The Arrangement, page 1
The Arrangement
WILDE MEN
BOOK ONE
MARIE MCKINNEY
I LOVE THE WAY YOU LLC
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © I LOVE THE WAY YOU LLC, 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form on by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Contents
Summary
Author’s Note
1. Maggie
2. Maggie
3. Maggie
4. Aidan
5. Aidan
6. Maggie
7. Aidan
8. Maggie
9. Aidan
10. Maggie
11. Aidan
12. Maggie
13. Aidan
14. Maggie
15. Aidan
16. Maggie
17. Aidan
18. Aidan
19. Maggie
20. Maggie
Summary
When Magdalena was a little girl, the worse thing she could imagine was never knowing who her father was. Then she grew up and met him. Now with the threat of what’s left of her family being ripped apart, she’s forced to wed his rival to stop a brewing war from imploding a world she never knew existed.
When the girl he’d pledged to marry was murdered, Aidan Wilde swore he would never share his life with anyone else. He promised her he’d dedicate every breath to ruining her killer. Who would have thought that in order to do the second he’d have to break his promise about the first? But that doesn’t mean he’s going to give away his heart.
He’s not the husband she wanted but he’s the one she needs.
She’s not the wife he wanted but she’s the one he’s owed.
Together Magdalena and Aidan could be a force to be reckoned with. But first they have to get out of their own way.
Book 1/5 in the Wilde Men of Wind Point series.
Author’s Note
STOP!!! Dear Reader, I can’t let you go another word without first thanking you for taking a chance on this novel. It’s not my first but it is my most loved and begins the Wilde Men saga that has taken me down the road to four other couples near and dear to my heart.
At this point, we’ve spent so much time together, they’ve begun to feel like family. All my work can be found at:
www.ILoveTheWayYou.com
The rest of the Wilde Men saga is coming in 2024.
For the price of a coffee, you can read not only my works but the works of many other talented authors, view gorgeous art pieces, share in real life love stories, and get recs for the best of the best in romance novels new and old, and much more.
I Love The Way You.com where falling in love for the first time happens again and again.
Chapter 1
Maggie
IT WAS HOT AND STICKY and the last thing Magdalena Moore wanted to be doing was trotting back and forth between the crowded dining room and the sweltering kitchen, sweat trickling down both her back and front in equal measure to gather damply in her brassier and the waistband of her panties. Where she couldn't scratch. Or adjust. Or do anything at all about other than itch wetly and whimper in her internal thoughts while trying to keep a professional appearance of 'happy to serve you.'
She wasn’t happy to serve.
She was hot and miserable.
The AC had blown that evening just after all the repair shops were conveniently closed for the day but Black Tin was more dependable than the postal service. She had worked here since she was sixteen, that was a decade of service, and in that time she couldn’t remember a single time they’d closed a second sooner than advertised. There had been actual active tornadoes and they’d still stayed open.
Next to that what were a few hours of 90-degree temperatures?
Hot. Miserable.
Also? The customers were dicks.
“Salad. Salad. Salad.”
Magdalena grimaced to herself as she passed the asshole chanting at her, determinedly ignoring everything but her next task. It was dinner rush and they were understaffed by regular employees and overstaffed with trainees. Which was fine, it was doable, just a regular Saturday night during the summer. She could handle this in her sleep. The chanting was something new but it wasn’t like she hadn’t gracefully handled rude customers before.
“Salad. Salad. Salad.”
Balancing two full plates in both hands as she weaved between tables, her shadow for the night trailing behind too close for the tight space so that at any given moment she was dodging potential collision, she threw a tight smile in the direction of the low murmur that was steadily picking up fervor.
“Be right with you!”
As she approached her target table, her smile momentarily faltered as she saw the group of men leering at her. A flash of dismay to register on her face and then she was plastering it back on. They were clearly drunk and had been eyeing her up since she first passed by their table. One of them, a burly man with a thick beard, placed his hand on her hip as she tried to set down plate in front of him. She braced herself not to flinch, trying to discreetly pull away without spilling the food all over him.
Fun times at Black Tin Roof Bar and Grill.
She’d quit but… Well. The kids. Her mom. The fact she had no other employable skills or work experience. There was always a ‘but.’
“Chicken tenders with fries…” She settled the dish in front of one customer, barely waiting for confirmation before deftly sliding the second entre on to the next. “And…lamb with mashed potatoes for you, sir. Anything else I can get for …”
Maggie trailed off, distracted as her coworker, Trina, touched her shoulder, pulled her to the side.
“Mags, you have a phone call, sounds pretty urgent. I’m taking your tables.”
“What?” she asked dumbly.
“Go get your call and clock out,” Trina said.
There was a pitying expression on her face that sunk leaden ice into Maggie’s veins. Rain, snow, heat, or tornadoes. They never shut down. The health inspector would burst a vein if he knew but Maggie wasn't the only employee to ever work a shift with a 101 degree fever.
They never clocked out early. So what was this? Numbly, Maggie untwisted her apron, dropping it to the ground and stepping over it as she headed for the back office.
The thing that was hardest about receiving an emergency call was what the actual call itself represented. Before the news, before the new reality set in and the plans for how to deal with the Big Bad Event began, there was the knowledge that something terrible had already happened mingled with the fear of not knowing what that terrible thing was. Like a terrified dog in an impending electric storm, Magdalena felt her stomach skitter with anticipated fear. There was a call. That was it. That was all the information she had. And in response, all her muscles were one solid contracted ball of nerves. She imagined it instead and her imagination got more horrific with each step. Nobody emergency called with good news. Nobody ever said, “stop everything you’re doing! You look very put together today.”
Maggie's heart was pounding in her chest as she entered the dimly lit office, the stale scent of old coffee and cigarette smoke filling her nostrils.
The general manager, Davis, avoided her eyes altogether and gestured at the lit office phone before excusing himself awkwardly and closing the door behind him.
Maggie immediately felt claustrophobia closing in. There wasn't a great lot of space or lighting. No windows. Barely much room to move around the monstrosity of a wooden desk, and all the odds and ends that'd been collected over the years by general managers of the past. But it wasn't any of those things that made the office feel too tight or too small, oppressive: it was that damn flashing light. She picked up the phone and tentatively pressed it to her ear.
"Hello?" Her voice was whisper-thin but in the all-consuming silence it echoed loud.
“Ms. Moore?” the voice on the other line asked.
“Yes, she’s me. That’s me. – yes.”
“Magdalena Moore?”
“Maggie. Yes.”
“I’m calling from Wind Point City Hospital. I have you listed as the emergency contact for a Jennifer Moore?”
Briefly, there was relief. She'd thought one of the kids…No. She'd heard "emergency" and thought Miri. She’d run off. Or swallowed something she shouldn’t have. Or was lost and scared and unfindable. Or water. There were a thousand fears about water which all ended with Miri’s lank little body swollen and bloated and still. So still. Anything would be relief from that ghastly image she could never quite scrub from her brain. Then swift on the tail end of relief, because of it, guilt sucker punched her.
“Yes, that’s my mother. What happened?”
“She was brought in this afternoon--”
Magdalena numbly absorbed as much of the information as she could, body and brain distant, the words felt like they were drifting through a fog with only every other coming through. There was a car accident, Jenni was hurt. Critically. She hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. Of course she wasn't. The other passenger, or the driver maybe? He’d brought her in. He was fine. Only her mother had suffered any serious injuries,
Magdalena felt like she was drowning in a sea of information. She couldn't process anything, not even the fact that her mother was hurt.
“I—do you need me to come in? Should I--”
“Yes. As soon as you can.”
“Okay.” The gentle click of the phone reconnecting to its base spurred her onwards. If maybe the next couple of hours she divided her life into things she could do…maybe she could get through this. Answer the phone. Go to the hospital. Go!
By the time she arrived her mother had been moved to a private room. Blurs in medical uniforms helpfully directed her to the right place. She got lost twice, turned around in the maze of whitewashed walls and the bright glare of lights reflecting off the linoleum floors, ‘go-go-go’ chanted in her head. Until finally she was there, pushing through a heavy wooden door, ushered in by the gentle swish and beep of machines. Keeping her mom alive. Medically unconscious, critical but stable. At any other time Maggie would have understood what those words meant but staring down at her mother’s motionless body all she could think was: “she’s so quiet.”
Her mother was never quiet. She was a flurry of nervous energy and chatter, always moving, always talking. Like pausing for a moment was anathema. Like she'd break apart into a million pieces if she just stopped for a second. Maybe she was right. Look at her now. It was unnerving to see her so still and silent.
"But alive, there's fight in her," the nurse said. She'd introduced herself when Maggie hd first entered the room, written her name on the board besides the television her mother could not watch. Maggie couldn't remember what it was. Strange hands lighted comfortingly on her shoulders and directed her to the chair beside her mother's bed. Pushed her down helpfully when her legs wouldn't unlock, steadied her when perversely they decided to crumple. Then left her alone with the other stranger who would not be comforting her any time soon. Not that Jennifer Moore had ever comforted her daughters a day in her life.
Awkwardly, Maggie gathered her mother's hand in her own. It was cold and lifeless, like a piece of frozen meat left out to thaw. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she tried to blink them away. She wouldn't cry, not yet.
The woman before her did not look like the mother she knew. She looked…so innocent. So young. The layers of foundation and blush had been wiped away, her almond-shaped eyes were clean of heavy mascara and dark bold eye-shadows. Her mouth that seemed to frown even in sleep was relaxed now. Despite the tubes and wires and plugs and machines…her mother looked at peace. That’s what was different. She was something out of the sleeping beauty movie Maggie had loved as a kid when the idea of falling into a deep sleep and only awaking when a kind prince had come to the rescue had been a vivid fantasy. She’d wanted so badly to be Sleeping Beauty. Wished so hard for a prince, any prince (Dad), to come whisk her away, take her to someplace better.
Then Gwen and Miri were born, her beautiful little sisters, and she was too busy rescuing them to worry about herself. Oh. What was she going to tell them? The truth. Obviously. But what was that? I don’t know if she’ll be alright. I don’t know what this means for us.
They’d stay with Maggie, of course. They’d be together. She’d make sure of that. It wasn't like when she was little when every knock or ring of the bell sent them dashing behind furniture, tucking themselves out of sight, for fear that child services were there to tear them away from each other. She was an adult now. No one could come to take them from her.
Maybe not much at all had to change.
A knock at the open door tore her from her thoughts.
A grizzly bear in a fitted pinstripe suit stood at the threshold. He cleared his throat, a pointed grumbling rumble. “You Magdalena?”
Maggie nodded cautiously.
“Mr. Naveem wants to see you. Come with me.”
And just like that, Mom was Sleeping Beauty but at long last, the prince had arrived for Maggie. Mikael Naveem. Her Dad.
Twenty-six years too late.
Chapter 2
Maggie
MIKAEL NAVEEM WAS A lot older than Maggie could ever have imagined. She'd known he was older than her mother, would have to be, by the time they'd met he was already a self-made man flush with resources and riches her mom openly admired but rarely got to enjoy herself. But she’d pictured a handful of years, a decade at most. Which still would have been a bit icky considering Magdalena had come along while her mom was still a kid herself, at the ripe age of fifteen. So their relationship had to have started at least then, a year or so earlier, maybe when mom was 14. Gross. Gross by any standard, but this. She hadn't expected this.
Maggie was twenty-six. This stranger sitting in front of Maggie was in his early sixties, at best. At best. He’d been a grown man, older than Maggie, herself, while Jenni had been nothing more than a little girl, the same age as her middle sister. What must that have been like for her mother? Still, a child herself seduced and pursued by an adult. This man who oozed authority with every breath. Maggie shuddered.
Most of her visions of him were pieced together from over a decade ago, taken from fleeting, anxious glances. The side of his face here, the outline of a man bending to let her mom into a car there. They'd never been allowed out the house when he'd come to pick her mom up, so Maggie had stolen peeks through the heavy curtains of their sixth-floor apartment until that too was put to a stop with a sharp backhand to her face. Her mother was never one to waste words when a pinch or a smack would do.
He looked like Miri. The male grownup version of her. Pin straight, light brown hair where Maggie and Gwen had inherited their mother's riotous black curls. Eyes that were too big for his face that on Miri made her look like one of those anime dolls, pouring out innocence and vulnerability with every blink, though hers were their mother’s bright green. On their Dad, though, it balanced his wide-set jaw and a prominent nose that apparently all three girls were lucky to have escaped. They all had his rich, copper skin, though theirs leaned on the lighter end of the spectrum in a golden hue that, next to their porcelain pale mother, had always marked them as not just hers. Marked them with shades of half-orphan, absent parent un-found.
No one would ever mistake him for a handsome man. But he wasn’t ugly. More than anything he was presence. A sleazy, intimidating overwhelming presence. That sent ice down her spine and a shiver of fear through her body. Despite wanting very much to embrace this opportunity (one she’d fantasized about for decades) she couldn’t shake her instinctual desire to shy away. Scramble backwards and flee …
For her life.
Christ.
But even so. Even so, she still wanted so much.
Mr Naveem's eyes were fixed on Maggie, studying her. She could feel the weight of his gaze, heavy and suffocating. She tried to keep her composure, to not let him see how much he affected her. But it was impossible. He was her father, and she couldn't help but feel a strange connection to him, despite everything.
He reclined casually in the back of a limousine with tinted windows like some mob boss from a ‘B’ movie.
Grizzly encouraged her inside and shut the door heavily behind her. It immediately clicked – the sound of the locks engaging.
Can’t escape now.
Already anxious from the shit show that was her day up to now, the discomforting thought swam around her head in a flood of cold, thought-mushing terror, and her heart triple timed.
He looked at her. She looked back at him.
She didn’t know what to call him. Such a dumb thought to have. Twenty-six years and not only did she not know what to say to the man that had occupied her every thought with his absence, she didn't even know what to call him. So many questions she had. But she couldn’t start because she didn’t know what to call him.
