The Billionaire's Triplets (A Steamy Contemporary Romance Novel) by Mia Caldwell

the small clients. She wouldn’t have time for them. And then suddenly things were thrown into chaos. Lissa was back in the office. Her damn sister had come out of nowhere to provide child care, and urged Lissa to get back to work. The woman came in, changing everything back to how it had been, and the deal with Tom wasn’t done yet. His lawyers were still going over details.
    Damn lawyers. Things would have to move fast now. She needed things in place. With Lissa back, the situation was different. What would have been easy was still possible, but riskier.
    She was having dinner with Acker that night and she’d let him know, get him to poke the lawyers with a cattle prod. Of course, he’d extract a price. He’d hinted at it that morning. “That was good,” he said. “You’re hot. But the thing is there are lots of hot women who don’t even want as much as you.”
    “Anyone in particular?”
    His smiled suggested there might be. “If you want to keep my interest, be prepared to play a few games.”
    “Games? Kinky games?”
    “Any games I want.”
    Tina didn’t mind a few games. Not when the stakes were so high. Sure, if he wanted kinky, she’d be kinky. At least kinky enough to make certain she was on the team in Milan.

CHAPTER FIVE
    It was morning. A brilliant sun rose over the palm trees that dotted the waterfront of the Mediterranean Sea brightening the office. Julio sat at his desk in his Barcelona office building. When he’d first built this building, he’d been proud and delighted to be able to sit at his desk with his coffee and watch the sunrise. This complex had made his name as someone who could design and manage international-scale projects. Now the newness and excitement were gone, and it was just his office, but he still appreciated the mornings in it.
    This morning, all mornings for a time now, a feeling of helplessness, of having missed something important, had pervaded his thoughts and made him sad. That sadness had nothing to do with his office or the sunrise, or success or failure. For a man who prided himself on taking on challenges that others wouldn’t attempt, of succeeding by doing things his own way regardless of what others thought, it was a strange, miserable sensation.
    It wasn’t failing that bothered him. You didn’t reach for the brass ring as often as he did and not experience failure. If he didn’t fail at things now and then, it would be a sign that he’d stopped setting his sights high, an indication that he’d lost his edge. Maybe that would happen someday. It was reasonable to assume that eventually he’d do like so many people and begin to settle for equaling his previous performance, essentially repeating himself by sticking to things that had worked in the past.
    That day hadn’t come. Far from it. The sadness he felt wasn’t failure, or at least nothing he could view as a failure. The truth was that he had no idea what had happened, what had gone wrong, and that was the tragedy. He’d met a kindred spirit, a soul mate who shared his spirit. She was so much his complement. People spoke often of their other half or better half, and while he didn’t think of her as better or half of anything, he’d immediately felt she was the female that corresponded perfectly to his maleness. They fit together perfectly yet came from different backgrounds, different cultures. When they met, when they were together, it was as if his horizons had suddenly expanded. His life was joyous before he met her, and she showed him that there were things he’d never dreamed of, and it had seemed she felt the same about his world.
    It was a brief interlude that was supposed to become more. That time in Switzerland had been a taste, a sample of what lay in store for them. He’d even said so, and she’d agreed. They’d talked about working together on fantastic new projects, of living in new places, of intertwining their lives. He’d dreamed that intertwining would go on forever.