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Here Comes Trouble
Leslie Kelly
Former air force pilot Max Taylor has gained something of a reputation with the high-society ladies he shuttles around on his charter airline service.And the rumor mill has been out of control since he's become a chapter in the tell-all book written by a late congressman's widow! Looking to lie low while the courts restore his good name, Max has decided to hide out with his grandfather in the tiny town of Trouble, Pennsylvania.Sabrina Cavanaugh isn't the sultry, mysterious heiress she's pretending to be. In fact, she's a junior book editor who happens to be on a mission — to nail Max Taylor for the womanizing creep he is. Having worked hand in hand with the loose-lipped widow in writing her memoirs, there's no way Sabrina's going to let some spoiled (and hot) flyboy kill her career-making project with a lawsuit.It looks as if the love of a lifetime is on the horizon.
Here Comes Trouble
Leslie Kelly
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is dedicated with utmost appreciation to my readers. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your encouragement, support and enthusiasm. I hope you’ll stick with me as we all get into Trouble.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
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
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
MORTIMER POTTS was not insane.
He did, on occasion, like to slip into the past—at least in his mind—and relive his favorite days. Days that were certainly more exhilarating than those he lived now. But contrary to the belief of some of his detractors, he was able to separate fiction from reality. Usually.
The problem with reality was that it was boring. The idea of settling down into his role as elderly millionaire—sipping cognac and smoking cigars on the patio of his Manhattan penthouse as he watched the world go by—simply held no appeal.
He needed adventure. Excitement. Needed to ride through the desert on a fine black stallion, or sail into a secluded jetty on the coast of Malta to escape pirates. Or whisk three young boys away to an African safari.
That was one consolation—his grandsons, at least, did not think him mad. Eccentric? Yes. But not insane.
Or perhaps that wasn’t a consolation. Having a bit of madness in the family would certainly invigorate the lives of those three young men, who’d become just a bit too pedestrian in their adult years. A little insanity could be good for the soul.
He would go insane if he was forced to ring in his eightieth year at a boring club filled with artificial people who wouldn’t dream of walking unaccompanied in Central Park, much less fighting their way out of a smoky tavern in Singapore. Ah, the good old days.
At least, he thought they were his good old days. Sometimes his memory played tricks on him.
“Your morning papers, sir,” said a familiar, well-modulated English voice.
Mortimer looked up to greet his manservant—and best friend. Roderick had been with him since 1945—a dispirited Brit tooling across Africa with a rich American once the Desert Fox had been defeated. He’d saved Mortimer’s life on one occasion and, as incongruous as it seemed, had helped him raise his grandsons.
Roderick had taught the boys how to live responsibly. Mortimer had taught them how to live.
“Anything of interest?” Mortimer asked.
“Not particularly.” Unruffled as always, Roderick, his dark, slicked-back hair now as gray as Mortimer’s was white, spread the papers on the small café-style table on the penthouse patio. Then the butler-cum-mechanic-cum-partner-in-crime-on-occasion stepped back and cleared his throat.
“What is it?”
“I believe the boy might be headed for a storm, sir.”
“Goodness, Roderick, how many times have I told you to call me Mortimer?” he asked. Then he focused on the man’s words. “The boy?”
Roderick merely sighed. “With a woman.”
Ah, Maxwell. A smile tugged at his mouth, even as Mortimer began to shake his head in feigned disapproval.
Mortimer did not play favorites with his grandchildren. But the rascally middle Taylor son, Max, was so much like him that he’d never been able to help being amused by his antics. Max was a rogue. A rapscallion, though a goodhearted one. At least, he had been. Before life had slapped him with a faithless wife.
Mortimer had had a few of those…wives, that is. Only one he’d wanted to keep. None, however, had sent him into the tailspin his grandson’s had. She had apparently destroyed Max’s faith in love. He seemed completely uninterested in trying marriage again…as were his two brothers, who’d never tried at all.
“What type of storm?” It probably didn’t speak well of him that he had a quick hope that his grandson had gotten a young lady in trouble. He would rather enjoy a great-grandchild.
“I fear he may be flying toward some rough publicity.”
Bad headlines. Bah. “Maxwell can handle rough publicity.”
Too bad. The idea of having to help his grandson with something scandalous was more appealing than sitting here in the city waiting to die. And a wrong-side-of-the-blanket infant sounded much more exciting than a media scandal.
Lifting the London paper, he idly began to flip the pages, finding nothing of interest. Until…“Did you see this?” he asked. “Property For Sale—A Pennsylvania Township.”
“A township, sir?”
Mortimer read on, barely hearing the other man. With each word, a surge of excitement built in his veins. Soon he was sitting straight in his chair, rereading, thinking, planning.
“I recognize that expression. You’re going to do something outrageous,” Roderick said, a note of resignation in his voice. “And I’m going to be dragged along, forced to break you out of some prison or find a bottle of your favorite Courvoisier XO Imperial cognac in a remote store that carries little more than six-packs of—” he shuddered “—Schlitz Malt Liquor.”
Ignoring him, Mortimer said, “This town is looking for a sheikh, a prince or a duke to save them from bankruptcy.”
“Is that possible? A town being sold?”
“It happens. Some actor bought a town last year, I think.” Mortimer read on. “Being offered in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is the town of Trouble, Pennsylvania, established 1821.”
A dry chuckle told him what Roderick thought of the name of the place. Most people would probably be put off by it. Mortimer, however, had never been one to retreat, had never liked to ride out of the way to avoid trouble. “This might be just what I need,” he murmured. “They did say they wanted a sheikh.”
He peered out of the corner of his eye, watching for any sign of skepticism from his butler, as he occasionally saw on the faces of others when the subject of some of Mortimer’s adventures arose. There was none, of course. Roderick knew full well that Mortimer had been granted an honorary sheikhdom from the head of a Bedouin tribe after the winter of forty-eight.
“I wonder about the condition of the place, if it’s bankrupt,” Roderick said, reading over his shoulder. “A few buildings, roads and parks for that amount? I should think you’d be able to purchase an entire colony for such a sum.”
“They’re states,” Mortimer said. “Remember that tea party and several years of revolution?”
Roderick lifted a disdainful brow.
Still, the man was correct. The amount named in the ad was not a paltry one. “Well, see here, there is more for the price.” He pointed. “Beyond the courthouse, town hall and fire station, some formerly private buildings are also included.”
“Oh, goody,” Roderick said, his voice as dry as the sawdust-flavored English biscuits he so enjoyed.
Mortimer’s enthusiasm was not dampened as he finished reading the advertisement. “These include a movie theater, photo hut, school, barber shop, a big, furnished house, a gas station, two restaurants—one with working ice-cube maker—and a factory formerly occupied by Stuttgardt Cuckoo Clock Company.”
Roderick sniffed. “How very appropriate.”
“All government buildings are currently in use, all others are closed after bank foreclosure. Also included is the bank.”
Well, that cinched it, didn’t it? His family had been in banking for a hundred years. It was how the Potts family had made their fortune. Which had provided Mortimer with a comfortable inheritance that he’d parlayed into millions through prudent investing and a bit of international intrigue.
Destiny. He was a sheikh. He had the money. He loved trouble. And he would, most assuredly, love Trouble.
“About the boy…”
Mortimer set the paper down. “Is it serious?”
“It may be. He will likely need to do some reevaluating.”
There wasn’t anything Mortimer Potts wouldn’t do for his grandsons. And it suddenly occurred to him that the purchase of his own little Pennsylvania town could help in that respect, too. “You are aware that if I proceed with this, my grandsons are certain to come try to rescue me from my folly.”
Roderick nodded ever so slightly.
“Morgan is preparing to fly off on some assignment for Time magazine. And Michael is doing something quite mysterious, which he referred to as ‘deep undercover’ work.”
That left Max. The rascal. Who would, without doubt, come to Trouble determined to save his grandfather.
Instead, Mortimer hoped, Max would be saving himself.
CHAPTER ONE
PILOTING A TWIN-ENGINE Cessna Citation CJ2+ out of Long Beach Airport in California, Max Taylor was prepared for a lot of things. Bad weather, low visibility, turbulence. He’d dealt with the wind shear off a low-flying commercial airliner. Equipment failure. Hell, even the odd seagull going splat on the windshield or getting sucked up into an engine.
But not this. Not a scene straight out of a bad porn movie. Nothing in his wildest dreams—or darkest nightmares—could have prepared him for a seventy-year-old passenger bursting into his cockpit. Naked. Completely, shockingly naked. “Wha—”
“Mr. Taylor, induct me into the mile-high club!” the gray-haired woman exclaimed, her arms wide, emphasizing the, uh, length of her bustline.
Max’s first thought was to dive back below five thousand feet so they wouldn’t be a mile up. His second was to think that all her millions hadn’t managed to make Mrs. Rudolph Coltrane look as young from the neck down as it had managed to deal with her tightly Botoxed face. And his third was to realize that he was being attacked in his own plane. By a woman old enough to be his grandmother.
“Mrs. Coltrane, what do you think you’re doing?” he asked, somehow managing to keep his voice steady, his hands on the controls and his gaze straight ahead. Not that it was going to do much good—he’d already gotten an eyeful.
Still in shock, Max suspected he was going to have nightmares tonight. Nightmares about the unattractiveness of breast implants going south, and sags that couldn’t be lifted by a crane, much less the best plastic surgeon in L.A.
“I was going to wait until we were higher up, but I can’t,” the woman said. “I’ve waited too long as it is. I know you’re used to a slightly younger woman…”
Decades.
“…but we’re alone now and I’m willing and a man with your…appetites probably can’t go for long without giving in to his carnal urges.”
Currently, Max’s only urge was to jump out of the plane.
“I’ve paid good money for this trip, and I fully expect you to be my in-flight entertainment.”
“That’s what the DVD player is for,” he whispered, shaking his head in bewilderment.
This couldn’t be happening. Not along with all the other weird crap he’d been experiencing lately. A constant stream of women had been driving him nuts for weeks, almost sending him into hiding. He seemed to be the latest fad among the “ladies who lunch” of southern California.
Max had always enjoyed relationships with his fair share of females. Probably the next guy’s fair share, too. He certainly wasn’t going to apologize for liking women.
And he did. Oh, he really did. He liked how they smelled and how they looked. Liked the tender bit of skin at the nape of a lovely neck and the feel of soft hair against his bare chest. Liked tangled sheets, steamy nights and slow, deep kisses.
Careful not to get snagged in any commitment nets—not after his one disastrous experience with marriage and the major screw-up he’d made of his life following his divorce—he only got involved with women who were looking for the same things he was. Intelligent conversation, a few nice meals and, occasionally, scream-like-a-banshee sex. No strings.
Which meant, he supposed, that the strange abundance of propositions coming his way the past few weeks should have been a good thing.
It wasn’t.
Because Max had become much more careful and circumspect about his sex life in recent years. Besides, he had always been the pursuer, not the pursued. He liked flirtation and seduction. A shared glance and the not-completely-innocent brush of a hand against a soft female arm. Charming his way into the good graces of even the most cool and unattainable ice queen gave him a great deal of satisfaction, whether sex was involved or not.
Lately, though, he’d been like a lame zebra being stalked by a pride of hungry lionesses.
