by Grant, Pippa
Crazy for Loving You
Pippa Grant
Contents
Introduction
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
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Epilogue
Are you caught up?
Sneak Peek at MASTER BAKER
Sneak Peek at THE PILOT & THE PUCK-UP
About the Author
Complete Pippa Grant Book List and Reading Order
Copyright
Introduction
Crazy for Loving You
(A Bluewater Billionaire Romantic Comedy)
Is there anything hotter than a growly, overprotective Marine cradling a baby? My melted ovaries don’t think so.
When you work hard and have the bank account to prove it, you’re entitled to play hard. I’ve seen some crazy things. I’ve caused some crazy scenes. And there’s no shame in my game.
But I’m still knocked off my stilettos when an insane chain of events leads to me inheriting a baby. The craziest part? The baby comes with a by-the-books, no-nonsense retired Marine who's so regimented that I wouldn't be surprised if he irons his boxer shorts.
Parenting? Bring it on. I don’t need sleep—I once started my day with business meetings in Cairo and ended it three days later at a club in Melbourne. Changing diapers? Please. It can't be any more challenging than changing out of Spanx on the back of a moving motorcycle. Training the little guy to run the family’s real estate empire? He’ll be all our bosses by the time he’s four.
But living with my new co-guardian? The gruff, muscled, tattooed former military man who manages to check all my boxes while trying to sneak under my skin?
He needs to go.
Because the longer he stays, the more layers he’s peeling off my heart.
But love isn’t something that’s ever diluted my gene pool, and I like my life just fine without it. I have awesome friends, this adorable baby and an obscene amount of money. Who needs love?
Turns out…maybe me.
Crazy for Loving You is a larger-than life ride through accidental parenthood featuring a fun-loving billionaire playgirl, a crusty Marine with a gooey center, a horny dolphin, the world’s most obscene pool, and all the fun you’d expect from a world built by Lucy Score, Claire Kingsley, Kathryn Nolan, and Pippa Grant.
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The Bluewater Billionaires Series
The Price of Scandal by Lucy Score
The Mogul and the Muscle by Claire Kingsley
Wild Open Hearts by Kathryn Nolan
Crazy for Loving You by Pippa Grant
One
Daisy Carter-Kincaid, aka a (semi-self-made) billionaire who’s never met a challenge she couldn’t take down in a dance-off while wearing Manolos and shooting Fireball. Until very, very soon…
When I die, they might not call me the classiest lady to ever live. Or the smartest. Or even the richest.
But there’s nothing like a funeral with very few tears to inspire a person to at least want to be missed.
“I wonder if she would’ve given the flowers one star for the orchids being peach instead of apricot,” my mother murmurs over her mai tai.
I choke on my own Bahama mama, smuggled into the funeral in black metal water bottles to make them look somber. “Mom.”
“What? I wouldn’t speak ill of the dead if the dead didn’t give me so much ill to speak of. And panning your spa in Arizona on her awful website because of a shade of orange on the curtains was petty as fuck.”
“It was,” the mayor of Miami agrees. Mom and I are in the family receiving line in my grandmother’s carefully-cultivated tropical garden outside her South Beach fortress, and the mayor’s just reached us to offer his condolences on my cousin’s passing. “She once told me that my dog was ugly. Not surprised that she’d be just as mean to family.”
His wife nods as she tugs on the collar of her black crepe dress. “She told me I needed a nose job. Also, is that Rafe’s mistress lurking over by the bougainvillea? I’m sure Julienne would’ve given her a one-star review for her performance in bed.”
“God bless you both, and don’t ever change,” Mom says. “What’s in your heart is what matters.”
We trade hugs, and they move on to the rest of my cousins and aunts and uncles.
“Julienne wrote on her blog that the sculpture I designed for the children’s hospital was an eyesore,” an artist I vaguely recognize murmurs. “May her judgmental and tasteless soul rest in peace.”
“Amen,” Mom agrees.
“Did you do the three dancing girls statue in the lobby?” I ask.
He nods.
“I love that! It’s so bright and happy!”
“Hence the problem,” his partner replies. “She called us just to tell us that her Instagram post tearing the sculpture to shreds got more likes than the number of people who’d otherwise see it in a year.”
We all hug and they continue down the line.
I lean closer to Mom. “Julienne and Rafe didn’t make many friends, did they?”
“Why make friends when you can live off trust funds and tear other people down?” Mom sips her drink and slides a glance at a waiter passing out elegant butterfly-shaped canapés, then leans forward to check out the head of the receiving line in the winding garden path.
The Dame, aka my grandmother, is in all black at the edge of the koi pond, standing stoically and welcoming the last of the mourners beside my dead cousin Julienne’s in-laws.
Her mother-in-law was the only person other than Julienne’s newborn baby to cry at the double funeral for my cousin and her husband. His father—aka The Creepy Asshole whom I’m keeping as much distance from as possible—kept checking his watch like he was going to miss a tee time.
And I’m very glad to have my bodyguard with me today.
Mom leans closer and lowers her voice. “I don’t know what her will says about a guardian for the baby, but this might be the best thing to ever happen to him. Unless Rafe’s parents get him, and then the world—and that child—are all doomed.”
She has an unfortunate point. “Poor thing.”
We both stare out over the flowers. I love bright and happy, but “celebrating the lives” of a serial cheater and his bitter wife feels so wrong. For so many reasons.
Mom takes another sip, then turns to me again. “You hav
e to wonder if she would’ve objected to the silver glitter casket. I thought she would’ve gone for gold.”
Clearly, she’s still not over Julienne’s review of the first spa I designed for my grandmother’s real estate empire. “It was platinum glitter.”
“Platinum glitter while her husband is laid to rest in a casket that was shinier than a sports car. One star.”
God, this is depressing. I hate depressing. “I don’t like to one-star things, but I’m one-starring my boob sweat. Who approved a heat wave in October, and when do we get in the pool?”
“Never. Your grandmother planned this, not you. Remember?”
“I hate being overruled.”
But my grandmother overrules everyone. On everything.
Mom sighs. But she doesn’t fidget, because she is The Dame’s daughter. So she’s impeccably dressed in a svelte black Caroline Herrera that shows off her cleavage without being too much, her makeup perfect, her hair demure, her expression sad but not weepy.
I look just like her, except the part where her chicken legs are actually chicken legs, whereas mine are compressed since I’m six inches shorter than she is.
Damn paternal genes.
“I severely dislike funerals,” she says. “Even though they were both horrible people, I’m still sad they’re gone. All those years they could’ve found their souls on earth, and now they’ll never get the chance to redeem themselves.”
“But if you had to go, having horny dolphins chase your sailboat into the path of an oncoming pirate tourist ship is pretty epic.”
“I will disown you if you die early on me in a freak accident involving horny anything and pirate anything else.”
“Ditto. Also, I promise that when it’s your time, I’ll have you laid to rest in a dick casket, just to watch The Dame’s eyeballs pop out of her head.”
A smile teases her lips, and her blue eyes crinkle at the edges while she touches her phallic diamond earrings.
My mother loves penises. She’s made a fortune in penis art since she divorced my father twenty-five years ago. Which is good, because The Dame disinherited her for marrying my father in the first place.
“For the lack of nice things said about Julienne and Rafe, there are a remarkable number of people here,” she says.
“It’s sweet of so many people to come for Grandma and the Rodericks.” I’m well aware that most people are here only to schmooze with The Dame, or that the many enemies Julienne made with her snark blog wanted to be here to pan her funeral, or that Rafe’s three mistresses are actually in mourning because none of them knew he was married and a dickhead and they all loved him in their own way.
Or that there would probably be more people here, except the Rodericks—Rafe’s parents—don’t have many friends in their social circle who would show up to a funeral.
Actually, they don’t have many friends at all. Not of the friendly variety, anyway.
Probably because Anthony Roderick is a dick who tries to blackmail people into doing business with him.
Firsthand experience there, and even though it’s been four years, the memory of him at Julienne’s wedding, cornering me and leering and demanding that we do a deal together since we’re family now still makes me shiver.
A local congressman steps up to us in line. “I got calls about Julienne and her opinion columns on a daily basis. My phones will be quieter with her gone.”
“So eloquently put,” Mom tells him.
“Thank you. My speechwriter and I worked on it for an hour last night.”
He moves on, and Mom looks down the row again. “Thank god. Your grandmother’s breaking rank. This must be about the last of them. How do you feel about politicians? The congressman is cute. You should ask him out.”
We head for the nearest waiter, because canapés. Yum. “Too close to home.”
“You and this ridiculous obsession with European men… Where did I go wrong?”
“Have you ever dated an Italian or a Spaniard?”
She frowns. “I don’t think I have.”
“Trust me. You should try it sometime.”
“I haven’t studied European penises up close…”
“Borrow my plane. Or take the yacht.”
“Oh, a week on the yacht would be lovely. And inspiring. Can I bring a pool boy?”
“You know I’d be disappointed in you if you didn’t.”
“And then when I get back, we can talk about you calling the congressman.”
“Mom.”
“What? I have to mom you until you finally settle down.”
We pass Alessandro, my bodyguard, who smirks at me.
I let him, because he’s one of my favorite people in the world.
“I have too much living to do to settle down,” I declare.
“Yes, yes, sow your wild oats. You’re only young once. But, Daisy, you’re in your mid-thirties now. You’ve been living like this for nearly half your life. And you’re my only hope for grandchildren.”
“I’m sure there’s a grandmotherless family somewhere in Miami who would love to be adopted by you and your alimony checks, but you might have to hide your jewelry. It’s inappropriate, Mother.”
“Daisy Imogen Carter-Kincaid.”
I grin.
She tries not to grin back, but she fails, and instead sips her mai tai again to try to hide her amusement over my suggestion. We both know she’s going to have her assistant look into a grandmotherless family as soon as this funeral party is over.
She makes enough money on her own that she can spare the alimony checks my father grumbles about writing every month. They might as well go toward spoiling surrogate grandchildren.
“I should ground you for insolence,” she says.
“I’m due in Tokyo Tuesday for the final approval of Carter Towers’ newest acquisition. And then Bali for a long weekend party with a rock band I can’t name because of an NDA. So you can’t ground me.”
“Oh, Bali. I love Bali. Is this rock band party a K-Pop thing? Are you hooking up with one of them, or the whole band?”
I love-hate that she knows me so well. “Need to know. You don’t need—actually, you don’t want to know.”
“Did you miss the part where I want grandchildren?”
I shake my head and turn back to glance at the crowd, and I suddenly feel like doing Jell-O shots and random acts of kindness.
No one’s hanging out. Now that the receiving line’s over, everyone’s headed for the door.
So much for The Dame’s plans for a celebration of life party.
Even the people who would usually schmooze and hint that they have a new charity we should donate to are running for the exits. So freaking sad.
I blame Anthony Roderick, because he’s one of very few people in the world who has earned the distinct honor of going on my assholes that I will never speak to again list.
“How about a three-legged alligator grandson?” I offer Mom. “I always forget when it’s my day to feed Steve at the enclave. He’d love you. He gets an extra gleam in his eye when he sees that much sparkle around the neck of the one tossing him a chicken.”
“Human grandchildren.”
“Hm. Maybe you should adopt another daughter. I always wanted a sister.”
“I know, I know. You’re busy being you. But my life is so fulfilled by you. I just want you to feel the same joy that having children brings.”
“Wow.”
“Good, right? I had the congressman’s speechwriter help me with that one too.”
I crack up.
Mom cracks up.
And then we both sigh, because this really is the saddest funeral in the world.
As soon as we leave, I’m officially detouring on the way to the office. I feel like dropping little love bombs all over Miami.
Someone should be happy.
Might as well be people looking for burgers and donuts and for their parking meters to not expire.
“Your yacht’s free for a week
or two? You’re sure?” Mom glances back at The Dame, who’s also watching the masses flee her garden as she talks with Anthony Roderick.
I rarely feel sorry for my grandmother, but talking to Anthony Roderick is a fate I wouldn’t wish on a flying cockroach. “Yes. Please take my yacht. It’s feeling neglected.”
“I was planning a trip to the Bahamas before Julienne’s accident.”
“Go. Use it. Escape. Have fun. Avoid horny dolphins and fake pirate ships.”
She starts to hug me, but we both grimace, because it doesn’t matter how many billions of dollars you have in the bank, you can’t fight body odor in heat like this. Freaking heat wave. Julienne would probably one-star her own funeral.
“You’ll be okay? You won’t be…sad?” Mom asks.
“I have my besties. And Tokyo and Bali. I’m good.”
“No, honey, you’re the best.”
I smile at her.
And I get approximately eight hours to believe her.
Until everything changes.
Two
Westley Jaeger, aka a recently retired, jaded military man determined to finally get the girl, even if she’s not exactly the one of his dreams
Beach Burgers is more crowded than usual tonight. The burgers are free today. Some rich local apparently did a random act of kindness and is paying, which we didn’t know when we got here. There’s barely standing room anywhere, but a table by the window opens up for Becca and me just as our number is called. I grab the tray of burgers and shakes and stuff a twenty into the tip jar while Becca stakes our claim.
