Claimed by Love
Love in Bloom: The Ryders
By New York Times & USA Today bestseller
Melissa Foster
Family law attorney
Gabriella Liakos has one true love, Elpitha Island, where she grew up and hopes
someday to return. But Elpitha is in financial ruins, and Gabriella will do
anything to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.
Duke Ryder is a
savvy real estate investor set on making Elpitha into an exclusive resort.
Unlike other investors, he's not scared of purchasing a property where one
family has roots so deep they practically reach the ocean floor...until he
meets his beautiful, stubborn, and enticing tour host―the daughter of the owner
of most of the island.
Gabriella sets out
to dissuade Duke from purchasing Elpitha, but Duke has other ideas. He wants
Gabriella and the island. Duke's powerful seduction draws Gabriella in, but can
a savvy investor who's used to glamour and glitz, and a woman interested in preserving
the culture she adores find a happily ever after together?
The RYDERS are the
newest addition to the Love in Bloom series. Characters from each series appear
in future books. Each book may be read as a standalone novel, or as part of the
series.
Chapter One
DUKE RYDER BALANCED
his cell phone against his shoulder, listening to his buddy and investment
partner Pierce Braden talk about their newest potential investment property as
he followed the rickety wooden dock onto the white sandy beach.
“The dock just
might be the most stable thing on Elpitha Island,” Pierce said. “Try to soak in
a little sand and sun while you’re there. That’s the best part of the island.”
Duke’s eyes were
immediately drawn to the sprawling oak trees he’d read about, standing sentinel
over the forested acreage beyond. Long, thick branches spread like languid arms
draped in moss, reaching for…what? One glance told him that there wasn’t much
to reach for, save for a building that looked more like a forgotten
Mediterranean villa than the welcome center of the small Southern island. The
stone and wood building had a deep porch that spanned the entire length of the
left side with stone pillars. A wooden trellis laced with the most captivating
flowering vines shaded the area. Although the structure itself was in need of
repair, it was surrounded by perfectly manicured, ornate gardens, which
contrasted sharply with overgrown and unkempt bushes littering the far edges of
the property.
“The proximity to
the mainland isn’t bad,” Duke said to Pierce. He set his suitcase on the sand
and looked back at the Atlantic. “It only took an hour fifteen to get here.”
Elpitha was the smallest of the vacation islands off of South Carolina, and
more than half of the land had been owned by the Liakos family for centuries.
It was just over eight square miles, and not many investors wanted such a small
tract of land, or to deal with families that were as entrenched as the Liakos
family was thought to be. Some families might sell out, but they would fight tooth
and nail against change, which could cause discourse on an island this small.
Duke and Pierce weren’t deterred. The restrictive size of the property would
only increase the value, making it an exclusive vacation spot for the
elite.
“With Hilton Head and
the other islands so overrun,” Pierce said, “Elpitha is ripe for development.
Although we’ll have to work around that name. Who wants to go to an island
called Elpitha? It sounds more like a disease than an island.”
Duke squinted up at
the blazing sun and loosened his tie. “I don’t know. I kind of like it.” He
noticed a plantation-style home tucked behind the trees in the distance. “They
weren’t kidding about the strange mix of Mediterranean and Southern feel of the
place. This should be interesting.” Duke knew some of the island’s history, and
though he still didn’t understand why Greeks would immigrate to the South and
try to re-create their country’s feel, it didn’t much matter. If he and Pierce
decided to purchase the land, they would bulldoze every structure and give the
island a complete Southern overhaul, making it the most desirable resort area
in the South.
“Chuck called
earlier and said Liakos’s granddaughter Gabriella is an attorney,” Pierce
explained. “He thinks they might bring her in on things. Apparently their
family keeps things tight. So if you meet her, play nice.”
The hollow clank of
a screen door hitting its frame drew Duke’s attention. A woman stood on the
porch of the old building, shading her eyes from the sun as she looked out at
the water. Her long dark hair hung halfway down her back. Duke was too far away
to see her features, but there was no missing her curvaceous ass and full
breasts, not to mention legs that seemed to go on forever beneath her short
summery dress. Duke watched with interest as he listened to Pierce relay the
most recent information from the attorneys and engineers.
The woman glanced
at her watch, then settled her hand on her hip. A voice rang out from inside
the building, and the pretty woman hurried back inside.
“I just found proof
of life,” he said to Pierce as he stepped onto the sandy path. “I’ll call you
once I’ve done some recon.”
His black leather
shoes quickly lost their shine from the dusty road as he approached the
building. Voices filtered out the open windows as he mounted the steps. He
glanced through the screen door, spotting the brunette he’d just seen. She was
facing away from him, speaking heatedly in Greek, hands flailing as her
exasperated voice pitched higher.
A thick-waisted man
with salt-and-pepper hair sat at a table near the counter, amusement shining in
his dark eyes as the brunette ranted to an older woman, and then the man said
something Duke couldn’t hear.
“Ugh! Baba!” The
younger woman threw her hands up in the air and flew out the screen door,
nearly smacking Duke in the face.
He stumbled
backward, giving the angry woman a wide breadth as she paced the front porch.
She mumbled something in Greek and then crossed her arms, raised her shoulders,
and dropped them quickly with a loud harrumph. Duke couldn’t help but drink in
the flush on her smooth, sun-kissed cheeks. Her nose was small and straight,
and her almond-shaped, dark—and currently angry—eyes were shadowed by lashes so
long they brushed her cheeks.
Having grown up
with a younger sister, Duke bided his time in announcing his presence, not
wanting to take the brunt of her reaction to whatever the man had said to upset
her.
She inhaled a deep
breath, her breasts rising and pressing against the sheer fabric, then falling
as she exhaled loudly. Her shoulders lowered, and the tightness around her
mouth softened. She turned a full-lipped, mind-numbing smile to Duke, as if she
hadn’t just come out in a firestorm.
“My father believes
that no matter what he says, I hear something else.” She tilted her head to the
side in a thoughtful pose, and in the space of a second her eyes filled with
rebellion, making her even sexier. “Hearing and agreeing are two different
things.”
Duke wondered what
her father had just said that got her panties in a bunch. Christ. Now he was
thinking about her panties.
“I’m Gabriella
Liakos. Welcome to Elpitha Island.”
The granddaughter?
Playing nice would not be a problem with this feisty beauty. Duke shook her
hand, holding it a beat longer than he probably should, still mesmerized by the
whirlwind of energy radiating from her. “Duke Ryder. It’s nice to meet you. I
didn’t mean to intrude.”
“No one intrudes on
Elpitha,” she said sweetly.
Duke shifted his
eyes to the screen door, and she laughed softly. It was the rare type of laugh
that floated like the wind and wasn’t easily forgotten.
“We’re Greek,” she
said with a shrug, as if that explained it all.
He arched a brow.
“When you combine a
Greek father and a Southern mother, who learned all the best Greek ways, that’s
what you get. Food, yelling, guilt, more food. Sweet love. Crazy love. More
food. That’s who we are.” She dragged her gorgeous eyes down his suit to his shoes
and put one hand on her hip as she had earlier, tapping her lips with the
other.
Duke wouldn’t mind
getting his mouth on those succulent lips for some crazy love.
“You’re the
investor, checking out our island so you can line your pockets, right?”
He couldn’t tell if
the look in her eyes was teasing or serious, but her sharp tongue piqued his
interest even more. Duke respected confidence, and even though it wasn’t the
greeting he’d hoped for, he liked knowing that Gabriella wasn’t a
pushover.
“Something like
that,” he answered casually.
As a real estate
investor, Duke knew his clients were vulnerable and, more often than not,
taking a deal they didn’t really care for because, by the time he swooped in to
save the day, they had gotten a strong dose of what failure tasted like. A hard
pill to swallow. Which was why Duke didn’t flinch as Gabriella measured
everything about him, from his appearance to his answers. While other investors
were cold as sharks, Duke had never quite mastered making ice flow through his
veins. But he always got the job done.
Her eyes flicked
toward the water, where another boat was nearing the dock. Her smiled turned
genuine at the sight of a handful of children waving from the boat. She waved
both arms over her head and yelled something in Greek, then settled her hands
on her hips as she watched the children file from the boat.
“It was nice to
meet you, Gabriella,” Duke said, hoping he’d see her later. The island had a
population of just over two hundred and fifty people, so he imagined it would
be hard not to see the same people throughout his stay. “I’ll just step inside
and see about my room and a tour.”
“Lucky you,” she
said, turning a steady gaze back to him, “I’m your tour host.” She didn’t wait
for him to reply as she opened the screen door and hollered something in Greek
to the people inside. Over her shoulder, she said to Duke, “Give me a sec to
get your keys and the cart, and I’ll show you around and drop you at your
place.”
It took a moment
for him to remember that they drove golf carts or used bicycles on the island
and that cars were prohibited.
She hurried inside
and headed directly to her Baba, which Duke now knew meant he was her father,
and said something that made the man laugh. She leaned in to kiss and hug her
father, and her dress crept up, exposing the backs of her thighs and hugging
her ass. He tried to ignore the stroke of awareness racing through him. She
walked around the counter and grabbed a set of keys from a hook, then draped an
arm around the shoulders of the woman with whom she was speaking earlier.
“Mama,” Gabriella
said to the woman. Her mother’s hair was a shade lighter than hers. “Talk some
sense into him, will you, please?” She whispered something, then kissed her,
too.
The woman wiped her
hands on an apron and smiled at Duke, catching him observing them. “Welcome to
our island, Mr. Ryder. I’m Peggy Ann, and this is my husband, Niko.”
Her warm Southern
drawl took Duke by surprise after hearing her speak fluent Greek, and he
realized it shouldn’t have. They were in the South, after all.
He stepped inside.
“It’s a pleasure to be here, and to meet you both.”
Gabriella’s father
nodded. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Ryder.”
“I’ll meet you out
front,” Gabriella said as she grabbed a large basket from the counter, then
disappeared through a door in the back of the room.
As he stepped onto
the porch, Duke had a feeling Pierce was wrong about the sand and sun being the
best part of the island. Those things had nothing on the intriguing woman who’d
just slipped out the back door.
Seized by Love
August 17, 2016
Chased by Love
Melissa Foster is a
New York Times & USA Today bestselling and award-winning author. She
writes contemporary romance, new adult, contemporary women’s fiction, suspense,
and historical fiction with emotionally compelling characters that stay with
you long after you turn the last page. Her books have been recommended by USA
Today’s book blog, Hagerstown Magazine, The Patriot, and several other print
venues. She is the founder of the World Literary Café and Fostering Success.
When she’s not writing, Melissa helps authors navigate the publishing industry
through her author training programs on Fostering Success. Melissa has been
published in Calgary’s Child Magazine, the Huffington Post, and Women Business
Owners magazine. Melissa hosts an Aspiring Authors contest for children and has
painted and donated several murals to The Hospital for Sick Children in
Washington, DC. Melissa lives in Maryland with her family. Visit Melissa on
social media. Melissa enjoys discussing her books with book clubs and reader
groups, and welcomes an invitation to your event.
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