Yasmin Sullivan - Return to Love

A second chance for a first love?

Six years ago, Nigel Johns lost the only woman he ever loved. Now, the successful financial consultant intends to prove to Regina Gibson that he’s a changed man. Except, his ex-fiancée isn’t welcoming him with open arms. In fact, she’s doing everything she can to keep him out of her life and away from her painful secret. Until an unexpected night of rekindled passion gives him hope for a second chance….

After she walked away from Nigel, Regina lost the one thing she loved most. Since then, she’s put all her energy into making it as an artist and forgetting the man who broke her heart. Now that Nigel is back and reawakening her body, she has to decide what she really wants. She can’t deny that they still make sensual magic together. But now that she’s back in his arms, will she let him back into her heart—forever?

“There is no us, and there never will be again.”

“Don’t say that before you hear me out.”

“You can’t possibly have anything to say that will change my mind.”

Nigel stepped around the counter, and before she knew what he was about to do, he had pulled her into his arms and was kissing her.

Startled by what was happening, Regina was momentarily unclear on how to react. Her thoughts flew out of her mind.

Something about being in the curve of those arms was familiar—the firmness of the grip about her waist, the abandon of the lips moving over hers, the heat rising between them. But everything else seemed part of the newness of him—the way his height sent her head back, the buttons of his suit pressing against her abdomen, the boldness of his fingers along her back, sparking flames in her.

These filled her senses, and she became lost in them.

Wait. What was she doing?

Startling her again, he pulled away.

“That’s the way it always was for us,” he said.

YASMIN SULLIVAN

grew up in upstate New York and St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, from which her family hails. She earned degrees from Howard University and Yale University. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., where she teaches with a focus on African-American and Caribbean literatures. When she isn’t teaching, she does creative writing and works on mosaics.

Return to Love

Yasmin Sullivan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dear Kindred Spirit,

When characters interact across the pages of romance novels, they help us believe in the potential magic within our own lives. We are kindred spirits because we yearn for such journeys and open our hearts to transformation, greeting each other across the space of once blank lines.

I hope that this novel takes you on such a voyage and allows you to believe in the promise of second chances and the idea(l) that love can triumph over heartache. It is the story of Regina Gibson and Nigel Johns. Their young love ended in anguish, but their new risk might heal that void. I am grateful that you have decided to travel their story with me.

I am already working on my next romance project, and your comments on our journey here would be invaluable. I would love to hear from you at yasminhu@aol.com.

Warm wishes,

Yasmin

For my mother, father, brother and grandmother, who have given me the richness of the human heart; for Jennie and Tanya, who have been my sister-friends; and for Madeline, Freddie and William, who have shaped my vision of love.

Contents

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 1

When Regina Gibson heard the door swing open and the chime sound, she didn’t glance up from the last shards of cobalt-blue tile she was fitting into place. She had them laid out in her mind, and if she looked away, the order would be lost.

She caught the coattails of a suit out of the corner of her eye and hoped he would be a paying customer.

“Let me know if you see anything,” she called from the back.

It was getting on in the evening, but with the nearby restaurants still open, people wandered in now and again—once they could tell that the beaten-down corner house was now actually an art gallery and studio.

The exterior of the building hadn’t been changed yet, except for a sign, but inside, they’d added installations, shelving, display cases, work spaces. They’d even added tables in the back rooms to teach classes, and they’d partitioned off the kilns.

Once the inside was in better shape, they could start work on the outside so that it didn’t look like a rickety brownstone. And once they caught on, they could start the real renovations. It wasn’t the perfect place yet, but it was the perfect location—right on the border of the arts and crafts district and near the Torpedo Factory Arts Center in Alexandria, Virginia.

Regina finished laying in the final pieces and cocked her head toward the back room, checking on the two kids. Kyle and Tenisha were still fixated on their little art projects. No problem there.

When she finally looked up, he was standing right in front of the table she was working at, his eyes trained on the children in the back room.

Her eyes didn’t follow his gaze to the children. They were drawn to the figure in front of her. His rugged features seemed trapped and contained by his flawless business attire, but his athletic-cut suit didn’t hide the rough-hewn inflections or the ridged sculpting of his body. The polish of the crisp navy cotton didn’t conceal a raw, unrefined beauty in his shape. It was as if something untamed was tamped down by the elegance of professional trappings.

He had a firm, never-back-down stance that said he would be a hard adversary to rumble with in...whatever his business was. And it was business. Everything about him said that he was all business—everything from the no-nonsense cut of his suit to the angular inlay of his jawline. The smooth, dark brown skin of his face held a concentrated expression that was softened but made no less determined by the curves of thick, sensuous lips. His eyes were serious but also wistful. His eyes...

Regina flinched and sucked in a breath. She knew those eyes.

The face was older, harder, different than the face she had known before. But inside it was the prior face, and she recognized it now as if someone had just pointed it out to her. The childhood had gone out of it—the baby fat that had plumped his cheeks, the boyish grin that made his eyes sparkle. These had been replaced by the calm, jagged confidence of an adult. He would be twenty-eight now—the same as her. He even seemed taller, his shoulders broader.

Regina could barely place this new configuration with what she knew of the boy behind it. It didn’t fit the idler she had known—the slacker lazing on the sofa with his buddies or running the streets with his jeans hanging halfway down his hips. The face before her didn’t match the one she had known, the one skipping classes and sleeping through exams. The one who had skipped out on her.