Read STEEL: MC ROMANCE (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 3) Online
Authors: Samantha Leal
Had she seen these? Of course she had.
Hurriedly he shoved his legs into his pants and dragged a tee-shirt over his head. He barely remembered to shove his foot into his loafers before he was barreling towards the elevator. He reached her room and shoved open the door; it was just as he had feared! All her belongings were gone.
Cursing in rapid Spanish,”Mierda, mierda, mierda” Leandro rushed downstairs, his heart in his throat as he looked over the crowd for any glimpse of her.
“Where is she?” he demanded of the receptionist.
The young woman took one look at him. All of the staff knew exactly who he was. She responded without asking who he meant, “She left Sir. She checked out.”
“When?” he bit out so furiously, that the startled receptionist drew back.
“A few minutes ago Sir. She was in quite a hurry.”
“Did you see which way she went?”
“No. But I’ll take a wild stab and say she was heading for the airport.”
Leandro didn’t wait to hear more; he left at a run, searching even as he headed for the door. But she was already gone. Weakly, he sank onto the pavement in front of the hotel. Whatever brightness had illuminated his day a scant twenty minutes ago had gone out completely.
Chapter Six
Alexandra Jordan was a mess. It had been seven weeks since she’d left Hawaii and while Lead Inc had not contacted them at all, she had been unable to get its conniving CEO out of her mind.
She had also been a nightmare to be around at work because she was so sensitive these days that the least thing set her off. In a single day, she had berated her CFO, fired a janitor and sent two new interns crying from her office after an intense scolding.
Three weeks after she had returned, the tension around her had been so palpable that Claire had pulled her aside and reminded her she was supposed to have gone on the break to relax and not to return an ogre. She had the temperament of a bear with a sore paw and she knew it.
When she had noticed that her normally stoic secretary now blanched every single time she so much as looked at the woman, and that even Claire was giving her a wide berth, she had gone home and had a good crying session just to get it all out of her system. These days she was more withdrawn and quiet which was a decided improvement from her earlier raging-bitch persona.
The past week, she had forced smiles until her cheeks hurt. She had smiled for real though when she learned that
Beautiful Designs
had somehow clinched the Alistairs Plc contract. Things were looking up, she had thought as she joined her colleagues for a toast in celebration.
But just when she had started to convince herself that Leandro was not worth her tears, her doctor had delivered what might have been amazing news under other circumstances, but felt pretty grim as things stood now; she was pregnant!
She had lost some weight, rather than gain some as one might expect, and the bags under her eyes were so prominent they threatened to dwarf her nose. She hadn’t been sleeping much either, she admitted but all that had to change now that she had a baby to think of. She looked around at the park; it was midday and she was pretty much alone. A few kids played in a nearby swing set while adults sat on some benches similar to hers, watching over them.
Alexandra’s hand rested both pensively as well as protectively on her stomach as she leaned back against the park bench and shut her eyes. She wasn’t showing yet but she already loved the tiny human being inside of her with all her heart. It wasn’t its fault that its father was a two-faced rat! But still, this was not how it was supposed to be!
“May I sit?” an achingly familiar voice said from right in front of her.
Alexandra’s eyes flew open disbelievingly. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The two-faced rat was standing right in front of her looking so unbearably handsome that she unconsciously started to grind her teeth. He was wearing a pair of well-washed jeans and a tee-shirt with simple sneakers and yet somehow he managed to look utterly respectable, male and delicious. He was also slimmer than she remembered; he actually looked a little gaunt.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, her throat almost closing up. She had been torturing herself with images of his handsome, lying face since Hawaii but seeing him in the flesh was even more painful than her fevered anticipation had imagined.
“I need to talk to you Alexandra. You left the Island in a hurry and I had no chance t
o
”
“To seduce me further just so you could get me to reveal secrets about my business? Well you failed; we got the contract!” she cut in acidly.
“
Cara mia
, I’ve hurt you but you will let me make amends yes?” he said, his Spanish accent thicker as he dropped his long frame onto the bench beside her.
Alexandra felt as though the entire air around them reverberated with the very force of his presence and vitality. She edged away from him a little on the bench.
“Alexandra? Come on, don’t avoid me,
Cara mia
,” he pleaded, his hand grabbing hers to still her nervous movements.
“You have a lot of nerve showing your face here,” Alexandra spat jerking her arm from his light grasp. “So all you wanted was a contract and you had to sleep with me too? The humiliation couldn’t just end at me warming up to you? You could have simply asked me to withdraw as a friend and I would have considered it. You didn’t have to pretend to like me and actually fucking take me to your bed!”
Pun was really not her strong suit, she thought distractedly.
“It looks bad I know, but I swear it was nothing like that,” he said gruffly, taking her hand in his.
She sprung to her feet, flinging off his hand, her heart racing as she said frigidly, “Leave me the hell alone.”
Something glinted fleetingly in his dark eyes but was gone before she could ascertain what it was and he said, “I can’t. I have tried a thousand times to let you go but I can’t. I tried to forget you. I can’t undo what is done.”
“You’re damn right you can’t! I hate you and I curse the day I met you,” she lied.
Leandro looked weary and deflated all of a sudden and Alexandra felt her heart constrict in her chest as she looked at him. In this moment he didn’t look the part of some corporate raider as she had painted him; he looked almost like a little boy whose heart was breaking.
“I never set out to seduce you. I came to Hawaii to persuade you to withdraw Beautiful Designs from the bid. Lead Inc has been trying to take over some companies, mostly subsidiaries of Alistairs Plc and this contract would have been like a leg in the door for us. Before I met you, it was just business, but once I saw you, I had to have you. I wanted to be with you, I should say. Seducing you was never my agenda. I swear it. I tried everything I could to stay away but I just could not forget you. Now that I know you exist, nothing is the same. All that I have accomplished means nothing without you. I was going to tell you everything that last day but you found out on your own before I had the chance.”
“Yeah you should have done a better job of hiding the papers I said,” she said bitingly.
He sighed, “That was the worst day of my life.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“Alexandra, I pulled Lead Inc out of the bid. That was the first thing I did when I returned. You can verify from them, I swear. I didn’t want to take it away from you; not if it meant I would lose you.”
Her heart thudded in her chest. He had pulled out of the contract when it meant so much to his company?
Alexandra took a quick step back as Leandro rose to his feet and took her hand in his once more. “I’m sorry Alexandra. Please forgive me? I feel like I know you as much as I know my own self. Can’t you see? You are a part of me and I am a part of you. Our meeting was a gift. Can’t you see that?”
“You only know so much about me because you read it up in some report!”
“I never read the report. In fact I had only just printed them out that same morning. I never read them I swear. Our connection surprised me too. You are the funniest, kindest, sweetest, most beautiful woman I know.”
His dark eyes stared into hers, open and searching and she read the blazing sincerity and remorse in his gaze. She believed him, she realized.
Her resistance melted away and she nodded, “Okay fine. No harm done.”
“There’s something else.”
“Huh?”
Before her surprised eyes, he went down on one knee and pulled a little black box from his pocket, his dark eyes gleaming as he looked up at her. Alexandra’s throat closed up as she stared at him, her hands flying to her mouth when the box opened to reveal the biggest and most amazingly cut diamond she had ever seen in her life.
“I love you Alexandra. I know I absolutely do not deserve you but will you make me the happiest man on earth and say you’ll marry me?”
“
I
I’m pregnant,” she blurted instead.
His eyes widened in surprise even as his gaze automatically dropped to her flat stomach before flicking up to her face.
“You’r
e
” he began hesitantly.
Alexandra nodded, happy tears springing into her eyes as she grinned down at him. He rose to his feet immediately and gathered her into his arms, his hands encircling her waist as he crushed her to him.
“You’re perfect. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted,” he breathed against her lips. His kiss was tender and gentle. His tongue stroked hers sweetly sending waves of a calm and soothing peace shooting through her nerve endings as she clung to him. An almost indescribable feeling of happiness washed over her.
“You never answered my question,” he reminded her, lifting his head and looking into her eyes with all the love in the world shining from his.
“Yes Leandro, I’ll marry you. I love you too,” she told him.
As she kissed him, all the walls around her heart melted away completely leaving her free to embrace this wonderful love that was hers to savor forever.
THE END
Leela Ash
Copyright ©2015 by Leela Ash. 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.
When she took the time to think back over the previous few weeks (or had it been hundreds of years?), Lily Rey would not know what to think. Any number of things could have happened any other way, and she would not have found herself living with the man she had always felt that she deserved, in the land that she had always dreamed of living in. In her scheme of thinking, things had changed so drastically in such a short period of time; she had gone from stressed to easeful, ignored to revered, and downtrodden to wealthy.
It had all started at the desk outside of Reginald P. Wooley, Esquire’s office. Reginald was a senior partner at the offices of Davis, Franklin, and Wooley, Attorneys at Law, a prestigious criminal defense office in Daytona Beach, Florida, when she received a telephone call from Tyler Yancey, her great aunt’s estate attorney. She had been expecting the call for about a week, and was beginning to worry that it would not come in time for her trip to Scotland.
“Reginald Wooley’s office, Lily speaking,” she had answered.
“Yes, Miss Rey,” the man’s voice had said through the crackle of cell-phone static, “I am calling in regards to Mrs. Henry’s estate. The reading of her will is this afternoon, and she had specifically asked that you be present, as it concerns you very much.”
“Okay, what time?”
“We will be starting at 4:00 p.m., exactly.”
“I’ll be there,” she said, replacing the telephone in the receiver. She remembered glancing at the clock and thinking to herself how they could have called her earlier. Her flight was scheduled to leave the runway at 8:15 that evening, and with the post-9/11 security, she would need to be at the airport by no later than 5:00 that evening.
She was cutting it mighty fine, indeed.
She had been looking forward to the trip—her chance to visit the land of her ancestors—for several months. She had always felt drawn to Scotland, most likely because family tradition had always said that they were descended from Scottish nobility, and it made her dream of castles, of handsome men full of chivalry and honor—basically what every young girl dreams of. The problem was, those young girls eventually learn that there are no more castles, princes to sweep them off their feet, or dragons to slay.
No, in modern life, there were only asshole law partners who prevent qualified women from promoting their lowly secretary’s job to a full paralegal, all while making her do the work of one. The bad part was, Reginald P. Wooley, Esq. was a perverted old man who only wanted to keep her at his front desk because of her round ass and large, perky tits. It was almost as if she was nothing but a long pair of legs and a vagina to the assholes at Davis, Franklin, and Wooley. They didn’t care that she was a certified paralegal, or that she was much better qualified than the ugly guy they had just hired to hold the title. They would rather have Lily in the position of “eye-candy-in-chief,” all while working her to death.
When she was honest with herself though, it wasn’t hard to understand why they wanted her to act as the company eye candy. In addition to her obvious physical assets of a large bust and round derriere, she also possessed with long, dark auburn hair that perfectly complemented her stunningly bright and large blue eyes. Her slightly hollowed cheeks and strong, thin chin perfectly balanced her face, and her legs were toned much more than the average, a testament to the multiple marathons, half-marathons, 10 and 5ks that she competed in every year. All in all, she was easily one of the prettiest women in Daytona Beach.
That day at lunchtime, she told the partners that she had finished her work, and told Reginald that she was leaving for her vacation. “Don’t you get lost in time over there! Make sure you come back!” he had answered, his eyes raking the plunging neckline of her blouse.
“I won’t!” Lily answered, all while thinking to herself that if she could help it, she definitely wouldn’t…come back. “Asshole,” she said to herself, as she walked out the front door of the office she so despised.
As she rode down A1A listening to P!NK’s most recent album, “The Truth About Love,” she cranked up the music and lost herself in her own world for a few moments. After she got home, showered, threw her suitcases in the back of her car, ate some lunch, and watched a last little bit of American television before leaving, she headed off to Tyler Yancey’s office for her appointment.
She had been very close to her Great Aunt Yvonne, who raised her from the time she turned eleven. When her mother had been killed in a car accident, her father wanted nothing to do with Lily, so the deadbeat asshole gladly signed his rights as a parent over to Yvonne, who was Lily’s mother’s aunt. Yvonne had not had any children of her own, but Great Uncle Harold, Aunt “Vonny’s” husband, had a daughter from a previous marriage. His granddaughter, Rose, was the same age as Lily.
As an only child, Lily had never known what it would be like to have a sibling, and Rose quickly became something of a surrogate sister. Rose’s father had abandoned her before she was born, leaving her to be raised by her mother, who had barely graduated high-school. Because her mother had to work two jobs to provide for her, Rose spent a lot of time with Lily’s Uncle Harold and Aunt Vonny. Now that Aunt Vonny had passed away, Lily had no family left besides Rose. Rose, of course, was not even related to her technically, but might as well have been.
When Lily arrived at the lawyer’s office, Rose eyed her white halter top and short blue shorts and immediately began laughing, her cigarette dangerously close to falling out of her mouth. “Hey, ho!”
“Hey yourself, skank!” Lily answered, breaking out into a wide grin. It was a normal routine of theirs to greet each other with insults, but it could not have been clearer to the average on-looker that they were close. “How’ve you been?” Lily asked as they embraced.
“I’m okay…it’s still hard to believe that Vonny is gone, you know?”
“Yeah, I’m really going to miss her.”
“What do you think she left you?”
“Probably $10 million…”
“Wishful thinking, much?”
“Considering that she didn’t have two pennies to rub together, yeah.”
“Yeah…I guess the fact that she paid for our college was our inheritance, huh?”
“Couldn’t have asked f0r more.”
“So, why are you dressed like a whore?” Rose said, snuffing out her cigarette, “You thinking that the lawyer will give you more if he thinks you’ll give him a blowjob in the car out back?”
“Well, I figured it couldn’t hurt” she joked, punching her on the left shoulder before opening the door to the small storefront that Tyler Yancey had rented for a law office.
“Hmmm…you’ve got a point there. Seriously, though…why?” Rose pressed, walking through the open door.
“I’ve got a plane to catch in a few hours, figured I’d make it easier for them to strip search me,” Lily answered sarcastically.
“I forgot! Where are you going, again? Ireland?”
“No, Scotland.”
“What’s the difference?” Rose asked as the lawyer walked from behind a small partition.
“Only the North Channel of the Irish Sea,” Yancey answered before Lily could open her mouth. “Ladies, thank you for coming. Shall we begin?”
“Aren’t we expecting anyone else?” Rose asked.
“No, you are the only two who Mrs. Henry made specific bequests to, and you are the only two who she specifically requested to be here. Shall we begin?”
“Sure,” Rose answered, sitting down in an office chair by the front door as Lily took a seat beside her.
“The last will and testament of Yvonne T. Henry,” the lawyer read aloud, “It is my wish that with exception of two personal effects, to be named herein, all of my assets be liquidated, and used to settle my final debts. First, my necklace of sterling silver and amethyst is bequeathed to my grand-niece, Lily O. Rey, along with the letter that accompanies it. Additionally, Lily is to receive one half of the monetary value of my estate, or two million dollars, whichever is less.” Trevor paused to take a sip of water while this sank into Lily’s consciousness. He then continued, “Secondly, my antique dining set, incorporating sterling silver cutlery and fine china plate are bequeathed to Rose S. Tolliver, along with the letter that accompanies the set. Additionally, Rose is to receive one half of the monetary value of my estate, or two million dollars, whichever is less. If there are any funds available after the monetary value of my estate has been determined, I leave everything to the Florida Cancer Society, in remembrance of my late husband, Harold M. Henry.”
Lily and Rose sat there in shock as the attorney reached behind the partition and handed each of them a fine wooden chest, containing their bequests. “Naturally, we are unable to give you your financial inheritance, but we can arrange to have it deposited in your personal bank accounts.”
“How much was it?” Rose asked, obviously still in shock.
“You will each receive $1.98 million.”
“Wow,” Lily said quietly a few moments later, when they had exited the office.
“Did you know?” Rose asked.
“Know? Know what?”
“That Gramma Vonny was rich?”
“No…” Lily said before carefully opening the case and removing the yellowed envelope that sat inside on top of the pristine necklace. Opening the envelope, she found a letter dated in 1999, written in her Aunt Vonny’s minute, tidy handwriting:
My Dearest Lily,
I do not know if you were aware that the necklace I have left you exists. It has been passed down through the generations from our ancestors, always to the first-born woman of the next generation. If your mother had not passed, it would have been left to her; however, as you are the only surviving woman in our line from the generations after my own, it is now yours. I have had it appraised, and the certificate of authenticity, signed by the Department chairwoman of the University of Florida’s Anthropology Department, will verify that it originated in the early fourteenth century in our ancestral homeland of Scotland.
Also, family legend says that the necklace conceals a power that only one woman, the descendant of our ancestor, would be able to unlock. Unfortunately, I do not have any way of knowing (or passing on to you) what that power is. I can only tell you that many women in our line have borne her name, including you—Lily.
I know that it has long been your ambition to visit the land of our ancestors, so perhaps you can be the one to solve the mystery of our family necklace. Maybe you can one day visit the home of the first Lily in our family, Culcreuch Castle in Fintry, to ascertain the roots of the legend, and the power that the necklace possesses.
Until we meet again, know that I have always loved you, my dearest niece,
Aunt Vonny