Brides Of Privilege (v1.3)
Kasey Michaels
Brides Of Privilege
Kasey Michaels,
Ruth Langan,
and
Carolyn Zane
Legend has it that the famous Colton family sapphires shine brilliantly on only the women— who are meant to be Colton brides.... Meet three powerful and sexy Colton men who face the challenge of finding the right women—the brides of their hearts! Join New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels, along with national bestselling author Ruth Langan and reader favorite Carolyn Zane as they create unforgettable romances and lure you into the fascinating world of the Coltons.
THE COLTONS:
Harrison Colton: The vengeful tycoon. When the sister of his ex-fiance shows up begging for his help, he discovers that the steel wall surrounding his heart isn’t as impenetrable as he’d thought.
William Colton: The playboy earl. Rather than succumb to a loveless union, he’d willfully chosen poverty over prestige. But now he must convince the beautiful, destitute widow living next door of the sincerity of his love....
Jason Colton: The determined doctor. When this hardworking M.D. rushes to aid a pregnant woman, her secrecy suggests she’s cut from the same cloth as his former bride-to-be. Now she must persuade him that their meeting was more than mere chance—but destiny!
KASEY MICHAELS is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than sixty books that range from contemporary to historical romance. Recipient of the Romance Writers of America RITA Award and Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times Magazine, in addition to writing for Silhouette, Kasey is currently writing single-title contemporary fiction and Regency historical romances. When asked about her work for the Colton series, she said that she has rarely felt so involved in a project, one with such scope and diversity of plot and characters.
RUTH LANGAN, award-winning, bestselling author of more than sixty books, both contemporary and historical, has been described by Romantic Times Magazine as “a true master at involving your emotions, be they laughter or tears.” Ruth has given dozens of print, radio and TV interviews, including Good Morning America and CNN News, as well as such diverse publications as the Wall Street journal, Cosmopolitan and the Detroit Free Press. It should be obvious to all her readers that Ruth Langan loves her work and lives to please her readers. “Colton’s Bride” is a story that truly touched her heart. She hopes it touches all of yours, as well.
CAROLYN ZANE loves to write stories about pregnancy, as she is one of those hateful women who feels her best when she’s expecting. While other women might have languished with morning sickness, Carolyn devoured barbecue beef sandwiches and chocolate cake with ice cream. Or anything that was not nailed down...with ice cream. Her husband, Matt, being the supportive sort, joined her in her ice cream habit. Had Carolyn known how wonderful the whole pregnancy thing really was, she most likely would not have waited sixteen years into her marriage to try it and would have well over a dozen children by now. As it is, she is kept more than busy with her two beautiful little daughters, Madeline and Olivia, and her adopted son, golden retriever Bob Barker.
Contents
SAPPHIRE BRIDE by Kasey Michaels
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
COLTON’S BRIDE by Ruth Langan
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
DESTINY’S BRIDE by Carolyn Zane
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
SAPPHIRE BRIDE
by Kasey Michaels
Chapter 1
Lorraine Nealy stuck small yellow arrows on the neatly typed pages. “Here, here and here,” she said rather unnecessarily as she then placed each page on the desktop. The paper arrows that said without words “Sign here, bozo” were also redundant, but Harrison Colton didn’t say anything; he just signed on each indicated line. Break Lorraine’s stride and she unfailingly started over from the beginning. Harrison was just about done signing the papers and the idea of going back to Go wasn’t part of his plan.
“Lorraine,” he said at last, as his personal assistant—she’d made it very clear she was not a secretary—gathered up the contracts, “whatever would I do without you?”
“You’d wither and die, Mr. Colton. The whole place would fall down around your ears. It wouldn’t be pretty, trust me,” Lorraine responded without missing a beat.
In her middle fifties, Lorraine had been at Colton Media Holdings for thirty years and had convinced herself that she was the linchpin that held CMH together. She’d been Frank Colton’s personal assistant until Harrison’s father had let go of the reins enough to let his younger son take over, and now she ran CMH through Harrison, as she’d tell anyone who asked. Even if they didn’t ask.
Harrison smiled, stood up, reached for the navy-blue sport coat he’d hung on the back of his chair. “In that case, I’m probably safe in leaving early today, with CMH in such reliable hands. Unless you’ve got more papers for me to sign?”
“Nope, all done. Your collar’s crooked,” Lorraine added, and Harrison quickly reached up and straightened it, slipping the Windsor knot on his maroon-and-navy striped tie back into place as well. At thirty-one, he had yet to adopt CMH’s own policy of casual Fridays, although he had heartily subscribed to the optional work-at-home Fridays. He had only come into the office to sign the contracts, and was more than ready to get an early start on his weekend.
Smoothing down his collar, he then ran a hand over his jet-black hair before Lorraine could tell him that he looked like he’d been “rode hard and put away wet,” and picked up his briefcase. “I am excused, aren’t I, Lorraine?” he asked, already heading for the door.
“Actually...” Lorraine began, and Harrison stopped halfway across the wide expanse of beige Berber carpeting, turned to look at her, his green eyes narrowed. “No, never mind. I’ll get rid of her. Just go out the side door.”
“Her?” Harrison, intrigued in spite of himself, shot a quick look toward the closed door that led to Lorraine’s office and the reception area. “Her who?”
Lorraine clasped the contracts to her rather flat chest and rolled her watery blue eyes. “Her who has been sitting in my office for the past hour, obviously unable to take a hint and go away. That her.”
“No appointment? No, of course not. I don’t make appointments for Friday afternoons. But she didn’t leave? Wow. Lorraine, you must be losing your edge. When you say no, strong men cringe. I know I do.”
“I told her maybe,” Lorraine said so quietly that Harrison had to step closer in order to hear her.
“You said maybe,” Harrison repeated, sincerely impressed. “You never say maybe, Lorraine. Yes, no, not in your wildest dreams. But never maybe. What does this woman want? Is she collecting for homeless poodles and hit your one soft spot?”
“There are rarely homeless poodles, Mr. Colton,” she replied tightly. “Poodles are eminently lovable, and almost always find homes.”
“Yeah,” Harrison said, grinning. “With you. What are you up to, at last count? Ten?”
“Six, with all of them expecting me home in the next hour to feed them, so if you’re done dragging your feet, please leave by the side door so that I can go back out there and truthfully tell this Hamilton wom
an that you’ve gone for the day.”
“Whoa,” Harrison said, holding out an arm, blocking Lorraine’s exit. “Did you say Hamilton? Annette Hamilton? No, that couldn’t be. She’s Annette O’Meara now.”
Lorraine pulled a small piece of notepaper out of her pocket and checked it before saying, “Not Annette. This is a Ms. Savannah Hamilton. I’ll tell her you’ve gone. Would you like me to set up an appointment sometime next month?’’
No, he didn’t want Lorraine to make an appointment for Ms. Savannah Hamilton for next month. What he’d like is for Lorraine to arrange for Ms. Savannah Hamilton to be on the next space launch headed for Mars. And definitely with the trip being a real family vacation, so that Sam and Annette went with her.
Harrison rubbed at his jaw as he walked back to the desk and laid down his briefcase. “What does she want?”
“What do any of them want?” Lorraine said. “A job. They think they can do an end run around the personnel department, bat their big baby blues at you, and have their byline on a story within six months, their Pulitzer within the year. Like I said, I’ll get rid of her. I should have gotten rid of her an hour ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Lorraine shrugged her thin shoulders. “I think you’re right. She does have a sort of stray-dog or wounded-puppy look to her. All dressed up and nowhere to go. And she seemed to be more unhappy about being here than I was to look up and see her standing in front of my desk. Maybe, I thought, she isn’t looking for a job. Maybe she’s looking for something else. I thought I could get her to tell me what she wanted, but she said it was a personal matter and I couldn’t get her to say anything else. Even my homemade peanut butter cookies couldn’t get her to talk.”
“Wow,” Harrison said, slipping off his sport coat and walking behind the desk. Trying to keep it light, so that Lorraine didn’t suspect anything, he continued, “When the peanut butter cookies don’t work, there’s nothing else left. Thumbscrews, the rack— none of them are more potent than your peanut butter cookies. I’m surprised you didn’t call Security and have Ms. Hamilton tossed out on her rear.”
“Me, too,” Lorraine said, her hand on the doorknob. “I take it I can relax now and Ms. Savannah Hamilton’s personal matter doesn’t have anything to do with an unexpected Colton cooking in the oven, because you seem truly surprised to see her, and because I know you’re a good boy. Sometimes. So, you’ll see her?”
Harrison lowered his six-foot-two-inch frame into the chair behind the desk. He ignored the first part of Lorraine’s little speech because he was too used to her to object. “But you can go home once you’ve shown her in. And don’t worry. I took three karate lessons when Jason and I were kids, so I don’t think she’ll be able to overpower me.”
“Your father was never flippant,” Lorraine reminded him. “He would never have made that crack, or the one about my peanut butter cookies.”
“True. But you love me. You even worry about me, and I’m probably crazy, because I like it,” Harrison said, wondering if he wanted to keep Lorraine here, and talking, or if he wanted her out of the room now, and Savannah Hamilton in it. “Give me five minutes, then send her in, okay?”
He needed five minutes, to think about Savannah Hamilton, to beat down the anger that automatically surfaced whenever he heard the Hamilton name. He needed time to remind himself that this wasn’t six years ago, he wasn’t a gullible idiot anymore, and he could handle whatever Savannah was going to say without either going ballistic or allowing some unexpected scabs to come off what he most sincerely hoped were healed wounds.
Six years. That was a long time, but maybe not long enough, because he still could remember everything with shameful clarity.
What a naive idiot he’d been back then. Straight out of graduate school and ready to take on the world, but on his terms. He’d refused his dad’s offer of a job with CMH and had set out to make it big on his own, without family help. And he’d done it, too, and only joined CMH when he’d already proved himself. He’d done just fine, except for that early speed bump with the Hamiltons.
An employment speed bump, and an emotional one, both of them damn painful. Harrison steepled his fingers in front of his nose and allowed the memories to overtake him, just for a few moments.
He’d joined Sam Hamilton’s company with high hopes, and when he’d met and quickly fallen in love with Sam’s older daughter, Annette, it seemed like a fairy tale straight out of the storybooks.
That probably should have been his first warning.
Sam Hamilton had welcomed him as a son, given his blessing to the engagement, and begun planning a huge society wedding. So far so good. Harrison had liked the affable Sam, loved the beautiful, dark- haired Annette, and gotten a huge kick out of her rather solemn and serious younger sister, Savannah.
Harrison smiled now as he remembered Savannah. Nice kid, a really nice kid. The baby sister he’d never had. He’d felt a little sorry for her, a motherless child whose father made no secret of the fact that he believed Annette had gotten the looks and Savannah the brains—and Sam Hamilton believed brains in a woman were about as out of place as suspenders on a bikini.
How old had Savannah been? Seventeen? Yeah, about that. She’d still been at boarding school, and Harrison had visited her there several times because she was homesick and because the school was close to the highway that led to his parents’ home in Prosperino, California. He’d visited her, dropped off things from home that she wanted, and somehow got involved in helping her with a school project.
He wondered how that had worked out, if she’d gotten a good grade. Not that he’d ask her, because that was ancient history, just like his job at Hamilton’s and his engagement to Annette were ancient history.
“Bastard,” Harrison grumbled, thinking about Sam Hamilton, thinking about the day Sam had asked him to come into his study for a small talk. Small talk? Like hell. Sam had passed some legal papers across the desk to Harrison, telling him he’d made up a prenuptial agreement that included giving Sam a stake in CMH. As if Harrison would ask his father to do any such thing!
Harrison sighed, shook his head. “And then there was one,” he said to himself, remembering how he’d stormed out of Sam’s study, grabbed Annette by the hand and taken her outside to tell her it looked like they had a problem. Would she consider eloping with him? They could hop in the car and be in Reno by nightfall, be married by morning.
“Idiot. Stupid, stupid idiot,” Harrison grumbled, picking up the pen he’d just used and winging it across the room. No way was Annette going to elope. In fact, unless he agreed to sign the prenuptial agreement, no way was she going to marry him. She didn’t even pretend to really love him, didn’t bother to lie. She saw their union as advantageous to her father, financially, and to herself, socially. Without a stake in CMH, without Harrison waking up, going home, and taking a cushy job at CMH, suddenly he was about as useless as suspenders on a bikini.
Oh, yeah. He wanted a Hamilton in his office. Sure he did.
Still, this was Savannah. She’d never done anything to him, right? She’d been as young and innocent as he’d been stupid and gullible. It wasn’t her fault her father was a son of a bitch and her sister a heartless gold digger.
Harrison leaned forward and hit the button on the intercom. “Send her in please, Lorraine, and then you can call it a day.”
He stood, not bothering to slip on his sport coat, and stepped from behind the desk, planning to meet Savannah halfway. It was the least he could do.
The door opened and Lorraine stepped halfway through the opening, putting her back against the door as she waved for the visitor to enter. “Ms. Savannah Hamilton to see you, sir. And I’m outta here. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Thank you, Lorraine,” Harrison said, wondering how old he’d have to be, with how many titles, and after proving himself how many times, before Lorraine treated him like a grown-up. He probably couldn’t hope to get that old.
And
then there was no more time for thinking, because Savannah Hamilton was in the room.
She hadn’t grown at all, was still probably about an inch over five feet five, which made her a full three inches taller than Annette. Her hair was still the same ash blond in an almost startling contrast to Annette’s coal-black hair, although Savannah now wore hers in a tight French twist, instead of the ponytail he remembered.
Her slim body was also pretty much the same. Long straight legs, narrow waist and hips, shoulders just a little too wide. Eyes as blue as the California sky, and still with that faintly startled, nervous look to them; eyes she used to look at him for the count of three, then averted to inspect the Berber carpet.
Creamy white skin. He remembered that she’d done a paper on the dangerous effects of the sun— and gotten an A. Obviously she remembered as well, because the scattering of freckles over cheeks and nose he could recall seeing were nowhere in evidence. Then he noticed the lipstick and the blusher and the eye shadow. She looked good, he imagined, but she didn’t look like Savannah. She looked like Savannah trying to look like Annette.
That made him angry.
“Hello, Savannah,” he said when she didn’t speak. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
She lifted her head, looked at him squarely, and then smiled. “Oh, I sincerely doubt that, Harry,” she said in that slightly husky voice that had always pleased him, then seemed to remember that she was here for something important, at which time the smile disappeared like the sun behind a cloud.
“Harry,” Harrison repeated. “Man, I haven’t heard that in a long time. You’re the only person who’s ever called me Harry.”
She looked up again, and as he was getting pretty tired of trying to make eye contact with her for more than three seconds, he quickly led her to the small grouping of chairs he used for informal meetings, and motioned for her to sit down. “I shouldn’t call you Harry,” she said as she tucked her purse between herself and the arm of the chair. “I’m sorry.”
