Blossoming Adventure: 7 Wonderful and Unexpected True Love Stories Read online
BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE COLLECTION
Blossoming Adventure
7 Wonderful and Unexpected True Love Stories
Billionaire Romance
First Chance - Billionaire's First Baby
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Jilted
Chapter 2 – The Ball Gown
Chapter 3 – Finding Flo
Chapter 4 – Avoiding Ben
Chapter 5 – The Miracle
© Copyright 2015 by T. Massey - All rights reserved.
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Disclaimer
While all attempts have been made to verify the information provided in this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretations of the subject matter herein.
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Warning disclaimer: This eBook contains some explicit sex scene and adult language. This eBook is for sale to adults only. Please ensure it cannot be accessed by under aged readers.
This book is a fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Introduction
Left at the altar by her cad of Fiancé, Florence decides to take her fate into her own hands. She leaves her small home town of Hammond and takes the first train ride to a big city. Deciding that marriage isn't for her, especially after losing her virginity to a man who changed his mind about her, she takes her pride and leaves. Knowing that she's abandoning her mother to find a solution to saving her farm, when she arrives in the big city and is offered a job, she takes it. Sending most of the money back to her mother to make up for the marriage falling through when the union was supposed to save her family financially, she finally feels free.
Benjamin's father is deathly ill, and makes a simple request. He wants to see Ben happily married before he dies. Ben is a bit of a womanizer, and the idea of settling down worries him. Especially from the pick of the women in their inner circles. How is he supposed to find a down to earth woman who will support him? An honest, kind woman is almost impossible to find in the big city, until he stumbles into Flo.
Picking up a dress for his sister, Flo catches him off guard and he's smitten from the moment she trips over a mannequin. Of course, he needs to find a way to prove that he wants more than just a roll in the hay, but will she be open to risking her heart again after being burned by the last man who said he wanted to marry her?
Seducing her first is easy enough, but how will he win her heart? Can he convince her he has honorable intentions and she's not just another notch in his bedpost?
Chapter 1 – Jilted
Florence’s hands shook as she smoothed the lace skirt on her wedding gown for the hundredth time. It was her wedding day, she should feel beautiful, elegant, but instead all she felt was nervous. The memory of what Roscoe had done to her left her nervous about their wedding night.
She wanted to see Roscoe, get reassurance that they were doing the right thing, but it was considered bad luck to see the bride before the wedding, so she knew her mother would never let her past the doorway. She had her doubts that this marriage would work out, but she was obligated to see her commitment through. She'd made a promise to her mother.
Their families had wanted them to be wed, they'd pushed the two of them together since they were young, hoping the two would be a match and unite the properties and farms. Flo's father had died last year and they needed the money to keep the debt collectors at bay. Roscoe's family had enough money, and if they merged the two ranches, it would be a good investment for both sides.
Her ebony hair was done up so tightly that her cheeks felt like they were pulled as high as her eyebrows, whoever invented these tight painful hair styles was not a woman.
"Ow, be careful Selena, you're hurting me!" Flo growled at the girl, the urge to reach out and poke her overwhelmed her.
She felt like her hair was being ripped out of her scalp. She was trying to hold still, but the girl was making it hard with how much tugging and pulling she was doing. She was feeling ill about the wedding, and she shouldn't take it out on the poor girl who was trying to help her.
Selena, who was supposed to do her hair and makeup was trying to finish styling the curls, and a burn from the curling iron stung her neck.
"Sorry Ma`am. I'm trying to be as careful as I can, please stop wiggling. You're making it hard to finish these curls when you won't hold still. I just need to add the veil and the decorative pins and I'm finished. Just a few more pins and we'll be done, I promise." Selena shoved another pin painfully into the curls and had Flo wincing.
"I'm trying, but this dress just doesn't fit right, it chafes in all the wrong places. I shouldn't have trusted my mother to order my dress. I should have gone through someone locally, I don't know why I let her talk me into using a catalog." Flo whined, she knew she should be happy about her wedding day to the man she loved, but it was clear that nothing was going right so far, she just wished it was already over.
Her white silk slippers pinched her feet, they were a size too small, but the wedding was about to happen and they hadn't had time to replace them, they'd been lucky the wedding dress had arrived on time. Her dress was slightly too large for her petite bosom, was almost too tight in the waist, even with her corset cinching it down to make it fit. It was like they'd sized it for someone else, then sent her the wrong dress. Except, it was her dress her mother had picked out of the catalog, and her mother had sent in her measurements.
The only thing she could think of was maybe her mother had exaggerated her bust size, and shrunk her waist size, but why would her mom do that? They didn't even have time once it got here to have it altered, she didn't want to believe her mom would fib about her measurements. There was no one to know besides the seamstress who had sewn the dress.
Taking a deep breath, she tried not to let the panic well up in her throat.
She was getting married today. Breath Flo, you've got this. She tried to tell herself. Closing her eyes, she took a few deep inhales and blew out slowly through her mouth, trying to get her nerves to calm down.
Her mother ran into the room suddenly, the door slamming behind her with a loud thud that started Selena and made her drop the curling iron onto the bottom of the dress.
"Quick, get it off the dress before you ruin it!" Flo ordered her, shaking the bottom of the dress, trying to remove the o
ffending item.
Selena reached down and grabbed it, clutching it in her hands looking at Flo's mother in panic. "I'm so sorry!"
"It's fine, just go away for a few minutes. I'll deal with my mother and we can finish this once she's gone. I need a break from my hair being pulled anyways." Flo told her, and as soon as Selena left the room, she turned to look at her mother and put her hands out in a "what" expression.
“The groom is missing,” Her mother exclaimed. She walked over to Florence and looked completely panicked, her eyes were wide and blood shot, and she looked like she was about to faint.
"What do you mean he's missing, Mom?" Flo asked her confused, where would he have gone?
Grabbing Florence’s shoulders, she shook her with hysterical panic. “I saw him leave a moment ago. Said he was going hunting. Hunting! What did you do to him? I told you it was bad luck to go for a walk before your wedding day, you weren't supposed to leave this room.”
Florence felt her brain knocking against her skull with every shake her mother made. Florence didn’t know why a walk would be bad luck, but it certainly seemed like bad luck to find the groom leaving his wedding before the ceremony.
“Did he say anything else?” She asked her mother, pulling away and trying to hold on to her mother's arms to keep from being shaken anymore, her brain hurt now. She managed to detangle herself from her mother and got off the stool to stand back and look at her mom.
“Hunting!” Her mother said one more time and then collapsed into a hysterical lump of sobbing on the floor at Florence's feet. “We’ll be the laughingstocks of the town. And you! What are your chances of a decent match now? I know you kissed him before the wedding, people will think he got the cream from the cow for free, and has no need to buy the cow now. No other man will ever want you!”
“It is 1910, Mom,” She said trying to reassure her mother. “I don’t need a man to live my life happily. Roscoe is fine for a husband mom, he's a better choice than many of the other men around here. He wanted to marry me, there must be something we are missing here, or he just needed to clear his head before the ceremony.”
But even as she said it, she knew that something was definitely wrong. She also acknowledged that her mother was right, the residents of Hammond didn’t care what century it was. She would always be that girl who got left at the altar. She'd never get another offer of marriage again if Roscoe stood her up. She would be considered used goods. Roscoe had already bragged about getting her naked in the hay, and she hadn't been able to look at anyone at church. The only reason she hadn't killed him for bragging, is the fact they were supposed to be married and everyone would forget in six months.
Men who abandoned their fiancé in a small town like Hammond made other men think that they are damaged goods. She saw it with his ex, and she had never thought she'd be a notch on his bed post. She thought his feelings for her had been real. Or, maybe she'd hoped they'd been real since she didn't think she'd get a better offer while staying in the small town that she grew up in that had almost nothing to offer most people.
Somehow though, she wasn't surprised. She'd always worried in the back of her mind that she had been out of his league. A poor girl from a no-name family would never be good enough for a man like Roscoe who'd hoped to marry a rich, beautiful girl. Someone either had talked him out of it, or the game had bored him and he moved on, and instead of being man enough to tell her himself, he just walked.
So what if he’d backed out? Wouldn't it be better to know now, instead of a year down the road after she'd invested her entire heart and soul into their marriage? Should she be angry? Relieved? It would have been an advantageous alliance. Roscoe’s property adjoined Florence’s family’s property. Between the two families, they might have cleared more trees and planted another field next spring. She sighed.
“The guests are arriving soon aren't they?” She asked her mom, hoping that would distract her and make her mother leave.
Her mother stared at her in shock. “You’ve just been jilted, and that’s all you can think about?” She got up and started pacing, noticing the black smear on the bottom of the wedding dress where the curling iron had landed and picked up the train to look closer at it.
“You should be going after him. Talk sense into him. Do it now, before he’s changed clothes and all is lost for the wedding.” She swatted at Florence’s backside. “Go, now.”
"Okay mom, I'll go talk to him." She walked over to the door and gave her mom one last look and then Florence left to go find Roscoe and see if she could fix this, or at least find out why he got cold feet or changed his mind.
She knew Roscoe was heading out to the woods above the north field. It’s where she always found him. She could easily catch up to him and get him to come back to the ceremony. She’d remind him that their families were counting on them and that all the food was already prepared for the dinner after the wedding. He was a reasonable man, even if he wasn’t the most reliable.
She passed her family’s barn. She’d had a lot of good childhood memories in that barn, but most recently, she remembered Roscoe kissing her goodnight. His lips were wet and cold and slimy, and the most recent memory left her feeling sick to her stomach.
She’d stood there trying to like it, reminding herself that it was her duty to like it. As his wife, she'd have had an obligation to let him touch her. She had promised her mom she'd take care of her when her dad had died, and she was failing the promise she made. Marrying Roscoe would have solved a lot of their problems.
Yet, she still found herself thinking about what happened, and the gut-wrenching feeling that accompanied the memory of what happened made her want to run screaming in the other direction.
When he’d started undoing her shirt, she had protested at first, telling him that they should wait, it was what God would want them to do, and she was a good Christian girl. He had kept trying while she tried to push him away and turn her back on him. She wanted to wait for her wedding night. That was how it was supposed to be.
Roscoe hadn't really given her a choice, he'd pulled her into the barn and tried to logic his way through her reserves. He had been so busy pawing and talking at her, that before she'd known what happened, he'd had her naked and pressed into the straw. He'd leaned down between her legs and pulled his small pecker out, and had stroked it until it had been hard, roughly pulling her legs apart. He'd fallen on her and shoved himself inside before she even understood what was going on.
“What’s the harm?” Roscoe had said. “We’re getting married anyway. Wouldn't you rather get the worst over with now, so we can enjoy ourselves better later? I know you're a virgin, you don't want to be a virgin on your wedding night. It will be unpleasant.”
So they’d gone all the way on a pile of straw in the loft. The discomfort of the whole experience flooded her with embarrassment and shame. The straw had poked her bottom and left chafe marks all over her back as a reminder of the evidence. As he’d entered her repeatedly, she’d only felt stabs of pain ripping through her, having her make noises of pain that had Roscoe covering her mouth, telling her to be quiet so her mom wouldn't hear them.
Feeling like she had been scraped raw with every thrust, it hurt, and had left her gasping in pain and trying to wiggle herself free, but he held on tight and wouldn't let her go until he was finished. When she'd started to cry, he told her to toughen up, that it was only bad the first time and that's why he wanted to get it over with before the wedding.
She’d known in that moment of humiliation and misery that she didn’t want to endure a lifetime of what Roscoe had done to her. When he was done using her body he promised her that the next time wouldn't hurt so bad, that she'd like it more. That the first time for a woman always sucked, but it's better it was over now, then leaving her wedding night a memory of pain of her first time.
He'd made a logical argument, but thinking on the memory of that night, she wished she could take it back. She regretted it. He hadn't even tried to kiss h
er once he got her clothes off and had managed to get her flat in the straw. He'd just roughly pushed her legs apart and forced his way inside while she felt a tearing sensation. The blood on her thighs afterwards left a reminder of what he'd done to her, and that if she'd really wanted to stop him, she could have.
If she'd been smarter, she would have never let him manipulate her into the barn alone, and would have gone into the house where she'd have been able to say no and mean it. Instead, she'd gotten herself into a situation where she had ended up consenting to something she hadn't really understood when it was happening, until it was too late.
Her mother had never explained what really went on between a man and a woman, and it had left her vulnerable. If she ever had children, she made herself a promise that her daughters would know what to expect before their wedding night, so they wouldn't end up in a situation like that.
She stopped walking when she reached the end of the barn, she hesitated. She didn't really want to find Roscoe. Now she had a choice, she didn’t have to go through with this, he'd given her an opportunity to run and get away from this situation. She was free to go where she pleased, he'd abandoned her, why should she go find him and force him to marry her when she didn't even want him? Everyone would think she was looking for Roscoe. They would have no idea she was gone until he got back from hunting in many hours.
Making up her mind, she went into her house and packed a couple of small bags. She got herself out of her wedding dress and put on her jeans and a regular shirt and finally feeling free, she walked three miles to the train station. She took out all the money she'd been saving for a rainy day and stuck it in her knapsack.