Page 1 of Three Rugged Bosses and a Clueless Girl

Chapter One

Michelle Carter folded her arms over her chest, pulled a face, and stuffed another chocolate-coated strawberry into her mouth. She detested everything, from the bright sunshine to the clear blue skies and, most of all, those stupid chocolate-coated strawberries.

She hated strawberries so much that every time she saw them, she revenge-ate them, stuffing her face like a crazy person and making sure she angry-chewed the heck out of them as well.

Why couldn’t she be one of those girls frolicking about the pool in skimpy bikinis, rainbow-colored drinks in their hands, with their perfect freaking hair and perfect freaking lives?

They didn’t have to worry about a roof over their heads or food on their table. Okay, she was exaggerating; she would always have a place to stay with her brother and his wife and just eat their food, but she and the girls in the pool were not the same kind of twenty-two-year-olds.

They didn’t owe a mafia boss a hot thirty thousand dollars on top of everything else that had exploded in her life recently.

No, they wouldn’t be that stupid to get entangled with people who threatened to chop her fingers off one by one and pickle them to keep in their refrigerator if she didn’t pay up.

At this point, she didn’t even want to be rich. This was it. No more trying to take over the world with her stupid ideas. The time had come for her to shelf her entrepreneurial dreams. Nothing good ever came out of them anyway, not since her first disastrous venture in middle school.

She had no idea what went wrong in the homemade manufacture of her limited-edition lip gloss—limited edition because she had run out of her allowance to make more. She sold the strawberry-flavored lip gloss—which explained why she hated strawberries so much—at school, but at least half of her customers got an allergic reaction and looked like puffer fish—angry puffer fish.

She was lucky the principal liked her enough and managed to talk the other parents out of suing her family for everything they had.

Now she was stone-cold broke as heck. Never mind the camel. She couldn't even afford a straw to break its proverbial back.

Why couldn’t she just be normal? But, oh, no, not her. She repeatedly chose the hard route without a single clue, a flashlight, or GPS. She chose the path that no sane person would willingly choose. Clearly, she was a sucker for punishment, which defied the fact that she was a big baby beneath it all, and cried when she got a splinter in her pinkie.

Arg.

"Michelle, lose that granny dress of yours and come play with us. It’s my birthday for crying out loud, and it’s supposed to be a pool party.”

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” Michelle said lamely to the tall, leggy girl lounging in the pool like a supermodel with her equally tall and leggy supermodel friends.

Melissa Jeffries’ sister had married Michelle’s brother, which made them sisters-in-law as well, she supposed. Since her brother had put in a brand-new pool at the back of their house, Frank—her brother—and Stella—his wife and Melissa’s sister—had thrown a barbecue pool party for Melissa, who had turned twenty-two today.

“What part of the invitation didn’t you get? Pool. Party.” Melissa continued, using her hands for emphasis.

“All of it, Melissa. All of it. Happy birthday, by the way.” Seated on a lounger under an umbrella, Michelle injected a stream of enthusiasm into her voice and raised a chocolate strawberry to the birthday girl as if it were a drink.

Maybe she should take up drinking and drown her sorrows. Wasn’t that the thing to do when everything that could go wrong did? Well, since she hated the taste of alcohol, maybe she could eat everything in sight until she exploded sideways. Her brother Frank, manning the barbecue with serious concentration at the other end of the yard, had already cooked a pile of burgers. She could scoff those down next.

Yep, that was what she was going to eat after the strawberries. She stuffed three more strawberries into her mouth and still managed to pout in self-pity before she crushed the juicy fruit under her teeth.

“Hey, you.” A slightly older version of Melissa said as she slipped onto a lounger next to Michelle. “Stop looking so worried. Something else will come up.”

“I’m done for Stella,” Michelle said with her mouth full, uncaring of etiquette. “Hope you’re okay with me moving in with you and my brother. I’ll have to share a room with Daisy. Hope she’s going to be okay with that.”

“You’re welcome here anytime, and I love you too much to make you share a room with Daisy. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” Stella laughed. Daisy was their four-year-old daughter, and the boss of Stella’s and Frank’s lives.

“Gosh, I’m so super screwed,” Michelle said, reaching for more strawberries. She had eaten nearly half of the tray already. “And I’m sorry. I’m finishing all the strawberries, and none of the other guests will get to eat them.” She placed the tray on her lap and popped another one into her mouth.

Stella laughed. “Don’t worry about it. And it’s not that bad, sweetie. So your food truck blew up in flames, but there’ll be others. You’ll get back on your feet. Again, sorry about Frank's rant about the insurance. You know how he is. Why don’t you stay here, relax, rest, regroup for as long as you like, and then see what happens next.”

That sounded so lovely to Michelle. She sighed in longing, but nope, apart from not having insurance on the food truck she had just bought two weeks before, she needed to pay a debt, and she preferred to do so with dollars and not digits. Oh god, would they also take her thumbs?

She was getting around to the insurance part, she really was—it was slotted in at number three on her list of things to do. But she was still riding high after winning a considerable amount of money on a scratch-off ticket from a supermarket chain and everything had felt like a dream.

She won enough money to buy a second-hand food truck, which she christened Fleur at first sight. It was perfect. Her life was made.

Lucky for Michelle, her parents had chosen to nurture her adventurous personality, maybe because they were exactly the same—carefree and more interested in what made them happy at that moment than they were in preparing for the necessities that life demanded. Her failed business ventures were an inherited trait from her parents.

The instant she displayed an interest in food, they fostered her passion and spent all their money on sending her to the finest culinary schools around. She was a damn good chef, too, and all she could dream about was being a nomad in her gastronomy food truck, wearing long floral skirts with flowers in her hair, and going to different places to sell her unconventional but totally delicious foods. No boss. Her time would be her own. A millionaire. That was how she was meant to be happy.

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