The Wedding Gift (Colorado Billionaires Book 7)

by Regina Duke

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Blurb

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Regina's Books

  Regina's Bio

  THE WEDDING GIFT

  by

  Regina Duke

  The Wedding Gift

  Copyright © 2017 Linda White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from Regina Duke.

  Published by RD Books

  United States of America

  Electronic Edition: August 2017

  Digital ISBN 978-1-944752-11-8

  This book is a work of fiction and all characters exist solely in the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any references to places, events or locales are used in a fictitious manner.

  Digital formatting by StevieDeInk, stevie1@steviedeink.com

  Edited by Marian Kelly, RavensGateEditing.com

  Cover design by StevieDeInk

  Cover photo ©yurmary - Fotolia

  When Kenzie Shane left the farm, she made it clear she’d never be back. Five years later, her life in ruins, she takes impulsive revenge on her ex-boyfriend before returning to help her parents, hoping they never learn the truth about her life in Denver.

  Clayton Masters thinks a fake bride will earn him an early inheritance, but things get complicated when he meets Kenzie and falls in love for real. Now he must help Kenzie escape her past so they can be together. Will he go for the money or choose true love? Find out in USA Today Bestseller Regina Duke’s latest book in her Colorado Billionaires series.

  The Wedding Gift is #7 in the Colorado Billionaires series.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Outside Eagle’s Toe, Colorado...

  On Saturday morning, Kenzie Shane pulled the classic cherry-red Mustang as close to the lip of the old marble quarry as she dared and turned off the engine. The setting October sun glinted off the new paint job. She ran her hands over the restored leather seats and squeezed the steering wheel. Her plan had kept her going, all the way from Denver. But now she was wavering. The car was all that was left. And she had paid for it, even though she didn’t realize it was happening until the very end.

  The sinking sun was forcing her hand. She pulled a screwdriver out of her bag, exited the car, removed the license plates, shoved them in her purse, and dropped it a few feet away. Removing the license plates had hardened her resolve. She opened the trunk and lifted her suitcase out. Her mind watched her body unload the car, as if her limbs were beyond her control. She fumbled for her cell phone and prepared to take a photo of the car in pristine condition. With phone in hand, she slipped back into the driver’s seat long enough to start the engine. She left it in neutral, so it rocked a bit as she got out, and a frisson of fear raced along her spine. She didn’t want to get dragged over the edge with the car.

  Trembling slightly, she stepped away to breathe and give herself one last chance to examine her decision. All she could see was Todd’s face, a film reel of his betrayals over the last year. She clenched her jaw and tucked her phone into the back pocket of her jeans. Then she moved to the back of the Mustang and began pushing it toward the edge of the quarry. Once she got it moving, it practically leapt to its own death. She fell to her hands and knees at the lip of the quarry and watched the magnificent classic car bounce down the cliff. At one point it struck an outcrop of rock and the back end flew over the front. It landed upside down at the bottom of the eighty-foot pit.

  She listened carefully. Silence. The abrupt collision with the ground below had killed the engine, not to mention the other damage. Fists clenched, she shouted into the looming night.

  “I’ll never trust another man as long as I live!”

  Live…live…live. The word echoed back at her from the other side of the quarry, as if urging her to get on with her life.

  Kenzie stood as close to the edge as she dared, snapping another photo of the smashed Mustang. She toyed with the notion of finding her way to the bottom and getting better shots of the destruction, but the setting sun had already pushed shadows across the immense quarry. By the time she found a way down, it would be completely dark. She would have to settle for what she could photograph from the rim.

  She replayed the events of the morning as the shadows swallowed what was left of the Mustang….

  Todd woke her up at seven by banging on the door of her bedroom. Jerked out of sleep, she stumbled to open the door. “What do you want now? Haven’t you done enough damage?”

  “I’m just reminding you that you have to get out of the house by noon.”

  “Gee thanks, because hey, I guess I can’t tell time on my own.”

  Todd smirked at her. “You’re so dumb,” he taunted. “You were dumb enough to let me take over your finances. So maybe you can’t tell time either. But I want you out of here by noon.”

  “What’s the big deal?” asked Kenzie. “It’s not like you get to stay. Thanks to you, it’s all gone. Thanks to you we’ve lost everything.”

  Todd actually had the nerve to laugh in her face. “Oh no,” he said. “I haven’t lost everything. It was your name on all the credit cards. We’re being evicted, but I don’t care. You’re the one who wanted a house.”

  Kenzie looked around and grabbed the first thing she could find to throw at him. It was a hiking boot. It caught him square on the shoulder. It surprised him, but he recovered quickly. He laughed again, taunting her. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  Kenzie stood there, fuming, and glared at him. How could she ever have thought this man was attractive? How could she ever have felt any love for him? She’d been so blinded by her attraction that she’d never even noticed his random acts of cruelty toward other people. She’d brushed off the fact that several times in her presence, he had dressed people down for no reason. She’d ignored the fact that riding in the car with him was always unpleasant because of the foul language he would hurl at other drivers. The turning point came when he showed her a semi-automatic gun that he claimed he’d purchased illegally on the street. She knew then that things were not going to end well.

  During their year together, his drinking had increased, along with his spending. He always had cash and enjoyed flashing it under the noses of the bikers who came by for beer every weekend. But it was only recently that she discovered he was not spending his own money. He’d taken out credit cards in her name and ran up high balances on all of them. She didn’t find out about it until the first collection agency began calling. Then came the second and the third. They kept calling and calling until she was at her wits’ end. They never believed her when she said she didn’t have a credit card because, of course, there were credit cards with her name on them being used almost every single day.

  She stared daggers at Todd. “You have done everything in your power to ruin my life. I hope you reap exactly what you have sown.”

  “Oh, I’m so scared. Is that some kind of curse?
You can’t even come up with a decent string of swear words.” Todd shook his head and clucked at her. “Too bad you’re so darn good-looking,” he said. “That’s what kept me around. That and the fact that you’re too stupid for your own good. How come you trusted me?” He sneered at her as if her naiveté was responsible for all his wrongdoing. “I was over you months ago, but hey, a man needs an income.”

  He spoke the words as if everything was her fault for being silly enough to actually trust the man she was foolish enough to fall in love with.

  Todd had used cash advances from those fraudulent credit cards to restore his classic Mustang. He’d stalled her for months, assuring her he was paying the mortgage on their Denver house, when in reality, he was funneling that money as well into his beloved car. He kept it locked away in the tiny one-car garage out back.

  Evidently, he forgot he’d given her a set of keys. When he first acquired it, the Mustang needed everything…new paint, tires, brakes, even a new engine block… in other words it was completely undrivable. He just wanted her to hang on to the spares. She’d tucked the keys in her purse, never expecting to use them.

  “I’ve got some business to attend to,” said Todd, hefting a hammer in one hand. “I’m coming back at noon to get my car. Don’t be here.” He punctuated his last sentence by poking a finger in her direction. Then he turned and headed downstairs. Every step was punctuated by a smash of the hammer as he punched holes in the walls.

  Kenzie didn’t move until she heard the door slam. She peeked out the window and watched him drop the hammer on the ground before opening the combination lock on the garage door. He went inside. A few moments, later he emerged, re-locked the door, got on his motorcycle, and roared down the driveway.

  Two weeks earlier, her mother had called and asked her to come home and help out at the ranch. That was her window of escape. She hated the idea of moving home. But she no longer had a place to live. And there were still the debt collectors hounding her. She had no job, no money, no car, and no hope.

  But she did have keys to the Mustang sitting in the garage. She slipped into her jeans and a clean tee shirt. Her suitcase was already packed. Socks and hiking boots, and she was ready to leave. The Mustang was Todd’s prized possession. When he needed to drive around town, he used his motorcycle. He didn’t want to get a ding or a scrape on that beautiful Mustang. The day her mother called, she’d dug in her purse to answer her cell phone, and her fingers had touched those keys. In that fraction of a second, she knew what she was going to do. She’d never done anything like it in her life, but then, a year ago, she’d been a totally different person. Todd had changed almost everything about her. When she met him, she was an optimistic young woman with a fresh college degree, ready to conquer the world. Now, when she looked inside herself, she couldn’t find a shred of optimism. All she saw was pain and anger and the darkness brought on by his betrayal. She shouldered her purse and pulled her suitcase behind her, thump, thump, thump, down the stairs. She was numb. Not even the new holes in the the walls elicited any feeling. She pulled her suitcase out to the garage. She might as well have been sleepwalking. She picked up the hammer Todd had dropped and smashed the lock. She didn’t feel a single pang of guilt as she opened the garage, put her suitcase in the trunk, and backed the Mustang down the driveway.

  She drove to Eagle’s Toe, where she saw the “Help Wanted” sign in the window of the Feed and Grain. After a brief interview—Taylor, the new owner, seemed nice, if a bit flaky—she returned to the Mustang and emptied the registration and insurance information from the glove box. It only took another half an hour to reach the quarry….

  Now that the deed was done, all the fight went out of her. Weakened by emotional turmoil, she trudged toward her purse, stabbing out a number on the screen of her phone. She lifted it to her ear, waiting for her call to be answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mom. I’m almost home. Could you come pick me up?”

  “I thought you were driving down.”

  “I had a little car trouble. I’m on the highway, near the old Patterson Quarry turn-off.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Kenzie ended the call and extended the handle of her wheeled suitcase. She looped the grip of her purse over it and pulled what was left of her life behind her toward the highway.

  Meanwhile, somewhere in east Texas…

  Clayton Masters stood over his father’s ebony desk and pounded his index finger against its shiny surface. “You can’t do this, Dad. It’s not fair!”

  Plano Masters leaned back in his oversized leather chair and stared at his son through half-lowered lids. It was Clayton’s least favorite expression, and every time his father did it, he wanted to open those eyes. Maybe if he emptied that pitcher of iced tea in Dad’s lap…that might do it. But he wasn’t suicidal, and with his old man, the expression “My father will kill me” didn’t sound too far outside the realm of possibility.

  Plano drawled, “It’s all in my name, Clayton. I can handle it any way I want.”

  “But you said yourself that Mother was out of her mind before…before…”

  Plano steepled his long elegant fingers in front of his chin. “Before she committed suicide. I know it’s hard to say out loud, but—”

  “Obviously not for you,” snapped Clayton, pushing his luck a bit. His sun-streaked blond hair swept back from his forehead with a grace and a wave his siblings all envied. His green eyes were the color of kiwis, his complexion was smooth and sported a natural hint of a tan year round. He looked like a male model, from his sensual mouth to his genetic gift of Masters muscle, the kind that other men had to work at for years.

  “I will ignore that remark,” rumbled his father, “given your current state of agitation.”

  Clayton paced to and fro in front of the desk, his fists clenched. “What about Austin?” he asked. “He got married summer before last. Doesn’t that satisfy this arcane codicil? And if Mom wasn’t in her right mind—”

  Plano cut him off. “Enough of that. This was her wish from the day you were born. Long before her mental health deteriorated, she insisted that this be part of your legacy. As for your brother, Austin was the youngest of you three. This codicil applies to you, the eldest. And frankly, I think your mother was spiritually guided when she put this in place. For God’s sake, Clayton, you’re nearly thirty. Are you planning to spend your whole life partying on an allowance from me? It’s as if your mother knew from day one that she’d have to insist on something like this.”

  “Spiritually guided?” Clayton snorted. “Don’t you mean manipulated by our godmother?”

  Plano slammed a palm down on his desk. “You leave Lulamae out of this!”

  His outburst startled Clayton, and it took a few moments for him to reclaim his composure. He shifted his gaze away from his father and let some cockiness drain from his voice. “You’ve never fully explained her relationship to the family.”

  “Relationship?” He made a disgusted noise. “Lulamae was your Aunt Polly’s friend, and she didn’t introduce me to your mother. Polly did. And I knew from the first moment that she was destined to be mine.” His eyes glistened with a distant memory.

  Clayton finally dropped into an overstuffed chair. He never really thought his father would talk about Lulamae, but he’d needed something to defuse his anger. He knew that mentioning Lulamae would send Dad down memory lane. Lulamae was godmother to Clayton and his brothers, Austin and Dallas, and she played the same role in the lives of their cousins, Thor and Ulysses Garrison. Maybe he should ask Aunt Polly a few questions. It might shed some light on this ridiculous requirement for the transference of the family wealth.

  Clayton wasn’t sure what to make of his father’s refusal to talk about Lulamae. The woman had power over their family and he suspected it somehow stemmed from his mother’s suicide. Meanwhile he and his siblings had benefited from having a billionaire godmother. Birthdays were always delightful. She’d gone out of her w
ay to make special visits to them when his father sent them off to boarding school for a while.

  But in spite of all the wonderful things Lulamae represented, she also brought mystery and drama into their lives every time she showed up. Clayton wondered how much she had to do with this ridiculous requirement about the money he thought should have been his on his twenty-first birthday.

  He snorted at his own question. It wasn’t even a matter of whether she was involved, just how deeply. She was entangled in so many aspects of their lives. And yet, none of the cousins knew why. Clayton was sure he wasn’t the only one to ponder these matters. Maybe he should go visit the Garrison side of the family. He had no interest in getting married, but neither had his cousin Thor before Ashley came into his life.

  Thor’s wedding had been fun. He chuckled to himself. Ulysses had drunk way too much, and so had Rudy. Those two were characters, that’s for sure.

  Although, since Uly met and married Belle, he’d settled down a lot. Rumor had it, they were getting ready to adopt a baby.

  Hmmm. What was it about that little Colorado town? Two cousins and his brother Austin had gone there single and ended up married. Yes, he should definitely go. If nothing else, he could ask for advice about how to deal with his father’s demands. Didn’t Austin’s marriage count for anything? He couldn’t remember anyone ever pressuring Austin to get married. He just went and did it. On the other hand, Austin was still receiving the same piddling allowance that Clayton was getting. He had used his to set up his own photography studio in Eagle’s Toe.

  Maybe his father had been pressuring Austin after all, and Clayton just didn’t hear about it. Either way, Austin ended up married. What was her name? Erin, that was it. She was a school teacher or something.

  Clayton realized his father was ignoring him completely, engrossed in his investment portfolio. No point in hanging around. He’d already received the speech about how his allowance was big enough, yada, yada, yada. He said, “Bye, Dad.” But Plano didn’t seem to hear him. So he headed for the front drive where he slipped behind the wheel of his sleek, red Maserati Granturismo and let its elegance wrap him in the automotive equivalent of a lover’s arms. If he started driving now, he could be in Colorado in ten hours. Sooner, if he ignored the speed limit and his luck held. His birthday loomed. The big three-oh. And if he didn’t cave to his father’s demands, he would live like a peasant on the dole until the old man died.