Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 89324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 447(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
When my best friend Taylor gifted me a vacation at a resort owned by his grandparents, the last thing I expected was to bond with a man seventeen years older.
Tate was also vacationing alone.
He’d come to Midnight Key to clear his head and reevaluate his life.
I’d come to get over my high school sweetheart who’d dumped me.
I’d spotted the brawny, tattooed Adonis in the lobby on the first day and thought he had to be someone’s hot dad.
But then we matched on an app that paired single men and women by proximity.
The problem was? At nineteen—almost twenty—I’d lied and said I was twenty-nine.
Tate outed me on our first date, and I fessed up to my real age.
But we continued to run into each other.
And eventually we found our connection was too magnetic to deny.
While we agreed to only use first names and to part ways at the end of the trip, I’d really fallen for Tate.
I never forgot him and knew he was the one who got away.
Remember that guy friend who gifted me the trip?
Well, four years later, Taylor got married.
He’d been estranged from his dad for years, though recently they’d reconnected.
What I didn’t know was that the man I’d had that torrid affair with at the resort would be standing next to Taylor in the receiving line.
My dream man Tate? Was Taylor’s father
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
* * *
BLAIR
I looked down at the photo of his gorgeous, angular face. This can’t be real. It was the handsome guy from the lobby, the same one I specifically remembered admiring when I checked into this place. Big and strong. Almost reminded me of a Viking. He had tatted arms and gorgeous, dark brown hair that fell over his eyes a little. It was mostly families or couples here at Midnight Key Resort. I’d assumed he was married, or maybe someone’s hot dad—he’d looked old enough to have kids.
Yet I’d just found him on the hookup app I’d joined.
After staring at his photo for far too long, I moved on to the details of his profile.
Tate, 36
I’m not good at describing what I’m looking for. Sometimes we don’t really know what we need until we find it. But I guess if I’m on this particular app, you can guess what I might be interested in for now. Anything more would be an unexpected but welcome bonus. Just trying to keep it real.
Hmm… I appreciated his honesty. Rather than trying too hard to write something witty, he’d written what he felt and what most people were probably thinking. I had to respect that.
Thirty-freaking-six.
Okay, so he was a lot older than me. It didn’t matter, though. In fact, that sort of turned me on. Being with an older man was always a fantasy of mine, one I never thought I’d have the opportunity to entertain. Tate looked a bit younger than thirty-six, though. I would’ve put him in his early thirties, maybe.
I felt guilty that I’d lied about my age on my profile. But my first instinct when setting up this account was to not give any true personal details. Yes, that was ironic considering I’d just appreciated the fact that he seemed honest.
Without thinking it through much longer, I swiped right. Almost instantly, a message came on the screen.
It’s a match.
Oh my God.
What now?
The room spun a little as adrenaline coursed through me. Actually, maybe that was the one margarita I’d had in months going to my head. Both the margarita and this vacation had been badly needed. Up until recently, when I was dumped, I’d had the same boyfriend since I was fifteen. So, this was the first time in my life I’d ever installed a hookup app. What better time, I supposed, than while on vacation alone at a resort, courtesy of my best friend, Taylor, who had footed the bill. His family owned the place.
A notification sounded.
Hot Lobby Viking Guy had sent me a message. Gah!
My heart began to race, but I wasn’t ready to click on it, for some reason.
I slurped the last of my margarita, desperate for some liquid courage. I’d managed to finagle that drink from the twenty-four-hour bar downstairs with my fake ID. Not wanting to get kicked out of this beautiful place, I didn’t plan on whipping out my fake ID every day while here, though. But the bartender on duty when I’d ventured downstairs this morning looked gullible, so I decided to take a chance. Just because I’d gotten lucky this morning didn’t mean it would happen again. Not sure why I ever thought it was a good idea to start my day with alcohol, but here we were.
At nineteen—almost twenty—I was likely the youngest person on vacation alone at this resort. The teenagers closest to my age were generally traveling with their families. I didn’t really fit in and had wondered if I might be the only single person here. Though apparently, I wasn’t, unless Tate was lying about his status. It seemed like chancing it on this app was my only opportunity to meet someone, since it matched people by proximity. And leaving the premises down here in Key West wasn’t an option, since I didn’t know the area and didn’t have a car. I also didn’t want to leave the safety of this all-inclusive, secure place.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly what I would have picked for myself, but it was an incredible gift from Taylor, my guy best friend whom I’d first met at sleepaway camp when I was a preteen. While we didn’t see each other aside from those weeks at camp, we’d bonded over the course of several summers and also kept in touch online. Eventually, we both became camp counselors together when we turned sixteen. I’d been in a relationship with Daniel since I was fifteen, so nothing romantic ever came of my time with Taylor during those summers. We were true friends, though, and Taylor felt like a brother to me. He’d recently met a girl, right before my breakup with Daniel. So even if we’d had those feelings for each other, the timing was never right. And that was just as well, because Taylor was someone I hoped to have in my life forever. My experience with guys had proven that being in a relationship was one way to ensure you eventually lost the person you cared about. So I was glad Taylor seemed happy with his new girlfriend, and I knew our friendship would withstand the test of time.