Minute by Minute (Timeless Series Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Minute by Minute

  Copyright

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek to Last Minute

  Books by Mayra Statham

  Acknowledgments

  About the author

  Copyright © 2020 by Mayra Statham

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Editing: Julia Goda of Diamond in the Rough Editing

  Formatting: CP Smith

  Cover image: Deposit Photos

  Blurb

  Sam Santino lives day by day. Abandoned as a child, he doesn’t think he has it in him to be a family man or create roots with anyone or anywhere.

  Macie Marks knows the beauty of love and the destruction a broken heart can leave. She saw it firsthand after her mother passed away and she lost her father to indifference.

  Each one is living minute by minute in their own way. Until their paths cross in the most unlikely of places, twice.

  Now stuck on a road trip across the country, they soon start to realize the pull toward the other is more than sexual. Can great things happen when you least expect them? Or will they let the opportunity for more pass them by?

  When women go wrong, men go right after them.

  -Mae West

  Prologue

  Macie Marks

  I COULDN’T BELIEVE I had done it. I’d graduated. The world was literally my oyster.

  I was twenty-two and on top of the world.

  Figuratively.

  Realistically, I knew I was buried under a mountain of student debt with no real idea what my next step was going to be. Or where I was going to live past next week. But I wasn’t going to let it get me down. Hell no! I was too proud of myself, and I deserved to be.

  Nothing was going to let me down. Not even the fact that my parents couldn’t be bothered to show up to their only child’s college graduation. I glanced over at the proud group that made up the Montenegro crew and smiled, my heart warm and cozy at the scene, and pushed the feelings of loneliness away. My roommate and best friend’s parents, sister, and grandmother had traveled across the country for her. All my parents would have had to do was take a short twenty-minute drive.

  But that was too much for Dr. and the second Mrs. Marks.

  Dear Doctor Dad was still pissed I hadn’t chosen his alma mater. Silly how he couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t get over the fact I had made a decision that didn’t coincide with his. He’d thought by refusing to pay for my college tuition, I would give in and toe the line. It didn’t matter I still went to an Ivy League school. At the end of the day, I had gone against him. I had messed with his ultimate plan of following in his footsteps only to then marry me off to God only knows which of his best friends’ sons, so the bloodlines would rival the oceans of the Caribbean.

  Too bad for him I had a mind of my own.

  My mom had taught me that. Ironic, since he had once loved her blindly.

  Melanie Morales had blessed me with a lot before she left this earth and my dad got remarried to step-Mommy Dearest. I had no idea how my mom and dad had ended up together, but they had. Part of me, the small romantic part, always thought it had been the one time my father had truly let himself live for himself.

  The loss of my mom at eight had been hard on me but devastating on Jerry Marks.

  Once she was gone, he had transformed into someone I didn’t recognize. The snobby, blue-blooded, holier-than-thou, nose-in-the-air man I knew today. His new wife, Janet, had stepped into our lives less than five months after my mom had been laid to rest. In less than half a year, I’d lost both parents.

  But today was not about that.

  Today was about celebrating the great achievement my best friend and I had accomplished. Thankfully, her family loved me from day one, our freshman year when they had gone to drop Nina off at the dorms.

  “Chula, do you think you could show me where the bathrooms are here?” her grandma asked, and I smiled with a nod. We talked on our way, the conversation easy.

  I’d known all of them the past four years, but her grandmother had a special place in my heart. Nina’s grams was amazing. Funny and badass were the only ways to describe her. We talked on the regular and a lot of the times just because. She always made me feel part of the family.

  “How can there be so many good-looking boys here and you and Nina still solas?”

  “We’re not alone.” I giggled, and she mockingly glared at me.

  “You know what I mean,” she huffed and smiled. “I’ll be right back.” She pointed toward the women’s room.

  “I’ll wait here,” I told her, and she smiled, patting my hand before walking away.

  I looked up from my phone and saw a man.

  Not a guy or boy, but a man. And he was looking right at me.

  He was beautiful.

  Tall and muscular with gorgeous olive-toned skin and short dark hair. You could tell by the way the suit he was wearing fit him perfectly in all the right places that the man was built. He had style and swagger. Sweet baby Jesus, was that a tattoo peeking through the collar of his dress shirt? He started moving toward me, and I looked around me. There was no one near me.

  The closer he moved in, the more my mind seemed to go on the fritz and putz out on me. Before I knew it, he was standing mere inches away. So close I could see the color of his eyes.

  Blue.

  Beautiful blue. Tropical-island-waters-you-saved-as-a-screen-saver blue.

  “Excuse me, do you happen to have the time?” he asked, and my ego instantly deflated. The time was why a guy like him would approach a girl like me. Oh well. He was too good looking anyhow. Who needed a guy who smelled like leather and spice and, oh my goodness, everything masculine and nice?

  “Oh. Umm,”—I reached for my phone in the pocket of my dress, I loved pockets in dresses—“Ten to six.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Macie, there you are, preciosa. Gerardo texted we need to get going to dinner,” Nina’s grandma said, grabbing hold of my arm before noticing the hot man in front of us.

  “Oh, okay,” I mumbled.

  “Macie,” he repeated my name, and damn, did it sound good coming from his lips. I met his gaze. His beautiful eyes flashed with something that quickly disappeared.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “Just… nice name.” Nice name. It was something. It wasn’t Can I have your number? but it was something.

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “Thanks for the time,” he added, and I nodded, giving him a smile before leaving with Nina’s grandma.

  “Who was that, mija?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You should have got his number.”

  “Grandma!” I laughed, and she shrugged.

  “If I were
twenty years younger, I’d… what do you call it? Oh yeah, I know! Swipe right.” She winked. My face hurt from smiling so hard.

  “He just needed the time.”

  “Oh, baby, youth is wasted on the young,” she admonished. “Yolo, Macie. Yolo.” God, I loved the Montenegros.

  “Yolo, huh?” I repeated right as we reached the rest of the family. I glanced back fully prepared for Mr. Blue Eyes to have turned and gone on his merry way with whatever graduate he was there to see.

  Instead, he was still standing there looking in my direction. Right. At. Me. A flicker of something burst up and in my chest. As quickly as it arose, it faded into confusion. A huge clock hung on the wall. The very wall I’d had my back to.

  Why had he asked for the time?

  Samuel ‘Sam’ Santino

  I don’t know why I had asked for the time.

  That wasn’t true.

  I had been all but ready to throw a pick-up line her way the moment my eyes caught a glimpse of her amazing ass. Damn, I was a breast man, and from what I could tell, she had a great rack, but her ass was a certified temptation and a half. I had a feeling my best friend Brandon would be gone most of the night, hell, god willing for him, the entire trip here.

  Temporary company didn’t sound too bad. She looked like she could be fun.

  But with every step I took, the more and more I seemed to notice. A red flag waved furiously in my mind, warning me to stop, to turn back, but I was committed. I was fucking captivated by her. I soaked in everything. Her quiet beauty. Her sweet smile. The soft sadness in her eyes she was trying to hide. Whatever was on her mind was deep, and damn if I wanted to hold her and soothe the jagged edges away. I saw it all. And when I was close enough to say something, I caught a hint of her soft fruity scent and my mind blanked. The soft wisps of strawberry-blond hair around her face made my fingers itch to brush them around her ear.

  Hook, line, and sinker, I was a fucking goner.

  She was fucking gorgeous. I could tell by the way she held herself that she had no clue how fucking stunning she was. And I had stupidly asked for the time. Like a fucking moron. Thankfully, none of my Marine buddies were around me, or they would have been shocked to hell. I wasn’t the type to get shy.

  I’d fucked up a second time by letting her walk away.

  No number. Just a first name.

  Macie.

  Her eyes caught mine from the distance, and I wanted to beg her to come back. To get her number. To ask her to dinner, breakfast, and lunch. Then figure out a way to talk her into doing it all over again.

  She looked past me, confusion filling her gaze when she noticed the clock behind me.

  Right as I was about to take the first step toward her, an older couple started talking to her and they started to leave.

  Yeah. I was a fucking idiot.

  Chapter One

  Macie

  “MACIE! THE TRUCK’S filled up!” Nina yelled from the living room, and I looked around my empty bedroom. It looked bigger.

  I was actually leaving the East Coast and heading west. I wanted to giggle for feeling like some kind of pioneer going out west. California. I was excited about the change my life was about to take and glad Nina and I would be working at the same university.

  University of the Desert in Southern California.

  I was going to live in the desert! Me! Born and raised in the East! A giggle bubbled up and out of me. The excitement too great. Nothing was going to get me down.

  Not today!

  The fact that my dad hadn’t been bothered to write an email or text back after I had left word with his secretary I was moving would be dealt with some other time.

  “Do you think we have enough snacks?” I asked as I walked out of my empty bedroom of our two-bedroom apartment.

  “Plenty! And it’s not like we can’t stop. We probably will with two guys,” she shared, looking around the now empty place we had called home.

  “That’s right.” I smiled tightly, the reminder making my stomach twist. I had no idea who the hell I was going to get stuck with the next week as we drove cross country.

  “I promise Sam’s awesome. I really think you two will get along!” she said, smiling too brightly, and I knew it was because she wanted to spend as much time as possible with her guy. I didn’t blame her.

  Brandon and Nina were made for one another.

  I had never been a true believer of one person for someone, but when it came to them, I got it. They’d fallen in love and tried to keep it together despite distance and time zones. When it got to be too much and a change had needed to be made, Brandon had broken things off. For two years, I’d had to see my best friend not at her full chipper self. She’d tried, and I think some of the time, she was able to fool herself into thinking she was okay. But at the end, at graduation, he’d come back looking for her.

  They were back full force and on the see-you-at-the-end-of-the-aisle express lane.

  As crazy as it might have looked to some of our friends, to me it made sense. She was back. My best friend’s smile sparkled like the diamond heart necklace around her neck.

  “I’m sure it will be fine.” I hadn’t met the infamous Sam yet.

  I’d been too busy saying goodbye to friends, finishing the last couple shifts of my second job, and getting all packed up in a crazy short amount of time. But Nina knew me like a sister from another mister. She and Brandon both had a lot of great things to say about him, so I wasn’t really worried about it.

  “Macie?” a deep voice that had lingered in the corners of my mind since graduation called my name, and I froze. “Macie?” he repeated, and I slowly turned.

  Right smack at our front door stood the guy.

  Mr. Blue Eyes.

  The guy who had approached me at graduation. The guy whose eyes had been starring in my dreams and naughty fantasies. And for some weird reason, he was standing in my apartment, next to Nina’s guy, Brandon.

  “You two know each other?” Nina asked, breaking the moment, and I felt like a fish out of water unable to say anything.

  “We go way back,” he said, leaving me momentarily stunned, but I watched the flash of something in his eyes, and it was like he was silently handing me the reins of control.

  “Yeah, way back.” My lips moved up into a smirk.

  “Really?” Brandon asked, looking back and forth between the tall beautiful stranger and me.

  “Macie and I grew up together.”

  “Bullshit, you grew up in Arizona.” Brandon laughed, and Blue Eyes shrugged.

  “How do you two know one another?” I redirected, hoping to steer the attention away from me.

  “Sam and I served together,” Brandon shared, enlightening me further.

  Mr. Blue Eyes had a name.

  “Sam,” I said softly, enjoying way too much how it rolled off my tongue.

  Sam. It suited him. Looking at him, his short hair, the way he held himself, I could see him in a uniform.

  Damn. My eyes shamelessly roamed over his body. From the top of his head to the tip of his shoes, I could picture it. His body would definitely fill out a uniform, very much like someone off Magic Mike.

  “You’re a Marine,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “And you’re Nina’s best friend,” he said, taking a step inside the apartment. Everything devoid of him faded into the background.

  “I am.”

  “Small world,” his voice rasped, his lips tipping upward, giving me a peek of what his smile would look like, and I had no idea how I was keeping my cool, but I was.

  “Very,” I whispered.

  “Wow,” I heard Nina in the background. “Umm, should we give you two a sec?”

  “Knock, knock!” Our super knocked on the door, making me jump and breaking the bubble I’d been in. “You ladies ready for the final walkthrough?”

  “Yeah.” “Sounds good,” both Nina and I answered and went to showing Larry, our super, the apartment.

  I felt Sam
’s eyes on me the entire time, tracking my every move.

  I don’t know how, but I did.

  And I liked it.

  Sam

  Life had its own ways of surprising you when you were least expecting it. Who would have thought the one girl I couldn’t stop thinking about, the girl who made me feel like some idiot teenager, was the same girl I would be crossing the country with?

  “Level with me, man. You really know her?”

  “I saw her at the graduation.”

  “What?” Brandon’s eyes narrowed, and I shrugged and looked away. The girls were in the bedroom talking to the super before turning in the keys.

  “I saw her and tried to pick her up, but…"

  “But?” he asked, obviously interested. His eyes widened, surprise and intrigue reflecting back at me. “Holy fuck, did she turn you down? Did the big, bad, and swaggy lose his magic touch?”

  “Fuck no. I…” I didn’t know how to explain I’d lost my nerve the second my eyes met hers. How looking into her eyes had felt like I’d been shot in the chest with a fucking arrow piercing the one spot I didn’t think existed anymore. My heart.

  “Okay, ladies, we are all set,” the older man announced as they returned to the living area. “I will pass this along to the landlord, and you should get your security deposit check. You guys requested it to be cash app’ed?”

  “Yeah, if it’s possible,” Nina said. “If not, the address I gave you is my parents’ house.”

  “But try and talk him into it, please, Larry?” Macie asked, batting those inky eyelashes at him. “We’re gonna be on the road, so the extra money would be great.”

  “California. You sure about that? I’ve heard it’s nutty there,” he teased and then smiled sincerely. “You two will be missed. Wish there were more tenants like you two.” He wasn’t creepy about it either. It was like a parent looking over his kid.

  “We’ll miss you too,” they said as they hugged the old man.

  “Okay, then.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll tell him and see what he decides. Be safe, take it slow, and enjoy the journey.”