YOU DO SOMETHING TO ME
~ New York Sullivans, Book 3 ~
Bella Andre
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Book
A note from Bella
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
Epilogue
Bella Andre Booklist
About the Author
YOU DO SOMETHING TO ME
~ New York Sullivans, Book 3 ~
(c) 2017 Bella Andre
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Alec Sullivan has always believed he has it all. A billion-dollar private aviation business. A penthouse apartment in New York City. Beautiful women who know better than to expect him ever to fall in love. And great siblings for whom he'd do anything. But when Alec's business partner passes away and leaves everything to a daughter Alec never knew about, in an instant everything in his life turns upside down. All because of Cordelia.
Cordelia Langley always thought she was perfectly happy with her life. She owns a garden store she loves, lives in a pretty little cottage in the same town as her adoptive parents, and figures there's plenty of time to meet Mr. Right. But she never counted on becoming the surprise heir to a fortune--or on meeting a man like Alec Sullivan. A shockingly sexy billionaire who makes her heart race and melt all at the same time.
Neither Alec nor Cordelia plans on getting any closer than they have to. Only, how can either of them fight this kind of heat, this depth of desire? And when Cordelia needs Alec's support, it's pure instinct for him to be there for her. But when it's her turn to help him confront his deepest pain, will Alec let her in? Or will he push her away, just as he's pushed away everyone who's loved him for the past thirty years...
A note from Bella
Nothing makes me happier than writing about a Sullivan falling in love! Especially a hero like Alec Sullivan, who is absolutely positive that he'll never be touched by love. I simply couldn't wait to prove him wrong and I thought I knew exactly how it was all going to go down.
I should know by now that whenever I think I know how a story is going to unfold, it will go in a completely different direction! From the very first day that I sat down to write You Do Something To Me, I was shocked. Because as soon as I gave Alec his own story, he turned out to be one of the most breathtakingly romantic, loving, wonderful Sullivan heroes of all time.
Can you tell how much I adore him?
So. Very. Much.
I absolutely cannot wait for you to read Alec and Cordelia's story. I wrote it while sitting outside in my own garden and I hope you can find a bloom-filled spot of your own to enjoy it.
Please be sure to sign up for my newsletter (bellaandre.com/newsletter) so you don't miss out on any new book release announcements.
Happy reading!
Bella Andre
CHAPTER ONE
Alec Sullivan hated surprises.
When he turned thirty, his sister, Suzanne, threw him a surprise birthday party. He'd had a hell of a day at the office dealing with a new aviation engine company that had promised him the best and had delivered anything but. Finding fifty people in his apartment expecting smiles and laughter and small talk over birthday cake was the very last thing he'd wanted. Five years later, Suzanne was still apologizing for that night, even though they both knew she'd just been trying to make him happy.
Alec would do anything for his sister and his brothers, Harry and Drake. He'd been taking care of the three of them since he was five and their mother had taken her own life, leaving his father as wrecked as a man could be--and unable to be a father anymore.
Which was where Gordon Whitley had come into the picture. He'd been Alec's boss out of business school and then Alec's business partner. They'd built S&W Aviation together.
And Gordon had been the father figure Alec never had.
Yesterday, Alec had found Gordon on the floor by his desk. Alec had dropped to Gordon's side, pleading with his friend to wake up, yelling for his executive assistant to call 911. But he'd been too late. The heart attack had been massive, all Gordon's years of joking that he should drink less and exercise more suddenly coming to an end in the middle of the workday.
Gordon's eyes had opened for only a moment, his lips forming one word: "Cordelia."
And then he was gone.
The blow of losing Gordon was bad enough. Twenty-four hours later, Alec still felt cold, and his gut hadn't stopped churning. But as Alec worked to process what Gordon's trust attorney had just told him, he felt as though he'd been hit by a second blow.
A blow so big he was still having trouble believing what he'd just been told was true.
"Gordon had a daughter." Alec's lawyer, Ezra, and Gordon's lawyer, Caleb, remained silent while Alec processed the shocking information aloud. "She's twenty-five, lives in Yorktown...and apart from the 1934 Packard convertible he wants me to have, he's willed her all of his worldly possessions. Including his half of our company."
Gordon Whitley was the kind of guy you expected to live forever. But Alec had always assumed that if something did happen to his friend and partner, he'd end up with Gordon's share of the company. At the very least, that extra one percent that meant no one could tell him what to do with S&W Aviation.
"Has she been informed of her inheritance yet?" Alec asked.
"I've spoken with her briefly on the phone, but will be meeting with her directly after leaving your office," Caleb replied.
Had she and Gordon been close? Had this windfall--making her a seriously rich woman who now owned half of the most successful private aviation company in the world--been one she'd known would come one day?
Or would she be as surprised as Alec by this news?
Alec had trusted Gordon implicitly. He'd believed there were no secrets between them. How could there be when they'd worked side by side every day for nearly twenty years?
Cordelia Langley was one hell of a secret.
He bit back a curse as he rubbed his chest, where everything felt tight. He was in perfect health, but it still hurt like the devil to lose his closest friend. A friend who had kept something huge from him.
"Set up a meeting with her here," he told Caleb. "Tomorrow. She and I need to talk."
Alec had known about Cordelia for only five minutes, but he'd already begun to put together a plan. His brain had always worked like that, even back when he was five and his father had told him that his mother was gone. Alec had immediately started making plans for how he was going to take care of Harry, Suzanne, and Drake. Because he'd known his father couldn't do it. And now that his siblings were fully grown and totally capable adults, Alec still watched over them. He always would.
After Gordon's attorney had gon
e, Alec turned to his lawyer. "I'll have the details of my buyout plan to you before I turn in tonight, so that you can draft it in ironclad legal terms."
Ezra didn't seem surprised by Alec's intention to buy Cordelia out of the company. It was, after all, the only part of this that made any sense.
"I'm sorry, Alec. Sorry we lost him." Ezra looked morose as he pushed out of his seat, gathered his files, and headed for the elevator. "Gordon was a good man."
Closing the door, Alec was tempted to pour himself a glass of the Irish whiskey that he and Gordon had often shared at the end of a long day, whether to celebrate a big win or commiserate a rare loss. No business loss had ever stung this badly, though. Or made Alec feel so empty inside.
But Alec's phone was ringing--a royal from a small country in Europe was waiting for a tour of S&W's best jets.
His silent toast in honor of the best friend he'd ever had would have to wait.
*
The following day, as Cordelia stared up at the shiny office building in Scarsdale, New York, one of the wealthiest cities in America, her heart was pounding out an uneven rhythm inside her chest.
Half of this building was hers now, as was half of the massive list of private planes that Gordon Whitley's trust attorney had given her. Along with a staggering list of customers that included some of the wealthiest, most-well-known people on the planet. Actors and actresses she'd watched at the movies. Billionaire tech founders. Even royalty.
Cordelia had spent the past twenty-four hours trying to come to grips with this shocking information. But she was still having trouble with it.
A lot of trouble.
Of course she'd wondered who her birth parents were. What adopted kid didn't? Her mom and dad were great--warm, loving, completely supportive of her in every way. They'd never pushed her into situations that made her uncomfortable. They had always understood that she was happier with plants--she'd planted her own vegetable garden when she was five, her first rose garden a year later--than she was with big groups of people. Or ever would have been inside an office.
Her group of friends was small and loyal. Her life running an organic vegetable and flower garden center in a sleepy suburban town was a good one. She was right where she wanted to be--working in the sun and the rain with soil and seeds all day. Then settling down at night with a cup of tea in her small, cute cottage at the back of her property.
The lawyer beside her cleared his throat. "Ms. Langley, are you ready to go inside now?"
She nearly snorted aloud. Ready? She was anything but ready for any of this.
Because for all that she'd wondered about her birth father, she'd never imagined he'd owned something this massive, this impressive.
Once she was old enough to understand, her parents had told her everything they knew. Her birth mother had passed away having her, and her birth father had put her up for adoption immediately. He'd chosen her parents personally, though they'd never met him. Her birth father had opted to remain anonymous, rather than put his name on file to be opened when she came of age, leaving only a short letter for her parents.
Please give my daughter everything I can't.
I'm trusting you both with her life, with her happiness.
Her parents had given her the letter when she graduated from college with a degree in botany, the same day they'd surprised her with the greatest graduation gift in the world--one acre of land to grow her future on. It was a major extravagance for two schoolteachers and she'd vowed never to let them down--to do whatever it took to live up to the promise they saw in her.
Three years later, she had a small, thriving nursery business...and now, shockingly, a billion-dollar stake in a private aviation company. Courtesy of the man who had given her up the day she was born.
Cordelia wanted nothing more than to be in her garden now--the private one in front of her cottage, where she'd planted alyssum for the butterflies, dahlias for the hummingbirds, and cosmos for the bees. But all the wishing in the world wouldn't change the facts.
Gordon Whitley was her birth father...and he'd given her the keys to his kingdom.
She understood that most people would call this the lottery win of the century. But Cordelia knew without a shadow of doubt that this life--fancy airplanes and celebrity clients and more money than she could wrap her head around--wasn't for her.
Today, she was here for only one reason. To sell her share of the company to Gordon Whitley's business partner. She'd take a small amount of her unexpected inheritance to make her parents' lives better, give the rest to charity, then return to her normal, quiet life among the blooms and the birds. As if none of this had ever happened. As if it hadn't turned out that her birth father had been less than thirty minutes away all along, but had never reached out, never tried to contact her, never tried to get to know her, even as an adult.
Working hard to push away the sting in her chest, she took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and lifted her chin. "I'm ready."
CHAPTER TWO
From his office window, Alec watched Cordelia standing out on the sidewalk. She was pretty, dark haired, and slim, with a definite resemblance to Gordon. She wasn't the kind of woman Alec would notice in a bar, nor was she the type of woman with whom he'd roll around in the sheets. He dated only women who understood that he was in for a good time, for pleasure--not forever.
Cordelia had paused in front of his building--her building too, until she accepted his buyout offer--for several minutes. She hadn't looked impressed. Hadn't looked scared either. She'd looked more confused than anything. As though she hadn't yet been able to wrap her head around her enormous inheritance.
That made two of them.
Alec had barely slept since learning of her existence. He'd wanted to do his research on Cordelia thoroughly, because the kind of offer that would work for a ball-buster with visions of taking over the corporate world was completely different from the proposition he'd make for a small-town girl who had been tossed completely out of her league.
Cordelia Langley was in her mid-twenties and unmarried. She'd grown up in suburban Yorktown with her adoptive parents, Amy and Walter Langley, who were both teachers. She hadn't played on any sports teams or been a member of school clubs growing up, apart from the garden club. She'd graduated from Pace University, just up the road from where she'd grown up, then opened her own garden center at twenty-two. She lived alone in a small cottage on site.
The picture his research painted was clear: Cordelia was a quiet, simple woman. One who must feel way in over her head with all of this. Odds were definitely in his favor that she was dying to unload it all.
Alec had to marvel yet again at the fact that his often ruthless business partner, a man who had dreamed big and achieved even more, was in any way related to a woman who grew flowers for a living. Alec had a heck of a lot of issues with his own father, but in truth, the apple hadn't fallen all that far from the tree. At one time, William Sullivan had been the most successful painter in the world. Giving it up to build homes on a lake in the Adirondacks hadn't changed who he really was at his core: driven to be the best. Just as Alec had always been driven to succeed. To win. To triumph.
Which was why he was prepared to make this transition as easy as possible for Cordelia with an extremely generous buyout offer. Honestly, he couldn't imagine a scenario in which she'd want to keep her half of S&W Aviation. She was likely counting the minutes until she could be back in her garden, knees in the soil, trowel in hand.
Hearing footsteps outside his office, Alec put on a smile and moved to greet Cordelia. But his step--and his smile--both faltered when he came face to face with her.
Alec had never seen eyes so green. Or a mouth so soft, so sweet-looking. And his palms had never gone sweaty in front of a beautiful woman before.
From the window, he'd thought she was merely pretty. But now he knew that had been a dire miscalculation. Because the undeniable truth was that she looked like a breath of fresh air on a perfect blue-sk
y day.
Damn it, sweaty palms were one thing. Spouting poetry was another. He was obviously more thrown off his game than he'd thought by his partner's sudden death and the news that Gordon had a daughter.
"Cordelia." As Alec offered her his hand, it struck him how perfectly her name suited her. Elegant and slightly old-fashioned, but beautiful nonetheless. "Thank you for coming to meet with me today. I'm Alec Sullivan, your father's business partner."
She hesitated for a moment before putting her hand in his. A moment that somehow felt longer than it really was--thereby affording him an even better glimpse into her stunning eyes, which were not just green, but flecked with gold all around the iris. Her breathing seemed slightly uneven as she faced him and he could see the pulse point at her neck jumping beneath her skin. Her hand was small, but strong, likely a byproduct of working all day in a garden. At the same time, her palm, her fingers, were surprisingly soft.
"He's not my father." Her unexpectedly fierce statement had Alec squeezing her fingers before he realized he had to let her go.
"I've been told in no uncertain terms that he was your father."
Her mouth set in a line as anger--and something that looked like grief--flashed across her face. "Biologically, yes. Any other way, no."
Alec found himself surprised yet again. Her grip and her personality were much stronger than he'd expected from his research.
Had he miscalculated his buyout offer?
No. It would be best just to get this done and over with. Not only because he had a business to run, but also because she clearly didn't want anything to do with her birth father.
"Come on into my office and make yourself comfortable." Their lawyers were already seated inside. He'd arranged for them all to sit on the couches rather than around the conference table, as the informality would help keep Cordelia from feeling too out of her depth. He didn't want to frighten her. He just wanted to close the buyout deal as painlessly and quickly as possible. "Can I get you anything to drink or eat?" His office was stocked with everything from the finest champagnes to Coke, from caviar to cheese puffs. Whatever his clients wanted, they got. It was how Alec and Gordon had built the most prestigious, and the most profitable, private aviation company in the world.