Winter's Touch: A Billionaire Romance: The Winter Billionaires, #8

By Olivia Blake

It's over.

Celeste had come home from Midland to find herself fired from Winters Group and Stephen vanished. No one could tell her where he was, or why he left. But when she called him, he made it perfectly clear that he was done with her.

Over. How could it be over? They'd barely gotten started.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pink Parts Press
• Release date: Aug 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781536561531

Book preview

WINTER’S TOUCH

THE WINTER BILLIONAIRES PART EIGHT

OLIVIA BLAKE

Winter’s Touch

Copyright © 2016 Olivia Blake

Published by Pink Parts Press

All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Names, characters, places, businesses, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Summary

It’s over.

Celeste had come home from Midland to find herself fired from Winters Group and Stephen vanished. No one could tell her where he was, or why he left. But when she called him, he made it perfectly clear that he was done with her.

Over. How could it be over? They’d barely gotten started.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Winter’s Touch

Bonus Material

Preview: Winter’s Fall

The Winter Billionaires—Andrew

Dark Bargains

With One Word

About the Author

Winter’s Touch

"MY FATHER?"

Celeste’s mother uttered an amused snort. You do have one, you know. You weren’t created by immaculate conception.

She’d asked about him when she was a little girl, curious why there was no daddy around when her friends had one. Her mother had danced around the topic with vague responses intended only to keep her quiet. Later, as a teenager, she had pleaded with her mother to at least tell her who he was, but had been met each time with a stubborn refusal to even discuss the matter.

Why now? she demanded. I begged you when I was growing up, when it was important to me to know so I’d understand who I was and where I came from, but you shut me down every time.

Because you’d have gone haring after him to see what was there. I didn’t want him lurking around the edges of our lives when I was hunting for a husband. Her eyelids drooped lower, hooding her eyes. And later I didn’t want him mucking things up while I used you to work the playing field. He might have interfered, or offered you an alternative. You were the last card I had to play, and I couldn’t risk it. But then I lost you anyway, so it was all for nothing.

Thank god.

Her mother cocked her head. If you’d stayed, you could have been the wife of a multi-millionaire by the time you were eighteen. The way I picked them, by now you’d be living in the lap of luxury, well on your way to being a grieving—and very wealthy—widow. Are you really going to tell me that you preferred living in squalor and working as a drudge during the best years of your life?

That’s exactly what I’m telling you. It must be something I inherited from my father. Who is…?

Gordon Wald. Emily opened a drawer in the over bed table and withdrew a yellowed envelope, which she handed to her daughter.

Celeste accepted it warily. What’s this?

He left it for you, and insisted that I give it to you when you were an adult and could make up your own mind about whether you wanted to see him or not. I imagine it’s some way to get in touch with him—he’s not an easy man to get to see. Noting Celeste’s impatient look, she relented. He started an oil exploration company in the early 1980s, after the oil shortages in the 70s had everyone in Texas trying to sink a well in their backyard. Later he branched out into other areas, and Wald Oilfield Services went international. He was well on his way to his first billion when I met him. I thought he’d be the one when you came along, but he wouldn’t marry me. So that was that. I got a settlement out of him that paid all the bills for the next few years, and never heard from him again.

Her fingers trembling, Celeste turned the envelope over in her hands. I don’t even know what to do with this.

"You’ll figure it out. You’ve got time."

Time. But how much time did she have? She’d completely forgotten about Andrew when her mother dropped this bomb on her. The envelope was a conundrum that could wait—Stephen’s brother needed to be dealt with now. Tucking the envelope in her purse, Celeste faced the other woman.

Thank you. Although I do think you might have tried to get it to me sooner.

One shoulder lifted in a careless shrug. I’d forgotten all about it until they cleaned out my apartment to move me in here. It was in the bottom of a box full of old bills and junk. You’re lucky I found it at all. Just don’t expect too much. He was a hard man then, and I hear he’s only gotten worse.

As she finished, Emily’s eyes closed and she sank wearily back against her pillows. Celeste studied her sallow face and bit her lip. How long do you have?

Months. Weeks. They’re quite vague about it. But not long.

I’m sorry.

Don’t bother with that nonsense, Emily sneered. I blew my chances, and I have no desire to spend another forty years rotting in squalid poverty. This was always an all or nothing game for me. I lost, so I’ll have nothing.

That was the mother of her girlhood. Celeste shuddered at the memory.

You can go now. The older woman made a shooing motion and squirmed her way deeper into her bed. As her daughter was about to step out, though, Emily cleared her throat.

Celeste?

Yes?

Don’t come back and see me again. Once was enough.

Celeste looked at her mother, now only a faded shadow of the woman she’d once been, and nodded once as she closed the door behind her. Goodbye, Mother.

Outside in the hallway she sank back against the wall and took a few moments to gather herself together and get her wayward emotions under control. Of all the ways she had imagined this meeting with her mother turning out, none had come anywhere close to the reality. Gordon Wald. She whispered the name in her mind, testing it. At long last she knew who her father was, although it still wasn’t clear what—if anything—that would mean to her. It was more than she’d ever hoped to gain, though. Patting the side of her purse where the envelope rested as though to reassure herself that it was still there, she turned towards the nursing home’s front entrance.

While her father was an interesting enigma,