Her Portuguese Man Of Love (BWWM Romance Book 1) Read online

  HER PORTUGUESE

  MAN OF LOVE

  INTERNATIONAL ALPHAS BOOK 12

  SHERIE KEYS

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  Summary

  “Wow, the ending left me so happy I am crying!!”

  “OMG, We all need a man like Adrian Ferriera in our lives!”

  When Delphine Bishop had her heart broken she knew she wanted to get as far away from America as she could.

  Next stop. Europe.

  And more specifically, Portugal.

  And it was there that she met the devastatingly handsome billionaire Adrian Ferriera and Delphine enjoyed the perfect vacation fling that would help mend her broken heart.

  However, just as Delphine was ready to fly home to the United States, her Portuguese man of love raised the stakes.

  He asked her to stake another week and if she didn't fall in love with him in seven days, he would give her a million dollars....

  This is a sweet but steamy billionaire romance that will have you laughing and crying all the way to the end. This story features a happy ever after but not in the way you expect it. Download now and get reading!

  Copyright Notice

  Portuguese Man Of Love © 2018, Sherie Keys

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Contents

  Chapter1

  Chapter2

  Chapter3

  Chapter4

  Chapter5

  Chapter6

  Chapter7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  Chapter1

  Golden afternoon light spilled from the tops all down the sides of the thick concrete and metal jungle of buildings that stood like staunch soldiers shoulder to shoulder, row after row, filling up the island of Manhattan.

  Nestled into them on the western side of the city on a tree-lined street amidst a wall of similar-looking homes was a respectable brownstone with a restored vintage door made of mahogany and set with stained glass inlays. Both the door and the home that it opened into were slightly nicer than some of the other homes but still not quite as spruced up as others; it blended well, looking and feeling slightly eclectic and comfortable.

  A man in his late twenties skipped up the steps to the brownstone and stopped before the door, giving it a sharp knock. He was flawlessly dressed and coiffed, his navy pants and button-up shirt pressed, and the collar of the shirt folded up just so. His short meticulously trimmed golden blonde hair had a glossy sheen and was combed into model perfect place. He looked as though he could have just stepped out of the pages of a men’s fashion magazine, from his leather loafers up, but his face and sea green eyes showed deep concern and conflict.

  He raised one hand and knocked on the door a second time, while in his other hand, he held fast to the handles of a cloth bag which sagged with the weight of its contents. The door opened, and the man’s shoulders fell as he gazed at the woman who stood before him.

  She was barefoot, wearing leggings and a loose button-up shirt. Her short pixie cut black hair was styled with volume and curled forward in front of her ears at the sides, which accentuated the beautiful bone structure of her face: high cheeks, big dark brown eyes fringed with thick black lashes, her rounded nose, and the delicate curve of her chin beneath her full lips. Her dark skin was the shade of caramelized chocolate, with a natural golden sheen to it. The only thing about her face which wasn’t a beautiful striking feature was the puffiness and redness of her eyes.

  “Oh, honey! You’ve been crying! Of course, you’ve been crying. Poor thing. Come here,” the man said, his eyes widening as concern overwhelmed him. He stepped through the doorway to her and wrapped his arms around her.

  The woman buried her face in his chest and held him in return. As he reached his free hand to close the door behind him, she burst into tears. He held her warmly until her weeping slowed, and she let him go and wiped her hands over her eyes, pushing the tears away.

  “I can’t believe you’re here!” she managed through her sniffling as she tried to even her breathing. He only looked at her sorrowfully and dropped his hands from her shoulders.

  “Well, I had to! I mean, I get this text from you that says you and Mike broke up, and I just had to come straight over. This is no time for you to be alone! My poor Delphine.” He hugged her once more and then took her hand in his and walked with her in tow as he headed toward her kitchen.

  Upon entering the kitchen, he sat her down on a barstool that faced the island counter in the middle of the room, and he placed the cloth bag on the wooden surface of the island before them. Delphine eyed it curiously.

  “What’s that?”

  He reached into the bag and pulled the contents out one at a time. “A pint of salted caramel chocolate ice cream for you, and a pint of chocolate raspberry swirl for both of us to share. Two bottles of the best red Zinfandel on the island, a cinnamon candle, and two kinds of masks: cucumber and charcoal. You can have whichever one you like, and I’ll do the other. All the necessities for post breakup healing.”

  Delphine cracked a small smile through her tear stained face as she gazed at him. “Justin, you really are the best friend a girl could ask for. Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  He leaned close and wrapped an arm around her. “You’re never going to have to find out.” He kissed her forehead. “Now, choose a mask and let’s get this wine and ice cream party going.”

  With that, he turned to her cupboard, withdrew two wine glasses, and then opened a drawer and pulled out a corkscrew. She dutifully read the backs of the mask packages and selected the cucumber, leaving the charcoal for him.

  Delphine Bishop and Justin Clifford had been best friends since middle school. He’d helped her through her first crush on a boy, and she’d helped him to accept the challenging truth that he was gay and had crushes on boys himself. She had given him the courage to be proud of who he was and not to cave to the judgment of those who disliked him. They had become fierce friends, and they had stayed that way all through the rest of their growing years and into adulthood.

  The two of them had gone to New York University together and taken some of the same classes, though their career interests took them in different directions. They remained each other’s closest allies, and they knew that nothing would ever change that.

  Once their face masks were slathered over their skin, they curled up on the sofa together with their pints of ice cream, and Justin began to press a little more for her to o
pen up to him.

  “So, what happened? I thought that things were going really well with him. I thought you two were going to get serious about the commitment you share. Like, church bell serious. I was so surprised when I got that text from you. I just had to come over to take care of you. I’ll tell you, Del, I couldn’t be more surprised right now. What happened?” Justin watched her and listened closely for her to speak.

  Delphine sighed and shoved her spoon down into her ice cream a little harder than she had been. “I want too much,” she replied miserably.

  Justin frowned. “You want too much? What do you mean?”

  She toyed with her spoon as the shiny cucumber mask on her face began to dry and harden. “I was talking about how it would be someday when we have kids, and he just stopped me right then and said that we shouldn’t be talking like that because he doesn’t think he wants kids, and then I got mad.”

  “He doesn’t want kids?” Justin was surprised for the second time that day.

  She shook her head. “I guess not. I mean, all this time we’ve been together, a year and a half now, and I thought all along that he was going to be in for the whole thing. I thought that he would want the big wedding and the marriage and then eventually the kids, and we’ve even talked a little about it before. I guess. I mean, now that I look back at it, it was more like I was talking, and he just wasn’t really responding, but this morning, he flat out said it. He said that he doesn’t want kids, and that left us in such a horrible place. I mean, here I was thinking that we were going to move in together and get married, that we’d settle down and then start a family. Now, I know that’s not what he wants.”

  Tears formed in her eyes again, and she struggled to swallow back her emotions and keep as calm as she could. Justin scowled sharply. “Then, what in the hell was he doing with you?”

  “I asked him the same thing!” Delphine looked up at him and set her ice cream in between her knees. “He said he wants to be with me, and he can see us getting married, but he just doesn’t want kids in the picture. Like… ever. He just wants it to be the two of us for the rest of our lives. I can’t do that, Justin! I want kids!”

  “I know. You’ve always had your heart set on having a family.” Justin looked at her with tremendous sympathy.

  “I have! That hasn’t changed. I felt so mad at Mike! I mean, we were together for so long, and I really thought that he was it! I want to start a family soon, and now the man that I wanted to do that with, the man I thought was going to be the father of my children, is saying that he doesn’t want that at all, and I can’t accept that! I can’t.” She teared up again, and her voice caught in her throat for a moment.

  “Justin, I can’t stay with him. I told him that if he doesn’t want kids, then I need to find someone who does. I need to get myself back out there again and start looking for someone who wants to be with me for the rest of my life, and who wants to have a family with me. I’m so hurt and so angry right now! I feel like I’ve just wasted the last year and a half of my life on a lie! He was the wrong guy from the start and if he had just been honest with me, then I would have been able to find someone else instead of spending all of this time with him!”

  “I can’t believe he never told you. That’s so awful, honey!” Justin reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “He should have told me. I asked him why he didn’t, why he let me believe all this time that we might have kids someday, and he said that he thought he could change my mind. You know, talk me out of having a family so that it would just be us. I’m so angry with him! I’m angry with him and with myself. I feel like I let myself down. I feel like I should have seen this… I should have known it and seen it coming. If I had been paying attention he wouldn’t have been able to pull this over on me, but I was so wrapped up in the romance of it all, I was so focused on the love and the dream that I missed the reality. The reality is that our whole relationship was based on lies. He knew he wasn’t ever going to have a family and he was just waiting for me to let go of my dream, so he could have what he wanted, and I would have to unknowingly sacrifice what I wanted! Now, it’s a year and a half later, and I’m a year and a half older, and I’m even further away from having my own family than I was when I met him!”

  She reached for her glass of wine and took a big gulp of it, holding the glass in her hands as she looked at the deep red liquid and saw nothing but her ex-boyfriend’s face in her mind. “We had such a big fight this morning, and I told him I couldn’t be with him anymore. I broke up with him and kicked him out of here. I just… I just can’t be with him. He’s not my future. He’s not what I want.” She began to cry again, and Justin handed her a box of tissues.

  “You are still really young, and you know what you want. So, what you need to do is get this all cried out, and we can do that today, and then you need to focus on the future. I mean right away. Starting tomorrow. You go out there, and you start the hunt for what you want. Do we know anyone who might be a good match for you?” Justin began to think through their friends for anyone who could be a good partner for Delphine.

  As their shared friends sifted through his mind, he grimaced. “Oh wow. I didn’t realize most of our friends are married or gay. There aren’t really that many great ones left out there, and you need a really, really great one. The finest of them all. I won’t have you settling for second best, especially not after this. You deserve the best.”

  “I do,” she agreed mournfully. “We don’t know anyone. I don’t know anyone.” Her tone grew dejected.

  “Well, that’s alright. There are about a gazillion people just in Manhattan alone, so we get you out there and dating, and we find the right guy for you. I’m even going to start looking for you. We will find you one, and if we can’t find him here, then by gawd we cross the great divide and start looking in Jersey.” He gave her a half laugh, and she closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “I don’t think I’m ready to start dating that fast. I’m so upset right now. I’m so angry and hurt. I feel like I’ve been let down by the one person who should never let me down. I feel like I let myself down. I should have known. I should have seen it or sensed it, or something. I’m not an idiot. How could he have played me for such a fool for all this time?” Delphine finished her wine and reached for the bottle, filling it back up again.

  Justin watched her thoughtfully. “You know what? You’re right. You don’t need a man right away. What you need is a break.”

  “A break?” she asked confusedly, looking over at him.

  “Yes. You need a break; away from him, away from our baby bee business, away from this home and the city, and all the madness of life and the broken heart you’re carrying now. You just need a break. You need a vacation.” He sounded completely sure of himself.

  Delphine stared at him. “Justin… we’re working so hard on this new business of ours, and we have so much to do! I have a ton going on. I have a life here! A busy one! I can’t leave right now!”

  He raised his brows and lifted his chin. “Of course, you can.” He picked up his phone and began swiping his finger over the screen, tapping here and there, while she watched him in disbelief.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, leaning a little closer to see the screen of his phone. She saw an image of a man in a swimsuit standing on a beach.

  “Helping you,” he answered as a smile began to form over his face.

  “If you’re looking up dating sites or singles cruises or something like that, you can stop. I’m not going to focus on dating anyone right now. I’m much more interested in having a family. I thought it was going to be with Mike, and since I now know that that isn’t going to be the case, then I will just have to do it on my own.” She stood up and walked to the bathroom that was off of the living room, leaving the door open as she flipped on the light and turned on the water faucet.

  Justin looked up from his phone and watched her for a moment before joining her. When he walked into the bathroom, she
handed him a warm, wet washcloth and she bent over the sink to wash the cucumber mask off of her face.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked suspiciously.

  Her voice was muffled by her hands, a washcloth, and water, but he understood what she said to him. “I thought I was going to have a family with Mike. I’m not. So, if it isn’t going to be with him, then I’ll just do it on my own.”

  “Are you talking about a sperm bank or something?” he asked incredulously as he pressed the cloth to his charcoal mask, softening the hardened shell of it.

  Delphine stood up and reached for a towel, stepping away from the sink so Justin could use it. “No, I’m talking about adoption. As soon as I kicked Mike out of here this morning, I went by an adoption agency. There are plenty of kids out there who need good homes.”

  Justin groaned and washed his face thoroughly before standing up and toweling off. When he was cleaned and dry, he lowered the towel and looked at her. “You don’t need to adopt a kid; you just need some perspective. You’re acting irrationally because you’re hurt and angry. This is exactly what people do when they’re caught in an emotionally traumatic situation; they make poor choices. Listen, you will find a guy, you will settle down and get married, and you will have your own babies. I know that. You are a stunningly beautiful woman; everyone says it, and you know it. You’re brilliant, you’re starting your own business with me, and you’re strong. You’re so strong and independent. Don’t sell yourself short here. All you need to do is find a good guy. The right guy. Then your dreams of family will happen. Come with me.”