Secrets of the Tycoon's Bride Read Online Free PDF

she wanted to dip her toes in Miami Beach society, he’d lead her to the water even though he usually avoided such events like he’d avoid swimming through a school of jellyfish. You never knew when you might get stung.
    Drinks at the Ainsleys’ could include anywhere from a half-dozen to a hundred guests. Adam hoped like hell his mother wouldn’t be there drinking herself into oblivion. Lauryn would get a dose of Bonita Garrison soon enough.
    After the wedding he and Lauryn would have to attend some of the Sunday family dinners, but until then he didn’t dare risk letting his mother’s increasingly bitter barbs scare off Lauryn because he didn’t have the time or inclination to search out another wife candidate. The nominating committee had already begun their search.
    Guilt nagged at Adam as he dragged on a silk shirt. Finding out her husband of thirty-eight years had a twenty-seven-year-old illegitimate daughter from a long-term and on-going affair couldn’t have been easy for his mother. But that was no excuse for pickling her liver by living in a bottle of booze. His mother’s drinking had been a problem for as long as Adam could remember, and with it came the lies and excuses to cover the things she’d done or forgotten to do. But the situation had worsened since the reading of the will and the open acknowledgment of Cassie, his father’s illegitimate daughter by his Bahamian lover.
    Adam made a note to hire a full-time driver for his mother. He couldn’t risk letting her get behind the wheel of a car. And he needed to talk to his siblings about drying her out before she killed herself.
    He stepped into his trousers and pulled them over his bare butt. He hadn’t known about his halfsister, Cassie, but he had known about his father’s affair for years. Should he have told his mother? Or had she already known? Was that why she drank?
    Five years ago during a trip to the Bahamas, Adam had stumbled upon his father and Cassie’s mother in an intimate clench. He’d tried to force his father to end the affair and failed. The confrontation had been ugly. Later that same year his father had turned over the running of Garrison, Inc. to Parker and the hotel operations to Stephen. Adam had received nothing. Nada.
    And now it was too late to make things right with his father.
    He tamped down the loss and frustration tightening his chest and finished dressing, then grabbed his keys and cell phone and jogged down the stairs. He couldn’t go backward. He could only move forward.
    For his plan to work he needed absolute secrecy. Only Brandon knew the whole truth behind Adam’s proposal. And even though his best friend was crazy in love with Adam’s newly discovered half sister, Adam knew he could count on Brandon to keep his lips zipped. Not just because of client confidentiality, but because Brandon was that kind of guy—as honest and loyal as a summer day is long.
    In the meantime, Adam would keep Lauryn away from his family until the contracts were signed and the wedding knot was tightly tied—and he had no doubt it would be tied. If Lauryn slipped up and revealed his strategy to his siblings he wouldn’t have a chance in hell of gaining more involvement in Garrison, Inc.
    But first he had to get through Monday evening. A night at the Ainsleys’ wouldn’t be pleasant, but neither would it be a total waste of time. With Lauryn on his arm he’d schmooze with the movers and shakers of the community who could aid in his quest for the council nomination.
    A win-win situation.
    He’d score points with Lauryn and for himself.
    And he’d do what he did best.
    He’d turn on the charm and land himself a bride.

Three
    Y et another dead end.
    Lauryn tried to keep her steps from dragging as she followed Adam into the moist evening air and across the brick courtyard toward his car. She’d pinned her hopes on walking in her