Sweet and Sassy Baby Love Page 10

  “Sure,” Em said, but she felt so exhausted by it all that her response was less than enthusiastic.

  Matt knelt in front of Em’s chair and grabbed her hands. “Please, Em. We can fix this. I’m sorry it happened just when we were doing so well. Please, let’s give it another try. When I got annoyed about what I thought your father did, I never considered it would mean we end things between you and me.”

  Em looked down at him and could not deny how much she loved him—or what he said about her running away. “Okay. You said I didn’t fight for what we had before, so this time I’ll do that as long as you promise not to quit on me halfway.”

  “I don’t want to ever quit on you, Em. That’s why I’ve been carrying this around in my pocket for weeks.” Matt pulled a small black velvet box out of his pocket and opened it to show her the diamond ring inside. “This is hardly the most romantic place to ask you, but…Emerson Cliffords, will you marry me?”

  Em burst into tears. And so did Sheila.

  “Yes, Matt. You are the only man I could ever love.”

  “And you are the only woman I could ever love. Thank you for making me the happiest man in the world.”

  He slid the ring onto her finger and his parents applauded. Both of them.

  The End

  A Note From The Author

  Thank you for reading ENCORE LOVERS in the SWEET AND SASSY BABY LOVE bundle. If you enjoyed it, I hope you will consider posting a review. Even one line can help an author or another reader. For updates on new releases, sales, or contests, please join my newsletter list. Your email would never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  If you’d like to send me feedback or just say hello you can write me at alicia@aliciastreetauthor.com

  I love hearing from readers and always answer every message.

  Other Books By Alicia Street

  All series books can be read as stand-alones

  Dance ‘n’ Love series

  Kiss Me, Dancer

  Touch Me and Tango

  Stars, Love and Pirouettes

  Snow Dance

  Dance ‘n’ Luv Contemporary Romance Boxed Set

  Tomboy Bride

  Tomboy Bride is a bridge story connecting all of my series and it is the first book about one of the Rocklyn clan - Kendra Rocklyn

  The Rocklyns

  Lovers in Training

  Maybe Lovers

  Rainy Day Lovers

  Windswept Lovers

  and don’t miss Kip Rocklyn’s book in the Hot Hunks Collection

  After Hurricane Nina, Kip’s Resolution

  Holiday Luv series

  Be Mine For Christmas

  The Christmas Honeymoon

  The Christmas Wedding Cake

  His Christmas Promise

  Her Christmas Secret

  O Christmas Tree

  Holiday Luv Bundle boxed set

  Peconic Bend series

  The Sweetheart Test

  The Christmas Sparkle Test

  The Leftover Bride

  About The Author

  ALICIA STREET is a USA Today bestselling author and a Daphne du Maurier award-winner. She writes both sweet and steamy romances and sometimes collaborates with her husband, Roy. Her years as a professional dancer, choreographer and teacher provide the inspiration behind her Dance 'n' Luv contemporary romance series. A compulsive reader of every genre, Alicia loves watching old black-and-white movies and inventing new recipes for soup.

  Contact Information

  You can always find me by way of social media.

  I send out a monthly newsletter where I provide information about new releases as well as free books and available promotional sign ups and giveaways.

  Newsletter

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  alicia@aliciastreetauthor.com

  FOREVER LOVE

  Forever Love

  Love Collection

  Natalie Ann

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019, Natalie Ann

  Book Description

  Can their pretend marriage lead to the forever love and family they both always wanted?

  Leah Morrison used to believe in happily ever after. That is until her wedding planning business started planning more divorce parties than bridal showers. Now she’s jaded enough to focus on her business and growing it the way she knows it can, pretty much giving up on finding her forever love.

  Gabe Richards is more focused on the fast track and proving to his parents that he can run the family manufacturing business. But their meddling ways are getting on his nerves with wanting him to settle down. He comes up with a plan...a temporary marriage to get them off his back for good so that he can dedicate everything he has to the company. But when he starts to develop feelings for his fake wife, he needs to figure out how to get her to stay after their one-year agreement rather than taking the money to expand her business and running.

  FOREVER LOVE and the following books are part of:

  Love Collection

  Vin Steele and Piper Fielding – Secret Love

  Jared Hawk and Shelby McDonald – True Love

  Erik McMann and Sheldon Case – Finding Love

  Connor Landers and Melissa Mahoney- Beach Love

  Ian Price and Cam Mason- Intense Love

  Liam Sullivan and Ali Rogers - Autumn Love

  Owen Taylor and Jill Duncan - Holiday Love

  Chase Martin and Noelle Bennett - Christmas Love

  Zeke Collins and Kendall Hendricks - Winter Love

  Troy Walker and Meena Dawson – Chasing Love

  Jace Stratton and Lauren Towne - First Love

  Gabe Richards and Leah Morrison – Forever Love

  Blake Wilson and Gemma Anderson – Simply Love

  Acknowledgement

  Thank you to all my readers out there. I couldn’t do what I do without all of your support and encouragement.

  Praise and Awards

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  “I've read every one of Natalie's books & have loved them all. I can't even choose a favorite character or book.” Kindle Customer

  “Great characters and plots make me a fan of this author” Tarri

  “Honestly, I just love this author. Every book is full of wonderful, interesting characters involved in interesting situations. I love the friendships and the family ties.” Carole M.

  “I enjoy reading a book that you feel like the characters are part of your family.” No1Twin

  “Beautiful storylines and very well written. Couldn't put them down and looking forward to getting more of her books.” Wanda G.

  “Love the entire series...seriously addicting and feel like the characters are my friends.” Sarah

  “This author has great storylines. Real life characters and great dialogue in all of her books. She does brilliant work.” Kitty

  “A well written story that I really felt the characters were real because the situations and feelings were written so well.” Sue Z-q

  Chapter One

  Prologue

  “Yes, Ginger.” Leah sighed and glanced in her rearview mirror before she put her blinker on and moved into the left-hand lane. “I understand you’re stressed, but there is plenty of time.” She was a master at calming bride’s nerves.

  The loud moan and screeching of, “But I want the right shade of pink for my flowers,” made Leah roll her eyes. There was no getting through to some brides...hence the name bridezilla.

  “I’ll speak with the florist again. I promise,” she said as calmly as she could while watching the traffic around her.

  “I want a new florist,” Ginger snapped back, her voice echoing on the Bluetooth in Leah’s car.

  Leah held back the sigh this time. She was already on her third florist and was running out of options from her go-to vendor list. Smoothing over ruffled vendors was almost
as bad as calming down nervous brides.

  “Let me see what I can do. I’d like to give this last one another chance to match your girls’ dresses. The dye wasn’t off by much.”

  “I want it perfect! My mother told me of someone a few cities away. I want you to contact them and see what they can do.”

  Since Leah was running late and had a raging headache on top of it, she gave in and said, “I’m driving right now, can I call you back when I get to the office to get the information? Or better yet, can you just text me the name?”

  “I’m paying you a lot of money,” Ginger said firmly, “and I want your undivided attention.”

  Leah knew she shouldn’t have hit the button on her steering wheel to answer the call when she saw who it was. But as Ginger said, she charged a high premium for her wedding planning business. Her reputation in the Capital Region let her get away with it with all the high-profile clients under her belt. But it was the spoiled rich brats that got on her nerves. Not that she’d ever let anyone see that.

  “Give me a second, Ginger,” Leah said, reaching for the pad on the seat next to her. She unhooked the pen that was attached to the top and clicked it. “What’s the name?” The minute Ginger started to speak, Leah realized the pen was out of ink. “I need a new pen. You’re going to have to text me when I hang up. I’m sorry, Ginger.”

  “Leah,” Ginger screeched again. It was worse than being in a room full of two-year-olds that wanted milk when there was only water around.

  She closed her eyes for one brief second praying she could shove the throbbing in her head back. The next thing she knew she was jerked back by her seatbelt and the airbag went off in her face.

  She took a few minutes to orient herself, Ginger still yelling through the Bluetooth, wanting to know what happened. Leah shut her car off, hoping the call dropped at the same time.

  The traffic wasn’t bad on Central Avenue. She’d been paying attention to cars all around her like she always did. All she’d seen was a BMW several car lengths ahead of her, but now it looked like she was kissing its back end.

  There was knocking at her window, causing her to turn her head. “Are you all right?”

  She shook her head, took inventory of her body and opened the door, glad the airbag was deflating.

  “Yeah. What the heck happened? Did you stop in the middle of the road?” Leah asked. How the heck had she hit him when she was so far back?

  The tall man was narrowing his eyes at her. “If you were paying attention you would have seen that asshole cut in front of me and if I didn’t slam on my brakes I was going to T-bone him.”

  “So instead you took the risk I wouldn’t ram into you, which I did,” she said, feeling her anger rising when it rarely did before. This was going to end up being her fault, she knew it.

  “You wouldn’t have hit me as hard if you’d had time to press on the brakes.”

  “I was only going forty,” she said. “That’s the speed limit.”

  He ran his hand through his thick wavy hair. Wow, he was good looking, not that now was the time to be thinking of that. “Doesn’t matter. You still rear-ended me.”

  “I did. And I’m sorry,” she said, pulling out all of her diplomacy skills she had from dealing with annoying clients. She unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out. Thankfully she wasn’t more than just shaken up and hoped to hell she didn’t get two shiners from this.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I get it. Sorry. I’m running late for a meeting and this is putting me behind even more. Really, are you okay?”

  “Shit,” she said, looking at her watch. Her hand went to her mouth. She never swore. “I’ve got a client that will be in my office in ten minutes.”

  “I guess you are okay if that is the first thought on your mind. Looks like we’re both going to be missing our meetings. I’m Gabe, by the way.”

  “Leah,” she said. “I guess one of us should call the police and I’m probably going to need a tow truck. I thought BMWs were made tougher than this.”

  She was looking at her white BMW’s front end all crumpled up against the rear end of Gabe’s black one.

  “At least we’ve got great taste in cars,” he said, but he didn’t laugh and neither did she.

  She took another deep breath in since she’d mastered the breathing technique to get through the day at times, then she walked around to the passenger door and grabbed all her information for when the police showed up.

  She wasn’t in the mood to chat with him, instead calling Madeline, her client that she was going to have to cancel, and then checking her text and email while trying to kill time. She was swamped and needed a full time assistant in the worst way but wasn’t quite ready to afford one yet.

  There were so many things she wanted to do to expand her business. So many ideas, but for the moment, her methods of drumming up clients and vendors were working, so she had to stick with it unless she wanted to cut other expenses. Since she was bare bones in most areas, it wasn’t an option.

  An hour later, the pleasantries of the police and sexy Gabe were done, they’d exchanged business cards in case there were any insurance issues, and she climbed into the tow truck to be brought to the BMW dealership for a rental while Gabe drove away.

  She ran smack dab into a sexy guy and rather than getting her number for a date, she hoped she didn’t get a lawsuit.

  Just another day in her life it seemed.

  Chapter Two

  Hard Disposition

  Gabe took a deep breath and pushed back from the conference room table. The board just left the room and he was glad it was done. Well, sort of done. His father, Colt Richards, was still standing there staring at him as strong and steel hard as the gun he was named after.

  “What?” he asked his father, trying to bite back the snarl but knowing he didn’t quite accomplish it. He and his father had the same personality, he’d been told multiple times. A fast trigger and easily riled.

  “You need to relax,” his father said, crossing his arms and smirking. “That breathing doesn’t work that well and your face is red. How do you control it until everyone leaves?”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re retired and not doing much more than sitting in on these quarterly meetings while I explain why we still don’t have a signed contract from two of the three airlines. And it’s called control. They’re gone, I can let go of it now.”

  “You’re going to give yourself an ulcer to go with that high blood pressure that the doctors are on your case about.”

  Gabe ran Richards Manufacturing. The company his grandfather had founded produced several parts for airplanes, both commercial and private. In the past twenty years, they’d taken on several government contracts just reinforcing their competitive edge.

  “I’ve got it under control. I’m not taking meds at thirty-five years old,” he stated firmly. Good diet and exercise were helping.

  “They’ll sign them. They’re just playing hardball like they always do. I’ve told you that before.”

  Gabe snorted. He had over a thousand employees relying on him to get those contracts signed within the next four months or he was going to have to start explaining why layoffs might not be just a rumor after all.

  “I’m sure they will. At least the government one is set for five years so I can breathe there,” he said.

  That actually wasn’t as hard to get done as he’d thought it’d be. Matter of fact he was able to add to it, allowing bonuses to be put in the budget for next year. But not if he couldn’t get these other contracts done now. The board wanted to know why they weren’t signed early like when his father ran the company.

  “You’re doing a good job on your own, Gabe, but the board is going to give you a hard time and you know it. I’m only here for moral support. I could have jumped in and answered questions multiple times and chose not to.”

  “You just like to make me sweat,” Gabe said, reaching for his bottle of water. What he really wanted was a glass of the scotch his fathe
r had left in the CEO’s office that he now occupied. His father, on the other hand, was getting to enjoy his retirement these past six months, that hard disposition out the window with his suit and tie.

  Gabe thought he’d be prepared to take over, but now he was beginning to have his doubts.

  “It’s a good character builder,” his father said, laughing. “Let’s go up to your office. There is something else I need to talk to you about.”

  At least his father didn’t say “my office.” Slowly the employees were learning to trust their new CEO…even if they weren’t so thrilled with it. Not that they had much of a choice with Gabe’s family owning sixty percent of the shares, and they’d never let it get any lower either. He’d heard the story enough that his grandfather hadn’t even wanted to give up that much control, but money was needed to expand and that had been the only way over the years.

  Those investors had more than quadrupled their investment, resulting in people knocking on Richards’s doors ever since, wanting to invest or buy. The answer had always been no and as long as Gabe controlled the reins, it always would be. They held onto theirs with tight fists.

  But now that the meeting was done, Gabe was dreading the private talk with his father. If it wasn’t about work, it could only be one other thing and right now he was just too worn out from being in the line of fire and jumping past bullets whizzing by his head.