The Tycoon's Secret - Baby for the Billionaire - Book Four (Baby for the Billionare) (28 page)

A man that sexy is just trouble.

Luckily it was highly unlikely that she would ever see him again after today.  They would share one quick meal and then she’d head back to Lil and reality.

Back to the quiet, predictable life she’d built for herself.

That thought held less appeal than usual.

Maid for the Billionaire is available
as a free download at all major retailers.

Read an Excerpt from USA Today Best Selling author, Kathleen Brooks

A Bluegrass Series Novel

Kathleen Brooks

Prologue

Her bare feet pounded down the concrete stairs. Her panty hose were ripped from snagging the cold metal strips on the edge of each stair. Her feet stung with every step she took. She heard the door above her open. She pushed herself faster. She couldn’t let him catch her.

She jumped the last stair on the sixth floor, the impact of the jump reverberating up her body.  She felt as though she had stopped breathing two floors ago. Her lungs burned as she forced her legs to move faster. Her hand was sliding along the railing to brace herself as she raced down the stairs at breakneck speed. 

She heard him yell her name. She turned around to see he was now just one floor away. The look cost her dearly as she missed a step and had to slow down to steady herself.

Her heart beat in turn with each slap of her foot. Faster. Louder. She just had to make it to the garage. He would kill her if she didn’t.  He called her name again as if she were a disobedient child. He was taunting her, triggering her fear. Her heart felt as if it would explode as she ran faster and faster down the stairs.

She didn’t feel the cuts causing her feet to bleed. She didn’t feel the pain running up her legs. All she knew was she had a couple more flights to go. She tried to suck in a breath of air but could only manage a small gasp. He was closer now.  She could feel him right behind her.

The door to the garage was so close. She could see it now. She had to reach it. He closed in on her. She could hear him breathing. She willed her legs to move faster.  He reached out his arm to grab her….

McKenna looked around and saw nothing but black, four-plank fences and green grass for as far as she could see. Daffodils were playing peek-a-boo with the bright morning sun.  She looked down at the GPS in her cherry red BMW M6. Only five more miles until her destination. Bringing her eyes back up to the narrow country road, Kenna gasped and hit her brakes as hard as she could.

The stabilization in her car kicked in and kept it from fishtailing off the road. She fought for control of the car as her brakes locked. A massive horse was standing in the middle of the road, calmly watching her scrambling for control over her car. She rested her head against the steering wheel and let out a shaky breath when she stopped the car in the opposite lane. Hearing tires squealing, she lifted her head and saw an old pick-up truck heading straight for her, fishtailing out of control.  Kenna shifted into reverse and floored it. The truck skidded by her, narrowly missing her car. The truck came to a sudden stop in the grass ditch off the side of the road.

Kenna watched a jeans-clad woman wearing a stylish, black, long-sleeve shirt and bright pink scarf belt jump out of the truck. The woman with beautiful, shiny, shoulder-length brown hair was the polar opposite of what McKenna expected to see. Instead of being concerned about her truck, the woman slowly approached the horse with her hand out. Kenna saw her mouth moving as she talked to him. Ever so slowly, she placed her hand on his head and gave him a smile. Sliding her hand down, she grasped the halter and scratched his nose.

Kenna opened her door and got out on shaky legs.  She could hear the woman talking on the cell phone as she walked toward the scene. “Yeah, Bets, I'm out here on Route 178, and it looks like one of your stallions is loose. Another woman and I almost hit him. Yes, we’re okay. No, I have him now. You better have one of the boys bring a trailer. Okay. Bye.”

“Hi. Are you okay?” Kenna asked after the woman put away the cell phone.

“Yes. Thanks. Looks like you made it out okay. I’m Paige Davies. Do you mind helping me for a sec?”

“McKenna Mason. What do you need?”

“Here, hold this.” Paige walked the massive stallion over to her and indicated where she was to hold him. “I need to see if my truck is able to run or if I need to call a tow. Thanks!”

Kenna took a hold of the halter and stared at the horse. She hadn’t been around a horse in decades. She held on for dear life, even though the horse seemed content to just stand off to the side of the road and watch the world go by.

Paige’s truck roared to life. She drove it out of the ditch and parked next to Kenna’s M6. What a sight: a brand new M6 next to a rusted, blue, Chevy pickup that had to be fifteen years old. Paige gracefully jumped down from the cab and walked over to her.

“Thanks. Now we have room for the little guy to be picked up. I wonder how he got out?”

“I'm just glad we didn’t hit him.”

“This is part of the Ashton Farm, and unfortunately they've been having a lot of problems recently.”

“Ashton, as in Will Ashton?”  Kenna couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t even pulled into town and she had just found the person she was looking for.

“Yes. The family owns and runs it. You know Will?”

“I used to. I haven’t seen him in seventeen years.”

“Are you here to visit them?”

“No, I'm here to interview with Tom Burns for the assistant district attorney job.”

“That’s great.” Paige was so excited for her that Kenna couldn’t help but smile. She stepped forward and scratched the forehead of the large horse.

“Actually, I'm glad I ran into someone from the town. Can you tell me a good place to stay? I couldn’t find any hotels online.”

“That’s because there aren’t any. You’ll want to go see Miss Lily Rae Rose. She has a bed and breakfast. Just continue straight and make a left at the first stop light you come to. She’s in the big white Victorian. And, if you’re looking for a good place to eat, Miss Lily has two sisters, Miss Daisy Mae Rose and Miss Violet Fae Rose, who run the Blossom Cafe. Great place to eat some chocolate after a close call like this!” Paige laughed and Kenna couldn’t help but like her. This was a woman after her own heart!

“Thanks a lot. I'm guessing you're from
Keeneston. What do you do there?”

"I have a store on Main Street named Southern Charms. I have all local made products. Everything from statues, paintings, jewelry, clothes, painted wine glasses, to cookbooks.”

“Sounds amazing. I'll have to stop by.”

“We should have lunch together. I can be the official welcoming party!” They both turned to the sounds of a diesel engine and saw a massive truck with a horse trailer come around the corner from the direction Paige had come. “Ah, good. Now we can get this boy home.”

Kenna stood back as three men jumped down from the truck and with an apple helped convince the horse to get in the trailer.

“Thanks for the help with him. I look forward to our lunch. It was great meeting you and welcome to
Keeneston,” Paige said as she and Kenna walked to their cars.

Kenna’s legs had finally stopped shaking when she slid into her car. Pulling out after Paige, she headed into town, wondering what her new home would be like.

***

"Just shoot me now," Kenna thought as she squeezed her eyes closed. She slowly opened them, hoping against all odds the scene before her had changed, but to her utter despair, it was the same scene she had just driven upon. Kenna had pulled her M6 to the side of the road and stared at the town before her with a critical eye. She was sitting on the edge of Main Street and could see the other end of what she guessed to be downtown just two stop lights away. The town was straight out of Mayberry, she thought. She couldn’t help but start  whistling the theme song to the Andy Griffith Show as she looked around her new hometown: perfect trees lining both sides of Main Street, American flags waving from every light post, and the people wandering down the sidewalk seemed to know each other since they were tipping their hats and smiling to each person they passed by.

Kenna had spent the last eleven years in the Big City. So when she took a deep breath that lacked pollution and listened to the honking of cars that were strangely not honks of anger, but honks of greeting as they passed someone they knew, she felt out of her element. Not for the first time, Kenna wondered how she ended up here. Just a month ago, she was at the hottest nightclub in New York City with her best friend Danielle, celebrating her twenty-ninth birthday with all her friends from Greendale, Thompson and Hitchem, the largest law firm in New York. Kenna sighed wistfully as she thought about the six figure salary, the hot clubs and a condo in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that she had left behind in a hurry.

With her eyes closed and her mind firmly set in what might have been, Kenna thought about how she had dined with professional athletes and actors at the best restaurants on the company dime since they were clients. Standing only five foot four, but blessed with what she called womanly curves, Kenna had not only wined and dined famous people, but had dated and been pursued by some as well. Kenna’s auburn hair, milky skin and dark green eyes that hid an intelligence and sharp wit had made her sought after inside and outside of the courtroom. 

Kenna continued her trip down memory lane by giving herself a moment to gloat. She had just made junior partner, one of the youngest associates to have ever done so and the only woman to ever do so.

She cringed as she remembered the night it all changed. The night she fled from her six figure salary and left her amazing condo.  She had fled from New York City with her ex-boyfriend hot in pursuit of her.  Kenna fought a shiver as she remembered Chad trying to find her to prevent her from leaving not only the city but most likely her beautiful condo ever again. It was in the early morning hours of the city that never sleeps that Kenna found herself running for her life and looking for a place to hide.  She had sat in her car and thought about what always made her feel better - chocolate. She had suffered a chocolate craving to end all other chocolate cravings that night.

Now sitting in her car in Keeneston, she remembered the shivers of fear that had wracked her body and the feel of the cold bite of the February wind. And all she wanted was chocolate. That’s when the idea hit her, the perfect place to hide and the perfect place to indulge in the mother of all chocolate cravings.  She had turned her car towards the interstate and headed to Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Kenna’s lips twitched. She had been right.  Since he had no idea where she was, she was left alone.  And in turn, Kenna was surrounded by chocolate for a month. The second night she spent in Hershey, Kenna knew it was time to develop a plan for the rest of her life, or at least for the next phase of her life. Even though she was tempted to apply for the taster’s job opening at the Hershey plant, she decided she couldn’t waste the law degree her parents’ death had paid for. They died when a drunken truck driver jackknifed his semi-truck on a patch of ice, leaving no place for her parents' car to go. The trust they established for Kenna was more than enough to pay for her attendance at law school, and she even had a good part of it left to be able to live off of if she wanted.  However, after her parents’ death, Kenna had lost the carefree ways that the life of privilege provided and had gone to law school to learn how to put away drunk drivers for the pain they caused innocent families.

Kenna sat on her bed in the extend-a-stay hotel with the smell of chocolate in the air and started looking for a job.  She started with Alabama and worked her way through the states alphabetically, looking for places that were hiring. She kept an eye out for cities that were small but not isolated, cities that Chad the Bastard wouldn’t think of looking for her.  But most importantly, cites that were looking for prosecutors. One week later Kenna pumped her fists in the air and jumped up and down on the bed when she saw the opening for a prosecutor seventeen states later. Not too big, not too small… just right.

It was a good thing she had found the opening when she did, Kenna thought to herself. She couldn’t put on any more weight after spending a month in Chocolate Heaven. She pushed the thoughts of the past back in her mind and opened her eyes again. Mayberry was still there. When she was in Hershey the week before, waiting to hear back about an interview, a memory floated up to the surface from some hidden depth of her mind. That memory was Will Ashton. “What the hell,” Kenna thought. It’s not like she had any place else to go and no idea what the future held besides a job application for an assistant district attorney position. Kenna knew her subconscious had led her here to Will Ashton and to
Keeneston, Kentucky.

Kenna pulled herself out of her thoughts as she drove up the driveway, surrounded by Bradford pear trees, and made her way towards the bed and breakfast Paige had recommended. “It's picture perfect,” Kenna said to herself as she got out of the car and looked up at the three- story, white brick Victorian.