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An Excerpt from Tempting the Billionaire
An Excerpt from Hard to Handle
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For Mom & Dad, and all the sacrifices you made (and continue to make) for me.
Love you guys.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Oh, Landon Downey. To understand this hero’s motivations, I had to first figure out one very important component: Why would a man voluntarily choose emotionless, controlled relationships when he’s from a close, loving family? The answer took me on a deeper, more emotional journey than I’d anticipated. And was so worth it. But, I didn’t find the answer alone.
Thanks to plotting partners-in-crime Teri Anne Stanley, Charissa Weaks, and Maisey Yates for helping me wrestle with the initial ideas for this book. Some I used, some I didn’t, but this book was a journey, and you all are a valid part of it. To my agency sib (and fellow extrovert) Tonya Kuper for beta reading and for loving this book. You’re encouraging and genuine—I’m blessed to know you.
My agent, Nicole Resciniti, who gushed over this story and made me feel as much a millionaire as Landon. My editor, Lauren, whose comments always cause me to smile. I love working with you both—you push me to mine for gold and when we find it, I’m reminded of the value of a team.
To my publicist, editing team, cover artists, and all the other hardworking people behind the scenes at Forever, thank you for all your hard work.
And to you, reader, for sharing this journey with me. Don’t tell Aiden or Shane, but I think Landon may have won my heart. If anyone deserves a happily ever after, it’s Landon Downey and Kimber Reynolds. I hope you enjoy reading their story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
~Jess
PROLOGUE
Landon Downey clutched the baby name book From Abba to Zed to his chest and knocked on his girlfriend’s dorm room door. While he was certain he didn’t want to name their child Abba or Zed, he was also certain he couldn’t show up empty-handed. Not after the ugly way they’d parted last week. He should have shown up with something nicer than a book with a bent corner and a bouquet of half-dead flowers, but the twenty-four-hour convenience store on campus hadn’t offered many options.
He’d been an asshole. Rachel had come to him in full-on panic mode. Rightly so, considering the stick with two blue lines she’d carried in her hand. Landon had been severely hungover courtesy of a late party at Cliff’s house. At the moment she had burst into his apartment sobbing, he’d had two things on his mind: Where is the Tylenol? and I’m running late. Finals week had started with a bang.
While he’d hustled around the house looking for his books and swallowing a couple of pain relievers, Rachel had followed, irate by this bit of inconvenient news, angry because birth control was “supposed to work, dammit!”, and generally pitching a fit about how she had neither the time nor the patience to deal with a baby. “I won’t sacrifice my law career for a child I didn’t plan to have!” she’d said.
He’d hastily agreed while gathering his things—admittedly not the best thing to do—but he simply couldn’t focus on the huge, life-changing news she’d laid at his feet. Especially when he was running on only three hours of sweaty, post-drunken sleep and before he’d had a single drop of coffee.
Hindsight being what it was, he now knew what he should have done. He should have ditched class entirely. He should have stopped rushing and given Rachel his full attention. He should have reminded her they loved each other and they could work out whatever sharp curve life had thrown their way.
But he hadn’t done either of those things. Instead he’d agreed with her that yes, the timing was bad and yes, the birth control should have worked, and then he’d told her he’d see her after class. But he hadn’t seen her that night. Or the next. She’d managed to avoid him the entire week.
He knocked again.
Finally, the door opened and her roommate, Tina, blocked the doorway, her expression a mix of fury and protectiveness. “What do you want?”
Ignoring her tone, he held up the bouquet of flowers. “I need to talk to Rachel.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Yes,” came a small, tired voice from behind Tina. “She does.” Rachel patted her friend-slash-bodyguard’s shoulder and Tina stepped aside, shooting a final, wary look over her shoulder at him. He studied his girlfriend—probably now his ex-girlfriend given the way things were going tonight. Rachel was pale, her face splotchy, and looked like she had the flu. No, not the flu. Probably morning sickness.
His heart lurched in a not entirely uncomfortable way. A baby. He clutched the book to his chest, still hidden behind the sad bouquet of dyed purple and pink and royal blue daisies, and forced the words out of his throat. “Can I come in?”
She pushed a lock of long, brown hair away from her face and shook her head.
Okay. She was angry. But he could get past angry. He’d thought a lot about their predicament, about the unexpectedness of raising a child while they were in college—of getting married way, way sooner than he’d planned. She’d have to drop some classes as her pregnancy advanced, though he knew she’d insist on working after. Meanwhile, he’d hustle to finish his degree. He’d landed an internship at an ad agency in Chicago that sounded promising. The two-hour train ride from campus would be inconvenient, but he was willing to commute. When the internship turned into a career, she could finish out her degree and he could balance the rest. They’d make it work.
Rachel, like him, was far too logical and pragmatic to allow her future to be compromised. Besides, people dealt with unexpected pregnancies all over the world, all the time.
We’ll make it work, he told himself again.
“Come on, Rachel. Let me in. It’s one in the morning and I’m standing out here getting eaten by mosquitoes.” When she didn’t smile, he said, “We need to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Was she joking? There were fifteen things to talk about. He knew because he had a typed list in his back pocket. “Yes. There is,” he told her. “Plans need to be made. Plans for us.”
“There is no us,” she said, her face a placid mask.
He blinked, taking in her puffy, red eyes and curled upper lip. She was… leaving him? What was she going to do? Raise his child without him? No, no. He wouldn’t allow it. She was angry; saying things she didn’t mean. First, he’d talk his way into her room, give her the name book, then pull out the list he’d made and they would work this out.
“If not for us”—he swallowed thickly and tried again—“then for the baby.”
She lifted her chin, her eyes filling with tears. “There is no baby.” She shot him the coldest, hardest glare he’d ever seen. Landon’s heart dropped into his stomach, the air snagging in his lungs.
Then she slammed the door in his face.
CHAPTER ONE
16 years later.
Another shout sounded from beyond the bathroom door and Landon reached out and silently flicked the lock. He didn’t know how long he could remain in here undetected, but it was worth a shot.
“Hang on,” he said into the phone
.
His sister, Angel, chuckled. “Where are you, anyway? You sound all echoey.”
He pressed his cell phone to his cheek and lowered his voice. “Echoey is not a word. I’m hiding in the bathroom.”
She barked a laugh. “From our nephew? Landon, really.”
“I think I bit off more than I can chew,” he mumbled, pacing the tiled floor. On his second pass between shower and sink, he noticed the ruckus that had driven him in here had stopped. Suspicious. He shushed Angel and held his breath, pressed his ear to the door to listen. Nothing. He unlocked it and poked his head out.
“Hello?” she whispered.
“He’s gone into stealth mode,” he said quietly. She erupted into another fit of laughter. “Send reinforcements.”
Tiptoeing in his socks through his bedroom, he sidled along the wall and around the dresser. Back pressed against the bedroom door, he peeked into the hallway.
“Rawr!”
A blur that may well have been his life flashing before his eyes nearly took Landon’s head off. He stilled the object with one palm—a plastic light saber—and Lyon grinned up at him, a gap where one of his front teeth should be. Thankfully, the tooth had been missing when he got here.
“You’re dead!” Lyon shouted.
“Not in the hall.” His voice held a comical tremor. “You’re going to break something.” Like my nose.
“Okay!” With that, Lyon turned on a heel and went tearing down the hallway, swinging the light saber with renewed vigor.
“Do you want Auntie Angel to talk to him?”
Landon stepped into the hallway and, with one more cautious look over his shoulder, made a break for the kitchen. “I can’t get anything done with him here,” he said as he neared the end of the hall. “How did you keep him for two weeks?”
The way he’d said it made two weeks sound like two years. May as well be. Lyon had thwarted both attempts at getting on his company’s conference call and several other attempts to check his e-mail from his phone. “Seriously, did you drug him or something?” he asked, only half kidding.
“Maybe I’m more maternal than you think,” she quipped. He thought of Angel’s struggle to get pregnant and felt the pang of loss for his only sister. She would make an excellent mother, and they all knew it. Never one to welcome pity, she shifted subjects before he could respond. “First of all, I took off work the first week he was here. After that, he had a routine and I was able to work some in between.”
“And you had Richie.” Her husband. Landon had himself, and the team of designers he’d assigned to the account, who were having a conference call without him with their client and the owner of Windy City potato chips, Otto Williams, this very minute. “I can’t take off this week.”
“Yeah, well our billionaire cousin used to say the same thing. Funny how after Shane found Crickitt, he found time for a vacation.”
At the mention of his cousin, he thought back to Shane and Crickitt’s summer wedding last year. Shane was a lucky bastard. He’d managed to meet Crickitt, who was not only considerate and kind, but also understood him. Landon had yet to find a woman who possessed one of those qualities, let alone all three.
That thought brought forth one involving his ex-girlfriend—technically ex-fiancée—Lissa, and his eyebrows scrunched together. They were better off apart, especially since their relationship had been an empty husk for years—way before she’d locked lips with actor Carson Robbins on the temporarily-famous YouTube video that had gone viral. Carson Robbins, Landon thought with a chuff, his pride stinging despite his efforts to keep from it. Why she had left him for that no-talent ass clown, he had no idea. The mind boggled.
A remote-controlled monster truck sped down the hall, narrowly missing Landon’s toes before crashing into the baseboard. The recently installed, special-order, Macassar Ebony baseboards. He pulled in a deep breath. The slapping sound of tennis shoes on the wooden floor followed the path of the car as Lyon blew past. “Careful, buddy!” he called to his nephew. Then to Angel he repeated, a little desperately, “I can’t take off this week.”
The truck slammed into his ankle and he bit back a curse. “Lyon!” His nephew’s eyes grew wide and Landon promptly slapped a patient smile on his face despite the pain in his foot. “Not in the house, okay, buddy?”
“Okay, Uncle Landon,” he said, lifting the car and stamping in the other direction again.
Landon limped into the sanctuary of the carpeted living room. “Help me, Angel, you’re my only hope.”
She laughed, at his expense, but he was beyond caring. The mighty Lyon Downey had defeated him. “Well, you can’t ask Evan to leave his immersion workshop.”
“Give me a little credit.” He knew what this workshop meant to his youngest brother. Evan hadn’t done much for himself since his wife died and he’d become a single dad. His MO up until six months ago had been caring for Lyon and making as much money as possible at his tattoo shop. Then he’d started painting on the side, for fun, or so he’d told everyone. But it wasn’t Evan’s dark, broody cartoon-style works that had captured Landon’s attention. It was the light back in his brother’s eyes. Evan had finally started living again instead of just surviving.
Next thing he knew, Evan was calling to let him know a friend of Angel’s had a friend in the children’s book publishing industry.
“He needs to create five more paintings this week for his agent,” Angel said, still arguing her point.
“I know that.”
“He could be a real illustrator, Landon. You have to find another way. Ever since Rae died, he’s been marginalizing the things he wants. It’s about time—”
“Angel.” She stopped speaking. “I’m not going to ask Evan to bail me out.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. I just… I want him to succeed.”
He smiled. Although a few years younger than him, Angel had always acted the part of mother hen to her brothers—Landon included. She’d gotten worse since Mom died. But Angel wasn’t the only one who wanted the best for Ev. Landon wanted him to succeed, too. His brother’s tattoo shop was profitable, successful, and, until the artwork of his heart had gotten attention in the literary world, all he’d wanted to do. Now his paintings were all he could talk about. Landon wouldn’t deny him this opportunity. No way.
“Can you delegate a portion of your work and lessen the load?” she asked, back on task. “You’ll still be able to get things done… just maybe not as much as you’re used to.”
This account was too important to take his hands off it. But he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to tease her. What were big brothers for? “Sure. You want to set a project aside and take the lead on Windy City? Maybe today while you’re in town?” She was scheduled to fly in this morning to handle a pitch for Holstein Electronics. A pitch he needed her, as the head of his art department, to nail. A pitch he’d never in a million years ask her to skip.
Predictably, she took him at his word. “You can’t be serious!” Her voice went an octave higher. “You asked me to bump up the Holstein account so we can get the billboard design done by next Tuesday! I’ll barely have time to breathe between flights from Tennessee to Chicago and back.”
“Exactly. And like you, the rest of my staff is buried. The delegation thing? Not going to happen.”
Angel heaved a sigh, then blew out the word “okay” before falling silent while she thought. A moment later, he heard her snap her fingers, a sign she’d landed on an idea. “What about the day care in your building?”
“What? No.” He wouldn’t abandon his nephew in a strange place, not even the day care at work, which he knew was staffed with well-trained professionals. Last night, Lyon had a nightmare because of the change of scenery. Evan had warned Landon it might happen, but nothing had prepared him for the helplessness of holding his nephew and being unable to comfort him. He remembered Lyon’s eyes, wide with terror and filled with tears, his little heart racing against Landon’s chest.
“No,” he
repeated firmly.
“Okay… Well, what about a nanny?”
A plump, proper woman with a British accent popped into his mind and he made a face. “You can’t be serious.”
Angel’s voice dipped conspiratorially. “What if she was someone you knew? Someone we all knew?”
He crossed an arm over his chest and narrowed his eyes at the lake view outside. She was up to something. Plotting and scheming as per her usual. “Spit it out, Angel.”
“You remember my friend, Kimber Reynolds? She came down to visit me last month and I mentioned she owns a vintage clothing store in Chicago.”
“The girl who stayed at Mom and Dad’s house one summer when we were kids.” The same summer his college girlfriend had given him the worst news of his life.
“Yes!” Angel said with game-show-host enthusiasm. She sounded proud he recalled who Kimber was. “While she was here she’d mentioned she could use some extra money. And since she lives not all that far from you…”
Kimber. He remembered bits and pieces about the girl who’d lingered in his peripheral for an entire summer. He remembered she had red hair, liked to read, and drank Mountain Dew. She’d offered to help him with his creative writing paper, the makeup assignment to save him from failing his college class after Rachel’s pregnancy time bomb. He recalled balking at first—what help could a sophomore be to a college senior?—but Kimber had insisted, and then surprised him. She was smart. Turned out she’d had some helpful advice.
“… sure she would be willing to help you out,” Angel was saying.
He blinked out of his daze and tuned his sister back in.
“Want me to use my three and a half minutes between stops to pay her a visit while I’m in town?”
He started to ask about Kimber’s credentials, then something Angel said earlier crawled out of his subconscious. “Wait, did you say ‘live-in’?”
“Of course.” He pictured her shrugging. “You’ll need someone to bathe Lyon and feed him dinner at night in case you need to work late at the office. And in the morning, you won’t want to wait for her to arrive. What if she catches a late train? Then your progress will be impeded.”
The Millionaire Affair (Love in the Balance) Page 1
