Plain and the Billionaire's Seduction (Plain Jane Series Book 3)
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PLAIN JANE
AND
THE
BILLIONAIRE’S
SEDUCTION
PLAIN JANE SERIES
TMONIQUE STEPHENS
Copyright © 2020 Tracy Stephens
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my critique partners Belinda, Karen, and Kathy.
To my drinking buddy, beta reader, and bestie, Charitee, what would I do without you? Don’t answer that question! Your friendship has kept me sane.
Thank you to my editor, Nadine Winningham and my cover artist Cover by Combs.
I couldn’t do what I do without all of you! Writing is a solitary endeavor, but it’s not a journey any author takes alone.
DEDICATION
For my daughter Cyré.
Some of the best moments of my life, I’ve spent with you.
You continue to be my inspiration and my reason for striving forward.
For my Mother.
Decades later and I still miss you.
Books
Plain Jane Series
Reading Order
Plain Jane and the Hitman
Plain Jane and the Billionaire
Plain Jane and the Billionaire’s Seduction
The UnHallowed Series.
Only Tonight (Standalone Novella)
Only The Fallen (Book 1)
Only One I Want (Book 2)
Only You (Book 3)
Only One I’ll Have (Book 4)
Only One Little Sin (Book 5 coming soon)
Descendants of Ra series
Entrapped Prequel (coming soon)
Eternity Book 1
Everlasting Book 2
Evermore Book 3
Encore Book 4
Forever Novella Book 4.5
Entwined (Book 5 coming soon)
Standalone Novels
If I Love You
Plain Jane and the Bad Boy
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DEDICATION
Books
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
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter One
D appled sunlight filtered through the few scattered clouds meandering in the late morning sky, bringing much needed shade to the gathering. Combined with the warm breeze stroking her skin, the scent of freshly cut grass, and freshly tilled earth, it was a beautiful August day. It wouldn’t last. Soon enough the heat would roll in and all would bake in the summer inferno.
Still, it was a good day for a funeral.
Not that Calista actually attended the funeral of her father. She stood on a grassy knoll two hundred feet from the interment of Harvey Bryn. Billionaire. Philanthropist. Bastard. Father. Two hundred feet. That’s as close as she could get to the man who gave her half her DNA. To the man who abandoned her.
Officially, she counted as a looky-loo. A stringer. A hanger-on. They probably thought she was part of the paparazzi lurking in the bushes for the perfect photo op. There wasn’t much press in attendance, probably why she wasn’t escorted away. She wouldn’t have fought if someone approached her to leave. After all, what could she say? Do? “I’m his daughter,” and throw herself on the casket? No. She had more dignity than that, and DNA didn’t make a person family.
In the distance, seated in the middle of a sea of the tri-state’s finest, was Erica Bryn. One hundred pounds on a good day, she appeared fragile as she lifted the delicate black lace draped on the pillbox hat off her face to dab her dry eyes every few minutes, all while sobbing on her mother’s shoulder. The dutiful grieving daughter.
Pretty picture.
Calista shouldn’t judge when she was also dry-eyed. It was all she had to give for the man whose name wasn’t on her birth certificate and who hadn’t been in her life.
So why am I here?
Good damned question. Morbid curiosity, not obligation, she decided. She owed Harvey Bryn nothing.
Yet she stood there hiding behind a tree, stalking his funeral when she had every right to be down there, in the midst of it all. She was the eldest daughter. One of two. That kind of attention wasn’t something she craved. Harvey’s world, he never wanted her to be a part of. Erica’s world, Calista never wanted to be a part of. With time and patience, everything came full circle eventually.
I should leave.
Yet she stayed and caught bits of the service, a few words from the priest in attendance. Who knew Harvey was religious? Certainly not her. Calista doubted her sperm donor had a celestial condo next to Gandhi.
She caught Erica’s muffled sobs. Her sister played to the crowd and laid it on thick. That wasn’t kind. Their father was dead. One of them should be emotional about it.
Calista waited for the service to end. She didn’t have a good reason for lingering; however, she didn’t question the impulse as the guests filtered back to their cars, many of them with drivers prepared to whisk them back to Manhattan. The family, Erica’s mother and her Aunt Ellen, plus two cousins, remained a few seconds longer then made a beeline for their cars.
Erica stayed, her hand on the coffin. Seemed she loved the old man. Why shouldn’t she when he had been a great father and she had been the apple of his eye, the reason his heart beat, yada, yada, yada.
Finally, Erica walked away from the gravesite, cutting between rows o
f headstones to escape. Calista wondered where Erica was headed. Was it to the celebration of life? Did they not do that in her family because the mourning was over? Fuck. It was none of Calista’s business. And not her right to judge.
In the distance, not quite out of view, the grave diggers waited to lower the coffin and fill the hole. They could wait a bit longer. She approached, weaving her way through the headstones, some dating all the way to the 1920s, the lettering shallow, weathered by time, yet the grass was freshly mowed, the cemetery well maintained. It was a good place to spend eternity. Not for her, though. She wouldn’t be worm food. Cremation and scattered ashes awaited her at the end of the journey.
This would be a nice place to bury her mother. Nice place to visit every birthday and Mother’s Day.
Pleasant thoughts filled her head as she approached the flower draped coffin. Gladiolus, chrysanthemums, and snapdragons covered the entire bronze and copper surface, scenting the air in a heady bouquet. Her stomach rolled even though it was a dry well. The last thing she’d managed to keep down was a granola bar yesterday.
A part of her wanted to keep walking to her car parked on the other side of the cemetery. Everything there was to say, she’d said at Harvey’s Fifth Avenue townhouse a short eight days ago. Had she known he’d be dead less than twenty-four hours later, would she have done things differently? Probably not. Death had removed some of the bitterness poisoning her childhood. Hard to be mad at a dead man, but the die had been cast. She hadn’t come to the funeral to throw herself on the casket and wail over the loss. She had come to pay her respects, because at the end of the day, she needed to say goodbye to Harvey Bryn, bio dad.
Thanks for the chromosomes. That was all she’d come to say, yet her heart ached. Not for the loss of the man, but from the loss of what should have been. She wasn’t a child anymore, blaming herself for her father’s abandonment. Maybe if I were prettier, smarter, funnier. Maybe if I weren’t me, tried harder to be someone else, someone like the daughter he’d loved. She wasn’t that person anymore longing for her daddy…yet she was here. She’d promised to never lie to herself, and damn it, she’d just broken that oath.
Standing in front of the coffin, the potent scent of the flowers choked her. The stench filled her lungs and drowned her. She’d never feel the same about the beautiful arrangement ever again. That didn’t stop her from brushing her fingers across the polished wood. It was warm in the August sun.
Was his body warm resting in the last bed it would occupy? In his last moments, as the world had faded, had he thought of her, for even a split second before he went onto more important things?
“I played a hunch hoping you’d be here.”
His deep, raspy voice sent a chill down her spine. Her hackles rose. Squaring her shoulders, she cranked her head to the side and caught the last person she wanted to see in her peripheral. Julius Morgan. Where had he come from, and how in the hell had he snuck up on her? He hadn’t been here the entire time. He couldn’t have been.
Damn it, he was sharp in a black suit, crisp white button-down, and black tie. The suit was tailored to his muscular frame. His blond hair trimmed. His sharp jaw clean of the five o’clock shadow she loved. Was that a slight cleft in his chin beneath his generous, sensuous lips? Good grief! Yep, it just made him more handsome, the bastard. The heat pooling low in her belly, plus her nipples peaking, proved one thing—one week wasn’t long enough to get him out of her system. He didn’t need to know that.
“Stalking is illegal.”
“Call the police. I can afford the bail.” He glowered at her.
Billionaire playboy, yeah, he could afford the bail. Her gaze returned to the casket. “I don’t need the police to take care of a nuisance. They have better things to do.”
The crunch of his footsteps on the grass sounded as he sidled up to her side. “To say this scenario shocked the hell out of me would be mild.”
Her gaze cut to him.
Without the beard, his lips appeared soft, eminently kissable. The memory of those lips on her flesh, combined with his burnish coppery eyes smoldering in the afternoon light, sent a pulse of desire to spark between her thighs.
“How are you, Calista?”
She didn’t buy he’d come all the way here because of concern for her well-being. “I’m fine.”
Not a strand of his blond hair moved as he shook his head. “That pat answer won’t fly. I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe.” She rubbed a silky petal between her fingers, ignoring him.
“I believe you loved your father, and now that he’s gone with unresolved issues left between you, you’re in pain,” he murmured.
She crushed the petal, then the entire flower, releasing a burst of sweet fragrance into the air as she stared at the uniformly green lawn and precisely placed headstones. The bleached white stones shouldn’t remind her of Chiclets instead of a final resting place. Strange what the mind randomly conjured when stressed.
“I had two conversations with my father before he died. Both within days of each other.” She wiped the sticky floral residue on her leg and faced him. “Everything we needed to say to each other was said. He knew precisely how much I despised him.”
His brow furrowed. “You despised him, yet you attended his funeral—”
“I didn’t attend his funeral!” she shouted into his face. “I stood outside of the church, across the street, with the few paparazzi angling for a photo of the Bryn heiress in mourning. That is not attending a funeral.” Damn it! All she wanted was a quiet moment for a silent, private goodbye, and he had to fucking ruin it.
She marched away, strides long, gobbling up the distance back to her car. Julius’ strides were longer.
“Does Erica know you’re her sister?”
By the way she had treated Calista on the yacht, like a servant every time they’d met, no, Erica didn’t know. Or maybe she did know, and her pretend ignorance was an elaborate mind fuck.
“You and Erica are working together,” she stated, not a question. Just working, or more? She wanted to know against her better judgement.
He studied her with the intensity of a bug under a microscope. She didn’t flinch, and neither did he. “Yes. I’ve taken charge of Morgan International and I’m joining the board of Bryn Conglomerate.”
“All your dreams have come true,” she said sincerely. “Congrats.”
His gaze turned smoky. “Not all my dreams. Not one in particular.”
Calista kept moving toward her car.
“You didn’t answer the question. Does Erica know you’re her sister?” He kept pace with her.
She glared at him defiantly as her steps hastened.
He tsked. “Your silence tells me she doesn’t know.”
He was a perceptive bastard, even if that weren’t the truth, not that she knew either way. It was what they both assumed. “Congrats on the partnership between Bryn Conglomerate and JMI Capital. It made the business pages. You must be ecstatic. When will you be crowned the new CEO of Morgan International?”
“Thanks, and soon,” he said dryly. “Didn’t know you followed the business pages.”
“I don’t,” she said and noticed he panted as he kept up with her pace. A frisson of guilt slammed into her. The man had lost part of a lung and a kidney. He was still recovering from the injuries and probably shouldn’t be exerting himself. But she didn’t slow down. If he couldn’t keep up, that wasn’t her problem anymore.
“Do you want Erica to know she has a sister?”
Calista halted on a slope, a few more feet and she would’ve been in the rental and on her way back home. Julius stopped next to her. She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t need to even though her heart raced having him so near. The question he asked was one she’d never asked herself. Did she want Erica to know of her existence? No. What difference would it make? None, she quickly decided. Not one damned bit of difference. “No. We’re strangers. Her knowing about me won’t
change that.”
“I think you’re wrong. Joshua and I, it took fifteen years for us to develop a relationship, but each day, we become closer.”
Her head whipped to the right, her body followed. She faced him. “Do not compare your situation to mine. You weren’t a dirty secret. Joshua always knew you were out there, somewhere, living and breathing. He sought you out. You will not tell Erica about me.”
“Or what? You won’t forgive me.” A brittle laugh escaped him. “You haven’t forgiven me for a kiss that didn’t happen.”
Oh, it happened alright! “Go ahead, tell me I’m cross-eyed, nearsighted, blind, whatever. Tell me I didn’t see your tongue down her throat.” She threw up her hands.
“You didn’t see my tongue down her throat!” he shouted. “You know damned well that wasn’t what happened. You saw her kiss me, then you ran before I pushed her away.”
Why was she entertaining this discussion again? She spun, not even giving him a much deserved “whatever,” and stomped to her rental. A few feet away, on the opposite side of the road that snaked through the cemetery, Julius’ Mercedes idled with Sunny behind the wheel and Edwards riding shotgun. Windows rolled up, they pretended to give them a semblance of privacy.
“Go ahead and runaway, Calista. It won’t change the facts.” He tossed over his shoulder, striding to his car.
Run? She didn’t run. “The facts are, I don’t care. Kiss who you want. You and I are done.” He stopped in the middle of the road. As if he were immune to being roadkill like any living being on earth.
“You care, and we are not done. I know and so do you.”
She ignored the fuzzy burn in the center of her chest and yanked open her car door. “We are done because I said we’re done. Stay away from me, Mr. Morgan. Right now, I’m an ex-lover who wants to be left alone. Don’t make me an ex-lover with a grudge.”
He stood in the middle of Cemetery Road, his dark suit was the antithesis of the bright sunlight bathing him and glinting off his blond hair. “You care about me. You care about your sister. You cared about your father. Even though you don’t want to. That’s why you were hiding behind a tree, and that’s why you’re running from me.”