Love Story (Love Unexpectedly 3)

I think my pride might kill me.

Nearly an hour later, he meets me at the coat check, helping me into my trench as I make a grab for the award-winning wine bottle in his hand. “Now do I get to see the bottle?” I ask, knowing that Abbott Vineyards has the unique quirk of letting each winemaker pick the name of the wine beyond the type of grape. “You’ve been so weird about it!”

Reece hesitates for only the briefest of moments before letting me pry the bottle from his hand.

I take in the familiar Abbott logo, the cabernet sauvignon descriptor, and then I see the name of the wine itself, and my happy smile turns into stunned wonder, and I look up at him.

“Love Story,” I say. “You named it Love Story. And there’s a little cartoon car that

looks suspiciously like Horny.”

His face is embarrassed. “Don’t turn it into a thing.”

I catch his arm when he tries to turn away. “Love Story. Like…our story?”

Reece scratches his cheek, before finally meeting my eyes. “Is it dumb? It just came to me, and it seemed…fitting.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s pretty much the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

His eyes light up, and I can tell he’s pleased by my reaction. “I was going to name it Endgame, but…”

“But what?” I say as we walk hand in hand toward the car (a secondhand Toyota sedan, since poor Horny is needing more and more naps these days).

“Well, because much as I love my work, I realized that a bottle of wine was never going to be my endgame,” he says.

“No? What is?” I ask, climbing into the car as he opens the passenger side for me. “Reece?” I prod, when he doesn’t reply.

Instead of answering, he ushers me in, gives me a mysterious smile, and shuts the door.

I bite my lip, trying desperately to get a grip on my euphoric smile before he opens the driver’s-side door.

I’m pretty sure Reece’s real endgame has to do with the diamond ring I spotted in his sock drawer.

And I want that ring on my fourth finger so bad, I’m practically levitating.

But, hey, I can be patient. If our story has taught me anything, it’s that the wait is always worth it.

Author’s Note

Here’s a little something nobody told me about being a professional author: The further you get in your career, the more choices you’ll have to make. What to write. When to write. How to write it. Who to listen to. Where to publish it.

The tricky part? Sometimes you get pulled in contradictory directions, and before you know it you can become paralyzed with all the sparkly options!

It took me a while to figure it out, but the best way to work through this is to know your priorities.

Mine? Writing the story I want to write. The freedom to tell the story that’s loudest in my imagination, the story that’s begging to be told.

Sounds obvious, but the truth is, it’s sometimes hard to find a home for these stories!

Which is why I need to start out my acknowledgments by thanking the following three people: Nicole Resciniti, Sue Grimshaw, and Gina Wachtel.

Right there you have my creative muse’s holy trinity, because these are the ladies who make stories like Love Story possible. I tell Nicole (my agent) that I’ve got a story in my head that won’t let go, and without batting an eye, she says, “Let’s find a home for it.” Sue and Gina are that home, enabling characters like Reece and Lucy to find a way to your e-reader. Not a day goes by that I don’t think how lucky I am to have this sort of support.

And it doesn’t stop there. Huge shout-out to Erika Seyfried and Madeleine Kenney for their marketing and publicity prowess, as well as being so friendly and fun to work with. To Janet Wygal and her copyediting peeps for polishing my gibberish into a readable book. To Lynn Andreozzi for continuing to be one of the best in the industry when it comes to creating gorgeous covers. Thank you to Matt Schwartz for his brilliance with strategy and numbers, and knowing the answers to all my questions before I even ask them. And to everyone else on the Penguin Random House side who’s touched this book in ways I don’t know about, thank you.

Of course I couldn’t do any of this without the support and patience of my husband, who doesn’t even flinch when I don’t shower on deadline, and to Lisa Filipe, my amazing assistant whose capacity for details continues to blow my mind on a daily basis. Thank you to my street team, who continues to be there for me even when I’m in the cave and don’t pay as much attention as I should.

To Annie Selak, who continues to be my biggest cheerleader, seeming to know exactly when I need an encouraging text on a bad day.