Always You: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection Books 5-8) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Embracing Her Ever After

  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

  Epilogue

  Falling for a Former Flame

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Gambling on a Gentleman

  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

  Epilogue

  Hooking a Handyman

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Newsletter Sign Up

  a sweet romantic comedy

  BRENNA JACOBS

  Chapter One

  No way.

  NO WAY.

  Tessa watched the tall guy coming through the lobby doors into the BBMJ Industries foyer—a space as bland as the company name.

  It was Ethan Bedford. But Ethan 2.0. She ran a quick eye over him before he noticed her. She’d been expecting him, of course. She was the one who’d recruited Ethan to join her engineering team at BBMJ, which was why she was waiting in the lobby to welcome him to his first day on the job. But she hadn’t expected him to have changed so much in six years.

  She hadn’t seen him since they’d graduated from the grueling Georgia Tech mechanical engineering program, and wow. Those six years had been very good to him.

  He wasn’t any taller—thank goodness, because he was already a few inches over six feet—but his gawky frame had filled out, and he’d traded the college hoodie and mesh basketball shorts he’d practically lived in for a crisp, blue-checked button-down shirt, and gray work slacks. His perpetually shaggy dark hair had been tamed with a professional haircut, but his smile was exactly the same when his warm brown eyes finally found her.

  “Tessa?”

  Oops. She hoped her ogling hadn’t been too obvious. “Ethan!” She hurried forward to meet him with a hug, a short, friendly one like the dozen they’d shared before, but even that short contact was enough to tell her that his bony angles had been majorly upgraded with layers of hard muscle. Whoa. Talk about a system redesign.

  “So good to see you.” She stepped back so she didn’t give the receptionist or security guard anything to wonder about. “You really should have called me when you got in last night. I could have treated you to dinner or helped you unload.”

  “This morning,” he corrected her. “I got in close to one, threw a sleeping bag down on the floor, and crashed.”

  She winced. “I feel so bad for dragging you in without more time to settle, but we kind of don’t have a choice.”

  “Don’t feel bad at all. Six hours of sleep is plenty for me. I’m ready to jump in.”

  “Great.” She pivoted and led him to the receptionist desk. “Sign in here, let’s get you cleared, and I’ll bring you in to meet the team.” The receptionist handed Ethan his security badge, and Tessa immediately shepherded him through the first secure door.

  “I can’t believe how efficient you are here. It took forever to onboard at my last job,” he said, hitching his nylon messenger bag over his shoulder and hurrying after her. She approved the choice. Canvas might look better, but it was so impractical.

  She slowed slightly while he caught up. “You sound surprised.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t have been after how quickly the office processed everything this week. But I got kind of nervous when I pulled in…”

  She smiled as his voice trailed off, a mannerism that she remembered well. He’d often done that right when he was on the verge of saying something too blunt. In a graduating cohort of mostly male engineers, he was one of the few who seemed to sense that sometimes there were more diplomatic ways to say things.

  “Let me guess. The flagship BBMJ campus doesn’t look like the headquarters of the leading manufacturing and design outfit in North America?”

  “Well . . . no.”

  Her smiled widened. To the uninitiated eye, the company site looked like a half-dozen bland stucco-and-glass buildings like a thousand other business parks in Anytown, USA. “They save all the bells and whistles for the research and design facilities in the secure parts of the complex. Visualize the buildings you saw when you drove up, and then picture them going three times as deep underground. It’ll take you a little longer to get access to the more secure buildings, but trust me, BBMJ is far more impressive behind steel doors.”

  She was glad for the small talk. Maybe it would cover up the fact that she was still off-balance from Ethan’s reappearance. Or rather, just Ethan’s appearance. The hair, the clothes. Not that his clothes were unusual. Button-downs and work slacks were pretty much the uniform for everyone on her team. It was just his . . . everything, really. The way he held himself. His easy, direct gaze. He was so different than she remembered. Back then, he’d been as awkward and gangly as all the other guys in her program, but he’d grown up. Nicely.

  Ethan was talking to her, she realized. She forced herself to focus on his words.

  “So, do you?”

  Shoot. She hadn’t focused fast enough. “Sorry, my mind was already jumping ahead to the . . . project. Do I what?”

  “Like working for a conglomerate? I hadn’t realized you were working here until you offered me the consulting gig. It’s kind of off-brand for you, isn’t it?”

  There was no judgment in his tone, just curiosity, and she understood his surprise. “Because I was on a crusade in college to change the world with alternative energy solutions?” She smiled, even more anxious now to pull back the curta
in on the project she’d recruited him for. “Being here is less off-brand than you think, and now that you’re officially cleared, I can give you all the details that matter. But first, an elevator ride.”

  She couldn’t wait to show him the lab. It was equipped with state-of-the-art machines from CNC routers to 3D printers. She’d nearly drooled when they’d been moved out of the applications workshop—the cramped workspace in their old building—and into their new digs.

  “You’re going to flip when you see this place.” Ethan was the only person she knew who was as capable of falling in love with industrial manufacturing machines as she was. They’d been inseparable in the Georgia Tech machine shop, booking time to tinker far beyond their program requirements. “I can’t believe Standard Labs let you go.”

  “They didn’t really have a choice,” he said. “They’ve been jerks ever since I got the nod for Klieber, and since I start that in six weeks anyway . . . ” He shrugged. “Besides, their breakroom coffee sucked.”

  “Everyone complains about my coffee, but the rest of the facility will make up for it.”

  “I can’t wait to see it.”

  “I’m dying to show it to you. And full disclosure, I’m hoping you’ll be so wowed that you’ll decide to abandon Klieber and stay here permanently.” He laughed, and she joined him. The idea of anyone turning down Klieber was definitely a joke. The European design firm was tiny in comparison to BBMJ, but they had been at the forefront of every major new energy solution in Europe for the last five years. Heck, if BBMJ pulled the funding on her prototype, she might even go banging on the Swiss firm’s door and beg to be hired.

  But first, she realized, as Ethan’s subtle woodsy-smelling shower gel or shampoo or something tickled her nose, she was going to have to survive this reintroduction to him. She was staring at his shoulders. Again. She pretended to look for something in her work bag while she refocused.

  They’d almost had a thing in college. Sort of. Maybe? She hadn’t had much experience dating, especially not after her one and only boyfriend, Dylan, turned out to be the lowest sort of rat before she’d transferred to Georgia Tech. But even then, she’d sensed interest from Ethan. Maybe it was the way he’d always sought her out in the lab, or the way she’d caught him looking at her sometimes, a mixture of hope and curiosity when he studied her, and then the red flush that would darken his ears when she caught him.

  She’d been pulled in too, easy with him in a way that she hadn’t been with anyone. Ever. Then one night, he’d leaned toward her with a soft look in his eye, and . . .

  Well. She’d bolted that night, and from that point on she created a space between them just in case, choosing other partners, hurrying out of class so he didn’t try to walk her to the next one. He’d backed off, and late in their final semester, she’d spotted him kissing a willowy brunette in front of the engineering building before class one day.

  She glanced casually now at his ring finger, but it was bare. It didn’t necessarily mean he was single, but the only social media he maintained was his WorkLink profile, and those didn’t list personal details.

  Not that it mattered. At all. He was leaving the country in six weeks. And even if he wasn’t, she’d worked too hard to get to this moment, standing on the verge of a revolutionary new technology, to risk a distraction like dating a co-worker. The only “ring” she needed to worry about was the elevator bell letting them know they’d reached the lab. She shifted her eyes to the front and kept them on the doors, waiting for them to slide open so she could introduce Ethan to her favorite space on the planet.

  Chapter Two

  Ethan kept his eyes on the elevator panel, watching the floors tick down while he listened to Tessa’s breezy monologue about the lab and everything that awaited them there. It shouldn’t have been so hard to concentrate on her light chatter, but he’d known this was a possibility. He’d always been like this around her in college—tongue-tied to the point of muteness by the raging crush he’d harbored their senior year. Well, until Sarah.

  He pushed away the familiar pang that accompanied the thought of her, the memory of her, and concentrated on Tessa again. Tessa, who he did not have a barely concealed crush on any longer.

  I grew up, he reminded himself. In his head, he said it in the stern voice of Professor Quaid, the most feared teacher in the mechanical engineering program because he suffered exactly no nonsense.

  Ethan forced himself to release the tension he’d been carrying in his shoulders since pulling into the BBMJ parking lot. He’d chalked that up to first-day jitters, but the second he’d seen Tessa he’d realized how much of it had been nerves about seeing her. If she’d changed at all, it was only to acquire a new layer of polish. Her dark brown hair hung in a straight, shiny sheet past her shoulders. She wore a little makeup now, and she’d traded her borderline inappropriate funny T-shirts for a soft-looking shirt covered with—he looked closer—little flowers. It brushed his arm as she turned slightly toward him, and he was surprised when goosebumps broke out where it touched.

  Really, Ethan? Professor Quaid’s voice said.

  “Sorry, what did you say?” The tips of his ears heated. He’d lost focus while he spent all his mental energy on trying to act normal around her.

  She answered with a laugh. “I know, I know. I could talk about this forever. I’ve been dying to bring you on board, and now I’m going to overwhelm you with my nonstop monologues about why you’re going to love it.” The elevator dinged to announce that they had reached their floor. “Well, as my seventh grade English teacher used to say, how about if I show instead of tell?”

  The doors slid open and she stepped out, waving her arms in a welcome gesture and grinning again. He stepped out too, and his eyebrows shot up. Tessa hadn’t been kidding about how well-equipped his new workspace would be. It was large, three-thousand square feet at least, with industrial polished concrete floors and crisp white walls. People talked about new-car smell, but it had nothing on the faint metal and paint tang of newly delivered lab equipment, fresh from the factory, oiled and ready to cut out prototypes and three-dimensional parts that turned the concepts drawn in CAD into reality.

  His fingers twitched to explore the features of the shiny CNC router, but he couldn’t just walk into someone else’s lab and start playing with their toys. There was a protocol, and he slid his restless hands into his pockets to still them. The lab was quiet, the handful of people inside it having paused their work to glance over at them, but when the machines ran . . . it was as soothing to him as the lap of the Chesapeake against his grandparents’ dock.

  Tessa touched his arm to indicate he should follow her into the lab. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to everyone and then give you the tour.”

  “Everyone” was only three people. Sanjay, an Indian guy a few years older than them, glanced up then right back down at the circuit board he was fiddling with. A black guy, Darius, turned from the CAD program on his monitor to give him a small wave and mumble “Hi,” before he dove back into his work. Tessa led him past them to stop in front of a middle-aged white woman with a liberal sprinkling of gray in her hair. She rose to shake his hand and introduced herself before Tessa could.

  “I’m Mary Beale, the project manager on Helios.”

  He smiled at the project name. “Helios, huh? Fitting name for a solar project.”

  “We think so. I hope you’re able to help us bring it home. Tessa says you were the only guy smarter than her in her senior seminar. If that’s true, we’re glad to have you.”

  “Wow. High praise. Guess she didn’t tell you that she took highest honors in our class.”

  “By a point,” Tessa said.

  “Either way, we’re glad for another set of hands,” Mary said. “I hope you prove to be as useful as she says you are. Management gives us all the technology resources we need, but they are stingy with their human resources. Tessa assures me we made the most efficient choice possible.”

  “You did.” Tess
a quirked her head to indicate they should move on, and Mary went back to her work and appeared to forget him as completely as Darius and Sanjay had. “Do I need to apologize for anyone?” she asked him quietly when they reached the far side of the room where the CNC router sat.

  He rolled his eyes. “Come on. I’ve been working with engineers since I was a teenager.”

  She nodded and let it drop. “We call the desks over there Think Quad. The machines here are Make Quad.” She waved at a stack of something covered in canvas in the third section. “That’s Test Quad. Now you’re oriented.”

  He nodded at the empty section on the opposite side of the space. “What’s that one?”

  “Nothing yet. But ‘quad’ sounds cool so that’s what we stick with.” She patted the machine beside them. “Have you worked on a Baileigh before?”

  “No. We had a Jinan, but I’ve heard these cut with a whole new level of precision.”

  “It does. And it’s fast.” She patted it the way his older brother patted the roof of his BMW, a clear affection in her touch. “It’s amazing and it’s only my second favorite child. You have to see our 3D printer.”

  “And then we’ll talk about the project?” he asked as he followed her to the next machine.

  “Try to get me to stop.” This time her grin was wide enough to show the slight dimple to the right of her mouth. He’d had a thing for that dimple in college. It pulled an answering smile from him.

  “After your tour here,” she continued, “I’m going to walk you over to HR so you can get your final security clearances. That’ll get you logins and PINs so you can use all the machines, but I just wanted you to know what resources you’re going to have as we work on this thing.”

  “Can’t wait to find out what the ‘thing’ is. Is that it?” He nodded toward Test Quad and the canvas-covered rectangular lump the size and shape of a pallet of Top Ramen at Costco, the only food he bought in bulk because he lived on it, pretty much. That and bananas. Some things hadn’t changed since college.

  “That’s it,” she said. “The gamechanger that green technology has been waiting for, the modification that is going to make Elon Musk question his whole existence. And you can see it right after you jump through all the HR hoops today. I’ll whip that cover off first thing tomorrow for you, and you’re going to help me solve the final inefficiency.”