The Millionaire Falls Hard

The Millionaire Falls Hard

by

Sarah Fredricks

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Copyright statement

Copyright © Sarah Fredricks 2012

Cover Design by www.cloudart.biz

Cover Photo by Yuri Arcurs / Dreamstime.com

All rights reserved worldwide.

The Millionaire Falls Hard is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Please respect the author's work and ensure the copy you are reading has been purchased (or borrowed) only for your enjoyment. Please do not copy or lend it to others.

Thank you.

Synopsis

Carrie is a world renowned children's author and single mum. In the past she has escaped from an abusive relationship and now lives successfully in Scotland, continuing her literary career and bringing up her son amongst a close circle of friends. Lately, she has been receiving threats and through time, these have turned more sinister. Needless to say the stress begins to get to her.

Jake is an award winning international businessman who buys the Estate in Scotland within which Carrie's house stands. Their relationship gets off to a bad start when Jake upsets Carrie's son!

However, their paths seem destined to cross and the tension between them is palpable. It seems other people can see their destiny, but they continue to fight it.

As the threats escalate, Jake is there for her - he organises and gets things done, what's not to like and trust about him?

A lot, as far as Carrie is concerned!

Carrie retreats on a major scale frightened to acknowledge what's happening between them - until a chance encounter when Jake decides enough is enough.

From that moment on the sheets burn with the passion that explodes between them.

Are the few shared days of passion enough to ensure a happy ever after?

WARNING - Novel contains one alpha male, one strong female, well developed secondary characters and explicit sex scenes.

Chapter 1

'Hey! Move away from that loch! You! Boy! Get away from the loch!'

'NOW!'

That sounded like one mean man! Charlie's head sprung up in fear and he ran.

Carrie rushed to her feet from where she'd been sitting, enjoying the April sun on her face. The hostility she heard in the man's voice incensed her as she ran towards it.

She found its owner sitting in a mucky looking landrover with the window wound down. She glanced at his face and then at the back of her son as he ran away.

Anger oozed from her pores. She balled her hands into fists by her side as if ready for a fight.

'Who do you think you are? How dare you!' she yelled. 'How dare you speak to a six year old child like that.'

Shocked, as she'd appeared from nowhere, and shaken by her anger, Jake was momentarily rendered silent. This flame haired woman with flashing green eyes stirred something in him.

'This is my land,' he managed to stutter. That's not what he should have said. Hell, he didn't know what he should have said. Her natural beauty left him speechless, gawping like a hormonal teenager. Not a scrap of makeup that he could see, long curly hair hugging her heart shaped face; she was the most naturally beautiful woman he'd ever seen. And he'd been with a good few women in his time. His success ensured he was never short of some woman wanting to be seen with him. Not that he was as bad as the tabloids made him out to be, he was choosy who he took to his bed. He was jarred from his momentary reverie by the angry voice.

'So that's how you're going to play it is it? Well that's fine. We'll stick to our own land in future.'

Carrie stormed off, running to catch up with Charlie.

*

For a moment, Jake just sat there and stared blankly ahead of him. He couldn't think straight. He didn't understand why he had reacted like that - so completely out of character. He hadn't thought about it for years; thought he'd long since got over that horrendous, nightmare inducing episode of his childhood.

Then there was the effect that woman, whoever she was, had had on him. Not only did he feel emotionally drained from the memories stirred from deep within his subconscious, he felt as horny as hell. He glanced up to his rear view mirror and watched her, admiring her cute, tight behind straining within figure hugging jeans as she ran. He had a flash of her front before she'd turned away. There was a woman with a figure a man could lose himself in, he thought. Beautifully proportioned with enough curves to satisfy without the extra flesh to conceal. He felt his erection harden as he pictured her running in the cropped tee that so wonderfully embraced her attributes. He'd been too long without a woman if his body could react that strongly, that quickly, to a woman he'd merely glanced at.

He shook himself hard, took a few deep breaths and continued to drive up the long Estate road to his home. A home he was inordinately proud of. It had taken a year to renovate the historic manor house that had belonged to the Gemmell family. It had been badly run down when he'd bought the Estate, even though the only remaining ancestor, the son, Roderick Gemmell, had been living there.

Jake had turned it into four luxury apartments. He'd felt the house would be too big for just himself and he couldn't imagine finding anyone he wanted to share his life with, now or in the future so breaking it up had made sense. From the outside you'd never guess the house was apartments. He'd found an architect who had been extremely sensitive to the building, and to the uninitiated the house looked as if it had been sympathetically restored to its former glory.

Jake had come up from London when he could to check on the restoration but it was this week, twelve long months later that he'd finally been able to move into the largest of the apartments. Jake had designed the interior layout of his three floor, four bedroom apartment himself and it never ceased to amaze him how instantly he felt as if he'd come home. It was just over a quarter of a century since he'd left with his widowed father, a hurt and lonely little boy. In his wildest dreams he'd never thought that at age thirty three, he'd be the proud owner of the vast Estate that he'd played on as a child whilst his father had maintained the grounds and his mother had worked in the house.

With his housekeeper moving up from London into the smallest of the apartments, he just needed to decide what to do with the other two. Whilst he knew his decision to break up the building had been the right one, he couldn't bring himself just yet to sell part of it to strangers, even though they would have separate entry and would likely rarely bump into him. For now they could be kept as company flats for overseas staff over on secondment but that wouldn't provide a return on his investment in the longer term.

He thought about the thirty staff who had been prepared to relocate from London to a country Estate in the heart of Scotland, just because he'd decided he had to move out of the rat race and return to the one place where he'd once been happy. He counted himself as fortunate to have such a loyal staff that they would be prepared to up sticks with him. Of course, the generous salary and benefits he paid his staff, along with the fabulous relocation package could well have had something to do with it.

He was incredibly proud of his world-wide IT and consultancy business and his own reputation for understanding client and market requirements to consistently deliver world-class results. He'd come from nothing, built the company up himself, with the help of a few first-class, handpicked people. He was now a highly respected and wealthy business leader.

The Estate boasted two working farms, a dozen cottages, a stable block and a small chapel. Like the manor house, they'd all been in severe need of renovation. In conjunction with the tenants he'd had their homes modernised and had then sold them to them for a modest fee. Doing that had given him a personal satisfaction to think that people who had lived there for a long time and had once been dependent on the Estate for a living now had their financial independence from it. If things had worked out differently for his parents, that could have been them. Still, there was no use focussing on what could never be. His mother had died whilst working there and his father had never got over his devastating loss.

The only dwelling still being renovated was the stable block which was being converted into a large period house. This work was nearing completion and he would shortly have to decide what to do with it. The small chapel was close to the main house and needed work too. He quite liked the idea of restoring it and having it used for special occasions. With its elevated position it had a stunning backdrop of the distant hills and the most glorious stained glass windows that were miraculously in good condition. The building seemed to surround a person in peace and serenity.

There had once been one other small holding but it had been in a state of near collapse, and it was there, on the east side of the Estate that he had built his state of the art headquarters. It was far enough away from the manor house to ensure his privacy and would be welcoming his staff for the first time in just a few days. With ten local staff recruited into the more junior positions, his company could move forward again with no distractions. He certainly had ambitious plans in the coming months that would keep everyone incredibly busy.

Thinking about his business always had the effect of driving out other, less comfortable thoughts, which meant, for now, he didn't need to analyse them. He parked up in front of his apartment and felt an inner peace as he gazed at what he had achieved.

*

As Carrie rushed to catch up with Charlie, her thoughts were in turmoil.

'How dare he shout at my loving and wonderful little boy! He's just six for goodness sake, and all his life I've had to be both mother and father to him. I've taught him about safety, he knows how to swim and loves studying the wildlife in the loch. Does that man think I would put him in danger?'

The incident tugged at a rare feeling of inadequacy that she couldn't provide Charlie with a father.

She may have disliked the previous owner of the Estate, Roderick Gemmell, but at least he hadn't cared if they'd used the lochs.

She thought for a moment about Lord Gemmell, Roderick's late father, a man she had grown incredibly fond of, despite the few times in her life she'd met him. She was sure he'd turn in his grave if he knew what had happened to his beloved ancestral home, now in the hands of a stranger. Still, she thought, as THAT man had said, it was his land now. Not that that thought calmed her down. If anything it made her resentful at that moment that he'd bought it. Living on the Estate wasn't going to be quite so carefree again.

Carrie found Charlie hiding in his little den of bushes just inside the gate to their expansive property, which stood at the south end of the Estate grounds. Charlie only went there on his own when he was deeply upset about something. Her blood boiled again, that that man could have had such an upsetting effect on her son.

'Come on sweetheart, let's go and get some ice cream. That man clearly has ideas above his station.'

Talking to her son broke through her angry thoughts and she found herself calming down. As Charlie took her hand and they walked up the drive to the house, Carrie wondered why she'd responded the way she had. She rarely got angry and certainly not so quickly or with such venom.

She'd felt so aroused.

Good grief!

That brought her to a standstill. No, he can't have had that affect on her, no man ever had. Having felt so used and abused by Charlie's father, she hadn't had a relationship since. She still felt the hurt from that disastrous time in her life, and now she had Charlie, she just wanted to protect him. For her, that meant not letting any man who might hurt them get close.