The Scandal (Billionaire's Beach Book 4) (26 page)

“
Me?
”

“You’re at my service, remember?”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Sara’s hand went to her head as she attempted to rewind the conversation. When had this all started going south? “What’s the reason,” she started slowly, “you behaved the way you did around me?”

“I fell in love with you, Sara.”

She jolted, backing into the deck’s dining table. Glancing around, she noted Essie’s big eyes and Imogen’s barely suppressed smile. Then she faced Joaquin again. “Don’t you remember? We don’t trust love.”

“We said that, didn’t we? We agreed we didn’t trust passion, love, marriage—and we had good reasons. So you know what I figure?”

“What?”

“I figure nothing could get past our high, sturdy walls unless it was the real thing.” He crossed to her and cupped her face in his big hands. “The real fucking thing.”

Dazed, she curved her fingers around his wrists to ensure she wasn’t dreaming. But he was there, solid and strong, looking down at her with tenderness and…wariness.

Sara had whispered her true feelings and then run for her life, while he’d been brave enough to speak his out loud—and with witnesses to boot.

“I think you’re right,” she said, tears springing to her eyes and her body starting to tremble. How else had the demands of her heart overridden her practical, cautious nature? “It…it must be the real thing.”

Oh, God.
The real thing! Delight started coursing through her veins, bubbly and intoxicating, like champagne.

Smiling now, Joaquin nodded. “Which means you’re going to fuss over me until the end of days. I’m going to make you happy for at least that long.” His mouth descended, and she started to rise on tiptoe to meet it. Then an insect-like buzz caused her to look up. He raised his head, frowning now.

“What the hell?” A small flying device was circling the deck.

“Oh, my,” Imogen said. “I’ve heard about this, yet not seen it before today. The paps, they have drones now.”

“Drones?” Sara stared up at the machine buzzing overhead. “Should we call the police? Get a broom?”

Then shouts from the water re-directed their attention. A pair of jet skis floated just outside the shore break, their riders pointing cameras in the direction of the deck.

“They can zoom in and take a photo of your freckles from there,” Imogen said on a sigh. “I suggest we go inside.”

Joaquin took hold of Sara’s chin, bringing it around so she stared into his wolfish eyes, now lit with something she’d never seen there before. Laughter? Happiness? Both, she decided, giddy at the notion.

“Or instead we make headlines,” he said now. “Care to make a new announcement to the world?”

Essie clapped her hands. “There are studies! They all say go bold or go home.”

“Oh, well…” Sara’s natural reserve balked at the idea.

“I can see it now.” Essie insisted. “‘Bodacious Butler Bags Bachelor Boss!’”

Sara didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that. “I’m not sure…”

“I’ve got a better one.” The most handsome man in the world took up Sara’s left hand and kissed her ring finger, his gaze trained on hers. “How about ‘Malibu Butler Marries True Love’?”

At that, Sara did it all. She laughed, she cried, she kissed the man who had, despite the odds, given her confidence in forever.

He’s right
, she thought, jumping up to wrap her legs around Joaquin’s waist in order to give the paps—and the whole world—an even bigger show
. It must be the real thing.

At dawn on the last day of May, Joaquin stood on a paddle board, stroking out into the calm ocean waters with Essie sitting cross-legged on the nose. His sister had a plumeria blossom tucked behind her ear, and they both wore colorful leis around their necks. Another string of flowers was piled in Essie’s lap.

He breathed in the cool morning air, thanking George Weatherford for bringing him to this place. If the man hadn’t taken in the broken and grieving sixteen-year-old, who knew what dark paths Joaquin might have traveled to escape his tragic memories. Instead, George had given him a role model, an education, a business that he enjoyed running…and, ultimately, serendipitously, Nueva Vida.

Glancing over his shoulder, he looked back at the house, smiling when he saw Sara on the deck, watching him. Of course she would be there. He waved, and she waved back, and it was hard to take his next breath because his chest was filled with love for her. As he saw his mother and Martin stroll out to join Sara, he almost fell off the board. Renata was never an early riser.

“Our mom’s up,” he told Essie.

She glanced at him and then lifted the lei in her lap. It was mostly white, accented with blood-red blossoms. “This one is hers.”

“Should we do it then?”

The teenager looked around. “This seems good.”

Joaquin stopped paddling, and the board floated easily. “Go ahead, Es.”

“Okay.” She cleared her throat, then sent another swift glance at Joaquin.

“Go, sweets.” He gave her an encouraging nod.

“I…I didn’t get a chance to meet you, Felipe,” she began then, her words slow and measured. “I wish I had been able to know both my big brothers. And I also wish you peace and the knowledge that you’re still remembered.” With a graceful move of her arm, she tossed Renata’s lei into the water. “And loved.” She removed the circle of flowers from around her neck and let it follow the first. “Be at rest.”

Her gaze came to Joaquin again.

“You did great.” He smiled at her, then touched the petals of the flowers around his own neck. “Fifteen years, man. I’ve missed you so much for every single one of them. What adventures we might have had together.” It was hard to breathe again. “But I’m now remembering the ones we did have with joy, Brother. I’ve found a woman, I’m putting together a new life for us, and I know, I know you’d be happy for me.”

He slipped the lei free from his neck and held its light weight in his hand, feeling as if the heavy burden of his grief had been lifted with it. The ghostly regrets seemed permanently buried now, too.

“Love you, bro,” he said, tossing the circlet into the water.

Then he echoed Essie’s words. “Be at rest.”

As the flowers floated on the surface of the Pacific, he and Essie communed with nature and their feelings for a few quiet minutes until he heard his sister’s stomach rumble.

“Sorry,” she said, with a little grimace. “I think it’s anticipating Sara’s promised waffles.”

Joaquin laughed. “They sound good to me, too.” Putting the paddle to use again, he turned the board. His fiancée still stood on the deck, the woman who’d told him she was eager to put down roots with him. That together they’d thrive.

He moved steadily toward her, feeling whole and hopeful and happy.

This new life was going to be so damn good.

# # #

Dear Reader:

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed
THE SCANDAL
, the fourth book in the Billionaire’s Beach series. It’s been great fun to spend more time in Malibu and write another surfside love story for you to enjoy.

Joaquin and Sara are set to enjoy a bright future together, though more excitement is to come in their lives as Sara’s butler classmates Emmaline and Charlotte journey toward their own happy endings in The Seduction and The Secret. I hope you’ll look for them.

Interested in sharing your thoughts with other readers? I hope you leave a review for the book
here
.

To not miss out on new releases and to get other information about upcoming books, sign up for my newsletter. You can also follow me on
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Twitter
, or visit my
website
.

Below, find an excerpt to the
first book in my Rock Royalty series
and links to buy other Ridgway romances you may have missed.

Enjoy!

Christie Ridgway

Excerpt – LIGHT MY FIRE

© Copyright 2014 Christie Ridgway

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Chapter 1

The children of America's premier rock band learned early to sleep through anything. Late night jam sessions, liquor (and worse) -fueled arguments, raucous parties raging from dark to dawn that were peppered with wild laughter, breaking glass, and the squishy thud of fists against skin. At twenty-four, Cilla Maddox had not lost that skill, though she'd recently come to view it as something less than a gift.

Still, she didn't stir from her curled position on the edge of the king-sized bed when a tall, broad figure entered the room in the middle of the night. No streetlights disturbed the darkness this deep in Laurel Canyon and the newcomer found the bed only by deduction. When, at his sixth cautious step, his shin met an immoveable object, he dropped the motorcycle boots and duffel bag he carried to the plush carpet and took a leap of faith by tipping his long body forward. Finding firm mattress and feathery pillow, he instantly fell into sleep.

Hours later, Cilla came awake to the sound of birds tweeting and chirping their odes to another Southern California morning as they flitted through the shrubbery and tall eucalyptus trees that grew inside and outside the canyon compound where she'd grown up. Eyes closed, she breathed in the country-scented air, such a surprise when the famous Hollywood Boulevard and its twin in notoriety, the Sunset Strip, were less than a mile away. Flopping to her back, she stretched to her full five-feet, five inches. Then she pushed her arms overhead and swept them back down until her fingertips met—

Something solid. Warm. Alive.

On a gasp, her eyes flew open and her head whipped right. She yanked her hand from a man's heavy shoulder to press it against her thrashing heart.

As it continued to beat wildly against her ribs, she stared at her bedmate. Though his body was plastered to the mattress belly-down, his face was turned toward hers and it only took another instant to realize he was no stranger. But recognition didn't calm the overactive organ in her chest that continued sending blood sprinting through her body.

She blinked, just to make sure her eyes weren't deceiving her. They apparently had told the truth, she decided. After years of adolescent fantasies, she was actually sharing a bed with
him
. With Renford Colson.

No mistake, it was her teenage fantasy man. His glossy black hair that tangled nearly to his shoulders. His days'-old stubble of beard that made his mouth look softer, fuller, more kissable if that was even possible. Those were his spiky lashes resting against his sharp-angled face.

Yet...was he really here? To make herself believe it, she mouthed his name.
Ren
.

As if he heard the silent syllable, his eyes flipped open.

She started, their distinctive color—a silvered green, just like eucalyptus leaves—jolting her to the marrow.

Dark brows met over his straight nose and she watched the drowsiness seep from him as his gaze sharpened. "Priss?"

She frowned. He was the only one to call her that nickname and it had annoyed her since she was old enough to understand it telegraphed something about the way he viewed her. "Excessively proper," she remembered reading in the dictionary. "Prim."

"Cilla." Her voice sounded morning-husky as she made the correction.

One corner of his mouth kicked up. "Priscilla."

Ugh. That was worse. To her mind, Priscilla was the name of some old-fashioned china doll that was deemed too nice to play with and so grew dusty on a high, forgotten closet shelf. As the youngest "princess" of rock royalty (an article in
Rolling Stone
had described the nine collective children of the Velvet Lemons in just such terms), she'd often been overlooked. Likely Ren hadn't given her a single thought in the nine years since she'd last seen him.

"Why are you here?" she asked, sitting up.

His gaze dropped from her face to the size XL T-shirt she wore, an authentic Byrds concert souvenir, one of the several such clothing items she'd collected (read: purloined from her careless father) during her lifetime. "Priss," Ren remarked with a note of mild surprise, "you've grown up."

Grown-ups didn't react to the red flush they could feel crawling over their skin. Grown-ups didn't check out their chest to determine if it was a modest B-cup that led him to such a conclusion. So ignoring both compulsions, she repeated her question. "Why are you here?"

"Couple reasons." Ren flipped over then jackknifed on the mattress to face her. Both palms rubbed over his eyes and down his cheeks, his beard making a scratchy sound. He'd fallen asleep in his worn jeans and wrinkled dress shirt. On the floor near him were a pair of battered boots and a leather bag, both as black as his hair. His hands went to the buttons marching down his chest.

She swallowed. "What are you doing?"

"I've been wearing this damn thing for—Christ, who knows?—it's got to be a couple of days. However long it took me to get here from Russia with a fucking long layover in Paris."

Her gaze didn't leave his nimble fingers as they continued unbuttoning to reveal a stark white undershirt beneath. "You didn't stop off in London?" That was where he was based. Ren had started as a roadie for the band, then moved into concert tour planning and security. When he'd left the employ of the Velvet Lemons, he'd set up shop across the pond and continued doing the same thing—just not for their fathers' band.

Cilla couldn't blame him for that. The three Lemons might as well have been named the Odd Ducks. They'd achieved superstardom in the 1970s and when they were nearing forty, somehow decided they wanted more than sex, riches, and scandalous reputations. Each had produced three kids before declaring their paternal urges satisfied. No mothers came attached to the children they'd fathered. They'd been bought off or wandered off and as long as Cilla could remember the nine rock progeny had spent their childhoods in the expansive Laurel Canyon compound that consisted of three separate houses and then this smaller cottage where she and Ren had chosen to sleep.