My Uptown Girl Read online

  My Uptown Girl

  C. Morgan

  BrixBaxter Publishing

  Contents

  Description

  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 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  More Good Reads

  Come Swoon With Us

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Description

  We come from different sides of the tracks.

  But we have one thing in common—we both work hard for what we want.

  Even though I try my damnedest to keep my heart closed up, there’s something about her that commands me to snatch her up and steal her breath.

  To let her fully into my life, no matter how different our backgrounds are.

  Her rich father is helping her open a restaurant and she’s hoping to serve some of the lobster I’ve caught to her new customers. I’m all for it.

  The electricity between us has me taking one step back and three forward.

  This is the woman I want beside and beneath me for the rest of my life.

  But her father thinks I’m riffraff. And he just might be right.

  Maybe if I just keep things professional, which is almost impossible.

  Heat blazes in and out of the kitchen as we try to work together, and I’ve got one thing on my mind.

  Owning every part of her.

  No matter what her family or anyone else thinks about it.

  This woman is my uptown girl.

  Chapter 1

  Fulton

  The first few drops of rain landed, making little wet spots on my faded threadbare T-shirt. The thinner the shirt, the quicker it dried. At least, that was what I told myself. I didn’t wear my good shirts to work. They would just get snagged, torn, and covered with grease and god knew what I came into contact with on an average day.

  The few drops turned into a lot more. Big heavy drops splattered on the deck, and instead of a couple of wet spots on my shirt, my shoulders were getting soaked in the rain.

  I gave my head a good shake, trying to remove the water from my hair that was clinging to my forehead. I needed a damn haircut. I lifted my shoulder, wiping the sleeve against my cheek in a futile move to try and wipe the water from my eyes so I could see clearly.

  “Got it,” I grunted, pulling the lobster trap onto my thirty-three-foot lobster boat.

  Stanley Gilbert, my best and only friend and righthand man, opened the trap and pulled out the few lobsters that were inside while I got the bait ready to throw in the pot. He quickly banded the few lobsters we managed to catch after making sure there were no females and they were the right size. The rope was dipped in the steam before I hung the bait and threw it over and quickly grabbed the last pot on my string.

  “Last one,” he shouted, looking up at the sky. “We are cutting it close today!”

  “Good, because this weather is about to open up and give us hell,” I said, working quickly but paying attention. One little mistake and I might find myself going over the side.

  We worked well together. I baited the pot before I threw it overboard. We had worked together so long, we didn’t need to talk about what we were going to do. We just did it. That meant we had lots of time to talk about everything else under the sun.

  With the last pot set, the hard part was done.

  “Anyway,” he said, picking right back up where he left off before we started pulling the string. “I think I have to get one of those big ones.”

  “Big ones?” I asked, trying to remember what it was he was talking about. Stanley tended to ramble about the weirdest shit. It was hard to keep up with the way his brain worked. I usually let whatever it was he said go in one ear and right out the other. I didn’t have the brain space to hold all of the useless information inside.

  “Those remote thingies, you know? Because I lost mine. Weren’t you listening to me? I need a new one. I can’t watch TV, except for that one boring channel. That’s kind of an emergency in my world.”

  I moved around the deck, securing my equipment in preparation for the trip home. Normally, Stanley would spray the deck while I drove the boat in but not today. I was only half paying attention as I moved about, which was dangerous, but it couldn’t be helped. My focus was on the dark clouds making their way inland. My poor boat couldn’t handle much and I really didn’t feel like becoming fish bait.

  “Yes, I was listening,” I answered, knowing if I didn’t say something he would pester me about his remote for the next hour.

  “Have you ever lost your remote?” he asked.

  As it turned out, he was going to regardless. He was unfazed by the ominous clouds. I supposed that was a bonus to being a bit flighty.

  “No,” I said, wiping the back of my hand over my eyes once again.

  “It sucks. I was forced to sit and watch a couple of guys wearing suits and rambling on and on about shit happening on the other side of the world. Like I give two shits about that. They had stupid pictures that didn’t even make sense flashing behind them. They were so boring.”

  “That’s called the news, Stanley. People like to know what’s happening around them. They watch the boring news to be informed.”

  “Stupid. Can’t change it.”

  I shook my head and kept working. Stanley wasn’t the smartest bulb in the box. He was smart about anything related to fishing, but book smart, he was not. I used to call him Bubba until he told me he didn’t like that nickname anymore. I didn’t want to insult the big guy and refrained from doing so, but in the back of my mind, when Stanley talked, I thought about Bubba the shrimper in that movie.

  “It’s good to be informed,” I told him. “It gives you something to talk about with other people. It’s called conversation.”

  “It’s boring. I wanted to watch racing. I can talk about racing with others.”

  “If you didn’t want to watch the news, you should have gotten your ass up and flipped the damn channel.”

  “I don’t know where the buttons are. They don’t make TVs like they used to. I’m just going to get me one of those big thingies.”

  I nodded, knowing we had worked through his latest crisis. “You do that. You know, there is one other option.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You could look for the remote. It isn’t like someone came into your shithole house and stole just the remote to your TV. Retrace your steps and find the damn thing.”

  He slapped the lid down over the lobster bin. “I did.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “I looked in the shitter. I looked in the fridge and I looked on the couch. It isn’t there.”

  “Maybe look under the couch or under the cushions,” I suggested. Sometimes, I felt like I was talking to a child.

  “Shit,” he said, looking up
at the sky. “Looks like we are getting one hell of a storm.”

  I rolled my eyes, shaking my head. “No shit, you think?”

  He turned and frowned at me. “I didn’t think you were serious.”

  “Come on. Let’s get this shit tied down. I need to get ahead of this.”

  We worked fast, but it wasn’t fast enough. It started with the heavy rain pounding the deck and splashing up. My bibs were slick, the rubber-like material squeaking as I moved. A gust of wind came through, sending the ocean spray over the deck, washing over my feet and nearly knocking me on my ass.

  “Shit!” Stanley shouted, diving for the lid to one of the lobster-holding tanks that had obviously not been secured.

  “Get it!” I yelled at him over the howling wind.

  Another gust nearly toppled me to the floor. I spread my legs wide to hold my footing, waiting for the wave coming in to pass under us. It was a lot bigger than I anticipated. The boat lurched to the side, the topless bin dumping out the lobster we’d worked so hard to catch.

  “Fuck!” Stanley shouted, trying to pick up the lobsters that were making a break for it.

  “Leave them! We need to get out of here!”

  “I’ll secure the bins. Get your ass in there and get us home!”

  I scrambled to get my footing, my muck boots slipping over the deck that was covered in an inch of water. I got myself to the wheel, fired up the engine, and headed inland. I struggled against the waves and the wind that were determined to tip over my boat. I refused to give up. I fought hard, knowing a capsize would kill us. Fishermen lost their lives every year to storms.

  It was my own fault, I silently lectured myself. I knew better than to gamble with the weather. It could come up on you with no warning, and Mother Nature moved a hell of a lot faster than my tired old boat. But a man had to gamble if he wanted to put food on the table.

  Stanley came to stand beside me, holding on as we bounced up and down, thrown back and forth as we moved over the turbulent waters. I didn’t want to ask him what the damage was behind me. I could tell by the look on his face it was bad. Some days, it just seemed like all the forces of evil were against you. Today was one of those days. With sheer will and a refusal to give up, the harbor came into view.

  Stanley slapped me on the back, all three-hundred pounds of his giant body in the slap. I jerked forward, holding myself upright by holding on to the wheel. “Good job, Captain Fulton.”

  “That’s Mr. Hannes to you,” I replied with a small smile. “We’re alive.”

  “Hell yeah, we are. I thought we were goners there for a minute.”

  I didn’t say it aloud, but I did too. “We just lost any money we would have made today,” I told him, my voice grim.

  “It’s all good,” he said in his usual nonchalant way. “After a good storm, there will be all kinds of fishing to do. Hell, if we’re lucky, some of the competition will have boat problems and all the lobster will be for us.”

  I said, knowing that would never happen. “We can’t afford to keep losing money.”

  I navigated my boat into the harbor where all the other smart captains had already moored their vessels. There was a sense of relief and dread as we limped along. I had nothing to sell, but I was alive. My luck could not get any worse. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind when the engine choked and sputtered.

  “Oh, not again,” Stanley groaned.

  “Don’t you die on me,” I whispered, throttling down to give the overworked John Deere engine a little break. “Come on. We’re almost home. Just a little more.”

  “Do you think it can hear you?” Stanley asked.

  I turned to look at the guy that was about an inch shorter than I was at six-four, but he had a good hundred pounds on me. He was the epitome of a big oaf. “Do engines have ears?” I asked dryly.

  “Fuck if I know. I’m not the one talking to the damn thing.”

  I shook my head again, something I found myself doing a lot when I spent time with Stanley, which was every day for a good twelve to twenty hours a day. “Maybe you should rub it. Give it a kiss or something. Coax the old girl in.”

  “Who?”

  “Not who. The engine. Shit, man. How do you forget what we are talking about a minute later?”

  He shrugged a beefy shoulder, moving to the side of the boat in preparation to jump onto the dock. “Because I don’t really pay much attention to you. You ramble a lot.”

  I groaned, remembering he couldn’t help it. The guy was wired just a little differently than everyone else. It was why I loved him and why he drove me absolutely crazy some days. My poor boat limped along, but thankfully, we docked. Stanley tied it up while I took care of the last things on the boat. The storm that had kicked our ass offshore was right on our heels.

  The rain was just starting, a precursor to the fury that was blowing in behind it. “Let’s go get a drink,” Stanley said.

  “I probably shouldn’t.”

  “Sure, you should. What else are you going to do?”

  “Wallow.”

  “We’ll wallow together. We need to talk about you getting a new boat. That thing is going to sink one of these days and I’m not a great swimmer.”

  “I don’t know if I can afford to buy myself a beer, let alone a new boat. She’s solid. It’s just that damn engine that needs some help.”

  “Then buy a new one.”

  “Sure, you got the twelve grand or so that I will need?”

  He chuckled. “All right, all right. I’ll buy you a beer. Damn, you sure are needy.”

  I wasn’t needy, but damn if I wasn’t tired of getting shafted every time I turned around. A guy needed a break now and again. If shit didn’t change, I was going to find myself a captain without a boat.

  Chapter 2

  Amara

  I headed downstairs, following the scent of something delicious. I suspected pancakes but I didn’t think my parents had the cook working this early. I stepped off the last stair and headed down the wide hall that led to the kitchen where the smell was coming from.

  My parents’ house was big, not gargantuan, but it was a gorgeous home that overlooked the ocean in Falmouth. I loved the house. It was home to me with the windows facing the water and the steady sound of the ocean waves rolling in.

  I was surprised to see my father standing at the stove in the massive kitchen that my mother had renovated years ago. “Dad?” I questioned with surprise.

  “Ah, there she is!” he exclaimed, spinning around with a spatula in his hand. “How did you sleep, Amara?”

  “Good. What are you doing?”

  “I’m making us some breakfast.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I see that, but why?”

  “Because we’re all here together. That has not happened in a very long time. I was hoping we could enjoy breakfast together before we fall back into our busy schedules and never see each other.”

  “That will be nice. Where’s Mom?”

  “She had an early call and is in her office. She’ll join us soon.”

  I helped myself to a cup of coffee and peeked at the breakfast he was cooking. It reminded me of my youth. “I thought pancakes were a Sunday tradition?”

  “They are, but today is special.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we are all here. You’re home. I have waited for this day since you headed off to college four years ago. How was your trip?”

  I smiled, sipping my coffee, and thought about our month-long vacation to the south of France. There were some perks of being from a wealthy family. “It was so much fun. Thank you for covering the cost for me. We had a great time. It was nice to hang out with my friends from school. I doubt we will be seeing each other all that often now that we’ve graduated. We are all ready to start our lives.”

  “You’re twenty-two, sweetie. You have your entire life ahead of you. You earned that trip. We told you when you were in high school if you graduated college, we would pay to send you wherever you
wanted. You worked your butt off and deserved that trip. You don’t have to jump right into working. You know I will support you while you take some time off this summer.”

  “Daddy, thank you, but I want to get started. There is no time like the present.”

  He laughed. “You are your father’s daughter.”

  My mother breezed into the kitchen, already dressed and ready for what was likely a slew of meetings for her various charities. “Did you sleep well?” she asked.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Let’s set the table while your dad finishes breakfast.”

  I helped her with the chore, feeling very much like I was back in high school. My parents were wealthy but they believed in normalcy. Most people assumed we were stuck up with a slew of servants. They did employ a cook for dinners, and we had a housekeeper, but I felt like we were normal. Mom was busy and Dad worked a lot. The cook was more of a necessity to make sure we were eating well, and when it was possible, we sat down to dinner together most nights.

  “What’s it like to be done with school?” my mom asked.

  “Good. Weird. I’m still trying to get used to the idea I’m not going back after the summer.”

  She smiled and nodded. “You’ll get used to it.”

  My father delivered the breakfast to the table. We all sat down to enjoy his cooking. It felt good to be home. “What are your plans for the day?” he asked.