Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
She’s a woman with goals, dreams, ambitions—always striving upward. And in the midst of everything, she's facing her toughest challenge caring for an aging parent.
Who has time for romance? From her experience, there's a low ROI on relationships. She hasn't met the man who can keep up with her anyway. Until...him.
Tech mogul Maverick Bell is a dilemma wrapped in an exquisitely tailored suit and knee-melting charm. From their first charged glance at the summer's hottest party, Hendrix feels like she’s met her match. Only he can’t be. Mav may be the first to make her feel this seen and desired and appreciated, but he’s the last one she can have. Forbidden fruit is the juiciest, and this man is off limits if she plans to stay the course she’s set for herself.
But when Maverick gives chase—pursuing her, spoiling her, understanding her—is it time to let herself have something more?
“One of the finest romance writers of our age.” –Entertainment Weekly
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“A woman is free if she lives by her own standards and creates her own destiny.”
—Mary McLeod Bethune, educator, philanthropist, activist
PROLOGUE
HENDRIX
The front door stands wide open.
That has always meant a warm welcome at the two-story traditional house where I grew up, but now the sight makes me shiver more than the chilly wind of Christmas Eve whistling in my face.
“Is this it?” the Uber driver asks, watching me stand in the driveway with my rolling suitcase.
“Uh, yeah.” Uncertainty colors my voice and probably my expression if the driver’s Can I go now? face is anything to judge by. “This is it. Thanks.”
But is this home? The slightly overgrown lawn and uneven hedges would never have been tolerated by my mother in all the forty years of my life. The garage door is up and Mama’s pride and joy, Shortcake, her pearl-colored Lincoln MKC, is parked there. Mama wouldn’t leave her baby exposed like that.
Something’s wrong.
Something’s been wrong for a while. I haven’t exactly ignored it. I’m not one to bury my head in the sand, but I did hope it wasn’t as bad as I’d suspected. There are worse things to be guilty of than hope, but right now I can’t think of them.
As the Uber pulls off and I drag my bag up the driveway to the wide-open front door, the cloud of dread that has gathered in my belly for the last year calcifies and drops like a stone. I cross the threshold and shut the door behind me, surveying the front room Mama always kept immaculate. It was the first impression of our home, and I’ve never seen it in such disarray. Black dirt from an overturned plant soils the white carpet. A thin layer of dust dulls the end table’s usually shiny surface, and the lampshade is askew. The whole scene is askew, and I’m so disoriented it feels like I’m standing on the ceiling.
“Mama?”
Her name comes out thin and tentative, like when I called her as a child, scared there was a monster hiding under my bed. She always responded right away, coming into my room with a reassuring smile.
There is nothing reassuring about this answering silence.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The smoke detector blares, breaking the quiet and jarring me from my stupor. White clouds billow into the hall, and I race to the kitchen. Plumes of smoke stream from a hissing pan on the stove. The acrid scent of something burning floods the air and stings my nose.
Shit!
Coughing, I rush past a mound of flour in the center of the kitchen floor, fumbling through the drawers where Mama always keeps dish towels. Wrapping one around the handle, I drag the pan away from the angry red burner. The pan sizzles when it hits the sink, a curtain of steam rising into the air and almost blurring—but not quite—the sight of raw chicken parts, chopped vegetables, half-formed piecrusts, and sloppily sliced fruit littering the counter.
What the…
Lifting the pan lid reveals collard greens, or what’s left of them. All the water boiled out and the charred mass is stuck to the bottom. I wrench open the oven door, and my nose wrinkles at the scorched, withered mess that may have been a ten-pound turkey in its previous life. Grabbing a second dish towel, I pull the smoking mess from the oven and plop it onto the range.
The smoke detector keeps squawking, so I stretch to vigorously wave my hands back and forth in front of the blinking alarm until it quiets. The silence that follows is even worse. With the immediate emergency of burning food addressed, I’m forced to deal with the bigger problem.