Alice And The Billionaire's Wonderland (Once Upon A Billionaire Book 3) Read online

  Alice and the Billionaire's Wonderland

  A Once Upon a Billionaire Romance

  Catelyn Meadows

  BOOKS BY CATELYN MEADOWS

  ONCE UPON A BILLIONAIRE SERIES

  Goldie and the Billionaire Bear

  Ella and the Billionaire’s Ball

  Alice and the Billionaire’s Wonderland

  Rosabel and the Billionaire Beast

  Hazel and Her Billionaire Tower

  Aaliyah and the Billionaire’s Lamp

  MAGIC VALLEY ROMANCE

  Billionaires and Big Deals

  CLEAN CHRISTMAS ROMANCE

  All I Want for Christmas

  Copyright © 2020 Cortney Pearson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, printing, recording, or otherwise—without the prior permission of the author, except for use of brief quotations in a book review.

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

  Beta Read by Scarlett West

  Copy Edited/Proofread by Sara Olds with Salt & Sage Books

  Proofread by Lisa Lee

  Cover Design & Interior Formatting by Qamber Designs and Media

  Author Photo by Clayton Photo + Design

  www.catelynmeadows.blogspot.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  Maddox rested his hands on the edge of the rabbit enclosure and stared at the little furballs. In all the years he’d owned Wonderland, he’d never had much interaction with rabbits. Now, he stood before their display in Arbor Ranch and Supply, desperately hoping this last-straw idea of his would work.

  It was hare-brained—no pun intended—but he couldn’t lose the park. He had to do something. Sympathy wove through him as he took in the animals’ gray, brown, and multi-colored furs. Stuck in their enclosure, no hope for escape without someone else’s assistance.

  “I get where you’re coming from, guys,” he told the rabbits.

  “Tell me again why we’re here?” his friend and associate, Duncan Hawthorne, asked from behind him. In suit pants and a tan button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, Duncan stared at the display of animal feed and various accessories with disdain. “I’ve never pegged you as much of an outdoorsman. Or a pet person, for that matter.”

  Maddox peered down at his own suit and tie. The irony would have made him laugh if he didn’t feel so downtrodden. Neither of them fit in with the store’s rustic décor.

  Duncan had come at Maddox’s request, and he had it about right. This was the first time Maddox had ever set foot in a store offering western wear or livestock feed. He was more of a tennis player and golfer himself.

  “Scavenger hunt,” Maddox said. He’d given a lot of thought on how to increase interest in his declining theme park, and oddly enough, his mental deliberations had led him here of all places.

  He couldn’t let a rabbit loose in his theme park. Too many issues sprang up with that option. People might sneak their own white rabbit in and claim they’d found his. There also wasn’t a way to humanely prevent the poor little creature from escaping the park, short of caging it, which would then make its location too obvious. And then there was the prospect of someone catching the rabbit at all, which was nearly impossible. On their own? With their bare hands?

  A scavenger hunt throughout the park with a white rabbit at the finish line, though. That was totally doable.

  “You’re crazy,” Duncan said. “Have you ever considered that the fact your numbers aren’t where you want them to be is a sign you should just pack it in? Cut your losses, sell the place and move on to something that actually will be profitable?”

  “Wonderland was profitable,” Maddox argued. It’d made him a billionaire, after all. “I can’t just walk away from the place. If I could just get some investors on board, I could do so much more with it.”

  Duncan read Maddox’s not-so-subtle hint about wanting him to invest and lifted his hands. “I’m staying far away from that sinking ship. You opened a theme park in Vermont. You could have done it anywhere, but you picked Westville, Vermont.”

  True, the town was small, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t an ideal location for a theme park.

  Maddox had appealed to his friend over a year ago, and many times since. But every time Duncan had asked for prospective numbers, what Maddox presented had never managed to impress him.

  Several chicks in their nearby heated cages chirruped loudly. They were cute, too, if Maddox was interested in farming or free-range chickens. Which he wasn’t.

  “It’s not a sinking ship.” Maddox strolled to the opposite side of the rabbit enclosure. “People in Vermont like roller coasters as much as anywhere else. Besides, look. Here’s a white one.” He reached in to stroke it. The rabbit shuffled on the pen’s shavings. “I wonder if we can have a little waistcoat made to fit him.”

  “You’re going to dress the rabbit? Why not just get a Build-a-Bear?”

  Maddox gave him a blank look. “Dude, have you even read Alice in Wonderland?”

  “I don’t need to read it. Everyone knows the story.”

  “Then you know Alice follows a rabbit wearing a waistcoat down his little hidey-hole, and that starts her whole adventure.”

  “I’ll tell you what you need to do,” Duncan said, clasping his hands behind his back and joining Maddox as he stared at the rabbits. “You’ve got good bones to the place. What it needs is a makeover. A new look.”

  “Wonderland doesn’t need a new look.” Maddox had used his mom’s old sketches of her vision from the beloved story when doing the initial layout. He wasn’t about to change a thing.

  “Come on,” Duncan said. “Everyone needs a makeover once in a while. Just spiff up the place. Add new signs, redo the décor. It might show certain investors you’re serious about the future.”

  Duncan ran an extremely successful business where he offered financial advice as well as backing. Maddox had begged his friend to give Wonderland a chance and choose it as one of his investments. Was Duncan suggesting what he thought he was?

  He held out a hand. “Hang on. You’re saying if I give Wonderland a facelift, you’ll consider backing it?”

  Duncan tilted his head to one shoulder. “I might. The place does have some serious potential. To the right person.”

  Maddox had known him long enough to know he never even hinted at something unless he was serious. Empty promises were too risky when money was involved. For Duncan Hawthorne to even imply interest was a milestone.

  Maddox gripped his shoulder. “You won’t be disappointed.”

  “I haven’t agreed to anything yet.” Duncan shrugged out of his grasp. “Why not start with a new brand? You find the right image to rep the park, and you might be turning me down.”

  Maddox laughed. He couldn’t help the way his insides swelled like a hot air balloon. “Let me see how this rabbit stunt goes. It’s a scavenger hunt, and I’m sure it’s going to triple the numbers I usually get. I’m increasing publicity to spread the word. People are going to be all over this. Searching for the next clues to riddles? Finding the white rabbit at the end?”

  “It is clever,” Duncan said with an obliging nod.

  “Come on, man, it’s ingenious.” Or so he hoped. He muscled d
own the worry tying knots inside him.

  “Where’d you come up with it, anyway?” Duncan asked.

  Maddox winced. If it was anyone else, he never would have confessed as much. But this was Duncan. They’d been best friends since freshman year at UVM.

  “It was Ruby’s idea,” Maddox said.

  Duncan’s eyes widened. “Ruby, as in your ex?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you seeing her again?”

  The insulting question stung. It didn’t help Maddox’s surly mood. “You’re seriously asking me that? Come on, man. You know what she did to me.”

  Duncan knew just how much that breakup had rattled him. It was the sign of what a good friend he was, that he hadn’t gone public with as much detail as he’d been privy to. With the amount Ruby had invested in Wonderland, calling their breakup messy was the understatement of ever.

  Ruby had backed out of both their engagement and his business when profits had begun to sink. Evidently, she’d only been interested in him if his park was successful.

  Her version of success was different from his. He had a billion-dollar theme park that reflected his mother’s favorite book. He’d started it for her. It had made him a huge success and he couldn’t lose it.

  Lately, the park’s appeal had all but vanished. The numbers weren’t coming. In fact, with the cost of operating rides, maintenance, electricity, and staff, profits were drifting into the fiction category right along with the book it was based on.

  Duncan’s expression shifted from skeptical to apologetic. “Forget I said it. I just wanted to make sure this rabbit thing wasn’t some ploy to get her back.”

  Maddox rammed away his uneasiness. Though his relationship with Ruby had ended badly, he did still hope to find someone to share his life with. But she would need to be someone he could trust, and Maddox wasn’t sure someone like that existed.

  He shook his head. “This is my livelihood. My mom’s idea. I have to do this for her. I need investors.”

  “Whatever you say,” Duncan said as a short, youthful associate with black hair and freckles made her way down the aisle toward them. “I’m going to go see if they have any turtles. There’s a mock turtle in the book. Why not set one of those loose?”

  “It’s supposed to be a challenge,” Maddox said with a laugh.

  Duncan whirled to walk backward as he spoke. “Right. A challenge. Because everyone loves those.”

  “When I’m offering a cash prize big enough to feed a family for a year, they do,” Maddox said as Duncan turned his back to him and strolled toward the display of saddles.

  “Can I help you?” the cute associate interrupted. She wore an Arbor Ranch nametag on her plaid blue shirt, and cowgirl boots climbed up the ends of her jeans.

  Maddox rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe he was crazy to do this.

  He could tell the associate no thanks. He could leave the furry cottontails behind and find where Duncan had strolled off to. Or he could step out of the box and take a chance.

  He’d always preferred that option.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I need a white rabbit.”

  This is going to work, he told himself as the associate assisted him with the rabbit. Whether the park was set in Vermont or not, he’d issue his challenge everywhere he could. Bring in new customers. He’d get Wonderland back on its feet.

  All he needed was the right girl.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Adelie stared at the gigantic F-word on the top of the letter that’d just been hand-delivered by a balding sheriff.

  Foreclosure.

  Her mind spun, her thoughts turning to mush.

  “This can’t be happening,” she said, closing her front door.

  “Who was that?” Suzie asked, trotting over in her bunny slippers, with a steaming mug in one hand. Adelie couldn’t form the words. Instead, she passed the notice to her sister.

  Suzie’s blonde hair was piled in messy perfection on top of her head. Her eyes skimmed the contents while a little line appeared between her brows. “How can this be? I thought we were caught up.”

  “We were.” Adelie huffed and followed Suzie past the floral couches and into their farmhouse kitchen. The smell of sizzling hash browns and eggs filled the small room. They’d eaten hash browns and eggs for days. Thanks to their chickens that roamed the yard willy nilly, it was a cheap meal. “Until I lost my job. I’ve been so stressed trying to find work, but I thought you said you were going to take care of our mortgage payments until I found something.”

  “Right…” Suzie shifted, shuffling to place her mug on the kitchen’s tiled counter. “About that.”

  Adelie blinked. “You haven’t been paying the mortgage?”

  Her sister was silly and spacey, that was true, but Adelie never thought Suzie would neglect something as important as this.

  “I forgot I had to,” Suzie said in a pleading tone. “All my money has been going toward school.”

  Adelie sank onto a chair at the kitchen table that had belonged to their grandparents. When Grandma and Grandpa Carroll both died—Grandma shortly passing after Grandpa had—Uncle Harper wanted to sell their house and get as much profit from it as he could. The girls hadn’t wanted to sell it to anyone else. Having been raised by their Carroll grandparents, the two girls had grown up in this house. To think about selling the Sears-kit home with its back-in-time charm to anyone else had been unthinkable.

  Instead of passing the home down to them, their uncle insisted on selling it to them. Fair enough, Adelie had supposed, since he had given them a decent deal on it. The sisters had thought they could swing a mortgage payment if they both did it together, but Adelie being unemployed, getting laid off from her position as a sales associate at Serendipity downtown, had lasted longer than she’d expected. She’d been job hunting, and prospects weren’t looking good.

  “What do we do?” Suzie said.

  “We’ve got to make up the payments,” Adelie said.

  Suzie harrumphed and folded her arms. “How are we supposed to do that?”

  They were surviving on fumes as it was. They’d already sold more of their grandparents’ antiques and family heirlooms than they’d ever wanted to, but no matter what they did, the bills kept coming.

  Adulting really stunk sometimes.

  Medical expenses didn’t help. Suzie had shoulder surgery over a year ago; it seemed like they’d be playing catch up for the rest of their lives.

  Adelie peered around the beautiful, quaint kitchen, with its white cabinets and their smooth silver handles, at the buttercream wallpaper speckled with flowers, at the paneled window above the sink that unlatched in the center and opened without a screen, and at the exposed wood rafters in the ceiling above. Sure, it was cramped, but the house had too much charm to let it be foreclosed. Not to mention how this would ruin both of their credit. The idea sank into Adelie’s chest like a rock.

  “This is one of those times I wish Grandpa was around to talk to,” Suzie said.

  Same old Suzie. Always trying to help find solutions in any way she could. “Yeah, but he isn’t. We’ve got to figure this out.”

  “We’ll find somewhere else to live,” Suzie said with a shrug.

  The thought hurt. It was physically painful. “How could you say that so easily? You love this house as much as I do.”

  Unease sweltered in her empty stomach. She stirred the hash brown and egg mixture in the skillet and, as it was brown and yellow—murky, just like she felt—she turned off the heat.

  The TV behind them blared and a news broadcaster piped up in their worried silence.

  “What is Wonderland without a white rabbit? Pierre has gotten loose, and it’s up to you to catch him. This is your chance to go down the rabbit hole and find the grand prize. Whoever follows the clues correctly and finds the white rabbit first gets a grand prize of fifty thousand dollars.”

  Reaching to dish a heaping helping of food onto their plates, Adelie peered at the TV in the corner above t
heir dishwasher. Cheers broke out in the newsroom on the screen. Daylight News anchors laughed and cheered, joking about this new opportunity.

  The anchor in a fashionable suit, with her dark hair pulled back, faced the camera and continued. “Today, we have billionaire owner of Wonderland Theme Park, located in Westville, Vermont, Maddox Hatter, here to tell us more about it. So, Maddox, before we start, I have to know. Is your name a coincidence or a pseudonym you came up with when you started the theme park?”

  Maddox crossed one leg to the opposite ankle and smiled. A heartbreaker kind of thing. Adelie bumped into the table and nearly dropped the plates in her hands. Attention equally plastered to the screen, Suzie apparently missed her sister’s faux pas.

  “Look at that,” Suzie said. Adelie was curious about his reply, but with Suzie’s interruption, she missed it. “It’s a wonder she hasn’t fainted yet.”

  Adelie sank onto the chair across from her sister. She couldn’t deny her temperature had gone up a few notches. “Are you saying you would?”

  “If I were in the same room with him, and he smiled at me like that? I’d be crazy not to.”

  “Crazy,” Adelie mused, nudging her eggs with a fork and squirting some ketchup over the top. “This whole thing is crazy. Who gives fifty thousand dollars to some random person just for finding a white rabbit?”

  If she had that kind of money, she’d want to use it to help others. She thought of her cousin, Ella’s, fiancé. Hawk Danielson owned Ever After Sweet Shoppe, and this sounded like the kind of charitable thing he might do.

  Suzie’s voice cracked with excitement. “Are you kidding? This is the chance of a lifetime. Even if we didn’t just get a visit from our friendly neighborhood police officer, we’d be mad not to jump at this.”

  Adelie swallowed and stilled. Her sister couldn’t possibly be considering this. “Stop it right now. You don’t actually want to go and try.”