The Millionaire Tempted Fate (A Novella) (Sweet and Savory Romances) Read online

  THE MILLIONAIRE

  TEMPTED FATE

  A SWEET AND SAVORY NOVELLA

  BY SHIRLEY JUMP

  Copyright Information

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Shirley Jump

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  eISBN: 978-1-937776-53-4

  Also by Shirley Jump

  Check out the entire Sweet and Savory Romances series:

  The Bride Wore Chocolate

  The Devil Served Desire

  The Angel Tasted Temptation

  The Groom Wanted Seconds

  The Beauty Charmed Santa

  Other books by Shirley:

  Really Something

  Around the Bend

  The Other Wife

  Return of the Last McKenna

  Simply the Best

  To learn more about the Sweet and Savory Romances series visit www.SweetandSavoryRomance.com and www.ShirleyJump.com.

  Table of Contents

  THE MILLIONAIRE TEMPTED FATE

  Copyright Information

  Also by Shirley Jump

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Excerpt from The Bride Wore Chocolate

  Excerpt from The Devil Served Desire

  Excerpt from The Angel Tasted Temptation

  Author Bio

  1 box Devil’s Food cake mix

  1 8 ounce container vanilla Greek yogurt

  1 cup water

  1 tub frosting, your choice of flavor

  You need something quick and easy to get him to pay attention. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9 by 13-inch pan with cooking spray. Mix cake mix, yogurt and water in a bowl, just until ingredients are incorporated. No going nuts and adding too much air, or taking too long, because you’re really in a time crunch here. Mr. Right is about to make the worst decision of his life.

  Pour the batter into the pan, then bake according to the package directions. Cool, then frost. Serve it to him with a memorable moment that will have him thinking twice about choosing that perky Barbie doll who is all wrong for him.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ten days. That's all Angie Wilson had given herself to pull off a miracle.

  Well, not a miracle, exactly. More of a diabolical scheme to win the heart of the man she had loved since third grade, when he’d given her his last Starburst. She'd been too in awe of the fact that Max Blackwell had realized she was alive to do anything more than sit across from him on the bus and clutch the wrapped orange square of candy in her palm. She'd tucked the softened chewy bite in her ballerina jewelry box, a place of honor given only to the most special mementoes.

  It was still there, a hard, and now petrified reminder of the day she'd met Max, when he’d just handed her a candy for no real reason, and how that one encounter had changed everything.

  "What about this one?" Max's deep voice jerked her attention back to the glistening interior of a Boston jewelry store and the reason she was here for this self-flagellation party.

  Picking out a ring for the woman Max wanted to marry.

  For weeks, Angie had told herself that Max's infatuation would blow over, that his ardor would cool, but if anything his feelings had grown for the woman he'd met by the dollar changing machine in the neighborhood Coin Wash Laundromat. Angie wanted to believe there was still plenty of time for Max to wake up, smell the coffee and realize his perfect woman was already in his life.

  That stubborn, deluded thinking had brought her here. To a jewelry store, where Angie was being asked her opinion about a marquis cut versus a princess cut. A ring meant not for Angie, but for her.

  Becky Perkins, who was altogether too blonde, too thin and too sweet-as-apple-pie for serious minded investor Max—a fact that had escaped him.

  Across from them, a somber salesman in a dark blue suit waited with patient silence, his hands clasped behind his back, while he did his best to blend into the elegant store décor with its glistening counters and gold-flecked champagne colored carpeting. Warm lighting washed over the jewelry cases, adding to the luxurious dark velvet settings.

  For the first time in his life, Max stood indecisive, hemming and hawing. Max’s strong, thick fingers dwarfed the delicate rings, as he touched one, then another, debating.

  Max dwarfed almost everything in the world, as far as Angie was concerned. Six-foot-two, he had maintained his lean, strong quarterback build ever since college. His short dark hair made his blue eyes seem richer, almost like the sapphires propped beside the selection of diamonds. More than that, Max had presence, a way of carrying himself into a boardroom or at a banquet or even, heck, into Starbuck’s.

  People noticed Max.

  He didn’t dress like the millionaire he was, nor did he act like one. He pumped his own gas, trucked his laundry down to the Laundromat when his washer broke, and still went through the drive-thru at McDonald’s once in a while. He was the same person he’d always been. The same person who had helped her pass Algebra II and who had held her tight when her father died. The same person she’d known for more than two decades.

  Except for this little detour into insanity with the engagement ring for Becky. Clearly, Max had had one too many Big Macs.

  She knew Max had this timetable for his life, one he’d written back in junior year, already ambitious and focused at sixteen. Item #27—get married at thirty, followed by #28—start a family at thirty-two. He was five months from his thirtieth birthday, and that internal clock was tick-ticking. For a man who lived for setting and achieving goals, this one loomed big and close.

  Angie couldn’t live her life that way. She made her choices by instinct, not logic. The mere thought of a ticking timeline terrified her. Maybe that was why she worked as a freelance graphic designer, instead of on the staff of an agency. She took the jobs she wanted to, took a week off for impromptu vacations when the mood hit her, and basically lived a flexible, adaptable life.

  Lately, though, she’d been feeling this…itch for more. Maybe it was an allergic reaction to Max’s sudden interest in marriage. Maybe it was being around all these sparkling symbols of commitment.

  Angie put her back to the counter. All that bling was blinding, as far as she was concerned, and if the man couldn’t pick a ring, maybe it was a sign he didn’t know his intended all that well. "Don't you think you're rushing into this?" she said. "You've only known her for three months."

  Max shrugged. "When you know, you know. Isn't that what you always say?"

  She had said that. In a long fumbling conversation where she'd tried to tell Max how she was feeling lately, how she’d finally realized that the feelings she had for him went beyond friendship, then the words got stuck in her throat and she’d ended up derailing into a discussion about ice cream. "I meant sundae toppings, not wives."

  Max chuckled. "Well the same advice applies." He picked up an intricate princess cut ring offset by an S-shaped coil of stones that encircled the main stone i
n a sparkling hug. "You should find someone too, Ang. Settle down, have the quintessential two kids and a dog. Move to the suburbs."

  "Fit me for a cage at the same time." She shuddered. "What happened to the guy who lives and breathes this city? The guy who once told me that Boston is as necessary to you as your heart?"

  "Things change."

  She glanced at him, waiting for the punch line, the "just kidding." The Max she'd known for more than twenty years, who lived his life inside rigidly straight lines, didn’t change. "You’re the man who has gone to the same barber since high school, who has bought the same model of Nike sneakers for ten years, and who follows the same schedule every week. Things change? Not for you."

  She didn’t add that she couldn’t understand why he was so quick to marry a dental hygienist who spent her spare time on Pinterest following boards about craft projects. Yeah, Becky was organized and neat and scheduled, but so was a grocery list.

  "What?" he said. "You're staring at me."

  "Because you have been replaced by an alien. This is not the Max I know."

  "You know getting married by thirty is part of my life plan. It’s time I settled down, and Becky is the right one for me to settle down with."

  "You make it sound like you’re choosing which CD to invest in."

  He chuckled. "Says the woman who has yet to commit to a brand of shampoo."

  "Hey, my hair is complicated. Like me."

  He turned the ring toward her. "What about this one?"

  The gaudy oversized ring stared back at Angie with a disappointed glare. She had waited too long to act on her feelings. Thought too much, padiddled around, as her grandmother called it. And now she was staring at a ring that she hated, meant for a woman she wished would disappear. Becky was all wrong for Max. Why didn't he see that?

  "It's a little too much. Big and ostentatious and screaming ‘look at me,’" Angie said. "If it were me—" What was she saying? But the words kept coming, and she reached toward the case, "—I’d go for something simpler. Something like this." She pointed to a one-carat round stone set in a filigree-patterned white gold band.

  Max picked up the other ring and turned it in the light. "I like this one but I don't know if Becky would. It’s hard to imagine it on her hand. Here, try it on for me."

  "Oh, I can't. It wouldn't be—"

  Max took her hand in his and slid the ring onto her finger. The protest died in her throat. "Look at that. It fits perfectly."

  The soft white light in the store danced off the ring's facets and sent a shower of sparkles onto the carpet, Angie's sweater, and Max's steely features. "I...I..."

  He laughed. "I don't think I've ever seen you speechless before. Must be your marriage phobia kicking in again."

  "I don't...I'm not..." She tried to push the truth out but it stayed put, a stubborn lump caught between her brain and her gut. Was this all because she was just caught up in the shock of Max settling down and leaving her as the lone single one in their group? She’d never wanted to get married before, in fact, never even thought of it for herself.

  Until the last couple of months. Until she woke up one day and realized all the teasing and half-flirting with Max felt different suddenly, as if she’d noticed the man, not just the friend. She’d started stuttering around him, becoming tongue-tied, worrying about things she’d never worried about like her hair and her makeup and what she was wearing, while she worked up the courage to tell him she wanted to take things beyond friends. Now Max was going to go and screw everything up by getting engaged to the wrong woman.

  Once again, instead of saying any of that, she caved to her inner coward. "Just thought I'd add a little realism to the moment. You know, the whole O-M-G effect. Do you want me to scream and faint, too?"

  He chuckled. "You don't need to go that far, Elizabeth Taylor. But since you're in the moment, let me try out the proposal. I'm so scared I'll screw it up."

  "You won't. Everything you do is perfect."

  Max grinned. "No need to butter me up, Ang. I already promised to take you to lunch for suffering through this with me."

  She gave him half a smile. "You know me. Anything for a barbecue burger."

  "A woman after my own heart." Max cleared his throat, then met her eyes. His ocean blue gaze held hers for one long moment. Then he dropped to one knee, still holding her left hand. "Love is a meeting of two hearts, a risk that we take. I want to ask you to be with me for every sunrise—"

  "Gag me, Max. Oh my God, that’s awful. Did you get out of a book?"

  "I was trying to be romantic."

  Angie rolled her eyes. "Let me get you some pancakes for that syrup."

  "Okay, let’s do it your way. Straightforward, to the point, none of that hearts and flowers bull." He cleared his throat. "Angie, you're the only one in the world who can make me laugh on the worst day of my life. The one person who always remembers I'm allergic to onions, and the one who once gave up her seat on a flight to Cancun to stay behind and nurse me through a man cold." He grinned and the smile seared itself on her heart. "Will you marry me?"

  "Yes," she said, the word a breathless, joyful whisper. "Yes."

  Max got to his feet. "Thanks. I'll come up with something better when I propose to Becky, of course, since that was all about you."

  "I thought what you said was perfect."

  "Well, if we ever get engaged, I'll remember that." He gave her a light jab in the arm. "Don't look so panicked. Your marital status is still safely single."

  He slid the ring off her hand and handed it to the salesman. Angie had forgotten the guy was even there. She’d been so caught up in the moment, and in the fantasy of Max proposing. For a moment her usual fear of the word "commitment" disappeared.

  "I'll take this one," Max said.

  "Certainly, sir." The clerk left with measured soundless steps.

  She looked at Max, at his defined profile, the smile she knew as well as she knew her own, and the truth hit her hard and fast.

  Twenty years ago, she had met her Mr. Right, and never realized it until now. At some point, she’d stopped feeling just friendly feelings for Max, and fallen for him, fallen—

  In love.

  No doubt about it, Angie Wilson was definitely in love with Max Blackwell. Deep, soul-sucking love that was going to hurt like an appendectomy without anesthesia when she watched him marry perky Becky.

  She opened her mouth to tell him, to say the words that were in her heart. "Max, I have to tell you…"

  "What?"

  She saw the anticipation on his face, the happiness that seemed to infuse his skin. Becky had brought that to his life and right or wrong, Angie couldn't wipe that look from his face. In the end, Max was her best friend, and the last thing she wanted to do, the one thing she never wanted to do, was hurt Max.

  God. This love thing sucked.

  Instead, she said, "didn't someone promise me a burger?"

  *~*~*

  Max sat across from Angie, the ring heavy in his pocket, and the burger in front of him untouched. He watched Angie eat, in that cautious way she had, with small bites, nothing that ever dripped down her shirt or smeared on her chin. When it came to food, Angie Wilson was as precise and particular as a mathematician. In every other aspect of her life, she was wild, untamable, but she took her meals seriously.

  He’d known her for as long as he could remember. There was no exact moment he could go back to, a day to pinpoint when he’d met Angie. It seemed like she’d just been there, as constant as sunshine, the only friend he had maintained all the way from James K Polk Elementary through Harry S Truman High School, and beyond.

  She’d gone from a short-haired tomboy who dangled off the jungle gym to a beautiful woman with deep green eyes and a sassy mouth. Angie was tall, thin, but with curves in all the right places and a long riot of black-brown curls that cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. He’d seen her more than once in a swimsuit, and knew her dedication to running had paid off in shapely
calves, a flat belly and a sexy physique that had most men stuttering in her presence. She was beautiful and tempting, and had absolutely no idea of her power over men.

  He’d been tempted by her—many times—but never acted upon those feelings. There was an invisible line between them, one made out of a two-decades old friendship, and as much as he might have thought about crossing that line, he hadn’t.

  Tension knotted Angie's shoulders and knitted her brows. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her so keyed up. Maybe that whole mock proposal had unnerved her more than he thought. Of everyone he knew, Angie was the most anti-marriage. She'd once compared the union of a man and a woman to spending your life on death row, chained to someone else's leg. "You know what wolves do in that situation?" she’d said. "They chew off a limb."

  That was Angie—as far from a commitment as a shark from a fish tank. It’d take a hell of a man to convince her that marriage wasn’t evil.

  "Hey, I'm sorry about what happened in the jewelry store," Max said. "I shouldn't have used you for target practice."

  She shrugged and took a sip of her iced tea. Around them, the diner bustled with activity and hummed with conversation. It was a dive, the kind of place shunned by food critics, but the food was amazing and the burgers better than the most expensive Kobe. "I survived."

  He laughed. "So did seven hundred people on the Titanic."

  She gave him a cocky grin. "Are you comparing marrying you to hitting an iceberg and sinking into the frigid waters of the Atlantic?"

  "Only if you like drowning in my love."

  She pretended to gag. "Save me from tacky soap opera lines."

  "Remember when we created that whole soap opera thing back in high school?"

  "Oh my God, I almost forgot about that." She put her drink down, and her gaze went to somewhere in the distance as she reached back with her memory. "What’d we call it? Oh yeah, I remember. 'As the Locker Opens.' Every day we'd make up a new drama—"