Forbidden Grumpy Boss (Damaged Daddies #2)

Chapter One Preview

Laura

“Don’t you know it’s bad luck for the bride to see the groom on the night before the wedding?”

I froze when I heard Conor’s voice. Slowly, I turned around, heart hammering in my chest. The lights on the porch of the hotel were low. It was summer, and flies buzzed around the lamps.

I watched as he removed his hands from his jean pockets. He was dressed in a plaid shirt and his work boots. I planted my feet shoulder-width apart and stared into the face of Conor O’Shea.

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” I said. My heart was beating rapidly, and the warm air caused a bead of sweat to trickle down my temple. I hurriedly tucked a few strands of my black hair behind my ear, and watched him as he strode confidently over to meet me.

“Hey,” I said, and suddenly realized that I was breathing hard. That my body could barely keep up with the panic in my system. Already, I felt like gulping down enormous breaths. But I knew I had to be strong—that I couldn’t show my emotions. Not now.

He stepped towards me, his boots creaking on the porch. The night was still and quiet, except for the humming of cicadas. He slowly reached up, resting his big, strong hands on my arms.

“Doesn’t matter, I guess,” he purred, his deep voice sending that old thrill of lust through me. I’d never been able to resist him. Not once. And tonight, I was going to have to do the impossible before he talked me into staying.

I couldn’t stay. No matter what.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, and let my arms drop to my sides. For a moment, a flash of concern crossed Conor’s face. Then his eyes rose up to the Caluga Hotel behind me.

I watched his green irises flicker in the light as he studied the wide old windows, the fresh lick of beautiful blue paint on the front of the building. It wasn’t much—just a small, local hotel. But I’d known it would be just perfect for our wedding.

“I mean, you’re not going anywhere,” said Conor, studying my face again. He chuckled as he said it, and reached up to adjust his scruffy hair. In the light, I could see the streaks of red that shone through now and then. “Right?”

“Right,” I said, feeling a lump rise in my throat. Did he know? Did he suspect? My head had been howling with questions like that ever since I’d packed my bags.

Ever since I’d decided to leave that afternoon.

“You know, Laura,” he said. “You can always tell me what’s going on. You know that, don’t you?”

“Uh huh,” I nodded. But how could I tell him?

Maybe there was a chance. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe I could still stay, and go through with it all. Maybe tomorrow morning, I could go down to the registry office with Conor—and my dad, and my mom, and everyone else—and get married to him.

“Hey,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he said. “Ask me anything. After all, by tomorrow lunchtime, you’re gonna be Mrs O’Shea,” he grinned.

His eyes seemed to glimmer sweetly at me as he said that.

From the first moment I met him, I'd known I wanted to marry him. Conor was the best-looking of all the boys in our tiny high school.

He was tall and slim, and muscular with chiseled abs. He was on the swim team and the football team in high school.

These days, he wore his hair long, almost to his shoulders. His angular, square jaw and intense green eyes nearly made me forget what I wanted to ask.

“Do you still mean it? What you said at the Falls when we first got engaged?”

“What was that?”

“You don’t remember?”

He curled his lip. “What is it, Laura? What did I say?”

“You said…” I whispered, “…that you didn’t want to have kids. That you,” I gulped, “couldn’t stand the thought of any little Lauras or little Conors running around our new house.”

Conor smiled, and tossed his hair over his shoulder a little defiantly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do still mean it. At least right now. I mean, I’m still working with my dad—and carpentry isn’t paying a lot in this town. And you, Laura? What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to work for the paper.”

“The paper?” he snorted. “The Caluga Collector ? And how much is Old Man Marshall paying you for that ?”

“I can get another job,” I said.

“I don’t want you to,” he grinned, and patted me on the shoulder. I hated it when he did that. Much as I thought I loved him, I couldn’t stand the way he spoke to me like a kid. “You know me. I love you for who you are. And I know you’ll be a writer one day if you put your mind to it. But—” he smirked. “Not right now, huh?”

I nodded, and looked away. On the porch, I could see an easel hung up. ‘WEDDING PARTY: 28th JULY, 12pm-9pm.’ I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to midnight.

“You should go,” I said, my voice hollow and lifeless. “It’s late.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I just wanted to get away from my dad.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just…”

“Look,” said Conor gently. “It’ll all be okay. I promise you.”

But it wouldn’t be okay. None of it was going to be okay. And the awful thing was that only I knew why.

I didn’t want to touch him—didn’t want to look at him, for fear that if my eyes lingered too long on his angular jaw, and handsome wiry frame, I’d be tempted to stay. Conor would know something was up. So I stretched out my arms, wrapped them around his slim torso, and rested my head on his chest.

He clasped his arms around me, and I smelled him, the sweet smell of varnish and the wood-smoke from his dad’s workshop. And I looked up at him.

“Goodbye, Laura Solomon,” he said. “Guess that’s the last time I get to call you that.”

“Yeah,” I faked a smile. “I guess it is.”

He bent down, and pressed his lips to mine. I swooned in his embrace, and for a moment, I could think about nothing but the sweet taste of his mouth, and the way he held me like he’d never let me go.

And for a moment, I thought that I was wrong—that I couldn’t leave him, not now, not when I wanted him this way and always would.

But when the kiss was over, and I looked into his eyes, I still saw that same pitying expression. And I knew there was nothing that could stop me.

Conor squeezed my hand, and then he was gone. I turned and watched him loping down into the valley.

I knew the route so well—we’d snuck in together so many times, down past the old rail depot, through the swampy waters on the west side of the lake, to the tumbledown house where he lived.

“Goodbye,” I whispered.

My shoulders shook, and I realized a tear had rolled down my cheek. It was lucky Conor hadn’t come inside. If he had, he would have seen that I had a bag packed, waiting by the door.

I called a cab from the phone in the hotel. So much could go wrong.

If it was Pete Dickey on the night shift, he knew my dad and the jig would be up. If it was Lawrence working at the turnstile by the rail station, he was best buddies with David, my older brother. And if anyone had been awake, then I would have been caught.

But as luck turned out, it wasn’t Pete on the night shift. Lawrence wasn’t working the front desk. He’d had the night off.

And there was no one awake in the hotel. I was alone. I took a cab to the station, then got a train to Seattle. I got to the airport at 4 am, where I emptied my savings account and booked myself on the first flight to San Francisco.

And the pregnancy test? I threw it away. Some part of me wanted to leave it behind on the porch, so that everyone knew.

If only I had. Things would have been so different.

***

Kyle Derek Solomon was born on February 12 th the following year, at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, at 8 am.

“He’s such a beautiful baby,” said Winnie, in my tiny, run-down apartment block where I’d been living for the past seven months. “Look at those eyes!” Out of the kindness of her heart, she’d driven me to the hospital when I’d gone into labor at 5 am.

Kyle, I was told, was one of the quickest and easiest deliveries that had ever been seen. I guess he couldn’t wait to come into the world.

From the start, he was a special baby. Winnie always said so, and I couldn’t help but agree with her.

The 67-year-old retiree who lived next door to me was a tireless helper. She shepherded me through the first few months of childcare while I worked long hours and nights in the mailroom of the San Francisco Post .

But more than once or twice, my manager or a journalist down there searching for his paycheck had to turn a blind eye to the baby carrier nestled in the back of the office.

I loved him more than anything. And more than once, I burned with guilt. He had a family in the world. And somewhere out there, Kyle had a dad. Not that I knew where he was.

Conor had joined the Navy a few months after I left. But I was persona non grata in Caluga Falls. My dad wouldn’t talk to me, and neither would my mom. I still wrote to my brother, David, and spoke to him sometimes on the phone. He kept urging me to come home.

And for a while, I thought about it. My life in San Francisco was tough. But one day, it just so happened that Keith Braggart, the commissioning editor, came down to the mailroom to ask me about something.

We were chatting in the hot, stuffy room when he saw the book on my desk. It had been two years since I’d first arrived in town.

“Huh,” he said. “ Local History of Portafino . Any good?”

“Well, I’ve only got through the first hundred pages,” I said. “But I’m going up with my son on the weekend. We’re going to see the flotilla.”

Ever since my dad took me out on Caluga Lake when I was a kid, I'd always loved boats. Portafino had little boat races in the bay every year. They weren’t a big deal or anything, but I thought it might help me feel a little less homesick.

I’d been living in San Francisco for a year then, but I still thought of home. I still thought of Conor, of where he was and what he was doing.

“You know,” said Keith, “I wanted to get one of my junior reporters to write that up. Interesting piece of local culture and all that. But she just called in sick this morning.”

I saw my chance, and I took it.

“I could write about it,” I said, staring defiantly into his eyes. “If you like. Something short, for the back pages?”

Keith studied me, his gray eyes looking at me before turning to the perfectly-organized mailroom and at the baby carrier, stuffed at the back in my office.

“Sure,” he said, smiling. “If you like. Put the copy on my desk on Sunday afternoon, why don’t you?”

“I will,” I said, promising myself that I wouldn’t let this opportunity pass me by.

The following weekend, I went out to Portafino, bringing Kyle with me in the baby-carrier, armed with a spiral-bound notebook and a pen.

I watched the ships racing in the harbor, and spoke to their captains. I handed in a five-hundred-word article to Keith, two hundred words of which ended up in the Post on Monday morning, under my byline.

The editor of the paper was so impressed that I’d managed to write it on my off-day that, the following week, I was promoted to Junior Reporter.

From then on, I didn’t think about Caluga Falls, or Conor, so much. I was so busy working that they slipped from my mind, while the years slipped through my fingers.

***

Ten years later, Winnie passed away. She didn’t have much in the way of family.

But she was like family to me.

I was heartbroken that the kindly old woman who’d befriended me wasn’t there anymore. She’d shepherded me through the dangerous, dirty city and looked after Kyle on long days and hot nights when I’d been out working, reporting on crime in the city, or traveling round the bay.

I was a senior reporter now, and it had been a long time since I’d had to work a night shift.

I remember the day of her funeral so clearly.

In the afternoon, I drove to the crematorium with flowers, and me and the five or six other people who knew Win sat in the cool chapel, stricken with grief. It was a warm day, the height of summer.

As we said our goodbyes and I left the church, I got a call on my mobile from a number I didn’t recognize.

“Hello?” I said, picking up the phone. I assumed it was one of the junior reporters, or one of my contacts. At the time, I was working on a big story about financial fraud in one of the many tech companies that now populated the city center.

“Laura? Laura Solomon?”

“Yes, it is me,” I frowned.

“Look, I just wanted to call and say I’m so sorry,” said the stranger. “About your loss.”

My loss? “Thank you,” I said stiffly. “But, uh, who is this?”

“This is Gillian Francis,” said the lady. “You remember me, don’t you, dear? I’m your mom’s second cousin. From Caluga Falls?”

“Gillian!” I exclaimed.

It was the first time I’d spoken to anyone from my hometown apart from my brother in years . These days social media made it easy to keep in touch. But by and large, the story of the teenage runaway had passed into legend.

Few people were interested in where I was and what I was doing. And I preferred it that way.

“Well, it’s a terrible loss, and I just wanted to let you know that even though we don’t live in Caluga anymore, we’re still coming up for the funeral, and—”

“Wait,” I said. “What do you mean? Coming up to Caluga?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have the wrong person.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t. But I haven’t lived in Caluga for twelve years.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” I frowned. I heard Gillian take a breath, and then she spoke again, her voice shaking.

“Your father died yesterday.”

***