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Just the woman he needs...
Since learning he’s part of the wealthy, powerful Meadows family, Professor Dresden Haynes has tried in vain to stay out of the spotlight—but it has inevitably found him. The only thing more difficult has been to stop filling his thoughts with visions of the gorgeous Laxmi Holder. A friend of his newly discovered relatives, ambitious, free-spirited Laxmi might just tempt the unruffled academic to let loose for once...
Despite her outer confidence, entertainment manager Laxmi is trying hard to prove herself in a competitive industry. Yet she can’t resist taking time to turn Dresden’s orderly world upside down. His serious, sexy vibe intrigues her. But helping him take his place as the long-lost Meadows heir is driving a wedge between them. With trust at a premium, will Dresden lose his chance with the woman who might be his perfect opposite—and his perfect match?
“You’re the perfect superhero type,” she mused.
“Now you’re being cruel.”
“Nope. It’s always the quiet types who have the deepest strength. The others are brute force and brawn. Boring. The intellectuals have a delightful way of taking their time, stroking their way, biding their time to the happy ending.”
He puffed up his chest. “Yeah. Do I need an S on my chest?”
“No, you need something original. Mysterious, dark, brooding.”
“I don’t brood.”
“You think hard.” She smiled. “Better.”
“Every superhero needs a leading lady.”
“Are you holding auditions?”
“Only have one person in mind.”
“I wonder who that will be.”
“She’ll know. They always know that they are the one.”
“But then they let the superhero go because he’s got a destiny bigger than hers.”
“Or she takes a step back out of fear.”
Laxmi stopped eating and pointed her chopsticks at him. “What woman has been afraid to step up to be with her superhero?”
Dear Reader,
In this latest installment, the Meadows family have all had their adventures. I hope that you’ve stayed with each cousin to enjoy her unique journey to self-discovery and love. Coming from a small family, I always imagined what a large extended one would be like—maybe a little comedy, a lot of drama, but love and loyalty would always rule.
With each story, I wanted to bring challenges and opportunities that were relatable and entertaining. Our heartstrings needed a little tugging as we witnessed the romance and all it meant as each couple’s life blossomed in a special way.
I hope that, in your life, you are surrounded by a circle of friends, family and relatives who are bringing joy, laughter and much love to your space.
May your dreams come true,
Michelle
The One That I Want
Michelle Monkou
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 Harlequin Kimani staff, thank you for the many years of support to bring my stories to life.
Acknowledgments
With the recent passing of my mother, it has been a time of loss and reflection. I want to extend my appreciation and gratitude for the kind words and thoughts during this time from Glenda Howard, Shannon Criss, Carly Silver and Keyla Hernandez. Your continued support helped with the completion of this book and series.
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
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Extract
Copyright
Chapter 1
Dresden Haynes stepped in from the biting, wintry mix into the cozy warmth of his parents’ home. Instead of the customary deluge of holiday decorations to usher in Christmas, the first floor was an exhibition of widespread chaos. For the first time in a while, he wouldn’t spend the holidays with his parents. This time he’d stay in Toronto while his parents, Patrick and Charlotte, no-longer-retired globe-trekkers, soon would be off to Kazakhstan as engineering consultants for a three-year stint on a water treatment contract.
This latest nudge to rock his routine off-kilter was one of many this year. All of it, especially a surprise meet-up with some members of his birth family and now the lengthy absence of his adoptive family, was out of his comfort zone.
Frenzied sounds of his parents’ preparations hit him in intermittent bursts. Overhead his father’s frustrations verbally punctuated the air just before loud, dull thuds and dragging sounds scraped against the ceiling. An assortment of suitcases blocked access to the staircase. Meanwhile, brown boxes outlined a path toward the kitchen, where he saw his mother with her sleeves rolled up.
Taking careful steps, he navigated his way through the foyer, around the assortment of boxes and down the hallway. Her determined expression remained rigid as she looked up at an awful abstract painting above the pantry door. He bit back the smile over her loud, dramatic sighs that floated toward him.
“Bought it at a yard sale. I think you should take it.” Charlotte shifted her attention as he approached to greet her with a kiss on the cheek.
“Let the new renters enjoy it.” Dresden failed to hide his shudder at the hideous collision of colors that masqueraded as art.
“You could move in until we return.”
“Nope. I like my place just fine.” His parents had chosen the suburbs, but he liked downtown Toronto with its beehive busyness. “And you know that my commute is closer to the university.”
“At least keep an eye on the place while we’re gone.”
“Stop worrying. I’ll play the grumpy landlord whenever necessary.” Dresden playfully bumped his mother’s shoulder. “Dutiful son. History professor. Landlord—I’m your best son ever.” And she was the best mother ever.
“Don’t run off our renters, either.” His mother softly slapped his arm.
Dresden nodded, also hoping she wouldn’t add last-minute items to his list of tasks.
Charlotte bustled past him toward the stove and lifted the lid off a small pot. “I don’t have much in the house to make a meal. Your dad and I’ve been eating out for the past two days. That’s tiresome and not great food. This morning’s feast?” She scrunched her nose to mimic his reaction to the offering of congealed oatmeal.
Dresden shook his head. “I’m fine. Ate not too long ago.”
“What brings you here? Not that I’m unhappy to see you. But we did have a really nice goodbye dinner with you last night,” she said as she opened cabinets, inspected the empty space and pulled out any forgotten items.
What did bring him there? A need. One that gnawed at his center. Although he suffered no physical pain, he felt a heaviness as the day broke and the hours until his parents’ departure grew closer.
“Thought you might need a hand. No matter how much you plan, there is always something that goes off-script. Decided to pop over, just in case...” He shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it on a chair and joined her with inspecting the higher out-of-reach cabinets.
“We’re fine. Movers will be here within the hour. And I do have one more day before boarding the plane.” She paused and a hint of a frown flittered on her forehead. “You, however, don’t have one more day to face your destiny.”
Dresden stared into the empty space of a cabinet. Not a speck of dirt in sight. However, his mood mirrored the bleak emptiness of the shelves. The void in his soul couldn’t give a glimpse of the future, and it didn’t offer any solutions, either.
The blame for his unsettled feelings sat squarely at one person—Verona, his birth mother—and her family, the Meadowses.
His parents, whom he refused to think of in any other capacity, had never hid the fact that he was adopted. They’d never shared the details, allowing him to choose whether he wanted to know. And he didn’t. Had no desire to unseat his parents from their position in his life.
But when Grace Meadows took his choice away with her revealing letter, the surprise had sucked the breath out of his lungs. She’d forced him to face the truth, to acknowledge that another woman and her family were connected to him. Her entreaty, though polite, had shredded his world, leaving him to question how he should or should not feel.
Then, like an encore performance, Leo Starks, her lawyer, further made inroads with his heartbreaking story about the loss of his family and finding love again with Fiona, Grace’s granddaughter. That same granddaughter, his half sister, had managed to breach his defensive wall with her fresh outlook and honesty, to extend a hand of friendship. One that he’d accepted, but not without conditions. He wanted nothing to do with Verona—the woman who’d given birth to him.
Despite his rules of engagement, because he was a Meadows, with their international news and lifestyle media empire, the media spotlight had turned on him. Why did the Meadowses have the power to whip up a fog of confusion around his life?
Dresden sighed, wishing for more palatable options to materialize for his sake.
“You’ve got to attend Grace Meadows’s birthday party.” Charlotte had a knack for delivering the toughest messages wrapped in soothing tones and gentle smiles. “You’ve already booked your flight for tonight. No procrastinating.”
“I can meet them anytime.”
“It’s your grandmother’s eightieth birthday.”
“Grace.” He couldn’t help the correction. Only in his thoughts did he play with such familiar terms of his birth family. Grandmother. Mother. Sister. But to say those words aloud and attach them to the respective member of the Meadows family—well, he couldn’t stop the constriction that gripped his throat when he envisioned the scenario.
“Go celebrate Grace’s life. She would love seeing you there.”
“How would you know?” He turned his back and busied himself with inspecting another set of cabinets.
“Because I want them to see what a wonderful and respectable man you’ve turned out to be.”
Throughout his childhood, to him, his mother was the average working mom. To his school friends, she had this larger-than-life persona, like a female Indiana Jones, who wasn’t afraid to work in faraway, sometimes dangerous, places.
“Ah...so that’s the true reason you want me to go. For your glory,” he teased.
“Can you blame me? We’d hoped you’d be prepared for this eventuality. That’s why we never hid your adoption from you. Nothing to be ashamed or afraid of by you or by us. Besides, you’re a dashing gentleman. With a forgiving heart...right?”
Dresden’s laughter erupted into a roar that took a few seconds to die down. “You certainly know how to flatter and sway the wind to your favor.”
“That’s how I got your dad.” Charlotte retrieved his jacket, handing it to him. Then she slipped her hand through his arm. “Now, come with me.” She tightened her grip and walked him out of the kitchen and down the hallway. “You shouldn’t waste another minute trying to figure out your next step. You already know.”
“I’m feeling manhandled,” he protested.
“And you’d be absolutely right.” They made it into the foyer. Her hand still wound around his arm.
“Is that you, Dresden? I’m coming right down.” His father’s footsteps crossed the room overhead.
“No need to come down, Patrick,” his mother shouted up the stairs. “He’s heading out now.” She opened the door and, with more muscle than Dresden was prepared for, pushed him outside onto the porch.
“Really, you want me to go hobnob with the Meadowses.” All kidding aside, Dresden couldn’t believe how adamant his mother was on the issue.
“Yep, pretty much. I want you to be kind and make that old woman happy.”
“I agree with your mother. Go and show respect for your elders.” His father popped into view next to his wife.
They were the trifecta of a perfect match, with brains, beauty and marital bliss. Way beyond his talent and abilities. His parents were a unique couple who enjoyed their intense, but sometimes chaotic, lives. To Dresden, they had set the bar on life and love way too high for him to successfully follow.
“Don’t think she’d want to be called old,” Dresden muttered. Suffering under the wintry conditions, his teeth chattered, joining in with the uncontrollable shivering of his body.
“Good. Later you can share with me what other things she doesn’t like.”
“I didn’t say that I’d go.”
“They aren’t the bad guys in your story. Right now, it might feel that way. But, trust me, after a few more decades of life under your belt, you may feel differently.”
“Well, until that time comes—”
His mother interrupted with her palm raised in the universal stop sign. “We’ll see you in the spring. Skype and FaceTime will be our means for chatting. I do love you, son. But you’ve got a birthday party to run off to. Stop dawdling.”
The door closed. Lock turned.
Dresden blew on his frozen fingers, hoping she was kidding. Not until his ears started to suffer from stinging numbness did he declare defeat. Dresden flipped up the collar of his jacket to ward off the frigid temperature. He headed toward his car to retreat from the battle.
* * *
Laxmi Holder’s party days were long over. Now she was staying out of the spotlight, in case any lingering fans recognized her; that had prompted her low profile, especially on social media. Now she was the average citizen, trying to get her daily hustle on from her home base of Brooklyn instead of Los Angeles. From being a singer to managing one, she had switched viewpoints on the same playground.
Returning home meant that she could either reestablish her friendships or make new ones. Her retention rate on that front was abysmal, except for one friend—Fiona Meadows—with whom she really wanted to invest the time to rebuild their bond.
She reread the invitation that Fiona had hand-delivered to her. The Meadowses were celebrating the matriarch’s—Grace’s—birthday. It took a bit of cajoling from Fiona to get her to respond in the affirmative.
The excitement over going to the media mogul’s birthday gave way to a case of dread a few hours before she was due to leave for the party. She wasn’t a celebrity—got close, though. Then her career had suffered a fast-burn to nothing.
A wardrobe of nice clothes, a fast sports car and tiny savings were the remnants of her former life. Now she’d have to go among New York’s elite and the world’s richest and pretend that she belonged.
“Well, here goes nothing,” she remarked to her mirrored reflection before heading out.
* * *
Five hours later Dresden exited New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport and stepped into the waiting limo. Unless he grabbed the driver by the shoulder in a fit of panic to force a detour, Dresden was bound for the iconic Winthorpe International Hotel.
The saying “sit back and enjoy the ride” didn’t really hold true. He was far from comfortable in the quiet, luxurious confines of the limo. Standing in front of a college class of forty to fifty university students talking about Canada’s natives, settlers and conquistadors didn’t faze him. But heading to a birthday party in one of the swankiest New York City hotels, with New York’s elite, for one of New York’s most influential moguls—who happened to be his grandmother—turned his gut into a queasy mess.
Dresden kept up a steady routine of rubbing his hands along his pant legs as the limo sped along to its destination. The clammy state of his palms didn’t bode well. People would shake his hand and give him the side-eye of disgust.
Horns blared. Messengers on bikes shouted warnings. Tour buses rumbled along with camera-ready riders. The New York City vibe had an effective way of delivering a potent shot of adrenaline to the system. With nervous energy already pumping through him, his pulse stayed at hyper level. He offered up a prayer of gratitude as the limo pulled up in front of the hotel. He needed his feet on firm ground.
A grinning uniformed porter briefly touched the brim of his cap before holding open the limo door. “Welcome to the Winthorpe. It’s our pleasure to be of service.”
“Thank you.” Dresden shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets, now feeling more than a bit self-conscious about its average, off-the-rack style. Even the staff outstyled him with their crisp white gloves.
“Any luggage?” The porter looked questioningly at the driver then at Dresden.
“None. I’m here for the Meadows reception.”
“Please step inside with your invitation and you’ll be escorted to the event.”
Dresden retrieved the important gold-embossed passport from his pocket and complied with the porter’s instructions.
In the lobby a dedicated attendant for the reception checked the invitation and escorted him to the ballroom’s entrance. There, a second attendant checked his invitation against a computerized list. Like a baton handed over for the next leg of the trip, a third attendant escorted him into the ballroom.
The expansive size of the room, the over one hundred decorated tables and chairs, the high ratio of staff to guests—all conspired to push his pulse into overdrive. He almost bumped into a passing waiter as he gaped at every drip and drop of glitz and glamour. Lifestyles of the rich and famous gathered under one roof.
As they were about to head down the middle of the room to what he presumed to be the head table, Dresden needed a minute to get the nerves under control. His heart raced as if amped by a massive dose of adrenaline. Although not hit by dizziness, he couldn’t ignore the out-of-body sensation that occurred with each step. He wasn’t in control. This wasn’t on his turf. The realization pressed in on his chest, impeding airflow. He tried not to pant like an out-of-shape jogger.
His escort looked back at the door, probably wishing someone more interesting and actually famous had been his assignment.
“I’m good. Gonna get a drink first.” Dresden pointed to the nearest bar. “I’ll find my way to the principal’s office.” He laughed. The attendant didn’t.
No longer under anyone’s responsibility, Dresden followed through on his word and headed for a bar a few feet away. Too bad the bar didn’t come equipped with stools. He’d gladly grab one and nurse a beer for the duration. No one would ever have to know that he was there. But for actual records, the check-in list would show that he’d arrived. Immediately his mother’s caution piled onto his guilt. The Meadowses weren’t owed his compliance.
* * *
Laxmi would have returned home if Fiona hadn’t spotted her in the room. She felt nauseous by the time she’d gone through the checkpoints to get into the party. At any moment, she expected someone to accuse her of being a faker.
“I’m so glad you made it.” Fiona hugged her tight, making Laxmi gasp. “Thought you would bail on me.”
“Of course not. Wouldn’t dream of it.” Laxmi hid her lie behind a bright grin. “Feels like most of New York is in this room.”
“It’s a good turnout.” Fiona looked radiant. Her fierce detective persona had disappeared behind stylish hair and makeup. She looked gorgeous in her evening dress.
Maybe she shouldn’t have worn the minidress. But she needed the safety net of her former style as the brash, youthful party girl. She could observe the world through that veneer.
“Come. Come. Let me show you to the head table.”
“Oh, no. I could have had a seat in the back. Near the coat check.”
“You’re so silly.” Fiona laughed, but as if sensing the retreat, she hooked her arm through Laxmi’s and guided her to the table.
After introductions were made, Laxmi took her seat.
Fiona patted her shoulder. “Sorry, I’m going to have to leave you. Have to play hostess.”
“Oh, please, go do your thing. I’ll be fine.” Laxmi waved her on and tried to keep her nerves away from her smile.
But once Fiona left, she felt alone. Stranded. No one at the table talked to her. The cousins might have remembered her, but she had been close to only Fiona. With the event not ready to start officially for thirty minutes, she scanned the room for a place to hang. The minibars stationed around the big room seemed good enough. She made her escape.
* * *
“Is this spot taken?”
Dresden shook his head without bothering to look over his shoulder. He wasn’t interested in conversation, even if its owner’s fragrance smelled so damn good it baited his curiosity to check her out. To distract himself, he shifted his focus to the head table and scanned the faces, looking for one specifically—Fiona, the only tolerable Meadow and his half sister.
“Which Meadows do you know?”
Dresden blinked and reluctantly turned to the woman who prodded his attention and who couldn’t read a vibe. Irritation fueled his impatience with the invader. His self-exile was on the verge of a breach.
A smile, bold and bright, greeted him and sucked the wind from his lungs. Its owner held out her hand to match the cheeriness behind her flash of teeth. “Laxmi Holder.”
The second after she said her name he silently repeated Lak-shmee.
He shook her hand and didn’t want to let go. But he had to when her smile turned into a bubbly burst of laughter at his flustered reaction. His face flushed with the creeping heat from his neck up over his cheeks.
An awkward handshake was the least of his problems as his eyes connected with her face.
Sexy, full lips were splashed with a badass red color. Bright eyes popped because of long, dark lashes and shapely arched brows. Add the interesting contours of her face and he might as well have stepped off the edge and fallen into a delightful rabbit hole.
“And you are?” she prompted. She hadn’t broken eye contact now that he couldn’t stop staring at her.
“Dresden.” He sipped his drink to quell the sudden dryness.
“You’re one of those one-name celebrities—like Cher and Madonna?”
He laughed at the idea of being anything but a history professor working on his genealogy as a personal hobby. Still, he jumped on the option to keep his last name out of the mix since he had no idea in what social circle she spent her time. His new fame had brought him into the spotlight with the details trickling in or being sensationalized for the gossip spreads. Any public mention of his life stripped away his privacy that he’d taken for granted. Reading the fictional and even the nonfictional bits about his life sounded insignificant and average when splashed against the Meadowses’ powerful reputation.