Montana Seduction

by Jules Bennett

  She glanced from his computer screen to him as she propped those long bare legs up on the corner of his desk.

  Just the sight of her had his gut tightening, his heart pumping faster. He leaned against the door and closed it with his back. She didn’t have on boots today like she typically did with her dresses. No, today she had on heels meant for the bedroom and a little red suit that looked like it was made of wrapping paper it was so damn tight...in all the right places.

  If he needed to hire someone to torture guests, she’d be the woman for the job. She was killing him.

  “Your minion gave me the message,” she stated. “Was that some type of a joke?”

  Dane hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and shook his head. “Not a joke at all. I just didn’t confront you myself because I knew you needed time.”

  “Time?” Those legs slid off his desk with grace and Stella came to her feet. She smoothed her skirt down to mid-thigh and circled the desk. “You proposed marriage through a damn letter that my attorney delivered from your attorney.”

  Dane swallowed. “I guess the proposal could use some work, but I figured if I asked in person you’d punch me—and then you’d say no. I can take a punch, but I didn’t want you to turn me down.”

  Stella stared across the room. With her brows drawn in, her hands on her hips, her jacket pulling across pert breasts...she was damn breathtaking.

  “Turn you down?” she repeated. “Of course I’m turning you down. You’re insane. I’m not marrying you.”

  “Did you read the entire letter?”

  “The part where I’d be part owner of Mirage? Yes.” She licked her lips, probably not knowing how arousing that was. Now was certainly not the time to bring it up. “I don’t know where this came from, but I’m not marrying you. If you feel guilty for taking all of this from me, that’s on you. You can’t just ask someone to marry you because your feelings are all out of whack.”

  Dane took a step toward her, then another, until they stood toe-to-toe. “You could’ve ripped up the letter and ignored me,” he told her, reaching to brush a strand of hair from her cheek. He let his fingertips feather across her jaw as he continued. “You could’ve texted or even called. Yet here you are.”

  “I needed to—”

  “See me?” he asked, sliding his other hand up to frame her face. “Damn, I’ve missed you.”

  Stella closed her eyes. “Don’t say that. We are nothing, Dane.”

  He remained silent, waiting for her to finish the silent war no doubt waging in her head. After a moment, her lids fluttered and she focused on him.

  “You don’t want to marry me, you want to sleep with me,” she told him.

  Dane couldn’t suppress the smile. “Why can’t I do both?”

  On a groan, Stella backed away and shook her head. “Because this is reality and the reality is I can’t be with someone who lied to and deceived me.”

  Dane pulled in a shaky breath. He deserved that, but the words still hurt. He reminded himself that she was here, in his office, so not all hope was lost.

  “You came to my house and slept with me,” he started. “I know you claimed you were using me and it was just physical, but that’s not the Stella I know. You love me.”

  Her eyes widened, her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She quickly snapped her lips shut and set her jaw.

  “Even after you realized who I was,” he went on, “you still wanted me. That’s not ego, that’s facts.”

  Stella shrugged. “So what? Yes, I fell in love with you, but that’s not real. I fell in love with the person I thought you were. I don’t even know the real you.”

  “You know me more than anyone else in my life. I’ve told you things, opened up about my past. I wouldn’t do that with someone I didn’t care about or someone I was just casually sleeping with.”

  When she didn’t snap back with an answer, Dane hoped there was some part of her that believed him. He couldn’t stop this momentum now.

  “I fully admit I sought you out as part of my strategy to retake ownership of this place,” Dane admitted. “I didn’t set out to purposely hurt you and once I got to know you...”

  “What?” she demanded. “You magically grew a soul?”

  Dane couldn’t hide his emotions and quickly realized Stella didn’t want him to. She deserved to know exactly how he felt, his every thought on this matter.

  “Once I got to know you, I realized deceiving you wasn’t how my mom would want me to go about getting the resort back,” he explained.

  Unable to stand still or to look at that hurt in Stella’s dark eyes, Dane started walking around the spacious office. He went to the wall of windows that overlooked the snowy mountain peaks.

  “My mom wanted this place to be mine. There was no doubt about that. When I lost it, I knew that one day when I had the money and the power, I’d get it all back. This has been my goal since I was eighteen.”

  Dane turned back around and leaned against the cool glass. “Now that it’s mine, I’m not near as happy as I thought I’d be. Everything is empty without you—the resort, my life. My heart.”

  Unshed tears swam in her eyes and he couldn’t keep this distance between them another second. Dane crossed to her and took her by the shoulders.

  “If you believe nothing else, you have to believe that I love you.”

  Stella reached up and swiped at his cheek and Dane realized he’d let his emotions show a little too well. He hadn’t even noticed the tear. His only concern had been getting her to see that he hadn’t lied about everything.

  “I’ll give the entire place to you,” he told her. “If you still want it, it’s yours.”

  Stella gasped and jerked back. “What?”

  Dane’s hands dropped to his sides. He couldn’t believe after all of these years, all of this work, he was saying this, but he meant it.

  “My mother was proud of this place, she had a goal of passing it to me.” Dane raked a hand over the back of his neck and sighed. “But she wouldn’t want me ruining lives in order to reclaim it.”

  “Dane.”

  “She would’ve loved you,” he murmured, the damn emotions threatening to strangle him. “She would’ve loved you not only because I love you, but because you’re a kick-ass businesswoman.”

  Stella laughed and closed the distance between them. Those tears swimming in her eyes threatened to spill at any moment.

  “Say it again,” she demanded.

  “I love you, Stella.” He smoothed her hair from her face, sliding his thumb along her bottom lip. “I thought I did before you found out who I was, but I was too afraid to admit it—I knew you’d eventually learn the truth and that it would ruin everything between us, so I tried to convince myself it wouldn’t wreck me to lose you. I want you to have this place. You may not be ready for marriage, but you deserve this.”

  Stella fisted his hair and pulled his mouth to hers. Dane didn’t miss a chance to wrap his arms around her and pull her in. It had been too damn long.

  When she broke the kiss and leaned back, her eyes shone bright with tears and her smile filled those cracks in his heart.

  “I want the resort, but I want you, too,” she told him. “Do you think your mother would be on board with both of us running this? I’m not sure that marriage is our next step. We probably should slow down a bit so we don’t mess this up again, but that doesn’t mean we have to be apart.”

  “I’ll go as slow as you want,” he told her, smacking her lips with his. “And I’m the one who messed up before. But I sure as hell won’t take you for granted ever again. We’re equals, Stella. In business and in life.”

  “Can I make a confession?” she asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t have anything on under my suit.”

  Dane’s body instantly responded. “Miss G
arcia, is this how you plan to conduct all of our business meetings?”

  She stepped from his arms and went to the door. With a flick of her wrist, the dead bolt clicked into place. Stella turned back around and started working on the buttons of her jacket.

  “I hope that won’t be a problem,” she asked. “I didn’t think my new business partner would mind.”

  Dane closed the distance between them and finished unwrapping his woman. “Oh, he definitely doesn’t mind.”

  As he pulled her into his arms, he realized that the emptiness in his life that he’d felt ever since losing his mother had healed at last. Here in this place, with this woman beside him, he knew he was exactly where he belonged.

  He was finally home.

  * * *

  Don’t miss Ethan’s story!

  California Secrets

  Available September 2019!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from His Marriage Demand by Yahrah St. John.

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  His Marriage Demand

  by Yahrah St. John

  Prologue

  Fallon’s hands trembled with anger as she placed the phone receiver in its cradle. Rising from her chair, she strode across her stylishly appointed corner office and stared out the window overlooking downtown Austin. Although she understood why her older brother, Ayden, wasn’t returning her calls, she was still annoyed he’d gone to Jamaica while she was in such a desperate state.

  Stewart Technologies was on the brink of bankruptcy. As CEO, Fallon had done her best to keep the company afloat, working sixty-and eighty-hour work weeks, but she was bailing water from a sinking ship. The last few weeks she’d been unsuccessful in her attempts to secure a bank loan.

  She’d gone to Ayden, the black sheep in the Stewart family, for assistance nearly a month ago. Ayden had rejected her assertion that he help the “family business.” The more Fallon thought about it, why should Ayden rescue the company started by a father who would never claim him as his son? Ayden owed no allegiance to her or any other Stewart for that matter.

  Was it any wonder he’d ignored her calls?

  Although she’d acquired personal wealth of her own through sound investments, Fallon wasn’t in a position to bail out the company. Her baby brother, Dane, certainly wasn’t about to, either. He, like Ayden, wanted nothing to do with Stewart Technologies. Dane was happiest in front of a camera being someone else, and it served him well. He was an A-list actor and got paid millions of dollars. Fallon doubted he’d put up his hard-won earnings to save a company he’d never wanted any part of in the first place.

  What was she going to do?

  * * *

  “Perhaps you should let it fail,” Shana said when they met up for drinks at their favorite martini bar across town an hour later. Shana Wilson was one of Fallon’s favorite cousins on her mother’s side. Nora hated them spending time together because she tried to disassociate herself from her back-country roots. But Fallon didn’t care. Shana was loud and opinionated but down-to-earth.

  Fallon stared at Shana incredulously. After all the hard work she’d put into Stewart Technologies, interning in the summer while home from Texas A&M University, learning the business from the ground up and climbing the ladder to finally sit in the CEO chair, she was supposed to give it all up? “Have you lost your mind?”

  Shana chuckled. “Don’t have a coronary. It was just a suggestion. I hate seeing you stressed out.”

  An audible sigh escaped Fallon’s lips. “I’m sorry, Shana. I know I haven’t been a joy to hang with lately.”

  Shana had come dressed for the evening. She was wearing a glittery sleeveless top, miniskirt, strappy heels and large gold-hoop earrings. Her curly weave hung in ringlets to her shoulders. Shana was on the prowl for more than a martini and usually Fallon didn’t mind playing wing woman, but she was in a sour mood.

  “No, you haven’t been,” Shana said, sipping her drink, “but that’s why I asked you to come out tonight. All you do is work and go home to that mausoleum. You are too uptight.” Shana looked around the room at the host of men milling around. “Maybe if you met a man and got some good loving, you’d loosen up a bit. I bet I know who could loosen you up while supplying you with the cash influx you need.”

  Fallon sat forward in her seat. Although she loved her cousin, she doubted Shana, who worked as a hair stylist at a trendy salon, knew much about finance. “Oh, yeah? And who might that be?”

  “Gage Campbell ring a bell?”

  Fallon’s heart plummeted at the sound of his name. “G-Gage?”

  “Yeah, you remember him? The guy you had the hots for, for over a decade?”

  How could Fallon forget? She’d thrown herself at him and inadvertently set in motion a course of events even she, at her tender age of sixteen, couldn’t have predicted. “Of course I remember. What about him?”

  “Word in the salon is he’s back in town,” Shana responded. “A couple of clients have come in talking about dating him. He owns a successful mutual fund business and has become quite the catch. Not to mention, he’s still as sexy as when we first saw him when we were eight years old.”

  Fallon would never forget that day. She’d been prancing around on her pony when Gage and his mother Grace toured the estate with Nora. Fallon had been showing off and the pony had become agitated and thrown her. If it hadn’t been for Gage’s quick reaction and his catching her before she landed, Fallon would surely have broken something. When he’d looked at her with his dazzling brandy-colored eyes, Fallon had fallen head-over-heels in love with the twelve-year-old boy.

  Fallon blinked and realized her cousin was still talking. “According to his current lady loves, he knows his way around the bedroom, if you catch my drift.”

  There was no mistaking Shana’s meaning and Fallon blushed.

  “Oh, lord.” Shana rolled her eyes upward. “We really do need to get you out if a little girl talk makes you blush. Perhaps Gage could help with Stewart Technologies? I hear he’s quite the financial wizard.”

  “That might be so, but Gage would never lift a hand to help me,” Fallon replied. Why would he? She’d ruined his life and she only had herself to blame.

  Copyright © 2019 by Yahrah Yisrael

  ISBN-13: 9781488046735

  Montana Seduction

  Copyright © 2019 by Jules Bennett

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