by Ember Flint
CONTENTS
Enchantingly Entangled
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
Epilogue
Epilogue 2
At the Stroke of Midnight
Excerpt of At the Stroke of Midnight
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Also by Ember Flint
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Enchantingly Entangled
By EMBER FLINT
Cora Spade is a spunky, full of energy 21-year-old with big dreams and big hopes and all the drive in the world to get where she wants to be.
Her blue-blooded friends relish the life of leisure and privilege they all share, but she wants to be more than a trust fund baby running around with a carefree attitude, a daredevil thirst for trouble and a limitless credit card, she wants to work and study and make something of herself, something that will give meaning to her life and will make a difference in the world.
There’s only one thing that can tear her eyes from her beloved environmental science books and that is the man she has had a crush on since the day they met, the man who thinks she is just a little spoiled brat, the one she has been avoiding since that summer, five years ago, the guy who happens to be one of her brother Charles best friends in the whole world.
CFO and VP of his family’s multinational company, ruggedly handsome 35-year-old Sterling Fitzroy is so upper-class old-money, there’s nothing above his family other than clouds.
Big, British, billionaire and bold to boot, he doesn’t have time for serious commitments —unless they relate to a business— and he’s fairly sure no woman will ever shackle him.
As they say, however, even the mighty must fall and when Sterling falls he does it hard and holds back nothing.
One moment he is a devil-may-care kinda guy and love is the farthest thing from his mind and the next he meets a sexy bombshell in an elevator and suddenly there’s something beyond success and money that he wants.
Actually, there’s only one thing he wants.
Her.
As soon as they collide, they can’t avoid the impulse and they’re not even sure they would want to try.
Dear Reader:
Ops, I did it yet again!
Here for you is a smutty-sweet standalone story as usual with no cheating and a guaranteed HEA that puts wings on the feet of insta-love and makes it fly even higher and faster.
This is a ridiculously saccharine romance that packs a punch and a speed that will leave your head spinning.
Just like his best friends from Devastatingly Desirable and Impetuously Irresistible, Sterling is an over-the-top hot alpha hero so possessive he needs his ring on Cora’s finger practically yesterday.
*Please note that Enchantingly Entangled is part of the ‘In love in a New York Minute’ series, each one of the stories focuses only on one couple and there are no cliffhangers so the books can be read in any order and also as standalones.
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Ember Flint
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. To request permission, contact the author.
Note from the Author: this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental. Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters are represented as 18 or over. Also, in real life, remember: always safety first.
Cover design by: Pink Diamonds Waterfall
Edited by: New Wave Romance
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As I sat down to write about Aston & Lara falling for each other and then about Charles and Jessica’s story in the previous books of this standalone series, I stumbled quite happily on another couple and they just would not let go of me until I gave them their own book.
Boy, don’t you wish you were in Manhattan when this heatwave of insta-love crashed down?!
First love was devastating, then it was impetuous now finally it’s enchanting!
Happy reading!
xoxo,
Ember!
To all of you insta-love aficionados out there, cynics can say what they want about it, but we know it can really happen.
Chapter 1
STERLING
I stretch my long legs in front of me and lean back against the headrest, closing my eyes with a sigh as I pass the back of my hand across my face. Fuck, do I hate flying!
I could think of a billion better things I could be doing with my Friday afternoon — including being thrown down a flight of stairs and/or spend an afternoon having tea with my formidable and hateful paternal aunts and my blasted stepmother —aka that woman— as they try to parade eligible young women in front of me.
That’s how much I hate flying and how fucking dreadful is the jet lag I get afterwards. I try to avoid flying overseas as much as possible, but in my line of work it’s a necessary evil and I still have to do it at least every two or three months.
Right now the order of the day is flying from Heathrow to New York City, alongside my friend, Aston Henley.
We both have tons of stuff to deal with waiting for us in the Big, poisonous Apple —Yeah, I’m not really a fan of New York. I actually despise it: it’s too crowded and noisy for me, but maybe it’s because I always experience it after being airsick for several hours and while jet-lagged.
Aston has to deal with stuff for the company he owns with our mutual friend, Charles Spade, plus the three of us have to seriously sit down face to face and discuss a business opportunity we have been considering for a while. I met Aston and, through him, Chuck five years ago while striking a deal and they have been my best friends ever since.
I’m going to have a very busy couple of weeks in front of me.
First in New York, where I have several business ventures to take care of, a potential deal to strike on behalf of Fitzroy Inc., my family’s multinational company, and finally plans for the installment of a possible subsidiary of our firm to oversee and then off I’ll go to Los Angeles, where Fitzroy Inc.’s American headquarters are located and many more headaches await me.
One positive thing is that right now I can honestly say I’m welcoming the possibility to escape England as this means I’ll get a much deserved —and desired— hopefully extended break from my family’s special brand of madness.
Still I have to fly overseas to accomplish all of this and that’s where I start to have problems, because w
hen I say flying makes me bloody fucking miserable I bloody fucking mean it.
It doesn’t matter how much care I take in the way I go about it, nor it matters that I’m flying aboard my own private jet with all the luxuries and comforts one could think of and one of my best and dearest friends keeping me company, I still feel cross, tense, headachy and on the verge of being sick.
“We are almost there, Fitz. I reckon it’ll be less than an hour till landing.”
I open one eye to look at my friend. “God, another bloody hour on this damn plane…”
He hands me a bottle of chilled Evian, chuckling a little. “Considering I intended to cheer you up, that’s not quite the reaction I was hoping for.”
I take a sip of the icy water and grunt when I feel it coming up again in my throat. I can’t even fucking hold a bloody sip of water down properly on this blasted plane.
“Stony, you know how much I loathe flying, if you wanted to make me feel better you should have lied and said we were already landing and then knocked me over the head with some blunt object to make the time pass quicker.”
“Don’t tempt me, Sterling,” he says glowering a little.
Aston hates when I call him Stony, but since I hate when he calls me Fitz I’d say we are even. We should stop using the stupid nicknames altogether probably, but it’s too much fun: I can bear to be called Fitz like some pompous relic of the British nobility if I get to raise the hackles of my usually calm and stone-faced friend at the same time.
Not very mature I know, but is our little joke and we’re too old to change anyway.
“Look on the bright side, Ster: for the next two weeks you won’t have to deal with The Pest any further. I’d say that’s definitely a perk of flying.”
I feel my lips curve up a little. “Amen to that. I swear to you if I had to stand there and listen to his shit any longer, for a change the London’s rags would have ended up with my face on their cover instead of his.”
Aston scoffs. “Now that’s something those gossipmonger pieces of shit would love to see, but I guess they will have to content themselves with Nigel.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “Well, then they will have some shit to spread on their blasted pages for a very long time.”
Aston turns slightly toward me, shaking his head of dark, curly hair. “A foursome in public? What in the bloody world was he thinking?”
I snort, rolling my eyes. “We both know Nigel doesn’t think, Ast.”
My little brother Nigel is not famous for his abilities of forethought and is still more than worthy of the nickname the family gave him when he was five: The Pest.
He is the product of the indulgence and leniency of our indolent, lackadaisical father and of the motherly care of the money-grubbing, spoiled, vicious woman he decided to marry after he divorced our mum, Caroline for her. Mum’s untimely passing twenty years ago when I was fifteen and my little brother only eight just made things worse.
Still I cannot, considering the fact that he is an adult, entirely blame his behavior and his failures on parenting and my own inability to curb his tendencies alone. He is reckless and immature and at the tender age of twenty-eight he has never worked a day and generally has done very little with his life, aside from spending money of course. Nigel refuses to be responsible no matter what I say and do, lives off his trust fund like life is an endless party and nothing more and gets in constant, embarrassing situations that make our family—and our company— look awful.
I can’t say how many times I’ve had to step in to cover up or at least fix his messes, but he is a jerk and doesn’t really care about our family’s standing, let alone our company’s reputation so there’s precious little I can do to stop him.
Aston, picks up his mobile and starts to fidget with it. “How was the family reaction to the pictures? Did Dolan actually say something for once?”
Yeah, there were pictures. And No: my father was pretty tight-lipped as usual about the whole mess.
That’s his modus operandi when it comes to Nigel.
I grimace a little. “My father gave a sample of his usual fond shake of the head and that woman was pissed because her socialite friends started to look down their noses at the whole unpleasant business and I understand they were pretty vocal about it, as she always does, she was careful to keep the bitterness at a minimum when my dad was around, but as soon as he would leave a room, she was on me insisting I make it all go away.”
“What about the old bats?” Aston asks, giving me a sympathetic look.
He is of course referring to the terrible duo of paternal aunts God decided would be fun to foist upon me.
My father’s older sisters are the bane of my existence. They live together like in a nasty, snobby remake of the movie ‘Death Becomes Her.’
One a widow, the other a glorified spinster, they seem to have one sole ambition in life: seeing me committed.
Nosy old battleaxes, they not only meddle in my company —well namely my father’s, but even being just CFO and VP I’m the one directing it. My dad is a nice man, but he is very distant and aloof and lives a life of ennui. He doesn’t want to retire for appearances’ sake, but at the same time he’s too busy catering to his second wife’s whims to actually have a real active role in the company, so I have to shoulder all the responsibilities alone— they also think they can arrange my personal life. Not that I really let them concretely interfere with things, but they still try and in doing so they give me an endless hard time.
“Oh, they were in high dudgeon for days. Especially when the racier pictures started to show up on Twitter. You would think they would wish to look the other way, considering it was their nephew’s naked arse they were looking at, but no! We had to talk about it over and over again, down to the last bloody detail.”
Aston shakes his head. “With the Board present?”
I nod. “It was positively ghastly.”
The fact that they have seats in the Board of Directors of Fitzroy Inc. is the main reason I contemplate murder so often when thinking of them.
“Good God!”
“It was bloody awful and so embarrassing. Aunt Lenora was going on and on about this mess tainting the names of our family and that of her Boyle connection. Claiming my late uncle would have certainly died if he had been alive to witness it. Alongside with my mother, who, of course, would have also died had she been alive. Aunt Penelope, was attempting to appear shocked to her core, going on and on about how a lady of her station was being forced to deal with such horrid matters. My suggestion that she stop talking about it then, was not well received. They demanded I deal with it and make a public statement.”
“What? A public statement? And what in the world they want you to state exactly?”
I throw up my hands. “I have not the faintest idea, mate. I’ll leave it to our legal department and our Press agent to fashion something suitable to shut up my aunts. Listen to this.”
I play for him one of the messages they left for me earlier today. They tend to speak over each other and most of the time only an experienced listener can tell them apart.
Sadly, both Aston and I fall into that category.
I watch him as he chuckles silently, his body shaking and his expression forcing me to smile and laugh a little myself.
“Sterling Fitzroy! We command you: answer this phone immediately! This devil-may-care attitude of yours in the face of your brother’s disgraceful behavior is intolerable. You must make him behave and stop this shamefulness. Five hundred years our family has been unimpeachable and now this… this madness! It has to end, we shall not stand for it, we—”
“Oh dear, I can’t believe they pulled the five-hundred years of history drivel again…”
“This is nothing to how they wailed and screeched at that meeting. Fuck, you should have seen Nigel.”
Aston’s eyebrows shoot up at that. “He was there?”
I laugh a little. My brother presence in a Board meeting ought not to be
attempted in the direst of necessities. “Oh, yes. He was high as a kite, the wanker, and laughing his arse off like it was all a lark to him. The more The Terrible Duo got red-faced and apoplectic, the more he was laughing. It was a nightmare.”
Aston pats my shoulder. “Fuck, man, I’m sorry. I wish I was there to lend you my support, but yesterday was a long litigious meeting after the other for me. Some of the oldest directors are considering stepping down from their position, because they don’t like my vision even if doing things my way means saving a lot of jobs.”
I shake my head. “Bloody bastards, they only care for growing the piles of money they’re sitting on.”
Aston sighs. “They really do and I’m tired of listening to them attempting to patronize me only because I’m well over thirty years younger than most people in that fucking Boardroom.”
I clap his back. “At least you don’t have two mad aunts as shareholders, pal.”
“That’s true. And talking about mad cows, have you heard anything from Charlie about his?”
I grunt. “Last that I know, he hasn’t ditched the blood-sucking succubus yet. We really have to talk with him, Ast.”
My friend nods seriously. “Absolutely. She is ruining his life.”
The ‘she’ in question is Lulu, Chuck’s egotistic, bitchy girlfriend who only cares about our friend’s status and wealth and is terrible at hiding it as we all know —Charles included—, still he insists on giving her chance after chance to prove us wrong simply because he is too nice a guy. I swear I love the man like a brother, but sometimes I really don’t understand the lengths he goes in his quest of being the perfect optimist.
Aston yawns. “I’d rather spend the rest of my life completely alone than be shackled to such a shrew.”
