Table of Contents
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Collections
Stonybrooke Shifters
Dystopian Romance
Stepbrother Romance
Alien Romance
Bear Shifter Romance
Highlander Time Travel Romance
Victorian Mystery
Billionaire Romance
Wolf Shifter Romance
MC Romance
Ranger
A Forsaken Riders Standalone MC Romance
Book 19
Samantha Leal
Copyright ©2017 by Samantha Leal. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Introduction
Thank you so much for purchasing my Novellete. All of my stories also contain bonus stories, so please take a look at the other stories I offer here. Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter for updates and free books!
The Forsaken Riders series is a collection of novelette length standalone Bad boy romances that fit together to tell the longer tale of the Forsaken Riders – and the woman they love - as they fight to dominate the town of Slate Springs.
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The Forsaken Riders are:
King (Book 1)
Lynx (Book 2)
Steel (Book 3)
Gunner (Book 4)
Hawk (Book 5)
Bull (Book 6)
Stag (Book 7)
Stick (Book 8)
Decker (Book 9)
Ax (Book 10)
Hunter (Book 11)
Rocket (Book 12)
Diesel (Book 13)
Breaker (Book 14)
Flash (Book 15)
Hammer (Book 16)
Brick (Book 17)
Chains (Book 17)
Ranger (Book 18)
Also by Samantha…
The Lost Creek Shifters
The Lost Creek Shifters series is a collection of novelette length standalone Bad boy romances that fit together to tell the longer story of the ancient tale of the bear and wolf shifters in a small mountain town. Enjoy!
ARLO (Book 1)
SCAR (Book 2)
BLU (Book 3)
BODHI (Book 4)
KODHI (Book 5)
…and also from Totally Romance…
STONYBROOKE SHIFTERS
DADDY SHIFTER’S VIRGIN
A SECRET BABY FOR THE SHIFTER
THE SHIFTER’S MAIL ORDER VIRGIN
DADDY SHIFTER’S FAKE FIANCE
THE SEAL SHIFTER’S SECRET BABY
CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA DADDY
NANNY TO THE SHIFTER
THE SHIFTER PROTECTOR’S VIRGIN
OAK MOUNTAIN SHIFTERS
HER BILLIONAIRE SHIFTER BOSS
HER SECRET PROTECTOR BEAR
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Table of Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Collections
Stonybrooke Shifters
Dystopian Romance
Stepbrother Romance
Alien Romance
Bear Shifter Romance
Highlander Time Travel Romance
Victorian Mystery
Billionaire Romance
Wolf Shifter Romance
MC Romance
1.
Nicole stood at the back of the hall and looked at all the empty seats stretching out ahead of her. They swooped down in a half circle, extending all the way to the podium where her professor was standing, shuffling his notes and looking far too serious for a Friday afternoon.
She felt a pang of dread curl up inside of her and threaten to burst out of her chest.
I would rather be anywhere but here, she thought.
She slumped down in the back row and tried to hide, hoping her professor wouldn’t see her. The lecture hall was practically empty and she knew if he noticed her up there, he would try and coax her down to the front. Still she thought about trying her luck and that maybe this once, he wouldn’t notice her.
She’d been hiding and avoiding class for the entire semester and she now knew for sure she was going to fail. It would have made her panic, if she had cared. However, the sad reality was she didn’t. Nicole had never wanted to do anything less in her entire life, and she had reached her limit.
She thought back to her first week in college a couple of years before. When she had arrived on campus, she had been full of worry and anxiety, but she had slotted into campus-life easily and made a ton of friends. She had enjoyed the new way of life at first and had done her best to study and be a model student, but there was just something else pulling inside her, and she knew law wasn’t her calling. Her mother and father had both pressured her into this and now she felt trapped and isolated, with nowhere to turn.
She chewed her lip and scrunched up her eyes.
The professor looked up and started to eyeball around the room. Nicole felt the panic begin to rise in her throat and she instinctively reached for her bag.
She just couldn’t do it. She had to run.
The anxiety was so powerful it felt as if it were rising right up into her throat and crushing against her chest. She saw him open his mouth as if he were about to speak, and she quickly rose to her feet and darted backwards toward the double doors that led the hell out of there.
As she burst through them and back into the light, her heart was pounding and her palms were slick with sweat.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” she whispered to herself as she carried on walking without looking back. “Panic attacks just from sitting in a lecture hall? You must be cracking up.”
But the truth was, she knew she wasn’t.
Her heart was pulling her in another direction and she was suddenly terrified that if she didn’t pursue it, she would spend the rest of her life regretting it. She had to be true to herself. It was time to face the music.
She walked back across the quad towards her building and as she climbed the steps that led back up towards her floor, she finally felt as if she could breathe.
She pushed open the door to her bedroom and closed it behind her quietly as to not to attract any attention her way, and then she sighed with relief.
She reached for her bag and opened the flap. Inside there was a large manila envelope, stuffed full of documents and ready for her attention. She took a deep breath before she pulled them free and started to read them from the very first page.
Her whole future was in her hands, and she had never been more terrified.
She had never, ever questioned her parents when it had come to their knowledge of the world, and what was best for her, but as soon as they had begun to push her in a particular direction, this one being to follow in the footsteps of her father to become an attorney and some sort of legal superstar, she had known they finally had gotten something wrong.
They weren’t letting Nicole become who she was supposed to be, and pressuring her into college to get a degree she had no intere
st in had just been the first step; adding rules and clauses onto her trust fund was the second.
She scanned her eyes down the page and swallowed.
All she ever wanted was to be able to open her own business. She wanted to create and thrive and make a living using her natural talents as a designer, not wasting away her entire life trying to make her father happy. However, both her parents had shrugged off her ambitions as pure fantasy, as something that could never possibly come to fruition, and they had stuck to their guns.
Law school was the only answer as far as they were concerned.
She just wanted the chance to prove herself and she had asked them time and time again for their support, but they had always shaken their heads and told her that they knew best.
“You need a solid education Nicole,” her father constantly told her. “You have to go to college, you have to train”, and “You have to take over the reins when I’m gone.”
The law firm had been standing since before Nicole was born, and this was maybe the only time she ever wished that she had a sibling to take some of the heat away from her.
“If only…” she whispered to herself.
It had been only weeks before she was due to come to college when she had confessed to her parents she had no interest in law and what she truly wanted was to open her own design studio, and try and make it out in the world alone.
Her parents had listened and let her speak but then glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes and a knowing look had passed between them.
“Starting a business takes lots of hard of work and investment,” her father had said, stony-faced.
Nicole was no fool and she knew exactly what she was going to tell them. She was planning on using part of her trust fund to start her dream. But the second the words began to form in her mouth, her father held up his hand to silence her.
“Your trust won’t be touched for pipe dreams, Nicole,” he’d said sternly. “It’s for your future as a wife, a mother, and an attorney. Not for you to prance around town playing one of these millennial creative dropouts.”
She had never seen him so determined in all her life and knew then it was a lost cause to try and fight him. Her father had made up his mind.
He was sending her to law school; he was lining her up to be junior partner at the firm when she graduated and he was clearly going to be tightening down on the clauses of her trust so that she was never going to get her hands on it until he got what he wanted. Nicole was trapped.
She blinked as she looked down at the papers in front of her. The redrafts had been sent only days after she had arrived on campus. She was no longer going to come into part of her trust when she turned twenty-one. The rules had changed. Now she had to be twenty-one, set to graduate in law and engaged to be married.
The pressure was intense and it only made Nicole more determined to prove them wrong.
Out in the hallway she heard a set of footsteps approaching and a key went in the lock. She looked up towards the door and watched as it slowly open and her roommate Sarah stepped into view.
“Hey.” She beamed. “What are you doing here, I thought you had class?”
Nicole shoved the papers back into the envelope and placed it down on the bed beside her.
“I did…” she began before she started to cringe.
“But?” Sarah half laughed.
“But I ran out again,” she said as she buried her head in her hands. “Literally the panic attacks began before I even enter the building. Getting into the lecture hall is absolute torture.”
“Jesus,” Sarah said with a sigh as she sat down next to her friend and rubbed her reassuringly on the shoulder. “You’ve really checked out, haven’t you?”
Nicole blinked back the tears and nodded.
“Yes,” she said, and gulped. “And I don’t know how much more of it I can take. They’re all going to be expecting so much from me and I have nothing to give back. I’m going to fail without question, and then what? Knowing my parents, they’ll make me retake it all over again.”
Sarah winced. “I can’t imagine you’re thrilled at the idea of that.”
“At this point, I would rather work at scrubbing toilets for the rest of my life,” Nicole said genuinely. “Law just isn’t for me.”
“Well, stand up to them then.” Sarah smiled. “You’re one of the strongest people I know. Why can’t you just say fuck it and go your own way?”
“You don’t know my parents.” Nicole sighed. “It’s not that easy.”
She rubbed her forehead and smiled.
“Is it to do with the trust?” Sarah asked cautiously.
The girls were best friends and there wasn’t a lot they didn’t share. Nicole had always been honest with her about the money that was waiting for her one day and had asked Sarah to keep it to herself.
“Pretty much,” Nicole admitted. “I want to excel on my own, but I can’t get a loan without a credit reference, and the only way I can possibly start my own business and open the design studio is with that money. It’s mine. I just have to convince them I’m going to make it a success.”
“Did they rewrite the conditions?” Sarah asked as her eyes travelled down to the envelope on the edge of the bed.
Nicole nodded slowly. “I have to be set to graduate and be engaged to be married.”
“Jeez!” Sarah snorted a laugh. “Your parents are fucking insane.”
“Insane and determined that my life is going to run exactly as theirs did. The thought of me being single and at college was enough to almost make them arrange me a marriage before I’d even left home.”
“Strict…” Sarah whistled.
“You really have no idea.”
“So… get a husband.”
Nicole glared at her sternly. “Oh shoot, of course, why didn’t I think of that?” She slapped her thigh and laughed.
“Hey, hear me out,” Sarah continued. “I’m not even joking.”
Nicole rose to her feet and shook her head.
“You sound just as insane as my parents,” she said with a laugh. “I can’t even find a guy I like enough to want to date, never mind one to marry! Plus, things are kind of time sensitive here, wouldn’t you agree? I can’t just mope around campus for another six months. I want to get out there and begin my life. I’m hungry, Sarah! I want to start my business and start living.”
“So,” Sarah continued, “get yourself a husband and play them at their own game.” She raised her eyebrows in a wiggle, a mischievous look spreading out across her face.
“I don’t follow,” Nicole said with confusion.
“I don’t know how much money you’ve got coming your way, Nic,” Sarah whispered. “But I’ve heard of places where you can hire men… kind of like escorts, and you could get him to act. Get him to pretend to be your perfect fiancé.”
Nicole looked at her friend, completely dumbstruck. Was she actually hearing her correctly?
“You are insane,” she whispered back to Sarah.
“I’m not,” Sarah said smugly. “I’ve just answered all of your problems. Find yourself a man, pay him to pretend to be your husband to be, and bingo, the money is yours and you can open your design studio.”
Nicole had to say, even though Sarah was clearly going crazy, she may be onto something.
“I still have the issue of college, though,” Nicole pointed out. “I mean, they’re not just going to forget about my career because I turn up with some guy.”
“I think you’d be surprised,” Sarah grinned. “Especially when he’s drop dead gorgeous, completely devoted to you, and you’re ready to set up home and think about having lots of little grandbabies!”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Nicole laughed. “You really have.”
“Maybe,” Sarah said as she bounced to her feet. “But you’ll never know unless you try. And when you’ve proven them wrong, you can give them their damned money back and you’ll be living your own life. I suppose the on
ly real question is, do you believe in yourself?”
Sarah let the statement hang in the air between them and Nicole could have both killed and kissed her at the same time.
Her friend was crazy, but like a true lawyer, she put forward a good solid case… and Nicole had the distinct feeling, that maybe, just maybe, if she played it right, this crazy idea of hers could possibly work.
2.
Nicole spent most of the rest of the week feeling restless and churned up inside. Sarah’s plan had been a bolt out of the blue, but it had also given her some heart. Maybe there was a way around her parents and their ridiculously strict ideals.
The money had been put into trust by her grandfather long ago and it was her mother and father who had suddenly decided they wanted to make Nicole earn it the only way they saw fit.
She lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. After dodging classes for the rest of the week, and several emails from her tutors asking where the hell she was and if she intended on showing up any time before the end of the semester, she was pretty much resigned to the fact she was no longer a law student.
“I’m living a lie,” she whispered to herself. “Now it’s time to try and get out of it.”
She rose up and looked around her and Sarah’s bedroom. The girls had been roommates since the very beginning and were like sisters. If Sarah believed in Nicole and her abilities, maybe she should just throw caution to the wind and live a little. Maybe she could turn it all around.
She reached over and opened her laptop before she started to type into the search bar.
Male Escorts?
“No, that sounds too gross,” she shivered and rolled out her shoulders.
Hire a boyfriend…?
She rolled her eyes and sighed.
“This is not going to be easy,” she whispered.
Suddenly the door to the bedroom burst open and Sarah trotted inside. She took one look at Nicole sitting there with a look of panic on her face and her expression cracked into a wide grin.
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