Against All Odds

Against All Odds
Gwynne Forster

Struggling to keep her corporate-recruiting firm afloat, Manhattan executive Melissa Grant has no time for love. Then Adam Roundtree walks into her life. But the charismatic businessman is no ordinary client. He's the man who can bring Melissa's career–and her heart–to life…until a shocking discovery jeopardizes their blossoming relationship.For Melissa and Adam, fate couldn't have played a crueler trick: their families have been embroiled in a stormy feud for generations, turning former business partners into lifelong enemies and leaving a bitter legacy that casts a long shadow. Then someone starts sabotaging Adam's work, and everything points to Melissa. Now they could lose everything…unless their love is strong enough to close the door on the past and open their hearts to the promise of the future.

The past could destroy their love...

Struggling to keep her corporate-recruiting firm afloat, Manhattan executive Melissa Grant has no time for love. Then Adam Roundtree walks into her life. But the charismatic businessman is no ordinary client. He’s the man who can bring Melissa’s career—and her heart—to life...until a shocking discovery jeopardizes their blossoming relationship.

Or fuel an unquenchable passion

For Melissa and Adam, fate couldn’t have played a crueler trick: their families have been embroiled in a stormy feud for generations, turning former business partners into lifelong enemies and leaving a bitter legacy that casts a long shadow. Then someone starts sabotaging Adam’s work, and everything points to Melissa. Now they could lose everything...unless their love is strong enough to close the door on the past and open their hearts to the promise of the future.

Against All Odds

Gwynne Forster

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Dear Reader,

Thank you for purchasing and reading Against All Odds. I hope you have enjoyed your peep into the lives of Melissa Grant, Adam Roundtree and their complicated families. When I began this story, I had no idea that I would be writing a modern version of the Hatfields and the McCoys, historical families with a well-documented hatred for each other. Fight it though they do, love and passion grip Melissa and Adam in a steel vise, and they cannot escape it. Once they taste its fruit, they don’t want to escape.

Adam is a strong man, kind and loving, but arrow straight and demanding. In times past, the strong, harsh and hard alpha male was considered the ideal hero, a man the heroine had to tame. But my taste is for the strong, capable and dependable man who has human frailties but overcomes them; who can hurt to the depths of his soul and still stand strong for himself, his woman and his family. In my view, Adam is such a man. I hope you will agree with me. You meet him again in many of the Harrington novels, because he is a close friend of Telford Harrington and his brothers, Russ and Drake. I hope you will read the Harrington series.

Kimani Press has reissued the first three Harrington books: Once in a Lifetime, After the Loving and Love Me or Leave Me and several others of my bestselling titles: Sealed with a Kiss, Beyond Desire, Secret Desire, Obsession, Swept Away, Fools Rush In and Scarlet Woman. If you can’t find them, drop me an email and I’ll try to help.

I enjoy receiving mail, and I try to answer within a reasonable time. You may write me at P.O. Box 45, New York, NY 10044.If you would like an answer, please enclose a self-addressed and stamped legal-size envelope. You may email me at GwynneF@aol.com. If you would like to join my book club, visit GwynneForsterBookClubOfFansAndReaders@YahooGroups.com.

Fond regards,

Gwynne Forster

Acknowledgments

To my beloved stepson, Peter Forster Acsadi, whose attentiveness, encouragement and support mean so much to me; to my husband, whose love, devotion and helpfulness sustain me; and in memory of my dear friend Lily.

Contents

Chapter 1 (#ue24d4b2e-fa22-524b-832d-4f12790c0a1b)

Chapter 2 (#u7a2c0ca0-b450-55a2-bc40-9f7b0a61cca1)

Chapter 3 (#u8ffe4b0f-87f2-57da-8038-1178a6bd0639)

Chapter 4 (#uab8cd292-3920-5d2d-9490-775fd0c456c3)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1

Melissa Grant hung up the phone. Anxious. Her graceful brown fingers strummed her desk. She’d had to expand her business in order to stay ahead of her competition, but months would pass before she got the results that she anticipated. Until then her financial status would be precarious at best. Her banker knew that and—because her first loan hadn’t been fully paid—had denied her request for a second one. Now she stood a good chance of losing her business. She knew when she came to New York that she could expect tough competition, but she had worked hard and established one of the top executive search firms, and she’d done it in less than five years. She had taken stock of her resources and decided that she had three alternatives, all of them unattractive. She could put her personal funds into her MTG Executive Search firm—something she’d been taught in business school never to do; she could borrow the money from her father; or she could take the lucrative Hayes/Roundtree account. Bankruptcy was preferable to discussing a loan with her father, Rafer Grant, and only trouble could come from any kind of involvement with a Roundtree. Adam Roundtree’s executive assistant, Jason Court, had called her with a request that she find a manager for “Leather and Hides,” the division of Hayes/Roundtree Enterprises, Inc., that tanned leather and made leather goods. She noticed the light on her phone.

“MTG.” She leaned back in her desk chair, twirling a slingshot that she won in a charity raffle. “Hello, Mr. Court. I’m not sure I’m the person you want for this job. I don’t know a thing about leather.”

“In other words, you don’t want the contract,” he said as though surprised. “Adam wants MTG. He thinks your firm is the best, and Adam is used to having the best. Think it over. I can raise the fee by twenty percent, but no more.”

* * *

Melissa hung up and buzzed her secretary for the Roundtree file.

“Here you are.” Kelly put the folder on Melissa’s desk. “I thought you said you wouldn’t take that job for all the bullion in Fort Knox.”

“That was yesterday. The bank just refused my request for a loan.” She scanned the few pages. “This must be a mistake.” She checked the figure on the last page. “He’s offering more money than I ever dreamed of asking for a search. I can find a manager who’ll suit him—I don’t doubt that, but the consequences could be...explosive. Probably hell to pay.”

Kelly frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“Someday when we have a few hours to throw away, I’ll tell you about it.” Melissa weighed the pros and cons. If she took the contract, she would no longer have a financial problem and, when she listed a firm on the New York Stock Exchange as one of her clients, her ability to attract fat accounts would be guaranteed. She looked over the papers, corrected the fee, initialed it, and signed the contract without giving herself a chance to change her mind. Her signature was unreadable, and she didn’t doubt that Adam Roundtree would inscribe his name beneath hers. But when he found out...when they all found out! Talk about dancing with the devil!

She walked over to her bookcase, scanned a shelf of business and reference books, and selected a volume of an encyclopedia with the intention of learning about leather tanning. The afternoon sun glared in her face, and she lowered the blinds, wondering absently why Adam Roundtree worked for Jenkins and Tillman, a New York real estate firm, rather than with his family’s Hayes/Roundtree Enterprises. Had he left northern Maryland and come to New York to escape his parents as she had? From what she’d heard of him, she doubted it. Men of his reputation didn’t run from anything or anybody. She put the book in her briefcase, sat down, and lifted the receiver.

“Would you please send this signed contract to Jason Court at Jenkins and Tillman?” she asked her secretary. “Get a messenger, and mark the envelope confidential. I’ll be leaving in a minute.” She pushed her tight curls away from her olive-toned face and completed her final task of the day.

Melissa walked out of her office, two blocks from Wall Street, and into the sweltering early July heat, her discomfort intensified by the high humidity for which New York City was famous. She didn’t wait long for a taxi, sat back and took a deep breath, grateful that she’d escaped the rush hour madness. Ten minutes later, getting a taxi within a mile of Wall Street would be impossible.

* * *

Adam Roundtree sat in his New York office reviewing reports from Hayes/Roundtree Enterprises, Inc. The Maryland-based company belonged to his family, handed down to them by his maternal grandfather. Jacob Hayes hadn’t believed that his gas field would produce indefinitely, and it hadn’t, but he’d lived modestly and ploughed his money into a hosiery and a fabric mill, the leather business, and the newspaper. His foresight had enabled him to pass considerable wealth to his children and grandchildren. Adam appreciated his social station and the wealth that he’d inherited, but he wanted his own kingdom, wanted to build his own legacy for his children—that is, if he ever had any. His father’s recent death meant that he had to take an active interest in the family business, including management of the leather factory, which his father had skillfully nurtured. His mother possessed a sharp mind, but his grandfather had thought it improper for a young woman to work, and she’d never used her university education. His younger brother, Wayne, a journalist, had his hands full running the newspaper. No help there. So the onus was on him. It would mean working two demanding jobs, but he’d do it.