Delivered (Will You Marry Me #3)

Chapter 1

Pauline

The first thing I did when I got back to California was stub my toe on the doorframe of my new apartment.

I hopped backward, grabbing my foot, biting down on a word my grandmother would have smacked me for. Pain shot up my leg. My eyes watered. And I thought, yes. Of course. This feels right. California has always been a place that hurts me the moment I step into it.

I dragged my suitcase inside and stood in the middle of the living room, breathing hard. Cataloging the space with the gaze of someone who’s learned to expect disappointment.

Water stain on the ceiling—shaped vaguely like a middle finger. Radiator in the corner that clanked every thirty seconds like it was trying to send a distress signal. A window overlooking a brick wall and someone’s sad little fire-escape garden—one dead fern and a pigeon with an attitude problem.

The pigeon stared at me through the glass. I stared back.

The pigeon won.

I turned away and surveyed the rest. Small but not terrible.

Clean, mostly. The kitchen had actual counter space, which was more than I could say for my last place.

The bathroom tiles were that shade of pale green that only existed in buildings constructed before 1980, but the water pressure was decent and the mirror wasn’t cracked.

I’d lived in worse. Much worse.

Four years in New Jersey had taught me that an apartment was just a place to sleep and write and drink coffee at odd hours.

My place in Newark had been fine. Good location, reasonable rent, a landlord who fixed things within the same calendar month you reported them.

I had liked my job at the Tribune. Liked my editor and the rhythm of chasing stories in a city that never stopped moving.

I’d built something there. Nothing fancy. Nothing impressive. But mine.

Then Aunt Calista called.

Her voice did that thing—too steady, too careful—and I knew before she even finished the sentence.

I’d submitted my transfer request a few days earlier, then booked a flight here. California Times had an opening, and by some miracle or cosmic joke, I got in.

So here I was. Back in California. Back in the state I’d spent seven years avoiding.

I pulled my grandmother’s photograph from my carry-on and set it on the nightstand.

This was always first. Always. Margaret Wells smiled up at me from behind the glass, wearing her church hat and that expression she got when she knew I was about to do something foolish but had decided to let me learn the hard way.

Seventy-eight years old. She’d raised me alone after my parents died.

Worked the reception desk at Mercy General for thirty years, knowing every nurse and doctor by name, remembering every patient’s birthday. Making everyone who walked through those doors feel like they mattered.

Now she was lying in a hospital bed herself.

I touched the silver chain locket at my throat—her gift, my sixteenth birthday—and held

on like it could keep me standing.

A few months ago, I’d almost lost Claudette. My best friend. The sister I chose. She had been hooked up to machines in a sterile room while I sat in a plastic chair and bargained with a God I wasn’t sure I believed in anymore.

She pulled through. Barely. And I told myself that was the universe reminding me not to take people for granted.

Now this.

Why?

The question clawed at me from somewhere deep, somewhere raw.

Why does life keep doing this to me?

I wasn’t asking for much. I just wanted to live. To love the people I loved without the constant terror of losing them. To breathe without bracing for the next phone call that would shatter everything.

Was that so much? Was that really so much to ask?

I pressed my palm flat against my grandmother’s photograph, the glass cool beneath my fingers.

She’s still here. She’s still fighting.

Tomorrow I would visit her. Right now, I just had to unpack.

I could do that. I was good at doing things.

The suitcase opened easily, and I moved through the apartment with purpose. Clothes in the closet. Toiletries in the bathroom. Laptop on the small desk by the window. My favorite mug in the cabinet above the coffee maker. Running shoes by the door.

I had a system. Systems were good. It meant I didn’t have to think about anything except the next task.

I was reaching for a glass in the upper cabinet when I saw it.

A magazine. Sitting on the kitchen counter like it had been waiting for me.

California Business Monthly. Glossy cover, thick pages, the kind of publication that featured men in expensive suits talking about acquisitions and profit margins.

I almost ignored it. Almost pushed it aside and kept unpacking, went about my evening like a normal person who didn’t let inanimate objects ruin her night.

Then I saw the face on the cover.

My hand stopped mid-reach. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat.

Jack Specter stared up at me from the glossy paper.

Thirty-three now, according to the text beside his photograph. I could have told them that without reading it. His sandy hair was shorter than I remembered, styled in that effortless way that made him look every bit like what he was.

Successful.

His jaw had gotten sharper. More defined. He wore a charcoal suit that fit like it had been stitched onto his body by someone who took personal offense at the concept of a wrinkle.

And those eyes. Those blue eyes stared out from the page like they were issuing a challenge.

Go ahead, they seemed to say. Try to forget me.

The smile was fake. I spotted it immediately—the way you spot a forgery when you know the original too well. This was Jack Specter, CEO of Specter Capital. Heir to a fortune. Face of the family empire. This was the mask he wore for the world.

I knew the real one. The way his mouth curved when something genuinely amused him. How his eyes crinkled at the corners, the sound of his laugh—low and warm—the way he used to look at me like I was the only interesting thing in any room.

Used to.

A redhead clung to his arm in the photograph. Tall. Elegant. Wearing a dress that flaunted her curves. She had the kind of cheekbones that belonged on magazine covers, which made sense, because here she was on one. They looked perfect together.

My fingers had curled around the edge of the counter without my permission.

This was ridiculous. It had been seven years since I walked away from him. I had built a whole life that had nothing to do with Jack Specter and his blue eyes and his careless cruelty.

I shouldn’t still feel like this. I shouldn’t still feel anything at all.

“Specter Capital CEO Discusses Expansion Plans,” the headline read. Underneath: “Jack Specter on ambition, legacy, and what’s next for the family empire.”

I flipped the magazine face-down. The slap of paper against laminate was deeply satisfying.

Then I picked it up again.

Then I put it down.

Then I picked it up and crumpled his stupid, aggressively symmetrical face into a ball, throwing it into the trash with enough force to make the whole can wobble.

Better. Much better.

I was still standing there, breathing too hard, when someone knocked on my door.

I jumped so violently I nearly knocked a glass off the counter. For one wild, irrational second, I thought—impossibly—that it was him. That he had somehow known I was here. Somehow found me. To finish the conversation we never had months ago when we’d met each other in Vegas.

Which was insane. Completely insane. Jack Specter didn’t know I existed anymore, and even if he did, he certainly wouldn’t be knocking on the door of a one-bedroom apartment in a building with questionable plumbing.

I crossed the room and opened the door.

A woman stood in the hallway. Purple hair. Nose ring. A smile so aggressively friendly it bordered on alarming. About my age, maybe a year or two younger, wearing an oversized band t-shirt and leggings covered in tiny cartoon cats.

“Hi! Oh thank God, you look normal.” She pressed a hand to her chest like I’d saved her from something.

“I’m Candy. I live next door. Well, technically my mom owns the building but she’s in Arizona right now because she says California cold is still cold when you’re sixty-seven, so I’m sort of in charge?

Mostly I just collect rent and apologize for things. You’re Pauline, right?”

She said all of this without a single pause for breath. I opened my mouth, but she was already continuing.

“Anyway, I wanted to say welcome and also give you a heads-up about Meatball before you run into him and, you know, panic.”

“Meatball?” I repeated.

She gestured downward.

I looked.

My stomach dropped.

At the end of the leash in Candy’s hand was a dog.

I think. It might have been a small bear someone had taught to walk upright.

It had wiry gray fur sticking out in every direction, a face like a grumpy old man who’d seen too much, and eyes that tracked me with the kind of focus that made my skin prickle.

Oh no.

Suddenly I was eight years old again. Mrs. Ford’s German Shepherd breaking loose from its leash. The blur of fur and teeth charging across the park.

I’d chipped my front tooth that day. Wore a cap on it for years afterward.

I’d never trusted a dog since.

“He’s a rescue,” Candy was saying, completely oblivious to my internal meltdown. “Part wolfhound, part mystery. The shelter said medium-sized, which—” She laughed. “I mean. Look at him. I think they were using a different measuring system.”

Meatball growled. The sound came from somewhere deep in his chest, low and rumbling, like thunder before a storm.

“That’s his happy noise,” Candy said brightly.

“His happy noise,” I echoed, my voice coming out too high.

“Mhm! When he doesn’t like someone, he doesn’t make any noise at all. So this is good! This means he likes you.”

Meatball took a step toward me. His head came up to my hip. His nose was the size of my fist. He sniffed my knee with an intensity that suggested he was filing away my scent for future tracking purposes.

Don’t move. Don’t run. Dogs chase things that run.

I pressed my back against the doorframe and tried to remember how to breathe.

“He’s…” My voice cracked. “Very large.”

“Isn’t he great? Total gentle giant.” She tugged the leash, and Meatball retreated to her side—reluctantly, still watching me.

“Anyway. Quick building orientation: hot water takes a minute, walls are thin so sorry in advance for my reality-TV addiction, and the radiator sounds like it’s dying but it’s been making that noise for three years and we haven’t exploded yet. ”So.” She shrugged. “Odds are good.”

“That’s… comforting.”

“I thought so.” She grinned, already backing toward her door, Meatball lumbering beside her. “Welcome to the building, Pauline. I think you’re gonna like it here. Probably. Seventy percent chance.” A pause. “Sixty-five.”

The door closed. I caught one last glimpse of those unsettling dog eyes before they vanished.

I stood in my doorway for a long moment. Processing.

Purple-haired neighbor. Enormous, possibly demonic dog. Building with decent odds of not exploding.

Somehow, this was the most normal part of my day.

I went back inside where I finished unpacking. Made a cup of tea with water that took exactly as long to heat as Candy had warned. Sat on the edge of my bed and scrolled through my phone without seeing any of it.

The crumpled magazine cover sat in the trash across the room.

I could still feel it there. Like a splinter under my skin—too small to see, impossible to ignore. Jack Specter, in my apartment, in my city, taking up space in my head when I had far more important things to worry about.

He was not part of my plan. He was a memory I’d already survived once. A closed chapter.

But even in the dark with my eyes shut tight against the unfamiliar ceiling, I could still feel him.

His face was crumpled in the trash across the room.

And somehow—impossibly—his eyes were still on my skin.