CHAPTER 1
Byron
Get a fiancé, they said. It will be fun, they said. Yeah. Freaking. Right.
If it wasn’t for Byron’s fiancé, he wouldn’t be out stumbling around in Sunrise, a sleepy little resort town despite its ridiculously perky name, population six thousand, looking for a needle in a haystack. Human version. Maybe it would be easier if he knew what his fiancé liked, but as it was, he’d never met her. He left New York, armed with two pictures, both of which he’d printed from the few he could find online from charity dinners and galas over the years.
He was so screwed.
He was also bastard of the century.
Who agreed to get married just so that one of the largest mergers in the fashion industry could happen? Oh right. That would be yours truly.
He was one thousand, eight hundred, and nineteen miles from his condo in New York. Of course, it was a penthouse suite. He was, after all, the classic villain of their story. The guy whose father made it big designing and selling shoes. The son who not just carried on the legacy, turning his father’s multi-million dollar company into a multi-billion dollar national name, but would do anything to reach true greatness. Even if he had to grasp and beg and marry his way there.
At least that’s what a few of the headlines said about him.
Byron had no idea who leaked the merger details before the damn thing even happened, but if he ever found out who it was, he promised himself he’d put their head on a stiletto spike. Not really, but it had a nice ring to it. What he would do is find the bastard and make sure they never worked in the city or State of New York again. He might not even stop at that. Maybe he’d make his desire for revenge global.
Forgiveness wasn’t exactly in his nature.
Apparently, neither was marriage.
He ground his teeth in frustration, stopping on the sidewalk and letting out a stream of profanity sure to rival the dirtiest of foul mouths. His mother would have frowned at him if she was still alive. She’d swat him with a fly swatter since that was her favorite weapon of choice and tell him that she was going to wash his mouth out with soap, even though he was thirty-three.
Despite his billions, he knew that he was shit for marriage. He never expected that he’d actually do the wife, kids, white picket fence thingy. He didn’t want a dog or a cat or a new car in the driveway. He had plenty of cars. And a hell of a lot more than a fence. He was living the dream. Uber rich and very nearly morally bankrupt. What more could a guy ask for?
Daniel De’Luco thought he could ask for a hell of a lot more. Thought he was good for more than just sticking his dick into random chicks every other night of the week. Maybe that was exaggerating slightly. It was more like three times a week.
Daniel De’Luco, owner of one of the biggest European shoe lines.
Daniel De’Luco, Byron’s future father-in-law.
Except that was never going to happen if he couldn’t find the guy’s MIA daughter. After hearing about her father’s plans to marry her off, she’d run. The guy lived in New York, but no. She couldn’t just try and disappear into the city. She had to jump a plane and get her ass to some shit hole resort style town, in the summer. Who the hell went to Colorado in the summer?
Noemi De’Luco. That’s who.
Thanks to the GPS tracker her father had on the phone, Byron knew where she was. The hard part? Finding her. De’Luco only gave him the name of the town and told him to work his magic like he worked it selling shoes. Decoded: work hard at winning my daughter like you worked hard at becoming obscenely rich.
De’Luco actually thought a marriage between them could work. That it could be real. That it could actually mean something. It was such complete and utter nonsense that Byron wanted to laugh at it. Except it wasn’t funny.
It wasn’t funny at all.
Him standing in the middle of the street, just after eight in the morning, ruining an expensive suit by cooking alive in it while tourists swirled around him like a mindless human river.
God, he hated being out of the city. Always had. Always would. He was born in New York. He’d die in New York and he’d spend as much time in between those milestones as he could there.
But he needed Noemi De’Luco if he wanted to take his brand global. And he damn well did. He’d tried. Tried and failed to break into that market. It turned out that many Europeans weren’t keen on wearing a brand made popular in America, no matter how much research and planning he’d done. He needed the De’Luco name. And he needed it yesterday.