The Ruthless Gentleman

by Louise Bay

  “Ask your daughter, sir. I’m ready whenever she is,” Hayden replied.

  “I wanna finish college, Dad. Life’s so good right now. I just want to enjoy it for a while, just as it is.”

  My dad huffed and turned back to the dining area where Michael and Landon were arguing about something.

  “You know, we could get married this summer,” Hayden said. “We don’t have to think about the babies thing until you graduate, but I’d like to marry you before you finish school.”

  “You would?” I said, stroking his chin with my finger, and he dipped to kiss me.

  “I really would.”

  How was it possible I’d gotten this lucky? As much as life had turned on a dime that afternoon down by the river, it had shifted again the day I’d met Hayden Wolf. And for nothing but the better. I had him in my life forever and that gave me a certainty that no matter what was ahead of us, the future was only full of happiness.

  “I’ll marry you this summer—hell, I’d marry you tomorrow. But let’s not do the babies quite yet. I want you to myself for a while longer.”

  “Want to do it in Taormina? I know how much you love Italy,” he asked.

  “I don’t care where we go. I just don’t want my honeymoon to be on a yacht.” It might rain a lot in England, but I’d never missed the constant sun of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

  He pulled me closer and kissed the top of my head as we stood watching our families laugh and joke together. “No yachts, I promise. Just you and me and whoever else we want to invite, wherever you want it to be.”

  “As long as I get to walk down the aisle to you, then the rest will just fall into place.” As long as I had every sunrise and sunset with him by my side, nothing else mattered.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed Hayden and Avery’s story. It took me a little longer to get to know these two and these two took a little longer to get to know each other. They think a HEA was worth the wait. I hope you did too.

  Elizabeth—And exhale. The next one will be easier, won’t it? Thank you for your commitment to this book and me and my writing. I really couldn’t do it without you.

  Najla—We did a LOT this time!! Holy moly. You’re so talented, sweet, hard working. You’re the best and I love working with you!

  Stevie thank you for all your love and support. I miss you! Come back!

  Sophie! You’re a breath of fresh air. Thank you for all your help and support. I couldn’t have done this without knowing you were there, picking up when I dropped things and coming up with great ideas.

  To Kimberly, it’s so great to be on the same wavelength about publishing and Lisa Vanderpump. Thank you for kicking ass on my behalf.

  To Kate – thank you. To Charity, Davina, Sallyanne and Ruth—thank you for your help! There was a lot this time.

  To all the amazing bloggers and reviewers who connect me with readers: you are amazing! Thank you for all your help.

  I am so grateful to the amazingly talented romance writers who live in abundance, lifting each other up, cheering each other on—I’m so proud to be a part of such a great community of women. Thank you.

  Bane by L.J. Shen

  Prologue

  Then.

  A liar.

  A con.

  A godless thief.

  My reputation was a big wave that I rode, one that swallowed everyone around me, drowning every attempt to fuck with what’s mine.

  I’d been known as a stoner, but power was my real drug of choice. Money meant nothing. It was tangible, and therefore easy to lose. See, to me, people were a game. One I’d always known how to win.

  Move the rooks around.

  Change the queen when necessary.

  Guard the king at all fucking times.

  I was never distracted, never deterred, and never jealous.

  So, imagine my surprise when I found myself being all three at once.

  It was a siren with coal black hair who robbed me of riding the biggest wave I’d seen that summer. Of my precious attention. Of my goddamn breath.

  She glided from the ocean to the beach like nightfall.

  I crouched down, straddling my surfboard, gawking.

  Edie and Beck stopped beside me, floating on their boards in my periphery.

  “This one’s taken by Emery Wallace,” Edie had warned. Thief.

  “This one’s the hottest masterpiece in town.” Beck had chuckled. Con.

  “More importantly, she only dates rich bastards.” Liar.

  I had all the ingredients to pull her in.

  Her body was a patch of fresh snow. White, fair, like the sun shone through her, never quite soaking in. Her skin defied nature, her ass defied my sanity, but it was the words on her back that made my logic rebel.

  It wasn’t her curves or the way she swayed her hips like a dangling, poisonous apple that warranted my reaction to her.

  It was that tattoo I had noticed when she swam close to me earlier, the words trickling down the nape of her neck and back in a straight arrow.

  My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You

  Pushkin.

  I only knew one person who went gaga over the Russian poet, and, like the famous Alexander, he was currently six feet under.

  My friends began to paddle back to shore. I couldn’t move. It felt like my balls were ten tons heavy. I didn’t believe in love at first sight. Lust, maybe, but even that wasn’t the word I was looking for. No. This girl fucking intrigued me.

  “What’s her name?” I snatched Beck’s ankle, yanking him back to me. Edie stopped pedaling and looked back, her gaze ping-ponging between us.

  “Doesn’t matter, bro.”

  “What’s. Her. Name?” I repeated through a locked jaw.

  “Dude, she’s, like, way young.”

  “I will not repeat myself a third time.”

  Beck’s throat bobbed with a swallow. He knew damn well that I didn’t mess around. If she was legal—it was on.

  “Jesse Carter.”

  Jesse Carter was going to be mine before she even knew me.

  Before I even knew her.

  Before her life turned upside down and her fate rewrote itself with her blood.

  So here was the truth that even my lying ass wouldn’t admit later on in our story—I wanted her before.

  Before she became business.

  Before the truth caged her in.

  Before the secrets gushed out.

  I never did get to surf that day.

  My surfboard broke.

  Should have known it was an omen.

  My heart was going to be next in line.

  And for a small chick, she did one hell of a fucking job obliterating it.

  Jesse

  Then.

  The moon was full that night.

  It was chuckle-worthy, if not completely tacky. What a freaking cliché, right? A pregnant, fat, ghostly-white moon sparkling in triumph, shining over the night that carved my destiny, my identity, my stomach, with deep, gleaming gashes.

  I stared at it, so still and tranquil. Beautiful things were often so useless.

  Don’t just hang there. Call the cops. Call an ambulance. Save me.

  I wondered if I was going to die. If so, how long would it take Pam to notice my absence? How long before Darren would assure her I’d always been troubled? ‘Thweet,’ he’d console with his lisp, ‘But troubled.’ How long before she’d agree with him? How long before the Kit Kat on Dad’s tombstone melted under the punishing sun?

  “What a shame. Such a good kid,” they’d mourn. Nothing like a dead teenager to make the entire community come together. Especially in the town of Todos Santos, where tragedies only happened in the newspapers and CNN. Oh, yes. This would give them something to talk about. A forbidden and delicious tale about the fall from grace of the current It Girl.

  Realization trickled into me like a leaking faucet. Emery, Henry, and Nolan wouldn’t even g
et a slap on the wrist. Community service? In my dreams. The public embarrassment in the form of scowls and cancelled invitations to the country club’s events next year was reserved for me. I was the outsider. The mortal idiot who mixed with the blue-blooded royals of Todos Santos.

  They’d get away with it, I knew. They’d go to college and attend parties. They would graduate and throw their stupid hats in the stupid air. They’d get married, and have babies, and reunions, and take annual skiing trips with their friends. And they’d live. God, they’d live. It was maddening to think that their heritage and money would buy their way out of justice. Because whether anyone bothered to scrape me off the road with or without a pulse tonight, I knew that I was dead. Dead in all the places that mattered.

  For a passing moment, I was still the old Jesse. I tried to look at the flip side of things. The weather was nice for February. Not too hot, not too cold. Whatever desert heat clung onto my flesh was diluted by the chill of the asphalt underneath me. A lot of victims bounced back. I could go to college abroad. Darren was an expert at throwing money at problems and making them go away. I could reinvent myself. Forget it ever happened. Didn’t they use hypnosis to suppress things like that? I could ask Mayra, the shrink my parents had sent me to ever since I’d started having nightmares. Science was limitless. Case in point: my forty-year-old mom looked twenty-three thanks to Botox.

  Little stones dug at my bare back. My pink lacy bra and panties were lying torn somewhere beside me, and even though my groin was numb, I felt something slithering down my thigh. Blood? Semen? Didn’t really matter at this point.

  Steadfast, I blinked back at the constellation, hung high in the inky sky like a chandelier, sneering at my heartbreakingly mortal existence.

  I needed to try to get up. Call for help. Save myself. But the prospect of trying to move and failing was far more paralyzing than the pain. My legs felt frozen, my hipbones crushed.

  Sirens wailed in the distance.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Often, I’d see my dad on the other side, like his face was permanently inked to my eyelids. That’s where he lived now. In my dreams. More vivid than the woman he’d left behind. Pam always faded to the sidelines of my story, more occupied with writing her own plot.

  The sirens got closer. Louder. My heart scurried to my stomach, curling like a battered puppy.

  A few more minutes, and you’ll become a piece of gossip. A cautionary tale.

  The old Jesse would cry. She would scream and tell the police everything. Act normal, given the abnormal circumstances. The old Jesse would declare vengeance and do the right thing. The feminist thing. She wouldn’t let them get away with it.

  The old Jesse would feel.

  The ambulance sputtered at the curb, close enough for the heat to roll off the tires and the scalded rubber to stick to my nostrils. Somehow, knowing they’d called for help was even more infuriating than being left for dead, like they knew they were untouchable even after doing this to me. A stretcher opened beside me. I recited the last words I heard before they’d left me in the alleyway, a lone tear free-falling down my cheek.

  My Whole Life Has Been Pledged to This Meeting with You

  “And what a meeting it was, whore. You gave a good fight.” Nolan kicked my ribs.

  I’d inked this sentence thinking Emery was the man I’d been waiting for. Now the back of my neck burned. I wanted to tear the flesh off my neck and dump it right next to my ruined clothes.

  With agonizing effort, I moved my left arm to cover my chest, my right arm dragging across my bare stomach, hiding what they’d carved onto my torso like I was a Halloween pumpkin. They’d made me watch as they did it. Held my jaw in their clean, smooth hands, my neck bending unnaturally to accommodate the awkward position. A punishment for my discreditable sin.

  The word shone like a neon billboard on my skin for the whole world to see, and to judge, and to laugh, the letters bleeding red into my pink designer skirt.

  Slut

  The old Jesse would explain, and bargain, and argue.

  The old Jesse would try to save face.

  The old Jesse was dead.

  Other Books by Louise Bay

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  The British Knight

  When I’m offered the chance to leave New York to live in London for three months, I can’t pack my suitcase fast enough.

  As soon as I touch down I’m obsessing over red telephone boxes, palaces and all the black cabs.

  But my favorite place is the tube. It’s wall-to-wall hot British men in suits.

  When I’m offered a temporary job working for a barrister, I say, sign me up.

  On my first commute into work, it’s a total accident when I lose my balance and fall against the most handsome Brit alive. He’s as charming as James Bond and as suave as Mr. Darcy. I want to lick tea from his hard abs and listen to his accent all night long.

  Turns out Mr. Handsome is my new boss. And his attitude isn’t as hot as his gorgeous face, broad shoulders and tight ass. He’s brooding, short-tempered and the most arrogant man I’ve ever met.

  As we’re fighting, out of nowhere he kisses me. And I’m pretty sure I see fireworks over Big Ben and hear God Save the Queen.

  I wasn’t looking for the fairytale but I might have found my knight in shining armor. The problem is he lives an ocean away.

  A stand-alone novel.

  Read More

  Duke of Manhattan

  I was born into British aristocracy, but I’ve made my fortune in Manhattan. New York is now my kingdom.

  Back in Britain my family are fighting over who’s the next Duke of Fairfax. The rules say it’s me--if I’m married. It’s not a trade-off worth making. I could never limit myself to just one woman.

  Or so I thought until my world is turned upside down. Now, the only way I can save the empire I built is to inherit the title I’ve never wanted-- so I need a wife.

  To take my mind off business I need a night that’s all pleasure. I need to bury myself in a stranger.

  The skim of Scarlett King’s hair over my body as she bends over . . .

  The scrape of her nails across my chest as she screams my name . . .

  The bite of her teeth on my shoulder just as we both reach the edge . . .

  It all helps me forget.

  I just didn’t bargain on finding my one night stand across the boardroom table the next day.

  She might be my latest conquest but I have a feeling Scarlett King might just conquer me.

  A stand-alone novel.

  Read More

  Park Avenue Prince

  THE PRINCE OF PARK AVENUE FINALLY MEETS HIS MATCH IN A FEISTY MANHATTAN PRINCESS.

  I’ve made every one of my billions of dollars myself—I’m calculating, astute and the best at what I do. It takes drive and dedication to build what I have. And it leaves no time for love or girlfriends or relationships.

  But don’t get me wrong, I’m not a monk.

  I understand the attention and focus it takes to seduce a beautiful woman. They’re the same skills I use to close business deals. But one night is where it begins and ends. I’m not the guy who sends flowers. I’m not the guy who calls the next day.

  Or so I thought before an impatient, smart-talking, beyond beautiful heiress bursts into my world.

  When Grace Astor rolls her eyes at me—I want to hold her against me and show her what she’s been missing.

  When she makes a joke at my expense—I want to silence her sassy mouth with my tongue.

  And when she leaves straight after we f*ck with barely a goodbye—it makes me want to pin her down and remind her of the three orgasms she just had.

  She might be a princess but I’m going to show her who rules in this Park Avenue bedroom.

  A stand-alone novel.

  Read More

  King of Wall Street

  THE KING OF WALL STREET IS BROUGHT TO HIS KNEES BY
AN AMBITIOUS BOMBSHELL.

  I keep my two worlds separate.

  At work, I’m King of Wall Street. The heaviest hitters in Manhattan come to me to make money. They do whatever I say because I’m always right. I’m shrewd. Exacting. Some say ruthless.

  At home, I’m a single dad trying to keep his fourteen year old daughter a kid for as long as possible. If my daughter does what I say, somewhere there’s a snowball surviving in hell. And nothing I say is ever right.

  When Harper Jayne starts as a junior researcher at my firm, the barriers between my worlds begin to dissolve. She’s the most infuriating woman I’ve ever worked with.

  I don’t like the way she bends over the photocopier—it makes my mouth water.

  I hate the way she’s so eager to do a good job—it makes my dick twitch.

  And I can’t stand the way she wears her hair up exposing her long neck. It makes me want to strip her naked, bend her over my desk and trail my tongue all over her body.

  If my two worlds are going to collide, Harper Jayne will have to learn that I don't just rule the boardroom. I’m in charge of the bedroom, too.

  A stand-alone novel.

  Read More

  Hollywood Scandal

  HE’S A HOLLYWOOD SUPERSTAR. SHE’S LITERALLY THE GIRL NEXT DOOR.

  One of Hollywood’s A-listers, I have the movie industry in the palm of my hand. But if I’m going to stay at the top, my playboy image needs an overhaul. No more tabloid headlines. No more parties. And absolutely no more one night stands.

  Filming for my latest blockbuster takes place on the coast of Maine and I’m determined to stay out of trouble. But trouble finds me when I run into Lana Kelly.

  She doesn’t recognize me, she’s never heard of Matt Easton and my million dollar smile doesn’t work on her.