The Billionaire's Touch (The Sinclairs #3)
Read The Billionaire's Touch (The Sinclairs #3) Online
Authors: J. S. Scott
Tags: #Romance, #Contemporary Fiction, #Contemporary
ALSO BY J.S. SCOTT
The Sinclairs
The Billionaire’s Christmas
(A Sinclair Novella)
No Ordinary Billionaire
The Forbidden Billionaire
The Billionaire’s Obsession
The Billionaire’s Obsession Complete Collection—
Simon
Mine for Tonight
Mine for Now
Mine Forever
Mine Completely
Mine for Christmas
Heart of the Billionaire
—Sam
The Billionaire’s Salvation
—Max
The Billionaire’s Game
—Kade
Billionaire Unmasked
—Jason
Billionaire Undone
—Travis
Billionaire Untamed
—Tate
Billionaire Unbound
—Chloe
The Sentinel Demons
A Dangerous Bargain
A Dangerous Hunger
A Dangerous Fury
Big Girls and Bad Boys
The Curve Ball
The Beast Loves Curves
Curves by Design
The Pleasure of His Punishment: Stories
The Changeling Encounters
Mate of the Werewolf
The Dangers of Adopting a Werewolf
All I Want for Christmas Is a Werewolf
The Vampire Coalition
Ethan’s Mate
Rory’s Mate
Nathan’s Mate
Liam’s Mate
Daric’s Mate
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 J.S. SCOTT
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503950924
ISBN-10: 1503950921
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
This book is dedicated to my beloved mother, Jennie. She left this world on August 22nd, 2015, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. My mom is the reason that I’m writing today. She was a romance reader, and I started devouring romance books very early in life, because throughout my teenage years I swiped her Harlequin Romances after she finished with them. Reading those books started a lifelong love of romance novels that stayed with me and was the very beginning of my desire to write them myself. Mom believed that working hard and being kind to others would take a person a long way in life. She was right, and I’ll always try my best to live by the example she set for me.
I love you, Mom, and I’ll miss you every day for the rest of my life, but you’ll always live on through me and my memories of what an extraordinary woman you were. Thank you for always being my biggest fan and for being so proud of me.
From Your Loving Daughter Who Will Never Forget You,
~Jan
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Fourteen Months Ago
Miranda Tyler chewed absently on the pen between her fingers, oblivious to the germs she was probably ingesting from the well-used object. She stared pensively at the blank email draft in front of her. Was she really going to do this? It seemed pretty pointless, and yet . . .
Her friend Emily had just gone to try to speak personally with the only Sinclair living in the area, the only man who had the resources to save Christmas for the seacoast town of Amesport, Maine.
It wasn’t Emily’s fault that all of the funds for the Youth Center of Amesport had been stolen, but Miranda—otherwise known simply as Randi to her friends—knew that Emily was blaming herself completely for the fiasco. Her friend was sweet, trusting, and those traits had gotten her completely screwed. All of the money was gone from the Christmas fund for the Center, stolen by an asshole who Emily had trusted, and now they desperately needed help.
Come on, Randi. If Emily can go try to talk to the Amesport Beast, Grady Sinclair, you can find the damn balls to send a stupid email.
Honestly, sending an email off to a generic address in the hopes that one of the billionaire Sinclairs might actually read it and help the town of Amesport
did
seem like a meaningless action. But Randi was desperate, and she couldn’t seem to conjure up a better idea, although she badly wished she had one. Her foster parents had left her their home, but her teaching job wasn’t exactly lucrative. She got by on what it paid, but she didn’t have the kind of funds needed to replace the Christmas money. If she did, she’d give it without a thought. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.
Once Emily had gone to meet The Beast—aka Grady Sinclair—Randi had sat down at one of the Center’s aging computers, trying to find email addresses for the rest of the Sinclair family.
Like the billionaire brothers and cousins are really going to make their personal emails public?
Still, Randi wanted to do
something.
Emily had been so devastated and desperate. Randi couldn’t bear it, and she couldn’t sit and do nothing while Emily went to grovel to Grady Sinclair and continued to make everything her fault. In reality, Emily was an amazing director for the Center, a selfless woman who had dedicated herself to the nonprofit organization that was the heart of Amesport life. The Center was a better place since Emily had accepted the job of director.
Just do it! Send the damn email. What’s the worst that could happen?
Randi put down the pen she was chewing on and copied and pasted the “info” email address published on the Sinclair Fund web page into her empty draft. She’d found the site during her search—the organization was a large group charity in which all of the billionaire Sinclairs participated. More than likely, her email would end up in the hands of some assistant or secretary. She very much doubted that any of the Sinclairs were really hands-on with the charity. But maybe one of the employees would have a heart and pass the emailed info to one of the bosses. It
was
almost Christmas.
Dear Mr. Sinclair:
Randi paused after typing the generic greeting, figuring that was as good a start as any, since every one of them had the same last name. She quickly wrote the shortest email possible, explaining the crisis and practically begging for their assistance. When she finished, she breathed a sigh of relief. She hated groveling for anything; it rubbed her the wrong way. But she loved Emily, and there was very little she wouldn’t do for her real friends.
Grady was the only Sinclair who lived in Amesport, and Emily was currently approaching
him
personally. With his reputation for being a jerk and a recluse, it had taken a lot of guts for Emily to seek him out on the secluded Amesport Peninsula.
Her eyes darting to the clock on the wall, Randi realized that Emily was probably just now arriving at Grady’s mansion. Grady’s brothers Evan and Jared each had a home on the same cape right at the edge of town, as did their sister, Hope. The mansions were currently empty and rarely, if ever, visited.
Plenty of people gossiped about the Sinclairs, especially about Grady, but nobody really
knew
any of them. Honestly, Randi couldn’t remember an occasion where she’d actually
seen
any of the other Sinclairs come to Amesport on vacation. Jared had overseen the building of his siblings’ homes on the exclusive peninsula, but she’d never
seen
any of them.
All of the Sinclair men have to be stiff-necked snobs! They certainly have never frequented any of the local businesses, or people would know them.
Randi dearly wished she had found information on the Sinclair sister, but Hope was rarely in the media and apparently not active on social media. Grady’s cousins, Micah, Julian, and Xander, had little connection to the town, but some of their heritage was here. So she’d try to appeal to their sense of family.
As she read the hastily written note to check for errors, she hesitated on how to sign the letter. Writing from her email at the Center, she could be anonymous, a worried citizen. Everyone in the town of Amesport had access to email here in the tiny computer room of the Center, and Randi had her own free email address she’d created only for business here. She rarely utilized it except for sending progress reports to the parents of the students she helped tutor after hours as a volunteer. Unfortunately, she was fairly certain most of the parents didn’t even bother to read her correspondence.
She ended up simply signing the email:
A Concerned Resident of Amesport.
Hitting the “Send” button with a heavy sigh, she watched as the letter was sent off into cyberspace, wondering exactly
who
would read it.
Probably an assistant who would delete it without another thought.
The Sinclair Fund was an enormous charity. They were in the business of raising funds for large nonprofit organizations, not giving them out to a small town in crisis.
Randi signed herself out of her email for the Center and shut down the computer. She’d promised Emily she’d watch over the activities here while her friend was approaching Grady Sinclair to try and raise the funds they needed to save Christmas for Amesport and the surrounding villages. Unfortunately, Christmas wouldn’t be very merry if they couldn’t get the funds back for presents for needy children and the annual Christmas party. For some of the kids, whatever they got from the Center would be their only gift, and the food provided at the Christmas party their main Christmas dinner.
Randi pushed the dreary thought from her mind as she looked at all of the decorations around the old building. Emily had brought life into the aging structure, even though the tired Center desperately needed maintenance. Colorful wreaths and Christmas decorations were everywhere, hung with love for the season by its employees and volunteers.
Peeking into the area where the senior citizens held their bingo sessions, Randi’s stomach rumbled at the enticing smells coming from the room. She’d come to the Center, straight from her teaching job at the local school, to tutor a few students who were struggling with their studies, and she was starving.
Sneaking quietly into the room to snatch a few chicken wings and some cake without being detected by some of the sharp old ladies was never easy, but she was up for the challenge. Snatching food had become almost an art for her in her early teenage years.
After a nervous week of checking for an answer with no return message, Randi completely forgot about the email she had sent in desperation . . . until she finally got a reply . . .
Two Months Later . . .
Evan Sinclair might have laughed at the ridiculous email he’d just finished reading—if he was actually the type of man who found humor in anything . . . which he didn’t. Ever!
He stared at the email, frowning as he read it for the second time. What kind of person would have the gall to ask a charity raising big money for cancer research, abused women, and the several other urgent causes that the Sinclair Fund actually helped, for money? And it wasn’t even for a good cause, in his opinion. It was for a small coastal town that needed Christmas funds. Did the author of the missive really think he was some sort of friendly elf to grant her Christmas wish?
Hardly!
Evan didn’t believe in Christmas. If there was a modern-day version of Scrooge, it would be him, except he wouldn’t ever have the apparent epiphany that old Ebenezer experienced. In fact, the holiday
did
irritate him and always would. It meant a disruption of business, and scheduling meetings around the frivolous, commercialized season. It hadn’t been a pleasant holiday when he was a child, and he abhorred it almost as much as an adult.
Normally, none of his brothers or cousins looked at the mailbox for the Fund, and they certainly didn’t answer letters personally; they had employees for that. But the email had caught his eye when his assistant had written to him about a complaint a big donor had mentioned over the quality of assistance he was getting via email from the website. Evan had logged in to the mailbox from home to evaluate how some of the inquiries were being handled. They couldn’t afford to lose important donors, and especially not people who donated millions.
He could hardly miss the subject line “Help Us Save Our Town” as he scrolled through old emails.
Intrigued, he’d opened the missive.
Now, he was scowling at the correspondence in front of him. The email’s author was anonymous, the email address generic, simply signing the short explanation and plea for help with “A Concerned Resident of Amesport.”
He should have dismissed it, especially since he knew his brother Grady had already solved the problem well before Christmas. In fact, Grady was now a town hero in Amesport because he’d donated the needed funds. He had also gotten himself engaged and then married to the Center’s director, Emily.
Christmas is over. Leave it
.
Grady solved the ridiculous situation, getting himself injured in the process.
Evan wasn’t crazy about the outcome, especially the fact that his younger brother had thrown himself into the line of danger to resolve the whole debacle and rescue his new bride. But Grady seemed happy enough since his nuptials with Emily, even though, in Evan’s opinion, he’d married with far too little thought and way too much haste.
The entire holiday season had passed . . . thank God. Unfortunately, the audacity of the person who had sent the correspondence still annoyed him.
He frowned as he read the email again, still wondering about the author. It was a well-written account of the situation at the time it was composed, but it was still presumptuous. He hated the fact that the words were trying to play on his sense of guilt, duty, and family. If there was one thing that Evan did, it was watch out for his family. As the eldest in his broken family, he considered everything that happened to his siblings his business, his responsibility.
Uncharacteristically, he forgot about
why
he was in the mailbox for the Sinclair Fund in the first place. He switched gears and signed up for an anonymous email address on one of the numerous free sites that offered them, and decided to reply to the inquiry. The email had been appropriately ignored previously by employees, and probably should have just been deleted. For the sake of the charity, he didn’t want the sender to know exactly who was replying. He just wanted the author to understand that the Sinclair Fund wasn’t an appropriate place to seek a donation for a trivial problem. He could reprimand the person, discourage future emails of the same nature to the Sinclair Fund, and no one would ever know.
He copied and pasted the original email from the mystery author before replying.
Dear Concerned:
How else could he start the return email? He wasn’t even sure about the gender of the person writing, but he would place a hefty bet on the writer being a female. Women seemed to get ridiculously sentimental over certain holidays.