The Unexpected Storm Read online

  The Unexpected Storm

  Finding Love—THE OUTSIDER SERIES

  By

  Lorhainne Eckhart

  © 2013 Lorhainne Ekelund, All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Steven Novak

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Editor: Robert Reed, Talia Leduc

  ISBN: 978-1-928085-03-4

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  Afterword

  Links to Lorhainne Eckhart’s Booklist

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Every once in a while, your heart has a mind of its own. It aches, it weeps, but there are days it soars and pumps with so much joy that you want to shout out to everyone just how wonderful everything is: The sun is perfect, the stars have all lined up, and you feel absolutely mind-blowingly freaking fantastic. The heart can also be responsible for you doing the most stupid, dumb-ass things ever, such as sliding your arms around the first good-looking babe you see and leaning in to taste her sweet lips with an out-of-this-world kiss that zings rockets right through your body, blowing off the top of your head, further proving you’ve checked your brain in to the nearest broom closet.

  Maybe that was why Neil Friessen was standing barefoot, his shirt wide open, with the stinging outline of the sexiest hand imprinted on his face, after being slapped by the dark-haired babe he’d just kissed. She was drop-dead gorgeous, even with those smoky brown eyes sizzling with the fires of hell and shooting sparks his way. She had the most stunning set of long dark lashes, full rosy lips, a narrow nose, cheekbones that shaped her oval face, and a strong jaw. My God, this woman had him, Neil Friessen, a tall, “smart and sexy”—the exact words his sister-in-law Diana had used to describe him—man taking a nosedive in the dirt like some fumbling twenty-year-old. And Neil was definitely not fumbling or twenty.

  Neil always had women hitting on him anywhere he went, and he loved it. It stoked his ego and made him feel damn good, not to mention he loved the ladies, especially those with mile-long legs and thick dark hair that had that bedroom look, as if he’d just run his fingers through those luscious locks. That was the babe standing before him on the sandy banks of the Atlantic Ocean, about thirty miles northwest of Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula, where the forest met the ocean and where her horse, a beautiful smoky gray Azteca gelding, was ground tied on the sandy beach.

  It wasn’t as if he didn’t know who she was: Candy McCrae, the daughter of Randy McCrae. Her father had bought this spectacular piece of paradise, two hundred acres of beach and rainforest, a property Neil had been trying to get his hands on for five years. The property backed onto the ten-thousand-acre parcel that Neil owned with his father, Rodney, and it was the missing key to their own paradise, the exact spot where Neil planned to build his five-star resort.

  “Just what was that?” she spit out, and he could see the way she struggled to breathe, as if she’d just gone three rounds in a fight.

  “Sorry. Lost my head is all, Candy. My brother Jed and his wife had a baby. Just got the news.” Neil held up his cell phone as if to show her he was telling the truth.

  She didn’t cry or yell. What she did was fist her hands as if she was going to come at him again and pop him in the mouth this time, not that he didn’t deserve it. But, hell, he’d wanted to kiss Candy as far back as he could remember. The trouble was that she hated him. No, it wasn’t hate—it was the fact that she wished he’d die some horrible, painful death. He was pretty sure those had been her exact words when he asked her out for dinner two years ago and then a second time when he saw her in Cancun, getting supplies, eight months ago. That time, she had added in the “Drop dead” look she’d mastered just for him, and she did so every time since he tried to talk to her.

  “Let me get this straight. Because you get news of something great happening in your life, your family, it gives you the right to trespass on my property, sneak up behind me, grab me, and kiss me. Or is there something else you’re planning to do to ruin my life?” she snapped.

  Her words were the second slap Neil had gotten in the past five minutes, and then it hit him: the vile, disgusting realization that she thought he, Neil Friessen, who could have any woman he wanted, was trying to force himself on her.

  Hell, no! It was the first time he actually stuttered and backed up, waving his hands in front of him. “No, no, I don’t think so. You got this all wrong, Candy.” Then he rammed his fingers through his thick brown hair and took another step back. “Look, Candy, I am sorry. I just saw you sitting there....” Had he lost his mind? He almost said he’d wanted to taste her lips and take them for a test drive for as far back as he could remember. She’d looked so lost and innocent, sitting there in the sand, when he stepped over the dune and saw her. “Well, you stood up, and when you turned to face me, you had a look on your face as if you wanted me to kiss you. I kind of lost my head.”

  Neil didn’t think she could get any angrier, but he was wrong. Her mouth gaped, and she appeared to lean closer, as if she was getting ready to blast him. Then she shut her mouth and crossed her arms tightly to her chest, tapping her foot.

  “I was excited, and, my God, you were just there....”

  “So you thought you could, what, have some fun with me? A romp in the sand and then send me on my way?” She gave him her back and stormed toward her horse, a few yards away.

  “No, Candy, wait. I was actually on my way over to talk to you when I got this call. Look, I’m sorry.” This was not going well. Neil was a master at working people, wooing women, and getting what he wanted. He’d always had a silver tongue, and he knew just the right thing to say and the perfect time to say it. He could always make everyone feel good about themselves, even when life dumped shit all around him. He saw the good in everything, including this feisty broad who stared at him as if he were a disease she had no intention of catching. Neil’s sharp-witted tongue and nimble mind, which he counted on to talk him out of this mess with Candy, were, for the first time in his life, blank.

  “Look, I want to talk to you about your property. I heard you went to Francisco Kan and asked him for help, offered him part ownership of your land, your property here.” Neil swept his hand out in a dramatic gesture, but she stopped and spun around, planting both fists on her slim, sexy hips, which were exactly where his eyes went. She wore light khaki pants with a drawstring tie and a short sleeveless tee that showed her belly button and pale, flat abs.

  “What? How the hell would you know anything about that?” She smacked her hand to her forehead as if she had realized something. “Why, that son of a bitch! Just what the hell did Francisco do, go running to you after he turned me down?”

  “Is that what he did, turn you down?” Neil couldn’t believe she wouldn’t have come to him. When she didn’t answer him, instead staring at him in a way that let him know she had shut down, he was certain something more was going on. He knew she struggled, and he didn’t know how she made ends meet. Whe
n Francisco, a short, dark-haired Mayan in his late fifties, had come to him that morning and mentioned in his very calm way, without disclosing whatever it was that Candy was trying to hide, that she had come to him to ask him to invest in her property, well, Neil had decided to go and see Candy.

  He should have known better, except he couldn’t help worrying about her. He cared, even though she’d kicked him in the nuts one time after another, and he couldn’t figure out what he’d done that had her loathing him. It bothered him, and he’d lost sleep over it, because she was the one woman who could push every single one of his buttons, turning bubbly and sharp-witted Neil Friessen into a raving lunatic.

  “Look, I just want to talk to you. Would you come back here?”

  “What do you want?” She made no move toward him. In fact, he could see every muscle in her arm tighten, and if he dared to step any closer to her, she’d probably deck him again.

  “Candy, I’ve made you several generous offers to buy your property, and you’ve turned me down each time. If you’re looking for a partner, I’d love to sit down with you and discuss it....”

  “Oh, I just bet you would.” She cut him off, grinding her teeth and spitting out each word. “Well, let me tell you something, Neil Friessen: I don’t want you as a partner. I would rather go into business with the devil himself than have anything to do with the likes of you. Now get the hell off my property.” She jabbed her finger angrily to the tree line and the path he’d taken to walk there.

  “What the hell did I ever do to you, Candy? I can’t for the love of God figure you out, woman,” Neil barked. As he scrambled to think, he was sure he’d never done anything inappropriate. He liked her, he wanted to date her, and she fascinated him.

  Candy narrowed those smoldering eyes, and this time he knew he’d get blasted. “You are a piece of work, Neil Friessen. You destroy people, you buy people, and you walk all over them if you don’t get what you want. You use them and toss them away as if they’re nothing, but you won’t ever get that chance with me.”

  Candy stomped toward her horse, picking up the lead rope and looping it around his neck. His long mane appeared freshly brushed, and Neil wondered why she never trimmed it. They were both wild in a beautiful, mesmerizing way, completely in sync with each other, reading and anticipating one another’s movements. He could actually picture the feeling of love between them. She mounted easily, riding bareback, and then turned her horse, staring down at Neil with the same blazing anger. It was so intense that even her horse sidestepped and pranced.

  “If I find you on my property again, I’ll shoot you.” She kicked her horse and took off in a canter down the sandy beach to where her small two-bedroom home had been built just inside the shelter of the trees.

  Neil watched, completely dumbstruck by her. His unbuttoned cotton shirt rustled in the breeze, and he rubbed his hand over light brown chest hair, wondering what the hell she thought he’d done. He spit on the ground. “Well, good riddance.”

  He was so done. He had come over here to offer his help, and she had practically spit on him again. Well, no more. He was so over her. He wasn’t a masochist, so why did he keep acting as if he were? It was time he moved on and stopped thinking about her and allowing his guts to get so knotted up over her. He’d date other women, sure one of the two dozen women who’d been flirting with him for months would distract him. At least they appreciated who he was and what he had to offer. He was a fine catch, and he just knew one of them would interest him. Tonight would be the first night of the rest of his life.

  ∞∞∞

  Candy spurred her horse on. “Come on, Sable!” she shouted. She leaned forward, racing over the thick white sand. The salty air mixed with the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, and she wanted to run and run. Her horse was responding, flying along with her. “Whoa, easy, boy.” She sat heavier to slow the horse until he walked, and he snorted, breathing heavily just like she was.

  They were completely in sync, understanding each other, her and her beautiful gray horse. He had reacted to her jolt of anger at Neil Friessen, her fury, her rage, and she knew better than to allow her blood to boil and her every emotion to spin out of control around her horse.

  Being around Neil was an emotional roller coaster. She wanted to hate him, but every time she saw him, his presence shot fire right through her. She tried to tell herself it was because he was the best-looking man in these parts. Attraction and sexuality oozed out of him in a boy-next-door, best-friend kind of way. He had silky short brown hair and a strong, powerful face that reminded her of all those hot movie stars, but his eyes were the color of whiskey, endless, always dancing with a spark of light. Every time she saw him, she couldn’t shake the image of him looking down on her in bed, and then she’d be furious at herself for going down that road—even though he had a body she’d love to explore, with tight abs and pecs under shirts that fit tastefully against his biceps. Lord, with those broad shoulders, it was clear the man worked out, but he probably owned some fancy home gym with a personal trainer and all.

  She pulled up to the corral where she kept her horses and slid off Sables’ back, hitting the ground. He was sixteen hands high, a big boy, all solid muscle, but he was sweet and loyal, and he always knew what she was thinking. He nuzzled her cheek, and she kissed his muzzle and patted his shoulder before loosely tying him to the corral fence.

  As she brushed her horse down softly, she had to remind herself that Neil Friessen was just playing with her, and it hurt like hell. She wanted to be loved, not toyed with, and she knew the only reason he was nice to her and was pursuing her, all flirty and interested, was because he wanted her land. The first time he asked her out, her dad had still been alive, and he warned her that they were sitting on prime real estate and that the Friessens wanted their property. Going out with Neil would only get her heart broken, because he had an agenda. Her dad had said that Neil would do anything to get their property, even pretend an interest in Candy. She’d listened thankfully, even though it stung beyond belief, because she wanted his interest to be genuine. The last time she saw Neil, he’d just finished with some blonde, carrying her bag and setting it in a cab, hugging her. Then he’d spotted Candy. Candy had been stunned, because she couldn’t believe he had the gall to ask her on a date less than five minutes after he’d been with another woman. Although she was proud of what she’d said, telling him to drop dead, she really wanted to hate him. It would be easier, and her heart would stop flip-flopping from her toes to her head every time she saw him. Even today she’d been embarrassed by how much she wanted that kiss, which was why she’d slapped him as hard as she could. She had known he was there, striding behind her, and when she stood up, her heart had flipped a switch, as if lightning zinged through her when his lips touched hers.

  She touched her swollen lips, still burning, and licked the taste of Neil from them. It was so much like the sweetest dessert she anticipated and loved, and she wanted seconds. But she couldn’t have firsts, and she couldn’t have seconds, so she watched her horse prancing in the corral with her two other horses, a dark thoroughbred and a palomino, and she focused on her problems, wondering what she’d have to sell next to buy their feed, to pay the farrier and the local vet. There, it had worked, and she felt like absolute crap.

  Chapter 2

  “Look, Candy, I know you love this place, it’s part of you, yadda yadda, but...” Vibrant, redheaded Stella Delinsky, Candy’s banker, looked completely out of place standing in the dusty dirt yard in front of the small adobe home. She wore bright red heels, a green pencil skirt, and a paisley blouse, with a red scarf draped around her short, vibrant curls. She was a seventy-year-old woman who didn’t give a crap where she was and handled anything and everything with an “It is what it is” attitude.

  Candy carried a bucket of water to the squared-out corral where her horses were kicking up dust and swishing their tails to knock the flies off as a two-week-old baby donkey dogged her heels.

/>   “What the hell is that?” Stella barked as she set her hands on her plump hips.

  “This is Ambrose. Isn’t he cute?” Candy set down the bucket and petted the baby donkey as it rubbed against her leg. She bent down and kissed the top of its head, and it jumped around excitedly and stumbled on the long, gangly donkey legs that it had yet to grow into. “I found him on my way back from town two weeks ago. His mother was hit by a tour bus, and the damn thing just drove away, left her to die. There was Ambrose, at the side of the road. He still had the afterbirth on him. I think he was only a few hours old. I couldn’t save his mama, but I brought this guy home with me, fed him goats’ milk from a bottle, and look at him now!”

  Stella slid her dark glasses down her large nose and peered at Candy with soft blue eyes, staring at her as if she thought she’d lost her mind. “Of course you did. For the love of God, you can barely feed yourself, you’ve not a dime to your name, and you’re picking up strays and bringing them home. What the heck are you doing here, girl?”

  Candy knew no one would understand, so she simply sighed, picked up the bucket of water, and kept going, filling the tub for the horses.

  “Look at you. You’re working yourself to the bone. You have nothing coming in, Candy. Every resource you had is gone, and you’re down to how many horses? There are no more tourists booking trail rides with you. They’ve gone to the bigger guy. What’s his name, anyway?” Stella snapped her fingers as she did when trying to remember something. “That guy on the other side of Cancun?”

  “Nate Bradley.” Candy knew exactly who he was, a dark-haired Texan, someone else she hated.

  “Ah, yes, Nate, great businessman. He’s landed a contract with all the cruise ships that come in. Touristy stuff. Candy, I hate to tell you this, honey, but maybe you need to sell off part of this land. Come on, honey. Your dad’s been gone for over a year now. You’re going to kill yourself working, and how safe is it out here for a single woman?” Stella flicked her hand in the air, her long artificial nails painted bright red, a statement of her and who she was.