Chapter One

If anyone had asked Orla Kissack where she would want to find herself at thirty-four years old on a Saturday night. Orla would never have said sat in the home her Grandparents had left her. Orla grew up in the small Island she was born, and Orla would be happy.

A wife she adored cooking dinner in the kitchen and a twenty-month-old daughter asleep upstairs.

The baby monitor sat beside her computer screen. The sound of her daughter's gentle snores filled the room with a sweet white noise that soothed the writer's soul.

Returning home to live here had been a way to reconnect with her friends and gave her a beautiful home to share with her wife.

It helped that she was often away from the Island working, often promoting her books, but now she felt restless to return. To come back to the place, all the people she loved in the world were. This was home in a way it hadn't been for a very long time.

Orla had been born into one of the wealthiest families on the Island. The middle of three daughters, Orla, and her sisters, had been brought to live with their grandparents when their parents James and Niamph, had been killed in a car accident when she was five years old. The crash that only Orla had survived.

Guilt had been Orla's constant companion; it had fuelled her craving to leave her island home.

At twenty-one years old, she had gotten a job in a writer's room on an American sitcom and remained for two years while writing her first novel. Which had been a surprising hit.

Praised and celebrated for her early success, Orla had never escaped the guilt and the self-loathing that had stalked her since that cold dark night when her parents had died yet she had lived.

Her sisters Ciara and Roisin, had both settled and happily married and had children; they had found a place to be happy. In contrast, Orla had struggled lonely in London, often moving around living out of a suitcase in hotel rooms in various cities worldwide.

Then out of the blue, Orla had taken a trip to her local gym and met Jay Brogan, and everything had changed.

Six months later, they were married and just about to move back to the isle of Man. It had been Jay's initial idea a way of making Orla lay some ghosts to rest, and for the most part, it had worked.

Now wrapped up cozy inside their warm home Orla sat in her office, which had once been her Grandfather's study; she typed out the last few pages of the final chapter of her newest work.

A great big fire blazing in the open fire grate filling the quiet room with a gentle spit and spat.

Orla's gaze drifted to the rug that sat in front of the fire; it was different now to the one she had known her Grandparents have. Still, in her mind's eye, she saw her Grandfather's huge Sarabi Mastiff dog Horatio curled up asleep.

Her Grandfather had buried him in the back garden after he had taken his final breath after a lifetime of love and loyalty. His place was now filled by his successor, Baxter, he had been Jay's baby, but the moment Orla met him, she fell in love with the messy white and brindle Boxer crossed with goodness knows what else. Jay had found him when he was a tiny puppy.

Horatio had been Orla's first dog, and after he passed, she'd been so hurt she had sworn to never care for another animal again, but life didn't work that way, and Baxter certainly hadn't worked that way, just like his owner he had crept under her resolve.

The writer smiled at his memory; as a child, she was never afraid when the giant Horatio was around.

Hands landed on her shoulders and slid down her arms as soft kisses were placed on her neck. "You said you wouldn't be working for much longer; I have dinner all served and ready."

Orla smiled, connecting with her wife's blue-eyed gaze through the screen of her laptop. Her whole world changed for the better when Jay staggered up to her at the gym, a big cocky smirk on her lips.

Her blonde hair always managed to be tamed even in blistering winds. It did as it was told and remained in place like Jay was some kind of mythical Goddess of hair. Orla had remembered the shock of finding herself drawn to a woman who was in no way her type.

Yet Jay Brogan quickly got under her skin until all Orla thought of was the blonde-haired blue-eyed woman with the magnificent muscles.

"I just have a few more lines to go, and I am finished." Orla knew her wife wouldn't take that explanation, not when she had been in her office all afternoon alone.

Jay had spent the morning at the gym, they had built a home gym, but Jay said she liked the gym's hustle. Orla hated those days because she didn't get the chance to sneak down and watch Jay flexing.

"I hope you're still not sulking because I went to the gym and didn't stay to model for you," Jay whispered in Orla's ear, a smile playing across her lips as she let her hands softly massage her wife's shoulders.

"I am not sulking; I'm working." Orla pouted in protest. It annoyed her sometimes that Jay knew her too well.

"You're going to come and eat with me, and then we are going to watch half of a movie anyone I don't care we won't finish it anyway." Jay sniggered it was their usual routine when Orla would be heading to London for a few days. Jay's eyes traveled to the baby monitor. She could see baby Aria sound asleep, her little chubby hand twitching made Jay smile.

It would be three whole days alone without Orla, and despite her rough exterior, Jay missed the hell out of her wife when she was away. Sometimes Jay would go with her, but this time Jay had an appointment with a client.

Orla was the only good that had ever come into Jay's life; even Orla had no clue how life had been for Jay, not entirely. Orla intended that she never find out; she didn't want to lose the look of love in her hazel eyes when she looked at her. No one had ever looked at her like that in her life.

"It is your fault we never finish a damn movie we have ever watched together," Orla said with mock agitation as she pushed Jay away and rose from the chair ready to do as her wife asked.

"You never have complained." Jay winked cheekily.

"I'm pretty sure I did during the Avengers movie." Orla shrugged.

"You were too busy drooling over Scarlett Johansson," Jay said sarcastically.

Orla laughed; how was it possible that her wife was still jealous over that? "

"She's not even attractive." Jay pouted, looking more like a toddler who had been deprived of her favorite toy.

"Oh no, babe, she is hot as fuck." Orla's hazel eyes twinkled. Orla fought the urge to laugh at the scowl that crossed her wife's face.

"Ask her to be the mother of your child and future children then if she is so hot." Jay pouted. "Get her to change their diapers and clean up their vomit."

"Hmm, I would, but I hear it's no good having someone so hot in your house." Orla teased. "She could set the house on fire."