Excerpt!
Once again, I was sitting in a waiting area.
This time, I was outside Aunt Halle’s room. We weren’t allowed inside with her yet.
I watched Caine sort out all the paperwork. He filled out various forms and gave all his contact details.
I was too numb to think, and we hadn’t actually spoken yet. Not hello, or anything. He’d just jumped into action and sorted things out.
There was one thing that I’d heard though. He said he was with Halle when she collapsed. It was he who’d called the ambulance.
He was there when it all happened. And I wasn’t.
I was in town at the spa thinking of how bad my life was when the woman who’d sacrificed so much for me fought for her life.
I couldn’t believe it. I was so numb I couldn’t think straight, and this all felt like I was watching what was happening play out like it wasn’t happening to me but someone else.
Caine finished talking to Dr. Fernandes and looked at me.
I gazed at him, and like always got that stunned moment where I got sucked into his looks and had to remind myself that the guy couldn’t stand me.
When we saw each other last, he was eighteen and I was fourteen. He’d looked like the regular high school jock who was popular and played football and had the prettiest girls on his arm. Much as I couldn’t stand him back then and knew the feeling was mutual, I was annoyed at myself for finding him attractive.
That annoyance very much filled me now because Caine Donoghue had traded in his boyishly handsome looks for the powerfully-built Navy man who stood before me. He’d cut his long, dark locks and sported a sharp faux hawk that accentuated the angles and planes of his chiseled face and his high, exotic cheekbones.
I couldn’t have been more annoyed at myself for even thinking about him, and at a time like this.
He walked up to me with a tentative expression on his handsome face. His bright green eyes sparkled with a hint of something too, and he attempted a smile.
“Can I get you a coffee or something?”
The last time he got me an or something, there was a frog in the cup. I’d gone to the mall and saw him there with his friends. I thought he was being nice when he brought me a tall Starbucks cup. It shook as I took it, and when I took off the lid, a disgusting frog jumped out. Actually, I think it could have been a toad.
“No, thank you.”
He sat next to me, and I looked at him out the corners of my eyes, then fully. I needed to say thanks. It didn’t matter what happened between us as kids. I needed to tell him how grateful I was. Especially since he didn’t have to be here. “Thank you, for doing this for her. I wouldn’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t offered to help.”
A slow, easy smile crept across his sensual lips. “You’re welcome.”
“I’ll pay you back.” Of course, I would. That was a lot of money to give, and it was a lot of money to part with.
The smile widened on his face. “No, you won’t.”
“Yes, of course I will. I have every intention of doing so.”
He chuckled. “I don’t mean I think you won’t pay it. I mean I won’t accept any repayment.”
I gazed at him long and hard. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking so much from you.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but this isn’t about you, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. Wow, that was an endearment I never thought I’d hear from him. Not when I was being called Big Bertha when I’d gained a bit of weight in my early teens, Metal Mouth when I had to wear retainers for a few years, Dotto- dot when I had so many zits on my forehead it did look like a game of connect the dots, and then there was The Ugly Duckling. That one had hurt me the most. I wasn’t ugly, not by a long shot, but he’d taken to calling me that after Mom cut my hair way too short after a relaxer went wrong. My hair had looked like duck feathers. It took forever to grow back.
Secrets that were meant to be hidden jump out of the closet in this hot, sexy, enemies to lovers romance. From USA Today Bestselling Author Khardine Gray writing as Bella Fontaine…
There are two things in this world that I’m certain of:
1.Money doesn’t grow on trees.
2.Caine Donoghue is the devil. He’s the kind of guy who’s sexy, knows it, and uses his charm to fool you. It doesn’t help that he’s an Ex-Navy man with all that hard muscle and a body built like a god. He’s the devil.
It sounds harsh, but it’s true. I should know because I practically grew up with him. I had to endure many summers of his evil. So I should know.
However, the day came when the man decided to go and shock me.
It only took a fifteen-year absence in each other’s lives, but…one major act of kindness that saved the person I loved most dissolved the barrier I placed up to keep him out.
I never saw it coming.
Me, trapped in the charm he oozed. Me, trapped in the temptation that lured me to him just from his sinful sexy smile. Me, getting lost in a man I thought was my worse nightmare.
Caine Donoghue sucked me into a sizzling hot, whirlwind romance that was so scorching it would make hell feel like the artic.
He unlocked something inside me.
But…us being together unlocked something else.
We unlocked secrets from the past that should have stayed hidden. Secrets that tangle the past with the present, and will affect the future.
Secrets that could destroy us.
It’s only a matter of time.
Then it won’t matter what I think …
Author bio:
Bella Fontaine is the multicultural and interracial romance pen name of USA Today Bestselling bestselling author Khardine Gray.
The name is to honor the strong, super talented, and courageous women in her family who inspired her to write and do what she loves most.
As with her other books expect hot, steamy, contemporary romance and romantic suspense. Expect drool-worthy heroes and sassy heroines. People falling in love and the wild, sexy fun they have on their journey.
