Recklessly Real: Frisky Business, #3

By Christa Wick

"Plus-size model Juno Bell breaks into billionaire's mansion estate."

 

I can already see the social media headlines now…

 

Of course, with my luck, it isn't the evil paparazzi who catch me in the act. It's billionaire Ian Dekker himself. And weirdly enough, he's amused by the break-in (this time, at least—let's not get into the last three times…the man really needs better security). He even takes a photo of me on his phone in all my breaking-and-entering glory as a souvenir.

 

This whole thing is going to kill my career, I just know it. But I don't care. Saving my dad's big cat rescue from being demolished by Dekker and his big property development plans is the goal. My parents already endured enough at the hands of another rich guy without a conscience. Preventing it from happening again is the only thing that matters.

 

Only, Ian's different from the other life-ruining billionaire. Still richer than sin. But different. He's actually willing to help my family.

 

And what he wants in exchange…is me.

 

Previousy published as Owning Her Curves, re-issued heavily revised with steam and story elements that have been changed from the original. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christa Wick
• Release date: Jan 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223390046

Book preview

Chapter One

Neck craning out the window of a well-seasoned truck finishing its third decade in service, I studied the base of the security wall I was trying to park against. Getting as snug a width as possible between truck and wall was critical if I didn’t want a broken leg. Unfortunately, the landscaper who had planted palm trees every six feet didn’t give a damn about my leg or any of my other parts.

The best I could do was angle the truck and pray I was close enough.

So that's what I did—pray and park. Finished, I checked the rear view mirror. The reflected view consisted of more high, imposing walls and palm trees, the surrounding streets occupied by the massive estates of Florida’s insufferably rich.

I looked through the windshield and passenger side window next, my gaze scanning for the first sign that billionaire Ian Dekker’s security team had spotted me with one of their hidden cameras.

The coast was clear—for the moment.

I wiggled my way across the bench seat then onto the truck's roof. Stopping to steady my balance on the dangerously smooth, curved surface, I took another glance around. Still no signs of a security team, but I expected they would soon be swarming me. I just wanted it to be on the other side of the wall where I would have a chance of reaching Dekker, provided I could break free and dodge the guards’ pepper spray and stun guns.

My attention circled back to the wall I had to get over. It was ten feet tall. I was five-ten and the roof of my truck was over six. But I had a gap of about three feet between the wall and where the truck’s roof was sufficiently flat enough for me to have traction.

The drop on the other side was a journey into the great unknown because Ian Dekker was rich and powerful enough to keep his home off Google maps. I figured, if the grounds were anything like the owner, there was probably a pool of alligators and piranhas on the other side. Heck, the top of the wall likely had broken glass or razors embedded in it because that’s what rich people do.

They mangle bodies and destroy lives.

For the cats, I told myself, trying to pump up the nerve to make the jump now that visions of sliced and bloodied hands crowded my head.

For dad, I said, still not pumped enough. And mom.

That last one worked.

I loved all the animals my dad rehabilitated and protected in his big cat rescue almost as much as he did, but saving what was left of my family was my main motivation. A rich, sociopathic monster had already taken so much from us. I wasn’t going to let another one rip apart what remained.

Drawing a deep breath for courage, I leapt off the roof of the truck, my hands curled like grappling hooks to catch the top lip of the wall. I caught hold. The rest of my body hit the solid barrier with the combined force of my jump and every last ounce of the two-hundred-five pounds of awesomeness that was and always shall be Juno Bell.

Ow! Ow, ow, ow!

All that awesomeness hurt like hell when it hit the immovable object of Ian Dekker’s security wall. My grip loosened. One hand lost purchase. I swung, caught hold again and braced my foot against the strip of metal that framed the front of the driver side window.

Get your butt up and over, I growled at myself, shoving down the pain. "Failure is not an option."

I pulled upward, grunting and grimacing. I got an elbow onto the top of the wall. I hooked an ankle next, then my thigh was flat against the top. Another three seconds of all-out effort and I was straddling the wall, fighting to catch my breath.

As I sat there, precariously balanced on a surface that wasn’t much wider than my hand, I scanned the area in search of the guards I kept expecting to appear and slap a pair of handcuffs after throwing me to the ground.

They had to know I was there by that point.

A covert cat burglar, I was not.

I mean—seriously—where the hell were they?

I looked at the house. It was still early morning. Lights were on. A woman somewhere in her late fifties was in the kitchen, her attention singularly focused on loading fruit onto a tray. Next to her was a trolley with a silver coffee service on top of a silver platter.

How fitting. The silver platter probably matched the silver spoon Ian Dekker had grown up with. Considering how ridiculously rich he was, maybe it was a silver ladle instead of a silver spoon.

Or maybe a silver shovel.

One he could shove up his⁠—

Okay, maybe that was a bit too far. Still, I chuckled at the thought of him shoveling his archetypal billionaire bullshit with a sparkly silver shovel. My amusement lasted for a New York minute before I put my game face back on to keep myself pumped up.

This was my last chance to speak to Dekker in person. I didn’t have any more time to waste if I wanted to reach him before the guards got to me.

After a final glance at the ground for obstacles, I lowered myself half the distance then let go of the wall. Landing in soft dirt, I froze. My planning didn’t stretch beyond getting over the wall and fending off guards. I didn’t even know how the estate was laid out.

I also didn’t have my next move lined up beyond freezing like a dumb deer caught in the single headlight of an oncoming train.

Should I just go up to the door and knock?

Not a chance. The civilized route had gotten me nowhere in the five days I’d been in Florida. Whoever answered Dekker’s door would turn me away like his guard did the other evening at the front gate. Or this morning’s tool would tell me to make a five-minute appointment some two months out like the secretary at his company had offered.

I had to find a way into the house that didn’t involve the gatekeepers and doorkeepers and schedule keepers that protected Ian Dekker from the people whose lives he carelessly ruined each time he launched a new development project.

First thing I needed to do, I decided, was to make myself as invisible as possible while I planned my next step.

Kind of an impossible job for a plus-size fashion model…

I swatted aside the annoying chirp in my head. There was no time for comments from the peanut gallery of my own self-doubt. And I wasn’t dressed for the day job this morning. I wore dark green skinny pants and a cute little camouflage t-shirt. My hair was pulled back, not blown out, and the only make-up on my face was a gloss of lip balm colored cherry red.

Spotting a massive ornamental shrub that would hide all my curves, I made a break for it.

You didn't want to hide here, did you? a man asked as he stepped out from behind the very bush I had selected.

Oh, crap. Was that who I thought it was?

Chapter Two

It took a few seconds of shock working its way through my brain before I finally convinced myself that I was actually face-to-face with the legendary and absurdly rich billionaire. Not only was the face smugly studying me a slightly aged version of the head shot on Dekker's company site, but even poor slobs like me know that bodyguards don't wear thousand dollar suits of Italian silk at seven in the morning.

Maybe by lunch—but not at seven.

It was the obvious choice, for obvious reasons, I said, admitting my plans for the oversized bush with a sweeping gesture at my abundant curves.

As I answered, my gaze darted around in search of the billionaire's hired henchmen. Spotting no one else, I looked at the man I had scaled a wall to talk with. He had stepped away from the bush with his hands behind his back and his gaze focused not on my face, but much lower.

I cleared my throat in the haughtiest way I knew how. He shifted his attention upward, studying my face with the same speculative intensity.

My brain short-circuited, the surge wiping out the painstakingly rehearsed speech with which I had planned to decimate Dekker as his security guards tossed me back onto the street or into a waiting cop car.

So I just stood there, mute and frozen while he brought a hand forward, his fingers wrapped around a smartphone. When all I could manage was a look from him to the phone and back to him, Dekker pressed a button then held the screen toward me so I could see the photo he had just taken.

I remained frozen as he saved the shot then navigated to a security video capturing my double-wide butt struggling to get over a wall designed to keep out more professional troublemakers.

I hadn’t seen any cameras on my initial pass around the estate, but I had already figured Dekker had the best money could buy, which likely meant small and wireless, hidden somewhere up in all these palm trees he had around the gated perimeter.

What do you think? he asked. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or Facebook?"

Why not all of them? I suggested. The more platforms the video is on, the bigger the audience to hear why I climbed over a wall to speak with you, Mr. Dekker. The video going viral benefits my cause.

It might also kill my career, but I didn’t mention that bit.

Feeling my cheeks heat as the spectacle continued playing out on his phone, I looked away. The woman in the kitchen no longer had her back turned. She stood at the window, a beefy looking male standing next to her wearing the kind of suit I’d expect for a private security guard at a rich man’s estate. A similarly dressed male stood near the front of the palatial home.

About that cause, Miss Bell, exactly why have my security guards had to throw you off of my properties at least three times this week?

He laughed before I could answer.

For God’s sake, woman, that’s three times—that I know about—and it’s only Thursday!

I’m a slow learner, I sniped.

Really, I had known from the outset my mission was doomed. I was simply too bullheaded to give up. Ian Dekker didn’t care about the little people he hurt when he built his giant resorts and gobbled up all the land around them. He handsomely rewarded his staff for keeping the real world away from him.

Just this one time, he was going to get a taste of all the crap he doled out. And I was going to do the shoveling.

I tried to get a conventional appointment, I said, my brain slow to realize he had used my last name. I couldn’t remember getting anyone at his company to actually write my details down. They said something about an appointment secretary and next month or possibly the month after that for a five-minute pitch. By then, it’ll be too late.

He stopped replaying the security footage on his device and raised a curious brow at me. What’s so time-sensitive you’d risk arrest four times in a single week?

I glared at him, fully intending to wait until the amusement on his face faded. But I didn’t have an eternity.

I had twenty-three days.

You seized my father’s property… I trailed off as he immediately sighed, his eyes glazing over just as quickly.

The state of Florida seized his land, Dekker offered. They did it to make room for a development that will add more than two thousand short-term, and at least a thousand long-term, jobs to the region. And your father would have been paid market value for the property.

With my hands curling into fists, I shoved them behind my back.

Money is irrelevant, I said. My father simply cannot move.

Well, then, depending on its exact location, maybe he can buy it back, he said tapping through his phone. How much did he receive?

Two hundred thousand, I ground out. Dekker’s casual disinterest was appalling. He needed someone to dunk him in his marble-tiled pool until he figured out where he’d left his sense of common decency.

Probably in one of his silk suits. Inside pocket. Lost at the cleaners, no doubt.

So he can have it back for an even million⁠—

What? I belted out, advancing on him until the guard near the front entrance sprang forward and I reined in my temper. You want to charge him five times what you paid him?

I want to charge him today’s market value—which has substantially increased given my acquisition of the surrounding land, Miss Bell.

He scrolled around on his phone some more.

I don’t see any property belonging to anyone with the last name of Bell. Who’s your daddy, sweetheart?

My cheeks colored. If Ian Dekker was trying to fuck with my head by calling me sweetheart and using an innuendo-filled tone in asking who my daddy was, it was working. I had never met anyone even half as dismissive as this man. And, as someone who was a big child before she was a big girl, I’d met a lot of dismissive jackholes in my twenty-five years.

Angelo Bellucci, I said, teeth grinding on every letter in my father’s name.

Finding my dad’s property in whatever file he was looking through, Dekker snorted. My property acquisitions manager offered him half a million to sell six months ago. Your father told him to fuck off and proceeded into the house, warning my manager that he would return momentarily with a 12-gauge.

My dad threatening to shoot someone he viewed as a trespasser didn’t faze me. But I blinked at the two numbers. My dad and I had a long discussion about what had happened after he called me in a panic on Saturday and I flew home. A lot of the discussion involved him swearing and shaking his fist in the air and calling Ian Dekker all kinds of colorful names. None of that conversation included him mentioning an offer to buy at more than twice the final price six months before the government seized the property.

Again, I said, voice softening after losing some of my moral high ground. It isn’t about the money. He cannot move. It’s a big cat rescue. It’s not like relocating across town with your typical tabby, or one of those other pampered purse-sized pets you rich folk have.

His brow crinkled. I don’t have a tabby…or any pet for that matter.

Great, he was suddenly turning into Mr. Literal. That or he was trying to screw with my head again.

The rescue cats have formed a pride, a bond that’s at least as strong as what humans experience with families, I explained, certain I had a limited amount of time to make a dent in Dekker’s hard shell. Moving them means splitting them up. It’s like ripping kids away from their parents and siblings. They get depressed. They make themselves sick from not eating or drinking⁠—

I stopped talking as Dekker shook his head at my words.

You want me to tell a thousand plus parents—the workers for all those new jobs—that they can’t feed their kids because a big pussycat that should really belong out in the wild is too sad to eat his steak?

Cheeks flaming, I forgot all about the security guards or the dangerously sculpted muscles hiding within the silken drape of Dekker’s suit. I stormed straight up to him, my finger wagging an inch from his nose.

You’re oversimplifying the situation and you know it!

Feet pounded the grass behind me. Dekker raised a hand to wave the guards away.

His gaze moved over me, the dark brown eyes tracing my overabundant