by Leslie North
"What...?" Brandy blinked as Max passed her the papers. "What brought this on?"
"I did. But only after I made life a living hell for all three of us," he admitted. "You, me, and the baby. This was... not a good start to the life I'd hoped we'd have together."
"Together?" Brandy sounded breathless at the suggestion, but she also sounded unsure. Not that he could blame her. "So you do believe me when I say I had nothing to do with your program getting stolen?"
"I should have believed you from the start," Max said. "But I couldn't let go of what had injured me in the past. I was so afraid that you... that the happiness I feel when I'm with you couldn't be real."
"I think I know what brought all this on," Brandy admitted. She crossed to the back porch and set the stack of documents down. Looking at him, she added, "That day in the garden. It was Elliott Brock, wasn't it?"
Max hated the flare of jealousy the name inspired in him. Hell, he didn't have any idea who Brock was. More than likely it was one of her business contacts at the publishing house. "It doesn't matter. I don't care who he is."
"Well, you should," Brandy said, "considering you intend to marry him."
"I beg your pardon?"
She grinned at his confusion. Clearly, she was having fun at his expense. Max supposed she had earned it. "Elliott Brock is me, Einstein. He's a pen name. I publish all of my suspense novels under Elliott's name. It makes switching between genres easier."
Lord, but he felt like a buffoon. He was still processing this as Brandy retrieved the papers... and tore them in half. "You really do know how to make a statement with a page," Max noted as he watched several of the shredded pieces drift out to sea on a rogue English breeze. Brandy laughed and shoved the rest of the useless documents into her pocket.
"You know how to make a statement, period," she said.
"Then how about this for a statement." Max took her hand in his, then sank slowly to one knee. "Brandy Jackson, will you marry me? Not for appearances, and not as a business arrangement. But because I love you. Will you start a family with me?"
Brandy's eyes leaked tears as she gazed down at him. Without the weight of a ring, her delicate hand trembled in his; but her expression, and the determined jut of her chin, was all he needed in that moment. "You love me?" she asked him.
"I love you," he confirmed.
"And the baby?"
"I will love her, too. Unconditionally."
" 'Her'?" Brandy repeated as he rose. "Don't tell me you intend to control that aspect, too? That you've made a business deal with my womb to have a girl? And... hey, get back down on that knee, mister! I haven't even said yes, yet!"
"Not yet," he repeated mischievously as he drew her in for a long overdue kiss. "But I'm a patient man, capable of more than one proposal, as we've found out. I don't mind waiting."
"Well, I do," Brandy said significantly, right before she crushed her lips to his.
I do.
Epilogue
“Max!”
Max revolved slowly to see his beautiful American wife jogging toward him. Brandy smiled wide with relief when she saw who his current, and much shorter, dance partner was.
“What? You didn’t think I left her out in the garden, did you?” In his arms, Max held Amanda Adeline Benton: his daughter, named for Brandy’s mother and grandmother, and quite literally the belle of the ball. The baby cooed and giggled her bubbling laugh as Max rocked her in his arms. One tiny hand clutched his thumb in a surprisingly unrelenting grip, and he used their father-daughter connection to steer her around the ballroom as if they were dancing.
Today, Landon Castle—and the ballroom, especially—were decked out in all-pink splendor, no expense spared. Brandy’s best friend from the States, Lucy—the same woman who had planned their wedding—had gone-all out for the Welcome Baby Ball.
Amanda fussed a little as Brandy tried to lift her from his arms.
“Hey.” Max affected a growl as he whisked the baby away to a swell in the music. “I don’t believe I gave my permission to cut in.”
Brandy smiled and shook her head. “Controlling as ever. What’s next? Are you already planning her future for her?”
“She’s going to be a Benton, which means that expectations are high,” Max warned her.
He kept his own expression carefully smoothed over as Brandy’s smile tugged a little inward on itself. “She’s only a few months old, Max! She’s practically new-born! And you’re trying to talk to me about—“
He couldn’t help himself any longer, swooping in for a kiss before she could go off on him completely in front of friends and family. “She’ll have anything she wants in the world,” he promised as he drew back from a stunned Brandy. He watched his wife’s pretty eyelashes flutter, and relished the way he could still make her “halt and catch fire”—to use some of his preferred terminology. “Anything and everything. Most importantly of all, she’ll have family,” he said in a silly high register for Amanda’s benefit, and was rewarded by her cooing delight.
“Really? You think family is most important of all?” Brandy crossed her arms, but now she couldn’t disguise the fact that she was amused. Max didn’t blame her. A year ago, the sentiment on anyone else’s lips—much less his own—would have had him pretending to check his watch or turn away to disguise his disgust.
Now, he saw all too well how business and family could mix. His new family was his business—his priority—his everything. Nothing would stand in the way of their happiness while he was there to safeguard it.
“Would you take a look at the happy couple?” Max noticed that Gavin didn’t sound particularly happy himself, more drily amused, as he and Tony strolled over with two glasses of what was sure to be his most expensive wine. He noticed that Gavin’s limp was more pronounced today; Gavin noticed him noticing and grimaced. Max said nothing, although he couldn’t help wondering if it was the cold and damp inherent to the castle. He wondered if his friend embarking on a castle purchase of his own was a good idea, but Gavin was impossible to talk out of an idea once he’d wrapped his brain around it—so long as you weren’t his domineering mother, anyway.
“Don’t worry, Gavin.” Brandy looped an arm around his mate’s stooped shoulders and grinned. “Your own happy ending is right around the corner! Same for you, Tony!”
“Please tell me how best to avoid it,” Gavin grumbled as he sipped his wine.
“Only in your books, Brandy,” Tony added.
Brandy shook her head. “That’s what I used to think.”
“That’s what I hope,” Tony offered.
Brandy pulled a face. “Seriously, what is this English resistance to love? You guys practically invented it! William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Brontës…”
Gavin certainly resembled the hero in a Charlotte Brontë novel with his patented stoop and scowl. He hadn’t been like this the last few times they met at the pub. Max wondered what had gotten into him. He seemed to have something—or maybe someone—on his mind. Maybe it was all the pink he found himself hopelessly immersed in at the moment that made the expression so comical.
“Anyway, I came over to thank you for that security program, Max,” Gavin stated in what was clearly a diversion from Brandy’s favorite topic. Max’s wife simply smiled knowingly and shook her head again. Max had to admit to feeling no small amount of pride watching her interact with his steelier contemporaries.
She held her arms out, and this time Max didn’t resist a changing of the guard—not when he suspected there were other, more pressing changes that would be required in the near future.
Brandy scrunched up her nose. “Ugh. Jerk.”
“I changed her the last time. It’s your turn—or don’t you believe in parental equality?”
“All right, all right.” Laughing, she took little Amanda away as Max turned back to his mates.
“So you’re leaving, then?” he guessed.
Tony raised an eyebrow and raised his glass. “What? Kicking us o
ut already?”
Max gave him a long look. “I meant Gavin. The family business. Ring any bells?”
“Gavin works for a living?” Tony laughed drunkenly at his awful attempt at a joke and drank on.
You’re getting sauced at my daughter’s first party, you wanker, Max thought, and tried not to feel amused. He certainly knew how to pick his friends.
“Yes. Just have to attend to one more… stipulation,” Gavin agreed cryptically as he sipped his own drink. “But the castle’s bought and paid for.”
“So I heard.”
“And MI5 is commissioning me to invent a secret weapon.”
“Funny,” Tony said, but Max wasn’t so sure Gavin was joking. The quiet steel in the other man’s eyes, the determination, told a different story.
“If that’s the case, you’ll need every available hour of your day to get started on it,” Max noted. “So leaving the family tech company…”
“Leave it to me,” Gavin said assuredly.
Max couldn’t help wondering what the other’s family’s last “stipulation” might be. But before he could probe further, a burst of multicolored light drew them out the open doors of the ballroom and onto the lawn. The fireworks have started, Max thought. Wanting to surprise Brandy, he hadn’t mentioned their existence—he had arranged it entirely on his own. Now, he hunted through the crowd of spectators for signs of his wife.
“Here.” She appeared beside him as if she had read his thoughts, holding their daughter in her arms. “Well done, Husband.”
“Thank you, Wife.” Max didn’t hesitate to reel the two girls into his own embrace. Home, he thought, resting his chin on Brandy’s head as he gazed up at the flowers blooming across the sky. He had found it in a castle, and in the arms of the equally battle-ready woman who came with it. Whatever life throws at us, we have each other.
We are home.
End of The Tycoon’s Pregnant Lover
European Tycoon Book One
The Tycoon’s Pregnant Lover, 30 January 2020
The Tycoon’s Fake Fiancée, 6 February 2020
The Tycoon’s Convenient Bride, 13 February 2020
Do you love bad-boy billionaires? Please keep reading for a preview from my next book The Tycoon’s Fake Fiancée and The Billionaire’s Pregnant Assistant.
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About Leslie
Leslie North is the USA Today Bestselling pen name for a critically-acclaimed author of women's contemporary romance and fiction. The anonymity gives her the perfect opportunity to paint with her full artistic palette, especially in the romance and erotic fantasy genres.
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BLURB
Reclusive billionaire inventor Gavin Burrows still thinks about Sarah Hanson—the woman he had a brief but memorable fling with three years ago. So he’s shocked when the pretty American woman shows up at his castle door pleading with him to not end his contract with his gardeners, who happen to be Sarah’s aunt and uncle. Sarah is desperate to complete the garden, but Gavin is desperate, too. He’ll do almost anything to get his mother to stop playing matchmaker—even if that means making a deal with Sarah to pose as his fiancée. She gets her garden, he gets his mother off his back. At least with Sarah posing as his fake fiancée, he can avoid all his mother’s marriage prospects. Coming from a large and rambunctious family, all he’s ever really wanted was to be alone to work on his inventions. He certainly won’t let one gorgeous gardener get in his way.
Sarah would never tell Gavin this, but that summer three years ago? She’d fallen hard for him. As an only child, Sarah has always wanted a large family, so when she learns he considers having a big, loud family akin to having the plague, she now realizes Gavin is definitely not the man for her. Still, she can’t resist the opportunity to restore Gavin’s historic garden to its former glory, so when he offers, she reluctantly agrees to pose as his fiancée and prays she can shield her heart. But even though she knows it’s temporary, she surrenders to their smoldering attraction and falls hard all over again. When Gavin’s parents throw them an engagement party, the guilt over all their lies begins to weigh heavy—as does the realization she’ll once again be left heartbroken.
As the garden she’s created turns out to be a spectacular achievement, Sarah can only wonder if her love for Gavin will wither or finally bloom into something just as grand…
The Tycoon’s Fake Fiancée
Available 30 January 2020
LeslieNorthBooks.com
EXCERPT
Chapter One
He hadn't forgotten Sarah Hanson since that fateful summer three years ago... the summer his mother had released him on a long-requested hiatus from the company to "invent things." The summer the beautiful American now standing like a transfixed deer before him had first come to England.
"Gavin?" Two shockingly familiar blue eyes were staring into his own. Their owner's face was round and youthful—almost that of a girl—but her elegantly arched eyebrows, raised now in the same bewilderment that Gavin himself felt, lent a sophisticated expressiveness to her features. "What are you doing here?"
"Sarah?" Her name was the least of the memories that suddenly resurfaced and threatened to overwhelm. "I could ask you the same."
His day had gone from the ridiculous to the sublime. An hour earlier, he’d been bemoaning his worse-than-death fate with his two best mates. A castle-warming party. His mother was throwing him a castle-warming party.
“I know it’s ridiculous, but you’re going,” he muttered under his breath.
He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Sarah’s eyebrows rose slightly higher. “I beg your pardon?”
He shook himself to dispel the memory of Max and Tony’s laughter at his expense. “No,” he answered, “sorry, I wasn’t talking to you.”
She tilted her head, an achingly familiar gesture, and he knew he was only confusing her further...
“Nothing,” he said. “I mean, being thirty-one and having a pulse is hardly an excuse to throw a party and invite all the hungry wolves to come and feast, is it?”
“I’m sorry,” she answered, shaking her head at him. “I don’t follow.” A look of concern was blooming on her face. “Gavin? Are you feeling all right? I mean—”
“No, no—I mean, yes, I’m well,” Gavin said hastily, and faltered again. Sarah’s appearance now hit him like a punch between the eyes. It seemed that every time he was finally granted the freedom to pursue his life's passion, another passion of a kind that equaled complete and utter distraction found him.
However, in that moment, Sarah Hanson looked as if she didn't know whether to run right into his arms or run for the hills.
Gavin didn't blame her. He felt the same way. Three years of being haunted by the memory of her... kept awake by fitful sleep and restless dreams... and here she stood like a figment in front of the castle he still had trouble believing was his.
"I'm living with my aunt and uncle now," Sarah replied, blinking in bewilderment.
In his bemusement, he’d nearly forgotten his original question. "Your aunt and uncle," he echoed, feeling stupid.
"I-I'm here to see the owner of this estate." Sarah stepped down from the front stoop and snapped a piece of paper at him. Although the stiff way she was holding herself struck him in its very stillness, the paper trembled in her hand. "I'm here to reinstate the gardening contract that was terminated. You wouldn't know who I might—"
“I terminated the
contract." The admission was out of his mouth before he could predict the consequences, if any. "I'm the owner of this estate."
"You?" Sarah stared at him, then slowly withdrew the piece of paper. "Perhaps you didn’t know that's my aunt and uncle's business."
"I had no idea." He studied her more intently now in the thickening gloom. "And you really had no idea that I was on the other end of that contract?"
Sarah shook her head so forcefully that he found himself believing her despite the unlikelihood of this entire situation. "No. They told me their contract was with Howard Talley."
"I bought the castle from Talley." Gavin found himself distracted, having noticed belatedly that the gathering gloom surrounding them was not simply the descending of the dusk; the sky had darkened considerably faster than it should have, even with the onset of night. A drop of rain splashed on the surface of Sarah's contract, then another. That was all the warning they had to herald the downpour—it was as if the heavens opened up, then, to spill gray rain on a suddenly colorless reunion. Sarah turned her gaze to the sky, eyes wide and mouth open in evident shock. He remembered her reaction—quite similar, actually—when she’d experienced her first English rain three years ago.
Gavin whipped off his jacket without thinking and held it over her head. Wordlessly, they hurried to the shelter promised by the castle's entryway. Lowering his makeshift umbrella again when they gained that refuge, Gavin fished through the jacket's pockets for his keys, then admitted them both inside the shadowy foyer.
Turning back from closing the door, he collided with Sarah. They gazed at one another through the darkness, breathing hard in the aftermath of their stumble through the rain. The three years between them seemed, for a moment, to melt away.