by Dawn Tamayo
THE MIAMI
MILLIONAIRE
by
Dawn Tamayo
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Dawn Tamayo
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in reviews.
Cover original photograph © Ddmitr
Cover artwork by Lynn Selwyn-Reeves
Cover © Dawn Tamayo
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my wonderful family and friends – thank you for your continued support and encourage, it means so much to me.
To all my readers – thank you for choosing my book and I hope you enjoy your read.
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Other books available by Dawn Tamayo:
UNDER THE MAJESTIC SKY
WHERE THE HEART LIES
CHAPTER ONE
The deliciously sweet Pimms was flowing by the fruit-filled jug load, and the beer tent overflowed with thirsty fete-goers. Victoria pushed back her long dark red hair and took another welcomed sip of her iced drink. She pinched a strawberry from her glass and popped it into her mouth whilst her large dark brown eyes looked around the fete and she smiled - she was pleased with the turn out.
It was unseasonably warm for the time of year, much to everyone’s pleasure! In England it didn’t usually rain much at the end of September so no one was expecting a full-on downpour, but certainly nobody had expected the beautiful bright blue sky and sunshine on this fabulously warm day either. It was just as well, otherwise the country fete wouldn’t have been as much of an amazing success as it was turning out to be, and the thrill of the unexpected warmth could be felt in the air.
A huge number of people had turned up today, certainly more than Victoria had anticipated. She and the fete committee had raised a seriously good amount of money for the local hospice charity on the entrance and pitch fees alone, and that was before they added up the additional income from the tombola and raffle. Several companies had been extremely generous with their donations for the tombola prizes - she had surprised herself with what she had managed to come up with! That, along with a grand raffle prize of the latest mobile smart-phone and it’s all singing and dancing interactive watch, accessories, and music speakers, had certainly hiked up the raffle prize money. Okay so it was a tiny drop in the ocean for Creative Technology Holdings who had kindly donated the main prize. But to a little country fete like this, those raffle prizes, along with help from the free local media, had really helped draw the people in. Victoria smiled, she would have been happy with up to five hundred people coming today, but so far the headcount from the gate said there was nearly twice that many, and more crowds of people were still coming in - that last minute plug on the local radio stations she had managed to pull off had certainly helped.
Victoria smiled contently - finally all the hours she had put in on the telephone to companies trying to get donations had been worth it, even if it had meant that she’d had to agree to the Chairman of Creative Technology Holdings hijacking an hour of their fete time for a bit of a public relations photo shoot! She had no idea what he wanted to do, his PR department had said that the Chairman would turn up at some point in the afternoon and wanted to pose for some photos along with additional press coverage which Creative Technology Holdings would organise – he would make an announcement about their newest product which they were launching in the UK, and then he would be off. She thought it was a small price to pay for the selection of goodies they had passed the fete’s way as well as the main raffle prize, even if it wasn’t quite what she had originally envisaged happening at the fete today.
Victoria put down her glass and straightened her green and blue paisley linen shirt. Her collection of colourful bangles and bracelets clinked against each other as they fell up and down her slender arm as she moved around. She was glad she had chosen to put on her white jeans now - she was enjoying being out of her usual formal work suits. Even though Victoria had helped organise the country fete she wasn’t actually working, this wasn’t her day job – she had been roped into doing all this by her best friend, Alice. Alice had said that since Victoria was the only friend she knew who worked in marketing then she really needed her help! Victoria hadn’t wanted to say “no”, especially considering it was for such a good cause, so here she was! And besides she was getting free Pimms for the afternoon, and she was enjoying every minute of it!
Victoria prodded at a piece of cucumber in her glass lost in thought - it was a shame Mark couldn’t make it today. Mark, her fiancé, was too busy. He was always busy, and she knew deep down it didn’t matter to Mark that he wasn’t there - he wasn’t interested, and he had said as much that very morning!
“Victoria, you know it’s not my kind of thing - a load of country bumpkins wondering around playing throw the horse shoe in a smelly field. Seriously? You can’t really picture me there can you?”
“Mark it’s so much more than that. I have organised a whole assortment of traditional Victorian fayre games, and we have a fabulous selection of locally brewed beers and local farmers’ produce. I am sure they all smell wonderful!” Victoria said trying not to feel a little hurt that he obviously hadn’t taken any notice of what she told him she had been organising over the last few months.
“If you like that kind of thing.” Mark said dismissively as he moved his tall lean body to the edge of the bed and stood up.
“Well okay yes there are a lot of people who like that kind of thing, but I would hope you wanted to be there not because you liked it, but to see what I had done and support me today.”
“Oh sweetie you know I support you,” he called over his shoulder as he ran his hands through his short light brown hair and headed towards the bathroom, “Another day I would be there but not today, I’ve got some work to catch up on at the office. You have a great day and I’ll catch up on my work while you go help your friends.” Mark walked into the en-suite and closed the door behind him.
Victoria propped herself up on her elbows and forearms as she called through the closed wooden door. “Not more work Mark come on, it’s Sunday! That company works you far too hard. You have been working such ridiculously long hours these last few weeks we have hardly seen each other.”
Mark’s head appeared around the door. “I know Victoria but we can’t complain. If I keep this up I’ll be made a partner soon and then you won’t be complaining about the amount of money I’ll be bringing in. That’s the big-time baby!”
“You know I don’t care about the money Mark! We both bring in enough money as it is, good money. It’s not about the money! I just think you look tired and I feel like we hardly spend any time together at the moment.” Ugh, Victoria hated to sound like a whining child, but it was true and there was no other way to put it – it sometimes felt like they were just flat-mates with benefits, not a couple who were in love and getting married soon.
“Don’t worry Victoria, I will have plenty of time to rest when we are on our honeymoon, and after that we will have all the time in the world together. There’s not long to go now.” Mark gave her one of his ‘I can sell sand to a Bedouin’ smiles and closed the door behind him.
Victoria heard the shower turn on as she flopped back onto
the plump pillows and smiled at the thought of their upcoming wedding. Everything had been planned right down to the very last little crystal on the favour boxes. It was going to be a fantastic day – one hundred and twenty guests of their families and close friends invited to the church, and then a big dinner-dance afterwards with a fantastic five piece band she had hired after seeing them perform at her friend’s wedding last year, and then a DJ to take them dancing into the early hours of the morning. Oh it was going to be a fantastic day, and in only twelve weeks time. It was going to be a winter wonderland wedding sitting perfectly between Christmas and new year. It sounded so far away when she said “three months”, but the weeks seemed to be flying by so quickly she had no doubt that what little time they had left to go would fly by just as quickly, and soon she would be standing next to her very attractive fiancé in his perfectly cut grey morning suit at the altar about to become Mrs Mark Cavendish.
“Nice job. Really well done.” A woman said cutting into Victoria’s thoughts and brought her mind back to the fete. Victoria thanked the woman and made her way outside the big white marquee walking towards her silver Volkswagen Golf. She quickly checked her watch – yes she would have just enough time before the Chairman turned up. Victoria pushed the button on her key-ring hearing the familiar beeps and reached inside her car to pull out her flat shoes - hours of standing around making polite conversation in high wedge heels was beginning to take its toll on her feet and she was glad she had remembered to put a pair of flat pump shoes in her car just in case. Slipping on her black pumps she locked her car again and pocketed the key just as something caught her attention out the corner of her eye.
Victoria looked up and squinted against the bright sun. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing at first, but then as it neared she realised she wasn’t imagining it! Right there, in the air heading her way at breakneck speed was a man attached to a parachute and he was coming down, fast! She could hear the faint sound of a small airplane engine overhead and assumed it must be where the parachuter had come from. Looking around Victoria wondered where the jumper was heading, but she couldn’t see anything in the surrounding fields except for a lot of animals and her little fete which, wasn’t looking so little now. She quickly walked away from the cars, back towards the tent, but Victoria stopped as she heard a male voice shouting out from above. Just as she turned around she caught her breath as the man fell to the ground hitting it hard, rolling over a couple of times, and then finally coming to a stop not twenty feet away from her as his parachute floated down over him.
“Oh crap!” Victoria said horrified. She hoped he was okay, he had hit the ground hard, really hard, and she knew it must have hurt! She saw a dark figure slowly appearing from below the parachute on the ground and quickly she closed the small gap between them trying to ignore the thumping feeling in her stomach as she realised he had only just missed landing on her - just another few seconds and he would have landed right on top of her rather than where he was now, just a short distance away on the hard dry grass.
“Are you alright?” Victoria asked concerned. Although the man was still sitting on his bottom on the ground, he had already shrugged off his parachute and was unclipping his safety helmet.
The dark haired man took off his helmet and threw it unceremoniously on top of his discarded parachute and started to dust himself down. Victoria looked at him not quite believing what she was seeing; instead of wearing a standard all-in-one parachute-suit, the man was smartly dressed in an exquisitely-cut navy-blue pin-striped two piece business suit with a perfectly starched white shirt, and a blue and white tie.
“I’m fine thanks. That wasn’t quite the entrance I had planned though!” He grumbled as he squinted looking up at her.
“Excuse me?” Victoria said as she stood rooted to the spot feeling perplexed, still looking at the man’s strange attire for someone who had just jumped out of an airplane attached to a parachute!
“Erm, you wouldn’t mind giving me a hand up would you?” The man said as he extended his hand out to Victoria. “I hadn’t planned on landing quite this hard, I’m going to regret this tonight that’s for sure.”
Victoria held out her hand and the smartly dressed man took it using her to help pull himself up, grunting as he did so. Still holding Victoria’s hand the man used his free hand to brush away the final pieces of grass and dirt from his suit.
Finally, after recovering from the surprise of nearly being landed on and the man’s perfectly cut and obviously expensive suit, Victoria was able to take a proper look at his face. She shielded her eyes with her free hand and wished she still had her high heeled shoes on so she didn’t need to squint to look up at his face with the bright sunshine behind him. As if reading her mind the man moved his six foot tall broad body so he stood blocking the sun from her eyes, and she saw him properly for the first time. Her jaw nearly dropped!
Victoria swallowed slowly and remembered to breathe as she looked into the clearest light blue eyes she had ever seen. Finally she pulled her attention away from his intense gaze and took in his lightly suntanned skin, his straight almost sharp nose and chiselled cheek bones, and then she let her eyes travel down to the rest of his body. She had a feeling his perfect gentlemanly suit hid a very athletic man underneath; his shoulders and chest filled out his jacket impeccably. As her eyes reached his belt she was far too tempted to look further down but that would have been just plain obvious, and she wasn’t about to do that, so she bit back the temptation and returned her attention to his handsome face in front of her.
“Hi, I’m Jake Cumberland. I would offer to shake your hand but it seems I already have one of those.” Jake said in his strong American accent smiling mischievously as he playfully squeezed Victoria’s hand he was already holding.
‘American!’ Victoria deduced as she tried to pull her hand away, but Jake was having none of it and held onto it smiling even more. And what a smile that was!
“Talking of which, can I have my hand back now?” She asked trying to ignore the sensation his cheeky grin was causing inside her stomach. She tried not to blush, which was almost impossible, but she had a feeling this gorgeous man was used to women blushing and falling over themselves when he was around. It was hard not to! It wasn’t as if Victoria wasn’t used to being around good looking men, her fiancé Mark was extremely good looking and incredibly fit at that. But this man was in a whole new league of his own – he was ridiculously good looking and she had a feeling he knew it too.
“Not just yet, I’m kind of enjoying this.” Jake laughed as he playfully pulled Victoria in closer. Without letting go of her hand he moved it around behind her back so he had his arm around the back of her waist whilst his fingers intertwined with hers.
Looking up at him with utter bemusement Victoria couldn’t believe she was just inches away from his body as he held her close, not losing eye contact with her for a moment. Jake squeezed Victoria’s hand gently, he wasn’t letting go of her just yet, totally enjoying every second of the feeling of her next to him.
Jake’s public relations team had told him about the local Gloucestershire fete which had approached them for contributions to their prize list. It had given them the idea to use the fete as a new angle for launching their latest technological tracking gadgets - they suggested he drop in by parachute from an airplane to catch everyone’s attentions, then the airplane would double back and fly with an advertising banner from Gloucester to London, coinciding with the local and national news channels covering his entrance and their latest gadgets. Jake loved the idea. He loved his marketing and PR team - they were young and funky and liked to push the boundaries, very much like himself. They knew Jake would be up for just about anything to get exposure for his business since he was a total adrenaline junkie who liked to ride motorbikes and fast cars to their limit. Besides he had done numerous parachute jumps for charity in the past - there was very little Jake wouldn’t do to raise money or awareness for either charity or his business. Howev
er, Jake had questioned his PR team’s choice of venue for his latest publicity stunt. They usually chose rock concerts or stadiums with thousands of people in the audience. He wasn’t sure if a local country fete with a crowd of little old men and women was really what they were after. That wasn’t exactly their target customer base, but his PR team had promised him it would be more than that. Then again, if it wasn’t, that would only make it even more news worthy – anything that shocked would get more media coverage, and pretty much anything that Jake did in the U.S.A. got news coverage anyway!
But this was a surprising start and certainly an unexpected bonus! A bit of unpredicted cross-wind had blown Jake off course and instead of landing on the other side of the fete by the black promo-lorry as planned, he had nearly ended up on the rooves of a load of cars. Thankfully he had managed to navigate himself out of danger’s way at the last few seconds to land on a piece of open ground, even if he had only narrowly missed landing on someone. And what a someone that was!
Once Jake had managed to shake free from the uncomfortable restraints of his parachute and dusted himself off he looked up to see an absolute vision standing in front of him. He saw concern etched on her perfectly proportioned face and her dark red hair was blowing into her eyes and seemed to be fighting with her hands as she tried to hold it back whilst she looked down at him to see if he was hurt. He had hit harder than normal and he was sure he was going to have a few bruises to show for it, so he asked the beautiful woman for a hand to help him up. As Jake took Victoria’s hand it felt soft and warm inside his, and once he was up on his feet he was in no hurry to let it go.