Married to His Business / Six-Month Mistress: Married to His Business

Married to His Business / Six-Month Mistress: Married to His Business
Elizabeth Bevarly

Katherine Garbera

Be swept away by passion… with intense drama and compelling plots, these emotionally powerful reads will keep you captivated from beginning to end.Married to His Business Elizabeth Bevarly Matthias Barton’s dependable assistant of five years was taking another job – with the competition. Matthias felt incensed, betrayed and, shockingly, a little jealous. How had his feelings veered from professional to personal? Newfound lust begat determination. He would win her back – by any means necessary. Six-Month Mistress Katherine Garbera Years ago, in a desperate move, Bella McNamara had agreed to become millionaire Jeremy Harper’s temporary mistress. He would never know she’d fallen madly in love with him even before she’d signed herself away.But now, finally, she had six very intimate months to work on her own plan: becoming Jeremy’s beloved wife.

Married to His Businessby Elizabeth Bevarly

MEMO

To: Matthias BartonFrom: Kendall ScarboroughRe: My Resignation

Following up on our earlier conversation, I am hereby submitting my resignation. While I have enjoyed my five years as your personal assistant, I feel it is time for me to move on to an opportunity where my qualifications can be used to their fullest. I am sure you will find someone who can programme your BlackBerry, make your coffee and organise your office to your liking.

Please rest assured that my resignation is solely for professional purposes and has nothing to do with your engagement, your unengagement or any other personal matters. The timing is strictly coincidental.

Six-Month Mistressby Katherine Garbera

“I have a dress for you,” he declared.

“I’d prefer to wear my own clothes,” she told him.

“And I’d prefer you to wear the dress I selected.”

“I think we’re at a stalemate,” she said.

“No, we’re not.”

“We’re not?” she asked. She shook her head. “I know you think you’re going to get your way, but—”

“I don’t think it, Bella. I know it. Because as my mistress, you’ll put my preferences first.”

Married to His Business

ELIZABETH BEVARLY

Six-Month Mistress

KATHERINE GARBERA

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

MARRIED TO HIS BUSINESS

by

Elizabeth Bevarly

ELIZABETH BE VARLY

is a New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of more than fifty novels and eight novellas. Her books have been published in nineteen languages and more than two dozen countries, and have been included in launches in Russia, China and the Spanish-speaking North American market. There are more than eight million copies of her books in print worldwide.

Although she has claimed as residences Washington, DC; Virginia; New Jersey and Puerto Rico, she now lives back in her native Kentucky with her husband and son, where she fully intends to remain.

Dear Reader,

Whenever you get a group of writers together, something interesting always develops. Something like, oh…I don’t know, a romance series. That’s what happened with the book you’re reading now. When some of us gathered in a hotel room at a romance writers’ conference and called another writer on the phone, we somehow ended up brainstorming this six-book MILLIONAIRE OF THE MONTH series.

We came home from the conference and immediately formed an e-mail loop, and little by little, the series took shape. One of us even located a magazine featuring log homes that included the perfect lodge for the Seven Samurai to occupy in the stories.

I had so much fun working with the other writers on this series, and I loved how it all turned out. Here’s hoping you enjoy our millionaires, as well.

Happy reading!

Elizabeth Bevarly

For all my Desire™ readers over the years.

Thanks for joining me on the ride.

One

As Kendall Scarborough watched her boss close his cell phone, stride to the northernmost window of his office and push it open, then hurl the apparatus into the wild blue yonder, she found herself thinking that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a good day to tender her resignation. Again. But she would. Again. And this time she would make it stick.

And how fitting that one of her last tasks for Matthias Barton would be ordering him a new phone. Again. At least phones were easier to program and format to his liking than were PDAs and MP3 players, a number of which also lay at the bottom of the reflecting pool in the courtyard of Barton Limited—which just so happened to be situated directly below the northernmost window of Matthias’s office. In fact, there were at least five years’ worth of PDAs and MP3 players and other small apparatuses… apparati…little gizmos…in the pool, Kendall knew. Matthias Barton was, without question, one of the finest minds working in big business today. But when it came to itty-bitty pieces of machinery, he was reduced to, well…throwing a lot of stuff out the window.

She straightened her little black-framed glasses and plucked out the pen that was perpetually tucked into the tidy, dark blond bun knotted at the back of her head. Then she withdrew a small notepad from the pocket of the charcoal pin-striped, man-style trousers she’d paired with a tailored white, man-style shirt. All of her work clothes were man-style, because she was convinced they gave her petite, five-foot-four-inch frame a more imposing presence in the male-dominated society of big business. After scribbling a few notes—not the least of which was New phone for Matthias—she flipped the notepad closed and stuffed it back into her pocket.

“Kendall,” he began as he closed the window and latched it, then turned to make his way back to his desk.

“Got it covered, sir,” she told him before he said another word. “We’ll go with VeraWave this time. I’m sure that service will suit you much better than the last one.”

To herself, she added, And the one before that. And the one before that. And the one before that. It was just a good thing Barton Limited was headquartered in a city like San Francisco where new phone services sprang up every day. The year wasn’t even half over, and Kendall had already been forced to change cellular companies three times.

“Thank you,” Matthias told her as he seated himself behind his big mahogany desk and reached for the small stack of letters she’d typed up that morning, which were now awaiting his signature.

His attire was, of course, man-style, too, but she didn’t think that was what gave him such an imposing presence—though certainly the espresso-colored suit and dark gold dress shirt and tie, coupled with his dark hair and even darker eyes, didn’t diminish it. Matthias himself was just larger than life, be it sitting at the head of the massive table that bisected the boardroom of Barton Limited, or slamming a squash ball into the wall at his athletic club, or charming some bastion of society into a major investment at a dinner party. Kendall had seen him in each of those situations—and dozens of others—and she couldn’t think of a single moment when Matthias hadn’t been imposing.

He’d intimidated the hell out of her when she’d first come to work for him straight out of graduate school, even though, back then, he’d barely been out of grad school himself. In spite of his youth, he’d already made millions, several times over. Kendall had been awed that someone only five years older than she—Matthias had only recently turned thirty-two—was already light-years ahead of her on the corporate ladder. She’d wanted to observe his habits and policies and procedures and mimic them, thinking she could achieve the same rapid rise and level of success through emulation.

It hadn’t taken long, however, for her to realize she would never be in Matthias’s league. He was too focused, too intense, too driven. His work was his life. He needed it to survive as much as he did oxygen or food. Over time, she’d gotten used to his ruthless single-mindedness when it came to achieving success, even if she’d never been able to understand it. And not just any old run-of-the-mill success, either. No, Matthias Barton had to be the absolute, no-close-seconds, unparalleled best at everything he set out to do.

Not that it mattered now, Kendall told herself, since she wasn’t going to be a part of his pursuit—or his success—much longer. She had a pursuit—and success—of her own to accomplish, and she should have started years ago. With her MBA from Stanford, she’d been overqualified for the position of personal assistant when she’d taken the job with Matthias. But she’d known that working for someone like him for a couple of years, even as a personal assistant, would offer her entrée into an echelon of big business that most recent grads never saw. She’d learn from a legend and make contacts up the wazoo, swimming with the proverbial sharks. But “a couple of years” had become five, and Kendall was savvy enough around the sharks now to be able to grill them up with a nice wasabi sauce.

It was time to go.

“Okay, where were we?” Matthias asked.

“Well, sir,” she began, “you’d just, um, concluded your call with Elliot Donovan at The Springhurst Corporation, and I—” She inhaled a deep breath, steeled herself for battle, and said, in a surprisingly sturdy voice, “I was about to give you my two weeks’ notice.” To herself, she added silently, And this time, I’m going through with it, no matter how hard you try to change my mind.