Sweat It Out: A Billionaire Love Story Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  One last Thing…

  Alter Ego (Preview)

  Heart Racer (Preview)

  www.amazon.com/Heart-Racer-Billionaire-Love-Story-ebook/dp/B071D79WWQ

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  One last Thing…

  Alter Ego (Preview)

  Heart Racer (Preview)

  Sweat It Out

  A Billionaire Love Story

  By Starla Harris

  Copyright © 2017 by Starla Harris

  All Right Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ASIN:

  This book was published by Starla Harris

  acornauthors.com

  Thank you for reading!

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  [email protected].

  PROLOGUE

  LUCY SMITH WAS PASSIONATE about many things. It would have taken her at least fifteen minutes to list all the things she was passionate about—from cooking to books to music, to her furry companion, a mutt named Toby, who in the few years since she rescued him had yet to not be there for her through thick and thin. But most of all, Lucy was passionate about challenges. She could never, for the life of her, back down from one. Especially when what was at stake was her whole career, or at least that was what she thought.

  Which was why she currently found herself on a train to a strange town before she’d even had a chance to really get her bearings around the city she had just moved to. Everyone had told her to rent a car, but Lucy figured a train ride would give her the time she needed to clear her head and perhaps more importantly, to prepare.

  There was no doubt about it in her mind that it was a gutsy move. But Lucy was convinced. Deep down in her heart of hearts, she believed that if she could pull this off, the doors to all of her dreams would swing wide open for her.

  She stared out the window and allowed herself to daydream for a moment as she tried to envision what that success might look like—a job writing for the likes of Clean magazine, the most widely read and respected health and wellness journal out there. This was the plan.

  When Lucy eventually returned her attention back to the iPad in front of her, she tapped the screen and hit play again. She watched his face, studied his movements and listened carefully to the words he spoke, paying particular attention to the delivery. She watched it over and over again until she thought she had it all down. And then she watched it yet again. This time, she looked for clues about who he was, beyond just the man and the legend on the screen. She wanted to know what was driving him—what his motivation was and what made him tick.

  Elijah Redford was the most renowned health and wellness gurus in the nation—and one of the top five in the world. He had taken his passion for the body and its movements and shaped it into an honest-to-god billion dollar empire. People were crazy about him. And rightly so. There were many wannabes out there—countless fitness and diet “experts” and spiritual gurus, all ready to help people “transform” their lives with the “best” workouts, nutrition tips and meditations that were supposed to save one’s figure, cure ailments with magical potions and elixirs, and fix a negative mindset. Some were frauds and some of them actually knew what they were talking about. But there was none like Elijah Redford.

  Lucy had spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out what it was about this guy that spoke to so many people. And then it finally dawned on her and she finally got it. It wasn’t just that his programs were brilliant or that he seemed to possess an uncanny ability to know exactly what the human body—any type of human body—needed. It was his passion. Elijah Redford was on fire with it, and he set you on fire in return. No one else in the fitness industry could compete with that.

  Lucy could not believe her luck when she managed to score a press pass to the conference in Ojai, just one short three-hour train ride from Los Angeles. There was a chance that she might have gone anyway, just out of sheer curiosity and because everything health and wellness-related really was her jam. But it was Elijah Redford’s name on the attendee list that ultimately convinced her to go.

  Lucy supposed the universe really did conspire to make things happen if one could find the courage to take a leap of faith.

  She watched one more video before she forced herself to put the iPad away. It’s all about mindset, she told herself. She looked out the window again and watched the Californian landscape sweep by. If she could get a profile on Elijah Redford, she might have a real shot at writing for Clean magazine, which had been her very own bible ever since she discovered what the healthy living movement was all about. Hell, if all goes according to plan, she might very well have her pick of stories to cover and magazines to sell them to.

  Her heart beat faster in her chest at the mere thought of the opportunity ahead of her. She could feel the ambition coursing through her veins. This plan was nothing short of brilliant.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she dug it out impatiently. She smiled as she saw the name of her best friend pop up on the display.

  “Go get ‘em, tiger!”

  An emoji of a cheerleader’s pom-poms completed the encouragement, to which she immediately replied, “Will do! I miss you!”

  “Miss you too. I’ll be visiting before you know it. Go be awesome!”

  Lucy couldn’t help but smile as she fired off a final reply and tucked her phone back in her pocket.

  Whoever said that men and women couldn’t be friends never had a friend like Michael Dalloway. She and Michael had been best friends since high school, and she knew for a fact that not even her moving all the way to California from their Colorado home town of Glenwood Springs would be able to mess with their friendship.

  She went back to staring out the window, her green eyes drinking in the landscape. Everything was different out here—the air, the sun, the trees and perhaps most of all, the people. She didn’t understand California—not fully, at least not yet. But she was determined she eventually would. She believed she just needed some time to adjust and get to know the place, and to let California get to know her in return. After all, she thought, moving to a new state or anywhere for that matter, was probably a lot like beginning a new relationship. It’s awkward at first. You study each other, pry cautiously because you don’t want to appear too eager and you
go out on dates. You get familiar with each other—slowly, gradually. And then with the proper nurturing, the relationship blooms and becomes something. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to happen?

  Her relationship with California was the only one she was interested in cultivating. She believed she was destined to live in California. Ever since she was little, playing with her Malibu Barbies, she dreamed of living in California like it was the Promised Land. And now as an adult, there was no doubt in her mind that the Golden State would play a critical part in her path to success. She didn’t have the time or patience for anything else. Guys? Dating? Jeesh… who had the time, the energy or the patience for all that? Lucy didn’t want distractions. She couldn’t afford them. Dreams required hard work and dedication and she wasn’t willing to give up her dreams for anything or anyone else.

  When the train finally pulled into Ventura, where the nearest rail station to Ojai was, Lucy gathered up her things and stepped onto the platform. It was a typical Southern California summer night. The stars were just starting to come out in the sky. Lucy took a deep breath and filled her lungs with the fresh, warm Californian air, before she headed off to find a taxi, away from the tracks and out of the station.

  Off the beaten path, she thought and smiled to herself. Because if there was one thing Lucy Smith was not afraid of, it was the unknown

  CHAPTER ONE

  LUCY HAD HEARD all about the stereotypes before, of course. In her hometown of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, the stereotypes attributed to people from California were especially harsh. Despite the thriving tourism industry, many of the people from Glenwood Springs were still mountain folk who were used to somewhat hard conditions (if only for the climate), and they often disparaged Californians for being shallow sissies and snobs obsessed with trends.

  She had never given much thought to any of that, mostly because she didn’t want to ruin California for herself and because, to be quite frank, she often felt like a bit of a sissy too. And, she had decided some time back, there was nothing wrong with that. So what if she wouldn’t last two days in the great outdoors? She could last hours at the gym, and that was all that mattered to her. Some people found communion with their bodies in the mountains. Lucy found it in gyms and yoga studios, sweating her ass off.

  But when she arrived at the opening night reception at the resort, she was disappointed as she looked around the room at the crowd of people milling around awkwardly networking. It became fast apparent to her that there would be little or no communion happening here.

  She had spent years trying to defend Los Angelinos from the unforgiving opinions that were so popular in her hometown, but now she was beginning to wonder if perhaps the people in Glenwood Springs had been onto something all along. After she listened to just about all 60 second elevator pitches she could stand and had enough business cards shoved into her hands, she decided to call it a night. She hoped the rest of the conference would be better.

  The next morning, she got up early. The agenda was interesting enough with an eclectic mix of presenters. There were lectures from health and wellness experts, classes from a few illustrious fitness figures (and some obscure ones too), and product sampling from leading (and not-so leading) companies in the health and wellness industry. Lucy’s shrewd eye could spot the fakes from a mile away and when she saw them, her blood boiled as it always did whenever she encountered someone who didn’t know what they were talking about.

  She attended a lecture from a lady who claimed to have found the perfect “gut healing” diet, only to find out that it was all a bunch of nonsense based on absolutely no scientific research. The woman believed spirulina was the answer to everything and could cure all. She espoused a diet that was nothing more than a random list of leafy green vegetables and herbal teas—beneficial, of course, but hardly the solution and hardly a balanced nutritional diet.

  There was another woman (one Anna Campbell) who went on to sing the praises of the miraculous anti-inflammatory properties of turmeric—which as far as Lucy was concerned, was among the only things she’d gotten right.

  Lucy picked up pretty quickly on the fact that this convention was more about competition and fake “namaste” attitudes than about truly helping people be the healthiest versions of themselves. There were a few good eggs here and there, Lucy was sure of that. And while she had yet to attend all of the seminars, it seemed as if the hacks definitely outnumbered the good ones.

  Most of the people around her in the auditorium were busy taking copious notes, nodding in agreement with whichever presenter was talking at the time. But there were always those who were smugly superior, who smirked cruelly at the commentator’s remarks. It seemed like the people were either completely engrossed in the topic at hand or they thought they had already found a way that was so much better than what was being said.

  Ever since Lucy arrived at the resort, she felt like she’d been barraged with the exact type of people the folks from her hometown loved to make fun of—snobs who spent way too much money on cleansing juices and who thought daily meditation would solve all their problems and put them on a pedestal from which they could judge others for their mundane and pedestrian ways.

  “Really?” she’d overheard one young man with a scruffy beard say to another earlier that morning on her way to breakfast. “You can’t find the time to squeeze meditation into your routine? Ten minutes is all you need in the beginning. I do it every day.”

  The other man looked at the guy with the beard and replied without missing a beat, “I have three kids, an overworked and underappreciated wife, two dogs and a geriatric cat. I don’t have ten minutes.”

  Lucy smirked and moved on. The father-of-three was the most genuine person she had encountered all morning. Everyone else seemed to have walked right out of a wellness website.

  She took a sip of the coconut water they handed out at the beginning of the first session and focused her attention back to what was being said. Anna Campbell was now emphatically praising the virtues of kale, the wonder green. Lucy bit back a groan. If she had to hear about kale one more time, she was going to scream. Then again, ten minutes later she found herself thinking that a whole lecture on kale would have been preferable to the number of exotic ingredients the woman was listing now, presenting them as “the best” allies against inflammation.

  Lucy took a deep breath as the familiar sense of annoyance and frustration crept up inside of her. She hated the fact that most wellness websites and magazines seemed to rely on hard-to-find ingredients for their recipes. She was more interested in learning how an ordinary person on a low-to-average budget could take care of their bodies, but admittedly, few experts seemed to be inclined to give out that information.

  She was out of her chair like a shot as soon as the lecture was over. As people moved to the front of the room to ask Campbell some post-lecture questions, Lucy made a beeline for the exit. She’d had more than enough. She checked the program. Another lecture she was fairly interested in was about to start, but she was just too annoyed to make herself sit through it. Besides, what if this one also revealed itself to be nothing but a bunch of trite information and newly developed nonsense? She didn’t think she could handle the disappointment so soon after having witnessed Anna Campbell’s tirade.

  Lucy decided that was she really needed was to move. A group workout session was starting in ten minutes in the resort’s garden. Everyone, Lucy included, was already wearing workout clothes, in case they decided to participate in some kind of impromptu exercise session. She hurried outside and inhaled deeply. The sunshine and the open air immediately began to help clear her head and work wonders for her mood.

  She found the group already warming up for the session. The brochure advertised this workout as an “innovative combination of yoga, Pilates, and cardio”. Lucy was a fan of all three and she fervently hoped she wouldn’t be disappointed. The instructor was a middle-aged woman who was more toned than most of the twenty-year olds Lucy knew. Her name was
Alice, she said. She didn’t offer any last name, which Lucy liked—it made her feel like she was working out with a friend. She supposed that was the intention.

  Alice, with her trim figure and sparkling energy, wasted no time. As soon as everyone was in place, she kicked things off. For the next forty minutes, Lucy moved more than she had in months, which was saying something considering that she owned a dog and exercised at the gym five days a week.

  For the next forty minutes, she felt like she could conquer the world. It was the toughest and most fun workout she’d ever had. It worked everything, every muscle in her body. It worked her mind too. This was the kind of workout that forced you to concentrate on nothing else but what you were doing. It was the kind of workout that was based in the flow of movements, which in turn promoted quietness of brain. Lucy was extremely grateful for the respite from the thoughts that had been churning around inside her head ever since she had left her hometown for Los Angeles.

  She gave her best to the workout, and the workout gave her its best in return. By the end, she was a sweaty mess, but she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this good. She felt powerful, capable and calm. She rushed to congratulate Alice and exchange cards with her (her last name was Baker), just in case.

  Lucy walked away dripping sweat and confidence. She had made the first worthwhile connection in the industry, and she couldn’t be prouder of herself. She couldn’t wait to tell Michael all about it. All in all, she thought, it had been a very productive first morning. She felt ready to tackle the afternoon and anything else life could decide to throw at her just then—she felt that powerful. That was exactly what Lucy loved about fitness. If done right, exercise could make you feel invincible.

  * * *