KAT CANTRELL read her first Mills & Boon novel in third grade and has been scribbling in notebooks since then. She writes smart, sexy books with a side of sass. She’s a former Mills & Boon So You Think You Can Write winner and an RWA Golden Heart^® Award finalist. Kat, her husband and their two boys live in north Texas.

      Contents

       Cover

       Introduction

       Title Page

       About the Author

One

Two

Three

Four

       Five

       Six

       Seven

       Eight

       Nine

       Ten

       Eleven

       Epilogue

       Extract

       Copyright

One

      If there was any poetic justice in the world, Sutton Lazarus Winchester had gotten his.

      Nora sagged back against the wall of the sterile hospital room, unable to process the inescapable fact that her seemingly infallible father was indeed dying of inoperable lung cancer. She should feel relieved. His tyrannical reign was nearly over. The man who couldn’t be bothered to walk her down the aisle at her own wedding lay pale and gaunt in a hospital bed, as if a bit of his spirit had already fled for hell in advance of the rest.

      The relief didn’t come. Nora had traveled home to Chicago with the barest hope she might find a way to reconcile with her father in his last days. And now that she was here, the sheer difficulty of that task nearly overwhelmed her.

      “I had to see it for myself,” Nora murmured to her sisters, Eve and Gracie, who flanked her as she faced down their father. None of them had gotten too close to the bed in case Sutton had more gusto than he seemed to have. Right now he appeared to be asleep but that didn’t matter.

      Like a snake, he waited until you were within striking distance and then sank his fangs into the tenderest place he could find, injecting poison and pain until it suited him to stop. It was how he’d always operated, and Nora had no doubt he’d find a way to do it from the grave.

      “We all did,” Eve murmured back. “The doctor wasn’t too happy with me when I asked her to allow another doctor to review the oncology reports. But I had to make sure.”

      Methodical to her core, Eve never missed dotting an i or crossing a t. As the oldest Winchester sister, she’d always been large and in charge and seldom let anything stand in her way.

      “Wanted to see the death sentence with your own two eyes, hmm?” Nora said without malice.

      Sutton had terrorized all three of his daughters, but Nora was the only one who’d grown so sick of the constant drama surrounding her father that she’d moved halfway across the country to Colorado, effectively—and gratefully—turning her back on the money, the glitter and the heartbreak of the lifestyle she’d been born into.

      Eve glowered. “Wanted to make sure it wasn’t manufactured. I wouldn’t put it past that Newport scum to have paid off a doctor to produce a false report.”

      “Do you really think Carson could find someone willing to do that?” Gracie asked, and it was clear she had no ill will toward the man the sisters had recently learned was their half brother.

      The total opposite of Eve, Gracie always saw the best in people. Nora’s younger sister had such a big heart, even in the midst of the huge scandal caused by the recent revelation that during one of his past affairs, Sutton had fathered a son—none other than his business rival Carson Newport.

      Now that Nora had seen her father, she could turn her attention to Carson, who was her second order of business while in Chicago. Oh, Nora didn’t give two figs about Sutton’s money and whether Carson Newport had a legal claim to any of it. Eve and Grace could fight that battle. But the man was her brother. She was curious about him. And she didn’t appreciate the idea of her sisters losing out on their inheritance; it meant something to them, even if it came down to nothing more than a just reward for the years of being Sutton Winchester’s daughters.

      “I wouldn’t put anything past him. There are a lot of unethical things people will gladly do for money, including doctors. And especially Newport,” Eve responded, tossing her honey-blond hair over her shoulder impatiently. It was longer than Nora remembered, but then, they hadn’t seen each other in quite a while. Not since before Sean had died.