.” I moved past him to start brewing another pot of coffee. That, at least, would keep my fingers from straying towards the man’s neck to strangle him.

  “Come to my office when you’re finished with the coffee.” He looked around the empty breakroom as if it were somehow bugged before winking at me conspiratorially. “I want you to be the first to hear.”

  I waited until after he left to sigh forlornly. If experience working at The Burner had taught me anything, it was that Jim’s excitement over a project usually meant hell for me. The last time he was so excited about an article was when he sent me to a strip club to get a top ten list for ladies orally pleasing their men. The very memory made me shudder.

  It wasn’t that I had anything against strippers and strip clubs, but Jim must have sent me to the seediest place in Atlanta. About a month after my article was publish
ed, it was closed down for health code violations.

  This had better not be a repeat of that incident.

  I gave myself a good ten minutes to prepare - just long enough for the coffee to finish brewing. No sooner had the pot topped itself off then I filled my mug and took a long swallow. The caffeine was like nirvana - so good I wondered how I’d made it through the morning without it.

  Oh, yes. That’s right - I’d been called in early. No time to brew my own.

  Scowling, I stalked back through the office, making my way past my cubicle and to Jim’s corner office. It took me another two minutes of standing outside to force my expression into a placid one before I knocked on the door.

  “Come!”

  I tried to be in Jim’s office as little as possible. He hoarded the few awards The Burner had won in its short ten-year existence, regardless of who’d won them. The way he lorded the damn things over us, you might think we were the New York Times. “You’re going to want to have a seat, Cecily. This news will knock your socks off.”

  Jesus, if he told me I was getting on a strip club stage I was going to die. Right then and there. Spontaneous combustion. I sank down into one of the hard chairs before his desk and waited with bated breath.

  For perhaps a good minute longer than was necessary, Jim kept me waiting. Then, he spoke two tremulous words. “Rhett Wilder.”

  For a moment, I merely stared at him. While the name certainly surprised me, it wasn’t for the reasons he might have suspected. Memories I thought I’d long forgotten rushed over me, and I found the corners of my mouth quirking upward in a small smile.

  Rhett.

  Jesus, it had been ages since he’d last crossed my mind. Thinking about him reminded me of better times - carefree times. When I escaped Jeb, and he snuck out of his house so we could meet in the woods at the edge of the neighborhood to see who could climb higher into the tallest pine.

  I’d broken my leg once - in two places - falling out of that damn tree. It hurt like a son of a bitch and I’d been certain I’d lose the leg, but Rhett had somehow laughed, even though his color was pale, and assured me that a one-legged me was out of the question.