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Chapter 1

“Please fasten your seatbelt, Miss Peyton We’re heading into some turbulence”

Tess’s French-ers clenched the arms of the leather seat as the plane shuddered and bucked Not because she was afraid of flying—her father’s pilot was ex-Air Force and could fly anything—but because the Indian food she’d gotten fro a bid to come back up

You will not throw up You do not have ti

The evidence of her packed schedule was laid out on the table before her, in all its painstakingly bullet-journaled glory, in the pages of the planner that dictated her life If it wasn’t in the planner, it siuts up soo, she would not be sick End of story And what Peytons wanted, they usually got if they worked hard enough

She breathed through the roiling of her stoet through before they landed Her father would expect an update on the latest London project, and she needed to be on the ball to prove she had not only handled the additional responsibility he’d given her, she’d waded into the shitstorm and made it come up aces That would be important when she proposed what she really wanted: that he allow her to take a greater role in operations of the home office in Denver

Not that either of those things was the point of this trip to Mississippi No, her powerful, successful, brilliant father had moved there to be with his neife Tess still couldn’t quite wrap her brain around the fact that her dad had gone to Vegas of all places Sure, Peyton Consolidated had a hotel on the strip But absolutely no one expected multi-billionaire Gerald Peyton, III to be old laone viral Speculation had run rampant Tess had her own concerns about the haste of thea few h London on the way home from their Paris honeymoon, she couldn’t deny that Sandy seemed to adore her father, and he was likewise smitten He was happy Happier than she’d ever seen hie hie to her mother

Hell, she’d envy him if she truly believed a commitment like that was really real and could really last But she didn’t believe it Not deep down Six weeks ago she’d had her own shot at that kind of happiness She’d been looking for adventure Romance A chance to step outside the toalls and be someone besides Tess Peyton, someone without all the attendant responsibilities that went along with the faone up to Scotland for the weekend, in search of her own hottie Highlander Except instead of a kilted Scotsman, she’d found an ex-pat American, with a voice like honeyed whiskey and ashe’d wanted—and so ht turned into two, then two turned into four, and before she’d known it, a week had gone by The best damned week of her life

But her uncharacteristic bid at recklessness, at going off-plan, hadn’t ended edding bells It had just ended She’d seen to that, hadn’t she? Nowhere in her planner did it spell out 1) Meet the man of your dreams 2) Fall in love Therefore, it hadn’t happened So there was no sense in dwelling on it No sense re the taste of hi about how he’d looked, sleeping and sated, the last ti over the delicate filigree of her necklace—the necklace he’d given her—Tess dropped her hand, shutting down that line of thinking with the same ruthlessness she used to hold back the nausea, and went back to the reports

By the ties, the air had smoothed out and so had her stomach

Jon came over the onboard interco our descent”