To Win a Rebel

Chapter One

George Butterworth looked out his home office window at the garden, and for several seconds, he couldn’t bring himself to move. Anna-Beth Knight was on the lawn once again, only this time, rather than doing some weird yoga pose, she was dancing.

This was not something new to him, for Anna-Beth was … an interesting woman. She was his best friend’s sister, who, for some odd reason, wasn’t exactly welcome within the Knight family. He knew why. Anna-Beth had always been a little different. She wasn’t hungry for a career or desperate for money. She didn’t have that Knight meanness that George had come to associate with the name.

According to her brother, Malcolm, if he didn’t find her a job, or somewhere to be, then their father would disown her. Malcolm didn’t want to cause a scandal, so he begged George to take her in as a homemaker, housekeeper, or something.

As it turned out, Anna-Beth didn’t have a desire to run a cutthroat business, but what she did have was the ability to cook and clean. His home was spotless. When he agreed to take her, George had expected her to be lazy, or trouble. All he’d ever heard was Malcolm complain about his sister, but she was actually a hard worker.

She got all her jobs done efficiently. She simply wasn’t cut out to be in the office, working a nine-to-five job.

From what he could tell, Anna-Beth had many different hobbies, interests, and loves. He watched her as she danced freely around the garden. Once again, she was wearing a sundress that molded to her large tits and waist, and then flared out past her hips to her ankles.

His two cocker spaniel dogs, Rex and Tee, were running around her feet. He saw her laughing as well, which lit up her whole face. She looked so confident and within her element he found it impossible to look away.

They had already shared breakfast that morning. He insisted on it.

He’d known Malcolm for nearly twenty years now, and had only seen Anna-Beth a couple of times. She was ten years younger than he was, and the first time he saw her, she’d been a ten-year-old girl. The next time had been at her eighteenth birthday party, and if he was honest, she’d not actually been present at the party, or at least he hadn’t seen her. And then, the final time had been as Malcolm brought her to his home three months ago.

He had expected to hate every second of having her in his home, but she was in fact a dream. From the moment he’d seen her again, with her long, blonde hair and beautiful, intense blue eyes, he’d felt this need to keep her. He’d not said anything to Malcolm, as he didn’t want there to be any reason for her to leave his home. Keeping her close was important.

At forty years old, George had encountered many a gold-digging woman. He’d even been used by one in the past, but he vowed he never would be again. Anna-Beth was no gold-digger.

Even if he hadn’t known her these past few months, and the fact she came from wealth, her complete lack of desire for it was an indicator. Also, according to her brother, she donated a lot of money to causes she was passionate about, much to her parents’ annoyance.

Moving away from the window, he couldn’t resist the pull of going to see her without a window or distance between them. Within minutes, he was standing on his back patio, listening to the rock music playing out of her cell phone as she danced with the dogs. Her giggle was infectious, and it took every ounce of control for him to not join her.

The dogs loved her, which was another surprise. When he had unexpected visitors, he often had to lock them away, as they didn’t like other people. They were rescue dogs, and from what the shelter told him, the start to their lives hadn’t been good, so he fell in love with them.

They were well-trained, if not a little disobedient at night, as they came into his room and slept on the floor near his bed. He knew he should send them back to their own beds, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He also knew that the dogs now divided their time between his own bed and Anna-Beth’s.

She spun around and finally came to a stop the moment she saw him. The music kept playing.

“You can come and join us, you know,” Anna-Beth said. She was panting a little, making her chest rise and fall with each intake of breath. It was a struggle not to succumb to looking at her chest, but he managed to keep his gaze at face height.

“I don’t dance.”

“All the more reason for you to do so. Come on, George!” She threw her hands up in the air, still holding her cell phone. “It is a Friday, and you’ve got to learn to be free. To shake off the week and just party.” She swung her hips from side to side and then spun around, wriggling her butt.

Did she have any idea what she was doing to him? All he wanted to do was to reach out, grab her, and take her to his bedroom. Actually, he didn’t even need a bedroom, he’d gladly take her out here, in the open. His property was secure. No one would bother them.

“You’re dancing because it’s Friday?” he asked.

“No one needs a reason to dance, duh. You can dance just because you’re feeling happy, or because you did something awesome. I don’t need a reason to dance. Sometimes I dance if I add an herb or spice to a sauce, and it works.” She gave a little fist pump.

He didn’t know why her family was so irritated by her presence. He found her utterly refreshing.

****

Anna-Beth was always terrified of saying stupid stuff when it came to George Butterworth. Since she was ten years old, she had the biggest crush on this man. She hadn’t told a soul, not even her brother, and normally she told him everything, but he wasn’t to be trusted. Not with this kind of secret.

She already knew where her last secret had gotten her. She finally admitted to her brother that she didn’t want to be part of the family business, and that she hated all of it. He’d gone straight to Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Grandpa, uncles and aunts, and all of them had been so disappointed in her.

There was no way she was going to forget that weekend of ranting, finger-pointing, disapproving looks, and of course the constant disappointment. She was kind of used to disappointment.

She couldn’t believe she had just said “duh” in front of George. It was so stupid of her. She was a thirty-year-old woman, and yet she was still living with a twenty-year-old crush. This was insane.

The only thing she could do was try not to think about it. When Malcolm dropped her off, he warned her that George was a grumpy bastard. She didn’t know exactly what had happened to make him withdraw and become more of a recluse. Either way, he didn’t appear to be like the cutthroat and cruel people her own family were happy to be.

“You want me to dance?” he asked.

Anna-Beth smiled. “No, I don’t want you to dance, unless of course you want to dance. I’m not here to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.” Like fall in love with me, and love me the same way I do you. There was no way she was going to tell him her feelings.

He was her boss, and she was trying to keep it professional. In fact, she suddenly realized that asking her boss to dance with her was not professional. She couldn’t help but drop the smile, and then understood what a fool she must have looked like.

“Anna-Beth, what’s going on?” George asked.

“It’s nothing. You’re totally right. I shouldn’t be asking you to dance.” She clasped her hands together, as she had memories of all the times she’d not been a simple employee.

Malcolm had dumped her here, because he had nowhere else to put her. Also, she knew he’d chosen his friend’s place specifically to keep her out of the line of gossip. Dancing, doing yoga, singing, cooking, cleaning, actually having fun, was not part of the Knight handbook.

Firing people, being cruel, manipulation to get what they wante d— they were all traits she refused to use.

“Dinner will be ready at five,” she said, brushing past him.

Dancing on the grass like a lunatic was not a good idea. Even though she was completely and totally in love with George, and had been since she was young, that didn’t give her cause to act like an idiot.

She walked into the kitchen and went straight to the fridge where the brisket waited. She’d gotten it out of the freezer yesterday as there were a couple of recipes she wanted to try.

George always ordered his meat from the local butcher, in bulk, and then froze it. He’d then use it throughout each month, leaving the final piece of meat until he ordered another one.

She tried not to think about her family and what they were capable of. She’d never gotten along with them. Not even when she was a kid and had seen their antics up close. Of course, they didn’t realize she’d been watching. To her parents, kids were to be seen and not heard, and seeing as she was a surprise child ten years after Malcolm was born, she’d been raised by mostly nannies. Nannies she had loved.

There were one or two who’d been strict and cruel, but they hadn’t lasted long. She remembered when one nanny had gotten angry with her for not understanding math at a young age, and she’d smacked her bottom with a belt. Malcolm had come to see her, and instantly fired the nanny. She did love her brother, as she did her parents and the rest of her family. She just wasn’t like them.

“Damn it, Anna-Beth, you don’t just keep giving your money away on hopeless causes. You must learn to invest money.”

“Why are you so dumb?”

“That is not how that works.”

“I’m so disappointed in you.”

“How can I trust you when you do this?”

That last one was because she helped an employee who had been unjustly fired, and she showed the woman what to do. She’d also provided the documentation for her to dispute her wrongful termination.

There might be a teeny, tiny problem her family didn’t know about. She didn’t test well, but she did have an amazing understanding of business law, seeing as she might have studied it. Or was it employment law?

Either way, Anna-Beth refused to be cruel. Her parents had placed her in the HR department as they thought she would do little damage there. She caused them too many headaches.

When people got in their way, they fired them, and it was wrong. Of course, those that did deserve to be let go, she didn’t dispute. The ones who were amazing at their jobs were able to stay. She wondered if any of the people she’d helped still had a job.

It had caused many stressful conversations around the dinner table. She didn’t care, as most of the people who worked there needed their jobs. She was more than willing to help.

End of sample chapter