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CONTENTS
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TITLE PAGE
BOOK DESCRIPTION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
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MORE BY JESSICA BLAKE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Grace Wells’ life is one long party until her world is turned upside down. When her family’s business goes under, she’s left with nothing. Goodbye mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Goodbye weekends spent sipping cocktails while fishing for the latest hotties. Goodbye shopping. Goodbye expensive cars. Worst of all… goodbye Los Angeles.
Now Grace is headed to Crystal Brook, North Carolina where she's left to practically fend for herself. With her inheritance down the drain, Grace is left having to start a new life—a task which seems nearly impossible. Until she catches sight of the gorgeous Luke Anderson who, cha-ching, is from a billionaire banking family.
Suddenly, Grace's luck seems to have turned around. Once she snags Luke and makes him her husband, she can return to her old pampered life. Unfortunately, Luke sees right through her. After all, he’s spent his entire life trying to escape her kind.
But Grace is on a mission and what Grace wants, Grace gets.
And this time, she gets more than she bargained for.
CHAPTER ONE
Grace
The long streak of light crackled and whizzed, pirouetting up into the air and exploding in a glorious plume of purple and green. More fireworks followed, each one lighting up the sky and the calm ocean beneath them. I pressed my hips against the banister, leaning as far as I could. The scene was so vivid. If I only tried hard enough, it felt as if I could reach out and touch the multi-colored stars.
Next to me, Rainy whistled and jumped up and down, some of her cocktail spilling over the rim of its glass. “More blue!” she slurred, like whoever was at the pier setting off the fireworks might just hear her and abide.
“Swim over there,” I teased her. “Just make sure to change into your bathing suit first. That’ll convince them.”
She gave me a saucy pout. “That’s a good idea. Maybe I will. Or maybe you should go. Men love Latinas.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
“Half Latina counts,” she said. “Because you know…”
Another round of fireworks burst into the sky, drowning out the end of her sentence. Several more people from the party pushed against the edge of the yacht, oohing and smiling up at the sky.
Two firm hands pressed into the small of my back before snaking around my waist. I tried to play it cool and hide my smile. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rainy grin and waggle her eyebrows at me from underneath her thick blonde bangs.
“How’s the view?” Eli said into my ear between two explosions.
I pushed one hip back just right, the tight fabric of my sparkly green dress stretching to its limit. I’d picked it out with him in mind, although not in a million years would I admit that. My hip grazed his thigh, and he responded by shuffling forward a bit.
“Better now that you’re here,” I answered, making an attempt even though half of my sentence was lost in the noise.
I turned sideways to peek at him. His unruly brown hair was sticking up every which way — a style that was meant to seem casual but which I knew took painful time crafting.
His hand slid down to my palm and tugged. I hesitated, planting my six inch stilettos firmly into the deck. Eli gazed back at me, and I cocked an eyebrow, letting it be known that I questioned his intentions. No way was he drawing me away that easily, no matter how willing I was to go. Eli and I had only hooked up once. Well, maybe once and a half — that depended on exactly what you considered hooking up — and there was no reason for me to stop playing hard to get anytime soon.
He jerked his head to the main door leading below deck. Between us and it, several black tie servers moved about with trays, offering drinks and hor d’oeuvres to the mostly twenty something crowd. The best Fourth of July party I’d been to in years was in full swing, and there was no way Elijah Bishop Welty was going to enjoy the satisfaction of drawing me away from it without a fight.
“Well?” I said, despite the fact that he couldn’t hear me. He could read my lips, though, and his fingers grasped mine harder as he took a step towards me.
“I want to show you something below,” he said into my ear.
I tried to keep my face composed while I slowly nodded. One minute, I mouthed, although we both knew that if things went well for both of us, we would be gone for much longer than one minute.
I let him lead me through the door and into the red carpeted hallway decorated with gold and white striped wallpaper, past the entrance to the kitchen and into a long room at the end of the yacht. I didn’t know much about boats — except that it probably isn’t okay to call a yacht a “boat” — but I knew the vessel we were on was impressive. It was all thanks to Rainy’s father, a man who had made his mark as a leading actor in high budget action flicks decades before Rainy and I were even born. He called the party an early birthday present for her, though her twenty-second was still months away.
The room Eli pulled me into had a fish tank longer than a couch in the middle of it. A big flat screen TV was planted against the wall and strewn about the room were chairs and chaises. I walked over to the tank, inspecting the tan starfish creeping along the pebbled floor.
“You look amazing tonight,” Eli said to my back.
“Oh yeah?” I softly responded, watching his reflection in the fish tank’s glass.
His voice practically dripped with lust. “Yeah.” The boy wanted me, and he wanted me bad, but I was enjoying the chase too much to just give in right then and there. Trailing my finger along the base of the tank, I tried to think of what to say next.
The cell phone ringing in my clutch interrupted all thoughts. I jumped slightly, having forgotten that I’d left the volume on the stupid thing turned up all the way.
“Do you need to get that?” Eli asked.
I dug in my little white purse while I turned to face him. My fingers found the side of the phone, and I hit the silence button. “Nope.”
He took a couple of fast steps towards me, stopping only a foot away. “What was I saying?”
I tilted my face up towards his. “You were telling me how good I look tonight.”
His mouth broke into a side grin. “Oh, yeah. I was.”
“You wanna keep going with that?”
Two palms grasped my hips, pushing my back up ag
ainst the tank. “I’d rather do other things with my mouth.”
The dam inside of me broke. To hell with playing hard to get.
“Show me what you had in mind,” I whispered.
*
The cool glass against my forehead felt like heaven. I sucked in a deep breath and batted my eyelashes open. I’d brought along the darkest sunglasses I owned, anticipating a hangover, but even they did nothing to shield me from the painful glare of Los Angeles’ midday sun.
The car’s driver hit a pothole, and my stomach lurched. Had I really had that much to drink last night?
It was hard to remember. I knew I’d thrown back a couple of cocktails by the time Eli and I went down below. After that, we’d found the liquor cabinet hidden in the room. There’d been a lock on it, but breaking it open was child’s play. Somehow the entire bottle of Grey Goose Magnum disappeared in no time at all, much like my strapless bra, which I never did manage to locate.
After going back up to the deck, we proceeded to drink more as well as smoke something questionable out of Connor Gentry’s bowl.
But considering that I had successfully hooked up with Eli and had no real physical damage other than a gnarly headache, I’d say it had all in all been a successful night.
Rainy and I had loose plans to meet up later to have drinks and rehash the events of the party. As I debated whether or not a little hair of the dog might do me some good, the car pulled into the circular drive on Sierra Mar. There were no cars in our driveway since my dad always preferred to use the garage, so it was impossible to tell whether or not he was home.
Saturdays could be iffy with him. Half the time he chose to see them as any other day of the week, working straight through the mornings and afternoons at his office downtown. “People need cat food every day,” was something he liked to say, referring to Pet Hop, the pet store chain he’d begun expanding across the country years ago.
Fumbling for the handle, I let myself out of the car. My legs shook slightly and I was glad I’d had the foresight to pack a pair of flats. After staying out on the yacht till close to dawn, Rainy and I had drunkenly traveled — thanks to her father’s personal driver, of course — to her house in Venice Beach. After a few hours of sleep, my own journey home began. It was time for a shower and a pair of underwear that didn’t ride up my ass in the name of being sexy.
“Thanks,” I mumbled to Rainy’s driver, remembering at the last second to turn around and grab my Gucci Soho leather shoulder bag. One of my high heels peeked out the top of it, and I jammed the shoe back in.
The driver nodded to me. “Have a good day, Miss Wells.”
I hurried past him and towards the front door. The Hollywood Hills street was quiet enough that most of the traffic was from residents, but I didn’t feel like pushing my luck. Someone I knew driving by and seeing me perform a walk of shame in last night’s dress, even if I was in my own front yard, was not something to be desired.
After rummaging through my purse, I located my keys in the very bottom and let myself in. The whirring of a vacuum cleaner came from somewhere in the right wing of the house, meaning LuLu the housekeeper was there. Too spent to talk to anyone, I headed for the stairs.
The Asian inspired house had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. With a main section plus two wings that wrapped around the swimming pool and a massive loft on the second floor, it overlooked most of the city below. After petitioning my dad for several years, he’d finally taken the exercise equipment down from the loft and let me move into the space. At the top of the landing was a short hallway, one end of it housing a bathroom and the other end opening up to the massive room I called home.
My cell phone rang as I pushed the door to my sanctuary open. Sighing, I dropped my purse on the floor and pulled it out. Unlike my keys, my phone had its own little side pouch it lived in, ensuring I never lost track of it.
“What’s up?” I asked Rainy, walking to the bed and falling flat on my back.
“Hey.” Her voice sounded weird, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the strange tone suggested.
I sat up, suddenly feeling much more awake. “Hey, yourself.”
“Have you seen the news?”
“No.” Did she know who she was talking to? It’s not like I’m a dumbass and didn’t know what was going on in the world, but I had better things to do in the mornings than sit down with a black cup of coffee and study the day’s headlines.
Although the coffee part sounded good…
My temples throbbed, and I reached up with my free hand to rub at them. “Aren’t we meeting later?”
Rainy sucked in a sharp breath. “There’s something on the news about your dad.”
“What?” My heart started pounding, and a dozen visions of my dad dying in various ways flashed through my mind. Heart attack. Car accident. Murder. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean about Pet Hop.”
I exhaled sharply. “Jesus Christ, Rainy. You scared me.”
“Sorry.”
I fell back down on the bed, thinking about chastising her more but also not having the strength to do it. Unlike me, Rainy still had both her parents. Unlike me, her mother hadn’t died when she was a baby, leaving her to be raised by babysitters and nannies. Unlike me, she didn’t live with the constant painful knowledge that the things she cherished most could be quickly and inexorably taken away from her.
“So what is it?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything.
“God, Rainy.” I was starting to get irritated. “What is it?”
“Everyone is saying Pet Hop is closing,” she said in a rush.
I absorbed the information. “Which one?”
“All of them.”
I scoffed. There were hundreds of them. There was a location in every major city in the United States and like half a dozen in L.A. alone.
“I’m not kidding, Grace.” Her voice was quiet. Serious. More serious than I’d ever heard her.
A thick ball formed in my throat. “It’s just a rumor. Why would my dad close them? That’s stupid. Come on, you don’t really believe that, do you?”
“The news says that the company is declaring bankruptcy.”
I stood up, unzipping the back of my dress and shimmying out of it while I talked. “Well, that’s not happening.”
“Okay,” she said, though I couldn’t tell whether she believed me or not.
“It’s not,” I stressed, kicking off my ballet flats. They ricocheted off the wall’s baseboard and landed on the carpet.
“I said okay.”
I stomped over to the closet and yanked the door open, then grabbed a yellow maxi dress off a hanger. “Look, I’ll text you in a little bit. We can go to Eau Claire. Or The Ivy.”
“K. See you.”
“Bye.”
As soon as she hung up, I called my dad. The phone rang and rang and when he didn’t answer, I threw it on the bed. Gritting my teeth, I pulled on the sundress and found my Louis Vuitton slides.
LuLu had killed the vacuum cleaner, and there was the soft talk of the radio coming from the kitchen. I veered away from that part of the house, heading for the side door that led to the garage. My dad’s silver Corvette was missing, but my yellow Hummer sat in its usual spot. I unlocked it, thinking of heading straight for the Pet Hop offices downtown.
I knew I probably looked like shit, what with last night’s mascara still on my face — albeit in the wrong location — but I was determined to figure out why such an awful rumor was going around. Pet Hop filing for bankruptcy just didn’t make sense. It was the leader in pet supplies. Last I’d heard, my dad was even talking about opening some stores in Canada.
I climbed into the Hummer but then froze as a familiar engine revved up the drive. A few seconds later, the garage door opened up. My dad pulled the Corvette into the spot between my car and his Jaguar convertible, and I climbed back down onto the concrete floor to wait.
His brows fu
rrowed as he climbed out of the car, though the tense expression on his face could have meant any number of things. The man’s not exactly what you could call easy going — even a little thing like the mail man arriving thirty minutes later than usually could set my father off if he’s already in a sour mood.
As he looked at me and pursed his lips, though, I could see something was different. Something big was going on — like, much bigger than having your newest order of paperbacks from Amazon arrive half an hour later than you hoped they would. His forehead glowed with sweat, a couple drops trickling down from underneath his sandy blond hair. He pulled out a handkerchief from the front of his suit and wiped his brow.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
His cutting tone made me draw back. “At Rainy’s Fourth of July party. I told you. Remember?”
“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t answer your phone. What about a party could be so distracting that you forget about the rest of the world?”
Oh, Dad. You do not want to know the answer to that question.
Immediately, I began to humorously play out exactly what the scene would look like if I were to tell my father about the drugs and sex on the yacht. Whatever his reaction might be, it would likely provide my friends and me with a story to laugh over for years.
“Didn’t you see my missed calls?” he pressed.
“Well… yeah.” There had been several missed calls from him when I’d woken up that morning, but no messages.
He stomped past me and pushed open the side door leading out of the garage. “I assume you’ve at least been on Twitter, so you know something about what’s going on.”
That one actually hurt. For the most part, my dad and I lived separate lives. And even though he could be distanced and preoccupied, very rarely did his treatment of me ever actually come close to scathing.
“You don’t have to be so mean to me,” I said, trying to quell the shake in my voice. “Just because of some stupid rumor…” I followed him up the little stone walkway to the left wing of the house.
He spun around to face me. “It’s not a rumor, Grace.”
Wrecked (Crystal Book Billionaires) Page 1