Charming Husband

By Celia Crown

What began as a desperate attempt to find Malia's friend, Katerina, a fiancé turned into a disaster. After three years of partying and scamming men of their money and hearts, the said friend needs a fake fiancé to fool her parents until she finally finds the real deal.

 

As a friend and a really good one, Malia did not volunteer her summer vacation to search for her friend's dream man.

 

Katerina wants a man who is kind and patient when she has her wild nights of partying. He must be over six feet with great hair and perfect teeth. He should be handsome, facial hair is acceptable, and he needs to have muscles to sweep her off the floor with roses in the other hand.

 

Her biggest demand is that he must be rich.

 

Nonetheless, Fate laughs in Malia's face when multi-billionaire Kace Hawkins is thrown her way.

 

He is a force to be reckoned with; a breath of death follows behind that charming smile with the hint of a devil's honeyed touch.

 

He wants Malia to marry him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Celia Crown
• Release date: Apr 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223473572

Book preview

CHARMING HUSBAND

____________________

CELIA CROWN

Copyright © 2019 by Celia Crown.

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction.

The book or any portion of the book may not be reproduced or used under any circumstances, except with the written permission from the author. Public names, movies, televisions, locations, or any references are used for atmospheric purposes. Any similarities and resemblances to alive or dead people, events, brands, and locales are all complete coincidences.

Contents

Charming Husband

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Afterword

More Books

Charming Husband

By Celia Crown

What began as a desperate attempt to find Malia's friend, Katerina, a fiancé turned into a disaster. After three years of partying and scamming men of their money and hearts, the said friend needs a fake fiancé to fool her parents until she finally finds the real deal.

As a friend and a really good one, Malia did not volunteer her summer vacation to search for her friend’s dream man.

Katerina wants a man who is kind and patient when she has her wild nights of partying. He must be over six feet with great hair and perfect teeth. He should be handsome, facial hair is acceptable, and he needs to have muscles to sweep her off the floor with roses in the other hand.

Her biggest demand is that he must be rich.

Nonetheless, Fate laughs in Malia’s face when multi-billionaire Kace Hawkins is thrown her way.

He is a force to be reckoned with; a breath of death follows behind that charming smile with the hint of a devil’s honeyed touch.

He wants Malia to marry him.

Chapter One

_____________

Malia

If there is a way to poof out of existence, I would have done it a long time ago.

I would have used that trick to avoid facing the dilemma of parents and teacher conferences in fifth grade when I accidentally bumped a girl with vanilla body spray into a bees’ nest.

I didn’t know there was that thing there. It’s just karma doing its thing because she was the biggest and meanest bully in the entire school.

Queen Bitch. Everyone calls her Beatrice because she’ll get her other girly hellions to punish those who disrespected her.

She became Queen Bee. Literally, and honestly, I wasn’t even the slightest remorseful when I saw her swollen face. I might have laughed and choked on my saliva, but that was alright.

Nothing hurt more than her face when her shrilling screams with tearful cries echoed in the entire schoolyard.

Mom was expectedly upset, but she never liked Beatrice’s mother as that woman is spiteful and swore she would get revenge on our little family with her big-time corporate husband coming to the rescue.

Our family has a humble upbringing, but that doesn’t mean we can't entertain clowns when the chance presents itself to us.

Nothing happened after that, and they were just big talkers with no spines.

Mom and dad don’t condone violence, and we talk out our problems. It always works in family disagreements, but it just takes more time than the usual fighting and screaming that I have seen with other people.

There are more times than I can count when I wanted to pray for the ground to open its maw and swallow me down to the depth of hell.

This is one of those times.

I just wasted my summer vacation to help my friend and self-proclaimed best friend, Katerina search for her dream man. This journey has been tiring and mentally draining, and everyone we have come across has something she doesn’t like.

He’s too tall, too short, oh no, he’s got uneven eyebrows.

She might as well be asking for a Ken doll at this point. No one is perfect in her eyes. I thought that some of the men she met were very handsome, but not Katerina-approved handsome.

This journey in search of Mr. Perfect left me wanting to drown in my tears because she would wake me up at the butt-crack of dusk to ask me how her makeup is at every step of the way because she thinks she would meet him that day.

She has been saying that for two months and at some point, I just tune her out when she rants about how those men only want her for her money and beauty.

Her family owns a massive oil rig company, and they provide business all over the world, and she is their sole heiress.

It’s safe to assume that there are bodyguards at every shadow near her, and they are so stealthy that I thought one of them was a mannequin for the newest gloomy clothing line.

He’s all black with a face tilted downwards as a scowl.

They scare me, and I watch my every move. Their job is to make sure she is not harmed, and anyone within breathing distance from her is considered a threat.

Being stared at is another reason why I wish being able to poof out of existence was a doable thing.

None of that tops the ever-looming presence of a man that I have no idea how to deal with. The questions that run around in my head are if I should bow down or say a casual greeting. Maybe I should get out of his way or better yet, become a mime so he can physically push me out of his way.

College tuition, here I come.

This is what going to school for another four years did to my mind: broke college students can do anything to get money. They are not above projecting themselves out of the window to avoid doing a ten-page paper and get some compensation in return.

Their excuse would be the wind was too strong, the railing wasn’t sturdy enough to hold their weight, and they propelled out of the window like a missile.

What their sleep-deprived and mentally detached brain doesn’t realize is that they need to account for physics and common sense.

If that excuse worked, I would have used that a long time ago.

Though, it doesn’t sound bad using it not to get this freakishly handsome man away. He’s so good-looking that it’s unnatural and unsettling.

Maybe it’s the crisp black suit and obsidian hair of perfection that makes me want spaghetti.

Did I mention that I am in this fancy party with Katerina and a few selected people that are permitted in this winery?

Also, being a careless clumsy fool has put me in a ten-million-dollar debt from one bottle of wine. It was one ancient and dusty wine that smelled like rotten grapes and radioactive waste, but freedom of speech could get me in trouble if I said that out loud to the man that owns this vineyard.

I wasn’t even on the guest list, but Katerina had gotten me in. She said that she isn’t going to meet her future husband by herself without any other opinion.

This part is smart of her because she’s blinded by love whenever she thinks that she has found the one.

Katerina steps in with her gorgeous accent, but she doesn’t try to flirt with him.

I don’t understand what happened.

This is her dream man, and he’s everything she described in her long list of traits that he needs.

I can’t say much about his personality other than that he is a super kind host when he let me in his vineyard even though I’m a low-class peasant that might breathe dirt into his precious wine.

He looked shocked at first, and maybe that was because I was an uninvited guest.

For the record, I did not want to be here, either. It gives me the creeps knowing that I’m surrounded by wine.

Could I get drunk from the smell alone?

All was fine, and we had a delicious breakfast that is made of something that my tongue can’t curl to pronounce to save my life. Everyone strolled around his area in the afternoon, and then he had us taste the wine that took years to ferment.

I think that was the word, but he said it more elegantly.

Then when it was time to leave, I got lost in the endless hallways and barrels of wine. I came across one room that I don’t think I was supposed to be in, but I went in anyway.

I mean, it’s not technically my fault that I broke something so expensive that my brain can’t even comprehend the restitution money that will equate to my soul—maybe more.

If he didn’t sneak up behind me and called my name, he said Malia as if he and I are old friends, and I accidentally knocked over a bottle of wine that I was admiring because it had its casing and a whole room by itself.

I must have been apologizing profusely for the last ten minutes and am about to go into a mental breakdown when Katerina casually slips in the room with her gorgeous silken dress and mentions it’s a one-of-a-kind wine that cost ten million dollars.

I’m crying.

Wetness drips grossly down my exposed collarbone, and the uneven heavy heaving shows clearly that I’m going to die today, from fainting and never waking up ever again or having this unfairly handsome man use my blood as coloring to deepen his other wine barrels.

Honey, my dear, Katerina coos with a smile.

This is not the time to be smiling at me as if I just did something adorable. This is a time that I would describe to be the equivalent of a disaster. My world just shattered with the same velocity and messiness as the broken wine under my heels.

The heels that Katerina paid for.

Even celebrities can't get their hands on it.

It’s a mere wine bottle. There is no need to shed tears over it.

I am offended for the thing that I broke, It’s a ten-million bottle of bitter grape juice.

It is also not a bright idea to insult wine in front of a wine fanatic and the multibillionaire that owns this place, and probably this whole country of France if he wanted to.

Miss. Rushkoff, the man smiles, and there is no animosity in his beautiful green eyes when he looks at me.

They suddenly turned warm, and I can't for the life of me understand why. He should be imagining me in flames and