Virtually Mine (The Lindstroms Book 5) Read online

  VIRTUALLY MINE

  The Lindstroms #5

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  Katy Regnery

  writing as

  Katy Paige

  VIRTUALLY MINE

  Copyright © 2020 by Katharine Gilliam Regnery

  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

  Editing: Ellie McLove

  Formatting: CookieLynn Publishing Services

  First Edition: September 2020

  Virtually Mine: a novel / by Katy Paige—1st Ed.

  ISBN: 978-1-944810-69-6

  Contents

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  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

  ALSO AVAILABLE from Katy Regnery

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For Callie, who makes every day magical.

  This one is yours.

  I love you.

  xoxoxo

  CHAPTER 1

  Once upon a time, there was a boy named Paul Johansson.

  Paul had big dreams about falling in love.

  He had big hopes for his own personal “happily ever after.”

  He just didn’t have the best luck.

  And he blamed this—in part—on the movie The Princess Bride, which his mother encouraged him to watch at the tender, impressionable age of ten. He was captivated with the angelic beauty of the heroine, Buttercup, his first genuine crush, but even more, he was desperate to be Westley, her handsome, quick-witted hero. What young boy, on the cusp of adolescence with pre-hormones raging, wouldn’t want to be the hero to the perfect heroine (who had long blonde hair and mouth-watering ta-tas in a low-cut dress)? Who wouldn’t want to be the swashbuckling pirate who saved the princess (and got to kiss her…with tongue!) before riding off a deux into a lavender sunset?

  He’d walked into his fourth-grade classroom the next day on the hunt for his Buttercup. And while Paul’s mission found no joy in elementary school, by seventh grade, he was fairly sure he’d found his princess.

  Dana Durant, a transfer student from Florida, was everything Paul had been searching for. Tall, blonde, and ridiculously tan for January in Maine, Dana had a bright white smile and the most gorgeous set of ta-tas any boy at Kennebunkport Junior High School had ever seen. After watching her in the cafeteria for weeks and learning of her great love of chocolate pudding, he’d convinced his mother to buy some from the store and brought a cup in to school.

  One cup of pudding.

  Two spoons.

  Her face had brightened when he sat down beside her and asked if she wanted to share, but his luck quickly soured when Bradford Kennedy Spearman sat down on Dana’s other side. Bradford slipped Dana a note (in flagrant disregard of their pudding date), which she opened, checking the “yes” box with a proffered pen and flashing that perfect white smile at Paul’s rival.

  Sliding the untouched container of pudding back to Paul, she stood up, taking Bradford’s hand and agreeing to be his date for the Winter Formal before Paul could tear the top off the pudding cup, let alone muster the courage to ask her.

  By high school, Paul had developed into a handsome, fit young man who regularly whipped Bradford Spearman’s ass on the tennis courts, thereby attracting the attention of one Sybil Wentworth.

  Paul, who’d known Sybbie all his life, had recently noticed her Buttercup potential: she was a perky blonde, who also happened to be the high school Homecoming Princess and Kennebunkport Country Club tennis champion.

  Won over by Paul’s earnest eyes and wandering hands, they spent two summers hand in hand, winning at doubles, swimming in the club’s pool and making out in the back seat of his dad’s Jaguar convertible.

  However, it turned out that Sybbie wasn’t loyal to Jaguars—or Paul, for that matter—and finding her in the back of Bradford’s BMW after the club Golf Championship had ended things between them.

  Paul didn’t mourn Sybil for long. Docile and appropriate with a perfect pageboy, she was basically a younger version of Paul’s mother which—once Paul had the perspective to realize it—grossed him out sufficiently that he never looked at the back seat of a Jaguar the same way again.

  With an available, though more guarded, heart, he packed his bags for Brown University and headed south to Rhode Island, putting dreams of Buttercup, Dana and Sybil firmly from his mind. Determined to put his studies first and ta-tas second, his good intentions lasted for about an hour, which is about the same time he met Gia Fortuna.

  Gia, an international student from Italy and Paul’s freshman hall RA, was everything that Sybil was not. Witty and irreverent, sophisticated, exotic and bright, Gia kept their conversations hopping during the day and introduced Paul to acrobatic sex and talking dirty at night. Within weeks he was ready to ask her to marry him and rode the wave of assumed true love, enjoying the bounty of Gia’s physical offerings for the ensuing two years.

  Sadly, upon graduating, his princessa Italiana had patted him on the head with a friendly smile, thanked him for the good times and departed for Milan without leaving him so much as a forwarding address. This efficiently broke his heart in half then torched it.

  As Paul sorted through the ashes of his charred heart, he realized that Gia hadn’t been “the one” either. She was beautiful, spirited, adventurous and sharp-minded, like Buttercup, but she was also fickle and unfaithful.

  With a bird’s-eye view at the lost loves of his life, Paul had to admit that while Sybil lacked some originality, Gia had been a little too edgy for him.

  Somewhere inside of Paul was the ten-year-old who still wanted the fairy tale—Westley and Buttercup, a hero and a heroine. He wanted to be everything to the woman he loved, and he’d never meant everything to Dana, Sybil or Gia.

  And then he met Jenny Lindstrom.

  She had it all.

  If any woman was Buttercup incarnate, it was her.

  Beautiful, blonde, spirited, principled Jenny, whom he’d met when she was grieving the loss of her mother, was the younger sister to his best friend, Lars. Even as he’d lent Jenny his shoulder to cry on, his feelings for her had grown exponentially. At the school where he was a principal and she was a science teacher, he was constantly looking for her, finding her, and falling for her.

  He had tried to do everything right with Jenny: he gave her space to grieve, made himself available to her as a friend, and then he fell genuinely and thoroughly in love with her, convinced she would reciprocate his feelings as soon as she was able. But when he’d finally offered his heart to her, she’d gently refused him and married someone else instead.

  So it turned out that, once again, appearances had been d
eceiving.

  Jenny wasn’t Paul’s happily ever after, after all.

  Paul’s beaten heart was resilient, though, even in the wake of Dana and Sybil and Gia and Jenny. He still hoped for true love, albeit more quietly now, a little gun-shy after a good bit of heartbreak.

  He woke up every morning and devoted himself to his job: principal of the little high school in Gardiner, Montana, which was the best in the state. Paul had created a good life, by and large. He loved his students and his friends, and both filled his life with equal measures of happiness and companionship.

  But he lived his life with quiet longing, his heart full of love for the right girl, just wishing deep down that he could finally find her: his heroine, his princess, the Buttercup to his waiting Westley.

  Somewhere in this great wide world, he knew—he still believed with every beat of his heart—there lived a girl who would be his happily ever after.

  ***

  “Earth to Paul! Come in, Paul!”

  His friend Maggie stood behind the coffee bar of his favorite café trying to get his attention.

  A smile spread across his face and he wished—for the thousandth time—that he could fall in love with Maggie Campbell. Maggie, the proprietor of the Prairie Dawn Café & Bookstore, was, along with Lars Lindstrom, one of his very best friends.

  “Can’t a guy daydream, Mags?”

  “Daydream? It’s almost ten o’clock, dreamer. We close at ten o’clock on Sundays.”

  He smiled at her soft Scottish burr, more pronounced after a long day. She nudged his elbows with the dishtowel she was using to wipe down the copper bar where he’d been sitting for the past two hours. Pivoting on the bar stool, he turned to look at the empty café. It had been hopping earlier, full of folks anxious to spend an evening in the air-conditioned café where they could read books, magazines and newspapers, listen to soft music and enjoy Maggie’s many baked and caffeinated creations.

  How had it emptied out so fast? He’d been lost in thought again. Feeling lonely. Thinking about Jenny Lindstrom.

  When he turned back to Maggie, she was staring at him with her hands on her hips, lips pursed, dishtowel gone.

  “Paul.”

  “Mags.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I have a confession to make.”

  Paul sat up a little straighter, narrowing his eyes.

  Oh, no. He knew that look.

  Maggie was known to take more than a cursory interest in Paul’s love life. The last three confessions she’d made to him had to do with setting him up on the most incredibly awkward blind dates known to man, in an effort to help him get over Jenny. Really and truly, he was mostly over Jenny at this point. She was married and had moved away to Great Falls. He didn’t need or want Maggie’s unsolicited advice and help. Sure, there were some days when Jenny’s loss still hurt. Let’s face it: if any woman in the world could have been his Buttercup, Jenny was—

  “Earth to Paul. Again. Do you want my confession or no?”

  “Who’ve you set me up with this time?”

  Her face broke into a bright, satisfied grin. “No one.”

  “Well, that’s a relief because after my date with Ms. Phillips, I believe I told you to stop meddling.”

  Mary Phillips, the forty-something secretary at Grace Church, was not only ten years older than thirty-year-old Paul, but she’d spent the majority of their evening together complaining about the greasiness of the food at the Grizzly Guzzle Grill, or describing—in considerable, stomach churning detail—her various attempts to get rid of a bad case of shingles. As if that wasn’t gross enough, she’d grabbed Paul’s shoulders at her doorstep and smashed her red lips against his. It took every ounce of strength in his body not to push her into next week and run screaming into the night. He still hadn’t mustered the courage to return to church.

  “I admit, that wasn’t my finest matchmakin’ hour. She seemed bonnie enough when she came in for coffee. I dinna realize she was diseased.” She tilted her head to the side, her smile fading just a little. “I care about you. Just hate to see you so lonesome, Paul.”

  Her words made Jenny’s face flash before him for a moment and he looked away, anxious that Maggie not see the pain that lingered there. She reached out, covering his hand with hers.

  “It’s been two years,” she said softly.

  “Just because she got married doesn’t mean—”

  “Yes, Paul, it does. It’s time to give up and move on.”

  Maggie took another deep breath, withdrawing her hand and propping her elbows up on the bar as she looked at Paul.

  “The feelings don’t just go away,” he confessed softly. Nor the hopes and yearnings.

  “Jen wasn’t right for you, Paul.”

  “So she said.”

  “You have all this bonnie romantic energy,” Maggie cajoled. “I hate to see it go to waste.”

  She smiled at him gently and he realized she was either stalling or buttering him up.

  “Time for confessions, Maggie. What’d you do?”

  “Right.” Maggie pushed off from the counter, scratching at a hardened drop of cream with one fingernail. “Well…”

  “Stop stalling.”

  “I signed you up for…” She mumbled the rest staring with rapt fascination at the counter.

  “You signed me up for what?”

  “Internet dating,” she mumbled again, a little louder, peeking up at him, then quickly back down again at the little spot she was scratching.

  “You did what?”

  She cringed. “I just want you to be happy!”

  “So you signed me up for internet dating? INTERNET DATING? Are you crazy?” He knew he was yelling, but there was no one left in the café to hear and goddamn it, Maggie had no right to meddle in his life like this! “Do you know the kind of women who go on the internet to find someone? Haven’t you ever watched Dateline?” He slipped off the barstool, shaking a finger at her. “You, you stay away from me—you’re certifiable!”

  “You canna seem to get over Jenny and all the dates I set up for you are disasters and then I started thinkin’ that’s because there’s no one for you to date here in Gardiner, so why not cast a wider net and maybe I could find you someone nice!” Her words tumbled out louder and in a nervous stream.

  Paul was furious. Part of the reason he’d left Maine was to get away from meddling family, and now here he was, thousands of miles away, saddled with a surrogate sister who was making him crazy.

  “I never asked you to find me someone nice! You had no right to do that, Maggie! No right.” He leaned forward, picking up his wallet from the bar and jamming it into his back pocket. “You think I need to meet someone? How about you? Mooning over Nils Lindstrom for—what’s it been now? Five years?”

  Maggie’s chin bobbed as she swallowed and her eyes suddenly glistened like he’d smacked her. Paul knew full and well that Maggie and Nils had had a recent falling out.

  Paul looked down, shaking his head back and forth. Bringing up Nils was a low blow and he felt bad about hurting her, but damn…just damn. He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly, trying to calm down.

  “I’m sorry, Paul,” Maggie began in a small voice. “I just—”

  As her voice broke off, his shoulders slumped and he sighed. For all Maggie’s blundering, he knew she wanted to help, and he loved her like a sister.

  “Aw, Mags. Your good intentions are killing me,” he said gently. “It’s—it’s okay. Just cancel it, okay? Or whatever you have to do. Deactivate it.”

  She bit her lip and he saw hesitation in her face.

  “What?” he demanded, a warning in his voice, hackles raising again.

  “Well, I wanted to give you a wee head start, so I looked over a bunch of different profiles to find someone nice,” she said, picking up the dishtowel again and worrying it between her fingers. “I did a good job. I—I sorted through the girls and I sort of exchanged a few emails with one and…”

  “And what?�
� he prompted. “Just undo it!”

  She put down the dishtowel and turned to the back shelf, unplugging her laptop and setting it gently on the counter before him. She looked up at him with a hopeful smile as she opened it up and tapped twice on the space bar. “I will. I promise you I will…but first, meet Miss Mystic.”

  ***

  Zoë Flannigan pulled on the collar of her black T-shirt and twisted her neck, trying to get a look at whatever was causing a painful throb on her left shoulder. She sat up in bed, taking off the shirt gingerly and wincing at the brightness of the morning sun streaming in through her bedroom windows.

  Twisting her neck as far to the right as possible only increased the throb to a sharp, stabbing pain. Seeing her shoulder blade was going to require a mirror.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and groaned as the room started spinning, making the remnants of last night’s partying swirl a warning in her belly. Closing her eyes and holding on to the sheets with fists, she waited until the spins stopped and her stomach settled.

  Only then did she open her eyes.

  The bathroom, about five feet away, looked about a million miles away from where she sat on the side of her bed, aching, nauseous and deeply hungover.

  With a groan, she hefted herself off the bed and walked haltingly to the bathroom, her gait less a result of last night’s debauchery than the fact that her leg was covered in scarred, twisted flesh. The bathroom light buzzed to life and Zoë backed up against the sink to look at her back in the mirror.

  Holy shit.

  A piece of plastic wrap affixed with white surgical tape, covered with once-seepy, now-dried brown blood covered a small area of her lower left shoulder blade. A tattoo of a small black lamb with a date underneath sat in the middle of a patch of red, raw, angry skin.

  Apparently, she’d gotten a tattoo last night. Great.

  She winced, wishing she could remember the events that led up to the new acquisition, but last night was a blur. She’d left the house with Sandy and Rob around ten and had a vague recollection of the clock reading three when she finally fell into bed, but other than those two details, her memories were foggy at best.