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  Contents

  Collide & Burn

  Books by Claudy Conn

  Copyright Page

  ~ Prelude ~

  ~ One ~

  ~ Two ~

  ~ Three ~

  ~ Four ~

  ~ Five ~

  ~ Six ~

  ~ Seven ~

  ~ Eight ~

  ~ Nine ~

  ~ Ten ~

  ~ Eleven ~

  ~ Twelve ~

  ~ Thirteen ~

  ~ Fourteen ~

  ~ Epilogue ~

  Journey

  ~ One ~

  Courting Kit

  ~ One ~

  About Claudy Conn

  Read more about Claudy Conn’s books

  Collide & Burn

  Books by Claudy Conn

  Legend Series

  Spellbound—Legend

  Shee Willow—Legend

  Prince in the Mist (Novella)

  Prince Prelude—Legend

  Aaibhe—Shee Queen (Novelette)

  Trapped—Legend

  Free Falling—Legend

  Catch & Hold—Legend

  ~

  Through Time Series

  Through Time—Pursuit

  Through Time—Whiplash

  Through Time—Slamming

  Through Time—Frankie

  Through Time—Compulsion

  ~

  Awakening Series

  Harley—Awakening (Novella)

  Awakening—Bray

  ~

  Shadow Series

  ShadowLove—Stalkers

  ShadowHeart—Slayer

  ShadowLife—Hybrid

  ~

  Hungry Moon Series

  Hungry Moon: Quicksilver

  Hungry Moon: Destiny

  Hungry Moon: Jodi

  ~

  Witches, Warlocks, and Dark Magic

  Dark Love

  Netherby Halls

  Lady X

  Journey

  Journey: The Reckoning

  ~

  Risqué Regencies

  Myriah Fire

  Oh, Cherry Ripe

  Rogues, Rakes & Jewels

  Taffeta and Hotspur

  Wildfire Kiss

  After the Storm

  Runaway Heart

  Lady Bess

  Lady Star

  Serena

  Mandy

  Disorderly Lady

  Madcap Miss

  Courting Kit

  ~

  Multi-book Bundles

  The Complete Legend Series

  Through Time Series Box Set

  Claudy Conn’s Bestselling Regencies

  Collide & Burn

  By

  Claudy Conn

  Copyright Page

  Collide & Burn

  By Claudy Conn

  http://www.claudyconn.com

  Copyright © 2015 by Claudy Conn

  Edited by: Karen Babcock

  Artist: Dawn Sullivan

  All rights reserved

  December 2015

  This novella first appeared in Mischief Under the Mistletoe: Holiday Hotties Just Waiting To Be Unwrapped,

  published October 2015

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Names, characters, and events depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Excerpt of Journey

  Copyright © 2014 by Claudy Conn

  Excerpt of Courting Kit

  Copyright © 2015 by Claudy Conn

  ~ Prelude ~

  Wade Devon

  I’M A MAN WHO deals in reality—the reality of making big money and all the practicalities involved with that. I have a PhD in finance and have used that to my advantage; I am only twenty-eight years old, and yesterday my accountant advised me my net worth is over two billion dollars.

  Things were going as I planned, and then out of nowhere …

  The word collision comes to mind when I think of that day—the first time I saw her.

  From that moment on, I was on a collision course with myself.

  I am a man who has always been in control. I like being in control. It’s how I got this far, and it’s how I handle everything life throws at me. I suck it up, repair what can be fixed, cut away what can’t be fixed, and then move on to the next project.

  My life is now spinning out of the mold I created, and I have no one to blame but myself.

  I stand here, look back, and ask myself, How? Oh, I know damn well how—it is because the one thing that can’t be controlled, the one thing you think you have shut off from the world, has a mind of its own. That one thing is the heart, and someone very wise recently told me the heart wants what the heart wants. I’m about to learn if I can live my life without attaining what my heart wants. Christmas is nearly here … the breaking point that takes me back to the beginning.

  The beginning?

  A warm day in early fall. The leaves had just begun to change. I was meeting with my real estate agent to look at three farms on Long Island, as I wanted a retreat, a plaything, away from my daily grind in New York City.

  What turned my head was the sound of her laughter, and something happened to me when I saw her face. It was like an explosion went off in my head. My ears popped, my sight clouded, and when it cleared all I could see, all I could hear, was her.

  I don’t do relationships. I tried that early on in college. Relationships don’t work for me. I don’t have the time, and I don’t want to have the time. Relationships take time and make trouble I don’t need.

  Besides that, I have trust issues.

  Maybe it’s because my parents split when I was a kid. Maybe. Maybe it’s because my mom cheated on my dad and then turned into a drunk. Maybe. Maybe it’s because my dad found another family to love and forgot the one he already had. Maybe.

  I don’t do long-term. I like being single and free. It’s uncomplicated.

  In business, the more challenging a deal, the more exciting, but when it comes to my personal life, I want it simple. So I look for easy.

  Marriage is a word that makes me want to run.

  It’s not because I don’t like women. Women are beautiful, mysterious, and delightful people, and I enjoy the chase, but when that initial spark dies, I know it is time to walk away. No one has ever inspired me to want more than that initial spark—a one-night, maybe two-night stand. I don’t want more than that.

  I enjoy making money and put all my energies into doing just that.

  I like what I do, and I’m good at it.

  As a wealthy bachelor I’m in the news. The other day I saw a shot of me on some rag magazine that called me one of the most eligible bachelors on the planet. Unless it affects a business deal, I don’t give a crap about what the papers write about me. No time to waste on that, but it does attract the wrong kind of women to me. They want what I am, not who I am, which has always confirmed my belief in my ‘no relationship’ rule.

  I don’t come from humble beginnings. My dad was what they call ‘old money’, and then he made additional new money. He owns hotels.

  Yeah, and he’s always been on the go. I suppose that’s what
made Mom what she is. I love her, but I don’t really like her.

  Yeah, well, I know some people assume that, as the son of Thurston Devon, I was given a widget factory for my twentieth birthday or that my father used his influence to make sure my business won lucrative contracts. Hardly. In fact, good old Dad’s only contribution, the initial seed money for my first venture, was actually a loan at high interest. I think he wanted me to fail so I’d be forced to work in his hotel business. If so, he was disappointed: I paid him off ahead of schedule.

  I always wanted to do something different, and his loan allowed me to go off on my own. I was able to sell an idea that paid off, and then I took the rest of my ideas and grew my little company, Devon Industries, Inc., into something not so little. Now, it seems, all we do is make money. I may have to go public, though I’m not really liking the idea, yet.

  What I do is, I think, unique. I walk in, see what’s wrong with a company, and if I think I can turn it around, I make them a fair offer. If my offer is refused, and I want the company badly enough, I do what it legally takes to acquire the firm.

  I balance that hard-nosed trait by making certain I don’t let any of the employees get laid off. I find ways, innovative ways, to ensure they can be productive. If someone gets fired from a company I own, it is because of poor performance, nothing else.

  The last year, however, I’ve found myself needing something more. So I put an idea into motion. I needed an outlet, and I determined almost immediately what I wanted it to be. I love horses, and riding in Central Park wasn’t doing it for me anymore. So I decided to head on out to the Island and asked a realtor I’d worked with before to put together a list of properties I might be interested in.

  He’d found three horse farms for sale in the area I’d specified.

  Yeah, I had made up my mind to purchase a horse farm, renovate it to my standards, make it a success, and keep it as long as it amused me.

  That was why I was there, in Syosset, away from the city.

  We had just stepped out of his office, and he was describing the first horse farm he wanted to show me, when a sound caught my attention. The sound of a woman’s laughter tickled my senses and put them on the alert. I turned.

  Her laugh had already intrigued me because it was delicious. Her laugh was infectious and made me smile as I took a visual tour of her body. That brought my dick to life.

  Her red hair was long and blew in the breeze … thick and shiny. She reached up with delicate fingers and swept it away from her face.

  That face—absolutely stunning, but more than that caught me. There was a simplicity about her features that drew me at once. No make-up, and yet her features were vibrant. Her dark brows, her full lips … damn, but she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

  I couldn’t do anything but stare at her.

  Directly across the street, leaving a coffee shop with friends at her back, she turned and laughed again at something they’d said.

  Her laugh came crashing into me like a beat of music you need to dance to, need to dance so much your feet move on their own.

  Her laugh riveted me in place. I shook myself as though trying to wake up from a long, hard sleep. I have been with a great many beautiful women, but this one affected my senses immediately, differently, and I was captivated by the newness of the sensation she aroused in me.

  Let me be clear: I am a player. As wicked as it sounds, as bad as I know it is to have that attitude, it is what it is. I am a ‘find ’em, fuck ’em, and forget ’em’ player.

  I mitigate the ugliness of that by being honest with any woman I pursue. I am always up front about what I am, what I will and won’t do.

  Though my realtor was talking on and on, I didn’t really hear a word he said, and that isn’t like me. I am always focused on whatever I set myself to do. He was trying to present me with the facts, taxes on the properties, how many stalls—things that should have held my interest. But I couldn’t look away from her.

  She simply took my breath away, and that hadn’t happened in a very long time. I am used to bedding models dressed in high fashion. This redhead was perfection in a jean jacket over a blue sweater, jeans, and boots. She had a way of swaying as she spoke with her friends that had me charmed and caused a throbbing vibration of need in my dick. For a moment I thought my cock was pointing at her like a water diviner.

  She smiled at her friends as she got behind the wheel of an old green jeep and pulled away from the curbing.

  I liked her smile. It appeared freely given, open, with nothing to hide.

  Too many women have tried to hide too many things from me.

  I wanted to taste her, right then, and as I said, I am used to getting what I want.

  On the door of her jeep, emblazoned in gold, was the silhouette of a running horse and the name Norcross Stables.

  “Didn’t you say Norcross Stables is one of the farms we’re going to visit?” I asked my agent.

  “Yes, but it’s the smallest of the three farms I have to show you,” he said, frowning. “I thought we’d leave it for last.”

  “No, we’ll go there first,” I told him.

  And that was how it all started …

  ~ One ~

  Charlene (Charlie) Wells

  “LATER, DEE,” I TOLD my best friend and put down the phone.

  Deidre is a gadabout, and I so am not. As usual she wanted to party, but I’d had a long day toting my paintings from gallery to gallery, and I just wanted to plop in front of the TV and veg out.

  So I begged off, and after much bickering back ’n’ forth and her making me promise to ‘party’ Friday night, I escaped, sorta.

  Because after shutting off my phone I turned and stared at all the stacks of boxes surrounding me. I had been living in box hell for the past month. Pack ’em up, label the boxes, and then turn around and unpack ’em. Sad to think this place I loved and that had belonged to my family all my twenty-one years was no longer ours—mine. Now, I was a tenant, and there was no guarantee I would continue to be one after next spring. I had never even seen the new owner. The one time he had come to look at our place, I’d been out with friends.

  Everything had happened too quickly for me to really assimilate it. I turned away from the boxes, and stared at the tall mirror propped up against them. My red hair was a windy mess around my face. My serviceable old sweater had hay sticking out of it everywhere. The really good part—my part—of this mad bargain is I get the apartment in exchange for very little other than pitching in if the employees need an extra hand and keeping Mr. Devon informed. I moved onto the deck overlooking the many large paddocks with the horses all grazing contentedly on their rolls of hay. It was October, and grass now was scarce, but some of the horses were still looking for that one delicious blade.

  A chill swept through me, and I stepped back inside.

  This horse farm in the middle of ‘high-end’ Muttontown was where I had grown up. It was a twenty-four/seven job, and my parents woke up one morning and told me enough was enough; it was time for a change. I had graduated from Post University and had even made some money with my paintings, and they needed early retirement. Apparently our farm, because it was ten acres in prime location, would fetch them over a million bucks. I agreed; it was time.

  They put it up for sale a few months ago, but until last month no one had even stopped by to look. Out of nowhere, the real estate agent called my dad and told him someone had put down a binder for the farm at full price. No haggling, no waiting, and the buyer agreed to the stipulation that I be allowed to either rent the apartment over the barn for a minimal fee or in exchange for very little time in at the stables. In addition to the apartment, I had a small barn with a nice paddock—behind what used to be our house at the end of the drive—to house my quarter horse Sassy and her goat. For the next six months I got a sorta free pass.

  Mr. Devon had struck what I thought was a really fair deal with my parents. All that was required of me was to oversee the s
mooth running of the stables while reconstruction and renovation went on and to be available for meetings with him at some point, to help him get a ‘feel’ for the place.

  As I was the proverbial ‘struggling artist’, that was too good a deal for me to pass up. A few of my paintings had been well received, and I’d even started to make ‘real money’, but it wasn’t enough to live on, and it certainly wasn’t a regular income. So, yeah, this deal fit right into my plans.

  To this point, I had not yet met the mysterious Mr. Devon.

  It all happened all so fast.

  One minute it was September and then, whoosh, my parents were gone and October was here. They didn’t take much with them, and off they went to live in a condo at Cocoa Beach, Florida.

  I was thrilled for them. They had run our horse farm on a small profit margin that required them to work twenty-four/seven most of the time. It had been a long, good run, and now they wanted to play.

  Mr. Devon wanted to make the farm into a thriving business. Apparently it was no more than a ‘new toy’ for Devon, according to the real estate agent. He also told me that Mr. Devon would be arriving shortly to take up residence in what had (until a month ago) been my home. It had been a little heart—not breaking, but straining—to watch everything change. I don’t really like change. I am a nester. I get comfortable and would rather keep an old, beat-up couch than buy a new one and try to get used to it.

  I shrugged into my jacket and went downstairs, took some grain in a bucket, and walked down the driveway to Sassy’s paddock. Sassy was nibbling at the rich green hay in her hay roll. Mr. Goat was grazing and ignoring all else, but she picked up her head, grunted in greeting, and trotted over. Mr. Goat, who got that name when I was twelve, looked up casually before returning to munching on weeds and grass.

  I poured the grain into Sassy’s feed bucket attached to the post and climbed over the weathered rail to give her neck a stroke and pat while she chowed down.

  “Boy, I haven’t ridden you in days. I promise, I’ll find some time tomorrow, and we’ll both have a run.”