Page 1 of An Heir Made In Hawaii (Hot Winter Escapes)

CHAPTER ONE

ANIKAPIERCESATback on her towel and gazed out over the pristine waters of Hanalei Bay. No one looking out over the calm, gentle waves would have guessed that just the night before the ocean had churned and frothed beneath the weight of a late-November storm. The heaviest rains of the season in the Hawaiian island usually didn’t start until December. But the storm hadn’t gotten the memo, barreling across the ocean and turning the midnight blue waves to black. She’d watched it from the hotel balcony, bewitched by the jagged bolts of lightning and the rumble of thunder that had made the windows tremble. The fierce beauty of it all had thrilled her, called to something primal deep inside.

Anika snorted. Or perhaps it had just been a perfect mirror of her mood. And all because ofhim.

Nicholas Andrew Lassard. The bastard.

She’d walked out onto the hotel’s terrace that overlooked the waters of the Pacific Ocean just after breakfast this morning, soaking in everything from the soaring palm trees to the mountains that guarded the Hanalei Valley. She loved Slovenia and the small town of Bled that had become her home. But she was going to take full advantage of the summer-like weather. With a hot cup of tea in one hand and a book in the other, she’d been excited to lie out on one of the chaise lounges and enjoy her morning.

Until she’d turned and run smack into Nicholas. If there was one thing to take joy in, it was that her tea had ended up all over his crisp white shirt. He hadn’t reacted with anger, even though the shirt probably cost as much as what she charged for a night at the inn. No, he’d simply smiled that charming Scottish smile and told her it was good to see her. Then, when she’d demanded to know what he was doing here, he’d calmly replied he was attending the International Hospitality & Tourism Conference.

Just thinking about the smug expression on his handsome face stoked the simmering embers of irritation into hot spurts of anger that roiled about in her chest. When he’d walked into the Zvoncek Inn, three weeks ago with yet another offer to buy her hotel, this one with an increase of another hundred thousand euros compared to the offer he’d made over the summer, he’d seen the brochure for the conference on her desk. The arrogant jerk had even commented on it and asked if she was attending.

Had he followed her to Hawaii? Was he truly that fixated with buying the inn that he would fly nearly eight thousand miles and track her down?

Yes.

She had underestimated Nicholas when he’d swept into Bled a year and a half ago and begun construction on the Hotel Lassard at Lake Bled. A three-story luxury hotel with an on-site spa, restaurant and rooftop bar. Elegant, glamorous and ridiculously expensive.

And just down the road from the inn that had been in her mother’s family since World War I.

The hotel had done their due diligence in sending a representative to meet with her and deliver a leather portfolio complete with architectural renderings of the future hotel.“Community relations,”the willow-thin girl in a fancy black suit had said with a huge smile that had reminded Anika of a shark. She hadn’t been a fan of having another hotel so close to hers, especially one with all the modern amenities hers didn’t have. But the kind of people who stayed at the Hotel Lassard were most definitely not the kind of people who stayed at the Zvoncek Inn. They wanted marble bathtubs and grand chandeliers, not cozy fireplaces and handmade quilts.

She’d met Nicholas a week later at a breakfast hosted by the local tourism board. With thick, dark brown hair that looked artlessly windblown and an actual dimple in his cheek when he smiled, he’d had half the women of Bled in love with him before they’d sat down. Irena, an elderly shopkeeper with huge round glasses perched on her nose, had breathlessly whispered the silver watch had to be Cartier and the charcoal-gray suit tailored to Nicholas’s broad shoulders and lean waist was most definitely from Savile Row in London.

“See how perfectly it fits his rear?”

The memory of Irena’s croaky voice teased a reluctant smile from her lips. Yes, Nicholas was a good-looking man. She could even acknowledge handsome. Too bad his greedy soul was so ugly.

The wealth, the charm, all of it had put her on guard. Nicholas walked in far different circles than she did. That he hadn’t bothered to come and deliver the news of his new hotel to her in person had shown her that Nicholas took care of the big, flashy things, whereas little people such as herself were fobbed off onto his underlings. Seeing him flirt with women of all ages at the breakfast before he’d delivered a slick presentation on what his hotel would bring to the community had cemented her impression of an overindulged lothario who liked playing at the hotel business.

Except, when Nicholas wanted something, he played hardball. She’d found that out the hard way this past spring when he’d surprised her by walking into the inn and requesting a private meeting. His sheer presence, from another one of those custom suits down to his shiny loafers, had grated on her nerves and made the worn rug in her office and the pots of snowdrops on the windowsill feel meager and outdated.

He’d smiled at her. She’d given him the tiniest one in return.

And then he’d robbed her of speech by sliding another leather portfolio with the embossed silver logo of the Hotel Lassard onto her desk, one with an offer to buy the inn for fifty thousand euros above its current value.

He’d taken advantage of her silence. His words had flowed out, smooth as brandy and just as potent, with that charming accent underlying his pitch.

He’d been satisfied, he’d said, with the property they’d purchased and its views of not only the lake but the island and its romantic church, the castle on the northwestern shore. Yet the one thing he hadn’t gotten was lakeside property. He’d accepted it, he’d said with all the humbleness of spoiled royalty, content to have the views.

Until he’d taken a tour of the lake and seen her inn from the water. He’d even used the Slovenian term,pletna, for the gondola-like boats that ferried tourists around, smiling slightly as if he was proud of himself for bothering to use the word correctly.

Her inn, he’d explained, could be a perfect extension of the Hotel Lassard. With extensive renovating, the integrity of the building could be kept while adding the luxury and glamour that guests of the Lassard brand expected. It would also give his clients access to the small beach for swimming and lounging in the summer, as well as the dock for year-round boat launches.

Then he’d leaned forward and said the words that even now made her grate her teeth just remembering how self-righteous he’d sounded.

“I know the inn is in trouble. I can fix it.”

To his credit, he’d only blinked when she’d said, “No.” He’d leaned back, his chair creaking ominously. For once, she’d wished something in the inn would break and send him tumbling to the floor.

He’d asked why. She’d replied the inn wasn’t for sale. He’d added one hundred thousand euros to the offer on the spot.

And damn it, she’d been tempted. For one horrible second, she’d been tempted. Yes, the inn was aging. It seemed like every time she turned around, mattresses were needing to be replaced, a window had to be repaired or one of the ancient water boilers was on the verge of dying. Decisions that had fallen to her more and more as her grandmother, Marija, had grown sick. Decisions that tangled with worry about her grandmother and weighed on her so heavily that some nights she would lie in bed and feel like she could barely catch her breath wondering how she would possibly overcome it all.

Accepting Nicholas’s offer would have been the easy way out. The inn had been in her family for over a hundred years. Walking the halls where her mother, Danica, had grown up, reading on the same window seat and walking barefoot in the yard in the spring when the snowdrops the inn had been named for covered the ground in a blanket of white blooms, had been a lifeline she’d desperately needed. After Danica had passed, Anika had journeyed from the States to live with her only remaining family. Marija, and the inn, had saved her.

But it wasn’t just her family or their legacy on the line. The guests who came back year after year considered the inn a home away from home. She wasn’t going to let some arrogant hotel scion turn it into a ritzy getaway her clients would no longer be able to afford, to turn her inheritance into a splashy spectacle. All because the bastard wasn’t satisfied with his views of the lake.

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