A Billionaire's Touch: Wine Country Romances, #2

By Natasha LeCroix

She wanted a ring. He wanted a harem.

Devastated at the break-up of her relationship, Callista Hansen is at loose ends when she drives away with all of her belongings packed into her car. Sharing a guy with multiple women isn't how she envisioned her future, but leaving him means she's on her own for the first time in her adult life.

Staying at a beautiful bed-and-breakfast in Napa for the weekend, she is instantly charmed by the handsome owner. A former child star, Garrett Wylie was burned when his last girlfriend tried to sell his family problems to the tabloids. He isn't ready to trust a woman again, yet the chemistry between them is too intense to ignore. Sex is all he's willing to offer . . . and all for now that Callista is willing to accept.

But as time moves on and their connection grows, it becomes clear that their friends-with-benefits arrangement isn't going to be enough. Letting go of the damage in their pasts and opening their hearts is a frightening idea for both, yet holding onto it will keep them from each other. A Billionaire's Touch is a 68K standalone romance with an HEA ending and no cliffhanger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Natasha LeCroix
• Release date: Dec 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781386363958

Book preview

A BILLIONAIRE’S TOUCH

Wine Country Romances

by Natasha LeCroix

Copyright 2016 by Natasha LeCroix

Cover image courtesy Depositphotos

Cover by Devorah Mast

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Table of 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

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Chapter One

But he’s such a nice guy! Madeleine protested, her voice coming through the speakers. Why?

I glanced in the rearview mirror out of habit. There was nothing to see but the boxes in the bed of my pick-up, and lines of cars stretching back to infinity on the highway. The sky was turning a lovely royal purple overhead. In the last half an hour, I had accomplished all of a mile in the stop and start traffic. It was far more stop than start, and we hadn’t moved at all in the last twenty seconds. There was a big accident somewhere ahead, judging from how many emergency vehicles had gone shrieking past me on the shoulder.

Nice wasn’t why I had all of my possessions carelessly tossed into those boxes. It just wasn’t- I began to say.

She overrode my attempt at an answer. So you broke up four months ago? But you’ve been living with him since then? It can’t just have been for money. It seems like there was still a lot of love there to me. Why didn’t you say anything to anyone about the break-up?

It just wasn’t working out between us, I said, sticking with her original question. That was a safe, bland answer. Cousin Madeleine meant well, but she was utterly incapable of keeping a secret. The juicier it was, the faster she disseminated it. I had learned that lesson the hard way.

In astonishment, Madeleine cried, You don’t have any idea what you had in him! You can’t! You’re too young. They don’t make men any better than Ivan. He’s a jewel. Do you know what I put up with day in and day out from Nick?

She rattled on without taking a breath. "I’m married to a guy who spends his entire weekend drinking beer on the sofa and yelling at the sports game on TV while the baby tries desperately to get his attention. I live with a guy who hasn’t been to the dentist in ten years and is proud of it. I’ll spend a whole afternoon making a healthy dinner all for him to pick up some crappy fast food on the way home from work that disagrees with his stomach and gives him gas. I dwell in his perpetual fart cloud. There are nights his butt is puttering so bad I have to sleep on the futon in the guest room. That’s my life. That is my life, Callie. He doesn’t open doors for me; he doesn’t bring me flowers; he never offers to change a dirty diaper and acts like he’s doing me a favor when I beg! When was the last time he even asked how my day was? I can’t tell you. And you know what? My friends all tell the same damn story! They would kill to have a good guy like Ivan."

An expectant pause stretched out. She was waiting for me to divulge my reasons so she could gauge if they truly justified a break-up. Traffic crept forward a handful of inches, my foot easing off the brake only to immediately press down again. I was trapped behind a red SUV riding low from a plethora of teenaged occupants crammed inside. The vehicle was vibrating from rock music being played at top volume. Cigarette smoke curled out of the driver’s window.

Did I lose you? Madeleine asked in the silence.

No, I said, biting back the truth for platitudes. She’d spread those platitudes around, for the little they were worth, but at least they didn’t mean anything. He and I weren’t right for each other. We grew apart instead of together. This is really for the best.

"Is it? You must be crying your eyes out. How has he been taking it?"

I don’t know. How he felt wasn’t my problem anymore, and I hadn’t cried in a very long time. All of my emotions were knotted together in a tight ball, impossible to untangle and blocking my tear ducts.

The problem is that you’re being too picky, Madeleine said as another ambulance roared past. The blaring SUV had drifted to the right, and I glimpsed flashing red lights in the distance. You can’t do that, Callie. It’s so easy at your age to think of the world as being full of guys, but you know what? It isn’t. Some of them are gay and you can’t change them. Some of them are psychos and you can’t fix them. Tons are too young for you and tons more are too old. There is a finite number when it comes to marriageable guys and they get snatched up fast. You’re going to miss out.

She made men sound like a hot-ticket item on store shelves at Christmas. And you’ve been together so long! she burst. How many years has it been?

Five. We got together when I was nineteen.

In a motherly way, which was a bit rich when she was only eight years older than me, she said, You must feel like you settled down with him real fast, but that’s not always a bad thing. You two were so cute together. God, I expected any day now that you were going to tell me he had proposed! Not that you were calling it quits. But maybe you just need a break instead of a break-up. Did you consider that? That’s normal, honey. You get so wrapped up in each other that you forget to take time for yourself. Little things get blown up into big things. Don’t do something you can’t take back all because what you needed was a girls’ weekend. Some margaritas, some chick flicks . . .

Certain that this was the problem, she said excitedly, It might not be too late! Is he seeing anyone yet?

Maybe more than one, I thought, wincing at how easily I had given in long ago when he asked to call me by different names during sex. Neveah. Destiny. Amber. Jessie. His lips kissing the triangle of hair above my thighs, Kelly, you taste so sweet; his hips thrusting to meet mine, fuck, fuck you’re hot, Emma, fuck! He buried himself deep inside for his climax, his lips on my neck, his seed spurting into the condom and his voice muffled, I love you so much, Tabby. I’d written it off as a silly quirk when we were brand new. It niggled at me more and more as time went on to so rarely be the name he moaned, yet still I tried to justify it to myself because otherwise we were so happy together. Then our lovemaking sputtered from daily to weekly to monthly to nothing and now I knew it had been anything but an innocent quirk.

Eager to end the call and regretting that I’d picked up in the first place, I said, I think I need to watch the road, Maddie. There’s a nasty accident up ahead.

One of the passenger side doors of the SUV swung open in the standstill. A whisper-thin teen boy in baggy clothing got out and scrambled up the hood to the roof, where he cast his gaze farther down the lanes. The pounding music cut off, and the driver put his head out the window. He shouted furiously at his buddy to get off the roof of his mom’s car before it got dented.

An empty water bottle went flying out another window. The kid on the roof yelled about littering and leaned over to peer upside-down into the SUV at whoever had thrown it. As this was all I had for entertainment, I sat back and enjoyed the chaos. The SUV’s trunk was covered in honor student bumper stickers.

Madeleine was still going strong without any contribution from me. Sometimes we just need that girl time! My book club takes a trip every year. Los Angeles, San Diego, Tahoe, Monterey, Santa Barbara . . . We rent a vacation home for three days, stock up on booze and snacks, arrange a little tourist sight-seeing for people who want to go out, movies for people who stay in, lots of hanging out! Last time we went to Santa Cruz and had a blast. I left feeling so renewed. Of course, I couldn’t go this year with the baby, but I can’t wait for next year. So, where are you staying?

With a friend in Napa, I said vaguely. Truthfully, I would be staying at a bed and breakfast called Zephyr House for the weekend. After that I would have a temporary home. My old freshman year roommate Nora and I had remained friends after graduation, and it was she who suggested I stay in her parents’ Napa home. The two of them were leaving on Sunday for the airport, and then they were off on a month-long cruise. They’d wanted Nora to housesit, but she lived in San Mateo now and it was too far for her to drive to work. As long as I didn’t throw any parties, they were delighted to have me staying there in their absence. There had been some robberies in the area this year, one on their very own road, and they didn’t want their house to look unoccupied for so long.

I wasn’t planning on throwing a party. The only visitor I intended to have was my twin sister Chelsea, who would be flying in from her home in New York City in a few weeks to see the family. Mostly, I just wanted quiet. Quiet in which to figure out what to do next, to unravel my life from Ivan’s, to sever myself piece by piece from our twosome. I had gone to the grocery store for snacks on the way to Napa and gotten a third of the way through the aisles before I realized half of what was in the cart was wholly unnecessary. My autopilot mode was still shopping for a couple.

The boy on the roof waved merrily to the people in the cars behind the SUV. No one honked or waved back. Everyone looked annoyed with the traffic, and disinclined to amusement. Sliding off at last, the kid hitched up his pants and got back inside. We crept up again as the music pounded once more.

This time, the creeping didn’t stop. A big moving van several cars in front of the SUV pulled into the slow lane, giving me a better view of what was ahead.

Was he doing drugs? Drinking too much? Hitting you?

Madeleine’s voice drew me back to our conversation. I’d forgotten that I was on the phone.

Half nosiness and half concern lay behind those questions. No, I said flatly. I’ll talk to you later, okay? There’s a cop in the road directing traffic. Although she started to ask another question, I hung up. I hadn’t been lying about the cop.

Flares were burning around a crumpled collection of cars in the fast lane and jutting into the shoulder, their metal guts twisted and exposed. All of the traffic was being waved over to the slow lane, the officer holding up the cars already there to let some of those in the fast lane merge. A woman was sitting up on a stretcher and speaking to EMTs as two police officers flanked a pudgy, sour-faced man with his arms crossed over his T-shirt. He shook his head defiantly when they spoke to him.

Putting on my blinker, I merged into the slow lane as the cop handling traffic waved me on. We went at a snail’s pace past the accident, and then quite suddenly, the highway opened up. The SUV swerved onto the off-ramp as I hit the gas and raced away.

My phone rang, but seeing that it was Madeleine, I let it go to voicemail. She wanted more but I couldn’t give it to her. The humiliation was still too raw, and to have to discuss the particulars of the break-up with everyone from Grandpa George and Gramma Caroline to my parents down to cousins twice removed and friends of the family . . . I could hear their baffled questions even now about open relationships and polyamory and if this had anything to do with swing clubs or key parties because they had seen a program on TV once about furries at a convention and . . .

Nice. Oh yes, he had been so nice to my family at holiday gatherings. Collecting the plates to take to the kitchen at the end of meals; talking brightly about his classes and professors; listening to Grandpa George’s wandering stories that had no beginning or end, only an endlessly revolving middle. Ivan knew what face to wear in public, and he wore it with conviction. Only I had seen the other face, the selfish, cruel, manipulative one that didn’t care if I got hurt just as long as he got his way. He was going to wear that face tonight or tomorrow when he got home to our apartment emptied of my things. And me.

There had been a time when I also expected I would be calling my family to tell them Ivan had proposed. That instead I would be driving away from him with a pick-up full of boxes had not once crossed my love-struck mind. I’d been so young and naïve when we first got together. He was a handsome graduate student, confident and intelligent and sure of himself in all things. With one look in my direction, he had wrapped me around his little finger.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. I looked more or less the same as I had back then, strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, a dash of freckles across my nose, but there was a difference in my blue eyes. The last few years had left their mark there. I looked drawn and tired.

I was tired. Spotting my exit on the next sign, I soon pulled off the highway and weaved through commercial and then residential streets lined with cute homes. The lots grew bigger and farther apart the further I got from the highway, the homes imposing and swelling in size. Traffic had lightened to nothing by the time I drove into the bed and breakfast’s parking lot.

I parked and rested in my seat for a long moment. This felt like a divide of sorts, a branching of choices where I could pull out of this space and drive back home, or get out and go inside. Two entirely different decisions that would lead to two entirely different lives.

A breeze rustled through shaggy trees as I stepped out, several of them with leaves turning yellow, orange, and a brilliant scarlet with autumn. The two-story brick and stucco home was beyond beautiful, and cozy for all its grandness as it had been in the pictures online. The pitch of the roof rose steeply to a peak over a half-timbered frame, redwoods high in the back. The porch light gleamed yellow and inviting over the arched door, where a group of people were going in with equipment over their shoulders.

The Zephyr House was an expensive place. But I had enough money for a weekend retreat, and I wanted to treat myself. Getting my suitcase out of the back seat, I set it down on the pavement. Then I climbed into the pick-up’s bed and sorted through the boxes tied down there. Some I left where they were; all they contained were cheap knick-knacks, yearbooks, and stuff to which I had minimal attachment. The others I transferred to the cab. Locking the doors, I retrieved my suitcase and rolled it to the house.

Now the cluster of people was standing in the large entryway. All of them were wearing identical black caps, and most were still holding onto their equipment. I couldn’t imagine what it was for, save the tripods for cameras. Red and black backpacks had been dropped carelessly upon a stunning oak table in the center of the room, messing up the stacked brochures there and one backpack looking precariously close to tipping over onto the vase of flowers. The vase caught my eye even more than the flowers it held, an elegant piece made of deep blue crystal. A pattern of anemones went around it in two rings.

On the floor were sleeping bags and a dusty, heavy-duty flashlight turned on its face. The tallest guy in the group was speaking testily to a middle-aged woman. That’s why we brought the bags! We can just all crowd in there on the floor! He sniffled like he was getting over a cold.

Unfazed, the woman straightened her knit sweater. I’m afraid that’s against our policy. We have a maximum capacity of four per room.

Let’s just book a second room! someone hissed at the guy. The black caps all had MONTEREY VIGIL stitched in shiny silver thread across the front.

Irked, he replied, It’s not like we’re going to be sleeping in those beds!

Oh, that’s right, I thought as they squabbled. Two recently posted online reviews for the Zephyr House had mentioned hoping to spot the bed and breakfast’s ghost. I had only skimmed those in favor of the reviews that concerned the things I cared about, such as clean sheets, functioning toilets, and lack of bedbugs. These people were ghost hunters.

Spying me around the party, the woman smiled in welcome. You must be Ms. Hansen!

I nodded. She turned to the living room and called, Garrett? Are you still in there? Ms. Hansen has arrived. A newspaper rustled from out of view, and then a man of about thirty appeared.

Unruly brown hair framed a handsome face. Thick brows. A straight nose. A strong jaw. A scruff of facial hair made him look a little rugged, offset by his neatly tucked in shirt and pressed trousers. His eyes were dark, almost black, and they cast a quick, dismissive, and rather derisive look over the ghost hunters. He dwarfed everyone in the room, standing in the vicinity of six-three.

Just as he looked at me, the sniffling guy stepped between us with an air of umbrage. You’re Garrett Wylie, right? The owner? he asked in a bossy, barking tone. Look here, Mr. Wylie, we just want the Stone Room. There’s no reason we can’t . . .

The room chilled, although it had nothing to do with the paranormal. The owner seemed to grow another inch in height, and the faint derision in his eyes turned to outright scorn. It reduced the ghost hunter to an arrogant, presumptuous, whiny boy, despite being around my age.

His bravado faltered, but only temporarily. The customer is always right! he insisted. There’s no reason we can’t cram into one room!

Ayden, there might be a reason in the fire code, a companion of his whispered.

As I explained to you on the phone, there is no ghost in the Stone Room or anywhere else in this establishment, Mr. Wylie said to Ayden in a baritone so frosty it could have left icicles on the windows. Nor will I allow you to spend the night frolicking about my home with EMF readers and night vision cameras, disturbing me and my other guests. All of this we discussed last week, and you agreed to. You can either book the Heather next door to the Stone, or leave.

Oh, he was good. Reducing their hunt to a frolic and mocking the tools of their trade, ignoring the demand to respect their rights as customers, claiming his home and laying out his terms so baldly, this was not a man who could be played with. He had seized all of the control in the entryway.

Left off-balance, the hunters looked at one another. There were mutinous mumbles among two in the party about putting up a bad review, purposely spoken at just a loud enough decibel level