by Natalie Ann
Copyright 2018 Natalie Ann
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without a written consent.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Road Series-See where it all started!!
Lucas and Brooke’s Story- Road to Recovery
Jack and Cori’s Story – Road to Redemption
Mac and Beth’s Story- Road to Reality
Ryan and Kaitlin’s Story- Road to Reason
The All Series
William and Isabel’s Story — All for Love
Ben and Presley’s Story – All or Nothing
Phil and Sophia’s Story – All of Me
Alec and Brynn’s Story – All the Way
Sean and Carly’s Story — All I Want
Drew and Jordyn’s Story— All My Love
Finn and Olivia’s Story—All About You
The Lake Placid Series
Nick Buchanan and Mallory Denning – Second Chance
Max Hamilton and Quinn Baker – Give Me A Chance
Caleb Ryder and Celeste McGuire – Our Chance
Cole McGuire and Rene Buchanan – Take A Chance
Zach Monroe and Amber Deacon- Deserve A Chance
Trevor Miles and Riley Hamilton – Last Chance
The Fierce Five Series
Brody Fierce and Aimee Reed - Brody
Aiden Fierce and Nic Moretti- Aiden
Mason Fierce and Jessica Corning- Mason
Cade Fierce and Alex Marshall - Cade
Love Collection
Vin Steele and Piper Fielding – Secret Love
Jared Hawk and Shelby McDonald – True Love
Erik McMann and Sheldon Case – Finding Love
Connor Landers and Melissa Mahoney- Beach Love
Ian Price and Cam Mason- Intense Love
Liam Sullivan and Ali Rogers- Autumn Love
Owen Taylor and Jill Duncan – Holiday Love
Chase Martin and Noelle Bennett- Christmas Love
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Cade Fierce has spent more time worrying about who he wasn’t than focusing on who he was. The fourth son of quintuplets who always acted out for attention rather than for what counted, but he’s an adult now trying to prove that he’s different. That he’s changed. The only problem—his reputation precedes him...most of all in the lady department.
Alex Marshall knows all about the Cades of the world. She’s spent her life deflecting their advances since she matured much faster than the rest of the girls her age, and avoiding the rumors that came with it. Trust issues, yeah, she has them full force. Now all she wants to do is focus on rebuilding her parents’ business that got left behind the times. Cade Fierce is the last thing she needs in her life. Too bad she can’t convince herself that a need and a want are two different things.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Peace and Quiet
Pretend Indifference
Fast on His Feet
Safe for the Moment
The Win
Uncommon Around Here
Not to Push
A Personal Nature
Held His Breath
Preconceived Notions
Just a Coincidence
Slick Enough
To the Gang
Smooth and Charming
None the Wiser
Work Overtime
Only Went So Far
Individual and Cliché
His Rules
On a Mission
Simple and Uncomplicated
Guilty of It
Such a Sucker
My Personal Genie
Avoid Danger
More Up Front
Made No Sense
Thick as Thieves
Big and Dominant
A Reputation
Relax and Enjoy
A Great Guy
Top of My List
Had No Choice
Boiling His Blood
Feel Like a Fool
Trust Me
Twice in One Day
Epilogue
Prologue
Cade made his way to the meeting place at eleven just as his text instructed. There was an excitement rushing through him, vibrating like the bass turned up to the highest number in the little convertible that he’d bought with his own hard-earned money.
Five kids meant they weren’t each getting their own cars when they got their licenses. Not when they were quintuplets. But since they all worked at the family pub, they all had the means to save or spend.
He’d tended to spend more than save early on, but when he discovered that chicks dug a guy in a hot car, he started to put those paychecks away faster than a pickpocket in New York City.
A nighttime rendezvous. Just what the doctor ordered with finals a week away. There was school, and there was play. Play normally took the lead in his life.
He was rubbing his hands together when he opened the door to the sorority house. In the basement, his text had said to go, so he made his way to the kitchen, then opened the door and walked down.
There were lights on in the house, but not too many people around. The two women he passed in the living room just looked up and smiled at him. They’d seen him here before picking up Sarah.
The stairs creaked under his weight. Not that he was heavy, but he was big. He and his brothers were all over six foot, and though he knew he still had some muscle to build, he was ripped just fine for twenty-one years old. The ladies sure didn’t mind if he could have added a few more to make a six-pack.
“Sarah,” he called out quietly. “Where are you?”
“In the back, Cade,” he’d heard and made his way past the ping pong table and old bar in the dingy room. It looked like a game room out of the seventies with the brown paneling and orange shag carpet, but what college kid cared about the atmosphere when they were drunk and hanging out, even looking to get laid.
It was a little darker in the back room, but there were a couch and some chairs. The door had been shut the few other times he’d been here and he was thinking now it was a sneak away room for a little bit of action without having to go to a shared bedroom on the upper floors. He was game for it.
“You got here faster than I thought,” Sarah said. “Normally you’re late.”
“You told me eleven. I’m good at following directions.” And he’d never be late if there was something in it for him. Something good.
“Are you now?” she asked. There was a look in her eye, one of secret pleasure that he couldn’t wait to explore. She’d sought him out weeks ago and had been extremely eager the few times they’d met up.
“I know that too,” he heard to his right, a higher pitched voice.
“Shit,” he whispered when he saw Lori standing there. He hadn’t seen her in a week or so since she stopped texting him out of the blue. She was all hot and bothered when she walked up to him in class that first time a few weeks ago.
“Me too,” a softer voice said.
He turned to the lef
t, and as luck would have it, there was Allison. All that went through his brain right now was an escape plan. He was good at running from his siblings as a kid, but he had nowhere to go right now. Not only that, his pride made him stand his ground. He’d talked himself out of situations before, he could do it again.
“What are you all doing here?” he asked to no one in particular. Not like he couldn’t figure it out, though part of him was wondering what was really going on.
“We just wanted to see your face when you saw us all in the same room at once,” Sarah said. Now he knew where that pleasure came from. She was ready to twist his balls in a vise that was going to be two sizes too small.
“Let’s see if you can talk your way out of this one, Cade.”
When he heard the fourth voice, he turned and didn’t know what could be worse. Another woman he’d dated on campus, or his sister, Ella. Please, dear Lord, let Ella help get me out of this mess. “Well, Cade? What do you have to say for yourself now?” Ella asked him, just like she had so many times when they were growing up.
Guess not.
Peace and Quiet
Ten Years Later
“Cade, honey. I need a favor.”
He turned and saw his mother standing in the doorway to his office. He hated being in the office above Fierce because he never got any peace. For as much as he talked and liked to socialize, when it came down to work, he wanted peace and quiet for that.
If his family wasn’t bugging him, then his intern was, or another staff member. Everyone got mad when he worked from home so much, but it seemed it was the only way he could get anything done.
“Hi, Mom. A favor, huh?” he asked, smiling. He knew better than to say he was busy or push her off. It never worked when he was a kid and worked even less as an adult.
Jolene Fierce walked into the room and sat by him on the couch. He worked better with his laptop on his lap on the couch with his feet stretched out in front of him on the coffee table than sitting at his desk on the other side of the room. When people walked by and saw his desk empty, they assumed he wasn’t in. The couch was his favorite place to be.
“It’s not a big favor. Just a little one.”
Nothing was little when it came to his mother. “What’s in it for me?”
He sent her the charming smile he’d perfected when growing up. She’d been his test subject where he learned to master what looks to use when he wanted or needed something.
She reached her hand over and patted his cheek. “Always looking out for yourself, aren’t you? You’ll get something out of it.”
He didn’t like the look in her eye right now. He wanted to say sneaky, but she never was. She was always upfront. In your face more than upfront, but still, there’d never been any secrets with her. She’d never had the ability to keep her lips sealed, much like him. “So what do I get?” he asked, humoring her.
She squinted one eye at him. “Your siblings loving what you’ll show them.”
“They already love everything I do,” he said. He was laughing, but it was true. Everyone had their niche at Fierce. Just because no one understood his or wanted any part of it, they still loved what he did. Too bad they didn’t realize the amount of work it took for him to do it.
Brody, the oldest, ran the bar. He was the loudest and the leader of them all. He had a way with people and had always been a night owl.
Aiden was next by just five minutes. They all were born just five minutes apart. Or as his mother often told them growing up, “pried out of her five minutes apart.” Aiden was the most confident, the most skilled, and a master behind the food at Fierce that had people coming from all over to sample his creations.
Mason was the quiet one. The shy one. The smart one. Science ran through his brain like food was cut from Aiden’s knife. Mason created and brewed all the beer for Fierce. His brewery was listed as one of the up and coming in the US, with beer distributed all over the East Coast, more than quadrupling revenue for Fierce in the past two years alone.
Him. He didn’t have any special skill other than running his mouth and being the entertainment for the family. Someone had to liven the rest of them up and he decided it was going to be him. Everyone was way too serious. Or as he liked to say, “tight asses.”
Ella. The business mind. The CPA and numbers behind the business. The only girl. The baby that they all had to protect. Or so they thought. She could protect herself, and at times, had protected him. Not that he shared that with anyone, least of all his mother.
“You’re so cocky at times,” his mother said.
“So I’ve been told. I guess it comes with my line of work.” He ran all the marketing and promotions for Fierce and was the family lawyer to boot. No one seemed to take him seriously as the lawyer, at least not until the last few years. “So why are they going to love what I do even more?”
“Several years ago, your father and I used Marshall Printing for all our ads. Do you remember them? You were probably too young?”
“The name sounds familiar.”
He remembered the old fliers around the pub when he was younger. Even though he’d always felt like he didn’t have his place in the family business, deep down he really did. He liked to come up with slogans and ads. It was a good thing because he and his siblings knew they were going to make his parents’ business huge one day and they needed all the bases covered.
“Well, they kind of fell behind the times and just couldn’t meet our needs when we were growing so much. Then you started taking over even when you were in college and your father and I let you run with it.” She put her hand on his arm, patting it, just like she did his face. Humoring him again. Guess he got that charm from her. “You did such a good job that we didn’t interfere.”
“Like you want to do right now?” he asked, lifting his chin.
She laughed back at him. “Of course. Anyway, you’ve got a lot of vendors. I know you do. But you see, Marshall Printing is back in business. Or I should say they’re overhauled now. They can do just about anything and everything that you’re getting from multiple sources. Probably some things you haven’t even seen before.”
“How do you know this?” he asked.
“I still see Paula Marshall now and again. Anyway. I was wondering if you could go over and just talk with Alex. Hear them out and discuss what they’ve got, what we need, and see what the cost is. Wouldn’t it be nice to get it all in one place? Assuring it’s the same shade of red for everything?”
This time he narrowed his eyes. His mother liked to play the card of “I’m not sure what you kids all do” but everyone knew that was a big whopping lie. She had her finger on every pulse and nothing got by her. Ever. “You know as well as I do it drives me insane when I can’t get the reds to match.”
“Exactly. When your father decided on red, years ago when he opened this pub, it was Marshall’s that printed the very first shirts.”
He sighed. She had him and she knew it. He was a closet sentimentalist. “Fine. I’ll give them a call and see if we can work something out. No promises though. I’m happy with some of my vendors.”
“But not all,” she pointed out. Again, she knew more than she let on.
“Point taken.”
“You’re a good boy, Cade, despite what everyone else says about you.”
He shook his head when she left and went back to work.
A few minutes later Ella appeared in his office. “What did Mom want?”
“Why?” he asked. “I don’t bug you every time Mom stops into your office and asks for something.”
She smirked at him just like his mother was doing minutes ago. “That’s because Mom only stops in my office to ask if I want to go shopping. She never comes and talks to me about work like she does the rest of you guys.”
“Then go shopping with her. Maybe she’ll talk about work then.”
“I go shopping with her every other month. Don’t get me wrong, I love to shop, but even I have my limit.”
> “There’s never a limit to shopping, Ella. She’s just bonding with you. She’s outnumbered and so are you. It’s that girl thing you two do that the rest of us don’t get. That and the spa.”
“You go to the spa just as much as I do,” she pointed out. At least she didn’t rub his face in the fact he probably shopped more than her. He had an appearance to keep up since he was out in the public more than the rest of them.
“Shhh. Don’t say that so loud.”
She shut his door. “You think you can hide everything, but you’re not very good at it.”
“How do you know I go to the spa?”
There were no secrets in his family. Or he should say very few of them between his siblings. He should be used to it by now, but probably never would be.
“You go to the same place I do. Don’t you think they’d mention it?”
“Shit. No. I thought that was one of those confidential things.”
“Cade,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s a doctor’s office, not a spa. Especially when they all brag about how charming you are to them.”
“Don’t be jealous that they like me more. They probably thought complimenting me would get you to be nicer.”
“I’m nice and you know it.”
“You could have fooled me right now standing there with your arms crossed.”
She dropped her arms but laughed at him. “Anyway. Seriously, what did Mom want? I heard her talking about the vendors. Are you changing them? Do I need to change any projections?”
“Calm down. You know, I used to think it was Mom that had her finger on every pulse, but it’s you. You get that from her. Geez, I’ll let you know if you need to change anything. She asked me to go talk to Marshall Printing. I guess they used to do all of the pub’s stuff years ago. Now they can do everything that I’m sourcing out through multiple vendors. She asked as a favor that I listen to what they’ve got to say.”
