The Reluctant Billionaire (Island Escapes Book 2)

by Caitlyn Lynch

  At last, she stepped off the late afternoon boat from Hamilton Island and headed for her cabin, feet dragging with weariness. Falling face-down onto her bed still in her designer finery, she fell into blissful unconsciousness.

  A loud rapping on her door woke her up. Groaning, Nessa pushed herself off the bed and headed for the door to open it.

  “Oh. It’s you,” she said to Luke. Holding up a hand to forestall whatever he was about to say, she told him, “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to get back to work, okay?”

  Luke shrugged after staring at her in silence for a moment. “Fine by me. It’s nearly ten, though. Are you working today or is Eric covering the pool bar?”

  She’d slept for almost sixteen hours! Startled, Nessa nodded. “I’m working.” Looking down at herself, realizing she was still wearing the designer gown, she said, “I’ll just take a shower and head on down there.”

  ***

  It felt good to step behind her bar again, even if her bottles were all in a muddle, she saw as she unlocked the grille covering them and pulled it back. Shaking her head, she started sorting them out. Why on earth was the Bacardi on the top shelf? She used it every five minutes making cocktails. Putting it back front and center in its usual place on the lowest shelf, and beginning to sort the other bottles, she whirled around as a voice said, “Hey, Nessa.”

  It couldn’t be… but it was, it was indeed Jace, leaning on the edge of the bar, wearing his old T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out, his sunglasses pushed up on top of his head, a good day’s worth of stubble gracing his jaw.

  The gin bottle Nessa was holding slid from nerveless fingers and hit the rubber mat at her feet, fortunately not smashing. She stood rooted to the spot, eyes on Jace, unable to believe what she was seeing.

  “Don’t be throwing the booze around, now.” He straightened up and came around the bar, picking up the gin and putting it back on the shelf. Turning back to look down into Nessa’s stunned face, he pleaded, “Say something, Nessa.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked numbly.

  “I’m home.”

  “What?”

  “This is home, now. The villa is, anyway. I’m no longer working for Hunter Enterprises; I’m starting a private architecture consultancy and design business, based right here.”

  She couldn’t make a sound come out, but her lips shaped the word, “Why?” and Jace understood.

  “Because of you. You made me see that the life I was living was slowly killing me, that I had to make a change, find what I really wanted and go after it. This is what I really want to do, Nessa, and you,” he lifted a shaking hand, tracing a finger gently down her cheek, “you are who I really want to be with. No high society lifestyle, just you and me and the things that make both of us happy.”

  “The girl I saw you with in New York…?”

  “I’d just met her and she clamped on like a leech. I couldn’t ditch her fast enough. I still can’t believe you really came.” He was still touching her, his hand curling around the back of her neck to draw her closer. “I barely got a glimpse of you, but you looked amazing.”

  Nessa laughed shakily. “I felt a fool. I didn’t fit, there.”

  “You fit with me, and that’s all I care about. We were both square pegs in round holes in our old lives, but put two square pegs together and you get… a really nice rectangle… okay, that analogy fell down a bit there.”

  “I like rectangles,” she said nonsensically, but Jace’s smile lit up as though she’d said three quite different words, and maybe in a way she had.

  “I like rectangles too,” he agreed, drawing her closer and bending his head until their lips met in a thoroughly satisfying kiss.

  ~ The End ~

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I hope you enjoyed reading The Reluctant Billionaire. I wanted to write a story where the hero discovers that all the money in the world can’t buy him happiness. Sometimes, our path lies another way. If you enjoyed reading Jace and Nessa’s story, please do take a moment to leave a review!

  Now, read on for a sneak peek at Her Fake Island Wedding, the next book in the Island Escapes series!

  Her Fake Island Wedding

  Chapter One

  “It’s a disaster,” Lucy declared melodramatically, sliding her lunch tray onto the table. It was lunchtime, and Sunfish Island Resort’s staff cafeteria was busy, staff members hurrying in and out to grab a bite in between tasks.

  Lucy had joined a large group of friends, and several of them looked up at her words.

  “What’s up, girlfriend?” Olivia, the resort’s marketing manager, asked with an amused smile. Her American accent was just one of a dozen different accents in the room; although the majority of the resort’s staff were Australian, there were plenty of other nationalities represented.

  “You look as though someone stole your puppy,” Nessa, the resort’s best bartender and Lucy’s fellow Englishwoman, put in.

  “Worse,” Lucy said dismally. “My mother’s coming to visit next week.”

  That provoked laughter around the table. She scowled impartially at all of them.

  “You’ve only been here a month,” Olivia pointed out. “And why is she coming now? Did you warn her this is the hot season?”

  “I did, and she says she’s already booked her flights because she got them cheap. You don’t understand what a disaster this is, guys. She’ll spend the whole visit pestering to know whether I’ve found a man yet.” Lucy poked at her salad with a fork miserably. Her mother had always been both overprotective and demanding with her only child, and now that Lucy had turned thirty, the insistence that she needed to hurry up and find a man to father her children before it was too late had only intensified.

  At the same time, her mother liked to denigrate Lucy’s judgement, always telling her that she had terrible taste in men and she mustn’t rush things or she’d pick the wrong man and be literally left holding the baby.

  It took everything Lucy had to not retort “Like you were?” every time her mother trotted out that particular criticism. Escape from her mother’s constant nagging was just one of the reasons why she’d applied for the research position at Sunfish Island’s marine biology centre, and actually being awarded the post was literally a dream come true.

  “Is she really that bad?” Nessa asked sympathetically, and Lucy raised her eyes to meet the bartender’s.

  “You have no idea,” she said dismally. “I knew she’d come out, especially when the contract actually included four weeks’ free accommodation for visitors, but I really didn’t think it’d be so soon.”

  The few blissful weeks she’d spent on Sunfish Island had been among the best of her life. From the day she arrived, she’d been warmly welcomed by her fellow marine biologists and the staff of the wider resort alike. Her job, studying the effects of coral replanting and regeneration on damaged parts of the magnificent Great Barrier Reef, was quite literally her dream and had been ever since she was a kid picking up shells and starfish on the beach near her childhood home at Dover.

  “We’ll help distract her,” Olivia offered. “Won’t we, Cory?”

  Her boyfriend, Sunfish’s activities director, looked up from his lunch with a nod and a smile. Cory Gillette was one of the best-looking men Lucy had ever met, tall, blond and athletic, he looked like a fourth Hemsworth brother. And he wasn’t even the only one around the table who would fit right in with that famously attractive family.

  “Does she dive?” Bryce was the resort’s resident dive instructor, and had partnered with Lucy numerous times on her reef dives. “I can put her on the daily schedule, no charge… she’ll be too tired to nag you.”

  Lucy smiled at him. If Bryce was only a few years older, she thought wistfully, she’d have made a serious pass at him, but he was only twenty-four and looked even younger. Blond, tanned and beautiful, she just had to appreciate him visually.

  “Unfortunately, she’s terrified of open water. Convinced
there are sharks in it.”

  “Well, there are sharks in it,” Bryce said equably. “Mostly only the little reef sharks around here, though.”

  “Somehow I don’t think that would reassure her!”

  Bryce grinned cheerfully at her, and Lucy found herself smiling back. It was difficult to stay down around Bryce for long; he was too relentlessly happy.

  “We’ll just have to put you on the dive schedule every day, then,” he said.

  “Then I’d be accused of avoiding her. No,” she sighed. “There’s no winning with my mother, not unless I produce a fiancé out of thin air and promise to start popping out babies nine months to the day after the wedding.”

  “That’s the solution, then,” Cory piped up, a wicked glint in his eyes. “We’ll find you a fake fiancé!”

  Loved the sample? Look out for Her Fake Island Wedding, coming soon from Caitlyn Lynch!

  Author Notes

  I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it! Stay tuned for more fantastic romantic action coming your way soon!

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