Sweet Revenge: A Nanny to Mommy Romantic Suspense Read online

  Sweet Revenge

  A Nanny to Mommy Romantic Suspense

  Mia Ford

  Copyright © 2019 by Mia Ford

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  35. Sneak Peak: Rock My World

  About the Author

  Also by Mia Ford

  Blurb

  If I get to meet my twin boys, I’ll be the luckiest woman alive once again!

  Okay, here’s the thing – I NEVER give up.

  So, when Ted decides to dump me,

  I decide to pick up the pieces of my life together.

  Yeah baby…I am gonna take revenge,

  For the sake of my little boys.

  They say you always get what you are destined to get.

  Well, I’ve found my perfect man,

  And he is determined to help me find my little boys.

  Revenge does taste better when it’s cold.

  Boys, momma’s coming. I love you.

  Chapter One

  Leia

  I love days like this.

  It started off as a typical Sunday drive (which I take quite frequently) in my little Volvo station wagon out on the open roads outside of the city. It’s very peaceful and during the autumn months the temperature is just perfect. Even during the blistering hot Southern California summers, it is not a bad time to get out and about and enjoy the freedom of being alive.

  My name is Leia Daniels. I was twenty-five years old, still a child in many ways, when I met the man who would have the most profound impact on my life, far more than I had ever dreamt of. It is something that I still think about, still dream about, and continue to this day to reflect upon at certain times of the year. I don’t think it will ever leave me and I would not be the person I am today if it ever did. I’m grateful for all of it.

  The day started off as any other Sunday. I arose early in my mansion about ten miles outside of San Diego. I have always been an early riser even if I stayed up late the night before, and this morning was no different. I woke up and enjoyed my early morning jog, a quick shower, and a small oatmeal breakfast. The maid and butler both had the day off and I had the house basically to myself. Sometimes I enjoyed the solitude, but most of the time it could get rather depressing and lonely as I remembered how lively the house used to be when my parents were still alive.

  I will never forget the day that the dreadful knock came at the door, and the policeman stood there with fear and regret in his eyes as he tried to look me in the eyes, and uttered the words that will ring on in my deepest fears, in the most dreaded part of my memory. “There’s been an accident. Your parents…didn’t make it.”

  I was just fifteen years old. I thought I was grown up (or damn near) and that I was mature beyond my years, but at that crushing moment I might as well have been a five-year-old who was now totally alone, totally lost in the world. Nothing in life is as devastating, especially to a child, as the loss of a parent. You are a part of them and they are a part of you; your very essence feels shifted, misplaced. It had happened over ten years ago and I still felt that I was trying to center myself and move forward.

  And I was very fortunate in many ways that I have never forgotten or taken for granted. Our long term butler, Walden took care of me. He’d been given guardianship over me in the event that something ever happened to my parents. My father had seen to it that all of his affairs were in perfect order, just in case…

  He couldn’t have known that a tragic car accident would take the lives of both him and my mother that chilly, dark night, but my father was a brilliant businessman and he used all of the skills that he utilized to build and run a successful cosmetics empire and he applied that same zeal and dedication to every single thing that he did in his life. I would inherit the business and I would one day oversee things, as I’d been doing since I graduated from college (as per the agreement my father and his lawyer had drafted up). At twenty-two I did just that, graduating summa cum laude from USC with a degree in Business.

  I loved the company my father built and I loved overseeing the day to day operations, but I have never been silly enough to think at my youth and inexperience that I was competent to run my father’s company. Many of the same people that helped him run things when he was alive continued to do so now. They were brilliant and they did a wonderful job. All of them were great people and I’d become very close with them.

  That Sunday morning after breakfast I went into the huge garage that was brimming with every type of sports car imaginable and I selected the Volvo. I had a lot of fun with the lavish, luxurious sports cars—they were a hoot—but I didn’t want to be noticed today. On quiet Sundays I liked to drive into town, get a manicure and a pedicure, and head to the Salon to get a touch up on my hair. After that I usually went to the spa to get a massage, and then meet a few of my girlfriends for a round of golf at the country club. Doing many of these things, I didn’t like to attract too much attention. I’ve never been one to seek out validation from other people and I’m actually uncomfortable doing so. I deeply love my privacy.

  Plus, being the heir to one of the richest cosmetic empires in the world, I was always a big target for the paparazzi that dogged me relentlessly. Usually if I drove the Volvo and dressed casually, they didn’t seem to notice me as much.

  I changed the radio station until I was on my favorite eighties pop station and let the sounds of early Madonna take me away for a bit. I’d always loved the music of that era, even though I was a bit too young to have been brought up in it. There was just something about the clothing, the fashion, and the sound of that music that grabbed hold of me and got into my head. I’d grown up in the late nineties, but the sounds of that era were too sad and depressing for my taste. I was a happy person for the most part and I loved music that touched that happiness and made it spark just a little bit more.

  The song she was currently singing was about a bad breakup and how she just didn’t care and was happy to move on. I could relate to it, having gone through a similar breakup about six months before. I was a bit torn up at first, though. It was my most serious relationship to date and I’d thought that we were in it for the long haul, but then we just started drifting apart and the spark was gone. It wasn’t anyone’s fault really, but that happened after almost a year of being together.

  Since then I’d been happy to be single and just going out with my single girlfriends to have a good time. I’d dated a
few guys here and there but nothing had really clicked heavily. I wasn’t in any hurry. A woman in my position couldn’t be. There were far too many vultures out there who could smell the money and come running. Of course I knew that most men considered me fairly attractive and I got plenty of head turns and looks when I was driving the Volvo, but as soon as they found out where I lived and I told them who I was, everything had always changed.

  “You should try the experiment,” Chastity, my best friend since high school told me.

  “What experiment?” I asked. I was very intrigued.

  “I’ve read about it. You pretend to be poor and then when that person falls in love with you then you tell them who you really are. It’s a total lock.”

  We were in my kitchen eating ice cream out of the carton. I set it down on the counter and looked at her like she was crazy (I thought she might be having a conniption or something) and said, “That is bizarre and totally dishonest.”

  Chastity laughed. “That’s the brilliance of it.”

  I shook my head. “No. There is no way I’m ever doing that.”

  But I’d actually been thinking about it a lot. It had some merit, although it was very deceitful and went against every honest part of my upbringing and moral character. Still, it was worth a shot. My biggest fear was that when I revealed the lie to whoever I was with they would hate me and break up with me on the spot.

  Or they would love me so much that they just didn’t care.

  There was a reason celebrities usually married other celebrities—they didn’t have to even worry about this sort of stuff.

  I made the turn onto Lexington Rd. heading towards the outskirts of town. I was going to be late for my appointment if I didn’t hurry and Lonnie Sands did not wait for anyone. He was perhaps the highest paid and most highly sought after stylist in the city. Most people had to reserve him weeks in advance and he was not cheap. I was his regular, though, and I paid him handsomely for it. It was about the only ridiculously expensive thing I really spent much time splurging on. Most of the expensive sports cars were actually donated by the dealerships to us, otherwise I would have sold off a good bit of them, except for the ones that my father cherished so much. I kept those for him.

  I still can’t remember exactly how it happened. Everything occurred so quickly I barely had time to react. One moment I was driving down the open highway and suddenly there was a motorcycle in front of me. It was a dirt bike and I believe it came in from the side, but I wasn’t quite sure. But there it was and it was close. Too close. I realized that instant I was about to collide with it. I did my best to swerve but the motorcycle did the same and I ran into the back of it as I slammed on my brakes, skidding and screeching all over the road.

  I’d done my best to avoid the impact, but it was too late. I hit the motorcycle hard.

  The bike instantly bounced and skidded to the right heading over the embankment almost ricocheting off the edge of the pavement and then doing several flips as it flopped around landing hard on the ground before rebounding high into the air and back down again and again.

  “NO!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I witnessed the horrific events unfolding right in front of me. I was paralyzed with fear. It was barely all I could do to hold my car on the road and avoid damage to myself.

  My car eventually came to a grinding halt in the middle of the road.

  And then silence. Just the radio playing on in my speakers songs about happier times, totally oblivious to the tragedy that had just happened. The tragedy I’d caused…

  Oh…my…God…I hit them… I hit someone….

  “No…it can’t…” I cried. Tears were falling from my eyes. I could barely breathe as my chest tightened up and I felt my heart flying in my chest sending shockwaves of panic signaling into the back of my head like some kind of pounding rhythm that had no real source.

  I quickly shut off the radio and then I just sat there in silence, frozen, too scared to move, too afraid of what I’d done or what I might see. Every single image of doom and total destruction of everything I had ever known passed by the internal lens behind my eyes.

  Somehow I eventually found the will to move. I turned off the car, opened the door, and staggered out into the open road. There were no other cars around. It was quiet. Empty. Too quiet. A soft, gentle breeze caressed across my face as if trying to comfort me, but it made the whole thing seem so much worse somehow.

  I stepped slowly across the road until I was now staring down the embankment. The bike was lying at the bottom on its side. Several pieces of it were scattered on the side of the road and all over the ground near where it finally rested at the bottom of the steep hill. It was mostly destroyed. The front wheel appeared to be just dangling, on the verge of falling off completely.

  And the driver…?

  Wait… where was the driver…?

  There was no one around, only the bike.

  I knew that someone had been riding when I crashed into them. Where in the hell were they?

  “Hello?” I yelled as I started to run around the embankment and then back and forth across the road trying to find them. “Hello?”

  I doubted they could hear me. They were most likely dead. I’d hit them pretty hard and I wasn’t sure how anyone could have survived it. They might have even…slid…under the car?

  “No…no, no, no, NO!” I yelled as I ran towards the road behind my car checking frantically for whoever this person might be. What had I done? At twenty-five my life was ruined and this poor person was probably dead…or at least hurt seriously. How could I have been so careless? So reckless?

  “Hello?” I shouted again looking towards the embankment.

  I was bawling now, the tears falling hard out of my eyes, my voice getting choked up and my chest so tight and heavy that I could barely even make a sound anymore. I was about to collapse in a full on panic attack.

  “Here!”

  The voice came out of nowhere. At first I wasn’t even sure I’d heard anyone over my own crying and the loud voices screaming in my head in anguish about what had just happened. But I thought… it was possible…did I really hear someone or was my head playing tricks with me? Hopeful thinking…that’s all it was. No one could have survived this. I plowed into the motorcycle going at least fifty.

  “I’m here!”

  The voice was there again. This time I knew I heard it.

  It was coming from my right. Towards the embankment behind where my car was parked.

  Quickly I broke into a jog and ran towards it.

  “Hello?” I shouted as I got closer.

  “Yes! I’m here!”

  It was a man’s voice. It sounded strong and clear. Maybe… could it be…?

  He was OK.

  When I came to the edge of the road I saw him. There was a small hill there right before the embankment started to drop off. He was lying just on the edge of that in a fairly grassy spot. He was sitting up and looking towards me, his helmet lying beside him close to his hand.

  A look of relief came over his face when he saw me.

  “Oh, my God!” I exclaimed. “Are you alright?”

  “Um… I think so… but I’m not sure I can stand right now. I took a pretty good tumble.”

  I almost laughed with his response. He didn’t seem to even be in that much pain. He definitely didn’t sound like the type of man who’d been seriously injured in a collision on a motorcycle. The nearest I could tell his right leg seemed a bit banged up and twisted as he kept rubbing it lightly and grimacing with the pain. I didn’t see any damage to his head or face though, which I took as a great sign.

  “I’m so sorry!” I said. “I don’t know what happened. Suddenly, you were there and I… I couldn’t stop.”

  “Nah, it was my fault. I soared over this stupid hill and into the road. I took a chance there would be no car there and I was wrong.”

  He laughed.

  It was at this moment I noticed how handsome the stranger was. He was fit
and athletic with a sweet smile, great dimples, and emerald colored, green eyes.

  “I’m calling an ambulance,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s necessary.”

  As he started to move his body slumped back down and he cried out in pain. “Ugh… maybe I was wrong…”

  “Just lie still. Do not move. We have no idea how hurt you might be.”

  I pulled out my phone from my pocket and quickly dialed nine-one-one and reported the accident.

  “Thanks,” he said. “By the way, I’m Ted Ridgeway. We might as well exchange names, right?”

  I smiled. I was so relieved that I had not killed this man and from the looks of things it was not technically my fault, but a freak accident caused by a miscalculation of an adrenaline junkie.

  “I’m Leia,” I said. “Leia Daniels.”

  Chapter Two

  Ted

  “So am I going to live?”

  I teased the doctor as he shone the bright light from that little flashlight that all doctors are in a never ending supply of into my eyes. My head was hurting just a little bit (the light was not helping) and I felt a little slow to move, mostly because my body felt like it had just been dropped in a meat grinder. But for the most part I was fine.

  What had I been thinking? I could have been killed making that stupid jump. I was lucky I hit that car just right, or it could have been much more serious. Hell, I think I was almost as shaken up as Leia was.