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Blurb:
A BWWM, Italian man, billionaire, revenge romance story.
Cora is the illegitimate child of the very wealthy Benjamin LaFitte.
Benjamin has just made a bad move and pissed off another very wealthy man, Paolo Agnelli, by buying a casino out from under him.
When Paolo finds out that Cora is Benjamin’s daughter, he decides to get revenge on his rival by wooing her then breaking her heart.
Of course, fate has a different plan in store for Cora and Paolo… one that involves a lot more romance than Paolo could have predicted!
When Paolo realizes he’s started to fall for Cora for real, he wants to abandon his plan and have a real relationship.
But what if Cora finds out about his deception before he can?
Discover now in this European man romance novel by Cher Etan.
Chapter 1
“I hate you. So much,” Cora mumbled, her voice throaty and thick with sleep.
“Hey, Cora, girl, don’t be like that,” the voice on the other end of the line crooned. She sounded disgustingly cheerful – and extremely drunk.
“It’s the middle of the night. I’m sleeping – or I was until you woke me up, you twit.”
“It’s not even midnight, pretty princess,” the caller slurred, a slightly petulant note in her voice.
“Yeah, in L.A. it’s not,” Cora rubbed the side of her head where bed head had flattened her usually frizzy mane against the pillow. “I’m on the east coast, for god’s sake. That’s a three hour time difference.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, Oh.” Cora felt herself roll her eyes behind her mostly-closed eyelids. “So what do you want, Mace?”
“Uh,” Mace sounded a little more sober and almost contrite now. “Just checking in, seeing what you’re up to.” A very unsubtle smirk crept into Mace’s voice. “Making sure you’re getting back on that horse.”
Cora groaned. She knew that, in Mace’s own weird way, this meant she cared for Cora’s well-being; that she wanted to make sure Cora was all right.
“Could we do this another time?”
“Sure,” Mace said, only to ask a moment later, “But you did, right? Get laid, I mean?” The drunken concern in Mace’s voice would probably be funny if Cora weren’t so tired.
“After all these years, your investment in my sex life is still a little disconcerting, just so you know.” When Mace didn’t reply, Cora decided to just get this over with quickly. “Yes, Mace, I did get laid. Don’t you worry.”
And because Mace was going to ask for details anyway, Cora added a few. “Crazy tattoo artist guy last month. He was a really hot, totally hung guy I met at a club.”
Mace coughed and her voice sounded slightly indignant when she said, “I did not need to know that, Lafitte.”
“He had such a firm little ass, too,” Cora added, smirking.
“Okay, okay. I get it,” Mace placated. “You still got it. Good for you.”
Suddenly, there was a drunk cackle in Cora’s ear, and she knew from experience that Mace just cracked herself up with some stupid innuendo she was about to share with Cora. “You know what they’re going to call you?”
Cora braced herself for the worst. “What?”
“The Slutty Professor.” Mace made a wet laughing sound.
“Very witty, Mace, really.” Cora just shook her head. “I’m hanging up now.”
And that’s what she did.
*****
It took a lot of willpower for Cora to drag herself out of bed and go on her morning run the next day. Usually, she was pretty good at going right back to sleep when something – or someone – woke her up, but this time, she tossed and turned for what seemed like hours. She thought that once she was in Central Park and had hit her stride, those thoughts would go away. It was one of the things she liked about running: that she didn’t have to think and could be completely in the moment as her muscles worked, her lungs expanded and contracted and her footfalls sent a steady rhythm through her body.
Only it didn’t work this time.
Instead, it was like Mace’s stupid joke had put Cora’s mind in a tailspin, and she couldn’t get the phrase ‘Slutty Professor’ out of her head however inaccurate it was. She had a long-term boyfriend in high school and then exactly one hook-up with a guy her freshman year before she met her Travis, her fiancé of five years. At that point, she was happy – with her, their life, their sex life, everything. In over six years, she was never genuinely tempted to sleep with someone else.
Ever since he left her because apparently the long hoped for ‘advantage’ he would gain from being associated with her father was not going to materialize; she’d been going out several nights a week, drinking and dancing and flirting and hooking up when the opportunity presented itself. Trying to party away the betrayal or at least keep the feelings at bay. She liked sex and she liked that people found her sexy enough, attractive enough, to take her home without even knowing who she was.
Still, if she was being honest with herself, it wasn’t like she loved her life as it was right now. And that admission only got her thinking about all the other things that hadn’t really worked out like she had planned.
Damn Mace.
*****
Cora had moved to New York from New Orleans just two months ago to take up the very lucrative teaching position at the Dalton School. It was as far away as she could get from Travis and her problems and she was in need of every mile of that distance. It seemed to her that everyone in New Orleans knew who Benjamin Lafitte’s illegitimate daughter was. Everyone except his legitimate family that was. He was a big deal in construction and property deals and following Katrina, New Orleans was just ripe for both. Benjamin had moved his operations from New York to Louisiana, bringing his wife, Leandra and son, Peter with him. They bought a ridiculously large non-functional plantation in the Bayou and Leandra Lafitte threw extravagant parties for her husband’s guests. On the other side of town, closer to the ninth ward, Chantale Abellard went about her business, trying to remain inconspicuous. But it was a small town and people talked and everybody knew about the torrid affair she’d carried on with Benjamin and the offspring who resulted; Cora. They took offense at how Cora remained unacknowledged in public, even though Benjamin made sure to provide for her every financial need; he had no desire to be dragged to court for child support. Though Cora was far from a child anymore, he continued to deposit money in her bank account every month.
“Guilt money” her aunt Johanna called it.
“Useful” her mother retorted and begged Cora not to reject it.
“Unnecessary,” was Cora’s take on the whole business until she found out her heritage was the reason Travis wooed her in the first place. Then it became a millstone around her leg.