Game of Love: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Author's Note

  Game Of Love

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Epilogue

  Thank you!

  Hot Shot (Preview)

  Lulu Pratt’s Books

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2020 by Lulu Pratt

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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

  Author’s Note

  Game Of Love is a full-length 75,000+ word novel. Please note it ends at 91%.

  Thank you for reading this. I hope you enjoy Game Of Love.

  I’ve also included a preview of my book, Hot Shot, for your enjoyment.

  I also would like to thank Renee for being a wonderful ARC reveiwer.

  Happy reading,

  Lulu xoxo

  Game Of Love

  – A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance –

  My new boss is a jerk. A hot billionaire-with-an-Irish-accent jerk.

  A bad boy who looks so good in his tailored suit.

  So what if he’s hot and his baby blues make me weak in the knees?

  Rumors of his criminal past are office gossip.

  And I’m not surprised: my family’s latest gaming app was stolen by his company.

  I’ve gone undercover as an intern to expose the truth.

  I’m determined to stay on mission... until the moment our lips lock, and all my plans go up in smoke.

  I have to be careful: he’s not the only one with secrets.

  But that’s not what drives us apart.

  Can we be together or do we both lose this game of love?

  ***Sizzling hot alpha full-length romance novel with no cliffhangers, no cheating, and a guaranteed happily-ever-after***

  – Dedication –

  I dedicate this romance to my better half, Jamie, for his support of this book and my dreams.

  Chapter 1

  FREYA

  I WILLED IT to rain.

  If it rained, I could cancel my run without guilt, and head home to curl up with a good book. Since graduating a year ago, I was relishing the time I had to read books I actually wanted to read. It felt like forever since I had picked up a novel and lost myself in another world. Not that my own world was that bad; in fact, the world was just starting to open up to me.

  That’s why I was in the café – I was researching travel options so that I wouldn’t have to use a book to escape anymore. I had finished four long years of a design degree and I couldn’t wait to leave Boston behind me for a few months backpacking around Europe. Between studying full-time and working long hours in the family business to fund my studies, I felt like I’d been stuck behind a desk forever, even though I was only twenty-three. Images of sandy beaches, winding medieval alleyways, galleries with portraits I had only seen in books or online, and majestic ancient buildings flooded my screen. It had been my dream to visit Europe for as long as I could remember, and I had only a few more weeks of work to go before I could finally think about actually booking a flight, throwing the essentials into a backpack, and setting off.

  I topped up my herbal tea with hot water and looked around. I would miss this place. It was my safe haven. Antoinette’s was a tiny café tucked down a quiet street; it was so cozy that it was almost possible to forget you were in the city. It barely sat a dozen customers inside and about four on the small patio, and those who did find a seat tended to stay a while. Antoinette, the owner, moved between her customers topping up mugs, serving the most amazing food, and making the kind of nosy queries that might have lost a less charismatic hostess her clientele. She knew everything about everyone who passed through the door.

  Right now, Antoinette was doing her absolute best to find me a man. She prided herself on her matchmaking skills, and a recent successful endeavor with pairing up her niece had filled her with confidence and renewed her determination to find my Prince Charming. Already today she had subtly sniffed out two potential partners from the various customers and gestured to me to assess them with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. I pretended to check them each over and then shook my head, resulting in a frustrated shrug and something muttered in French that I couldn’t quite make out.

  My phone vibrated its way across the painted wooden table, moving closer to me as though asking to be picked up. I sighed and dragged my eyes away from the Irish village on the screen and picked up the phone.

  “Freya? Come home, you aren’t going to believe what has happened!” a panicked voice cried.

  “What’s up? I’m kinda busy…” my tone probably gave away the fact that I was fed up with my sister’s tendency to dramatize the trivial. I was used to Beatrix’s melodramatic calls, and I was quite happy where I was, thank you very much.

  “Oh God, can you just drop whatever you are doing and get over here?” she begged.

  “Come on, just tell me. What’s going on?” I sighed, draining my teacup and packing away my laptop.

  “It’s an absolute nightmare. Just come over! I can’t explain on the phone!” She hung up. I had a feeling that this was more than the usual design issue that she wanted me to sort out. The phone flashed into life again, and I answered it instantly.

  “Beatrix?” I asked, worried now.

  “Mom and Dad are fine, I mean, there’s nothing wrong like that… No need to panic!” she reassured me.

  “So, what’s going on?” I asked again as I started to stand up.

  “Just get over here!” she half-shouted, exasperated. It seemed to me like she could have explained whatever new disaster had befallen in the time this all took, but I knew better than to argue with her when she was like this.

  I looked outside and saw the first few spots of rain starting to fall. No run for me this evening! Then again, that meant I needed a taxi, and that could be easier said than done.

  As I walked out, a man held open the door for me, for a second I regretted leaving as I might have taken Antoinette up on her matchmaking offer. He was dark and tall with blue eyes that twinkled a
s he gave me the once over. As I thanked him for holding the door, I thought I detected an accent in the way he said, “My pleasure.”

  I made my way along the street while scanning for cabs, huddling under my coat, and at the same time wracking my brain for potential causes of my sister’s outburst.

  My family ran Dynasty Games. It was a moderately successful app company that grew out of my parents’ business, which had originally made traditional physical board games. It wasn’t a change I loved, but Beatrix was passionate about all things app. My argument had always been that a game on a screen could never match the memories I had of the family sitting around playing board games together or rather testing out Dad’s latest invention. Apps were the future, though, and Dad’s old games had been swept away in a rush of action games, strategy games, and games that were so addicting that they regularly made people walk into lamp posts. It was a brave new world of virtual reality and in-app purchases, and while I was out of touch with the mindset that allowed people to pay real money for imaginary things they could use in an imaginary world, I was also in awe of it.

  I have to admit I did enjoy my time spent at the studio. Dad was the creative force, coming up with new game ideas, albeit with little idea of how his concept would translate into an on-screen app. I was in charge of working out how to make his ideas look good while Beatrix worked with Dad to refine his ideas and worked with a couple of full-time on-site coders, while Mom ran the office and made sure the bills were paid. We also had a large number of devoted testers who gave feedback.

  When things were going smoothly, we were a well-oiled machine, churning out quirky little games and expansions that people seemed to love in a way that the bigger game companies just couldn’t match. Of course, financially, it was a tough market. Being a small fish in a big pond was great for creativity but less healthy for the bank balance. It was a relief when a series of successful small projects led to a few awards and some interest being shown in the company from some of the bigger players in the industry. Lately, tension had been high as we prepared to launch our biggest venture yet, a project that would either make or break Dynasty Games. However, despite the added pressure I found my attention increasingly drawn to the world beyond my parents’ home studio and Beatrix’s constant stream of improvements. Once this new game was launched, I was free. Free to explore the world beyond Boston, beyond the family business, and beyond my own comfort zone. I felt a knot of excitement in my stomach as I thought about it, which was quickly replaced by a lump of anxiety over Beatrix’s mysterious call.

  I frantically waved down a cab. It pulled up and soon I was on my way to Dynasty Games Ltd., also known as Mom and Dad’s place. I might have been totally ready to move on to new things, but I had an uneasy feeling that all my grand plans might have to be put on hold.

  ***

  My parents could never bear to move from their comfortable suburban neighborhood, where they had lived for almost thirty years and raised two daughters. So instead of commuting to work each day, they decided that work could come to them. They built a studio at the end of their huge garden, and it quickly became the hub of the company. The studio had become my second home; it was where I worked, where I avoided my studies, and where I would inevitably find my parents and sister. As it was always unbearably warm inside, even in the cool spring air, the windows and sliding glass doors were kept open a lot, so the whole workspace blended into my parents’ real pride and joy – their garden, filled with flowers and shady trees and a lawn that was free of dandelions all year long. As I fumbled some money in the direction of the cab driver once we reached the house, I could hear raised voices through the open doors. I hurried towards the studio, taking a deep breath.

  “She’s here!” I could hear Beatrix screech as she slid the door open further and dragged me inside. She was talking so fast on the phone that I couldn’t make her out as she quickly left the room and went into her adjacent office, slamming the door after her. I took in the chaos that met me. Paula and Drew, Dynasty Games’ crack team of developers, were at their usual posts but frantically tapping on phones, tablets, and keyboards with an energy that was quite different from their usual chilled-out pace. They didn’t even look up as I entered. At the layout tablet, my parents were sitting with documents strewn messily in front of them. My dad gave me a silent wave and held up a phone to indicate he was making a call. Mom was the only person who was calm and still, so I sat down beside her, shuffling out of my coat, and dropping my bag.

  “What happened?” I began, then froze as she burst into tears.

  “We’re ruined, Freya. Everything is ruined…” She put her face in her hands, and I looked in panic at my father who had just hung up the phone. My blood had turned to ice, and for a second I thought I might collapse.

  “No answer! What do we pay lawyers for?” he muttered, reaching out his hand to cover Mom’s. He smiled at me, and his attempt at being reassuring had the opposite effect. I could feel the adrenaline surging through my body as I racked my brain to try to work out what could have gone wrong.

  “It’s Animagic. It’s been ripped off,” my mom said, blowing her nose noisily.

  “But how? We haven’t released anything yet!”

  I was almost relieved; the game couldn’t possibly have been ripped off, they had to have made a mistake. We had been working on Animagic for six months, twelve if you count when my dad had his first ideas. It was our biggest project to date. We had put everything we had into production and taken a business loan to invest in a massive marketing campaign that was due to launch over the weekend.

  “Here,” Beatrix had come back into the room, and she thrust a tablet into my hand. She was quiet now, the anger all gone and her face pale under her perfect makeup. I looked at her quizzically and then focused on the game loading on the screen. A series of beautifully animated characters tumbled onto the screen, and the menu opened. I explored the options, finding a tutorial that seamlessly walked me through the introduction to a game called Cre8ure. Each time I pressed the arrow to move to the next screen my heart sank a little further. Cre8ure was Animagic. Sure, visually it was different – there was no trace of my artwork, but the concept was virtually identical. Players had to earn, collect, and amalgamate creatures with different characteristics to move successfully through a series of habitats. Everything that made Animagic different and appealing had been copied. The unique mixture of action gameplay, strategic thinking, and compelling collections was our unique selling point.

  I was speechless. I handed the tablet back to my sister and looked blankly at my mother who had made coffee and was sliding mugs across the table.

  “We don’t know how it happened,” Dad said solemnly. “We have only just spoken to the receptionist at the lawyer’s office. They were meant to be getting back to us, but now there’s no answer. It’s a gray area…”

  “A gray area?” I stood up. It was my turn to react, and I was consumed with anger. “How the hell can this be a gray area? It is a blatant breach of… of copyright! It is entirely stolen!”

  “Not visually. The artwork, the script, the characters, they are all different. And the concept could be just different enough to make it acceptable. At any rate, it doesn’t look like a sure thing in court…” Beatrix said ruefully, sipping her coffee and closing her eyes.

  “We don’t know what to do, how it happened, or whether we will even ever know…” Mom added, dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex.

  “So, what we do is we release!” I said, sloshing some of my coffee onto the tabletop as I gestured to the promotional artwork for the game on the wall. “We release and compete with it. This doesn’t take away from the fact that we have a great product on our hands. I say we let it speak for itself.”

  “Freya,” Beatrix sighed. “You don’t understand. Our app is going to look like a cheap copy. It’s Clover House. We cannot compete. The one thing we had going for us was the concept, and now they have used that. They are offering free in-app purchase
s for the first three months; you can even earn real-life merchandise. There’s a range of fucking stuffed animals, for fuck’s sake!”

  Beatrix earned herself a shocked look from our mother and she fell silent, shuffling through paperwork and pointing things out to Dad in a low voice.

  “Beatrix thinks there might be a risk of Clover House suing us for copying them if we release,” my mom said quietly.

  “They wouldn’t have the balls!” my dad was saying.

  Beatrix looked at me with grim determination, and I knew she wouldn’t say a lawsuit wasn’t a possibility if she hadn’t checked out the facts.

  I closed my eyes for a second, my heart sinking anew. Clover House were the big boys. They were based in Boston like us, but they had international offices, a fancy new skyscraper, and ruthless lawyers. They had made a pretty persuasive attempt to buy out Dynasty Games a couple of years back. We had resisted and continued to carve out our own niche with small-scale quirky games and educational apps aimed at kids while Clover House brought out a string of massively successful products with a more widespread appeal.

  It had seemed like this town was big enough for both of us, the market was booming, advertising revenue was up and the technology was getting more and more accessible.

  But now it looked like they’d won the war.

  Chapter 2

  KEEGAN

  AS USUAL, my mind wouldn’t settle on my work. I tried to focus on the spreadsheet on the monitor in front of me, but my attention kept wandering, my eyes turning to the overcast sky outside. I also kept thinking about the pretty woman I had held open the door on the way in here. Her copper hair was what made me notice her, but her smile was striking and genuine. She seemed in a rush or I might have tried my luck with an offer of coffee. Anyway, I would likely never see her again.