Megan Carlton’s secret affair with financier Brandon Knight ended when he pulled off a hostile takeover of her family’s hotel empire and then kissed another woman. Broke and alone, Megan starts a new life and learns to stand on her own, then Brandon finds her serving coffee and surviving on tips and tries to pull her back into her old life and his arms. She thought she was over him, and she certainly can’t ever trust him again. But what her head knows and her heart feels are two different things.

Brandon was used to always getting what he wanted, then the woman he loves disappeared without a word. When he finds her months later working as a barista, he wonders if she’s suffering from amnesia. Getting a scalding Americano to the chest proves she recognizes him, but she’s got the situation—and him—all wrong. Now all he has to do is prove it.

Excerpt

“You want so badly to paint me the villain in this, but I didn’t do anything wrong.”

She froze, anger boiling up from deep within her. It took her a few breaths before she could speak without wanting to spear him with a fork. Lucky for her, she’d had months to think about what she’d say to him.

“Spare me your guilt-induced back pedaling. If you don’t like yourself very much right now, it’s because of what you did, not how I reacted to it. It’s one thing to play me as hard and as rough as you did, it’s quite another to try and wrap it up in a pretty package and call it altruistic. Millionaires quake when you start buying into their companies because they know you plan on restructuring them right out of their income bracket, not because you are known for being soft and cuddly.”

“I’m talking about this deal, Meg.” He tapped his finger on the table for emphasis.

“This deal, not all the ones I did before or have done since. He was destroying something you were proud of.”

“I’m sorry, but my father isn’t at this table. I’m talking about you, Brandon. If you really were trying to save Carlton Hotels for me, you would have told me before it all went down.”

“If I’d have told you, you would have run straight to him.”

“You do see where your selfless logic gets fuzzy here, right?”

Brandon’s chest rose and fell as he huffed a deep breath. “You are exasperating. How hard is it to see that I was trying to do this for you, as a gift.”

“La Perla is a gift, Brandon.” She tamped down the images of just how much of the pricey lingerie he’d given her over the years. “Taking my family’s business for your own isn’t something you do to say happy birthday.”

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About Jenna Bayley-Burke

By day, Jenna is faster than a speeding toddler, stronger than a stubborn husband, able to leap tall Lego structures in a single bound…but by night, while the family sleeps she writes romance novels where no one ever has to scoop up after the dog, change diapers, clip coupons, drive carpool, do laundry, mop floors, get silly putty out of hair, vacuum, empty the vacuum bag (gross!), exercise, count calories, apply bandaids, clean up puke…wait where was this going? Oh, Jenna writes romance because it is glamorous. Just ask the dog.

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