Becky Turner [Alpha Billionai His Offer [MF] (epub)

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.HIS OFFERBECKY TURNERKINDLE EDITIONCopyright © 2015 Becky TurnerAll Rights ReservedCover Design by Mayhem Cover CreationsFormatting by Mayhem Cover CreationsAll rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.This is a work of fiction.All of the characters, organizations, and events described in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.My NewsletterIf you love steamy billionaire stories, click the link below to sign up for my newsletter.Click here to subscribe!My Other BooksClick the link below to see a list of all my currently published work!Click here to see them!HIS OFFERThe thing about being a big fish in a little pond is that you never really have to prove yourself to anyone.Even if you never did a single thing to deserve your status, no one ever asks you to show that you can handle whatever things are entrusted to you.They just assume you can do it, and can do it without any help, because of who you are.Or, who your parents are.Or were, I guess.That’s why no one batted an eye when The Leaky Lifeboat was passed down to me.No one said that maybe I couldn’t handle it.No one could say anything about me possibly driving the bar into the ground.They just trusted me to not screw up because my parents never screwed up, which meant, ostensibly, that I had learned some things from them.The other thing about being a big fish in a little pond is that you can’t admit to the little fish that maybe you don’t know the first thing about whatever it is you’re being asked to do.Because all the little fish know is that the big fish are going to make everything okay.They’ll keep the little fish from being eaten up by invasive species.They’ll keep the pond healthy.They’ll take care of everything.I guess it’s time to stop talking in metaphors.Besides, I should really be saying “lake” instead of “pond”.Our town sits on the Oneonik Lake, a forgotten little body of water in a forgotten little part of the largely forgotten little state of Ohio.Fed by the Cuyahaga River, Oneonik Lake is surrounded by four small towns, of which mine is the smallest.Home to retired steel mill workers, a few small-business owners, one or two fisherman who can barely live in what they catch, and a medley of people who commute to work at the larger towns, my town is one of those places with one sign on the highway and no visitors.My parents owned the most successful bar in our little town.Note: it was also the only bar in our little town, so to say that it was the most successful is kind of a joke.The Leaky Lifeboat had history, though, and character.It’d been around for over 100 years, and for most of those years it had been owned by my family.My great-grandpa inherited it from the original owners, who had been close family friends without children of their own.Then it was my grandparents’, and then it was my parents’.And in September of 2012, my parents were driving home late at night when a runaway truck plowed into them and sent their Plymouth into the Cuyahaga River.And then The Leaky Lifeboat became mine, at age 20.After the funeral and the wake and the mourning period, after people had stopped bringing by fruit salads and casseroles, after people stopped hugging me whenever I was at the grocery store or gas station, it finally became real.I remember very clearly sitting in the office behind the bar; it’d been closed since the accident, but after three weeks people started asking, politely and discreetly, what I was planning to do.Obviously, they believed, I would just pick up where my parents left off.My parents almost lived in the bar.There were two bartenders, locals, and one chef who made simple bar food.My parents were always hanging around to lend a hand when it got busy: they were the owners, but they weren’t above slinging drinks or serving French fries.And they really loved being there, seeing all the townsfolk coming in to have a good time or lay their troubles down for the evening.The Leaky Lifeboat was like the social hub of town.People said that more laws were made and conflicts solved over pints at The Leaky Lifeboat than at Town Hall meetings.The whole town really depended on The Leaky Lifeboat.Which is why, when I sat down in the office and nearly had a panic attack looking over all the receipts and ledgers and deposit slips and accounts, I had to pull myself together and get to work.I couldn’t just close it down, or sell it.As much as I was still lost in grief, and as much as I knew that this was going to be the most challenging thing I’d ever do, and as much as I realized that it meant I had to drop out of school and devote my life to the bar, I didn’t have the heart to close it down.The town was my family, almost as much as my parents were, and I couldn’t let them down [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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