How To Propose Accidentally (Complete Series): How To Propose Accidentally

By Layla Valentine

I'll lie to her, I'll use her, and I'll… marry her?!
Sure, the proposal was accidental
But once I make her mine, can I really bring myself to let her go?

I'm a business titan, a legend around New York City, and I always get what I want.

With my latest venture – mining priceless lithium out of the ground - I'm bound to make a killing. But there's a catch: the curmudgeonly owner of the land won't budge and refuses to sell to me, no matter what I offer, and no matter what underhanded schemes I think of.

That is, until I learned this man has a hot-as-all-hell daughter, and she's the perfect person to help me get what I want—the land, the mine, and hell, maybe I can have some fun along the way.

I offered her the job of a lifetime at my company, turned on the charm, and made her want me. She'll be putty in my hands.

The snag in my plan was finding myself on one knee, with a ring in my hand. I sure didn't expect to end up accidentally proposing to her, but what if this is the sweetener my scheme needs?

After all the lies, deceit, the manipulation, will she accept my offer? Or scorn me, and dash the only hope I had at my dream business deal?

And what if… what if this all goes badly wrong?

What if I fall in love with her?

This is the complete How To Propose Accidentally series, from Layla Valentine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Layla Valentine
• Release date: May 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201194840

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

OLIVER

Istared at the graphs on the poster boards in front of me, trying desperately to keep my mind on what my assistant, Addie, was trying to tell me. Trying to follow along with her lecture—though it was sounding more and more like something one of my professors at NYU would have talked about during a class.

A class that I might well have tried to sleep right through.

Look, geology had never been my thing. And that made it the most bizarre thing possible for Addie to be talking to me about.

Though, I’d also been in a funk for the last six months. Bored out of my freaking mind. And not really paying that much attention to anything.

I couldn’t blame Addie for trying to find something that would bring me out of it. Not really. And she wasn’t that far off base, to be honest. Mining was in my blood.

Well, not my blood, specifically. My family’s. I had ancestors who had come over from Ireland and walked right into the copper mines in New York, and then gone into the holes in the ground again and again and again to support their families over two hundred or so years. So when Addie first suggested it as a possible route for my company, Smithfield Corp, it had definitely touched a nerve.

More than that, honestly. I was a big believer in family. A big believer in tradition. The idea of doing something that my ancestors had also done…

It felt right, somehow. Like something coming full circle. Like something coming home to roost. I’d taken to the idea right away—though I had also forgotten about it right away, as I usually did when I wasn’t personally involved in something. She’d said she’d look into it and we’d left it at that.

Now, it seemed, she had something to report. Something big, if the look on her face was anything to go by.

The problem was, right now, I was also bored with her lecture. The poster boards. The graphs. Because my brain had grabbed hold of what she was saying and started doing what it usually did: presenting me with options. Giving me all the possibilities, and doing it in a way that felt more like an avalanche than a gentle trickle. Giving me ideas for integrating into the local culture. Ideas for other companies. Ideas for sales routes.

But, most of all, telling me that this was something I absolutely had to do. Because like I said, that mining thing? It was in my blood. And as an only child—an only child who had been brought up on the wealthy side of New York, and who had lost his mother far too young—the idea that I could bring things full circle and take us right back to where my ancestors had started…

Well, it was too perfect not to take it up. Yeah, I’d make a ton of money. Grow the company by leaps and bounds. Get us into a whole new realm of investing.

But it was the family aspect that was going to drive me. I already knew it.

And it was that family aspect that finally brought me out of my ennui and got me involved in the conversation.

And you’ve had the area tested already? I asked, breaking into her monologue. You’ve already confirmed that there’s a good chance of actually getting something out of the ground?

She nodded, and I saw the start of a triumphant smile at the corner of her mouth. She’d grabbed my attention—and if I knew Addie the way I thought I knew her, I suspected that there had been an office bet about this. And that she’d just won a tidy sum.

I’ve had the soil tested and retested, she confirmed. And not just the soil. The rocks, too. There’s loads of pegmatite just laying around the place, and that’s what you mine lithium from. The area itself is perfect for it, as well. Briny water. Stagnant water. It builds the ideal environment for this sort of thing. This area worked for copper mining in the late 19 th century, and it’ll work for lithium mining now, for the same exact reasons.

And we’ll be able to access it? I asked quickly. Get machinery up there, have trucks running up and down to collect the material and take it back to where there will be factories to strip it out of whatever rock it comes in?

No, it wasn’t a sophisticated question. But I wasn’t bothering with sophistication. I didn’t need to know how it worked, or the name of the process. I didn’t need to know the names of the rocks or how exactly we were going to get lithium out of them.

That was why I hired experts. People who knew that sort of stuff like the backs of their hands.

Me, I was the money guy. The guy who owned the company and gave the approvals. Thought up the big ideas and got them into production. Made sure the organization did what it needed to do. Made sure we had the resources available to keep business moving forward. I was all big-picture, and left the details to the people under my employ.

There are already a few structures up there, and there’s a logging road that’s been in heavy use for forever, Addie confirmed. Getting up onto the mountain and bringing the material back down isn’t going to be a problem.

I stared at her, my mind flying through the possibilities. Structures already up there. A road in place. It would cut down on the construction costs. Cut down on the amount of work we had to do up front.

And the government licenses for mining the land? I finally asked. I assume there will be environmental concerns, and that we’ll have to prove we’re going to do this in the greenest way possible. What governmental agencies will we need to get involved with here?

And at that, Addie gave me the grin that she’d been keeping to herself up to this point, the smile lighting up her entire face like she’d just hooked the biggest fish she’d ever seen.

I knew this look. Addie had been my PA as long as I’d been CEO, and she was practically a second mother to me. Nearing sixty, she had forty years of PA work under her belt, which meant she could handle any situation that was thrown at her, and was almost always three steps ahead. Addie was organized, straightforward, and down-to-earth, with her personality perfectly mirrored by her short, no-nonsense gray hair and usual attire of a pantsuit and sneakers. She was practical and professional—the perfect PA. And I could tell she had more good news for me.

Addie walked toward me, her face glowing and a folder in her hand. When she dropped it onto my desk, I glanced at it—and then looked back up at her.

Already done, she said triumphantly. I filed for the licenses last week and the feds have already approved you.

I leaned back and gave her a bit of a smile myself. Impressive. You filed for them before I’d even approved anything?

She gave me a shrug. I figured I’d get a jump on it for you. This one felt like a home-run to me.

I flipped the folder open and pulled out the first sheet of paper, my eyes running down the text and taking in the important details. Then, I looked up at her again.

The Adirondacks? I asked. New York?

She leaned over and ran her finger down the paper to something at the bottom.

Indian Lake, to be specific, she noted, her voice all business.

When she looked up and met my eyes again, I could see that she was about to deliver the bad news. Or, rather, the news that made this more of a challenge than it had seemed like it might be up to this point.

All you have to do, boss, is talk the guy who owns the land into selling.

Ah, and the catch arrives, I noted, my blood starting to hum at the thought of the coming negotiation. And what is this man’s name?

Arvin. Arvin Kinnear. Owns a campground up there, and has been extremely resistant to any offers.

I leant forward, flipped the folder neatly closed, and grabbed it before I stood up and gave her my most charming grin.

"He’s been resistant to any offers, you say? Addie, that’s just because he hasn’t met me yet."

Cocky? Yeah, maybe. So sue me. I was good at my job. I was only thirty-seven and I owned a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate that could do anything it wanted.

When it came to getting some backwoods redneck to sell his campground to me, I didn’t have a single goddamned doubt. That man was mine for the taking. He’d never even see me coming.

He’d never know what hit him. Hell, he’d get hit—and then thank me for it, afterward.

CHAPTER 2

RACHEL

"D ad, you cannot continue to stay up here by yourself with how bad things are getting!" I yelled, jerking the door of the closet open and staring up at the fifty-year-old water heater he’d been using in his house for the past… well, fifty years.

Actually, ‘using’ was being too generous. He hadn’t been using this. According to the woman—Martha—who came to help him around the house with cooking and cleaning sometimes, the water heater hadn’t been working in weeks. He’d just been too lazy—or too old, more like—to come in here and fix it.

What have you been doing, taking cold showers? I wrinkled my nose. Refusing to take showers at all?

My father made a face that looked like a cross between a braying mule and a five-year-old boy who’d been told that he had to wash behind his ears.

Maybe if you didn’t leave so often, I wouldn’t be left in situations like this, he said mutinously.

I took a deep breath and tied the bright red, frizzy mess of my hair in a disorderly bun on top of my head—just to give myself some time before I responded to him. When I didn’t feel like that had given me enough time, I slowly rolled my shirt sleeves up as well—and then adjusted the belt on my loose-slung jeans.

At that point, I figured I’d just about gotten my temper under control.

Dad, I said slowly, trying to measure my words. Trying to figure out what I could say that would get him to actually listen. "I was in the city for two weeks. On vacation. A vacation that you promised me three years ago, and which I didn’t take until this month. And if you can’t manage to take care of yourself while I’m gone for two measly weeks, then maybe you should think about that and what it might mean for your lifestyle up here on the mountain. Maybe you should think about the fact that if you can’t take care of yourself, it might be time to come down off the mountain."

I turned my eyes on him and glared at him, doing my best to stare him down. Not that I was going to have much luck. I was smart, and I was stubborn, and I was crafty. But I’d inherited all of those characteristics from my father himself.

And he’d been practicing the stubborn part for about forty years more than I had. As much as I hated to admit it, he was better at that game than I was.

This wasn’t the first time we’d had this fight. I knew it wouldn’t be the last. And I knew that because I knew that this time—just like all the others—I was bound to lose. The man was the most stubborn creature on the face of the earth, and I must have really pissed someone off in a past lifetime to be stuck with him in this one.

Stuck taking care of him since I was a kid, courtesy of a mother who had died and escaped his clutches.

Though, that was horribly unfair. My dad wasn’t a bad guy. He was just too stuck in his ways to consider doing anything different. And that was the problem.

I dropped to my knees and got started on the water heater, pulling the cover off so I could get to the special switch that the repair guys would charge you two hundred dollars to come out and push, and then turning the dial to ‘pilot’ the way they’d charge you an additional hundred bucks to do.

A quick flip of the switch and I had the pilot light lit again. A few seconds later, the machine gave the whoosh that said it was going to start heating water again—just in time for me to get my first shower since I’d arrived back home.

If you could call this place home.

Which, of course, I did. I’d been born and raised here, and though I didn’t like to tell my fancy city friends that I was from a little place called Indian Lake, New York, where my dad—and his dad before him, and his dad before him—owned and ran a campground that was almost as old as the state itself, this would always be the place that held my heart.

I got up, gave my dad another scathing look, and then turned and stalked outside, too annoyed to talk to him any further today.

The problem was, once I got out there, the scenery spread out before me like it always did, and I had to stop and catch my breath at the beauty. Indian Lake was so named because it was just that: a lake that sat cradled at the top of a mountain in the New York Adirondacks, completely isolated from the rest of the world, our own little piece of heaven. It wasn’t a big lake, but it was ours, and the way it sat so close to the sky, surrounded by virgin forest…

Well, that scenery was what my father’s grandfather had fallen in love with. It was why he’d built his home up here, so far away from the rest of the world, and then started to build a community—which had turned into a mine, which had turned into a campground, which had eventually turned into home for little old me.

It was the sort of place that stole your breath right away from you and refused to give it back until you’d left the mountain again. It was why so many people