The past could destroy their love...
Struggling to keep her corporate-recruiting firm afloat, Manhattan executive Melissa Grant has no time for love. Then Adam Roundtree walks into her life. But the charismatic businessman is no ordinary client. Heâs the man who can bring Melissaâs careerâand her heartâto life...until a shocking discovery jeopardizes their blossoming relationship.
Or fuel an unquenchable passion
For Melissa and Adam, fate couldnât have played a crueler trick: their families have been embroiled in a stormy feud for generations, turning former business partners into lifelong enemies and leaving a bitter legacy that casts a long shadow. Then someone starts sabotaging Adamâs work, and everything points to Melissa. Now they could lose everything...unless their love is strong enough to close the door on the past and open their hearts to the promise of the future.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for purchasing and reading Against All Odds. I hope you have enjoyed your peep into the lives of Melissa Grant, Adam Roundtree and their complicated families. When I began this story, I had no idea that I would be writing a modern version of the Hatfields and the McCoys, historical families with a well-documented hatred for each other. Fight it though they do, love and passion grip Melissa and Adam in a steel vise, and they cannot escape it. Once they taste its fruit, they donât want to escape.
Adam is a strong man, kind and loving, but arrow straight and demanding. In times past, the strong, harsh and hard alpha male was considered the ideal hero, a man the heroine had to tame. But my taste is for the strong, capable and dependable man who has human frailties but overcomes them; who can hurt to the depths of his soul and still stand strong for himself, his woman and his family. In my view, Adam is such a man. I hope you will agree with me. You meet him again in many of the Harrington novels, because he is a close friend of Telford Harrington and his brothers, Russ and Drake. I hope you will read the Harrington series.
Kimani Press has reissued the first three Harrington books: Once in a Lifetime, After the Loving and Love Me or Leave Me and several others of my bestselling titles: Sealed with a Kiss, Beyond Desire, Secret Desire, Obsession, Swept Away, Fools Rush In and Scarlet Woman. If you canât find them, drop me an email and Iâll try to help.
I enjoy receiving mail, and I try to answer within a reasonable time. You may write me at P.O. Box 45, New York, NY 10044.If you would like an answer, please enclose a self-addressed and stamped legal-size envelope. You may email me at [email protected]. If you would like to join my book club, visit [email protected].
Fond regards,
Gwynne Forster
Acknowledgments
To my beloved stepson, Peter Forster Acsadi, whose attentiveness, encouragement and support mean so much to me; to my husband, whose love, devotion and helpfulness sustain me; and in memory of my dear friend Lily.
Chapter 1
Melissa Grant hung up the phone. Anxious. Her graceful brown fingers strummed her desk. Sheâd had to expand her business in order to stay ahead of her competition, but months would pass before she got the results that she anticipated. Until then her financial status would be precarious at best. Her banker knew that andâbecause her first loan hadnât been fully paidâhad denied her request for a second one. Now she stood a good chance of losing her business. She knew when she came to New York that she could expect tough competition, but she had worked hard and established one of the top executive search firms, and sheâd done it in less than five years. She had taken stock of her resources and decided that she had three alternatives, all of them unattractive. She could put her personal funds into her MTG Executive Search firmâsomething sheâd been taught in business school never to do; she could borrow the money from her father; or she could take the lucrative Hayes/Roundtree account. Bankruptcy was preferable to discussing a loan with her father, Rafer Grant, and only trouble could come from any kind of involvement with a Roundtree. Adam Roundtreeâs executive assistant, Jason Court, had called her with a request that she find a manager for âLeather and Hides,â the division of Hayes/Roundtree Enterprises, Inc., that tanned leather and made leather goods. She noticed the light on her phone.
âMTG.â She leaned back in her desk chair, twirling a slingshot that she won in a charity raffle. âHello, Mr. Court. Iâm not sure Iâm the person you want for this job. I donât know a thing about leather.â
âIn other words, you donât want the contract,â he said as though surprised. âAdam wants MTG. He thinks your firm is the best, and Adam is used to having the best. Think it over. I can raise the fee by twenty percent, but no more.â