by L A Pepper
The spark in the fireplace caught and rose up and I fell back on my haunches. I loved Chloe. I wanted her back in my arms, back in my house, back next to me, my friend, my love. Oh my God. I was in love with Chloe. I did not want this to be fake in any way. I wanted it to be real. I was in love with her.
I pretended I wasn’t paying attention to them, but I knew immediately when she finally shut the door on the big beefy hunk.
“He plowed the road between us and town and pulled your car out of the ditch while he was at it.”
“Great!” I said, full of false cheer. “Then I’ll just head back to the city and get out of your hair.”
She took a step back. “You can’t leave, the roads are still blocked all the way out of the mountains. He only cleared the road between us and the village.”
“Well then, I should get a room at the inn. Clearly I shouldn’t be here. You’ve picked who you want.”
“Who I want?”
I had to laugh and couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Leif.” Her face was shocked, like maybe she thought I wouldn’t realize that she’d run home to the better man. But he wasn’t better. “He’s not good enough for you, by the way.”
She frowned at me. “Why, because he’s a farmer?”
I scoffed. “No. Because…” I shouldn’t say it. But I couldn’t let her get herself into something that wasn’t as honest as she was. “Because he was all over another woman in town when I met him. Clearly, he’s not interested in what you need. You should be worshipped. He should be giving you the world, not cheating on you.”
“He was? Who?” She did not seem as upset as I thought she should be.
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Does it matter?”
She nodded far too eagerly.
“A redhead at the grocery store.”
Her face lit up. “Oh! Laura! That’s great. Oh my gosh.”
“Wait, what?”
She turned to me and smiled, almost predatory. “I was trying to set them up. Sort of. She’s a nice girl. Perfect for him. Simple and sweet and honest and good.”
“So are you. And you deserve someone who is worthy of you.”
“Do I?”
“Yes! And he’s not good enough. Wait. You set him up with her?” This didn’t make sense. She didn’t play games with people.
She laughed. “I’m not interested in Leif, Nick.”
“You’re not?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. Were you jealous?”
My head was spinning. “No.”
“You’re lying.”
“I am not,” I lied.
She took a step towards me and grabbed the baggy sweatshirt near my waist.
“You like me, Nick.”
“I do not,” I lied.
“You do. You know how I know?” she asked, pulling me towards her by the sweatshirt. I went without resisting.
“How?”
“Because you looked at me with the same longing in your eyes that pretty little Laura looked at Leif in the grocery store. Which is the same way that I look at you?”
Suddenly I could breathe. “Yeah?”
She nodded and leaned up, kissing the pulse point in my neck and my heartbeat started racing.
“I don’t… I don’t like you, Chloe,” I said relief making my voice weak.
“Nick…” she said, disappointed. “Tell the truth.”
“I’m trying.”
She must have heard something because she pulled back. “Nick?”
I swallowed. “I don’t just like you. I—I love you.”
She gasped. “You do?”
“I’m in love with you.”
“Really? It’s not just pretend?” A tear came to her eye. I reached out to wipe it away.
“Not at all. Chloe. God. I love you. You shouldn’t have left me.”
“I had to,” her eyes were full of deep sea shadows. “I broke our rules.”
“We had rules?”
“It was supposed to be fake. Just an agreement. And I fell in love with you. I couldn’t… I had to leave. I couldn’t play the game anymore.”
“No games, Chloe, the games are over. Just us, okay? This is real. I adore you. I’ll give you anything you want.”
“I never wanted anything, Nick. I just wanted you.” Her tears turned to joy. “We’ll go home. No more running away.”
I wrapped her in my arms and kissed her, bearing her down to the rug in front of the fire. I brushed her rich chocolate hair back from her face. “Wherever you are is home for me. It’s you. You’re my home.”
She smiled and held me tight. “You’re my home, too.”
“I think maybe we’re home when we’re together.” I pulled off her ugly sweatshirt, and she pulled off mine, and I loved feeling of her heartbeat pressed up against mine, with nothing between us.
She smiled and traced my lower lip with her forefinger. “Then we should be together, always.”
“Good idea,” I said, and we kissed, with the fire crackling, and mountains outside covered with snow, and the silence, and started our adventure together.
Epilogue
I stepped out of the private plane, and looked at the Greek skies arcing above me. Ancient mountains dotted the blue Aegean sea, and the pure white stucco of the villages tumbled down the shore in a stunning contrast to all the shades of blue.
“Does it live up to your expectations after everything you’ve read, Mrs. Meryton? This is my favorite sea in the world, because it reminds me of your eyes.”
I laughed with joy as Nick came up behind me and put his arm around my waist. “I can’t believe we’re actually in Greece,” I said.
“One of the perks of being my wife, apple blossom. And one of the perks of being your husband is avoiding a New York society wedding and getting married in your parents’ apple orchard. It was the most perfect, and meaningful wedding ever.”
“I cannot believe Rachel ran a whole special issue featuring our wedding.”
“You can’t?” he chuckled. “She loves it so much up there she’s planning on buying a little farm. So much organic and free range and purity she is dying of joy. And she’s fallen in love with the mountains.”
“Good. She works too hard. She needs some work/life balance.”
“I found mine,” he said and pressed a kiss to my neck as we stood, just a minute more, in the door of the airplane. “You ready for adventure?”
“With you by my side I am. I love you so much, Nick. You’ve given me the world.”
He kissed me and I would never get used to the way his kiss filled me with love and heat and a feeling of bliss, a feeling of belonging.
“The world was always there waiting for you. But you, you Apple Blossom, you’ve given me a home.”
The warmth of his love took my breath away, instead I took his hand and together we walked down the steps into the rest of our lives together.
Protecting His Secret
A Billionaire Second Chance Secret Romance
L.A. Pepper
© Copyright 2019 - All rights reserved.
It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.
About L.A. Pepper
Like you, LA loves contemporary romance stories and is an avid reader.
She's had her heart broken by her true love, yet is still addicted to happily ever after endings!
When LA is not writing about the next bad boy billionaire, contemporary romance novel, she enjoys a glass of Chianti, raclette with her girlfriends, spin classes, and watching the sunrise every morning!
She is a self-proclaimed desperat
e housewife and lives in a cul-de-sac of excitement, drama, and love stories. Many of her outlines are inspired here.
LA was given her nickname by one of her teenage daughters, and it stuck with friends and family!
Leanne lives in Canada with her husband, and 4 children!
She would love to connect with you!
Connect with The Author
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Other Titles
Enemy Fiance Billionaire: An Enemy to Lovers Fake Fiancé Office Romance
Protecting His Secret: A Billionaire Second Chance Secret Romance
Free Gifts
Free Copy of Lovesick: A Billionaire Best Friends Brother Secret Baby Romance
Chapter One
The company limo pulled away as I walked up the steps of the three-story brownstone. I took a deep breath and let in the green scent of the tree-lined street; the soft afternoon air of June in Greenwich Village. It might seem funny to think of the air in New York as fresh, but after the dry heat and smog of LA, the light on this quiet street seemed pure and welcoming. I was glad to leave the constant socializing of California for my little sanctuary here.
Home sweet home.
Being bi-coastal could feel like you were split in two sometimes. Never really sure what you were leaving behind or where you should be, always having that nagging feeling that you weren’t quite here, weren’t quite real. You were playing pretend, somehow. Now, though, now I’d burned all of my reasons to stay in LA. The ink on the divorce papers was still wet when I packed my bags and jumped on the earliest flight possible. So here I was. Not even time to warn anyone I was coming. Or maybe I didn’t want to admit my complete and utter failure.
I opened the front door and heard the wailing of unidentifiable sound. Music filled the house. I smiled. My cousin was staying here because her parents disowned her when she came out as a lesbian. Being part of my family came with a lot of privilege money, power, property. But with that bounty came quite a few difficulties. Mostly the family itself. We were a bunch of reprobates. Selfish. Overly proud. Condescending. Greedy. Myself included. Definitely, myself included. LA wasn’t a failure because I was a good guy. What was the point of getting everything you wanted, if everything you wanted just made you miserable, anyway? And made everyone around you miserable, too. My parents would say happiness wasn’t the point and then force me on pain of disinheritance to do whatever they wanted me to do.
Sometimes I was glad that my parents had passed, another thing that made me selfish. We’d never been that close, by design. When we managed to meet, it was generally antagonistic. I’d always been a disappointment to them. I’d tried to be. Now there was no one left to disappoint, and it was a relief. It was just me and my favorite cousin, and I could thwart her parents by taking her in and making the older generation unhappy. They couldn’t do a thing to stop it. I’d inherited the whole fortune. No one could hold it over me anymore and I got to do what I wanted. What I wanted was to support my cousin because my aunt and uncle were pompous, self-righteous bigots. It was a win/win situation. I smiled at the thought and opened the door of my home.
“Bette!” I called over the music. She didn’t respond. She was a party girl, just like the rest of my family. Grab the life you want. Enjoy the pretty girls. Have the best champagne. Travel the world. Do what you want. We lived such an enviable life. It was a load of crap.
This music was not helping my headache. “Bette, darling!” There was an edge to my voice. Maybe she had a girl there, and I was interrupting something. I put my keys on the foyer table and set my suitcase down in the archway. I looked up the stairs, but all seemed to be quiet up there. The music was coming from the kitchen, so I opened the door. I nearly reeled back from the wall of sound. This was way too loud for a romantic situation.
“Bette, dammit!” I yelled, this time, over the music. “I’ve left her. You’re no longer house sitting. We are now roommates.” I stopped.
There was a girl in the kitchen with her back to me. She had lovely olive skin exposed in a skimpy tank top and ripples of bronze hair curling over her bare shoulders. Her ass was a perfect heart shape in cut-offs that were entirely too short. I staggered back from the perfection. Her feet were bare, and she was…
She was dancing with two giant, supremely hairy dogs.
This was not Bette.
I stood there, stunned and watched her dance to the still unidentifiable music. A woman sang at the highest register, then down to the low register and then back up again. The stranger danced harder. She wiggled that great ass, and the dogs leapt around her. One of them put its giant paws on her shoulder and she started… I didn’t know what to call it… waltzing with it?
The dog was nearly as astonishing as the girl, with long flowing hair of a dark chocolate brown and a pointed snout. Wait. Hadn’t Bette asked me if she was allowed to have dogs in the house? I’d been having a fight with Brigitte at the time, so I said yes and gotten back to bitching about her, but yes. She said two. Some kind of hounds. I was thinking some low slung basset or something, but these dogs. Yes, with that height and slim build, long hair and aquiline profile, that would be just the kind of dogs that Bette would get. Dogs were supposed to look like their owners, right? I chuckled at the thought, it was hard to keep the smile from my face. But the girl was turning, waltzing the dog around so she finally faced me.
She yelped and dropped the dog who landed on the floor and began bouncing as if it were still dancing.
“Hi!” I yelled. The music was still quite loud.
Her eyes were huge and as green as leaves. Her mouth was full and pink and puckered in an ‘O’ of astonishment. Or horror. She was delightful.
“Are you Bette’s new girlfriend?” I asked over the music. Bette had good taste. She was gorgeous and her tank top barely restrained the greatest set of tits I’d ever seen.
“What?” she asked, I could barely hear her.
“ARE YOU BETTE’S GIRLFRIEND?”
She shook her head and ran over to the stereo mounted under the counter and fumbled with it. The music turned off, and I felt almost deafened by the sudden silence.
“Wow. I didn’t know that stereo went so loud.” I said, and couldn’t help grinning. Everything about this scene made me happy. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time.
“Oh. I’m so sorry,” she said and blinked thick black eyelashes as if she was reacting too. Her voice was husky and resonant and something low in my body tightened.
Oh. Well. Fuck. That was no good. “So you’re Bette’s new girlfriend,” I said, reminding myself. Just because I was James Silver did not mean I got everything I wanted. It was good for my character to be denied my cousin’s girlfriend.
She blinked again like it surprised her I’d say such a thing, then chuckled. The sound caught me right in the gut. “No. I’m watching her dogs while she’s away. I walk them during the day when she’s busy.” She pointed at herself proudly. “Dog walker.”
She was not Bette’s girlfriend. The relief I felt was like a solid thing. This would probably be trouble. But then, it was a while since I’d been in trouble. I smiled and leaned against the dark slate countertop. “Do you have a name?” It turned out there was no reason I should be denied what I wanted, anyway.
She tilted her head at me and a lock of curly bronze hair fell over one eye. “Hannah?”
I wasn’t sure how she was so sexy without makeup and wearing dog walking clothes. Dog dancing clothes, I supposed. “Is that a question?”
She straightened up and put both hands on the countertop across from me. “No. No, it’s not. My name is Hannah.”
“Nice to meet you, Hannah,” I flashed her the smile that made girls melt.
She narrowed her eyes. She was the exact opposite of my ex-wife. It was thrilling.
“Bette’s away in Italy with friends. She’ll be back at the end of the week. I’m the dog walker.”
“You said that already.”
&nb
sp; “I guess I did.”
“Don’t you want to know who I am?” I slid into the stool and smiled at her.
She smiled back at me, wide and bright, and full of sun. She nearly knocked me off the stool with that smile. “I know who you are, James.”
I was at a loss. I was not used to being at a loss. Her smile and husky, knowing voice, and the way she said my name emptied my brain. I let my practiced mask take over much as I had these last few months. “James Silver, billionaire playboy, at your service.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “Is that who you are?”
“That’s what they call me in the media. But you’re Bette’s dog walker. So maybe you know me that way. I’m Bette’s cousin. This is my house.”
“Yes. Sure.” She crossed her arms and tilted her head again. “That’s how I know you.” This time the lock of hair fell over her face and she huffed a breath to move it before giving up and tucking it behind her ear. “You’re also newlywed to A-list movie star, Brigitte LaFontaine. Her movie just broke box office records, you know. You must be very proud, Mr. LaFontaine.”
Rage flashed through me and I stood to my feet. “Silver,” I said shortly. “James Silver. Not Mr. LaFontaine. Mr. Silver.”
“Oh, sensitive are we? Don’t like your wife to outshine you?” She mocked me.
I snapped. “I don’t care if my wife outshines me if she will actually be my—” I cut the words off. I was contractually bound not to reveal our divorce. Not yet. Not during opening week. Couldn’t have a scandal that might hurt her box office take. In fact, I was still supposed to be in LA, squiring her to every last shindig and marketing event, but I refused to sign the damn papers unless she let me leave. Right away, damn the gossip.
The marriage had been a mistake right from the beginning. I’d believed her when she said she loved the real me, but all she ever really liked was my reputation and the attention a marriage with a Silver would bring her. She loved the mask. She loved being the center of attention, but once the million dollar wedding was over and the photoshoots of us in our new, beautifully decorated home were done, she really didn’t even care to talk to me.
