by Avery Laval
A Tycoon’s Rush
The Sin City Tycoons Series
Avery Laval
A Tycoon’s Rush is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Avery Laval Books
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
A Tycoon’s Rush : The Sin City Tycoons Series / Avery Laval Books.
ISBN: 978-1-947834-21-7 (Ebook)
Published by Blue Crow Books
an imprint of Blue Crow Publishing, LLC
Chapel Hill, NC
www.bluecrowpublishing.com
Cover Design by Lauren Faulkenberry
Cover Image Credit: Ollyy/Shutterstock
Contents
Also by Avery Laval
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Sneak Peek: A TYCOON’S JEWEL
1
2
3
About the Author
Praise for Avery Laval’s Sin City Tycoons Series
“What a sparkling gem of a story! I loved it—and can’t wait for the rest of this dazzling series!”
USA Today bestselling author Caitlin Crews
“Avery Laval's first book in her Sin City Tycoons series is a delicious take on the billionaire boss and secretary trope. I was hooked from the first page and loved every emotional, decadent moment. The characters are strong and layered, and I enjoyed how Jenna clashed with Grant. Who doesn't love a good power play between the sexes? When they finally came together, it made me sigh with happiness. This was the perfect, sexy read to take me away for a few hours, and I can't wait to see what's next!”
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jessica Clare
“An Avery Laval romance is like a ripe cherry drenched in chocolate—delicious, sexy, and utterly addictive!”
Nina Lane, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Spiral of Bliss Series
“Avery Laval has a flair for writing multi-faceted characters who are refreshingly smart and irresistible. A Tycoon's Jewel has just the right amount of smoldering chemistry, Vegas glamour, and delightfully fast-paced plot. A story to be devoured.”
Tina Ann Forkner, award-winning author Waking Up Joy and The Real Thing
Also by Avery Laval
The Sin City Tycoons Series
A Tycoon’s Jewel
A Tycoon’s Rush
A Tycoon’s Secret
A Tycoon’s Bargain
Coming Spring 2019
A Tycoon’s Deception
1
“Get him back here,” Brad Bradley said. “I don't care how. I don't care what it costs. Just get Charlie Ahlers back.”
Like most things Natalie Schaffer's boss said to her, this sentence was shouted over a speakerphone. Had the man, glued to his iPhone at all times, never considered texting? Instead, it seemed like he was trying to shout to her office down the hall while buzzing her on the phone at the same time. She heard it in stereo. But for once, he was giving her welcome news.
Truth was, Natalie normally had a love/hate relationship with traveling for work. The stamps in her passport and the sights she saw—pure love. But all the travel was organized by some Machiavellian middle manager. Although they flew the sports agents first class and put them in four star accommodations, they put Natalie up in dumpy hovels, shoved her into the back of coach class, and otherwise showed her in a thousand little ways that she was a lowly assistant and would likely never be more. Today, though, she didn't care about pecking order. She just had to get out of town.
She couldn't spend another day in her stupid apartment with her stupid roommate. Her stupid roommate whom Natalie had, just once, just last night, succumbed to a kiss with after a couple too many glasses of sangria. How had that seemed like a good idea? Davis was a player, a pick-up artist, and she never fell for guys like that. She hadn't fallen for Davis either. The thing was, she'd come home after a night with the girls where they had lectured her again about her dry spell. The spell was getting long, she had to admit. And he had hit on her as usual, almost like it was his job, and she had thought, what the hell? What's one kiss if it means the dry spell is broken?
One kiss was a lot, apparently.
Davis suddenly wanted her to believe he was going to clean up his act for her. He was going to be a one-woman man, he’d told her, as he’d brandished cheesy deli-bought flowers at breakfast that morning. Never mind that three years of sleeping in the bedroom next door to his meant Natalie knew he was more like a three-woman man, and sometimes at the same time. Ew, ew, ew. Just the thought of that stupid, sloppy drunk kiss made her want to rub bleach all over her face. Again.
So. Thanks to that major lapse in judgement, a long weekend out of town didn't sound too bad. She'd be in a distant locale, with horny Davis miles away, to give her time to prepare a proper defense against his dark arts, and give him time to move on at least once, maybe twice, to greener pastures that would please his slutty nature.
And if that failed, a weekend away would at least give her time to figure out where she could move to next, all while chastising herself for screwing up the holy grail of a decent, affordable house in a good neighborhood. Where else was she going to live in Vegas without spending all of her tiny salary on rent?
What had she been thinking?
She sighed. She had been thinking: Dry spell. Even she couldn't really get angry at herself. Though she could wish she had thought to get her ya-yas out with someone she didn't live with. And that she'd done so about, say, six months ago, when the dry spell was just a long stretch of time when she was focused on work to the detriment of her love life, and not some kind of drought of biblical proportions as it had recently become. The kind of drought that made her wonder if she'd ever have sex—good, bad, or otherwise—ever again.
Four hours before her transatlantic flight, her boss, Brad, went through the motions of a briefing. Natalie didn't need one. She knew the details of this particular client inside and out. She’d been following him perhaps a little too carefully since his star turn at the last winter Olympics. Was it bad that she was so devoted to her job? Well, maybe it was, when her job involved a man who looked like Charlie Ahlers. Six feet of muscle, a chiseled jaw, sand-colored hair that always looked delightfully messy, and eyes that dared you. Just dared you. No wonder no other man had sounded interesting since Brad had taken him on as a client. No wonder she'd been spending date nights home alone watching esoteric skiing competitions.
Charlie Ahlers was a wayward ski jumper with a huge endorsement deal pending. Just pending. Not signed. Brad Bradley's client list of pro athletes and sports commentators was worth plenty of money, sure, but Charlie's deal was tying up a tidy commission and Brad was not one to leave any money on the table. Or worse, to let a good deal slip through his fingers—which this one would, if they didn't locate Charlie soon.
Natalie had done runs like this before—finding injured snowboarders in bars and slipping contracts under their pint glasses, tracking down reality show dancers who'd flown the coop after bad relationships were made way too public, restoring the confidence of one especially embarrassed NASCAR driver who had accidentally Instagrammed a very, very personal photo o
f his—well—gear shifter.
Brad Bradley of International Talent and Sports had a flair for underdogs, and this guy, this Charlie Ahlers character with his well-shaped body and decent—okay, stunning—face, was another one of them. He was a gold medal skier who'd gone from Olympic glory in one winter to complete washout in the next. Not that anyone knew just how washed out he'd become except for his ski team and his representation. Discretely but aggressively, Natalie's boss, along with coaches and the U.S. Olympic Committee and God knows who else, had spent a year trying to coax the guy out of his unofficial retirement, begging Charlie to go back into training to be ready for the next games. At least he could do a few international events, a Grand Prix, and show the world he could still stand on two skis.
He'd said no every time. But now Brad had found the golden ticket to get him back into the fold: Money, in the form of a good endorsement offer from a coffee franchise. Maybe, Natalie reasoned, their idea was, if you drink their coffee, you'll be jumpy enough to handle anything. Even a thirty-meter vertical drop covered in ice.
Whatever their reasoning, their offer was big money. And athletes, like most humans, liked big money, enough to come out of their unofficial retirements, strap on their skis, and get back out there again in time to train for a World Cup event. In order to win more medals, and yes, hopefully, get more big money. Problem was, Charlie wasn't answering his phone. Or his email. Or his texts.
Okay, the real problem was, no one knew where the hell he was.
But Natalie had a guess as to where to start looking. He'd posted something on his Instagram account. A picture of a mountain. Not just any mountain. It was nondescript, but Natalie recognized it immediately, because of a postcard she’d received just the day before—from her chic cousin Jenna McCormick. From her honeymoon in Italy.
Of course, unlike Jenna’s postcard, Charlie Ahlers's single Instagram posting in the last six months wasn't just a picture of a mountain. It was a picture of a girl, in a bikini top, laughing almost deliriously, in front of a mountain. Maybe it was his girlfriend. Though, she didn't have the look of a girlfriend. She had the look of a groupie. The hungry look. And either she was reaching for the phone or it was a selfie, because her arms were outstretched on either side of the frame. Needless to say, it had the sepia filter over it. Typical. Instead of just groupie, now she looked like Ye Olde Groupie.
Stop it, Natalie! For the love of Pete. She sounded like a jealous ex, when in fact she'd never even met this guy. Lusted after him, sure, but who wouldn't? She’d watched him in the Olympics, and for months before and months after, of course, until his surprise disappearance. Watched his winning jumps more than a few times, to be perfectly honest, not closing the browser window until long after the post-run interview, where he looked off into the distance, moved to tears by the day, and said, cryptically, “Rich, this is for you.”
Only it wasn't cryptic to Natalie. She knew Charlie's twin brother Richard had signed up for the Marines a week before the games. Was that part of why Charlie had vanished from the limelight? Maybe. Natalie had tried to bring it up in a planning meeting, but Brad Bradley hadn't wanted to discuss feelings. He wanted to discuss money. The money Charlie Ahlers could—but wouldn't—bring in.
And that's when Natalie had pulled up the screen shot. The Instagram post with the groupie and the tree had been taken down within hours of going up, but Natalie was no dummy—she knew nothing was ever truly gone from the internet. She showed the picture to Brad and he started at it, stupefied, and she told him.
“I know where he is,” she’d said that morning, a little nervous as she did it. “And I know how to find him.”
And the next thing Natalie Schaffer knew, she was on a plane to the most beautiful place she'd never dreamed of going.
2
April in Sestriere, Italy. The end of ski season in Sestriere was like the end of the season in every winter resort town Charlie had ever been in, and he'd been in a lot. Spring was on its way up, and it brought quiet, desolation, and blessed solitude. The snow was growing slushy and overskied. The lifts were closing early. The women were getting desperate. The bars were emptying out.
Especially this bar. Miles from the closest piste, miles from everything, for that matter. A person only came to this bar to escape something, and that's exactly why Charlie loved it so much. He’d been in it every night for a month, although his goal hadn’t been to get drunk. Tonight he did nurse the prettiest little glass of scotch for warmth, but mostly he wanted to be around people without having people near him. No one here tried to strike up a conversation with him. He liked it that way. He needed time to think.
He needed to think about the stupid idea that he might want to jump again. That made no sense whatsoever. He loved the sport, sure. But he loved his brother more. Wanted him back home, safe and happy, in turn keeping his parents safe and happy, letting Charlie himself sleep well again at night.
So jumping was in his past. His future was uncertain. Going back to the States? Figuring out if had what it took to go to law school? Getting an MBA? Sure, he was only thirty, but somehow, his college days seemed decades behind him, not years. So much had happened since then. The medal, yes. But more than the medal: the training, the slopes, the sheer hours upon hours passed in joy of his sport. Win, lose, as long as he was on skis, Charlie had never much cared. Even when he'd had to take time off for an injury, he'd been happy knowing more skiing was ahead of him.
And now it was all behind him.
So maybe he, like the rest of the bar's patrons, was here to escape something too. It was that future without passion that he wanted to escape. If you wanted to get all shrinky about it. Which he didn't.
He looked up and down the bar. The options tonight were bleak, but it was just as well. Though he'd once thought there was no such thing as too many women, he'd been with more than he liked over the last six months. More escapism, probably, through his healthy sex drive and the world's best pick up line—Want to see my gold medal? The women certainly hadn't been about love or connection—he barely spoke Italian, after all. Or French. Or German.
But the sleeping around had grown old. Truth was, he liked getting to know his dates before taking them home. He liked women who didn't agree with everything he said, who had things to say for themselves. The women he'd really fallen for in the past, and there'd been a couple, of course, though no one who’d had him on bended knee, hadn't been nuclear physicists or political speech writers, but they could think, and reason, and argue when it mattered.
That didn't seem like too much to ask, really.
Now, this girl, coming in now, she had that certain look about her. The interesting look. She was middling height, beautiful build—just slim enough to be called thin, but with something intense happening in the curves department and a waist that nipped in under a white belted ski parka. Her dark brown hair was short, spiky, almost elfin. And if she hadn't been taking in the men in the bar one by one like her panties were on fire and they were all firemen, he would have thought she had the aura of a thinker about her. That, he supposed, had to do with the eyes—wide, searching, yet narrowed slightly, eyebrows lifted as though she were the tiniest bit skeptical. Yeah, ok. To make a long story short, she was sexy.
Then her eyes locked on his. Damn. Busted checking her out. But she was smiling at him now, apparently all too happy to be noticed by him. She threw her bag over her shoulder and made straight for him. Charlie sighed. Couldn't they even pretend to be slightly hard to get? Was that too much to ask?
He watched her head his way and for a moment warred within himself. He could blow her off. He knew that was an option. No one was forcing him into a one night stand here. But she was so damn voluptuous. Was it criminal to want to see that body without the parka, and the sweater, and the everything else, for that matter?
The devil on his shoulder reminded him that the only thing criminal would be letting this caliber of opportunity go to waste.
He listened to the
devil. “This seat's open,” he called to her when she was still a few feet away. “Can I buy you a drink?” he added in rusty Italian.
“Depends,” she said, and her American English rang out like a bell. “You're a ski bum.” She gestured to the tell-tale goggle tan on his face. “Do you all know each other? I'm looking for another one named Charlie Ahlers. Heard of him?”
Charlie coughed a bit in surprise, and then laughed. It must be the beard, he thought. He was quite a bit scruffier now than he had been during most of the media coverage. “I know him. Intimately.”
She paused, tilted her head to one side. The penny dropped. “No kidding. Well, don't I feel stupid.”
He smiled. “It's the beard.”
“It's very, ah, voluminous.”
Ouch. “Italian ladies love beards.”
“I'm sure they do. Italian ladies feel differently than I do about hairiness.”
Double ouch. And, at the same time, hello. A little push-back. Maybe he'd read this girl's intentions wrong. Maybe her panties weren't on fire so much as just nicely toasted.
“I can shave,” he said a little more quickly than he should have.
She laughed, and wow, when this girl smiled—he wanted to make her do it again.
“I think the first step is a long hot shower.”
“Care to join me?”
She smiled again, but rolled her eyes. Those wide, skeptical eyes. Brown black, and yes, intelligent. “Apparently you've gone feral since the Olympics,” she said.