Beauty and the Bachelor

by Naima Simone

  She loved Lucas—God, she loved him. But she wouldn’t consign herself to the same marriage she’d witnessed growing up. She deserved more than that. He deserved more.

  But with her father’s arrest, she hadn’t had time to see or talk to Lucas in the days since she’d left. Her mother hadn’t understood, hadn’t yet grasped that her husband had committed a crime and faced jail time and stiff fines. He might be home now on a two-million-dollar bond, but the chances were her father would serve time. Still, he was her father, she loved him, and she would stand by him.

  The front door opened as soon as she approached it. She smiled a thank-you at Maddie and stripped off her coat. After handing it to the housekeeper, she headed down the hall toward her father’s study, where he could usually be found when home. Rapping a perfunctory knock on the door, she pushed it open.

  “Hi, Dad. I’m sorry I was held up—”

  She skidded to a halt just inside the room, shock stealing her breath and voice.

  Lucas.

  He rose from the couch, and she stared at him, hungry and aching. God, she’d missed him. The silky sweep of his hair against his jaw. The lean face with its patrician angles and planes. The vivid green-blue eyes and the cherished survivor’s scar. And the tall, rangy body that spooned around her at night, powerful and protective. Her fingers itched with the need to touch him, caress him. She clenched her fists, the nails digging into her palms.

  “Sydney,” her father greeted, also standing from the chair flanking the sofa and waving her farther inside the room. “Come sit down. We were waiting for you.”

  Jerking her starved gaze from Lucas, she crossed the room and kissed her father’s cheek before settling on the other end of the couch.

  Jason lowered to his chair, and after several silent moments, leaned forward and sighed. “Sydney, this is one of the hardest things I have to admit, especially to you, my daughter. What the news has been reporting about me is true. What hasn’t been said yet is I turned myself in.”

  Shock reverberated through her, the vibrations loud and discordant. He’d turned himself in, not Lucas… Oh, God. Her accusation and his denial echoed in her head, rebounding off the sides of her skull, growing louder with each pass. Yes, he’d lied about leaving her father’s company alone, but he hadn’t gone to the authorities…

  “The guilt had been weighing on me for two years,” Jason continued, breaking into her self-recriminations. “I could no longer go on living as a fraud. It ate at me, coming home and facing you and your mother, knowing I was basically a criminal. Still, the shame isn’t what ultimately made me go to the FBI.” Jason glanced at Lucas, who hadn’t uttered a word since she’d entered the room, before he returned his attention to her. Weariness etched lines in his face, and while only a matter of days had passed since his confession, he seemed years older. “Since I met Lucas, something about him had bothered me. Only after the wedding did it click. He resembles his father, Robert Ellison.”

  She risked a peek at Lucas, worried that just the mention of his father’s name on Jason’s lips would send him into a fury. But Lucas remained as still as a statue, his expression indecipherable.

  “I’d always wondered what had happened to Robert’s son,” Jason murmured. “And after the wedding, Terry and I did some digging—some really hard digging. It took a while and a lot of hours from our investigator, but we discovered he’d reinvented himself as Lucas Oliver, the man my daughter decided to marry out of the blue after one date. The pieces came together quickly after that. Your conversation with Terry about the company, your sudden decision to marry. You did it for me. To protect me.”

  Jason’s face twisted in pain, corresponding with the wrench in her chest. “Sydney, I’ve done things in my life that I’m not proud of. Many regrettable things,” he whispered, and she wondered if he was thinking about the man he’d once called a best friend. “But it would have been unforgivable if I had allowed you to pay for my crime, my sin. So I turned myself in to the FBI so you could be free. We—this family, you—have suffered so much loss. I won’t have you endure one more moment of it. And I’m sorry that you’ve had to do so for me, and from me, in the past and now.” He held his hands out, palms up, and stared down at them before switching his tired, sad regard to her. “Honey, your sacrifice made me realize I had to be better, to do better. But it also made me acknowledge that I couldn’t be all bad, because I managed to raise a fine, selfless woman like you. Sydney, you deserve a life filled with happiness. You deserve love.”

  Tears stung her eyes even as shock froze her to the couch cushion. He’d sacrificed for her. For her future.

  “Dad, I—” She stuttered, shook her head. “Thank you,” she finally said, voice hoarse.

  “No, Sydney. Thank you. You, your brother. You two were and are the best of your mother and me. I shouldn’t have let my grief over losing Jay make me forget what I still had in you. I wasted so much time. And now…” Clearing his throat, Jason rose, clearly thinking about the inevitable prison stint that would steal even more time away from his broken family. “Now, if you two will excuse me,” Jason murmured, then with a long glance in Lucas’s direction, exited the study, leaving her and Lucas alone. Stunned, she stared at the closed door for several seconds before returning to Lucas.

  “Did you know?” she asked.

  “Not until I arrived here today,” he said, his piercing scrutiny focused on her.

  “Why are you here, Lucas?” Even to her own ears, she sounded tired, wary. Her father’s confession and declaration had taken a lot out of her emotionally. After their last confrontation, part of her feared what Lucas sat here, ready to tell her. And though she loved him, he’d hurt the hell out of her with his deception. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about not turning in my father, but you still lied to me about buying up the Blake Corp. stock and trying to take the company over—”

  “I came to tell your father the truth about who I was, about our marriage, and why you left me.” A pause. “He beat me to two of those.”

  She rocked back against the arm of the couch. Why would he reveal his secret, expose himself?

  “Before I met you, revenge was my one purpose. It drove me, it defined me. And I tried to hold on to it, because without my anger, I didn’t know who I was. But over the last few weeks, I’ve discovered who and what I am. I’m your husband. I’m free of guilt. I’m more. Because of you. And I’m in love with you.”

  God. Hope, beautiful but so fragile hope, fluttered inside her like a butterfly battling its way out of its cocoon. “Lucas…” she murmured.

  “I own 46 percent of your father’s company, which makes me the majority shareholder. But this morning, I had my lawyers draw up another contract. This one signs over every share to you. You can give them to your father or keep them. It’s up to you. And no matter what you decide, I’m still going to place the full influence and money of Bay Bridge Industries behind Blake Corporation to make it solvent once again. Even if your father has to step down because of his plea bargain, the company will remain in your family. Your legacy,” he murmured. “I’ve caused you so much pain, Sydney. And I’m sorry. I never want to see hurt and disappointment in your eyes again. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’m going to ask for it anyway. Forgive me, sweetheart. And come home to me. I love you with everything I am.” He paused. “Please…love me.”

  Love, powerful and huge, swelled in her chest, filling her, spilling out of her. That this beautiful, strong, prideful man would humble himself before her and the man he’d considered his enemy to ask for her forgiveness and declare his love for her—for her.

  After seeing the file he’d possessed and added to for years, she understood the enormity of his sacrifice. For half his life, he’d planned his revenge, but he’d placed her above it…loved her more.

  “I love you,” she confessed, voice soft, trembling. Then stronger, louder. “I love you.”

  With a groan, he launched himself across the length o
f the couch, crushing his mouth to hers. As always, she opened to him, accepting him, embracing him. The kiss was familiar and new. Their present and future.

  “Say it again,” he whispered against her lips. “Please. I need to hear you say it again.”

  “I love you.” She pressed a kiss to each corner of his mouth, to his scar. “Who you were, who you are, and who you’ll be. I love you.”

  And sealed the vow with a kiss of passion. Of trust. Of forever.

  Epilogue

  One year later

  “How in the world did you convince him to participate?” Sydney demanded. Lucas grinned, and she groaned in return, rolling her eyes. “Oh, God. You’re smiling,” she drawled.

  Lucas laughed, catching the irony of her words since, just a year earlier, Aiden had said almost the same thing to him at this same venue. Except this time Lucas was attending the Rhodonite Society’s annual Masquerade Bachelor Auction with his wife, and his smile was one of pure joy.

  “I told Aiden his taking part in the auction would be wonderful publicity for the company…and I may know the location of certain pictures from our college days that would be pretty embarrassing were they ever to see the light of day.”

  “That’s so wrong. Effective, but wrong.” She snickered. “Why wouldn’t he want to join in? This is, after all, the place you and I met. Who knows? Maybe he could find the future Mrs. Kent tonight.”

  “Yeah, sweetheart, not a selling point.”

  She gasped in mock outrage, jamming a fist on her hip, the mound of her belly more pronounced. “I beg your pardon.”

  “For him, of course.” He smoothed a hand over her stomach and the baby sleeping inside. Excitement and delight pulsed through him when he felt a small nudge against his palm. Three more months, and he would be able to hold his precious daughter in his arms. “The night I came here was the luckiest and best of my life.”

  A warm, beautiful smile lit her face, and he couldn’t resist placing a kiss on those gorgeous, sexy lips. God, he loved her. He didn’t think it was possible to adore one person so much that life without her scared the shit out of him. She’d taught him forgiveness, blessed him with a family, brought life into the darkness that had been his life.

  The hostess for the evening stepped out onto the stage, signaling the start of the auction. The same MC he’d bribed to supply Sydney with the wrong bachelor number. He laughed softly and guided Sydney to their table, seating his wife before settling next to her. She glanced around, and he clasped her hand. Charlene hadn’t attended the event this year. Since Jason had pleaded guilty to several federal charges related to the fraud and started his three-year sentence six months earlier, Charlene had become something of a social hermit. She’d found it hard to face the people she’d called friends, embarrassed over her husband’s actions. Sydney worried about her mother but also understood she could only do so much. At least finding out she would soon be a grandmother had brought some joy to the older woman. Hopefully, this new life would help bring healing.

  In the meantime, Sydney had blossomed. She’d enrolled in a master’s program at Boston University to earn a degree in social work, as well as continuing to mentor and work at the youth center. Though touched by his signing over his shares in her family’s company to her, she’d trusted him with the management of the assets, and he hadn’t betrayed that belief in him. Just a year had passed, but the reputation and financial health of the business was improving bit by bit, so when the time came, her legacy would pass along to their legacy.

  “You’re thinking too hard,” she whispered, her lips brushing against his jaw and setting a match to the desire that always simmered for her. He returned the caress, grazing her mouth with his and inhaling her honeysuckle scent.

  “I love you,” he murmured. Settling a hand over her belly and his child, he pressed a kiss to her gold and brown curls. “Both of you.”

  His tale had begun with blackmail and revenge and ended in joy and love.

  Now that the beast had his beauty.

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  Acknowledgments

  First and always, I give thanks to my Father, who has blessed me time and time again. Just when I start to think I’ve reached my limit of strength, creativity, and peace, You prove me wrong. And the best moments of my life are when You prove me wrong. Looking forward to co-authoring more books with You.

  To Gary. If there is a man who is more supportive, kind, loving, and patient, he’s probably wearing a halo over his head. LOL! I love you, admire you, and strive to be more like you.

  To, Debra Glass. You never fail to make me feel like a glittery, princess version of Nalini Singh. Your selflessness has been a true blessing. You are a true blessing, and I thank you for your time, advice, that beautiful brain of yours and Daredevil.

  To Jessica Lee. You’ve been my partner in this journey, and I can’t think of a better wingman—or wingwoman. Or whatever. Bottom line, you rock, lady!

  To Tracy Montoya. Thank you for the following: Challenging me. Pushing me to dig deeper and be a better writer. Encouraging me. Being such a wonderful editor. Always going to bat for me. Being you. And—which might be the most important of all—introducing me to Firefly.

  To The Saints and Sinners. The best street team EVAH!! Y’all are my comic relief, my peeps, my sounding boards, and just a plain good time. I love hanging out with you guys! And I love each and every one of you!

  About the Author

  Naima Simone’s love of romance was first stirred by Johanna Lindsey, Sandra Brown, and Linda Howard many years ago. Well, not that many. She is only eighteen…ish. Though her first attempt at a romance novel starring Ralph Tresvant from New Edition never saw the light of day, her love of romance, reading, and writing has endured. Published since 2009, she spends her days—and nights—creating stories of unique men and women who experience the first bites of desire, the dizzying heights of passion, and the tender, healing heat of love.

  She is wife to Superman, or his non-Kryptonian, less bulletproof equivalent, and mother to the most awesome kids ever. They all live in perfect, sometimes domestically challenged bliss in the southern United States.

  Come visit Naima at www.naimasimone.com.

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