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He let her slip away once...
Detective Fiona Reed lives a life far from the privilege of her family’s vast media empire. But forging her own path came at a cost, and an invitation to her family’s estate in the Hamptons is just the thing to help Fiona heal from her emotionally draining job. When sensual Leo Starks returns to her life, he’s no longer an intern, but now a brilliant lawyer who reawakens her deepest desires.
Ever since his fling with Fiona, Leo has been secretly in love with the beautiful officer of the law. Yet he can’t let his feelings for her wreak havoc with the job he’s been hired to do. But when a shocking revelation threatens to engulf the Meadows clan in scandal, can Leo protect the woman he’s determined to fight for?
“It takes effort to know someone.”
“Then, give me a chance.” She tucked in the ragged edges of her pride. “Please give me a second chance.”
“One day at a time.”
“Can’t ask for anything more,” Fiona said, knowing that her heart wanted more.
He offered his hand. “Friends.”
“To lovers.” She shook his hand, afraid that he would withdraw and tuck it behind his back.
“You’re quite persuasive.”
“We don’t have too many days here. Figured that if you wouldn’t persuade me, then it’s up to me.”
“Yeah? Go ahead. Persuade.”
Fiona didn’t waste another second. She slipped her hands around Leo’s neck and tiptoed to reach his mouth.
One kiss. One mouth pressed against the other. That was all it was.
Except when she kissed Leo, she wanted more. She desired him.
Breathe.
Once more she reacquainted her lips with his beautiful, wide mouth, tracing its bold curves. Celebrating its masculine lines.
As if touched by magic, time stood still.
Dear Reader,
With each story in The Meadows Family series, I fall in love with this family all over again. It’s Fiona’s turn to decide what is important in her life. I hope you enjoy this romantic journey that strums on the heartstrings and invites you to fall for this winning couple.
At the time of writing this, the announcement of David Bowie’s death had hit the airwaves. A true pioneer and participant of life and music was gone. But one of the most memorable parts of his life was his love for Iman and the beautiful courtship of his soul mate that led to their marriage.
The power of love is magical, lasting and transformative.
I hope you also feel the magic with One to Win.
Peace,
Michelle
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MICHELLE MONKOU became a world traveler at the age of three, when she left her birthplace of London, England, and moved to Guyana, South America. She then moved to the US as a young teen. Michelle was nominated for the 2003 Emma Award for Favorite New Author, and continues to write romances with complex characters and intricate plots. Visit her website for further information at www.michellemonkou.com or contact her at michellemonkou@comcast.net.
To the readers who started on this journey with me since 2002, who’ve stuck with me with die-hard loyalty and who may just have joined the ride—thank you with all my heart.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Carly Silver for your editorial assistance and helping make the story shine.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Introduction
Dear Reader
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Copyright
Chapter 1
“Budget cuts!” Detective Fiona Reed couldn’t believe what she’d heard.
Frustration pumped anger through her veins. Her pulse pounded, accenting the soaring beat of her temper. Words bubbled up and pushed against the verbal barrier that kept her civil and respectable.
“Watch your step,” Captain Baxter warned, “before you spew words that you can’t pull back.” His glare sparred with hers and won.
“Sir, this budget cut is...is...plain stupid. We can’t get our job done with fewer hours—no overtime is nonsense. That’s just dumb. Most of the victims who are listed as missing in our case files are minors. Cuts along the support staff? We need more help. It’s not rocket science, what we need to solve these cases. And it’s definitely not about the counselor’s sound bites harping on government waste and effective management.” Her voice had escalated probably beyond the walls of the captain’s closed office. Oh, well—it wasn’t the first time that she’d delivered a vehement one-way pitch here.
“Your area isn’t the only one affected.” Baxter ran a hand over his bald head. His haggard features spoke volumes as to his own misery as the messenger. “Every area, department, everything, has been whittled down. It’s how things are now. We all have to deal with it. That means you, as a team player.” He stabbed at the space between them. His thick black eyebrows drew down over his fierce gaze.
Fiona heard the words. She listened to the message, but none of it satisfied her. None of it deflated her irritation. The Missing Persons Unit of Essex County, New York, needed more than the three detectives and two clerks assigned to it. The shortage in manpower had almost cost the lives of a set of twins who were habitual runaways, but had thankfully been found. Working around the clock wasn’t the exception. Day, night and the seconds in between, Fiona had followed every lead to track the sisters. The fifty dollars she had to pay here and there to get information came out of her pocket. Whatever it took to find any of these kids, she’d try.
Bottom line, the shrinking budget mattered. With other social services around the county getting eliminated or slashed, too many cases of the missing remained unsolved with stomach-churning frequency. The deep tar pit of bureaucracy into which these people sank and disappeared from everyone’s attention twisted her gut in knots of frustration. After six years on the job, at times it felt like an insurmountable climb to have successful endings to the cases. If she had her wish, she’d do anything she could to double the funds to run this unit.
Fiona studied her boss’s face, trying to read, trying to test, trying to gauge her footing. Where did his loyalties lie?
“Are you fighting to keep the funding?” Fiona took the plunge into volatile depths.
“Detective, watch your step.” Baxter spoke softly, but his displeasure radiated like an overheated sunlamp. His neck and shoulders were rigid with his annoyance.
“We need the money.” She pounded her fist into her open hand. “What we do is worth fighting for.”
The captain tossed aside his pen, poised over the paperwork on the desk, and shot up with such force that his chair hit the credenza behind him. His body rose to its full towering height. His shoulders squared and his chest puffed up with his indignation. Dark brown eyes pinned her in place. Baxter clenched his hands and leaned on the desk. His breathing was heavy, nostrils flaring, as he angled into her space.
They faced off across the desk. Seconds felt like minutes. His eyes narrowed into a squint. No doubt she was in deep trouble. Not a particularly unique event in the life of her career. A stubborn streak in her refused to back down, even as the warnings flashed through her consciousness like a gaudily lit sign. She held her ground, despite a slight tremor in her knees that threatened to take over her entire body.
“You’re overdue for your vacation. Take it, effective immediately,” Baxter delivered with his quiet anger.
Fiona flinched from the swift punishment. “Sir, I’ve got a crazy caseload on my desk. You need everyone here.” Obviously, it was too late to retract or soften her belligerence.
“This isn’t up for negotiation. Boggs and Fogarty will divvy up your files. You need to walk away and get your mind back in the game.”
“Sir...” She was used to arguing with her captain. Those clashes might have ended in threats, scoldings, but never this...banishment.
“A vacation or a suspension. And don’t try my patience. I understand that I didn’t exactly come onto the scene in the best of circumstances after Captain Doyle suffered a massive heart attack. You didn’t get the promotion that you wanted. And the media hasn’t been supportive of the strides made by this unit. The last thing needed around here is this implosion.” He folded his arms. “Now, I agree with everyone that you are a damn good detective. You’ve deserved every commendation. However, lately, you’ve been...”
“Doing my job.” Fiona wasn’t going down without a fight.
“Intense. Belligerent. Insubordinate. I know about your off-the-record tirade with Counselor Jenkins.”
Each criticism was shot at her ego like a well-aimed dart.
“So take two weeks. Get your head together and rejoin the team.”
“I don’t—”
The captain held up his finger. The gesture was a distant reminder of her days in school when the teacher reprimanded her for talking out of turn.
“Yes, sir.” Fiona clenched her jaw. Logic pried its way in, past the hot rush of her impatience.
“Effective immediately. Please close the door on your way out.” Every syllable Baxter uttered had its own beat.
With no other choice, Fiona walked toward the door, turned the knob and opened it. Taking a deep breath and exhaling to put on a stoic face, she stepped into the hallway. But then her hand shook and she opened and closed it to steady her nerves before pulling the door shut. Then with her chin up, she returned to her cubicle.
The walk of shame was self-made. She couldn’t blame a drink, a drug or lack of sleep for her brash behavior. Her colleagues avoided eye contact with her. Some even slowed and seemingly pressed their bodies against the wall as if she were contagious.
Inciting the captain’s ire was a stupid career move. Instead of focusing her anger on the annoying obstacles outside of the unit, she had thrown her net wide enough to show her disrespect to the captain. She had overstepped, to put it mildly.
Acknowledging her rash behavior now didn’t change her current status.
Back at her desk, she flipped open the twins’ file. It could now be moved from active to closed. That should have had her doing backflips in celebration. Maybe when the turbulent emotions flagged, the brighter side of things would emerge. All she could see at this point were the photos, testimony and visual evidence of sad lives and raging emotions.
She pinched the bridge of her nose right between her eyes to inflict her own punishment. Her boss was correct. She had to deal with anger and disappointment more appropriately. Otherwise, the negative emotions would consume her, gnawing on her soul until only bitterness overtook contentment. The job and its sidecar BS got to her and screwed up her judgment.
“Hey, chica, you’re good?” Her coworker, Detective Jacinda Mehta, asked in a husky whisper.
“Yeah.” Fiona took a deep breath, doing her best to shake off the sucky vibes of failure.
“You were in there for a quite a bit.” Jacinda rested her chin on the cubicle wall. “I’m making sure you still have your head.”
Fiona coaxed a smile out of herself. “Still got it.” She pointed upward to said body part. “Barely.”
“I tried to talk you out of it.” Jacinda shook her head, as she entered the cubicle. “But you were hell-bent on taking on ‘the man.’” She provided air quotes that just emphasized to Fiona how harebrained and impulsive her actions had been. “So, did you get away with it? I had to head down to the evidence locker.”
Fiona knew Jacinda might be worried about her, but her coworker also was ready to share a laugh at her streaks of stubbornness. “I said what I had to say.”
“Fist bump, chica.” Jacinda extended her hand.
Fiona complied. “And...I’ll be taking a two-week vacation.”
“Hot damn. You got a double win—telling off the boss and heading to the beach.”
“Who said anything about the beach?” Fiona shook her head at Jacinda’s excitement.
“That’s where I’d go.”
Fiona shrugged. The response seemed appropriate, given she hadn’t weighed her options. It had been a while since she took time off. Real time off that lasted for more than a long weekend. The sun hadn’t warmed her body in a while. And as for walking barefoot in the sand, that hadn’t happened in a couple years. The idea of kicking back felt strange and wrong to entertain when she had a caseload the height of a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper. But the matter was no longer hers to consider.
“Look, do I need to give you a list of destinations to visit?”
Fiona shook her head. Any suggestions courtesy of Jacinda might land her at an expensive resort halfway around the world. Her colleague loved to cherry-pick interesting male partners on her various trips.
For her part, Fiona preferred a good book and a glass of wine—alone. She was over the manhunt for a good while. Her recently ended relationship with a man who was oversexed, uncommunicative and bad at kissing helped to instill her current priority system.
Desperate wasn’t her middle name.
* * *
Later that day, Fiona gathered at her cousin’s house in Midway, New York, where her other cousins waited. Belinda’s place was often their mutually agreed setting to catch up. After her latest drama, the others wanted a blow-by-blow account of her issues on the job.
“Wow. What a story. You are lucky that your boss didn’t write you up.” Her cousin Dana interrupted for the umpteenth time, no longer trying to hold in her amusement.
“Humph!” Fiona hadn’t stopped fuming, although she had to admit that her punishment could have been worse.
“Now you can go with us to the Hamptons.” Belinda emerged from the house and stepped onto the deck. One hand balanced the drinks and the other held a plate with slices of her homemade peach-almond cake.
“Grace doesn’t know my situation changed.” Fiona accepted the proffered iced tea and helped by taking the plate of sliced cakes and setting it on her lap.
“No, you don’t.” Dana promptly removed the plate and placed it on the small table centered in front of the three women. “Belinda, you always have the best snacks for our gab sessions.”
“My pleasure, ladies.” Belinda looked pleased at their murmurs of appreciation as they munched and washed down the treats.
The September weather still held on to the last dregs of summer’s humidity. Upstate New York hadn’t escaped the oppressive blanket of hot and sticky temperatures. But for Fiona, the hellish conditions felt right for sitting on the deck, soaking up the sun, pigging out on cake and drowning her sorrows in iced tea.
Belinda’s home was always the cousins’ fun hangout place. Although her cousin’s charming boyfriend had become a familiar presence, Jesse Santiago knew when the women needed their alone time. Now that Jesse had permanently closed the door to his soccer career to run his father’s construction business, he had blended into Belinda’s world and shared her love for horses. Most of his free time, except for when he was with Belinda, was spent riding around the large property or performing any rehab needed on the physical structure of the equine therapy facility.
After sampling another slice of cake, Fiona pointed at Dana. “I don’t hear you confirming my statement that Grace doesn’t know about my situation.” Fiona unfolded her legs from her seated position and sat up. “Please tell me that you didn’t throw me under the bus with our grandmother.”
“Way under the bus, like six feet under.” Belinda tossed back her head as she expelled a hearty laugh.
“Why should we be the only ones that have to go to the Hamptons?” Dana’s mouth closed into a pout.
Belinda took up the defense against Fiona. “You know Grace feels that it is a family tradition to have one vacation together—our annual Meadows family duty.”
“But it’s not really a vacation. Our family under one roof is chaos. Drama with a capital D. That’s not a vacation. Besides, let’s stop pretending that we are this family dynasty, like the Kennedys or Rockefellers, operating like we are like this.” Fiona held up her hands pressed together with interlocked fingers to indicate closeness.
She didn’t care that the family did show up to the various gatherings. If her grandmother didn’t insist on having her usual expectation heeded, the family wouldn’t operate like a close-knit unit. The reason they did was clear—it wasn’t because they wanted to be together.
Despite all of Grace’s accomplishments, she couldn’t brag about the bond between her and her three daughters. Their mothers all had a mixture of respect and awe for Grace, but all had endured her hands-on, sometimes manipulative nurturing.
Verona, Fiona’s mother, who also was Grace’s eldest daughter, had the most strained relationship, with no signs of improvement over the years. Whatever history had passed between her mother and Grace remained unknown, although their measured approach to each other was quite visible. Regardless of her cousins’ endorsement, going to the Hamptons did not rank as one of Fiona’s favorite ways to spend family time.
Dana leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “What else would you be doing? You are now a benched superhero of the police department. And for the record, I plan to continue this family-vacation tradition when that time regretfully comes.” Her dark brown eyes reflected sincerity.
“Okay, now that you’ve taken over from Grace to be the CEO of the family media conglomerate, don’t let it go to your head. You’re supposed to be on our rebel side,” Belinda reminded her.
“Yeah, well...” Dana swallowed the rest of her defense in a long drink from her glass.
“Maybe I can grovel and get my vacation postponed.” Fiona’s forehead was still furrowed as she resumed reclining with her legs tucked to the side. She munched on a piece of ice.
“From what you’ve told me, I foresee that if you step foot into that office, you’ll regret it. Your boss may be new, but he seems to be as tough as a junkyard dog. So go ahead and disobey his order. I’ll sit back and wait to tell you ‘I told you so.’” Dana’s mouth pursed full of smugness.
“You were always the mean one,” Fiona accused. Defeat set in, ratcheting up her grumpiness.
“That’s why she’s running the Meadows empire. Someone’s got to walk in Grace’s queenly footsteps.” Belinda jabbed her thumb in the air toward their youngest cousin.
“Stop calling Meadows Media an empire. And I’m not mean. I’m doling out the appropriate advice, that’s all.”
Fiona ignored the bickering and drained her glass to chew on more ice. “Looks like I’m going to the Hamptons.” Something she’d suspected she’d get roped into when the invitation had come from Grace two months ago.
Grace had a reputation for approaching each granddaughter with an invitation to join Meadows Media. Her invitation was predictable and always managed to tweak a bit of guilt from the ones who didn’t join the company after graduating from college.
“Let’s move this inside now. I’m melting and I just got my hair done. My honey and I are going on a date tonight.” Belinda stood and brushed off the crumbs.
“I don’t want to hear about any lovey-dovey stuff.” Fiona hurried ahead of Dana into the cool indoors. “I seem to attract men who can’t handle a woman working a demanding job or men who need to be put on a pedestal to be worshipped.”
“It’s a bit more than that, Fiona.” Belinda was busy in the kitchen, retrieving fresh glasses for the delicious fruit punch spiked with a touch of white rum. “You, my dear, are a workaholic. You thrive off of four hours of sleep. You are prone to canceling dates. And you’d rather spend your free time with us than staring deeply into a sexy, horny man’s eyes.”
Dana puckered her mouth and made kissing sounds.
“Well, sue me for thinking that y’all were cool with hanging out together.”
“Stop whining. I’m not the one giving you a diagnosis. However, I will say that you need to take these two weeks to relax. Then you can go back and be refreshed for the never-ending wave of cases that come across your desk.” Dana grabbed hold of Fiona’s shoulders and massaged them.
“Maybe I should change what I’m doing.” Fiona wanted to test the waters with her cousins about the latest thoughts burdening her.
“What?” Belinda walked out with the second round of drinks and handed one to each. “Okay, you really need to come to the Hamptons. We should talk about all this in a different setting. You sound like you need a life intervention when absolutely nothing is wrong with you.”
“Oh, right, like I really need to figure out my future under Grace’s nose. If I recall, she has been all over both of you about holding down the family business. You, Dana, stepped up, but it was a no-brainer because you have the passion and business brains to run Meadows Media. And you, Belinda, you stood your ground to build your equine therapy center from the ground up. Now that leaves me to hold my stance with her or surrender and take the offer to be the head of Meadows security.” Fiona batted her eyelashes at Dana. “May I be your bodyguard?”
Dana waved off her silliness.
“Oh, this is going to be fun.” Belinda was too cheerful for Fiona’s liking. “Consider the exercise of finding your path a rite of passage. And you get to go through it at a prime beachfront location.”
Although Belinda’s buildup sounded good, from Fiona’s headspace, the “rite of passage” didn’t fill her with a cheery disposition. She really was questioning her future and to be faced with Grace’s intense focus on the family’s legacy and the cousins’ roles in continuing the decades of success made her stomach flip and flop and tie itself into knots.
“Would it help if I said that Leo Starks will be there?” Dana’s voice dropped low and seductive.
“Leo? The same Leo Starks?” Fiona kept her gaze on the golden liquid in her glass, a mix of naturally sweet tropical fruits. She couldn’t blame the splash of alcohol for the instant flush to her cheeks. “Why will he be there?”
Dana’s expression just about glowed over the news. Her animated hand gestures added emphasis. “Word is that he’s there at Grace’s invitation. She was always impressed with him, from his days as a legal intern several years ago at Meadows to landing a job at Grayson, Buckley and Tynesdale after he earned his law degree. No real information about the reason for his presence, though. And Grace is not telling. But that will make it more fun for you to sniff out why your onetime Brazilian Sweet Lips is coming to the Hamptons.”
“Don’t call him that.” Fiona had to agree that the moniker was 100 percent accurate, but she wasn’t sure if said lips were still one of Leo’s most attractive points. “So Starks will be there? For the entire stay?” Her cheeks remained warm. The sensation spread over her entire face and down her neck, as if she sat too close to a roaring fireplace.
Memories of Leo Starks didn’t float away into the black hole of forgotten experiences. Falling in love had the power to keep its hook in for the long haul. Though she’d allowed doubt to creep in like wild weeds and fracture what they had between them, she couldn’t close the door completely on their special time.