The Wedding Belle (Colorado Billionaires Book 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Blurb

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Regina's Books

  Regina's Bio

  THE WEDDING BELLE

  by

  Regina Duke

  The Wedding Belle

  Copyright © 2014 Linda White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from Regina Duke.

  www.reginaduke.com

  [email protected]

  Published by Linda White

  United States of America

  Electronic Edition: September 2014

  Digital ISBN 978-0-9858482-6-2

  This book is a work of fiction and all characters exist solely in the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any references to places, events or locales are used in a fictitious manner.

  Digital formatting by StevieDeInk, [email protected]

  Edited by Marian Kelly, RavensGateEditing.com

  Cover design by Sandra Edwards

  Cover photo © krasispektar / Fotolia

  Belle Daireng’s dream career brings heartbreak, betrayal, and the threat of a lawsuit. Her reason for becoming a nurse was born of a secret that could destroy her future hope for happiness. But right now, she’s nursing a broken heart and she’d settle for any job that would ease her financial worries.

  Ulysses Garrison’s secrets could cost his family billions. The last thing he wants is a full-time nurse telling him what to do and driving him crazy with her athletic beauty. If only he hadn’t told that first lie. Now he has even more secrets, and one of them is his growing love for Belle.

  The Wedding Belle is #4 in the Colorado Billionaires series.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Monday, 9:30 a.m.

  Belle Daireng realized she should have worn more comfortable shoes for the interview, but she didn’t know she’d have to park two blocks away from the hospital. At least her hair looked great. She’d gotten her wedge trimmed with last week’s unemployment check. Her thick, dark hair formed the perfect frame for her large gray eyes. The Fineman Memorial Hospital in Eagle’s Toe, Colorado was small but remarkably well equipped for its size. At least, that’s what she’d learned when she looked it up on-line. Unfortunately, the website didn’t say anything about its painfully inadequate parking lot. Evidently, the residents of Eagle’s Toe were a healthy bunch. Or maybe they all had chauffeurs. She’d spotted four limos so far on the trek from her car.

  If she got the job, she’d just have to wear sensible shoes. She’d dressed to the nines in her best outfit for her interview, and her treasured Ann Taylor slingbacks were the icing on the cake. But they weren’t built for walking.

  Her eyes burned with tears at the thought of the disastrous ending to her last position. Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for nursing. Too bad they didn’t have a class in school entitled, “Are you cut out for nursing?” Or maybe, “Can you put up with arrogant and obstinate MDs?” That might have prepared her for what she found on the job in the ER. Or maybe they should have offered a class called, “Surviving Betrayal on the Job.” She shoved the memory of that day deep inside. It had shaken her confidence to the core. When the head of nursing told her she was being let go, her humiliation was complete.

  “Don’t feel bad,” her supervisor told her. “Thirty per cent of new nurses change jobs in the first year. Maybe the ER just isn’t for you.”

  “It’s what I’ve dreamed of my whole life,” Belle had mumbled.

  “You’re a good nurse, Belle. What happened to you could’ve happened to anyone. Dr. Zivo is being a jerk. Just shake it off. Remember, there’s always a job for a nurse.”

  But it wasn’t that easy. Belle couldn’t shake it off. She wondered if she would ever get over it. She still needed a job. She had student loans to pay, and moving home was not an option for an orphan. She did have a few good friends from college, but they didn’t want a roommate. Two of them were newly married, and the third was already living with three other girls.

  Of course, there were other hospitals in Denver, and she would have applied to them at once if her problem at her first job was based only on that incident in the ER. Too bad the work environment wasn’t the only poison in Denver.

  When she read about the assistant fundraising position in Eagle’s Toe, she decided to try for it. She certainly knew a lot about hospitals. It only paid half what she would make as a nurse, but it was too soon to think about another nursing job. She needed time to lick her wounds and think about her career path. Losing a job was bad enough, but she’d lost so much more. The pain of those memories tore at her heart. She needed to push those feelings away, stiffen her backbone, and try to make a new life.

  Lost in thought, walking with her head down to avoid turning an ankle in her heels, Belle was caught off guard by the yip, yip, yip of a small dog. She looked up just in time to see a tiny black-and-tan chihuahua scamper across the parking lot toward the wheels of a rolling limo.

  Belle cried out in alarm. At the sound of her voice, the little dog stopped in its tracks, directly in line with the left front wheel of the limo. Belle moved as quickly as she could, running on the balls of her feet, toward the dog. The driver hit the brakes and the tires squealed on the pavement. The horn blared. Belle held out a palm, then reached down with her other hand and scooped up the tiny dog.

  The right rear window of the limo descended and an angry young man stuck his blond head out. “What the heck are you doing, woman? You nearly ran right into this car! Are you out of your mind?”

  Belle glared at him in exasperation. Were all men buttheads? “Your car nearly ran over this little dog!”

  The blond man draped a muscled forearm over the car door. “The key word there is ‘nearly.’ We didn’t. So the dog is okay. So get out of the way and let my driver pass.”

  Belle sized up the man’s features in a glance and decided he would be quite handsome in a Nordic sort of way if he wasn’t red-faced and yelling at her. And the muscles in his forearm hinted at an admirable physique. She snorted mentally. With her luck, he was a doctor returning from a morning gym session. The thought soured her expression and she snapped back, “Your compassion is overwhelming. I’ll get out of your way, because you’re obviously more important than anyone else on the planet.” She drew her herself up to her full five feet eleven inches and moved to the sidewalk, turning her back on the limo.

  She took a moment to calm the chihuahua. “Poor little thing. Everything’s okay now. You look so scared.” She pressed her cheek against the tiny trembling body. “And you’re so cute! Who do you
belong to? No collar?”

  The chihuahua began licking her chin. The scent of puppy breath made her smile. “You’re just a baby!” She stroked his domed head while she considered her options. “I doubt that I can take you into the hospital.” She glanced at her watch. “Darn. I have ten minutes to find the fundraising office. But I can’t just turn you loose. Poor baby.”

  In a heartbeat, she knew what she had to do. She turned around and headed for her car. Her heels slowed her down, so she took them off. With shoes in one hand and puppy in the other, she trotted along the sidewalk barefoot to her car.

  Once there, she was grateful for the shade of the tree she’d parked under. She cracked the windows a bit, poured some water into the cup holder, and pulled her emergency hoodie out of the back to make a bed for the puppy on the front passenger seat.

  “You wait here. After my appointment, I’ll find your owner. Somehow.” She was glad she always kept a pair of running shoes in the car. She’d started doing that in college, when she found the only time for exercise was between classes. She tossed the heels onto the back seat and sat down behind the steering wheel to slip her feet into the running shoes. As she did so, the puppy moved to take a drink from the cup holder. He had to lean way over to get his mouth close enough to drink, and when he did so, his back legs lifted off the ground and he landed snout first in the water.

  “Oh, no!” Belle lifted him with one hand and used the hoodie to wipe him dry. “Well, if I leave you here, you may drown while I’m gone. Hmmm.” She thought about it for two seconds, then opened the glove box. She pulled every unnecessary item out of her bag and stowed everything in the glove box. Only her wallet, iPhone, and a print out of the email confirmation of her job interview remained. She picked up the tiny pup and slipped him into her bag, leaving one hand inside to cradle him. Then she locked her car, settled her purse over her shoulder, and began jogging toward the hospital.

  By the time she asked three different people for directions and finally entered the right elevator, she felt like she’d just run a marathon. She examined herself in the mirrored wall and groaned. Her tailored jacket hung open. The single button that fastened it had jumped ship somewhere between her car and the elevator. And there was a dark, wet spot on the fabric on her left side. The puppy must have tinkled on her jacket when she first picked him up. She spotted a ladies’ room, but decided against it. She was already ten minutes late for her appointment, and trying to wash the spot out would only make the wet area larger.

  Belle rolled her eyes. “So much for first impressions,” she muttered. For half a second she was tempted to skip the interview, but the disastrous state of her bank account took that option off the table. She would just have to explain her appearance as best she could and hope her interviewer was an understanding woman. She found a door with Fundraising on a shiny black plaque next to it. She took a deep breath and entered.

  Thick burgundy carpeting silenced her every step. She was in a reception area with futuristic furniture, all clean lines and chrome. It jarred her sensibilities. She expected a secretary, a laptop, a phone, and maybe a few files on the cold marble desktop, but there was no one. Recessed fixtures and a back wall of opaque glass blocks provided light. On either side of the uninviting desk were two doors, one closed, one standing open. She approached the open door with hesitation.

  “Hello?” She peeked inside.

  The carpet was the same, but the furnishings were completely different. The oversized desk was made of dark wood. Facing the desk were two matching red leather chairs with an oval elbow table between them. To her left, a wall of bookshelves sported mismatched volumes on the middle shelves. Trophies were scattered on the other shelves. The wall opposite the book shelves appeared to be cabinets. Two were glass-fronted and displayed bottles of liquor. She wondered idly if one of the cabinets hid a refrigerator. Behind the desk was a wall of glass. The bright sunlight was tempered by vertical blinds, set at forty-five degree angles, blocking the harsh light but illuminating the room. This desk sported a computer and a laptop, and the soft whoosh of paper feeding through a printer made this room feel like a working space.

  Behind the desk, turned away from her and silhouetted against the wall of light, a man said curtly, “You’re late.”

  Belle’s heart sank. No, it couldn’t be.

  The man swiveled a wheelchair slowly to face her.

  Belle’s mouth went suddenly dry. Yes, it could be, and it was. The man in the chair was the same one who had yelled at her from the limo.

  In an instant, Belle made a decision. It seemed obvious to her that she wouldn’t stand a chance of landing this job, so she might as well be herself and get comfortable. She set her purse carefully in one of the leather chairs and plopped down on the other one. Then, as if she’d known the man for years, she announced, “You would not believe the morning I have had!”

  “It couldn’t be worse than mine,” he grumbled. He held up his phone. “My mother is on her way up here and she is fit to be tied. You might want to leave before you get hit by the fallout.”

  Belle cocked her head to one side, trying to place his accent. “You grew up in Texas.”

  “Bingo. Give the lady a cigar.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Of course you don’t.” He reached for a pen on his desk, but when he moved the chair, something hard clunked against the wood. He grimaced.

  Belle leaned forward to roll the pen in his direction but stopped midway. She pressed her lips tightly together, not sure she was ready to be nice to him yet. He hadn’t apologized for yelling at her earlier.

  “Leg?” she asked.

  “Ankle. Might as well be the whole dang leg.”

  “Motorcycle accident?”

  “No.” He stopped what he was doing and glared at her. “Not that it’s any of your business, I fell off an oil rig.”

  “In Texas?”

  He reached behind his chair and seized a grabber, then banged it down on the pen and pulled it toward himself. “No. Not in Texas.”

  “It was just an innocent question,” Belle snapped.

  “Well, I’m not in the mood.” He waved a hand at his elevated left ankle. “This thing is driving me crazy. My ribs hurt like the devil. My brother stuck me in this office because he thinks I need something to do. And he called me this morning to tell me I had to come here and do an interview for an assistant I don’t want and don’t need.”

  “You’re turning bright red,” said Belle. She marveled at how liberating it was to know ahead of time you weren’t going to get the job. It let you say exactly what you were feeling. “As for the job, I wouldn’t want it anyway if you were the boss. I’ve had my fill of obnoxious, pushy doctors who think their degree gives them the power of life and death over patients and coworkers alike.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you have high blood pressure?”

  “That’s none of your business! And I’m not a doctor. This interview is over. You’ll excuse me if I don’t walk you out.”

  “Ah, self pity,” said Belle. “It’s not very becoming on a big, strapping man like you. I’ve seen children in the pediatric ward handle a broken ankle better.” She stood up and lifted her purse carefully off the other chair. “Since we are mutually agreed we don’t want to work together, would you mind signing this card so I can prove that I’m looking for a job?” She took the card from the Unemployment Office and handed it to him.

  He grabbed it, used the pen he’d finally reached to scribble his signature, and shoved it back across the desk.

  “Thank you.” The nurse in her spoke the next words before she could stop herself. “I hope you feel better soon.”

  “Oh, the hell you do,” he grumbled.

  The sound of a woman’s voice from the doorway startled them both.

  “Ulysses Garrison, how dare you speak to a young lady like that! What is the matter with you?”

  Belle’s eyes widened and her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Ulysses? No wonder you�
��re messed up.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Polly Garrison’s pale features were more frazzled than usual, and her blond hair flew about in wisps every time she turned her head. She was dressed in jeans, a plaid camp shirt, and hiking boots. Her accent was much thicker than Uly’s. She stood in the middle of the room, skinny arms akimbo, and spoke like a woman used to getting her way.

  “Young lady, I chose that name for my son because Ulysses was a mythical hero with great determination and courage. It’s a fitting name for any young man, and I’ll thank you not to disparage my taste.” Without waiting for a response, she ran her hands through her hair and wailed, “Uly, the parking lot attendant lost my baby!”

  Uly grimaced and rearranged himself in his wheelchair. “Why on Earth would you leave your grandson with the parking attendant?”

  “Not the baby, my baby! Charlemagne!”

  Somewhere, a dog yipped.

  Belle opened her purse and a tiny black-and-tan head emerged and yipped again.

  “You found my baby.” Polly rushed forward and lifted the pup out of Belle’s purse. “Oh, sweet Charlie, mama thought she’d lost you forever.” She cradled the pup against her chest and turned a face full of gratitude toward Belle. “You are an angel. What can I ever do to repay you? Where did you find the little darlin’ anyway?”

  Before she answered, Belle glanced in Uly’s direction. He braced for the worst, but was pleasantly surprised.

  “He was running across the parking lot, in danger of being run over. I picked him up and tucked him in my purse so he’d be safe.”

  “Oh, thank you so much.” Polly moved about the room like she’d been there a dozen times. She opened a cabinet and took out a shot glass, then opened another door and found a bottle of water. She set the glass on Uly’s desk and poured it full of water. Then she set Charlie on the desk so he could drink. He lapped it up eagerly.

  Belle couldn’t help but smile. “He’s so cute. I’m glad we ran into each other. I didn’t know how I was going to find his owner.”