Table of Contents
Copyright
Author's Note
Never
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
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Epilogue
Going Down
Making His Baby
Revenge F*ck
About the Author
Relentless Pursuit (Preview)
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Lulu Pratt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Author’s Note
Never is a full-length 60,000+ word novel. Please note it ends at 23%.
I’ve included several complete bonus books for your enjoyment.
I have also included the first five chapters of my latest book, Relentless Pursuit.
Thank you for reading this. I hope you enjoy Never.
Happy reading,
Lulu xoxo
Never
I signed on to give this baby a second chance for a mother. I never counted on falling for my ex.
I broke up with my high school sweetheart when I went away to college.
I never expected him to knock up my sister.
It was easy to tell myself it wasn’t my fault. That they didn’t exist.
Until the day my sister died, with a clause in her will begging me to be a mother to their baby.
How could I deny the child?
Except that means seeing and being with Ethan every day.
I watch in wonder as he deals with his little girl, he’s the most loving, caring father.
Soon, my body fills with desire whenever he walks into the room.
I try to ignore his crazy sexy body and even sexier smile, but every day it gets harder.
Now he says he wants me. He’s always wanted me.
And he wants us to be a family.
***A steamy STANDALONE contemporary romance with a smoking hot hero. No cliffhanger, no cheating and a guaranteed happily-ever-after.***
Chapter One
Lara
“Of course she had to go and die,” I mutter to myself, knowing it’s one of the worst things I can possibly say about my sister, and knowing it’s absolutely unfair. Pulling into a parking spot in the lot outside of the estate lawyer’s office, I take a deep breath.
If she had the choice, Alexis would be alive. Easter was destroyed by her death. The family was technically together, but the fact that she wasn’t there, that she was dead, had hung over everyone in the room, the house, over dinner, the whole deal.
I take another deep breath and flip down the mirror to check my makeup. It’s hard to believe it, but a week ago I was finishing my work and planning my packing to go home to see my father, my sister, her husband, and their child, and a few other family members for Easter.
And then I’d gotten the call.
Looking at my reflection, my eyes still look a bit bloodshot, and my mascara has smeared a bit at the corners of my eyes. I make a quick movement to clean it up a bit, and think about the whole big, stupid mess.
I can still remember the way Dad’s voice sounded on the phone. “I know you were planning on coming in a couple of days, Lara, but I would appreciate it if you could get here maybe tomorrow.”
I’d gotten the time off work for the whole week, and helped Dad as much as I could. We’d had the funeral for Alexis on Wednesday, and then there was the long wait between then and Easter Sunday, with Dad and me dealing with visitors to the house, telephone calls and accepting pre-Easter feasts worth of food that he didn’t even have room for. It’s difficult to say whether people would have insisted so hard on bringing so much food if Mom was still around, but I have to think that at least a few of the people who came to see us might not have come twice if Mom was still around.
I touch up my powder a bit and dab at the color on my lips, something that wouldn’t look like I’m joyful at my older sister’s passing but also something that doesn’t make me look like a corpse myself, and then I make myself get out of the damn car finally. Sitting there won’t make Alexis’ death un-happen, and it won’t take away the obligation to listen to the reading of her will. It won’t mean that I don’t have to sit in some stuffy estate lawyer’s office with the man I used to love, and my father, who has never reconciled himself to everything that happened a few years before and how it tore apart our family.
I just have to get through this and hope that Alexis forgot to even think of me, the same way she hadn’t thought about me at all when she and Ethan hooked up.
I straighten my skirt and smooth my blouse as I walk to the entrance to the office, trying to remind myself that it’s stupid to dread seeing Ethan again. It makes a little more sense to dread being around Riley, my niece, who is just eighteen months old, but I’m mostly looking forward to being around the little girl who reminds me so much of my sister when she was younger, before things went so sour between us.
The receptionist is at her desk, and she looks up when I come in. “You father and Mr. Parks have already arrived. I’ll just walk you through to Mr. Gottlieb’s office,” she says, taking me in for a moment. I nod and let her escort me through the reception area and down a little hallway.
I’ve known I have to attend this appointment for days, and I’ve been dreading it, not because I’m worried that my sister might have made some gesture to try to win me over from beyond
