by Julia London
Lear Sister Trilogy
Including three full length novels:
Material Girl
Beauty Queen
Miss Fortune
By
Julia London
Copyright 2011 by Julia London
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Dear Reader:
The Lear Sisters Trilogy was my first foray into contemporary women’s fiction with strong romantic elements. The three books were originally published in the early 2000s and have been out of print for a few years. I am very pleased to be able to offer them to you again, with new covers, and with some slight editing, in digital format. However, this is all new to me, so if you discover typos or errors, please don’t hesitate to contact me at Julia @ julialondon.com.
If you would like to know more about me, my books, what’s new and what’s old, I invite you to join my mailing list, or visit me on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and even Goodreads, where I can be found on any given day talking about my life and my books.
You can read about the series, and my other books, both women’s fiction and historical romance, at my website, http://www.julialondon.com.
You may also be interested in the Thrillseekers Anonymous series, a trilogy of contemporary romance about four men who operate a high-stakes, exclusive thrill-seeking club. They will be reissued in digital format in the summer of 2011.
Or, if you prefer more women’s fiction with strong romantic elements, you may prefer the Cedar Springs series. All three books (Summer of Two Wishes, One Season of Sunshine, and A Light at Winter’s End) are all available in paperback and as ebooks.
If you are curious about all of my books, here is a complete booklist.
Thank you for your purchase. I hope you enjoy this collection of novels.
Julia London
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Material Girl (Book One)
Prologue
NEW YORK
The news that he was going to die arrived like a distant rumble of thunder, a disturbing sound so far on the reaches of his consciousness that he lifted his head and wondered what he had heard. Aaron Lear looked to the windows of his office on the forty-third floor in lower Manhattan and noticed that the afternoon light was beginning to fade. Was it that late already?
He was still sitting where the call had left him—on his haunches, against the polished oak wall down which he had slid as his mind tried to grasp the words cancer and aggressive. His office was suddenly sweltering; the light was fading rapidly now, gray and black shadows draped his office. Aaron tried to breathe—he was not prepared for this, had not considered the possibility of his mortality. Even when he had first begun to have trouble—a strange bit of discomfort was all, really—he never thought it was something so . . . so foul. So goddamned final.
We don’t know much of anything yet. Just hold on to that for now, his doctor had advised. How could he hold on to something so vague? Aaron pulled himself to his feet, but his limbs felt as if weights had been tied to them and he leaned heavily against the desk. The room was now almost dark; he wondered how much time had really passed since he’d picked up the phone. A lifetime.
Of course he had suspected something was terribly wrong for weeks now, from the moment he had felt the hostile invasion of his body, had sensed the vague but undeniable state of war being waged within him when he had, by some internal monitor, felt the cancerous cells advancing like an army of ants through his stomach, into the winding turns of his colon, throwing their incendiary bombs down the chute.
He was only fifty-five!
It was impossible to even contemplate that he might be brought down. There was so much left to do, to see, to be! What about the dynasty he had built and still operated from his position as president and CEO? This vast shipping empire was all his doing, his creation, one he had started after he escaped West Texas and the life of a cotton farmer when he was nineteen. He had built this company truck by truck, plane by plane. He had begun by driving line-haul between Dallas and San Antonio, scrimping and saving until he could buy his own truck. Then there were two. Then four, then a fleet, expanding and growing under his guardianship until he was shipping freight around the world. Lear Transport Industries, better known as LTI, was like another child to him, the proud mark of a man and his life and accomplishments.
He was not ready to let go!
Bonnie. He had to talk to Bonnie, still his wife in spite of their fifteen-year estrangement, still his one and only true love. Bonnie Lou Stanton, his high school sweetheart, the homecoming queen with the laughing blue eyes, the only one to believe in him when the relationship with his father had soured. It was Bonnie who had come with him to Dallas when he had left the family cotton farm behind, Bonnie who had stuck by him those lean years when everything looked bleak and had encouraged him when he thought he was failing. And later, with a baby on her hip, smiling cheerfully as she made one can of ranch-style beans last two days. They had been closest then, drawing on one another’s strengths. Exactly when they had begun to drift apart, Aaron couldn’t really remember anymore, but he knew that he still loved her, would always love her.
His gaze fell to the picture of his daughters on his desk, and he felt the smile spread across his lips. They were the best thing he had ever done. There was Robin, his oldest, her curly black hair indicative of her spunk, her blue eyes steely with determination. And Rebecca, sitting gracefully in the middle, as pretty now as she had been the day she was crowned Miss Houston. Then Rachel, the baby, laughing when she should have been smiling, her blue eyes sparkling with the gaiety that was always with her. Three beautiful women who he had a hand in producing. Biologically perhaps, but he couldn’t claim much credit beyond that, could he?
He had been an absent father for the most part—one of the more egregious things about him, according to Bonnie. God, how many times had they argued about it? He insisting that his work was what enabled them to live a life of privilege, Bonnie arguing just as strongly that wealth and privilege were not as valuable as a father to the girls.
A thousand tiny spears of bitter disappointment jabbed Aaron; there was no denying the truth, not for a man being consumed alive by cancer. He had been a mean lover, a sorrier husband, and a pathetic excuse for a father while creating his empire. He had let Bonnie down in the worst way, his girls even more, and the pain of that realization was almost as lethal as the cancer in him.
The worst of it was that the cancer scared him to death, left him practically trembling in the dark at the prospect of what lay ahead. The coward in him needed Bonnie like he had never needed her before.
In the dim light, Aaron found the phone he’d thrown aside and dialed her cell. It rang three times before she answered it. “Hello?” The sound of crystal clinking in the background pierced his consciousness—Bonnie had her own life now. She wasn’t waiting for his call anymore. Hadn’t she made that abundantly clear?
“Aaron, I know it’s you, I have your number on caller ID.”
“Bonnie.” His voice sounded empty, hollow. “Bonnie, how are you?”
She covered the phone; Aaron heard her whisper to someone. “Ah, fine.”
“Good . . . good.” How e
xactly did one go about telling his wife he was dying? “How’s the weather in L.A.?”
Her sigh was full of tedium. “Aaron, I’m in the middle of something. What did you need?”
He cleared his throat, tried to force the ugly words out. “Actually, there is something I need to tell you—”
“Is it one of the girls?” she asked quickly.
“No, no, not the girls. I . . . I don’t know how to say this . . . .”
“Say what?”
He closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly shut against the burn of tears. “I’ve had some bad news. . . . I had a little thing happen this summer, and I went . . . well, I guess I don’t have to give you the blow by blow, but it’s . . .” He paused, pressed his knuckles into his eyes again, unable to say the words that would commend him to death.
He could hear Bonnie moving, the click-click-click of her heels on pavement. “Aaron,” she said low, her voice softer now, the way he remembered it. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
The burn of tears burst through his knuckles, slid hot down his cheeks. “I’m sick,” he whispered coarsely. “Really sick. And . . . and I know I don’t have any right to ask this, but . . . but I need you, Bonnie. I need you bad.”
There was no immediate response from her; Aaron caught his breath, felt the wet burn of his tears etch their grooves in his cheeks. He waited. Waited through the long pause in which he could hear the shortness of her breath, and when he thought he could not hold his own any longer, she said simply, “I will be there as soon as I can.”
Chapter One
HOUSTON
Everyone would always remember where they were the day they learned Aaron Lear was dying. For Robin, his oldest daughter, that day started off as usual—with a frantic search of her spacious, empty, and covered-with-dust Tudor mansion for a stupid shoe.
She was in something of a hurry, seeing as how she had a stack of reports six feet high on her desk, the result of having spent the entire month of January in London. And there was the business of the deal with Atlantic, an idea that had come to her at a cocktail party after the Atlantic rep had bought her several drinks. She had been working on landing them for four or five weeks now and needed the deal sooner rather than later because Dad didn’t like her region’s sales figures. Or anything else, for that matter.
Which was why she was a little worried about yesterday’s call from Mr. Herrera, the owner of one of LTI’s oldest accounts, Valley Produce. He had given her assistant, Lucy, quite an earful, complaining heatedly that an unacceptably large percentage of his produce LTI transported was arriving wilted and spoiled at the grocer’s destinations, and none of the LTI account reps seemed to want to do anything about it. Therefore, he had felt obliged to call the vice president of Southwest Operations (that would be her, Robin) demanding satisfaction. If he couldn’t rely on LTI to get his produce to the customer in the time or condition he required, he was very certain he could find a freight company that would.
What startled Robin about his call was not that he was unhappy, but how in the hell his unhappiness had escaped her. Valley Produce was one of the first companies to sign on with her father when he had begun his business some thirty-odd years ago, and she was very certain Dad would not be very happy to hear from Mr. Herrera right now. Especially since the last time they had talked, he had been very displeased with her handling of a similar situation in Austin.
Yeah, well, Dad was easily displeased; that went with the territory.
Where the hell was her shoe? Dressed in a sleek, black (all her sleek outfits were black) Donna Karan short skirt and jacket, Robin searched the wreckage of her bedroom for the left of a pair of Stuart Weitzman black leather pumps. This chaotic state of living, while not entirely foreign to her, was still highly undesirable, and she was, she realized, desperate to finalize the deal with Jacob Manning to do the renovations she had started and abandoned.
Okay, so her friends were right—the purchase of this house had been something of a lark. She had stumbled on it one Sunday afternoon as she drove, lost, through the Village, looking for the barbecue her friends Linda and Kirk were hosting. The house was nestled on a wide boulevard with giant live oaks and huge mansions. It was perfect, of course—not too big, not too small. So she had phoned her attorney, told her to buy it. When she’d moved in, she’d stored her belongings, shoved her clothes into one room, set up the dining room table with the leather chairs, and let the rest of it sit empty in anticipation of the renovations she would do herself.
At least she had every intention of doing them herself. But she had succeeded only in knocking a couple of huge gaping holes in the walls before she was off to Madrid, and then London, and New York, and then . . . whatever. How could she have known so many things would come up? Needless to say, she was hiring out the work before she went stark raving mad, and it was, come hell or high water, the one thing she would accomplish today.
When the wayward shoe was at last located, Robin emerged from her house looking completely cool and sophisticated. The only accessory that did not reek of chic was the black leather headband she had stuck on her head as a last resort for keeping her short, wildly curly hair in some sense of order.
Robin marched out onto the drive, passing Raymond, her yardman, with a jaunty wave, and proceeded to her Mercedes 500 E-Class. She fired up that sweet ride and sped out onto North Boulevard.
As she turned off the boulevard, a man on a Harley pulled into her drive. He parked the bike, waved at Raymond. “You doing okay?” he asked as the yardman walked up to the door to unlock it for him.
“Can’t complain, can’t complain,” Raymond said. “You gonna be long, Mr. Manning?”
“Nah. Just need to look at a couple of things. I’ll put the key out.”
“That’ll do,” Raymond said.
Jake Manning walked inside the empty mansion, pausing in the foyer to peer into the dining room, where Ms. Lear had obviously set up shop. His nose wrinkled as he surveyed the wreckage—empty yogurt containers, papers strewn about, a bra curiously draped over one chair, the obligatory computer, one running shoe, an empty wine bottle.
Jake moved on, up the great curving staircase to the upper floors.
Now here was the odd part, he thought as he reached the second- floor landing and surveyed the gaping hole in the wall directly ahead. That hole made no sense. She had freely admitted to it, had told him on the phone that she “had started the renovations.” It made no sense because first, that hole served no conceivable purpose, and second, while he’d never actually met Robin Lear (she preferred to have Raymond let him in), her house had all the markings of a society bitch. He should know—he did enough of their houses, could spot them a mile off. But this hole thing had given him pause. No dainty, cosmetically enhanced woman was going to make a hole that big.
With a shrug, he continued on to the master bath to double-check the dimensions.
In the meantime, Robin was cursing traffic, which was, as usual, moving at a snail’s pace. She punched a number into her cell phone, and used the morning crawl to reschedule a dinner date, return two business calls, and track down Darren Fogerty’s assistant—Darren being her contact at Atlantic—to set up a meeting for the next morning. When she clicked off that call, she was at the elevator, headed for the tenth floor suite of offices that housed the LTI Southwest corporate offices. All four of them. Oh, and a conference room.
She marched through the glass doors emblazoned with Lear Transport Industries, Inc., her briefcase swinging carelessly from her shoulder, and said hello to the receptionist as she stopped to pick up her phone messages. There were several new ones—from Bill (Flying in. Drinks tonight?), Darren from Atlantic, a sales manager of a cable manufacturer, and three that really caught her attention. Mr. Herrera (she needed a cup of coffee for that one), Dad (an elephant tranquilizer), and Jacob Manning, who would, if she was lucky, commence the renovation of her house today.
Pink slips firmly in hand, Robin marched on, r
ight past Evan Iverson’s door—at which point her heart did a little start when she saw him seated at his desk—and stuck her hand in Lucy’s cubicle to signal that she had, indeed, arrived, before disappearing into her own office. Tossing her briefcase aside, Robin went immediately to her wet bar and the pot of coffee Lucy had put on. French roast. Pedestrian, but potable.
In the midst of pouring a cup, Lucy came in with a “Yo.” Robin glanced over her shoulder at Lucy, who stood in the doorway of her office wearing a lime-green sweater and black pants. Her long red hair was piled on top of her head with a pencil stuck through to hold it. Robin paused to sip the nectar of gods before asking, “Hey, did you take Dad’s call?”
Lucy came farther into the room, adjusted her black-rimmed matchbox glasses. “I took the first one. He said he assumed you would manage to drag yourself in before noon, and if you did, you should call him immediately. At the ranch.”
The ranch? Oh great. When or why Aaron had made the trek to Texas, Robin couldn’t imagine, and frankly, didn’t even want to think about it.
“Mr. Herrera has called twice. Are you going to call him? You need to call him.”
Well, hello, she knew that. Robin took another sip of coffee. “Was that Evan I saw?” she asked, trying very hard to be nonchalant.
“Yep.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Don’t know,” Lucy said with a shrug, and plopped down in one of two leather armchairs in front of Robin’s desk. “But he needs to talk to you before he goes back to Dallas. He asked if you had lunch plans.”