“I want you to come back with me.”
“You’re going home to your family and your old life,” Willow said. “You don’t need me there.”
“You’re wrong. They’re my family, but I don’t know them. Right now, you’re my whole world. I can’t remember a time when you weren’t in my life. Don’t make me do this without you.”
“I don’t know how to act around rich people. I’ll embarrass myself and you in the process.”
“I could never be embarrassed by you. And I’m in the same boat. I don’t feel like a billionaire. The only constant in my life is you. You’re my lifeline.”
“And when you get your memories back? What then? I go home and we pretend this never happened?”
“No, I’m not ready to give this, you, up yet. But under the circumstances, we can’t promise each other anything either. But go with me. Please.”
* * *
Promises from a Playboy by Andrea Laurence
is part of the Switched! series.
Dear Reader,
I’ve waited a long time to find just the right story and hero for my heroine, Willow. I didn’t know her name would be Willow. I didn’t know she would be a mystery writer. But I knew she had overcome adversity and loss. I knew she was a fighter. I knew she had a sassy husky named Shadow after I lost my own fuzzy boy to cancer in 2019. And I knew she would be the perfect counterbalance to a hero like Finn.
They wouldn’t be an ideal match to start, of course. She had a lot of baggage and had worked hard to remove herself from the world and the pain she believed would come with it. He was too wrapped up in frivolity to notice someone like Willow. But by taking away his past, his memories, and his preconceptions about himself and the world, I was able to open his eyes to everything he was missing.
Finn and Willow’s book is special to me and I enjoyed writing their story for you. If you enjoyed reading it, tell me! Contact me on my Facebook page or via my website at www.andrealaurence.com.
Enjoy,
Andrea
Andrea Laurence
Promises from a Playboy
Andrea Laurence is an award-winning contemporary author who has been a lover of books and writing stories since she learned to read. A dedicated West Coast girl transplanted into the Deep South, she’s constantly trying to develop a taste for sweet tea and grits while caring for her boyfriend and an old bulldog. You can contact Andrea at her website: www.andrealaurence.com.
Books by Andrea Laurence
Harlequin Desire
Millionaires of Manhattan
What Lies Beneath
More Than He Expected
His Lover’s Little Secret
The CEO’s Unexpected Child
Little Secrets: Secretly Pregnant
Rags to Riches Baby
One Unforgettable Weekend
The Boyfriend Arrangement
Switched!
From Mistake to Millions
From Riches to Redemption
From Seduction to Secrets
Visit her Author Profile page at Harlequin.com, or andrealaurence.com, for more titles.
You can also find Andrea Laurence on Facebook, along with other Harlequin Desire authors, at Facebook.com/harlequindesireauthors!
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Excerpt from Trapped with the Texan by Joanne Rock
Prologue
Finn was startled awake by a loud bang and a rumbling that made the plane shudder with turbulence. Normally flying on the corporate jet was smooth sailing, the epitome of luxurious travel, so he instantly knew something was wrong.
His heart was pounding in his chest. He tried to get up out of his seat, but the shaking of the plane knocked him back into the chair. There were five people on board—Finn, the pilot and copilot, a flight attendant and a manufacturing consultant that had joined them at the last minute. The consultant’s original flight on a commercial carrier had been canceled and Finn had offered him a ride back to the US from Beijing. As he turned to look at the terrified man in the seat across the aisle from him, he knew the man now regretted taking him up on the offer.
Pushing up and bracing himself on the next seat, Finn fought his way to the front of the plane. He ignored the calls of the buckled-in flight attendant pleading with him to return to his seat.
“What’s going on?” he shouted over the chaotic beeping of sensors, the frantic Mayday calls of the pilot and the uncharacteristically loud roar of the engine.
“Mechanical failure,” the copilot said as he turned around and looked at Finn with worry lining his brow. “Something has gone wrong with the engine and we’re not going to make it to Salt Lake City. We’re trying to reroute to Sea-Tac for an emergency landing. You should return to your seat and put on your seat belt, Mr. Steele.”
“Screw the seat belt! Put on your parachute,” the pilot shouted as he fought to control the steering. “There’s one under each seat.”
“Parachute?” Finn stumbled and gripped at the door to the cockpit to steady himself. “Are you serious?”
“If we don’t make it to Seattle in time, we might have to bail. I’m trying to bring us down to a safer altitude just in case.”
Finn swallowed hard. The idea of leaping from the jet into the dark night had never crossed his mind. He was the family wild child, but the risks he took were with women and fast cars. He wasn’t the type to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.
The plane jerked hard, sending him stumbling forward. Another shrill alarm sounded from the control panel. Then again, he thought, this was not a perfectly good airplane. He stumbled back to his seat and pulled out the package underneath. The man beside him nervously did the same, slipping the parachute straps over his arms while still securely belted into his leather lounging chair.
Finn put on his own parachute, snapping the clasps over his chest to secure it. His father had insisted that each plane be equipped with parachutes for emergencies. They’d gone over how they worked once when they first bought the planes, but he wasn’t sure he’d really listened. He honestly never thought he would need to use it. Who would expect a fancy private jet like this to be anything less than flawlessly maintained?
He groaned and lowered himself into his seat as they rumbled through the air. His father would be incensed if one of the multimillion-dollar corporate jets crashed. And somehow, Finn knew it would be his fault. Everything was always his fault in the end.
Finn was reaching for his seat belt when another loud bang deafened him. The bang coincided with a fireball and the sudden whip of wind through the cabin as the blast created a large hole in the side of the fuselage. Half a heartbeat later, Finn was sucked from his seat and flung into the dark night.
In an instant, there was the sensation of freezing cold with the wind whipping around him. The blackness enveloped him with only pinpoints of light visible in the distance. He couldn’t breathe at first. His brain could barely keep up with it all; he was in complete sensory overload.
Finn had no idea how high he was or
how far he was from the ground, but he could feel himself start to get light-headed. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the cord and the parachute jerked him to a slower descent. That done, he gave in to the swimming sensation in his head and blacked out.
When he came to, he could see the tops of trees highlighted by the moonlight. He came in hard and fast, blowing through the thin upper branches as he descended into what appeared to be a densely wooded area. Considering they’d been over the Pacific Ocean not long ago, he was ecstatic to find trees underfoot instead of miles of inky black sea.
At least until the sharp twigs and leaves started whipping at him. They cut at his skin like a hundred icy knives. As he descended lower, he tried to cover his face with his arms and he could feel the branches snagging at his clothes.
Then he jerked to a sudden stop.
He looked up and realized the same branches that had attacked him had snagged his parachute. Now he was dangling from his harness, unsure if he was five, ten or thirty feet from the ground. Finn squirmed, hoping he could untangle the parachute enough to get closer to the forest floor, but there was no getting loose.
Finn considered his options for a minute. He needed to get down from this tree, but there were no tree trunks within his grasp. He couldn’t just dangle here until morning and hope someone found him. He could be in the middle of nowhere for all he knew, and he was too exposed up here in the treetops without shelter from the wind. He started to shiver in his thin dress shirt and summer suit coat. Beijing had been a lot warmer in September than wherever he was now. Maybe it was the cold, or maybe it was shock of the accident starting to set in. He couldn’t be sure. But he knew what he had to do.
With trembling fingers, he fumbled with the harness. The lower buckle unsnapped easily, but he fought with the second. When it finally gave way, he had no time to react before he slipped out. He fell for what felt like minutes, branches slamming into his ribs and whipping at his arms and legs before he took a thick branch across his forehead and everything went black.
One
Willow Bates was enjoying the brisk morning air on her back deck with a large mug of coffee in her hand. The weather was just starting to cool down in the San Juan Islands community that she called home. Somewhere between Victoria, British Columbia, and Seattle, Washington, the smallest of the islands—Shaw Island—was her blessed retreat. Fall was coming. Unfortunately, that also meant that their stormy season was coming.
And judging by the thick black clouds on the horizon, she wouldn’t be enjoying the outdoors for a few days. The weatherman said a severe thunderstorm with high winds was heading their way. That meant she’d likely be cut off from the mainland for a day or two, but she didn’t mind. She rarely left her island. There was nothing for her in Seattle but painful memories and traffic.
Her shaggy white-and-gray husky mix traipsed over to her and laid his head on her lap. He looked up at her with his big ice-blue eyes. She scratched him behind his pointed ears and sighed. “We need to get your walk in early today, Shadow. It’s going to rain for a few days. I probably need to get out of the house and away from the computer for a while, too.”
Shadow lifted his head and replied to her with the grumbling woo sound that was common for his breed.
She did need a break. It had been a long week filled with highs and lows, frustrations and breakthroughs. As a writer, she had a lot of times like this. It was the creative process. But it could give you a headache staring at the computer for hours on end, lost in another world that was completely under your control and yet totally uncooperative at the same time.
If her older sister, Rain, were here, she would’ve nudged Willow at some point and thrust a plate of food in front of her. She’d done that all through college as Willow studied and ignored her basic needs. “Coffee is not a food group,” Rain always said.
Willow thought of that every time she poured another cup instead of fooling with making herself something real to eat. It wasn’t as though she didn’t eat at all. Her rear end would argue otherwise. But she did live entirely on easy-to-prepare foods she could get in bulk at the warehouse store when she bothered to take the ferry to Victoria or Seattle. She kept a stash of protein bars, enough cans of soup and boxes of crackers to survive a nuclear winter, industrial-size jars of peanut butter and jelly, and an assortment of breakfast cereals that would make any six-year-old proud.
Sure, her sister would argue that they’d grown up as vegans and her diet was seriously lacking in fresh vegetables and fruits. Rain could keep her lecturing for her two-year-old son, Joey, and leave Willow out of it. If cancer hadn’t succeeded in killing her, protein bars and coffee surely wouldn’t.
She took the last sip of her coffee and set it aside. “You ready to go?” she asked Shadow.
Her dog danced excitedly around the deck and howled at her. He was always ready for a walk.
“Okay, okay. Let me get my jacket.”
Willow opened the back door and slipped into the jacket she’d thrown over the kitchen chair. She put her keys, phone and a canister of bear repellent in her coat pockets, then went back outside where Shadow was waiting.
“Are we headed to the beach today?” she asked as they went down the steps of the deck and into the wooded area behind her house.
Shadow’s fluffy curled tail disappeared ahead of her into the trees. He liked to roam free but he didn’t go too far. He was too protective of Willow to leave her alone for long. She had gotten him as a puppy not long after she’d moved to the island. She’d finished her last cancer treatment in Seattle a year ago and was keen to get as far away from all of that as she could. Rain had worried about her being alone, so Willow silenced her sister’s concerns with the blue-eyed ball of fur.
With a new house and a new puppy, Willow had started her new life here. Shadow had been by her side ever since then. He could read her moods and feelings like a book, forcing her to take a break when she needed one. He wasn’t a trained therapy dog, but he had become so much more than just a pet to her.
The woods were very active this morning. The birds in the trees squawked loudly, probably anticipating the weather. She pressed through across the spongy forest floor, stepping over fallen trees and following the makeshift trail she and Shadow had worn into the dirt on their way to the beach.
As she reached the tree line, Shadow greeted her with a loud howl. He’d found something on the beach he was excited about. That could be anything from a fish he’d hauled out of the shallows, the perfect throwing stick or something dead and decaying, which was endlessly fascinating to him for some reason.
“What is it, fuzzy butt?” she asked.
He pranced about and then shot off across the beach toward his prize. She squinted her eyes to try and see if she could spy it in the distance. There was definitely something out there. It was bigger than a fish and not moving. Maybe a seal. They didn’t get many of them here, but they did show up from time to time. She walked along the shoreline until the shape became clearer and she realized what she was looking at.
It was a body.
Willow ran across the beach until she got close enough to see it was the figure of a man slumped back over a piece of driftwood. He seemed to be in his thirties or so with golden blond hair and a strong jaw—features that clearly highlighted his handsomeness—but he’d obviously had a bad night. He was beaten and battered with dirty and torn clothing, and there was a large knot on his forehead that had dripped blood down the side of his face.
It was like seeing some angel fallen to earth, cast out of the heavens. His golden curls and perfect skin gave him a cherubic appearance like an old Renaissance painting.
But this man was real. And possibly still alive. There was a bit of color in his cheeks and she could see the faint rising and falling of his chest. She knelt down beside him and reached out to touch his throat. His pulse thumped against her fingertips and she sighed in relief.
“Sir?” she asked, but he didn’t stir.
Not quite willing to pull her hand away, she reached up to cup his cheek and feel the rough stubble of his beard against her palm. She wasn’t inclined to caress strangers—especially ones who looked like they’d been beaten and dumped on a beach by some thugs—but she couldn’t stop herself.
When was the last time she’d touched a man? Hugging her two-year-old nephew and brother-in-law, Steve, didn’t count. Neither did the poking and prodding from the doctors and nurses at the hospital. Honestly, she didn’t really know. Too long.
Shadow sniffed at the man’s clothing with enthusiasm, eventually licking the man’s face and howling loudly with excitement. That did the trick. The man started at the noise, then winced. Willow jerked her hand away as he groaned loudly and brought a hand up to his bleeding head.
“Damn,” he muttered under his breath as his eyes fluttered open.
Willow sat back on her heels and sucked in a ragged breath as the man turned and looked at her. Despite the shape he was in, the man was beautiful, and more so now that he was awake. His large dark brown eyes were fringed with thick lashes any woman would kill for. His gaze ran over her for a moment and a smile curled his full lips, revealing a dimple in one cheek. “Well, hello there, beautiful,” he said in the slurred speech of a sleepy drunk. He shifted his weight and groaned again in pain.
“Don’t move,” she said, ignoring the injured man’s flattery and reaching out to press him back to where he was lying. He obviously wasn’t in good condition if he thought she was beautiful. She wore no makeup and her hair was a mess under the cap she’d tugged on before she left. “You’re hurt pretty badly.”
“Don’t I know it,” he replied with a dry chuckle despite the obvious pain. He looked away from Willow and scanned the beach around him with a frown of confusion lining his forehead. He stopped when he found himself face-to-face with the interested, but patiently waiting, Shadow. The dog was sitting beside him panting heavily, with his pink tongue hanging out of the side of his goofy doggy grin.
Promises from a Playboy--A secret billionaire with amnesia romance Page 1
