Katherine Garbera - Bound by a Child

“There’s something about you that makes it hard to look away,” Allan said.

“You must have an iron will because you don’t have any problems doing it.”

He leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees and his face more sincere than Jessi had seen in a while. “That’s because I’m not a sap. I know better than to let you think there is anything between us. You’d use it to get whatever you wanted.”

She shrugged—it would be nice to believe she had that kind of power over him. “Good thing I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago.”

“Sometimes I don’t know whether to arm wrestle you or kiss you.”

“Kiss me? That didn’t really get us anywhere the last time,” she said.

“I was hesitant because of business complications, but now there is nothing stopping me from taking what I want.”

“Except me,” she said softly.

She looked over at him to gauge his reaction and it was clear that he took it as a challenge.

* * *

Bound by a Childis part of the Baby Business trilogy: One hostile takeover, two feuding families, three special babies

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KATHERINE GARBERAis a USA TODAY bestselling author of more than forty books who has always believed in happy endings. She lives in England with her husband, children and their pampered pet, Godiva. Visit Katherine on the web at www.katherinegarbera.com, or catch up with her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Huge thanks to all of the readers who chat with me on my Facebook page, especially Danny Bruggemann, Jean Gordon, Barbara Padlo, Angie Floris Thompson and Amelia Hernanadez, who suggested names for the hurricane in this book. I ended up choosing Pandora since it sort of fitted my story. :-)

Plus a shout-out to my UK writing buddies Celia Anderson and Lucy Felthouse. Thanks for talking books, hotties and UK phrases with me. Writing is a hard, lonely job and I have to thank my darling husband and kiddos for their support. And as always thanks to my editor, Charles, for his insight.

Contents

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

Excerpt

One

Allan McKinney might look like a Hollywood hottie with his lean, made-for-sin body, neatly styled dark brown hair and piercing silver eyes that could make a woman forget to think. But Jessi Chandler knew he was the devil in disguise.

He was the bad guy and always had been. More tempting than sin itself as he rode in at the last minute to ruin everything. Knowing him the way she did, she couldn’t imagine he had come to her table in the corner of Little Bar here in the Wilshire/La Brea area of Los Angeles for any other reason than to crow about his latest victory.

It had been only three weeks since he and his vengeful cousins at Playtone Games had taken over her family’s company, Infinity Games, bringing their longtime rivalry to a vicious climax.

She’d just come from a meeting at Playtone Games where she’d made a proposal to try to save her job. The most humiliating thing about this merger was having to grovel in front of Allan. She was a damned fine director of marketing, but instead of being able to continue in her role and just get on with the work that needed to be done, she had to trek into the city from Malibu once a week and prove to the Montrose cousins that she was earning her paycheck.

He slid into the booth across from her, his long legs brushing against hers. He acted as if he owned this place and the world. There was something about his arrogance that had always made her want to take him down a notch or two.

It was 5:00 p.m., and the bar was just beginning to get busy with the after-work crowd. She was anonymous here and could just let her guard down for a minute, but now that Allan was sitting across from her, messing with her mojo, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Are you here to rub it in?” she asked at last. It fit with the man she believed him to be and with the little competition they’d had going since the moment they’d met. “Seems like a Montrose-McKinney thing to do.”

Her father had been adamant about staying away from Thomas Montrose’s grandsons due to the bad blood between their families. She got that, but even before the takeover, she’d had no choice but to deal with Allan when her best friend, Patti, had fallen in love with and married his best friend.

“Not quite. I’m here to make you an offer,” he said, signaling the waitress and ordering a Glenlivet neat.

“Thanks, but I don’t need your kind of help,” she said. She’d probably find herself out of a job quicker with him on her side.

He ran his hand over the top of his short hair, narrowed his eyes and looked at her in a way that made her sit up straighter in her chair. “Do you get off on pushing me to the edge?”

“Sort of,” she said. She did take a certain joy in sparring with him. And she kept score of who won and who lost.

“Why?” he asked, pulling out his iPhone and setting it on the table next to him. He glanced down at the screen and then brought his electric gaze back to her.

“Concentrating on your phone and not on the person you’re with is one reason,” she answered. It irked her when anyone did that, but bothered her even more when the person was Allan. “Besides, I like getting to see the chinks in your perfect facade when you can’t hide the real Allan.”

The waitress delivered his drink. He leaned forward on his elbows. The woman was thin and pretty and wore a pair of large black glasses that were clearly a personality statement and went well with her pixie haircut. Allan smiled at her, and the waitress blushed, which made Jessi roll her eyes.

“What did I do to make you so adversarial toward me?” he asked, turning back to her as the waitress left.

“Why do you care?”

“I’m tired of always arguing with you. In fact, that brings me back to my reason for tracking you down,” he said.

“What reason?”

“I’d like to buy you out. Your shares in Infinity Games are now worth a lot of money, and we both know you don’t want to work for my cousin Kell or me. I’ll make you a fair offer.”

She sat there in shock as his words sank in. Did he think her family heritage meant so little to her? When she thought of how her dad and grandfather had always been so busy at work that they’d never been around...well, hell, no, she wasn’t selling. Especially not to a Montrose heir. “Never. I’d give them away before I sold to you.”

He shrugged. “I just thought I’d save all of us a lot of frustration. You don’t seem to be really interested in working for the merged company.”

“I’m not selling,” she said one more time, just in case he had any illusion that she was going to walk away easily. “I’m planning to keep my job and make you and your cousins eat your words.”