Zander's Firecracker Read online

  CONTENTS

  Zander’s Firecracker

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Epilogue

  Epilogue 2

  Author’s note

  Follow the Author

  Also by Ember Flint

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  Zander’s Firecracker

  By EMBER FLINT

  34-year-old, Strait-laced, straight-faced Zander Markos is a lawyer who never cracks a smile if he can help it, and as one of the heirs to the ubiquitous and all-powerful Markos Inc’s empire, no one could argue with him if he’d say he has no time to even think of having fun, let alone actually do such a mundane thing.

  In light of all of this, it remains a mystery why his brother thought it would be a good idea to put him —a no-nonsense, micromanaging, security freak— in charge of overseeing the preparations for the company’s July 4th retreat and beach party at their estate on Lake Tahoe, and yet here he is, neck-deep in organizing funny family-friendly activities within an inch of their lives, until there’s no fun left whatsoever in them.

  Of course, any Independence Day party worth its name’s got to have a firework display and the Markos must have only the best and therein lies the problem, because ‘the best’ is not what Zander expected.

  24-year-old Alexandra ‘Alexa’ Tinley may be short compared to most kids, let alone adults, but she’s tough and a spitfire through and through. She’s been ‘one of the boys’ all of her life and still has the mouth and scrapping abilities to prove it.

  She could not tidy a room if her life depended on it because she’s in constant motion and wherever she goes, disorder rules, but when it comes to her art no one could say she’s not the absolute best.

  A man and a woman can’t get any more different than these two: he’s order, she’s chaos, he’s ice, she’s fire, he’s Scotch neat and she’s… nitroglycerine, and yet they can’t look away; the explosion is inevitable.

  This little voluptuous nuclear firecracker might have ‘handle-with-care’ written all over her, but she’s still the spark he was missing and he’s the tether she didn’t know she needed.

  Dear Reader:

  Man, these two are gonna butt head!

  But don’t worry: it won’t last much since Zander and Alexa are only safe from each other if they stay away from each other, which they don’t, because… duh: this is one of my books so that’s never gonna happen!

  This is a quick, fun, steamy novella that’s totally SAFE.

  What you get is:

  NO-cheating

  NO OW/OM drama

  A passion that’s gonna set the summer sky on fire with a white-hot display you won’t forget.

  As always, your sugary shot of guaranteed Happily-Ever-After is included in the kit, but do bring your own safety-goggles!

  *Please note that ‘Zander’s Firecracker is part of ‘The Holiday Firecrackers’

  collection of standalone books brought to you by some of your favorite insta-love romance authors out there.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2020 Ember Flint

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. To request permission, contact the author.

  Please respect this author’s hard work and purchase or read this book through Amazon. Acquiring a copy through any other mean is a violation of the author’s rights and supports piracy of copyrighted material.

  Note from the Author: this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental. Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18, that it contains explicit love scenes and naughty language and that all sexually-active characters in it are represented as 18 or over. Also, in real life, remember: always safety first.

  Cover design by: Megan Wade

  Edited by: New Wave Romance

  Dedicated to those insta-love readers who want their smut filthy but cute. Here’s to glitter, sugary sweetness and romantic explosions all over the place.

  Chapter 1

  ZANDER

  June 27th

  “Are you even listening to me right now?” I ask, trying to catch my brother’s eye.

  He huffs and glares at me from across the large expanse of my mahogany desk, one hand combing his dark blonde hair back, the look almost comical on his usually serene face. Seeing him in such a cross mood is not a normal occurrence. He’s always been laid-back and fun-loving and very little can perturb him.

  I, on the other hand, can’t find it in myself to be unperturbed, no matter how small the nuisance in my path.

  Anthony and I have always been very close, he is more than a simple brother to me, he’s my best friend, but we couldn’t be more different, inside and out.

  For one thing, most people would never even guess that we are brothers, unless they took a really close look at our features and our type of build.

  He takes after our mom in the looks’ department —she was Brit and he got her pale complexion and light coloring— while I definitely inherited the dark, Mediterranean characteristics of our dad and the Greek side of his family.

  And for another, we have completely different outlooks and personalities.

  He’s open and friendly and I’m told I’m kind of off-putting. He’s into sports, I’m into books, he’s funny and I couldn’t crack a non-awkward smile to save my life.

  I’ve always been stern and withdrawn, I guess I take after our mother in that. She was a very shy, serious type and she said that, before she got us, there was only one person in the world that could make her laugh: our father.

  Tony is a lot like him, or at least he’s a lot like our dad used to be: he smiles and makes jokes all the time and he’s very congenial and loves to tease me to no end. Our father used to be the same when Mom was alive, but he hasn’t been himself since she passed away.

  “Of course, I’m not listening! It’s half past eight on a Saturday morning, for fuck’s sake. I can’t believe you dragged me down here for this,” my brother grumbles in a yawn.

  I shrug. “I had to, your home office is too noisy with the kids coming in and out of the place all the time. We never get anything done there, Tony.”

  The flip-flop precariously perched on Anthony’s foot falls off and he wiggles his now free toes, smiling as he sprawls even further down the seat of the antique armchair he’s been haphazardly occupying for the past twenty minutes.

  “Like it’s my fault you can’t resist your nephews and nieces for more than five minutes before going off to play with them.”

  He is right, of course, I love his platoon of little monsters to pieces and there’s not a single thing I wouldn’t let them do, work notwithstanding, so they constantly manage to ensnare me in one of their games.

  I sigh, my eyes flicking once more to the bullet-point list still open on my tablet. “It is your fault: you made too damn many of them and you keep on going. Don’t you and Vi have another hobby besides
the obvious?”

  My brother and his wife have four small children ranging from eight to one-year-old and already there’s gonna be a fifth bundle of joy coming in about three months. Violet once told me he barely has to look at her to get her pregnant, which is way over the fucking line of TMI if you ask me, but she has never had a filter whatsoever so no surprise there.

  Still, you can’t help but love her: her parents and older brother have always been horrible to her, so our mom and dad kind of adopted her when we were kids because they genuinely cared for her, besides they could see she and my brother had one of those ‘for the ages’ type of love. She’s like a little sister to me and has helped pull all of us Markos men through some pretty painful shit since our mom passed, so I’d listen to her oversharing every day even if it’s embarrassing as hell to me. I owe her this and so much more for what she’s done for us as a family and for all the wonderful ideas she has when it comes to our charitable trust.

  Anthony’s middle finger shoots up. “Shut up, little brother. You know we’ve always dreamed of having a big family. As for other hobbies… you’ll understand why we like each other’s company so much when you find the one.”

  “Uhm…”

  I better pull the brakes now before he goes off on a tangent with his ‘the only one for you’ theory.

  My brother knows full well that I’m not one for relationships —I’ve never been— but whatever matchmaking bug my sister-in-law caught when she met me twenty-one years ago and decided I too needed to be paired to someone and walk off into the sunset, it seems that she has finally managed to pass it onto him as well, so now they tag-team against me in their quest to make me give up my bachelor status.

  Not fucking happening, thank you very much.

  I don’t have time for women.

  I’ve tried to explain that just because they fell in love at first sight and haven’t come down from their high yet, doesn’t mean I’ve got to want to have what they have, even if I’m happy for them, but they won’t take no for an answer and won’t believe me when I tell them I’m fine being alone.

  They say I work too much, that I’m just like Dad in this: throwing myself into things at the expense of my personal life.

  I can’t say they’re wrong per se, but I love what I do, and I don’t mind having less free time because of it, besides I wouldn’t even know what to do with more free time if I had it.

  Give me a spreadsheet to look through and I’m your man, tell me you need me to organize something or fix a logistic issue and again, you’ve got me, ask me to rule the courtroom when I’m haranguing one of my cases in the middle of a lawsuit and yes: still your man, but tell me to just sit and do nothing or go out and ‘have fun’ and you’ve lost me, besides it’s been years since I last stepped into the dating pool and I realized it was full of gold-digging alligators, I’m much safer on dry land even if it does get lonely sometimes.

  I roll my eyes and raise my hands in front of me, palms-out. “Let’s not go there, Anthony. We have more important things to discuss right now than my lack of a romantic inclination.”

  “Zan, if only you would—”

  “We’re here to talk about the Fourth of July event, Tony. Focus.”

  “Need more coffee to focus, bro.”

  “Nah-ha, you already downed two. If I let you have another, Vi will have my balls. She says you need to cut down on your caffeine-intake, something about gastritis.”

  He groans. “Does she have to tell you all of my business?”

  I laugh a little. “Are you seriously asking me?”

  He shakes his head and undoes the first few buttons of his… well I wouldn’t call it a ‘shirt’ — no sane person would.

  My eyes fall once more on the yellow, purple and brown short-sleeved, some-what Hawaiian ‘thing’ that he’s wearing, and I frown.

  “Whatever possessed you to wear such a fugly thing? This is our main headquarters, bro, I don’t have to remind you that as the CFO and VP of the joint, you’re supposed to always dress the part.”

  He throws his hands up. “It couldn’t be helped, and it’s your fault, you asshat.”

  “My fault? Bitch, no way you can pin the blame for wearing such an abomination on me.”

  Anthony glowers. “I sure can. The reason I’m wearing it is that I lost a bet to Vi.”

  “And what does it have to do with me?”

  He sits up a little. “Only everything! In March she betted me that I would come to regret my decision to put your officious, neat freak, drill-sergeant ass in charge of organizing what should have been an easy, harmless, fun-filled July 4th-slash-birthday beach party for Dad, you know, before you turned it into Mission Impossible wrapped up into the rush to conquer planet Mars. I said ‘No way, babe, no one can do it better than my lil’ brother and sure, he’s gonna be his usual anal self, but no I won’t regret it. She dared me to ditch Armani for some eyesore piece of clothing if I ever did. I told her to do her worst and find me the ugliest shirt in LA. Flash forward four months to this morning when I answered your call, half-asleep at the ass-crack of dawn after having been up all night with a colicky baby and there you were asking me to come into the office, on a Saturday no less, to deal with your party-planning from hell. There was no way I could pretend to be pleased with you right then, you bastard! So here I am, looking like a douche.”

  I let out an airless chuckle. “First of all, you always look like a douche: a shirt, or whatever that thing is, doesn’t make much of a difference, dude. And second, how is it my fault that you still play betting games with your wife at 37-year-old?”

  He smirks, his light blue eyes glinting. “You would play them too if you had a wife like mine, Zan.”

  “And why is that?” I ask, swiveling my chair to the left and then back to the right as I take another sip of my black coffee.

  Anthony’s smile gets bigger. “Because sometimes I get to win.”

  I groan. “I so don’t wanna know.”

  He laughs. “Yeah, maybe it’s better. I wouldn’t want to upset your maiden’s sensibilities.”

  “Fuck off.”

  I put down the tablet and grab the stress-relief, glittery blue ball that his older daughter, Rosie, made me and chuck it at his head.

  He laughs, picks up the ball after it bounces off the side of his face and starts to juggle it from one hand to the other. “For the record, I can confirm, if it wasn’t clear enough, that I do regret putting you in charge and I will to the end of my days. You’ve been planning this thing like a damn military campaign since the start, and I’ve been this close to have you murdered for days now.”

  “I have you beat, then, bro: I’ve been planning your demise for years.”

  He throws the anti-stress ball my way again, aiming for my chest. “Fucktard.”

  I smirk a little, intercepting the volley with the palm of my hand and put the squishy ball back down on my desk. “Asswipe. Can you really blame me for wanting it to be perfect? You know what this means to Dad!”

  “I know, man, I do, believe me. But, really: four months of planning? We all thought a month would be more than enough to dot all your Is and cross all your Ts.”

  I let out a frustrated sigh. “It could have been if it was just the original retreat and party I had to deal with here, but now it’s a project across all the main Stateside headquarters, we’re talking about eleven week-long retreats and parties in eleven different locations, all executed at the same time for a total of one-hundred-forty-two execs, and this on top of the lawsuit too, so tell me how would have a month been enough?

  My brother shakes his head. “It would have been, trust me. You would have had time to spare if only you’d stop micromanaging everything, you’re such a control freak, bro. I mean, fuck: you have a staff of fifty-eight well-capable people working on this, do you really have to double-check every single thing they do? We thought following this project would help you do something fun, distress a
little, that’s why I put you in charge. Violet is worried for you, you know…”

  I look heavenward. “I’m okay, and Violet is always worried for me: she’s gonna be worried until I’m married, so pretty much for the rest of my natural life.”

  Anthony stands up and starts to pace back and forth in front of my desk. “Can’t you at least let me help?” he asks.

  “Tony, you have four children, a pregnant wife and manage the financial affairs of a giant corporation that has seventy-four offices worldwide, trust me, pal: you don’t have the time. And by the way, only five minutes ago, you were ready to kill me for asking you to be here today.”

  He goes to stand in front of the wall-to-wall window overlooking Wilshire Boulevard from the top floor of our thirty-five-stories tall building in the Financial District.

  “The fact that I don’t want to be working on a Saturday morning doesn’t mean I don’t wanna help,” he mumbles.

  “I know that.”

  I walk up to him, tablet in hand, and I slap him on his back.

  “And the fact that I think you might need to step back and let your staff do their job in peace, doesn’t mean I think you don’t know what you’re doing. You work too much, Zan, and I just…”