Page 274 of Under Her Skin

A Billionaire’s Gift

A Holiday Romance

Loss. Love.Realizations.

Blaine Vanderbilt may only be thirty-years-old, but he’ managed to make a fortune in the retail market as the founder of a chain of discount stores he named BargainBin.

The tall man with smoldering good looks has a hard heart. He’s led his life thinking there is no harm in running a business that puts others out oftheirs.

Until his elderly father passes away and leaves him with the question—should he make some changes to how he’s beenliving?

It has Blaine wondering about all he’s done, not only in his business life, but in his love life as well, as he’s been as cold with women as he’s been with other businessowners.

He decides the time has come for the tides to turn and he makes a plan to change his ways completely. Step one is making sure the children who are stuck in the Children’s Hospital in his hometown of Houston have a great holiday. That’s where he meets the woman who may be his saving grace or his worstenemy.

Can Delaney Richards accept Blaine for the man he is becoming, or will his past bad deeds be a thing she can’t forgive himfor?

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A Time forThanksgiving

Book1

Chapter1

BLAINE

November5th:

The sound of light drops hitting the canvas rooftop of the black canopy fill my ears along with my heart. It feels as if it’s raining inside of me too. Today we are laying my father to rest in the grave next to my mother’s. She died when my youngest brother, Kent, was born—a rare thing nowadays. That happened twenty-five years ago. It doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as it usedto.

But with pops’ death, the pain is coming back, biting at me with a vengeance. It’s been a long time since anything has hurt me. It took me years to harden myself to the point that I was unbreakable. And in one day, pops managed to break down that whole steel structure that had surrounded myheart.

Like a grizzly bear with a huge fist, pops slammed into the protective barrier that shielded me and my feelings from any pain. He was taken away from us so suddenly. His fatal heart attack at fifty-seven has left me, my younger sister, Kate, and the youngest of us, Kent, alone in thisworld.

I’m the oldest, and I assume the others are going to be looking to me for the first time in their lives as a role model. I have never been what pops would call a good role model to them. As a matter of fact, he would use me as an example of how not tobe.

I’m a billionaire at the tender age of thirty. I’ve worked on my little empire since I started college. I mastered in business and managed to hedge in a group of like-minded investors to help me with myendeavor.

With the initial investment of money, I managed to build a great business. My first store, Bargain Bin, in downtown Houston, my hometown, it was a complete success. Only a year and a half later, I had the money to open another store inDallas.

At that time, I wondered, if the stores I was opening in the big cities were working so well, why didn’t I try opening one in a smaller town? Not a tiny town—a midsizedtown.

So I opened the next Bargain Bin, number three, in Lockhart, Texas, population 13,232. Just the right size to find out if my idea wouldwork.

One by one, my stores took over the market in that town, just the way I thought they would. There was some controversy about my store coming in and ruining business for the locally owned, small-town stores that were already established there, but I didn’t care. Business is business. No reason to take anythingpersonal.

The thing about Bargain Bin is that I will beat any price on anything. Sure, I have to really search around the world for the cheapest products, but it’s working for me. I have stores all over the United States now—quite a feat for a man myage.

Pops wasn’t in love with my way of doing business or with how I treated women either. He told me on more than one occasion that my heart was cold. He was right. I had to agree with him onthat.

Just like anything that you want to keep for a long time, freezing is the best way to accomplishthat.

A squeaking sound brings my mind back to what it should’ve always been focused on instead of roaming away from the sadness in front of me. My sister leans into my side and runs her arm around me as she sniffles. “I’m going to miss him, Blaine.” We watch as my father’s gleaming, titanium casket is lowered into the darkground.

Not exactly sure what to do, I look to my brother, who is on the other side of her, for the appropriate response to such a thing. As always, he helps me out as he gestures for me to put my arm around her and pat her on thehead.

I mimic his movements and say, “There, there, Kate. Things will be all right. You have me.” And just like that, Kent has me taking the place of Pops, as he was mouthing the words for me to say to her and I was doing it, trusting him withoutthinking.