Kane (BBW Billionaire Romance)

D
aniella Marquardt is
a woman with big curves and even bigger problems. Her dead sister left behind a baby, and even if the man sitting in jail isn’t the baby daddy, he’s trying to get custody for his own sinister purposes.

Ready to flee the state, Daniella makes one last stop at a secretive company to find the man who tried to save her sister while delivering the baby.

She isn’t there for help, she just wants to thank him. For all she knows, Trent Kane probably works in accounting—or maybe the tech department.

Never in a million years would she suspect he’s the big, bad Chief Operating Officer of a private military company with unlimited resources. When she does meet him, she doubts a man with such a hard heart and cold demeanor would be interested in saving her niece a second time.

For Trent Kane, he figures the curvy beauty is there to sue him and wants her out of his office. When he discovers the threat to Daniella’s niece, he won’t let the woman refuse his help.

But even though a part of him wants Daniella, he’s determined to keep her at arm’s length. He doesn’t do relationships. He doesn’t even do second dates.

As far as he is concerned, love is for the weak.

* * *

T
his title includes
characters introduced in
Undeniably His
. While reading
His
is not necessary to understand this story, it is recommended, especially for readers who crave a billionaire who can deliver a toe curling spanking.

I
ncoming
!” Sergeant Trent Kane warned with a barking cough. His arms jerked up, shielding his head at the first rumbling drone of another mortar shell.

He was in Baghdad’s Green Zone, trapped in a piece of shit office building repurposed as temporary housing for Americans traveling on government business. With its central location within the Zone, the building was supposed to be safe.

The Iraqi insurgents hadn’t received the memo and the first three shells had quickly turned the structure into a pile of collapsing rubble, more chunks of wall and ceiling falling with each round fired.

Kane’s balls shriveled in anticipation when the droning tone turned to a clear whistle. The shell hit a second later, throwing his body against a broken chair, splinters as thick as fingers stabbing at his clothes and flesh.

A woman’s scream pierced the dust-filled air.

Dropping his arms, he looked to his left to see Collin Stark, his team leader, recovering from the blast. Stark lurched forward as the woman screamed again, his blood caked hands lifting one of the broken pieces of wall crushing Reed Henley and his wife, Katherine.

Fingers numb, Kane resumed clearing the rubble, an unvoiced thanks offered up that the last shell hadn’t added to the sharp blocks of debris covering the pregnant woman.

After the first shell hit, it had been Reed covering Katherine, his bigger, more resilient body shielding her torso and head. Then the ceiling had collapsed and the screams had started as rubble pressed on Reed’s body, pushing him down onto his wife.

Another of Katherine’s screams tore through Kane like shrapnel from a mortar shell. Finishing up his second tour in Iraq, he had experienced combat situations that would shake anyone all the way down to their core. But combat happened too fast to process in the moment. There was no time to be afraid, to smell the fear of everyone around you.

This—this was different. Different in a way that might haunt him for the rest of his life.

“Got a leg!” Stark yelled.

Kane scrambled over, relief flooding through him that the limb, clearly belonging to Katherine, was still attached.

But there was blood, a lot of blood. Some of it dried, some of it fresh.

She screamed and more blood flowed.

Five and half months pregnant, the woman was going into labor as the building crushed down on her and Reed. There was no doctor, not even a first aid kit. No assistance would arrive anytime soon. The shelling had to stop first.

All he could do to help was to keep digging.

* * *

K
ane jerked
awake in his Raleigh office. A glance at his Rolex indicated it was a quarter to nine. He stretched and cracked fingers cramped with the memory of the recurring dream, of the endless blocks of debris that he tried over and over to clear in time to make a difference, his sleeping mind locked in one of Psyche’s impossible tasks with no divine intervention offering a resolution.

He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, the smell of Katherine Henley’s blood mixed with the chemical residue of the mortar shells still clinging to his nose a decade later.

Picking up his cell phone, he tapped the screen and opened a secure messaging app, quickly thumbing a text then hitting send.

Gray’s Hotel, one hour. Make her sporty.