Alaskan Alpha: 3-Book Bundle (Books 1-3)
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2015 by Melissa F. Hart. All rights reserved worldwide.
No part of this book may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written consent of the author/publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
http://www.melissafhart.com/
Books in the series
Selena - Volume 1
Conner - Volume 2
Mates - Volume 3
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Table of Contents
Selena
Synopsis
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
Conner
Synopsis
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
Mates
Synopsis
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
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Selena
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Synopsis
Selena Ortiz is a twenty-seven-year-old woman making her way to the top of a man’s business in a man’s world. She lives in a posh Manhattan apartment and works in a towering Manhattan building. She has a boyfriend she loves assumes she will end up marrying. Things in Selena’s world are good until suddenly…they aren’t.
Her boss tells her that she’s being transferred to Alaska. She has to leave in a matter of days, and she’ll be expected to live there. The only thing that Selena knows about Alaska is that it’s cold and it’s desolate. She doesn’t want to go, but unless she wants to lose her job, she has no choice.
Selena says good-bye to her boyfriend and her family and she gets on a plane, having no idea what she is getting into. She’s picked up at the airport and taken to a strange little town that is inhabited by people unlike any she has ever met before. Most especially Conner. He’s the man whose business is being destroyed by her company, and he’s not happy that she’s there.
Handsome, brash, rude…Conner is everything Selena dislikes in a man…Or so she thought.
***
CHAPTER ONE
“Alaska? Really, Daniel?” Selena was looking at her boss like he had two heads. She wasn’t even trying to control her facial expressions the way she usually did when he said something crazy. After all, a girl had to work. But now he was telling her that they needed her to go live in Alaska. Who lived in Alaska? Eskimos and guys who want to risk their lives on fishing boats, that’s who. Huh uh, no way…Alaska? He’s clearly lost his mind.
“Yes, Selena. Really. We sell fishing equipment. There’s a huge fishing market in Alaska. It makes perfect sense that the company would want to expand there.”
Selena was an executive for a company called Lloyd Enterprises, working for the subsidiary company called I Dream of Fishing. She worked in an office in Manhattan. She hadn’t been attracted to the company because of the fishing…at all. As a matter of fact, when she had gone for the interview three years prior she had only known three things.
The first was that the corporation she was currently working for in the cosmetics industry was under investigation by the FDA, and in trouble with PETA for testing on animals. She needed to get out of there before it all unraveled.
The second thing she knew was that Lloyd Enterprises was one of Forbes top twenty companies in the United States. That likely meant high executive salaries and high end bonuses even for a subsidiary.
The third thing she had known was that it was in Manhattan.
She had lived in New York her entire life. Her family lived in Queens, and she had rented a nice, comfortable apartment in Manhattan with a brilliant view of the city. She had a nice boyfriend who was an executive with the Apple Corporation, and she thought that sooner or later he was going to ask her to marry him. Although she wasn’t thrilled about the idea, she also knew that she would probably say yes. She came from a big, traditional Puerto Rican family, and although her career was important, marrying and having children rivaled it as well. So now, as her boss offered her a raise, and a house, and huge year-end bonus to move, all she could hear was “Alaska.”
“I, um…Daniel…I just don’t know about moving to …Alaska? Isn’t there someone else who can go? What about Bart? He loves to hunt and fish and all of that stuff. Why not send him to Alaska, and I’ll pick up the slack here?”
“Selena, Bart has a wife and kids in school. He can’t just uproot his family. We need someone with more freedom.”
“But, I have a family, too.”
“Not one that will have to go with you. Listen, Selena, I didn’t want to have to strong arm you into this, but I don’t want to lose you either.”
“Lose me, Daniel? Are they going to fire me if I refuse to relocate?”
“No, but if you refuse to go, and Bart refuses to go, they’ll have to hire someone who is willing. They aren’t looking to hire anyone right now. I can promise you that before they do that, they will look at downsizing here in New York.”
“So the bottom line is I go to Alaska and make a lot of money freezing my ass off in the wilderness, or I stay in New York and look for a new job?”
“I wish it were different,” Daniel said.
“When would I have to go?” she asked.
“They would like you to be there by Monday.” he said.
Selena laughed, but then she saw the look on his face. He wasn’t kidding.
“You realize that is in six days…right? I’m supposed to pack up my entire life and move to…the white wilderness in six days? This is cruel and unusual punishment, and I’m not even certain what it is I’m being punished for.”
“You’re not being punished at all, Selena. This is a big promotion for you…an enormous raise.” Daniel was trying hard to make this sound like a good thing, but Selena wasn’t buying it.
“I’m taking the rest of the week off,” she said. Good, Selena. Be firm with him just prior to kissing his ass and packing up and moving to freaking Nowheresville.
“That’s fine,” he said. “We’ll need to just spend a few hours one day getting you familiarized with the company we are absorbing and your staff on that end.”
“Absorbing? That’s a nice way to put it, Daniel. Why is it that in this fishing paradise, this company was financially strong enough to fight over a takeover?”
“They tried. It took Lloyd three years to get them to finally cave. And don’t say “take-over” okay? This company belonged to a good friend of Lloyd’s at one time. His son runs it now since his and his wife’s…untimely deaths,” Daniel told her. Lloyd was the founder and CEO of I Dream of Fishing. He was also one of Forbes 500 top ten wealthiest people. “Lloyd doesn’t want this to seem hostile.”
Lloyd had been born to parents who both came from New York “old money.” His mother’s family owned five-star hotels all across the city as well as in Hawaii and had recently opened one in France. His father’s family was in the yacht business. His great-grandfather had designed and built one back in the ‘40s for some famous actor or other, and that was it. The family began designing and building yachts for “the beautiful people.” Lloyd worked for his father for a while and from that, built his own empire. He had started I Dream of Fishing because of his own interest in deep sea and ice fishing.
“These people aren’t going to be happy that I’m there, are they?” Selena asked. It was one more nail in the coffin of the job she thought would skyrocket her into the big leagues.
“Doubtful, at first.” Daniel grinned. “But that’s one more reason why we picked you. You have such a way with people. You’ll have them eating out of your hand in no time.”
Selena rolled her eyes. It was too late for flattery. She got up from the plush chair she was sitting in. “I’m going home to call my family…and my boyfriend and tell them the good news.”
“Okay, Selena. Thanks,” Daniel said, as if she’d had a choice. Selena didn’t respond. What was she supposed to say, No problem? You’re welcome? Don’t worry about it? None of them fit.
When Selena got home, the first thing she did was pour herself a glass of chardonnay. She needed a minute before she had to start breaking this news. She came from a tight-knit Puerto Rican family that was not going to be even a little bit happy about this. Her father had nearly died of a heart attack when she moved from Queens to Manhattan.
She thought about her boyfriend then. Tony was Italian, also from New York, and also very close to his family. There was no way she would ask him to leave them, although she knew he would if she did. She loved Tony. They had been together for five years now, and she was comfortable with him. At twenty-seven, it was strange to say, but Tony was the most serious relationship she had ever been in, and the only person she’d ever had sex with.
After they had been dating for over a year, Selena had asked him one night, point blank, “Aren’t you going to try and get me in bed?”
Tony had looked shocked. “I-I thought you were a virgin?”
“I am, but we’ve been together a long time, and we’re both over twenty-one. Wouldn’t that be the logical next step?”
“Um, yeah,” he said. “Okay.” He had started undressing her then, very awkwardly, and she realized that Tony was a virgin, too. Once he’d gotten her clothes off, he didn’t seem sure what to do next. After a lot of thrusting and grunting, she felt him climax and then he collapsed on top of her, passing out within minutes.
As he had snored, Selena had pleasured herself until she, too, reached her climax. It became sort of an on-going ritual for them, and Tony rarely deviated from the missionary position no matter how hard she tried. The one thing she remembered most about that first time was that she had lain there after bringing herself to orgasm and wondered what all the fuss over sex was about. If masturbation made you feel better than intercourse….
Well, she had figured out after a year of online reading and watching quite a few movies when she was alone that ranged between soft and hard core porn, that they just weren’t really doing it right. She had actually tried to get Tony to watch a porn movie with her one night, hoping he would learn something. He had blushed bright red however and acted uncomfortable through the entire thing. Selena was sexually frustrated, but she would never cheat on Tony. It wasn’t how she had been raised. Eventually she discovered some pretty fantastic sex toys online and spent a little money (quite a bit) on things to put in her locked box. She kept having mediocre to bad sex with Tony, and then when she was alone, or he was asleep, she would bring herself to a mind-numbing orgasm.
After she finished the glass of Chardonnay, she called him. “Hi, baby,” she said when he answered. “How was your day?”
“It was fine.” He never complained…about anything. He never got mad, he never yelled or cursed. Sometimes it actually drove Selena crazy, and she would try to goad him into a fight…but to no avail.
“Mine kind of sucked,” she said.
“I’m sorry. What happened?” he said, more concerned about her day than he was his own. See why she couldn’t cheat on him?
“They gave me a promotion, and a raise.”
“Oh, um…is that bad?” he asked.
“No, that’s not the bad part. The bad part is that the job is in Alaska, and they expect me to start next week.” There was silence on the other end of the line. Selena wished she knew what he was thinking. He had a hard time expressing his feelings and Selena usually had to try and pull it out of him. Finally, she said, “Are you still there?”
“Yeah, um… yes. I’m sorry, babe. Alaska? That’s…”
“Insane?” she asked.
He laughed. “Yeah, a little. You have to go?”
She told him what Daniel said.
When she finished, he said, “So they won’t fire you for not going, but they’ll lay you off because they won’t have a job for you here any longer?”
“You got it, babe.”
“I don’t even know what to say to that,” he said.
“I know. Me neither. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t go,” he told her suddenly. It was out of character for him to tell her not to do anything. He had pretty much agreed with everything she had said or done for the duration of their relationship.
“I have to go,” she said.
“No, you don’t. You can live with me until you find another job. You’re fantastic at what you do. This is New York…”
“Baby, if I quit this job because they want me to relocate, I may as well kiss my career goodbye. You can’t get to be CFO of a national corporation and refuse to be flexible.”
“CFO? They’re offering you Chief Financial Officer of the entire corporation?” he asked.
“Yeah, crazy huh? That and the huge salary are the only positives about this whole mess. But you know that even though New York is a huge place, news of me passing on an offer like this will travel like wildfire, and they’ll use it against me. Being a twenty-seven-year-old Puerto Rican woman was already enough to overcome.”
“Selena…I don’t want you to go.”
“I know, babe. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll come,” he said.
She hadn’t realized until that exact minute that leaving her wishy-washy boyfriend behind without having to break up and hurt his feelings was on the positive list. She loved Tony…but she had been craving more for a long time. As bad as she hated to admit it…and she never would out loud…it might be her opportunity to discover some of that life-altering sex she’d been reading so much about. After all, men did outnumber women in Alaska, and weren’t those outdoors types usually pretty masculine?”
“No, Tony,” she said. “You have your job and your family here. We’ll still see each other. I’ll be making a lot of money, so we can travel back and forth as much as we like.”
“It won’t be the same,” he’d said.
“I know,” she told him, not saying that it just might be a good thing. After she hung up, she had another glass of wine and then took a bubble bath. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, she took the biggest and most life-like toy she had out of the locked box under the bed where she kept it. While she was in the tub, she celebrated the possibilities of things to come.
***
By Monday, Selena could no longer see any of the good points she had decided were there last week. As she boarded the first-class flight, all she could think was that she was going from living in one of the most glamorous and fabulous cities in the world, to a scene from Little House on the Prairie, or better yet, the room above the bar in A Perfect Storm. She should have listened to Tony as he begged her to stay. They’d even had sex twice…in one night. It was still bad sex, but it was the first time he had gone for two in one night.
Her mother had cried for three days solid. Her father wouldn’t speak to her at all after telling her in Spanish that she was “ruining the family,” and her four sisters and one brother all looked at her accusingly every time she was around, for breaking their mother and father’s heart. But, she had gone on with her plans nonetheless. Although the idea of living in Alaska was somewhat repellant to her, there was something about the whole situation that excited her, even though she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what that was.
It was too late anyway, even if she wanted to change her mind. S
he had given up her apartment, hired movers, packed her suitcases and said goodbye to everyone. She wondered if this would be worth all that she had given up.
CHAPTER TWO
Selena stepped off the plane holding her carry-on bag and seriously considering going straight up to the first ticket terminal she saw and buying a ticket back to New York. She was tired, scared, annoyed and she didn’t want to play anymore. She followed the signs to baggage claim. There she saw a guy about her age with hair so blond it was almost white, and crystal blue eyes. He was dressed in jeans and a blue flannel shirt. He looked like he was ready to chop wood. His sign said, Selena Ortiz, I Dream of Fishing. She gave him a little wave, but then continued on to baggage pick-up. When she got back, he was still holding the sign. He must have thought she was just being friendly.
“Hello? I’m Selena.”
“Oh, hey,” the guy said, putting down the sign. “Welcome to Anchorage.”
“Thanks,” she said. She looked around the airport. It was no JFK, that’s for sure. “Are you Conner?”
“I wish.” The guy grinned. “No, I’m Sam. My friends call me Slam.”
“Hmm, that’s…interesting,” she said with a smile.
“I’m a hockey player.”
“Of course you are,” Selena said.
He pushed the dolly with her bags, and she followed him out to a four-wheel drive SUV. Selena was pleasantly surprised to note that it was a clear, sunny day and the temperature had to be close to seventy degrees. She hadn’t really known what to expect, but the only thing she knew about Alaska was that it was cold…at least most of the time.
Alaskan Alpha: 3-Book Bundle (Books 1-3) Page 1