Single in Sitka (An Odds-Are-Good Standalone Romance Book 1) Read online

  SINGLE

  IN

  SITKA

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  K A T Y R E G N E R Y

  SINGLE IN SITKA

  Copyright © 2019 by Katharine Gilliam Regnery

  Amazon Version

  Sale of the electronic edition of this book is wholly unauthorized. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part, by any means, is forbidden without written permission from the author/publisher.

  Katharine Gilliam Regnery, publisher

  This book is a work of fiction. Most names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any references to real people or places are used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Please visit my website at www.katyregnery.com

  Cover Designer: Marianne Nowicki

  Developmental Edit: Tessa Shapcott

  Formatting: CookieLynn Publishing Services

  Second edition: October 2019 / Complete Novel

  Single in Sitka: a novel / by Katy Regnery—2nd ed.

  ISBN: 978-1-944810-45-0

  Contents

  Copyright

  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

  Epilogue

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For Callie.

  Thank you for visiting Seattle and Sitka

  with me this summer.

  I loved them both.

  I love you too.

  xoxoxo

  Chapter 1

  Amanda

  SINGLE IN SITKA

  Single dad. Widower. State trooper. 36. Three great kids.

  Between them and work, it feels like I barely have time for

  anything else, but I miss being with someone.

  Online dating is a joke.

  I don’t get the point of Tinder, or I do, but I think it’s pretty gross.

  Anyway, I’m not looking to meet fifty anonymous women…just one who’s special. Could that be you?

  Hope to hear from you soon.

  Luke

  Luke.

  Mmmm.

  Luke.

  I stare at the four letters while some inner voice, no doubt hailing from the general area of my ovaries, repeats the name over and over again in my head.

  Luke. Luke. Luke.

  Strong. Masculine. Slightly old-fashioned.

  It’s one of the cheaper ads, so there’s no picture, but I’m fairly certain he’s built like a lumberjack and hung like a horse.

  He drawls in a voice that sounds suspiciously like John Wayne’s…

  When Luke commits, little lady, he commits forever. Now get in my bed, spread your legs, and prepare to take my load.

  I bite my bottom lip, blinking at the screen.

  That escalated fast.

  But heck, it’s been months since I’ve been laid, and I guess I’m feeling a little, well, deprived. Nope. Deprived is too elegant a word for what I’m feeling. I’m feeling…horny. Yep. Horny, I think, shifting slightly in my seat as my eyes continue their laser-lock on Luke’s ad.

  Hey! Wait a minute. They never print names. I frown at the screen, scrolling up the page to check the other ads. Looks like a typo. None of the other ads include a name. Just Luke.

  Sigh. Luke.

  I slide back up to the ad, half wishing there was a picture but half glad I can let my mind run wild instead, imagining hot, sexy, burgeoning-with-fertile-seed Luke, undressing at the foot of our four-poster bed covered with the skins of bears he’s bested with his bare hands, his muscles rippling as he reaches for my foot and drags my naked body down to—

  “Amanda?” Two hands clap just in front of my nose. “Earth to Amanda McKendrick!”

  I snap my neck up and find my column writing partner, Leigh Stanton, leaning over my cube wall.

  “Huh? What?”

  Leigh raises an eyebrow. “Who’s Luke?”

  “Huh?”

  “You literally just sighed the name ‘Luuuuuke,’ like you were having a mental orgasm.” She tilts her head to get a peek at my screen. “Hey…what’s Single in—”

  “Nothing!” My fingers are still clutching the mouse, and with one click, the screen disappears.

  She gives me a look before glancing back at the now-blank screen. “Nothing, huh? Sorta seemed like a big bowl of something.”

  “Nope. Nothing. Just…research.”

  “Research! Great,” says Leigh. “I hope it’s research for this morning’s pitch.” She pauses, scanning my face. “You do have the pitch ready, right? The June pitch that you promised to come up with while I’m growing a human being inside my body?”

  The pitch.

  Shit, fuck, and every other dirty word my mother ever forbade me to say.

  I forgot about today’s pitch.

  My shoulders slump, and I shake my head.

  Since my boyfriend of five years, Bryce, walked out of my apartment two months ago, leaving behind a stack of bills and note saying, “I’m just not into us anymore. Super sorry,” my creative juices just haven’t been flowing. I’ve been spending more time reading personal ads and fantasizing about hot Alaskan men than doing any actual work.

  “Manda…you promised.”

  Leigh plucks a red M&M from my dish of candy, then walks around the four-foot wall into my cube, her massive stomach preceding the rest of her body by a few seconds.

  I groan softly. “I know. I’m sorry. I just—”

  “My maternity leave starts tomorrow,” she reminds me, chewing on the sweet treat. “You’re supposed to have our June idea outlined and ready to go. Today. This morning.” She glances at her watch. “Now, Manda. It’s go time.”

  Leigh’s husband is the Seahawks safety Jude Stanton, and she’s really into sports jargon.

  “I’ll come up with something on the fly,” I say as I stand up from my desk. I glance at her stomach, ignoring the knot of longing in my heart. “Lots of kicking today?”

  “Girl? When he kicks my lungs, it steals my breath. I’m barely holding on,” she answers, her voice weary as she looks down and rubs her belly. “No doubt about this one’s daddy.”

  “Was there ever?” I joke.

  “Nope. I love that man,” she says, reaching for another handful of candy. “My Jude.”

  Since I hate and loathe M&Ms, I’m pretty sure I keep the bowl stocked mostly for her cravings. I’d do just about anything for Leigh. I adore her.

  Jude, whom I also adore, is scary-big. Half Maori with a two missing teeth and tribal facial tattoos, at first sight, he may look like he eats small children for breakfast every morning…but when he looks at Leigh, his expression is filled with so much tenderness, it hurts me. That’s crazy, right? But it does. It makes my chest ache and my eyes water because I want what they have.

  I can’t imagine either of them cheating on each other the way Bryce cheated on me.

  I clear my throat of the lump attempting to lodge there. “How many more days?”

  “Technically? Ten.” She chuckles, then raises her voice a little, leaning down to talk to her baby. “But I wouldn’t mind sooner if that wo
rks for you, sugar.”

  I laugh with her as I follow her to the conference room, noting that her once graceful gait is now a pronounced waddle. And fuck, but I’m jealous. I’m jealous of my best friend’s waddle.

  At thirty-two years old, my biological clock has been on alarm mode for two years, loudly reminding me that time’s running down, a fact that sends me into sweat-induced panics in the middle of the night. Especially now that I’m single.

  After five years together, I truly believed that Bryce was the proverbial “one,” right up until the day he broke it off and moved in with Ruby, a bartender at our favorite bar. Erstwhile favorite. Sometimes I don’t know what was worse: losing my possible forever someone or losing the place where I would have gone to drown my sorrows.

  Anyway, the net-net is that here I am, single all over again, without a prospect in sight, while my best friend is blissfully married with her first baby on the way. It’s so depressing, I wonder how the heck I’m going to make it through the summer.

  Leigh looks at me over her shoulder, easily reading my mind after a friendship that started in college and spans several years of working together at the Seattle Sentinel. “He’s out there, Manda.”

  “So you say.”

  “Bryce was an asshole. I never liked him.”

  “You say that too.”

  “For real? Let Ruby have him. She’s a first-class skank for poaching him right from under your nose…and he’s blind if he can’t see what he lost.”

  While I appreciate Leigh’s support, I feel too pathetic to muster a rousing, “Hell, yes, sister-friend!” so I mumble a quiet “Thanks.”

  She stops midwaddle and turns to look at me, scanning my green eyes with her brown. “Hey. Don’t get down on yourself. You don’t want to be half of ‘Manda and Bryce’ anymore, do you?”

  “‘Manda and Bryce’ sounds better than ‘Manda and no one.’”

  “No, it does not! He wasn’t the one, sweet thing. You were just passing time with him. The right one’s still out there waiting. You’re not giving up, are you?”

  “Giving up? Hmm.” I tap my chin. “Well, my boyfriend of five years dumped me because he wasn’t ‘into us’ anymore, which we all know means he wasn’t into me…and then he moved in with Ruby the bartender, who’s all of twenty-two. A whole decade younger than me,” I say. “Doesn’t exactly make a girl feel like a million bucks, Leigh.”

  She moves the folder she’s holding under her arm and reaches for my hands, taking them in hers. “He’s out there.”

  I drop her eyes because her faith in me doesn’t feel warranted. “Sure.”

  “Manda!”

  When Leigh uses her no-nonsense, almost-a-mom voice, I listen. “What?”

  “Hear my words, girl. He’s…out…there. You just have to believe.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  “You believe me?” she asks, her dark eyes searching mine.

  “Yes…no…I want to, but…” I take a deep breath and sigh, looking away from her and blinking away the fat, unwanted tears that are suddenly blurring my vision. “Where? Where is he?”

  “He’s not going to fly through your bedroom window with a three-carat princess cut, Manda. You gotta find him. You gotta put yourself in his path.”

  Online dating is a joke…Amen, brother.

  I pull my hands away and brush at my eyes. “And where is that, oh wise one? On Tinder? Ugh. Gross.”

  “No, not on Tinder,” she says, pursing her lips, full of sass. She grabs my hands again, holding them tightly in hers. Oh, crap… “Let’s visualize.”

  Visualizing. Something Leigh learned recently in Lamaze class. Something she’s been practicing regularly ever since on a reluctant me.

  “What…now?”

  “Yes, now. No time like the present. Close your eyes. Clear your mind. Now…see what he sees. Where’s he walking? Where’s he going?”

  “How do I know?”

  “Shhh! Come on, now! You have to do this!” she insists. “You figure out what he sees, and you’ll figure out where to find him.”

  I feel incredibly ridiculous, holding hands with my best friend/coworker in our bustling office to do a half-baked visualization exercise meant to help my nonexistent love life. But that steel is back in her voice, so I comply.

  “Fine,” I mutter.

  “Good. Now, breathe.”

  I take a deep breath, filling my lungs before letting it go.

  “Now, look at the world through his eyes. See what he sees.”

  When I was little, I had a book about Alaska, given to me by my grandmother, so I can easily picture Sitka, Alaska, with its harbor full of fishing boats and harbor seals. I see bright-green fir trees and bright-blue skies. I picture orcas and humpbacks, totem poles and an old Russian Orthodox church.

  “Now turn around,” says Leigh, her voice low, soft, and hypnotic, “and look at him.”

  I do it. I turn away from the harbor and picture…Luke.

  My eyes pop open.

  “Did you see him?” she asks, her eyes sparkling and happy, her hands squeezing mine with excitement.

  “Ladies, can we expect your attendance? Or do you require an engraved invitation?” asks Norman Frumplestein, giving us a deeply irritated look as he passes us in the hallway, en route to the conference room for the meeting.

  His name is really Norman Frum, but he always looks frustrated, rumpled, and like he’s channeling Frankenstein’s monster. Ergo, Frumplestein.

  Norm is the Lifestyles editor and therefore our boss, but both of us—me and Leigh—have a few years of seniority on Norm and are paid almost as much he, which makes Norm kinda sorta hate our guts.

  “Oh, I’ll take an invitation,” says Leigh, not even a little bit intimidated by Norm’s bark. “I love a pretty invitation.”

  Over his shoulder, he calls, “Terrific, Ms. Stanton. Here it is: get your butt into the conference room. And Ms. McKendrick, I hope your idea for the June column wows.”

  “Hey, idea girl,” says Leigh, glancing back at me, “is our column going to…wow?”

  I still got nothin’.

  “Mmm. Maybe?”

  “I’ma go pee, which means you have exactly five minutes to come up with something, girl. You feel me?”

  What I feel is the ground tremble as she waddles away.

  Pressing on my mouse again, I note the click-bait headline “Bear Attacks on the Rise in Sitka” hovering just over Luke’s personal ad but ignore it.

  The only “something” circling in my head is “Luke,” a single dad in Sitka with such modest hopes and such a theoretically hot bod, I can’t help the way his name pulls at my—ah-hem—heart.

  ***

  “Sounds like you boys have got sports covered.” The Sentinel’s editor-in-chief, Steve Halloran, looks at our boss with his bushy gray eyebrows raised. “Norm? What’s coming up in Lifestyles?”

  Norm nods, turning to the young woman sitting on his left with what passes for a smile in Frumplestein’s world. Leigh and I have a running theory that Kim Johnston, who joined the Sentinel in March and quickly secured her own column, is putting out more than articles for Norm.

  “Kim’s got late May covered. She’s going to a few area schools to talk to parents, teachers, and students about the last day of school. Where’re you headed, Kim?”

  Kim leans forward, looking up from her notes. “Bellevue Christian and Schmitz Park Elementary.”

  “Nice,” says smug-Norm. “And you’ve got the veteran’s thing in…uh…”

  “VA Clinic. Puget Sound. Memorial Day Cookout.”

  “Right,” says Norm. “And you’re also doing a piece on the Capitol Hill Block Party in late June?”

  “All over it,” she answers. “Can’t wait to get my tunes on! Boom!”

  “Great,” says Steve with an indulgent chuckle. “Good stuff. Kids, vets, and local music covered. I like it. Good work, Kim. What else you got, Norm?”

  “I’ve got Stacey on the Seattle Street
Food Festival the first weekend in June and the International Beer Festival the third weekend.”

  “Are we a sponsor this year?” asks Steve. “For the beer weekend?”

  “No, sir,” says Norm, shifting in his seat. “Amazon’s the lead sponsor.”

  “We missed the boat on that?”

  “Didn’t realize you wanted in,” says Norm, his pasty cheeks coloring a little.

  “I always want in. Bit of a fuck-up on that one, huh?” Steve gives Norm a look. He’s all about rejuvenating the Sentinel’s lagging subscribership by being a part of major local events. “Sponsorship is an easy way to keep the Sentinel relevant. It’s good local PR.” He shrugs with annoyance, then shifts his attention to me and Leigh. “Wow me, ladies. We need a winner. What’s on tap for the June column?”

  “Manda’s got a great concept,” says Leigh.

  “Fabulous,” says Norm, pursing his lips like he just bit into a lemon peel. “Let’s hear it.”

  I clear my throat. “Umm…it’s umm…”

  I look at Norm, then at Steve, who’s waiting expectantly for my idea. Except, my mind is a blank. Utterly and completely blank…except for…Single in Sitka…

  “We’re planning to…”

  Luke…Luke…Luke…

  I turn to look at Leigh, who blinks at me, her dark eyes starting to look a little crazy.

  “Share the idea with us, Manda,” she says slowly, leaning forward a little as though her sheer will for me to formulate a sudden idea will make it happen.

  My heart beats faster and faster and suddenly that click-bait headline screeches across my mind’s eye in hot-pink neon, and I hear myself say,

  “Bear attacks are on the rise in Sitka, Alaska?!”

  I blurt it out in a sort of combination question-statement, smiling at Steve like a lunatic.

  “Huh?” grunts Norm.

  “What’s this now?” hisses Leigh at my shoulder.

  I ignore her and plow forward with my nonidea idea. “Um. Bears. They, uh, they’re attacking. People. I think. In Sitka. Big problem. Massive problem.”

  “Bears,” says Steve.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Fascinating,” says Norm, rolling his eyes, “but we need to hear the concept, Amanda.”