Family Bonds- Emily and Crew (Amore Island Book 4) Read online

  Family Bonds- Emily & Crew

  Natalie Ann

  Family Bonds

  Emily & Crew

  Copyright 2021 Natalie Ann

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without a written consent.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Also by Natalie Ann

  About the Author

  Blurb

  Prologue

  1. A Wakeup Call

  2. Understatement Of The Year

  3. Gossip About

  4. Ask Him Out

  5. Smoking Delivery Guy

  6. Clear The Air

  7. Luck Is Luck

  8. He Wanted More

  9. A Goal In Mind

  10. Seeing A Pattern

  11. Looks Good On You

  12. A Promise

  13. Go Time

  14. Pleased With Yourself

  15. Life On The Island

  16. What Works For Me

  17. Makeup Sex

  18. Back To Crew

  19. Thinking About Us

  20. The Big Talk

  21. Put On The Spot

  22. To Get Through This

  23. Spoke The Truth

  24. Do The Same For You

  25. On The Spot

  26. More Than It Was

  27. Personal Business

  28. Head Over Heels

  29. Blood Pumping

  30. Work A Little Harder

  31. All Yours Now

  32. Before My Time

  33. Makes Sense Now

  34. Claw My Way Out

  35. Be There For You

  36. Take Charge

  Epilogue

  Also by Natalie Ann

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Natalie Ann

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  Amore Island

  Family Bonds- Hunter and Kayla

  Family Bonds- Drew and Amanda

  Family Bonds – Mac and Sidney

  Family Bonds- Emily & Crew

  Family Bonds- Ava & Seth

  About the Author

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  Blurb

  Emily Rauch was proving to be a powerhouse in the hotel business at a very young age. She and her sister had a vision and she was making it come true, come hell or high water. She had to be tough in a man’s world and had no problem with that. Even in her family’s world...the Bonds. She was determined to come out on top. If it meant staying single because men were intimidated by her, then so be it.

  Crew Ackley was just a middle class kid until his parents hit the lotto and left it all to him when they died tragically. Then he learned that everyone wanted to be with him for a handout. Fed up with not being able to figure out who was real and who wasn’t, he left the area and was starting over on a small island off the coast of Massachusetts. He thought that’d make him happy until he found a woman he wanted to get to know better who didn’t see him as anyone other than the man delivering her mail. But if he told her his net worth, would she only see that?

  Prologue

  “Next up is Emily Rauch, co-owner of the Atlantic Rise Hotel,” Helena Bond said. “As many of you know, she is from Patricia’s side of the family. Come on up here, sweetie.”

  Emily squared her shoulders. The last thing she wanted to do was be put up for auction for the Bond family fundraiser, but it was for a good cause bringing in a lot of money that went to various much-needed and underfunded causes on the island. This ye
ar it was for the health clinic that many of her cousins worked at too.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said to her younger sister, Penelope. Irish twins they were. Her mother having them just under one year apart. For one week a year, they were both the same age. This past summer, late August, they were both in their twenties. Then she turned the big three oh.

  “You’ll be fine. I’m just glad she asked you and not me,” Penelope said.

  “She didn’t ask you because she heard you were out on a date a few weeks ago and thought you were taken. I should have said it was a blind date and didn’t work out so you’d be stuck too.”

  Penelope laughed and pushed her toward the stage where Helena was waiting with a big grin on her face.

  Not her aunt, but close enough to one. Her mother, Sophia, was actually best friends with Janet Bond, Helena’s sister-in-law. Janet and Helena ran this fundraiser, but Helena was more the voice of it. Or at least the voice of the auction since it was her idea.

  “I’m coming,” Emily said to Helena, who held her hand out, then grabbed Emily’s and patted it.

  She did have a fear that she wouldn’t get that many bids. Or none at all. Her cousin Bode’s went well and she was afraid that might be a hard one to follow. Hailey Bond was after her and she knew damn well that would be high. Anyone with the last name Bond did well in life.

  But she liked that she could hide behind being part of the family without really announcing it to the world.

  “The bidding can begin,” Helena said to the auctioneer. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of the fast-talking kind and it was more in fun.

  After she got an opening bid at a thousand, she felt a little bit better. When it started to go up in hundred-dollar increments by men she didn’t know, she was worrying a little, but everyone would be vetted before the date occurred through security measures.

  The bidding was still going and she was standing there stiff in her fitted black dress and Valentino Garavani studded nude pumps. They made her feel powerful and feminine at the same time. She’d learned to master that in her life if she wanted to get ahead.

  She had no problem getting noticed for her looks, but she was damn well going to make sure that wasn’t all someone saw.

  Tough. Businesslike. Get out of my way if I’m in the zone.

  Yep, that was what people thought of when they saw her.

  Not sexy and laid back.

  Not standing on stage with a big smile on her face waiting for some guy to pay a few thousand dollars to spend a couple of hours with her.

  For the life of her she had no idea why anyone would want to.

  But it was for charity, and on the island, the Bonds put that first.

  When the bidding stopped, the auctioneer said, “Going once, going twice—”

  “Three thousand,” she heard in the back. Damn, that just jumped up a thousand. There were some chuckles in the crowd and she was trying to see who belonged to the paddle that was just raised but couldn’t make out his face.

  “Someone is interested in winning a date with Emily,” the auctioneer said. “Going once. Going twice. Three thousand it is to number sixty-one in the back.”

  She nodded her head and walked off the stage, then caught sight of who it was and started to laugh. “Wow. Guess that might be the only way to get a date with me.”

  Crew Ackley, her mailman, grinned and winked at her and she wondered how the heck he was able to drop three thousand dollars on this and why he would.

  And at the end of the night, she made her way over to him. “That was nice of you. It will go for a good cause.”

  “I’m sure it will,” he said.

  “I’m not sure how this is going to work. You obviously know where to find me to set this up, but why don’t I get your number? I’ve got to go out of town next week and then with Thanksgiving, it might be a few weeks if that works for you?”

  Crew pulled his phone out and she tried hard not to stare at his large hands. Everything about him was big and intimidating and she almost had to do a double take to realize it was him in the dark suit and black tie rather than the government-issued blue-and-white one with a bag over his shoulder as he hopped in and out of the truck driving around her neighborhood.

  His dark eyes were laughing at her and she was trying her hardest not to flush like she always wanted to when he smiled at her. She’d never been attracted to big men before or ones that were rougher looking, but Crew got her salivating more than juice from an orange being squeezed in a press.

  “That works for me,” he said, reading off his number. “Do I get yours so I don’t think it’s some cold call and send you to voicemail?”

  “I guess you do,” she said. She sent him a quick text, heard his phone go off. “There you go. We’ll be in touch with each other.”

  “We will,” Crew said, walking away. She tried her damnedest not to follow his movements, but when she heard Penelope laughing she knew she was caught.

  1

  A Wakeup Call

  “Crew, sweetie, I’m so glad you could make it.”

  Crew smiled at his grandmother when he walked into the retirement home’s large common room where she was playing cards with her friends. “I wouldn’t miss it. You know that. This is easier for me than Christmas. Maybe I should fly you to me for Christmas.”

  “Heavens, no,” she said. “Did you hear that, Ethel? My grandson wants to fly me to some remote island in the East.”

  “Go,” Ethel said. “Take a bikini with you. You can borrow mine.”

  His eyes went wide and then he heard his grandmother laugh. “I don’t need to borrow yours when I’ve got plenty of my own. How’s the ocean this time of year? It’d be just like taking the Polar Plunge.”

  Thoughts of his grandmother in a bikini running into the freezing ocean were causing his heart to hurt in more ways than one. “How about we save the ocean until it’s warmer? Maybe you could visit in the summer?”

  “We’ll talk about it another day,” his grandmother said. Which probably meant no. He’d been trying to get her to move with him for the six months that he’d lived on Amore Island.

  Nope, she was content to stay in the retirement facility that he paid for back in Boulder, Colorado. She understood his need to leave and he just wished she would have come with him.

  He only came back to visit one or two times a year and never the same time. He didn’t want his remaining family to know when he might be in town and he knew his grandmother would keep that secret.

  “Are you ready to get some dinner?”

  “I am. No one came to visit with you today?” he asked.

  Lucy Hanson was his maternal grandmother. The only one he wanted to be around after his parents died tragically. He’d been in college burning through their money and partying the same way they were. It was a wakeup call to find out the small plane his father had just purchased and was flying crashed during a storm one night and there were no survivors. Pilot error had been the final call.

  “Your Uncle Richard only comes around if he thinks you will be here. The same with his greedy kids.”

  “You mean your other grandkids,” he said, smirking. Dina and Derek Hanson weren’t that close to him growing up even though they were around the same age.

  Crew’s parents were just blue collar workers living paycheck to paycheck their whole lives until they struck it big on the lotto.

  His mother’s brother decided that maybe his younger sister was worth something now. Like a handout when he’d never helped his parents when they needed it. After it was all left to Crew, his uncle and cousins thought they could squeeze some green out of him. Not happening.

  “It doesn’t matter what their names are, they rarely come around. They are too busy with their lives.”

  “Good for them,” he said sarcastically. He’d never abandon the one person to take him in and love him unconditionally. His grandmother loved everyone the same. Or she used to. She had little tolerance for her son and other grandki
ds now. “Let’s go back to your rooms and get your jacket.”

  He offered his hand and helped her up even though she didn’t need it. She might be seventy-five, but she’d give most fifty-year-olds a run for their money in many things in life.

  Once they were in her two-room suite on the first floor of the complex, he looked around the open area. There was a decent-sized living room with a four-person table near the galley kitchen. Her bedroom and bathroom were off to the side. She loved it here and he knew if he couldn’t get her to go with him, she was at least being looked after.

  She came out of her bedroom with her jacket on over her black pants and UGG boots and he couldn’t hold back the laughter. “What?” she said. “You bought them for me.”

  “I did,” he said back. He’d been stunned when she said she wanted a pair but figured they would be nice and warm on the grounds, not that she’d go out in public in them. Even her black pants were stretchy with a longer sweater. She looked pretty modern to him too.