by Bella Andre
Wild in Love
~ The Maverick Billionaires ~
Book 5
Bella Andre & Jennifer Skully
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Book
A note from Bella & Jennifer
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Tour of Lake Tahoe
Bella Andre and Jennifer Skully Q&A
Excerpt from Breathless in Love
Books by Bella Andre
Books by Jennifer Skully
About the Authors
WILD IN LOVE
~ The Maverick Billionaires, Book 5 ~
© 2018 Bella Andre & Jennifer Skully
Meet the Maverick Billionaires—sexy, self-made men from the wrong side of town who survived hell together and now have everything they ever wanted. But when each Maverick falls head over heels for an incredible woman he never saw coming, he will soon find that true love is the only thing he ever really needed…
Daniel Spencer is proud of the billion-dollar business he’s built, but there are few things he enjoys more than creating something with his bare hands. Lake Tahoe has everything he’s looking for—the cabin he’s building for family and friends to enjoy, crystal clear water, and lush green mountains. Everything except the perfect woman to share it with. Until Tasha Summerfield literally falls into his arms.
After learning that her family has lied to her for pretty much her entire life, Tasha flees San Francisco for the mountains. As she tries to bury her heartache by hammering her dilapidated cabin back together, the last thing she expects is to fall for a sexy billionaire. But when a storm blows in and she desperately needs help, there is Daniel, waiting with open arms.
Tasha believes Daniel deserves a woman from a perfect, loving, tight-knit family like his. Yet how can she possibly resist a man this sweet and generous…who looks positively sinful in his tool belt? With every delicious taste of him, Tasha finds it harder to quell the hopes and dreams she thought were crushed forever. But when it turns out that Daniel’s family isn’t picture perfect after all, will the truth set them both free? Or will it destroy any chance they ever had?
A note from Bella & Jennifer
As soon as we started writing about the Maverick Billionaires, emails flooded our inboxes, all wanting to know the same thing—when was Daniel going to get his happily-ever-after?
At long last, we are thrilled to give you the story you’ve been waiting for. We absolutely loved writing Daniel and Tasha’s story. And we loved the setting too. Lake Tahoe is a beautiful part of California that we love to visit.
Thank you for supporting our Mavericks—and our writing dreams. We hope you absolutely adore Wild In Love!
Happy reading,
Bella and Jennifer
P.S. More Mavericks are coming soon! Please sign up for our New Release newsletters for more information. BellaAndre.com/Newsletter and bit.ly/SkullyNews
Chapter One
The lake was brilliantly blue and perfectly calm as Daniel Spencer stood on the back deck of his Tahoe getaway. The air held the crisp scent of the mountains, and he breathed deeply to take in the sweetness. He’d chosen Fallen Leaf Lake on which to build his waterfront cabin because of this spectacular view, the snow-capped mountains in the distance, the scent of wildflowers just starting to bloom, and the peace of it all, away from the rush and noise of the city.
Except for the insistent thwack of a staple gun spoiling the perfect quiet.
Since his last visit over three months ago, someone must have moved into the run-down shack up the hill—the blue tarps on the roof were new, and a small, older-model truck had replaced the rusted hulk on the gravel drive. He’d always gotten along well with his neighbors, but this morning he couldn’t push away his resentment at the intrusion.
His family had been right; he definitely needed a few days away to recharge. It had been way too long since he’d had a vacation, or come up to work on the cabin. Weekends had been out of the question as well, given that they had become a revolving door of birthday parties and sports events and barbecues with his friends and their wives or girlfriends and children.
The other four Mavericks—Will, Sebastian, Matt, and Evan—had each found the woman of their dreams. A partner they could share everything with. Love and companionship and intimacy. Over the past few months, Daniel had begun to realize that being the only unattached Maverick separated him from the pack.
He was now the odd man out.
Will’s wedding had jump-started Daniel’s restlessness—and Evan and Paige’s recent housewarming party had only deepened the growing hole inside him. At first, he’d sought to plug it with work, making sure he had little time for anything else—especially thinking too much. But he had to admit he’d become a bear to work for these past few months, asking for too much, pushing everyone else as hard as he pushed himself.
And all the while, he couldn’t help asking himself, what was it all for? He’d triumphed over his dirt-poor childhood to build Top Notch DIY into the world’s leading home-improvement franchise, with outlets around the globe. His face filled millions of screens on a homebuilding TV show that aired weekly. He had more money than he could possibly spend. But something was missing.
Someone was missing.
Someone to share it all with.
At thirty-six, Daniel had dated plenty of women, but he’d never found the one woman with whom he could share the perfect love and relationship he’d seen in his parents. It had never felt sappy to say that he wanted the kind of love his mom and dad had found. After all, who wouldn’t want a relationship that good, that free of bumps and hurdles—two people who had always been there for each other, no matter what?
His mother, Susan Spencer, set the bar. As an adult, Daniel had a clear-eyed view of her strength and wisdom, qualities he hadn’t always appreciated as a punk kid narrowly skirting the line between right and wrong. Back then, he hadn’t wanted his father’s no-nonsense advice either. But Daniel knew better now. His parents were his rocks, his guides. They never faltered, never screwed up, even though they had struggled to make ends meet for most of their lives.
No matter how difficult life had been, they’d never lost sight of the important things: love, family, loyalty. In that grimy Chicago neighborhood, which was the only place they could afford, Bob and Susan Spencer had taken in his friends—all the Mavericks—and though each of the boys had gone through his own struggles, none of them had ever been left wanting for love or attention.
Daniel had been thinking of his family when he’d drawn the plans for this cabin. It wasn’t meant to be a bachelor pad—he envisioned playing games outside in the summer sun with his wife and kids and making s’mores in the outdoor fire pit beneath a full moon.
At present, the exterior was complete except for the trimmings. He had electricity as well as plumbing, one working bathroom, and a caref
ully handcrafted river-rock fireplace. The refrigerator, countertop microwave and coffee machine were the only working appliances in the kitchen, but he did all the real cooking on the barbecue anyway. He’d brought in a big bed for his master suite so he had somewhere decent to sleep, but though the log walls were dried in, there were holes where the interior door frames should be and bare, unfinished planks for floors. For all his dreams, the house wasn’t much more than a shell.
Just like his life.
He shook his head, cursing himself for falling into a mental hole again. This week away from work was supposed to renew him. He’d risen hours before dawn in order to miss the commuter traffic on the drive up from San Francisco. On the road, he’d been eager to continue the work. Now that he was here, it was time to focus on the fact that he was not only the luckiest guy in the world to have a thriving business and bank account, along with all his close friends, but also that nothing he’d faced would ever compare to his parents’ struggles. Especially not while he was standing on the edge of a glorious blue lake, with the Memorial Day holiday just around the corner and a week’s vacation stretching out ahead of him.
He knew exactly what would knock some sense back into his brain—a cannonball into the frigid lake. The ice and snow that had covered the water for the past several months had only just melted.
He whipped off his flannel shirt, kicked off his boots and jeans, and had just made a flying leap toward the crystal clear water when a scream suddenly fractured the morning’s quiet.
* * *
Tasha Summerfield had never actually believed one’s entire life could flash before them in the moment they were about to die.
She believed it now.
Five minutes ago, with her tools dangling from the belt around her hips, she’d been climbing carefully up onto the roof. The weatherman predicted a thunderstorm would roll in by Friday, and the tarp she’d tacked up to cover all the leaks had torn loose.
Her roofline was steeply sloped, which thankfully meant the snow from the previous week’s storm was already sliding off rather than piling high. Unfortunately, it also made it tough to position herself properly to tack down the squares of plastic tarp with a staple gun.
Holding the edge, she’d gotten her hand too close to the staple gun and almost nailed her thumb.
“Watch what you’re doing, Tasha.”
She’d become way too used to talking to herself over the past three months, but it was either talk to herself like a crazy lady, or go absolutely nuts from the unending silence.
Besides, anything was better than thinking about her family.
Having forcefully shaken thoughts of her father and brother from her head, she’d just finished nailing down the last corner of the tarp when the extra box of staples in its pouch in her tool belt tumbled out, broke open, and scattered.
Grabbing for them, she’d not only missed, she’d also gone tumbling down the roof, scrabbling for a handhold, but finding none.
And as all twenty-seven years of her life flashed by, one particularly horrible scene stood out in vivid Technicolor.
Chapter Two
Three months ago…
The view from her father’s office window was magnificent, the San Francisco Bay darkly powerful as a storm rolled in from the north. Tasha’s brother, Drew, stood by the window, his arms folded over his chest, his face a tense mask as dark as the leaden sky behind him. Five years older than Tasha, Drew had the same black hair they’d inherited from their mother, his cut scrupulously short, executive style, like their father’s.
Seated in front of her father’s dominating oak desk was Eric Whitcomb III, a partner in Lakeside Ventures with her father and Drew. Tasha had been dating Eric for almost a year. He’d bowled her over the day her dad had introduced him—at thirty-nine, he was charming, handsome, and cultured. She felt like a character on Downton Abbey when she was with him. Wined and dined and desired by an English gentleman.
“Sit down, Natasha,” Reggie Summerfield ordered.
He was a loving father, but he was also a man who instantly commanded respect, so she put down her bag and sat on the sofa facing him. Even seated behind his massive desk, her father was an imposing man, with steel-gray hair and eyes so dark they were almost black.
She felt spotlighted in his gaze, the look in his eyes reminding her of all the times as a child that he had called her into his home office—wherever home had been at the time—and told her they had to move again. At least once a year, sometimes more, she’d had to leave her friends, her school, the teachers she loved, whatever clubs she’d joined. Poof—no warning, just gone. She’d lost count of the times she’d started over in a new place.
Her stomach was already clenched with that familiar anxiety as she asked, “Is something wrong?” She wasn’t a kid anymore, so it wasn’t her childhood fears of making new friends that held her in their grip this time. Instead, they were the worries of a daughter with an aging parent, one who meant the world to her. Was her father sick? Was that why Drew and Eric were both here? Could that be the reason her brother looked so grave and sad?
“We’re canceling the venture,” her father said. “You need to lie low for a while.” He hiked his tailor-made slacks and crossed his legs. For a man who never fidgeted, she could swear that was exactly what he was doing. “Take a trip like you’ve always wanted to do.”
Relief washed through her that he hadn’t sprung an illness on her. But what on earth was he talking about? “You’re shutting down Lakeside Ventures? Why would you do that?”
“We need to take down the website too,” he replied in lieu of answering her questions. He twirled a pen on his desk, another uncharacteristic movement. “And it would be best if you shut down your business as well.” He punctuated the words with an ominous drumming of his fingers on the chair arms.
“Shut down my business?” It was unthinkable—what would she tell her clients? She designed interactive websites as well as marketing collateral and had recently entered the field of interactive commercials. A year ago, her father had hired her to do the website for Lakeside Ventures. The enterprise was going to revolutionize timeshares, and she’d been so happy to be a part of it, because everything her father touched turned to gold. But now he wanted her to erase everything she’d worked for since she’d graduated from college five years ago? “Why would I do that? The website is good.” Really good, if she did say so herself.
“The website is fantastic, Tasha.” It was the first thing Drew had said, jumping to her defense. Drew leveled his piercing blue gaze on their father. “Tell her the truth, Dad.”
Seated across from her father, Eric snorted, shaking his head, looking anywhere but at her. He seemed a different man from the one who’d meticulously planned tomorrow night’s Valentine’s dinner, telling her he would be sending a limo to pick her up, promising her a present that would thrill her. She’d been imagining a small velvet box…and had secretly wondered if she was truly ready for everything Eric might offer.
Her father’s next words dashed all her contemplations. “We’re under investigation.”
He couldn’t have stunned her more if he’d dangled her outside the twentieth-floor window by her heels. “Investigation? By whom?” Nothing made sense, not from the moment she’d walked in and found the atmosphere inside her father’s office as dark and stormy as the view outside.
“The government. They say it’s fraud. We just haven’t gotten our funding yet, and a few antsy clients are questioning what we’re doing.”
The first Lakeside resort—to be followed by many more—was in Northern California. Tasha had wanted to visit the building site before now, but her brother had convinced her she was too busy working on the state-of-the-art website—and keeping up with her other client projects—to take time off just yet. Using the photos of the lake and surrounding woods that Drew and her father had supplied, along with the architects’ plans, she’d graphically created what the resort would look like, down to the interio
rs of the individual condos.
It was impossible that the government could question her father or her brother. It had to be a terrible error.
She would do everything in her power to stop this miscarriage of justice. Her father couldn’t give up everything he’d worked so hard for. And they definitely couldn’t do this to Drew. He’d been so proud when their dad asked him to join the family business after he’d graduated from high school—she still remembered their celebration.
“We can fix this, Dad,” she said, jumping off the couch, passion filling her to right this wrong. “We’ll give the investigators the plans. I’ll walk them through the website, show them how great it’s going to be once you’ve got all the funding. And when you take them up to the site where the condos are going to be built, you’ll be exonerated, and we can get back to building the resort.”
“Grow up, Tasha.” Eric’s harsh voice sliced through her pleas, cutting them to ribbons. “It’s time you faced a few facts.”
Over the past five minutes, more than one surprise had been tossed Tasha’s way. But the biggest one of all was the change in the man she’d been dating. Gone was the smooth, British accent, the cultured Eric-Whitcomb-the-Third façade now replaced by a flat American tone. Gone were the handsome features, erased by a hard mouth curled in an ugly sneer. “Your dad wants you to lie low, so just do what he says and get the hell out of town until this blows over.”
She stared at him, stunned. Eric had seemed so perfect, always so nice, so solicitous. But she remembered that he’d only once told her the name of his family’s so-called estate. And hadn’t they always gone out with her friends, rather than any of his?
It all made sense now. He wasn’t who he’d said he was. And he’d obviously duped her father and brother into some sort of disreputable scheme.
She came at him, ready to pounce, desperate to avenge her family. “What have you suckered my family into?”