Reviewed by Sadonna

TITLE:  The Billionaire: An MM Age Gap Bi-Awakening Romance

SERIES: The Portland Protectors-EHM Security

AUTHOR:  Rheland Richmond and Emerson Beckett

PUBLISHER:  Self-Published

LENGTH:  313 pages

RELEASE DATE:  July 29, 2024

BLURB:  

There’s a thin line between love and hate, and I hate that I’m still in love with him.

★Austin “Daredevil” Wentworth★

I hate Greer Rowan.

Hate how I feel when he looks at me, hate the way things ended, and I hate that he’s my older brother’s best friend.

I hate how badly I want him, and most of all, I hate that I’m still stupidly in love with him.

And now Greer has hired me to do the impossible with him on an international excursion that I know is going to land us together in his bed. The problem is, I might not hate that.

★Greer Rowan★

I’ve been such a fool.

I had my reasons for doing what I did, and I know I hurt him. Austin may never understand, but I’m going to force him to hear me out. And if pushing all his protector buttons to get him to pretend to be my bodyguard boyfriend at my niece’s wedding won’t do the trick, I’ll dare him to do something else for one reason. That angry man is all I want.

Austin is the love of my life. We’re supposed to be together, and I’ve already spent too many years without him.

The Billionaire is book three in the Portland Protectors- EHM Security series. It is a not so fake boyfriend, gay for you, brothers best friend, grumpy sunshine MM Romance with a swoony HEA.

REVIEW:

Note:  This is the third book in this series and contains major spoilers for the previous books as well as the Package Deal series books.  It can be read as a standalone, although I think understanding the context is best served by reading the series.

Austin Wentworth will always be there for his team.  He and his SEAL team have done well with their security business in Portland after their service is over.  He says he HATES Greer Rowan, the Portland Pirates owner and employer to many of his colleagues boyfriends/spouses.  He’s on the periphery of that social group – but only because he refuses to have anything to do with Greer.  Nobody knows exactly why he seems to hate the man.

Greer feels like things have gone on long enough.  He’s been waiting 14 years and ever since Austin has been in Portland, he’s done everything he can to avoid Greer.  It doesn’t help that Austin’s brother Carter is Greer’s best friend.  It also doesn’t help that they were no contact for over a decade.  But the most damning thing is what happened 14 years ago.  And Austin is not interested in hearing from Greer what really happened and why.

Greer gets Jesse/GQ to help him force Austin to spend time with him when he can’t get away.  So he cooks up a scheme that he needs protection while on a trip for his niece’s wedding in Costa Rica.  It’s a bit of a ruse but he knows that Austin would never shirk his duties.  And what better way to force Austin to talk to him than to get him to pose as his boyfriend and also be his bodyguard.  Austin is NOT happy about it, but he agrees to do the job.  This can go one of two ways: either blow things up once and for all, or move them off this cold war they’ve been fighting and remove the last barriers to them being together.

I’m not going to ruin the ride, but let’s just way that things turn out for the best.  For everyone.

Well this turns out to be a quite swoon worthy romance – after a fairly contentious beginning 🙂  There is a long history between these two and this book finally explains Austin/Daredevil’s animosity towards Greer.  He’s not necessarily wrong to be angry, but he also never allows Greer a say, so Greer has to resort to a bit of trickery to get Austin to listen to him.  And it turns out that as painful as it has been for both of them to be apart, it also probably had to work out this way for them to really be able to see what was there for them.  I honestly expected a lot more angst from this book, but it turned out to not be so bad.  The one character I really disliked was Greer’s sister.  She was completely annoying.  Luckily her kids were great 🙂  Austin and Greer were both destined to lonely lives until they could figure their way out of the past and look to the future.  I loved that Austin was all in once he broke free from the past.  Greer finally being happy and no longer being alone and lonely was so lovely.  I wanted to just hug that man!  I loved that his players and friends really did appreciate him and all that he had done for them and they were eager to repay him and be there for him.  Great to see all the guys from the Package Deal series here as well.  I love getting little glimpses into their lives with their families too.

Also the epilogues were adorable!  And I cannot wait for Dreamboat and The Commander’s book 🙂  I feel like that is going to be one crazy ride 😉

RATING: 

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