Eligible Billionaires
Maggie Marr
(Eligible Billionaires, #1-9)
Publication date: December 27th 2016
Genres: Adult, Romance
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Praise for Can’t Buy Me Love:
“Marr delivers a great story, the thrill of romance, and sexy love scenes in this often delightful novel.”
—Romantic Times Book Review
—Romantic Times Book Review
“Maggie Marr does it again! Can’t Buy Me Love is an entertaining hot and heavy high stakes Hollywood love story that’ll keep you turning the page! ”
—Jenny Gardiner, #1 Kindle Best Selling Author, Sleeping With Ward Cleaver
—Jenny Gardiner, #1 Kindle Best Selling Author, Sleeping With Ward Cleaver
“Sharp, sexy prose and a fast-paced plot make Maggie Marr’s Can’t Buy Me Love a very entertaining and steamy read! Romance readers will love this book! ”
—Jane Porter, Best Selling Author, Flirting With Forty
—Jane Porter, Best Selling Author, Flirting With Forty
“Readers will delight in Meg and Cole’s sexy, romantic and charming love story and will find themselves touched by the kind of passion and vulnerability it takes to bring these two ambitious people together for a lifetime.”
—Marilyn Brant Author, A Summer in Europe
—Marilyn Brant Author, A Summer in Europe
Author Bio:
Maggie Marr is the author of contemporary romance and women’s fiction. She writes smart, sexy, women and the men they love. She got her start in Hollywood pushing the mail cart at ICM, but quickly rose through the ranks to become a motion picture literary agent. As well as writing, she maintains a boutique legal practice dedicated to the needs of creatives & entrepreneurs. She is the current President of Los Angeles Romance Authors (LARA) and legal adviser to the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA). Maggie loves all things pop culture and when she isn’t taking care of her clients or writing she can be found reading, chasing kids, or exercising her rescue pup.
Eligible Billionaires Boxed Set Excerpt
Can’t Buy Me Love (Eligible Billionaires Book One)
“Is it always this hard?”
For Cole Jackson only one response answered Meg’s question: Yes. Every conquest was the outcome of a hard-fought battle, every win the results of a decimated other side, every challenge more difficult than the last. Otherwise, what was the point? With ease came softness and with softness a swift defeat.
Cole yanked at the knot of his cobalt blue tie, tired of the daylong stranglehold. On the far side of his office window, night sucked away the last light of day as the sweltering orange sun surrendered to the Pacific. The streaks of pink, orange, and fuchsia that decorated the sky failed to captivate Cole. He could witness such displays of color on any horizon, in any city, on any night—so why waste time with this sunset?
Cole reached for the crystal decanter stationed on the bar in his office. His pour was generous and neat. Amber liquid shimmered in the final rays of the sun. He sipped the bourbon. Heat slid down his throat, but the liquor didn’t scorch him nearly as much as the woman who, after a six-month absence, now stood in his office.
“There are cell phone towers up and down the entire California coastline and the one spot in Los Angeles where I can’t get a signal is your office?”
Meg Parson’s voice was brighter and lighter than the curves of her body would suggest. She shifted her weight and her hip teased forward against her suit skirt. The outline of bone against taut fabric taunted Cole with hints of lace panties. In a careless moment his gaze roamed over her legs, caressed her skirt, and brushed over the outline of her breasts.
Hunger for Meg clutched his belly and twisted hard. Cole turned toward the ocean and the unwatched sunset—away from Meg. Better to feign interest in the blossom of color on the horizon than to indulge his desires to stare at his colleague and former assistant.
“Hello? Hello?” Meg said into the phone.
In the window, Cole caught Meg’s reflection as she flipped her long sable-colored hair over her right shoulder. She tightened her jaw and closed her eyes.
His stomach clenched as Meg’s tongue caressed her pout of a mouth. Cole took another slug of his drink, hopeful that the liquid heat burning down his throat would distract him from his desires.
No. Luck.
He set his jaw in opposition to his craving and pulled his gaze away from Meg’s indelible imprint on the glass. He didn’t need the reflection; her every sinew was seared into his mind but Meg was off-limits.
In the three years she’d worked for him, Meg made herself indispensable, and he had been fool enough to let her become a necessity. She knew everything about him—from the way he took his coffee down to his shoe size. She ran his business affairs seamlessly. He leaned on her. Depended on her. Cole even began to need her and needing anyone was intolerable. To need a person was to appear weak. Need allowed vulnerability to take root. Need was the end of strength. No, to need Meg was completely unacceptable.
“Yes, hi. This is Meg Parson. I have Cole Jackson for Stan Morton,” Meg said.
With the sound of his name on her lips he faced her. This was a business deal, nothing more.
“Of course I’ll hold.” Meg covered the mouthpiece and her blue eyes sparkled with the thrill of the deal. “Why didn’t we use your landline?”
Cole’s heart quickened as Meg’s excitement spilled over to him. Cole sipped his drink and watched Meg over the top of his glass. This time, her proximity, and not the bourbon, seared through him.
“They’re getting Stan,” Meg whispered, still covering the mouthpiece.
Stan Morton owned one of the two things Cole wanted most in the world: TBC Studios.
And the other thing?
Cole’s eyes traced the porcelain curve of Meg’s neck as she twirled a piece of hair between her thumb and pointer finger. Well, the other thing wasn’t for sale, nor was it negotiable. Office dalliances weren’t Cole’s style and neither was a long-term commitment. Meg was the type of woman who required he break both rules, and Cole preferred his relationships exactly as they’d been for the past decade: hot, fast, and disposable.
This deal was Meg’s baby, and once it was consummated Cole would have to promote Meg. If he waited any longer another company would swoop in and grab her. One of his competitors might already be trying.
“How will you celebrate?” Cole rarely asked Meg anything so personal. A dusty pink flush crept over Meg’s ivory-colored cheeks.
Protectiveness surged through Cole.
“I’m thinking Bali.” A smile started in Meg’s eyes and quickly encompassed her whole face as she thought about a luxurious and well-deserved beach vacation.
“Nice choice.”
“And you?”
One Night for Love (Eligible Billionaires Book Two)
“I want it harder,” Prim said. A grunt came from behind her. “God, yes.” Warmth pulsed through her body and tingles shot from her spine and into her limbs. “Yes, deeper, deeper.” The warmth in her core puddled. Her muscles loosened. Her eyes closed. She soaked in the pleasure of a strong, hard touch. Stroked. Kneaded. Rubbed.
This was paradise.
“Lady got too much tension in her shoulder.” Layla’s hand, supple with oil, trailed along the fine vertebrae of Prim’s neck. “Muscles still knotted in here”—her deft fingers pulsed along Prim’s left shoulder—“even after six days of massage.”
Air whooshed from Prim’s lungs. She opened her eyes and stared at the terra-cotta-tile floor beneath the massage table. What could she say? Even with the sun, surf, and sand, she couldn’t forget her huge mess of an existence in California, which she would return to tomorrow.
“Lady’s lower back is still tight.”
Layla’s fingertips fanned out and Prim felt the tension in her back melt. Relaxation oozed through her.
“Lady needs to be with a man.”
Prim jerked her head from the circular cushion. “A what?”
“Head down.” Layla pressed on the back of Prim’s head. “A man. Lady needs to be with a man to release the tension in her body.”
Prim resettled her forehead and cheeks against the cushion. Her sex life, or lack thereof, wasn’t something she really wished to discuss with her masseuse. Of course, Layla’s hands had been all over Prim’s body for the last six days. The morning massage was a high point of Prim’s existence at Mesquale. She’d spent the past six days trying to relax, trying to forget about her career disappointment, and trying to prepare for the unwanted reality she was about to return to.
“Thought lady would find a friend by now,” Layla continued. “Every morning I walk up to house and think this is the morning pretty lady has no more tension here.” Layla’s thumb dug deep into the muscle of Prim’s left shoulder.
“Oooow,” Prim whined. Layla’s thumb hurt so good.
“Lady is pretty. She is young. She has beautiful body. Not married. No kids. She has private house, private beach at resort.” With each word, Layla rubbed her hands deeper into the muscles of Prim’s back. “She on holiday without man, but plenty of men at resort on holiday without a woman.”
Prim closed her eyes. Layla was beginning to sound more and more like Prim’s mum in London.
“So why, I ask, why has lady, while she here, not found friend to take care of all the tension in these muscles?” Layla pulled the heavy, heated towel up over Prim’s back and took her strong hands and stroked down Prim’s left leg.
“God, yes,” Prim whispered between her teeth.
“You not answer me.” Layla laughed. “Maybe lady not know answer.”
“Men are pigs,” Prim said. There were two Prim wanted to gut right now.
“You’re not having sex,” Layla said. “I feel it in your muscles. I see it in your joints. Too tight. No sex.”
Prim’s sexual frustration bubbled through her body and replaced the relaxation that Layla’s hands had provided.
“I just haven’t found anyone,” Prim said. “No one that I want to be with.”
“Don’t have to keep the man, just have to use the man. Don’t keep the pig for a pet, just use it for what you need.”
Prim smiled. She liked the way Layla thought.
Layla tickled Prim’s right toes. “Done.”
Prim sat up and pulled the sheet around her body.
“Lady leave tomorrow?” Layla asked. She wiped her hands on a towel.
Prim nodded. “Early. I return to work on Monday.”
“Maybe you get lucky tonight. With all the massage, your muscles are ready for a man. The heat will explode for you. Maybe you find one at Devils and Angels?”
Prim screwed up her face and shook her head no. “Not going.” She slid from the massage table. “Leaving early tomorrow morning, spending the night here.”
Layla’s smile slipped from her face. “Lady must go.” Her gray hair was twisted in long coils around her face. The skin around her eyes was etched with tiny wrinkles, but Prim could neither tell her heritage nor, for certain, her age. She seemed timeless. “Someone you must meet. I feel it in your body.”
Okay. A little too much voodoo with the massage. Prim reached for the envelope she’d prepared and handed it to Layla. “I can’t thank you enough for this week. You’ve made my body feel…” Prim pulled the sheet tighter around her torso. “Well, you’ve made my body feel better than it has in years.”
“Eighteen months,” Layla said. “It’s been almost eighteen months since you’ve been with a man.”
“How do you—?”
“You still not believe what my fingers feel? I can feel it all in your muscles, in your bones. We carry the body through life, and life … it infiltrates all of the body.” Layla said the words as if they were obvious facts. “You go tonight. You meet someone, take away the tension these hands can’t reach.” Layla hefted her bag of massage oils over her shoulder. “You go.”
“Not going,” Prim said again and followed Layla toward the door. “But thank you.”
“You are going,” Layla said, a smile plastered to her face. “The man who will take the tension from you will be there. You will find him tonight.”
Prim’s smile remained fixed to her face. Perhaps it was the language barrier. She’d had similar conversations with Layla over the course of the last six days, and instead of arguing or trying to explain, Prim had simply nodded and smiled. The last one was when Prim had emphatically denied that she would go snorkeling but then she … had?
Layla’s smile remained on her lips as she descended the front stairs. She raised her hand and waved over her shoulder. “Lady have fun time tonight. More fun than the last eighteen months.”
Prim closed the door behind Layla. She was not going to the party at the resort’s disco tonight. She’d already scheduled an early dinner and she had to pack. Her flight was leaving early for Los Angeles, and the car was scheduled to pick her up before sunrise. Prim walked to the open French doors. The surf pounded the shoreline. A breeze gently lifted her hair from her shoulders. Beautiful. Luxurious. Glorious. Relaxing.
The muscle in her left shoulder tightened. How was that happening? Layla had worked on Prim’s body ninety minutes a day for six days. How could there still be tension in any part of her? Her hand clasped her shoulder and she pressed her fingertips deep into the muscles. The tension was because of the two pigs in Los Angeles. One a seller and one a buyer. With one stroke of a pen, they’d both upended the carefully crafted life Prim had worked toward.
Ryan Murphy had ruined Prim’s future. He’d sold Metro Media to that old codger of a man, William Rhodes. Why would a seventy-year-old man who’d made his money in steel suddenly have an interest in a media company? If only Ryan had told Prim he was considering the sale. If he’d given her even a little time, she could have found a way to buy Metro herself. Since she’d arrived at Metro, her ultimate goal had been to run the company—perhaps even own it. After years and years of hard work and sacrifice, that goal was now lost to her.
Prim looked out at the sand of her private beach. She’d resigned when she discovered that Ryan intended to sell Metro Media. Eventually she’d forgiven him. His grief over Paloma had tainted his judgment. He’d not been rational. He’d come to Prim’s home and begged her to stay for three months as part of the transition team. She’d grudgingly agreed.
Prim closed her eyes. A breath of fresh air tinged with salt entered her lungs. She opened her eyes and exhaled. Twelve hours of paradise remained. Twelve hours without the sharp changes that would inhabit her life for the next three months. The sheet that wrapped around her body dropped to the ground and Prim stepped out onto the deck, now naked and free.
She’d needed this time to prepare herself. She’d needed to be alone to think and to process the inevitable changes she’d confront when she returned to work Monday. Prim stretched her arms up over her head and let the sun warm every inch of her skin. She hadn’t been naked on her beach the entire time she’d been at Mesquale. Not once. But today was the last day. Why not be wild? Why not be free? Why not go to the Devils and Angels party at the disco tonight? After six days of sun, surf, and sand, she deserved to be completely relaxed and totally free.
A Christmas Billionaire (Eligible Billionaires Book Three)
Once upon a time, Nick North had believed in love. He’d believed in Christmas. He might, if asked, have told you he even believed in happily ever after. But the Nick North who wanted to believe in a future that contained a wife and children and a happily-ever-after was gone. Killed by a dream that had died. His heart had frozen solid on a Christmas Eve night long ago.
People who knew Nick, with his tall, muscular body and his eyes the cold gray of a cloudy winter sky, might even be able to pinpoint the moment that carefree young man who had been unencumbered by heartbreak had died, though the people who knew the details wouldn’t have dared discuss such a topic in front of Nick. If anyone ever missed the old Nick, the warm and jovial man he’d been before that frozen Christmas Eve, before the night that turned his heart to ice, they never uttered the words of their distress in front of him.
Some people, those who didn’t know about Nick’s heartbreak, determined that his final semester of B-school had changed him. The work, his studies, his drive to succeed, his dogged determination to make billions of dollars and fulfill his family’s desires, killed the carefree Nick North. Nick became a hard-carved, heartless, cold-blooded capitalist. A man who saw only black and red, dollars and zeroes, profits and losses. A man who could quickly assess any business and whittle it down to its essence, squeeze out every penny, and just as easily toss the business aside, workers be damned. According to Nick North, there was no human side to business, there was nothing personal, there was simply business.
Other people knew the truth of what had happened that long-ago December night. Those people—Nick’s inner circle, his mother, his now-deceased father, his sister, a couple of B-school classmates—realized the sad details of what had happened to Nick and his heart on Christmas Eve. An event that had turned a warmhearted, loving young man on the cusp of a bright and brilliant future into a cold-hearted son of a bitch.
Nick avoided those who had known him before, those who understood his heartbreak, his change, his loss. Once his father passed, Nick purposely avoided his mother. His mother and his sister never spoke of Nick’s heartbreak. His B-school classmates who knew of his loss were scattered to the wind, tossed about on foreign corporate shores.
And the woman? The woman who shattered his heart and dashed his hopes for a happily-ever-after? She was gone, and Nick hoped to never see her again. To see her those emerald eyes and that amber hair would drop him to his knees. He’d loved beyond what he’d thought himself capable of, and she’d left him, abandoned him, turned her back on his love. Gone was his future and his plans. His heart had split wide, and the cold, frigid air of a Chicago Christmas had seeped into the still-beating inner chambers and frozen him from the inside out.
Nick North would never love again.
With a frozen heart he focused on business. The coldness, the calculations, the dollars, the pursuit of profit engaged his brain. The hard, cold world he created with his own bare hands. Building after building after building, added to the immense portfolio of North Industries. Nick stood atop North Tower, hands grasped to hips, the Chicago skyline lay before him a slain beast at his feet. North Tower was the newest skyscraper to decorate Chicago’s skyline. Taller than Willis Tower, prettier than Trump, and soon to be better known than Hancock. This floor was reserved for him and his life and his work. Wind blasted the building and created a tiny sway beneath his feet. A blast of arctic cold could cause any one of the skyscrapers that graced the Chicago skyline to sway six, seven, as much as ten inches at a time.
Let the cold wind blow.
Nick preferred the frigid to the warm. The ice to the puddle. The gray to the sun. Cold was Nick’s dominion.
The phone on his desk rang and he pressed the Bluetooth in his ear. “Is it done?”
The long pause and the sigh from Frederick indicated that the one thing Nick wanted accomplished was still unfinished.
“No, sir, it is not.”
His jaw muscle tensed. Were Frederick not his most brilliant and trusted advisor, and a man Nick had been lucky to have in his life since he began North Industries, the heat building in his chest would rage forth. His frozen heart had not tamped down the heated fury that could warm his belly in a second.
“Who the hell is this woman?”
“Sir, she’s an activist who came to visit her grandmother for the holidays. When she discovered your plan to demolish Winter Pines and replace it with the Shopping Extravaganza, she went into action. And that, sir, is when the proverbial shit hit the fan.”
“It’s been a week, Frederick. You should have assessed her weaknesses and her desires so that we might capitalize on those.”
Beyond the wall of windows thick gray clouds with bruised, purple bellies rolled in from the west. Sleet sliced from the sky toward Michigan Avenue, where the ants of humanity scurried below.
“Are you slipping, Frederick?”
“Slipping, sir?”
He turned toward his desk, which was sleek and hard and made of steel. “Yes, slipping.” His fingers curled around the black leather back of his chair. “Or do you have a soft spot for these people? Perhaps this woman whom you’ve failed to properly assess?”
“No, sir,” Frederick said in his even, measured tone. So impudent that Nick could hear a smile in Frederick’s voice. “Not slipping, sir, merely trying to hold this deal together until Christmas.”
“Christmas?” He might pierce the leather back of his seat with his fingertips. “You’re treading water until Christmas? My timeline dictates that we break ground this week. My intentions are to have that entire geriatric home demo’d by Christmas Eve. I want a hole where Winter Pines is by Christmas Day. Have I not been clear, Frederick?”
“Crystal, sir.”
Frederick was as smooth as ice and as old as a glacier. Few emotions ran through the man and that included fear, which was the primary reason he’d been in Nick’s employ for so long. Aside from Nick’s mother and sister, and of course the woman—the one woman whose name Nick refused to think or to say—every other person on the planet seemed to tremble in trepidation at Nick’s approach. He did not court the fear, he didn’t want the fear, nor did he need his employees and business associates to fear him, although it did help maintain the cold, frosty perimeter that surrounded him at all times. Distance, absence of warmth, created a safe distance from human contact, feelings and even the remote possibility of love.
“This woman has shut us down for nearly five days,” Nick said. “I convinced the mayor, the city council, and the zoning board of that little suburban outpost to approve this construction. We hired local architects. We commissioned environmental and economic reports. I even offered buyouts to the residents of Winter Pines and paid for their moves. All was on track until this woman. How are this woman and her grandmother still there? How is she keeping my demolition team from starting?”
“Chains, sir.”
“Excuse me?”
“She has chained herself to the front door of the central building, sir. As of this morning. Yesterday it was a sit-in, but the local police threatened to move them. Today she’s returned with chains and padlocks.”
Nick closed his eyes. He tilted his head back, and a giant blast of air exited his lips. What kind of woman chained herself between a glass door and a wrecking ball? A twinge tightened his right shoulder. He’d known such a woman, what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“I’ll be there within the hour.”
“Excellent, sir,” Frederick said.
Again Nick heard the smile in Frederick’s voice. What in the hell? Why was Frederick so excited to see Nick on-site when it was so obvious he was completely pissed off?
“I think your coming to Lake Grove and seeing what is taking place at Winter Pines is an excellent idea.”
“You understand I’m not happy about this, don’t you, Frederick?”
“Yes, sir. Looking forward to your arrival.” Frederick hung up.
Odd. Frederick hung up … Nick always hung up first when he finished a call with Frederick. It wasn’t that Frederick was any less responsive than he’d always been, but there was something in Frederick’s voice. Something unfamiliar, something unusual, something—
A chill slid down Nick’s spine and goose bumps prickled across his skin. This wasn’t right. He strode through his office and out the door. He’d be in Lake Grove soon, and he’d fix this damned mess himself.
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