Sweet Seduction
A Billionaire Virgin Romance
Alexis Winter
Alexis Winter Publishing
Sweet Seduction
A Billionaire Virgin Romance
Forbidden Desires Series-Book 2
A Novella
By
Alexis Winter
© Copyright 2018 by Alexis Winter - All rights reserved.
In no way is it 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. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Now that Charlotte Fairweather has her new bakery off the ground and running, it feels like nothing in her life can go wrong. She’s got her head on straight, her business off to a strong start and the perfect boyfriend in billionaire businessman Preston Pierce.
Everything seems perfect. They can’t keep their hands off one another and the chemistry is off the charts. The heat isn't only in the kitchen, Charlotte is experiencing things she’s only ever read about in romance novels! That is until the rug is pulled out from under her when he calls everything off.
Now, she’s all on her own with nothing left going right for her but the bakery that she fought so hard to get started. What happens when she discovers that his reasons may be motivated by someone else pulling the strings behind the scenes that she never expected? Does she fight for the man she loves or let him walk out of her life for good?
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
BONUS CONTENT
Sweet Temptation
Untitled
Untitled
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
Charlotte Fairweather was standing behind the counter of her bakery at the close of the day. Things had been getting increasingly busier as the weeks had gone on and the neighborhood started hearing about the new bakery that had just opened. It had gotten to the point that Charlotte had to hire another person to work the bakery with her in addition to the guy she had hired to manage the coffee bar.
The barista, Jacob, had turned out to be the best help she could have asked for. He was willing to come in and work whenever she needed him. The tips were good and he was in charge of managing himself, so he came in early and stayed late as much as she needed him to. Even with the two of them, it had all become too much already and she was interviewing a candidate for the spot of an assistant this afternoon. Then, she was supposed to be meeting up with Preston for dinner tonight.
The two of them had been seeing each other for the past few weeks, ever since he had showed up here and told her he couldn’t do this without her. It was strange to have someone in her life like that when she had never considered dating anyone seriously before now. He might have been older than her, but the two of them seemed to have a lot more in common than most people would have suspected.
They enjoyed a good night in, dinner around a desk while they planned the next step in each of their businesses. Surprisingly, he was also quite content to sit around in the kitchen back at her tiny apartment and watch her buzz around and try out new recipes while her cat, Andy, curled around his ankles. They’d been spending some of every night together since his confession. A few times the two of them had stayed over at either his penthouse apartment or the bedroom in his office if the managed to work late, but Charlotte was always up before sunrise to get ready for work the next day.
One of the perils of running your own business meant that you were responsible for everything that happened. She didn’t have the luxury of having other people to manage things the way Preston did, she knew if she worked her ass then someday she too cold could one day have that luxury. He could arrive to the office at whatever time he wanted, even though he still managed to make it in before everyone else on his payroll. She admired that in him, plus it motivated the hell out of her to work even harder.
The only thing that had bothered her a little was the age difference between the two of them. It was less about the fact that he was older than her and more about the fact that he was so much more experienced than her. She’d been a virgin when the two of them got together and he had been so far from virginal that it wasn’t even funny. It made obvious sense, he was a handsome billionaire who was more than fifteen years her senior. It would have been ridiculous for him to have saved himself this long or even been ‘inexperienced.’ She was young, new to the city, fresh out of college and entirely naive. It scared her a little that she wasn’t exactly what he needed, no matter how much he assured her that it was exactly the opposite. She knew that he could not only have any woman he wanted but a woman that would be able to truly satisfy his desires.
Charlotte got a little lost in thinking about things with Preston, until she realized that she had been cleaning the same spot on the counter for the last five minutes while she stared into space. It had taken Jake clearing his throat from across the room to bring her back to her senses.
“So what time is your interviewee supposed to be in?” He was finishing things up in his half of the bakery, getting the coffee making equipment polished, shined and sanitized for the next morning when the two of them would arrive before sunrise to get things going for the day.
Charlotte glanced at the clock, shocked when her brain finally registered the time. She walked over to the front door, flipped the sign to closed and stared untying the apron from around her waist as she answered him.
“About fifteen minutes. Do me a favor?”
“Whatever you need boss.”
“Let her in when she gets here. I need to go back into the office and get ready for this thing. It’s really only my second interview ever and I got lucky with you.”
He laughed and nodded, tipping his hat towards her before going back to his cleaning.
“Alright, I’ll agree you got lucky with me and I’ll be happy to let her in when she gets here. What’s her name?”
“Riley Dorne, but I have no idea what she looks like, just that she’s 24 and has bakery experience. That’s it. So, if anyone who looks like they can ice a cake shows up at the door, feel free to open it.” She shrugged with a laugh, but it was half serious. She would have honestly interviewed anyone who could decorate a cupcake, but those people were few and far between. It was a little ridiculous how hard it was to find someone to even apply for the job who was qualified. Riley was the first applicant who had even had experience in a bakery.
Charlotte knew she was good at what she did, but she wasn’t ready to train someone from scratch, especially not when she was still learning how to run a business herself. It was more than she wanted to put on her plate, so she was stuck looking for someone who had experience. That was part of the reason she was so nervous about this interview. If she kept on working the hours she was working, she was going to kill herself. Seven days a week, open to close, baking all the cakes, pies, cupcakes, muffins, cookies, brownies, everything that got served up in the bakery all alone while also trying to nurture and grow a new relationship. When the business had been slow, she had been able to keep up. Now, it was almost like she needed two of herself.
Preston had been the one to come up with the idea of hir
ing someone to help her out. That way she could at least catch a breath during the day and maybe even take a day off from time to time. In the future, there would probably be more employees, but for now, she would be happy with someone who could just hang around so she had a half an hour to eat her lunch. As it was, she was lucky to get ten minutes with no customers in line to inhale a few bites of a sandwich before the front door bell chimed to let her know that someone else was walking in the door.
It was good to be busy and Charlotte didn’t want to complain about the abundance of business. It meant that she could pay her uncle back and keep the place going without any extra input from either him or Preston for the moment and it made her feel like she was doing something she was actually good at. That being said, employees were going to have to be a necessity from now on.
Jacob mostly managed himself. He came in the same hours she did and he was good at serving customers when she needed to be back in the kitchen. But, he was just as busy as she was these days, between the coffee and the baking, there just weren’t enough hands to go around.
Charlotte paused in the office, leaning against the desk and brushing her hair back from her forehead before she noticed a patch of flour on the dark navy blue of her skirt. It stood out like a sore thumb, but she hadn’t even had time to slow down and notice it until now. As she was dusting it off, she heard a knocking on the glass of the front door. It was either a last-minute customer or the person she was waiting for. The voices from the front lasted longer than they should have if Jake was just telling someone that they were closed for the evening. That meant Riley was here.
Charlotte took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. She was nervous about this interview, almost as much as if she were the one being interviewed. Jake had sort of fallen into her lap, she’d met him on the first floor of the Pierce Building back when she had opened the original food cart. He was the barista in the coffee shop in the cafeteria and it had just been a natural next step to offer him the job here when she had finally gotten everything settled. He’d known her coffee order by heart after the first week of her showing up at the stand he worked at. He didn’t own the shop, he didn’t even rent it. He had actually only worked there for a couple of months when she opened her food cart, so coming with her wasn’t an issue. At least, she had been able to hire her first employee without too much trouble. Now she just had to figure out how to hire her second one.
There was a quick knock on the office door, followed by Jake opening the door and sticking his head in with a smile.
“So, your interview is here.”
“Thanks, Jake. Why don’t you show her in?” He nodded and shot her a wink before disappearing out back into the bakery only to come back in followed by a young brunette.
“Please, have a seat.” Charlotte gestured to the chair on one side of the desk in the office before she settled into the rolling desk chair on the opposite side. Charlotte smiled, trying not to look as nervous as the young woman who sat down across from her did.
“You must be Riley? It’s nice to meet you.” Charlotte arranged the small file with Riley’s information in it in front of her on the desk as the other woman nodded and opened her mouth to try to speak. She was shy, that much was clear, but Charlotte wasn’t sure what that meant about her ability to do this job.
There were going to be customers. She was at least going to have to be comfortable enough speaking to communicate with them, but the job she was interviewing for didn’t exactly require her to be eloquent and outgoing. She just had to be able to serve up baked goods and do a little baking from time to time. You could manage that without much in the way of talking, but Charlotte wanted someone who was going to be more like her, someone who was good at getting to know the clients and greeting them as they came in their door.
“It’s nice to meet you too.” Her voice was quiet, nervous, a little timid, but at least she had answered. That was a good sign,
“So, Riley, I see that you’ve had a few years of experience with baking.” She glanced up from the paper, trying to sound professional, but the truth was that Charlotte had no idea how to conduct a job interview. She’d only been to a couple of them herself. Her experience with them was mostly limited to the one’s she had seen on television or in movies, and she really hoped she was going about this correctly.
Charlotte watched the young woman across the desk from her straighten up when she mentioned baking, her eyes even seemed to sparkle.
“To be honest, I’ve been baking since I was old enough to reach the countertop. My parents are bakers, and I worked in their bakery until I moved here to go to culinary school.”
Charlotte tried to hide her excitement at the mention of her previous bakery experience, glancing down at the paper in front of her. The resume did mention two years of culinary school, but not that she had graduated. And the jobs she had listed varied from the experience that must have come from her parents’ bakery to various retail jobs.
“Do you mind if I ask why you didn’t finish school?” Charlotte bit the inside of her cheek. The question seemed personal, but she was curious. There might be something in the answer that she would need to know about her potential new employee.
Riley let out an audible sigh, her posture deflating a bit, “Money. That’s really it. My parents died and everything went to pay off the debts they’d incurred opening and running their business. I couldn’t afford to stay in school on my own.”
Charlotte watched as Riley started studying her fingers carefully clasped in her lap in front of her and immediately felt bad about pushing the subject.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
Riley immediately threw up her hands, “It’s ok, really. I just love baking, and I haven’t had a chance to do anything with it since I left school. When I saw your ad looking for an assistant, I had to jump on the chance. I understand if you don’t want to hire someone who dropped out of school, but thank you for the consideration. Really.”
Riley went to push up from the desk chair with a disappointed look on her face. Somehow, she had come to believe that this was Charlotte’s way of dismissing her. Riley had clearly not had an easy go of things in the past few years. It made Charlotte want to wrap her up in a warm hug but Riley looked like the type of person who was going to fight to do things on her own. Charlotte liked that about her. She also liked that it appeared Riley had done whatever it was she needed to do to take care of herself since her parents had died. She was determined. As far as Charlotte was concerned, those were all admirable qualities and there was no way she was going to let Riley leave without giving her a chance.
“Hey,” Charlotte stood up and moved around the desk to grab Riley’s wrist gently, trying to take care not to scare the other woman. Riley froze in her tracks and turned to face Charlotte. “Don’t go. You’re exactly the kind of person I was looking for. This bakery is getting to be more than I can handle on my own and Jake, who you’ve already met, is great with coffee and service, but he doesn’t know a croissant from a danish. I need someone who knows their way around a kitchen, specifically an oven. You’re the first person I’ve come across who had any experience whatsoever, but being born in a bakery makes you even better than I was hoping for! You’re hired.”
The look on Riley’s face melted from disappointment to joy in a fraction of a second, but even Charlotte was surprised when the brunette pulled her into a hug, squeezing her arms around to trap her until she let out a soft squeak. Riley released her, biting down on her lip as she pulled away.
“I’m sorry. God, that was weird and unprofessional, I just got so excited. Thank you!” Riley was bouncing on her heels as she clearly fought off the urge to hug Charlotte again.
“No apologies needed, you just surprised me. Trust me, I’m so happy you’re this excited to work here! I know this is really quick and sudden but any chance you can start tomorrow?” Charlotte asked nervously as she crossed both of her fingers.
Riley nodded and grinned
at Charlotte, shoving her hands into her pockets to avoid pulling her back into another hug.
“I’d be thrilled to. I just have to call in and let my current job know that I won’t be coming back.” She breathed out in a sigh of relief. The place she had been working clearly hadn’t been one of her favorites. “Thanks again, I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
Charlotte smiled, holding out her hand to shake Riley’s.
“I’m looking forward to working with you. See you at 6 AM?” Charlotte raised an eyebrow, making sure that Riley understood exactly what time she was supposed to be there in the morning.
Riley nodded and took a step towards the door.
“I’ll be here with bells on.” She rested a hand on the knob, letting herself out into the bakery beyond.
Charlotte was excited, but as soon as Riley walked out of the room she sank into the chair with a sigh of relief. That had gone much better than she had expected, but she still felt drained. Her nerves had gotten the better of her until she had been certain that Riley was what she was looking for. Charlotte knew she had gotten lucky again. It took Jake’s voice from out beyond the office door to bring her back to reality.
“Hey boss? I’m out for the night, and unless I’m mistaken you have a date you’re not supposed to miss tonight.”
Charlotte’s eyes went wide. It was Frida, s was supposed to be meeting Preston at his office as soon as she was done with the interview. Jumping up from the chair, she grabbed her purse from the hook by the door and headed out into the main room of the bakery.
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