Cancer And The Playboy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Coming Soon

  Don’t Forget Your Free Book

  Related Works

  Resources

  [email protected]

  Don’t Forget Your FREE Book!

  Cancer And The Playboy

  The Daimsbury Chronicles, Book 3

  By Zee Monodee

  Small-town contemporary romance set in Surrey, England

  The Daimsbury Chronicles:

  Storm In Their Hearts (A Spin-Off)

  Bad Luck With Besties

  A Girl Named Trouble

  Coming Soon

  Hot Flash of Love

  Cancer And The Playboy

  (The Daimsbury Chronicles, Book 3)

  By Zee Monodee

  Copyright 2011-2018 Zee Monodee

  Kindle Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  As the story is set in England, the spelling and Grammar for this book is English (United Kingdom.)

  Cover Artist: Zee Monodee

  Editor: Natalie G. Owens

  Blurb:

  There’s truth in the saying “It happens when you least expect it ...”

  Crafty and resilient, Megha Saran has carved her own midsummer pond from the shark-infested waters of Indo-British society. Until the day she is diagnosed with breast cancer, and a twist of Fate—along with her big mouth—lands her on the path of a man a million times removed from her reality.

  Playboy Magnus Trammell has been summoned by his illustrious family to get his act on the straight and narrow before his thirty-fifth birthday. When he meets Megha, he proposes a deal: become a goodwill ambassador for a project he wants to set up, and in return, get the medical care and support his money can buy.

  A win-win bargain—until their hearts get on the line …

  Megha, mutilated in body and her soul from the cancer treatments, cannot fall for a man who only dates airhead pin-ups. And after a life hiding behind a veneer of shallow, carefree sophistication, Magnus is reluctant to test the deep, bottomless waters that surround this strong and independent woman.

  Both crave fulfilment. Will they find it together, against all the odds?

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Coming Soon

  Don’t Forget Your Free Book

  Related Works

  Resources

  Cancer And The Playboy

  Chapter One

  Megha Saran clearly remembered the day she had met Magnus Trammell. Well, officially met him, that is—probably not something anyone could forget, when the billionaire boss you’d seen only in the tabloids went down on one knee before you. Not to ask any question like the average male in that position would ask, but to beg you to reconsider your resignation as a sales girl in his family’s exclusive haute joaillerie shop. To top that, he also wanted to make you the manager of the place, since he’d fired the other one who’d been about to sack you the previous day—if you hadn’t pre-empted this by quitting beforehand.

  She’d thought him an utter loon back then, three weeks earlier, and not a day went by when she didn’t ask herself if he wasn’t a few spices short of a full curry.

  Today proved no exception.

  “Are you bloody insane?” she threw out, eyes boggling and mouth agape.

  “Think about it,” he replied. “You would be the ideal candidate for this procedure.”

  She shook her head and blinked. Maybe by doing so, she hoped the image would clear, and she’d thus not see a thirty-something bloke in Bermuda shorts, a wrinkled cotton shirt that probably cost more than her whole vintage wardrobe, and worst of all, with a man bun; said bloke now staring back at her as if what he’d just said made perfect sense. Yes, the Puss in Boots eyes—in this case striking slate grey—amid all that chiselled facial beauty rendered him even more Prince Charming-like along with the shaggy dark blond hair. They—he—would melt any woman’s heart, though she supposed Magnus had always settled for making knickers melt and had never progressed his aim farther north. Still, that didn’t work on her, because she knew him the way no other ‘regular’ woman did: as his employee and almost his right-hand woman at the shop by now.

  It was official by this point—he was crazy. Then again, he proved this theory right every single day. She shouldn’t be surprised.

  So she cut her gaze from one gorgeous Swedish man to another Nordic-like god who sat on the opposite sofa with a soft tinge of crimson on his high cheekbones. Magnus had managed to ruffle the stoic Stellan, his best friend who’d known him and the breadth of his antics forever. That must’ve been quite a feat. Poor man. Dare she pull him into this discussion, and embarrass him further with such intimate talks? Yet, she had no other way, did she, given that they were here in his flat in an exclusive building in Kensington. Magnus lived one floor up, but no one dared poke their nose into his apartment given how it wasn’t fit to sustain human life because of the mess he always left behind him. She pitied the guys’ cleaning crew.

  Okay, in for a penny, in for a pound. Stellan Elriksen was a big boy who could take it no matter how she cut it. Focusing on Magnus again, she glared at him from where she sat on a high-backed sofa.

  “Seriously, we’re going to discuss my fertility options right now?” she asked.

  Magnus threw his hands up as he paced in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that offered an impressive view of the lush green treetops of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park farther along.

  “Think it through, Megha. Oocyte cryopreservation is not guaranteed to be covered by the NHS even for fertility preservation in the wake of a cancer diagnosis. We’d set up a full clinic specialising in this procedure for such cases, also provide financial aid in all instances, and for some, we could cover the costs completely. Think how many women just like you that would help!”

  Megha snorted. She couldn’t even think of her own options at the moment—hadn’t really been able to ever since the diagnosis that had come in three weeks, two days, and six hours ago.

  It’s cancer.

  The dreaded C-word. No one expected to hear
that. Like winning the lottery, but from the dark side that totally sucked.

  But it’s good news, the doctors in London had also added. She was young and strong. The cancer was in the early stages on top of being a triple negative, which meant it had nothing to do with hormones.

  It also implied something was genetically wrong—most probably a BRCA mutation which had caused this cancer in her left breast when she was just twenty-nine. Not even over the big three-o, and they were pushing that kind of news on her. What had she accomplished so far? Nothing, and her love life had just one failed relationship in its tally. Other than that, zilch.

  But who the hell expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer at this age? All the guidelines said to get a mammogram every one to two years once past forty, because that’s when the risks really started to appear.

  In your twenties? You gotta be facking jokin’! Those had been her exact words to the doctors upon them delivering that bombshell on her.

  And then she’d found out she wasn’t alone, or as singular a case as she’d thought herself to be. Breast cancer was on the rise in younger women, but no one spoke about that. No campaigns existed to alert younger women and even teenage girls of the risks they face once puberty strikes. No, cancer was for mums and grans, women beyond forty. What an effing joke!

  “Megha, are you hearing what I’m saying?” Magnus asked as he paused in front of the window, blocking the one ray of sunshine falling on her with his wide shoulders.

  Stellan cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what you need me here for. This is Megha’s personal matter, and …”

  She could see his discomfort. What was that idiot Magnus up to? He’d asked her to come over because he had a proposal to discuss with her, but here they were going over her medical stats.

  It dawned on her what he was asking, then. Her eyebrows went up, her mind drawing a blank because even she had run out of expletives and expressions of surprise in response to yet another of Magnus’ schemes.

  “So if I got this straight, you want me to be the poster child for a fertility preservation initiative you want to set up for younger cancer patients. Is that right?”

  He snapped his fingers and grinned. Goodness, that man bun was doing nothing to help his credibility here as it bobbed with his every movement.

  She closed her eyes for a second and sighed. She couldn’t do this. Not anymore. And not with him, or with poor Stellan caught in the cross-fire between them.

  “Abso-fucking-lutely not!”

  Magnus slapped his thighs with his palms. “Why not? Listen to me here. You’re not yet thirty. Your cancer was a Stage 1 invasive Ductal Carcinoma In Situ, probably the best kind to have if you’re gonna get breast cancer as it can be treated if caught early, like in your case. Beyond adjuvant therapy and a dose of radiation treatments, you’re expected to make a full recovery. However, the chemo might very likely damage your fertility options for the future, so it makes immense sense right now for you to have your eggs harvested and frozen while you’re in your reproductive prime. You won’t have to worry about potential infertility later in your life when you’ll find someone and decide to have a family, then.”

  “There’s always adoption,” she quipped.

  The words rolled off her tongue almost unbeknownst to her, because she sat there flabbergasted by what Magnus had just said. Not only had he detailed her full diagnosis and prognosis, but he’d also sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.

  Her surprise seemed mirrored on Stellan’s face.

  Magnus paused in his step and faced her. The serious look on his face stumped her, and she gulped back. For the first time, she wasn’t seeing the glib playboy with the too-easy smile and the carefree attitude who took most things in stride and discarded what didn’t suit him. Right now, she saw a man—a flesh-and-bone, fully realized and mature man. Something she’d never expected to even lurk inside sunny Magnus, and this gave her pause. What was his game here? Did he care?

  Could he care, really?

  From that first day in the office of Trammell’s in Daimsbury, he’d had her on her toes. She hadn’t realised she’d actually met him the day before, when he’d come to the shop in disguise and the then-manager had tried to package the earrings he’d bought into a little square box. What a disaster that could’ve been when he’d present the gift to his girl and she’d already be hearing wedding bells, to then discover not a diamond ring but Swarovski crystal hoops in there.

  She’d wanted to stop a client from making a monumental mistake and had intervened to tell him he needed a flat box and not a cube to prevent the wrong idea forming. The client had seen the wisdom in that, but not the manager who’d felt she’d overstepped her bounds as a lowly sales girl when he’d been the one handling that transaction. She’d quit while she was ahead before he fired her, going back in the next day to pick up her cheque for her pro-rata pay of the month.

  Imagine her surprise to be greeted not by Stick-Up-The-Arse-Manager, but one of the actual owners of the shop. Magnus Trammell, despite being from the illustrious family who called Daimsbury—their tiny village in Surrey and one hour’s drive west of London—home, had set foot there maybe once or twice in his thirty-four years on this Earth. He’d be glimpsed haphazardly by the locals, usually at the wheel of his red Ferrari 360Spider, before he left for yet another party capital of Europe, doing his mighty best to uphold his reputation as a gallivanting playboy.

  So up close and personal in that small space, she’d had to admit the photos in the tabloids and the gossip rags had never done him justice. Nor had seeing him from afar one Christmas when he’d come to light up the green’s tree with his family. In front of her then, he’d been a vision of scrumptious male physical perfection in his champagne-coloured suit that matched almost exactly the hue of his messy blond hair. Then those eyes—they’d captivated her when little lines had fanned at their corners as he’d smiled at her.

  She could so easily have lost her wits right then, but something had kept her from making a fool of herself, for example by openly drooling on her jumper. Something inside her—call it instincts—had told her to peek beyond this façade, because that’s what it was: a façade.

  And today, he proved that initial assumption right. Could it be he actually had a working brain inside that vapid head of his?

  Stellan stopped her from pondering that idea further when he spoke.

  “Wait a second, Magnus. What exactly are you getting at? And what am I doing in the middle of all this?”

  Magnus went to lean against a wall, the ray of sunshine falling back again on her and blinding her for a few seconds. He pressed his back to the moiré wallpaper, one knee bent so the bare sole touched the wood panelling on the bottom half of the surface.

  She risked a glance at Stellan—bare feet there, too. What was that with them? And suddenly, she grew self-conscious of the delicate ballerina flats on her feet. Should she have left them at the door? This notion, more than the understated but obvious luxury of the setting, ruffled her. She didn’t belong here, to be honest …

  She slaked her gaze to Magnus again, who was staring at his best mate.

  “It’s Nammy,” he said.

  Stellan groaned. “What has she done now?”

  Magnus sighed aloud. “The cottage in Daimsbury. She wants me to have it.”

  “But?” Stellan probed.

  “But it comes in a trust, along with thirty-five million pounds. Her gift for my thirty-fifth birthday.”

  Had her eyes boggled out of her head already? Which part of his words had stumped her more? The ‘cottage’, which was actually a ten-bedroom, three-storey Victorian edifice set out amid one acre of its own private gardens on the Trammell property in the village … or that this Nammy, whoever she happened to be, was gifting him one million pounds for each year he’d lived? The most she’d ever received for a birthday had been a hundred pounds once.

  “What are the conditions of the trust?” Stellan continued.


  Magnus shrugged. “It has to be something ‘responsible’ for the trustee to unblock the funds.”

  “And the trustee is?”

  Another sigh. “My father.”

  Stellan shook his head. “That’s where I come in?”

  Magnus nodded. Stellan returned the nod, his face going pensive. She hadn’t thought the staid man who’d seemed carved from pale marble could look even more still. This had to be something momentous, right?

  She shook her head and pulled herself to the front of her seat. “Wait, you lost me here. Who is this Nammy, and what is this all about? And more important, how do I fit in here?”

  Magnus turned to her, and the full force of those grey eyes which suddenly weren’t smiling but looking as serious as a heart attack made her gulp all while her mouth went dry. Goodness gracious, this man had charisma, and this look, as opposed to the cheerful smile, could make her wet her knickers.

  Was making her wet her knickers already, actually …

  Something must be utterly wrong with her, because this was Magnus. Her boss. Ultimate playboy who dated only airheads, and she considered herself a total bluestocking.

  Guess hormones didn’t agree to that brief, after all …

  But she’d asked a question, and she needed answers. So, she waited.

  Magnus peeled himself from the wall to come squat in front of her.

  That serious expression didn’t leave his face, and from up close like this, she unwittingly lost her breath at the different face staring at her from below the golden lashes fanning hooded eyes. A layer of darkness, and she didn’t mean that literally as he now had the sun at his back, sat on his well-cut features. With him not smiling, she could clearly see the defined outline of those beautiful lips.