Ruined: A scorching hot romance book with a bad-boy. Perfect for fans of Fifty Shades Freed

“We have to act like a real couple...”

The solution? Mind-blowingly real pleasure!

Dane “Smoke” Kingsolver and Cat Livingston need to fake a relationship to get her abusive ex off her back. Convincing people their friendship has heated up to scorching levels is unexpectedly easy! But when their red-hot chemistry threatens to ruin everything they’ve ever known can they go back to what they had before? And do they even want to?

“DARE is Harlequin’s hottest line yet. Every book should come with a free fan. I dare you to try them!”

—Tiffany Reisz, international bestselling author

JACKIE ASHENDEN writes dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes who’ve just got the world to their liking only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr Jax, two kids and two rats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their gutsy heroines she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, wasting time on social media, or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband. To keep up to date with Jackie’s new releases and other news sign up to her newsletter at jackieashenden.com.

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Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Ruined

Jackie Ashenden

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07115-4

RUINED

© 2018 Jackie Ashenden

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Jenny.

You’ve been waiting so patiently for the end of Cat and Smoke’s story

and here it is at last.

Hope you like it. :-)

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

Cat

IT’S ALWAYS BAD when you’re in the kind of trouble that requires the help of an outlaw motorcycle club. It’s especially bad when you know you’ll do anything to get that help.

But what do you do when your kid’s in danger? You fight any demons, slay any dragons. It’s hard when you can’t slay those dragons on your own, though. When you have to pay in order to have them slain for you.

I would have paid anything to get Annie away from her father.

Which was why I’d ended up standing outside the Knights of Ruin MC’s clubhouse, in the rain, at midnight on a Saturday. In the middle of one of the loudest parties I’d ever heard.

I didn’t want to go in. I always swore I wouldn’t.

But when the devil has your kid, and the cops think everything’s fine, what the hell are you supposed to do? There was only one person who could help me, and unfortunately he was inside.

Dane Kingsolver, aka Smoke, my best friend since I was a kid and a Knights enforcer.

Who was not answering his goddamn phone.

The Knights’ clubhouse was in an old brick warehouse on the outskirts of Brooklyn. There were hogs lined up like toys outside, a couple of prospects hanging around looking after them, a couple more on the door. Music blared—the hard-driving beat of heavy rock. A bunch of girls were talking to the prospect on the door, their hair in artfully styled manes, their skirts up to their navels. All looking for a piece of danger, of wildness.