Daddy by December (The BAD BOY BILLIONAIRES Series)

Copyright
© 2012 Judy Angelo

 Lyons
Publishing Limited

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise (mechanical,
photocopying, recording or stored in a retrieval system) without the prior
written consent of the Publisher.  Such action is an infringement of the
copyright law.

This book is a work of fiction.  The names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or
have been used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.

Author
contact: 
[email protected]

The
BAD BOY BILLIONAIRES Series by Judy Angelo

Volume
1 -
Tamed
by the Billionaire

Volume
2 -
Maid
in the USA

Volume
3 -
Billionaire's
Island Bride

Volume
4 -
Dangerous
Deception

Volume
5 -
To
Tame a Tycoon

Volume
6 -
Sweet
Seduction

Volume
7 -
Daddy
by December

BAD
BOY BILLIONAIRES, The Collection - Vols. 1 - 6

COMING
IN AUGUST:

To
Catch a Man (in 30 Days or Less)

A DADDY IN THE MAKING...
A little girl, a wish, and a woman determined to stay out of his reach.  How to
reconcile the three?
Billionaire investor, Drake Duncan, is at the top of his game. He decides to
hire a ghostwriter to work on his memoir. Little does he know that the writer
who will answer the call is truly a ghost - from his past.
Meg Gracey is the proverbial 'starving artist', a writer down on her luck. When
she is offered a contract as ghostwriter she jumps at the chance, only to later
realize that the job will throw her directly in the path of the man she vowed
never to 'touch with a long stick'. Caught between starvation and emotional
torture she is forced to choose.

Does she follow reason or give in to the
desires of her heart?

Show More

Show Less

DADDY
BY DECEMBER

CHAPTER
ONE

“I want her.”

“But what about looking
at the others?”

“No, this is the one I
want.”  Drake Duncan stabbed the paper with his index finger.  “I read through
all the profiles.   This one's the perfect fit.  Professional, good track
record.  Got some novels under her belt, too.  I don’t want anyone who’s so
cast in the ‘biography’ mold that they don’t know how to weave a good story.”

His personal assistant
gave him a look tinged with doubt.  “I was going to recommend Percy Slater. 
He’s worked with stars from Hollywood.”

“Yeah, I’ve read some
of his books.  Boring.”

Drake grinned at the
gray-haired woman as she pursed her lips and gave him a disapproving stare. 
Liz Dobson  had been working for him for the past eight years and she'd become
more and more valuable to him with each passing year.  No-one could anticipate
his needs and organize his work life like she could.  But in this matter he
would make the final decision.

“Fine,” she said with a
nod of resignation.  “I’ll contact Ms. Gracey right away.”  She gathered up the
files and went through the door, pulling it closed behind her.

Drake Duncan was
looking for a ghostwriter.  He was at the top of his game, leading a
conglomerate of investment companies and, he decided, it was time to tell his
story.  After all, you never knew when your ticket would be called. 

When he’d heard of the
passing of Steve Jobs of Apple Computer it had been like a kick to the gut. 
The man should have had a good thirty more years to go before he even thought
of leaving this earth.  But there it was.  It was his time and no amount of
money could save him.  Not that Drake was anywhere near Steve Jobs’s fifty-six
years.  But age had nothing to do with it.  You could go at any time so if you
had a story to tell the best thing to do was just tell it.

Drake had built Duncan
Investments of Chicago into a billion dollar company in the space of nine years
through a series of daring but successful investment strategies.  Even in the
face of the worldwide economic recession he was able to maximize growth for the
corporation, making his shareholders wealthier than they’d ever dreamed.  Now
he was ready to share his success with the world.

He smiled to himself. 
He was looking forward to the project.  His ghostwriter would be Meg Gracey, if
she accepted the job offer.  He liked that name.  Outside of the profile and
recommendations she'd posted on the job board he didn’t know anything about the
woman he’d chosen to record his journey.  Liz would check her out.  He had a
good feeling about her, though.  Her name had the sound of someone dignified,
someone serene.  For the next few months she would be spending a lot of time
with him, gathering the intimate details of his business and his life.  He
hoped she did, indeed, have a serene soul.  Working with him, she was going to need
it.

******

Meg Gracey pulled up in
front of Hyde Park Elementary School just as the bell rang.  Whew!  Just in
time.  She’d fought through a mangled mess of traffic, whispering prayers for
the cars to get moving.   Now she breathed a sigh of relief.  It was tough
being a single mommy.  There was no-one to call if she got held up at an
appointment.  She had to plan each day precisely so she would never be late to
pick up her daughter.  This was Jessie’s second semester in the first grade and
so far, thank God, she’d never been late.

She switched off the
engine and hopped out of the car then ran along the pathway leading to the huge
front door. At that moment it burst open and she had to head for the grass to
avoid the bubbling mass of kids streaming down the steps toward their waiting
parents.  She stood on tiptoe, trying to find that special curly blonde head in
the crowd.

“Mommy!”

She would know that
voice anywhere, pluck it from the myriad of shouts and calls.  She turned to
catch the little bundle of pink and white barrelling toward her.  Jessie jumped
and Meg lifted her into her arms, backpack, lunch kit and all.  She hugged her
daughter close and buried her nose in the child’s neck, reveling in the tightness
of her hug and the bubblegum scent of her hair.  She gave her a quick peck on
the forehead then gently lowered her to the ground and took her small gloved
hand.

“So, how was your day?”
Meg asked, as she always did, her smile broad and cheerful.

“Mommy, guess what?” 
Jessie opened her blue eyes wide, a look of wonder on her pixie face.  “I saw a
bunny today, a real live bunny, not the Easter Bunny.”

“A real live bunny,
huh?”  Meg took the lunch kit from her hand and they headed down the path
toward the champagne colored Honda Accord.  “That’s really cool.”

“Oh, yes.”  Jessie’s
voice was a soft whisper of reverence.  “I got to touch him and everything. 
He’s so soft and cuddly.  Can I get one?”

Meg chuckled and shook
her head.  She’d expected that.  Jessie loved animals and seized every
opportunity to put in her bid for a pet.  Her goldfish, Sammy, was not enough. 
The big complaint?  He wasn’t cuddly.  “You know why we can’t get a pet right
now, Jess.  We talked about it, remember?”  She opened the back door of the car
and slid the Dora bag off her daughter’s back.

Jessie gave a pretty
pout as she climbed into her booster seat.  “I know.  Pets are a lot of
responsibility and I'm not old enough yet.”

“That’s right.”  Meg
buckled her up then tickled her, making her squirm.  “But when you're old
enough…”

Jessie giggled.  “When
I'm old enough I can get a lemur and a tiger and a bear and we'll start our own
zoo.”

Meg smiled at their
ongoing joke.  “And when Mommy lands the biggest writing contract ever we'll
add a giraffe and a pony.”

“Yay.”  The little girl
raised her hands in celebration and Meg laughed out loud.  There was nothing
like the enthusiasm of a child to lift your spirits.

That afternoon Meg and
Jessie sang nursery rhymes and fun songs all the way home.  Her daughter was
such a bundle of joy.  At five years old she was the youngest in her first
grade class.  The first day of elementary school had been hard for Meg,
watching her baby, so tiny among the other children, leaving her to enter the
building she called ‘big kids’ school’.  Now that they were almost halfway
through the school year it had gotten a little bit easier for her to leave her
daughter.

The singing was
soothing therapy for Meg.  She needed it after the grueling day she’d had. 
Despite the cheery face she showed Jessie, inside she was in turmoil.  That
morning she’d done yet another job interview, this time for the position of
technical writer with a law firm, but she knew the likelihood of her getting
the job was slim.  There had been seventeen other applicants vying for the same
position, all of them placed in the same room to fill out the application
form.  It had been so demoralizing.

The life of a writer
was not easy, particularly in an economic environment where it had become even
harder to get picked up by agents and publishers.  Three years earlier she’d
given up her teaching career to pursue her life passion and she’d achieved some
measure of success, selling seven of her contemporary romance manuscripts and
making a reasonable living, enough to sustain herself and her daughter.  But
the past six months had been brutal.  She had two manuscripts still sitting on
editors’ tables and at the same time she had bills to pay.  With reality
staring her in the face she started putting out ads on craigslist.com and on
job boards, offering her services as a ghostwriter.  So far the phone hadn’t
been ringing off the hook with calls from people wanting to write their memoirs
or the novel of their hearts.  The stupid phone hadn’t rung once since she’d
posted the ads.

Not one to roll over
and die, she started looking for writing work in the technical field –
brochures, product manuals, websites – but the market had lots of job hunters
with tons of experience in that area.  Why would anyone hire her over them? 
Still, she kept on trying.  Tomorrow was another day.  She’d get up early and
start the search all over again.

As they pulled into the
underground parking garage, Meg pasted a practised smile on her lips and turned
to her daughter who sat humming in the back seat.  She was sure Jessie would be
a singer one day.  Whenever she sang her sea-blue eyes sparkled and she’d shake
her head till her sunshine curls bounced around her cheeks.  She adored music.

“Ready to go, sweetie?”

“Can we have spaghetti
for dinner?”  Jessie gave her a cherubic smile as she began to unbuckle her seatbelt.

“Honey, we had
spaghetti yesterday.  And the day before.  No more spaghetti.”  Meg wiggled her
finger at the little girl but she just laughed.  Jessie knew she had her mother
wrapped around her little finger and she used that knowledge to full advantage.

“Spaghetti, spaghetti,
spaghetti,” Jessie chanted then laughed out loud as Meg reached over to tickle
her.