Heat Wave: Nerds of Paradise (A Magnolias and Moonshine Novella Book 18) Read online

  “Exactly,” she said. “And haven’t you been telling me for the last few days that together we can figure out any problem?”

  “Yes.” He was sure he looked as sheepish as he had all those years ago when she led him around by the nose.

  He was certain of it when she laughed, brushed her hand along the side of his face, then pressed up for another kiss. When she lowered herself again and looked up at him, a whole new, serious look had come over her.

  “Huntsville is a nice offer, but there’s no guarantee I’ll get it. There’s no guarantee that NASA will allow me to grow the way you say PSF will. I trust your judgement when it comes to knowing your company. That’s why I’d made up my mind days ago that I would take the Haskell job.”

  An unexpected wave of euphoria rushed through Dennis. “Really? You’re going to come work for PSF?”

  She nodded, her smile growing. “Mmm hmm. How could I pass up the chance to run my own research team?”

  “Oh, I see what’s important to you,” he said, enjoying the joke far more than he should.

  “You certainly do,” she answered, laughing low in her throat. She surged into him, kissing him with a passion that left him praying none of the old folks or her mom were spying on them from the kitchen. It was the kind of kiss that had him wanting to pick her up and carry her to the nearest bedroom so he could show her just how happy he was with her decision.

  All too soon, he had to let the kiss and his need to make love to her go.

  “We will figure out how to be everything we need to be,” he said, still not willing to let her out of his arms. “I’m sure Howie would contribute to some sort of a building fund. We could set one up.”

  “And I’m pretty sure that travel between Haskell and Atlanta is possible,” she added. “We can both come back to help when we need to.”

  “That’s true.” Dennis grinned. “PSF does, in fact, offer vacation time to its employees. Four weeks, in fact.”

  “Four weeks paid vacation a year?” She blinked in surprise.

  “Yeah, I know.” His grin widened. “Why do you think I took the job? It’s all about the perks.”

  “Sounds like it,” she said. She leaned into him, hugging him tighter and making a sound of immense relief.

  Dennis shared ever bit of that relief. He could hardly believe he held Angelica in his arms now, after so many years. And he would get to keep on holding her. At last, it felt as though all the pieces of his past, present, and future were fitting into place. As long as he had Angelica by his side, it didn’t matter where he was, he’d be home.

  Epilogue

  Angelica rode with her face practically pressed up against the passenger window of Dennis’s car from the moment they pulled out of long-term parking at the Salt Lake City airport until they pulled onto the campus of Paradise Space Flight in Haskell.

  “Wow,” she said for the hundredth time. “It’s absolutely amazing. Why didn’t you tell me the West was so gorgeous?”

  “Well, there’s a huge variation in geography from Salt Lake City to Haskell,” Dennis explained with a laugh. He cut the car engine then hopped out, running around the front of his car as if he would hold the door for her.

  Angelica was way ahead of him. She had the door open and was on her feet, breathing in the fresh—if somewhat thin—air of the high prairie. “The mountains were undeniably beautiful,” she went on when Dennis reached her side. “But this flat part just feels so…so big, so expansive. It’s like anything could happen here.”

  Dennis chuckled. “I think that’s why the Haskell ancestors bought all this land and settled here a hundred and fifty years ago.” He shut the car door for her as she took a few steps away and turned in a circle, drinking in her new home.

  Leaving Atlanta, and all the troubles of her neighborhood, behind had been harder than she was willing to let on to anyone to. But she hadn’t simply ditched them. Dennis had taken a couple of weeks of sudden vacation to help out with initial efforts to find Mrs. Brown, Mr. Fellowes, and Mr. Jeffries a temporary home. He’d pounded the pavement as hard as she had, looking for friends to lend them rooms for a while so that they didn’t have to go into homes. And Dennis had also been instrumental in making sure the insurance company came out to assess the damage as soon as possible and to document everything so that the charred remains of Mrs. Brown’s house could be demolished as soon as possible.

  It would still be a while before work could begin on the new house, but as far as Angelica was concerned, things had worked out perfectly. She and Dennis were already talking about another trip back to the old neighborhood to help Latoya rebuild in just a couple of months.

  Angelica finished turning in a circle, studying her new hometown, by facing the enormous, reflective-glass structure that was the PSF building. She flinched at the sight of it.

  “Whoa. Whose idea was it to stick something like—” She flailed as she searched for the right adjectives to describe the modern eyesore. “—that in the middle of all this beauty?”

  “That would be Howie.” Dennis sighed and took her hand. They headed toward the building’s front door. “Howie makes one stunningly awful decision for every twenty brilliant decisions.”

  “Well, it’s definitely stunningly awful,” Angelica agreed.

  Dennis made a hesitant sound. “Just wait until you see the inside to form a full opinion.”

  He was right. As soon as they were through the front door, Angelica gasped. All of the building’s shiny reflectiveness served to make the interior of the building light, bright, and uplifting. The walls were hung with beautiful works of art and photographs of faraway galaxies.

  “Okay, I take it back,” she laughed. “This is incredible.”

  “Not a bad place to spend eight hours a day, five days a week.”

  Dennis nodded for her to turn down a side hall. They walked until they reached an elevator, took it up a couple of floors, then walked out into a cozy and bright open office area. The center of the wide area held more than half a dozen large desks arranged in two rows facing each other, almost like desks would be arranged in an elementary school classroom.

  “Angelica, I’d like you to meet your new team,” Dennis said, loud enough for the men—and one woman—working at the desks to hear.

  They all looked up from their computers, papers, and even a whiteboard covered with equations in the corner, in the case of one man. Angelica was instantly greeted with smiles and warmth.

  “This is our team leader, Scott Martin,” Dennis introduced a stunningly handsome man in khakis and a blue button-down shirt, whose desk sat at the head of the two rows.

  “Mr. Martin.” Angelica held a hand out to him as he came forward to greet her. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Call me Scott, please.” He took her hand when he reached her and shook it firmly. “We all go by our first names here, even Howie.”

  “Especially Howie,” the woman said, jumping up to shake Angelica’s hand too. “Hi, I’m Laura.”

  “Hi, Laura.” If Angelica had had any worries about whether she would fit in at PSF or whether it was a good idea for Dennis to bring her straight here from the airport, they were quickly vanishing. “And Scott. Dennis has told me all about you guys,” she said, facing the others, who were getting up from their desks to greet her. She turned back to Scott. “Congratulations on your engagement.”

  “Oh, so he told you about that, did he.” Scott grinned, obviously over the moon with joy about being engaged, but sending Dennis a mock scolding look all the same.

  “I’m sure Dennis here had all sorts of stories about us,” an Asian man with a wide smile—who Angelica figured must have been Hero Yamaguchi, if she was getting all of Dennis’s stories right—said. “But watch out. We’ve heard a lot of stories about you too.”

  “Not too many,” Dennis rushed to say, blushing furiously. “And all good ones.”

  “He’s been in love with you since you two were kids,” Laura said with a w
ink. The other guys—including a handsome, dark-haired man who looked like he didn’t smile much and must have been Will Darling, and a baby-faced young man with a hint of cowboy to him, who must have been Linus Pettigrew—made scolding, snorting sounds at Laura. “What?” Laura went on. “He sent me an email saying everything worked out between them.”

  “Did he?” Linus perked up. “All right.” He held up his hand for a high-five.

  Dennis sheepishly gave him one.

  “Dennis and I are together,” Angelica said, laughing. By every rule of the universe, it should have bothered her to be the center of gossip. But the people standing in front of her seemed so much like her people, like the crowd she should have been running with all along instead of wasting her time with the likes of Vanessa and Emily, so she didn’t mind. “It was a long time coming, but we can safely say we’re a couple now.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it as proof.

  “Angelica’s moving in with me,” Dennis added, his grin enormous.

  “That’ll save Howie the time finding a place for you to live,” Scott said.

  “It’ll save Howie the time of finding a suitable Haskell girl for him too.”

  They all turned to find none other than Howie Haskell himself coming in from the side hall to greet them. He walked right up to Dennis and clapped a hand on his back, then turned to Angelica with an assessing look.

  “Hmm,” he said, studying her from head to toe. A wave of anxiety bowled into Angelica. She’d never wanted to impress someone so much, or worried that she’d fall short so badly. But those feelings were short-lived. “She looks smart,” he declared. “You’ve got spark. I can tell from looking at you. Besides, Dennis here wouldn’t fall in love with anyone who couldn’t keep up with him.” He turned to Dennis. “I approve.”

  Angelica’s mouth dropped open. She had no idea what to make of the bold, brash man who had just sized her up and declared her…well, smart. He hadn’t led off with “pretty” or “fashionable” or any of the other pseudo-compliments that most men gave her. As taken-aback as she was, she had a feeling she could grow to love Howie Haskell.

  “Howie, you’ve offered her a job and have been trying to get her to take it for over a year,” Dennis said. “I would hope you approve of her.”

  Howie snorted. “I meant that I approve of her to be your snuggle-bunny.” The others burst into variations of embarrassed laughter. Howie smiled at Angelica and winked. “I only hire the best, but I take a serious interest in the happiness and well-being of my employees. So only those who are better than the best get my stamp of approval to date my work family.”

  Angelica burst into laughter. “Uh, okay.” She wasn’t entirely sure Howie was for real.

  “And as for you, young woman,” he turned to Laura. “We need to have a little talk about a certain young rancher.”

  “We…do?” Laura turned downright pale.

  “I’ve got a little bone to pick with you,” Howie went on. “A dinosaur bone. What’s this about you finding a valuable fossil on the Flint Ranch?”

  Laura recovered her color and then some. She stammered for a few seconds before saying, “It’s a unique, and probably incredibly valuable, specimen of two dinosaurs who must have died in combat with each other. One of them—a potentially new species of carnivore—is biting the other, a Protoceratops.”

  “Excellent.” Howie clapped his hands together. “Come up to my office so we can discuss it. And as for you, lovely Miss Angelica Jones, who I am proud to have as a member of my family.” He reached for Angelica’s hand and shook it heartily. “Welcome to Haskell.”

  Angelica still wasn’t sure she’d recovered by the time Laura followed Howie out of the room and Dennis led her around the immediate office area on a tour. She finally shook herself out of the stunned silence Howie had left her in as she and Dennis reached a balcony overlooking an interior courtyard and what must have been the entrance to the planetarium Dennis had mentioned.

  “Is he always like that?” she asked, pointing her thumb over her shoulder.

  “Who, Howie?” Dennis laughed. “Yes. That was tame for him.”

  Angelica let out a low whistle, then joined Dennis in laughing. Her head had been spinning for days, weeks, but she was finally beginning to feel like the ground was settling under her feet. She couldn’t help but slide closer to Dennis and close him in a hug.

  “I’m so glad I came to my senses and made the right decision,” she said, breathing easy as he hugged her back.

  “Me too,” Dennis said. “I have a good feeling about this.”

  She smiled and closed her eyes, resting her head on his shoulder. After so many years of missing him, and even more years of skating far too close to ruining both of their lives, things finally felt the way they should, the way they were destined to be.

  “I have a good feeling about this too,” she said. “We’re going to change the world together.”

  Excited to read more about Dennis, Angelica, and the gang at Paradise Space Fight? Be sure to check out my Nerds of Paradise series, beginning with Opposites Attract—the story of Dennis’s boss, Scott Martin, and his attempt to build a “green” house and win the heart of cowgirl Casey Flint—and Chaos Theory—a romance between an uptight engineer, a flighty free-spirit, and the competition that drops them in the middle of the wilderness alone together. And coming very soon, book three in the series, Carbon Dating. Boy meets girl (and finds fossil), boy loses girl (and fossil), boy wins girl (and fossil) back, boy give girl fossil. Ah, if only it were that easy!

  And be sure to check out the rest of the books in the Magnolias & Moonshine series:

  The Sassy Bride by Ciara Knight

  Her Hero by Hildie McQueen

  Hurricane Bride by Beth Williamson

  The Wedding Charm by Susan Hatler

  Sweet Love of Mine by Lindi Peterson

  Moon Over Atlanta by Kymber Morgan

  Georgia on My Mind by Amanda McIntyre

  It Could Happen to Us by Lucy McConnell

  SEAL You in My Dreams by Sharon Hamilton

  Magnolia Mystic by Lisa Kessler

  Anxious in Atlanta by Kristen Osbourne

  Southern Secrets by Susan Carlisle

  Out-lanta by Tina DeSalvo

  From Now On by Raine English

  Sweet Georgia Peach by Amelia Adams

  Maybe Baby by E. E. Burke

  A Kiss is Just a Kiss by Melinda Curtis

  Heat Wave by Merry Farmer

  Taste of Tara by Shanna Hatfield

  Hit and Run Love by Jennifer Peel

  Click here for a complete list of other works by Merry Farmer.

  About the Author

  I hope you have enjoyed Heat Wave. If you’d like to be the first to learn about when new books in the series come out and more, please sign up for my newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/RQ-KX And remember, Read it, Review it, Share it! For a complete list of works by Merry Farmer with links, please visit http://wp.me/P5ttjb-14F.

  Merry Farmer is an award-winning novelist who lives in suburban Philadelphia with her two cats, Torpedo (her grumpy old man) and Justine (the new baby girl). She has been writing since she was ten years old and realized one day that she didn't have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something. It was the best day of her life. She then went on to earn not one but two degrees in History so that she would always have something to write about. Her books have topped the Amazon and iBooks charts and have been named finalists in the prestigious RONE and Rom Com Reader’s Crown awards.

  @MerryFarmer20

  merryfarmerauthor

  merryfarmer.net

  [email protected]

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank all the people who have been cheering me on to write this series—something I’ve been dying to do for over a year now! Huge thanks to my editors, Cissie Patterson, J.R. Tague, and Carly Cole. And a world of gratitude to my excellent and opinionated beta readers, Carol
ine Lee and Joline Stewart. And a special thanks to my “nerd on call,” Lael Odhner, who not only has his own robot-making company, but inspired me with a billion ideas for this entire series through his shenanigans when we were in college.

  And a special thank you to Ciara Knight and Hildie McQueen for organizing the entire Magnolias & Moonlight project!

  Click here for a complete list of other works by Merry Farmer.