It Must Be Your Love: The Sullivans Read Free

songs were everything he needed. But tonight, as his tour bus roared down yet another highway to yet another stadium, Ford finally realized that his songs and audiences could never even come close to filling the hole inside of him.
    Only one thing—only one person—had ever been able to do that.
    Only Mia.

Chapter Two
     
     
    Mia Sullivan knew nothing about the man she was about to meet...except that he must be rich.
    Really stinking rich.
    Mia had been contacted the previous day by a lawyer representing a client who was in the market for a home in Seattle. The budget? Ten million dollars, give or take a few million, if necessary.
    The location? On the water, of course.
    The time frame? Immediately.
    The client? Anonymous until today’s showing.
    As the owner of Sullivan Realty with a half-dozen agents working under her, Mia already had a full slate of showings and meetings set up for Friday morning. Plus, she’d found the anonymous-buyer aspect more than a little suspect. What possible reason could a potential client have for keeping his or her identity a secret from her? Especially when she’d previously sold property to some of the wealthiest men in the world, not to mention being cousin to movie star Smith Sullivan and pro-baseball player Ryan Sullivan. Quickly running through various possibilities in her head, Mia figured it was possible that the buyer might be a wealthy and dangerous convict who had done his time and now wanted to restart his life with a big house on the water in the Pacific Northwest.
    Of course, she’d love the commission on a ten-million-dollar sale, but at this point she didn’t absolutely need it. Besides, Mia Sullivan had four older brothers and loving parents who had taught her well about looking out for herself, and she was nobody’s fool.
    Well, that is, apart from that one week five years ago when she’d been a complete and utter fool, all for love...
    Shoving that ugly thought back into the dark depths where it belonged, she’d point-blank asked, “Has your client done time for a horrible crime?”
    It had sounded like the lawyer was barely restraining his laughter as he’d said, “No. I can promise you that he is most definitely not a murderer.”
    Then she’d known it was a man, at least. “I’m afraid it’s going to be extremely difficult to help choose the perfect house for a client who insists on remaining anonymous.” At the lawyer’s continued silence, she’d added, “I’d have to know his age and the size of his family or staff, at the very least.”
    “I truly do apologize for not being able to divulge any further details about my client, but I can promise that he is of sound mind and does not intend to do you any harm.”
    “If that’s intended to be reassuring—”
    “I have also couriered over a check for twenty thousand dollars as a down payment on your fee. Whether you are able to find a home that my client wishes to purchase, or not, the money is yours.”
    As if it had been choreographed, Mia’s assistant, Orlando had brought in an envelope just as the lawyer finished speaking.
    Mia had slid out the cashier’s check for twenty grand, and this time when her mouth opened, no further protests had come out. So despite the red flags waving inside her head, warning that something was definitely off with this whole situation, the fact was that no Realtor on the planet would ignore this client. Anonymous or not, he was clearly serious about buying a waterfront home in Seattle, so she’d decided to shift her original Friday clients to Orlando and book new showings at three of the best waterfront listings in Seattle.
    In any case, Mia thought now as she headed up the front walk of the first house, it was far more likely that he was going to end up being a twenty-two-year-old nerd who had struck it rich with a high-tech start-up and didn’t have any social skills to speak of, rather than a crazy, dangerous convict sprung from prison on a technicality.
    As