Daisy's Secret Billionaire

by Francesca Lane

  Daisy’s Secret Billionaire

  Beach House Memories, Book 2

  Francesca Lane

  Daisy’s Secret Billionaire

  Beach House Memories Book 2

  Copyright © 2020 Francesca Lane

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This novel was briefly released previously as

  Jake: The Secret Billionaire

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  Cover Design by Tugboat Design

  FRANCESCA LANE writes sweet beach romances ... for any time of year. For a free eBook, visit: FrancescaLane.com

  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

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Sneak Peek of Luke’s Second Chance Family

  Also by Francesca Lane

  In Jake: The Secret Billionaire …

  Jake Morelli's stuck in a broken down old beach house. Daisy's the girl next door. As he races against time to rebuild the house full of memories, can she rebuild his heart?

  One

  “We’re depending on you, Jake.”

  Jake slammed his truck door and stepped quickly across the parking lot of the Clothing Mart, his sister’s admonition ringing in his mind. Maggie was the eldest—and bossiest—of his four sisters, and though he was older than her by nearly two years, she still had a way of making him listen.

  He chuckled, despite the predicament he found himself in—the same predicament all his siblings found themselves in: Jake and his sisters had inherited their parents’ beach house.

  Some might have found that enviable, but he found the circumstances … odd. After their parents’ untimely deaths, he and his siblings discovered their mother and father’s assets had been given away to various charitable causes. Except for their summer home—their well-worn, in-need-of-work beach house.

  The catch? Each sibling had to live in the house for a full month, alone, and make necessary repairs. And they had to do so on a strict budget. If they refused, the house would be given away to charity. No exceptions. At the end of the five months, the executor of their parents’ estate informed them, they all had to stay in the house together. He shuddered. Jake was the lone brother to four sisters—this didn’t bode well for him.

  A man in a baby blue vest greeted him. “May I direct you, sir?”

  “Men’s clothing.”

  The man smiled kindly and gestured toward the farthest corner of the warehouse-sized structure. Of course. Jake offered his thanks and snaked his way through the store.

  “You’re not in the big city anymore,” Maggie had chided him earlier on the phone. “So get yourself some clothing suitable for the beach—get rid of those wing tips you wear to business meetings and please start work on our parents’ house right away. We need to sell it soon!”

  There had been an urgency in Maggie’s voice that he had noticed for some time. He’d learned that she was having some financial problems, and in his own way, he had done something about it. Though no one in his family knew what he was up to—that was strictly between him and his banker.

  Jake blew out a breath, clearing his mind the best he could. In addition to family troubles, tiresome accusations—and a mammoth lawsuit—awaited him in Los Angeles where he lived and worked nonstop. Like Maggie, he wanted nothing more than to serve his month-long sentence at the beach house and make the improvements necessary for him and his sisters to get top dollar for it—then let it go.

  A wall of denim greeted him. He exhaled. Not the designer brands he was used to, but they would do. He grabbed three folded pairs in his size and stacked them in his arms. Next, he moved to a table of board shorts and T-shirts in vibrant colors. Neon … everywhere. No thanks.

  He added a couple pairs of the shorts to his stack and scanned overhead signs for directions to plain, white undershirts. There. He made a beeline for the next section where a ladder partially obscured the wall.

  That’s when he spotted her: a woman standing on the highest rung of the rolling staircase, her feet shod in stilettos, her skirt short enough to call him to task for noticing. He glanced around. Didn’t this violate some kind of OSHA law?

  He cleared his throat.

  Her gaze traveled lazily down the length of the stairs, one delicate hand curving around the railing. A flicker of … something appeared on the woman’s face when she caught his eyes. The look speared him, as if she held him in contempt.

  That’s when he noticed one of those pointy heels hovering over the waffle pattern of a step. She was definitely tottering. What were the chances of it landing solidly in one of those stiletto-heel-sized holes?

  “Can I help you down?” he asked, ignoring the dagger in her gaze.

  Waves of blonde locks cascaded down her shoulders. She smirked. “No thanks. I’ve got it under control.”

  He crossed his arms. “Clearly.” A part of him demanded that he walk away. Why would he choose to pick a fight with a stranger? And yet … something in her expression egged him on. He pointed to a sign above the ladder that said Employees Only.

  She snapped a smug smile at him, as if he were a naughty child. “How do you know I’m not an employee?”

  “The absence of a brightly colored vest.”

  She nodded, though it was anything but sincere. “Right.”

  The woman turned her back on him and continued to hunt for whatever it was she was hunting for. Jake frowned. What in the world was her problem? Didn’t she know how dangerous this was?

  A male voice shouted from behind. “Excuse me, excuse me! What are you doing?”

  The woman pulled several more packages from shelves, kicked off her heels, and hopped down to the floor as a manager approached them.

  “You should have called for assistance,” the guy said, scolding them both.

  The woman ignored him. She flashed Jake a winning smile and handed him a package of wife beater T-shirts. “Here’s what you were looking for,” she said sweetly.

  Then, she disappeared.

  Daisy pumped her arms, allowing the sea air to salt her tongue. She turned up the jets, her feet nearly kicking her in the behind as she flew through the sand. She hadn’t planned on coming anywhere near Colibri Beach at this time in her life. She had stockpiled the money she’d made working at Sly’s Hardware during high school and it had served her well—she had not had to touch the small trust fund her father had left her.

  After graduation, Daisy had extended her wings, flying off with a charity relief organization, using her skills to build houses in Mexico and Belize, and to help rebuild them in hurricane-ravaged areas of the United States. She had pretty much mapped out her life, never considering that her mother might need her here—at least, not so soon.

  She slowed, frustration filling her mind. Of all the times that she had to be here, Jake Morelli was home. How was that for bad luck? Guilt twisted her insides, because it was her mother who really had the bad luck. After all, her home had been badly burned. Thankfully, Jake’s sister had found her mother, Wren, before it was too late.

  Ultimately, Daisy had taken time off from her work to fix the drafty old house she had grown up in. She sighed. Her mother h
ad always wanted a girly girl, and instead, her mother got her. A girl who liked to get out of bed in the morning and run outside, shoes off, hair flying, and to dig up sand crabs before all the sandpipers got ’em. A girl who spent most of her growing up years with smudges on her face and freckles from the sun.

  Daisy groaned into the air and ran faster. A seagull dive bombed her and she shook her fist at the cranky bird. Just you wait!

  Really, if she thought about it, this wasn’t going to be so hard. She would find someone to take over for her once she made her mother’s home livable again. Her mother was an independent woman. No way would Daisy attempt to deny her the right to her home, though that annoying realtor, Lillian Madsen, would like nothing better than to acquire the listing.

  No. Positively, no.

  Wren Mcafee would be staying in her home, surrounded by its beautiful lavender bushes, until her last breath. Daisy, her daughter, would make the necessary repairs and then move on. And that would that be that.

  Still, she couldn’t get the face of that annoying Jake out of her mind. Why did he have to show up here? Oh, she knew about his parents’ strange Last Will and Testament, but any one of the Morelli siblings could have been here this month. Why him now? And of all the weirdest of places to run into him—Clothing Mart. He acted as if he had never seen her before. Typical. They had only known each other for years—though their paths had not crossed in many since then—but whatever. She was a stranger to him. And she preferred to keep it that way.

  Made for a cleaner break.

  Daisy clenched her chin, remembering how cruel he could be. Some people remembered exact words, could quote things others had said, but Daisy struggled with those kinds of recollections. Instead, she remembered how people and experiences made her feel. And seeing Jake again brought back all of those feelings of rejection again.

  A smile tickled her face. Then again, she’d had the last word yesterday, hadn’t she? He’d stood there so smug, waiting for her to fall off that stairway. Probably thought he would catch her like some swoon-y cowboy or something. Handing him wife beaters was a stroke of inspiration that she hadn’t seen coming—but it worked. By the wide-eyed expression on his mug, she could tell that he hadn’t expected her to walk away and leave him to deal with management.

  She considered that a big win.

  A flicker of sweat dropped from her chin. Always a sign of a good run. Even with the sea breeze, she’d worked up a sweat and she needed this now. She had been taken aback by the work her mother’s home needed. The fire damage to the outer wall and her mother’s subsequent recovery had brought Daisy back to the beach. If it weren’t for Jake’s sister Grace and that hunky husband of hers rushing to her mother’s aid at just the right moment … well, she hated to think about what might have happened. Thankfully, they’d learned that her mother’s occasional penchant for smoking cigars had nothing to do with the fire.

  More than all of that had caused Daisy to put her hands to her face when she walked into the house she had grown up in. Her heart squeezed, but not in a good way. The house looked worn, dingy, and downright sad. She had flung open the curtains, desperate for some of the beach’s gorgeous natural light to flow in, but the windows were covered in salt air and grime. The house was going to need more than construction rehabilitation—it needed hands-on, tender lovin’ care.

  A male voice broke into her strained thoughts. “No high heels today?”

  Daisy blinked and slowed. Jake? She had vaguely noticed someone running toward her but hadn’t given it much thought. If she had realized it was Jake, she would have taken a detour.

  She stopped next to him, one hand reflexively finding her hip. “Did the T-shirts fit?”

  He crossed his arms, a glint of competition in his eyes. “Touché.”

  Not one sign of recognition showed up in his eyes. She wanted to smack that smirk right off his grizzled face.

  “Almost didn’t recognize you without your red dress,” he said.

  She peered at him from beneath the bill of her baseball cap. “Yet, you did.” Maybe she had been wrong about him. At least he knew her. That was something.

  He grinned, despite her comeback.

  “What brings you here?” Daisy said, though she felt anything but neighborly toward the man, who, as a boy, pretty much ignored her growing up. Not to mention that time he turned her down flat …

  He flashed a grin, his white teeth glinting in the morning sunlight. She’d heard through the grapevine that he was some bigwig architect-builder down south—probably paid a lot of money for those teeth. He pointed to a spot behind her. “Rehabbing my childhood home. It’s down the beach a ways.”

  Wait. She dug that hand deeper into her side and frowned. He was telling her where he grew up? Why would he do that if … if he knew her?

  An amused smile played on Jake’s face. He dropped his gaze. “Why that look again?”

  “What look?”

  “The scowl. Same one you shot at me, a stranger, at the Clothing Mart.” He could hardly contain his laughter—she could tell. The laughter died, but his smile remained. “Was it something I said?”

  She stepped toward him until the toes of their running shoes met. She rose up on those toes until her eyes hit his … chin. Whatever. She gave him her best stare down. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  He recoiled slightly, his brows dipping. “If I’m not mistaken, I believe that’s the reason for our conversation.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I recognized you from your high-wire act, offered you a pleasant hello, and so here we are … conversing.”

  Oh, he was smooth. Daisy kept her gaze on his, though, not letting him get out of this quite yet. “Yesterday I was wearing heels and a dress. How is it that you recognized me out here with a hat and running clothes?”

  He didn’t reply right away. Instead, he held his chiseled body steady, arms across his chest, feet spread wide. Jake Morelli looked too perfect. Still, his symmetrical brows, crest of deep brown hair flowing in the exact direction of the sea breeze, and well-crafted whisper of a beard couldn’t hide the fact that he had a splattering of freckles across his nose. Just like when they were kids.

  “Well,” he said finally, “I suppose it was your size.”

  “My … what?!”

  He chuckled. “You are … petite.”

  Oh. That. Daisy knew she was short, but it never stopped her from pursuing life at full speed. She just wore heels doing it. Like she had yesterday when she stopped at the store on her way to meet someone at a friend’s wedding. One thing she hadn’t realized, though, was that her lack of height could so easily identify her to someone who, apparently, had no idea that they had met before.

  Daisy shook her head, slowly. “You really have no idea who I am, do you?”

  “Should I?” His voice continued to hold that tinge of humor in it. Not in a particularly cruel way, but his tone told her she was entertainment to him.

  Daisy rocked back on her heels, madder than a gull who’d found an empty McDonald’s bag. “Jake Morelli, I grew up in the house next to yours. Saw you every summer and sometimes in those in-between months, too.”

  He ran his gaze over her and something dawned in his eyes. “The munchkin?”

  Daisy rolled her eyes but kept herself from stomping a foot, like a toddler. No one had called her that in nearly eight years. She hadn’t missed the term, especially when spoken about her. “It’s Daisy,” she emphasized. “Daisy Mcafee.”

  Jake’s giddy smile dimmed. He looked closer. “Mcafee? Are you—”

  “I’m Wren’s daughter.”

  Two

  A fat, misshapen cloud hovered over Jake’s head. Daisy hated him, apparently, though he had no recollection of anything he had done in the past to invite such wrath. Weren’t teenage boys supposed to be clueless? His mind replayed the smorgasbord of reactions Daisy had offered him moments ago on this beach—a glare, an eye roll, crossed arms, and one ha
ughty chin.

  A dog appeared at his feet, panting heavily as sea water dripped from her fur. She dropped a stick of driftwood onto one of his Adidas running shoes and whined.

  Jake chucked the dog under her chin and laughed. “Ready to run?”

  The dog sidled backward, egging him on.

  Jake faked her out a few times, then pitched the stick high into the air, far enough for it to land in the tide. The dog tore after it, and from a distance, the dog’s owner caught his attention and waved.

  Jake kept on moving, soaking up the perfect weather. At least he had that going for him today. The air was crisp and warm at Colibri Beach, cheery enough to make him ask himself, at least once, why he had so seldom returned over the years.

  One reason was obvious: time. Jake worked long, treacherous hours using his skills and passion to create sustainable, mixed-use commercial developments throughout Los Angeles. Buyers wanted to see eco-conscious designs that were foundational—not just a building with solar panels stuck on the roof to make things look eco-friendly. He worked arduously on balance, on providing free-flowing projects that maximized light and space, yet contained strong structural support.

  To his mind, the study and execution of a building of any size was both art and science. Not to mention sweat. There had been other reasons he’d stayed away, but why bring up bygones now?

  His cell phone rang and, eager to do away with his memories, Jake answered the call without looking at the screen.

  “It’s Mike. Got a second?”