The Billionaire Takes a Bride

‘He could be anywhere,’ she offered just a little desperately, discovering too late that a make-believe pet could be as much trouble as a real one. ‘He’ll have found himself a quiet corner and gone to sleep by now.’ He was beginning to assume a presence and character all his own. ‘They’re nocturnal, you know.’ She swallowed. ‘H-hamsters.’

‘Is that a fact? Then I’ll be sure not to make too much noise. He must be tired after all that effort.’ And he finally straightened, releasing her from his personal force field which had held her fixed to the spot far more effectively than any door. When she still didn’t move he said, ‘Well, if you’re sure I can’t tempt you…’

‘No!’ Did that sound too vehement? She was beyond caring. ‘I really do have to go.’

‘If you insist.’ He made a gesture that suggested she was free to leave any time. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Iphegenia Lautour.’

He was laughing at her now and not making any real attempt to hide the fact. But that was okay. She’d been laughed at before and this was the warm, teasing kind that didn’t hurt. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if Sophie had misjudged him. He might be a shocking flirt, but he did seem to have the redeeming feature of a well-developed sense of humour…

‘Ginny,’ she said, her voice no longer crisp but unusually thick and soft.

It seemed to go with the tingling in her breasts, a curious weakness in her thighs. He had the most kissable mouth of any man she’d ever met, she decided. Not that she’d met many men she would cross the road to kiss.

Firm, wide, the lower lip a sensual invitation to help herself…

She caught her own lower lip between her teeth before she did something truly stupid, cooling it with her tongue.

‘People call me Ginny,’ she explained. ‘Usually. It’s shorter.’

‘And easier to spell.’ The muscles at the side of his jaw clenched briefly. Then, since she was clearly rooted to the spot, he opened the door and held it wide for her. ‘I’ll keep a look out for Hector, Ginny, and if I find him I’ll be sure to send him home.’

She was being dismissed. A minute ago she was desperate to escape. Now he was reduced to encouraging her to leave.

‘If Mrs Figgis, your cleaner—’ she added in case he wasn’t personally acquainted with the lady who kept his apartment free of dust ‘—doesn’t suck him up in her vacuum cleaner thinking he’s a lump of fluff,’ she said, before she could stop herself. Her urgent desire to flee evaporating the moment a swift exit offered itself.

‘Perhaps you’d better warn her,’ he suggested.

‘I will. And I’m, um, really sorry for disturbing you.’

‘I wouldn’t have—’ he paused, smiled ‘—um…missed it for the world. But now I really must take that shower, so unless you want to come and keep an eye on me, make sure I don’t drown the heroic Hector…’ He stood back, offering her a clear route to his bathroom.

This time there was no hiding the crimson tide that swept from her neck to her hairline as she finally caught on to what he already knew. That she’d become just one more case of iron filings clinging to his personal magnet.

‘No…’ She backed through the door, raising her hand, palm up, in a self-protective little gesture. ‘Really, Mr Mallory, I trust you.’

‘Rich,’ he said. ‘People call me Rich.’

‘Yes,’ she mumbled. ‘I know. I’ve seen it in the papers…’

Then she turned and fled.

Ginny couldn’t believe she’d just blundered into a strange man’s bedroom then lied shamelessly while he flirted with her. Worse, that she’d responded as if he’d reached out and flipped a switch—turning her on had been that easy. And, with the game so swiftly won, he’d lived up to his reputation and just as quickly become bored.

She groaned as she ran down the spiral staircase, wishing that it were possible to stop the clock, rewind time…

‘Miss Lautour?’ Mrs Figgis, standing at the foot blocking her way, a puzzled expression creasing her face, brought her to an abrupt halt. ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in?’

The voice of Rich Mallory’s cleaner had much the same instantly bracing effect as the proverbial cold shower. Allegedly. She’d never found the need for such self-abuse.

‘Through the French windows, Mrs Figgis,’ Ginny said, clinging to the truth. Her voice shocked back to crispness. Besides, having bearded the lion in his den and escaped in one piece, she wasn’t about to be scared by someone wielding nothing more dangerous than a duster.

Nevertheless, she held her position two steps up. Just to even up the cleaner’s height advantage.

A mistake. It just drew attention to her boots. Puzzlement instantly shifted to disapproval.

‘Can I ask you to be careful when you’re going round with a vacuum cleaner?’ she asked. Getting it in before she was on the receiving end of a lecture about leaving footwear at the door—particularly anything as unsuitable as boots—in keeping with the Japanese theme of the décor. ‘I’m afraid I’ve lost my hamster—’

‘Hamster?’

What was it about hamsters that was so unbelievable?

All across the country people kept hamsters as pets. As an undergraduate, she’d briefly shared rooms with a girl who’d kept one. It had escaped all the time. It had even got under the floorboards once. Life with a hamster was a constant drama.

That was where she’d got the idea in the first place…

‘Small, buff coloured rodent. About so big.’ She sketched the rough dimensions with her hands. ‘He’s called Hector,’ she said, her head distancing itself from her mouth as she elaborated unnecessarily. Or maybe not.

She probably thought a woman who kept a hamster as a pet would be a sad-sack obsessive—not true, her room-mate had been the life and soul of any party—but Richard Mallory would undoubtedly mention the incident, be suspicious if Mrs Figgis knew nothing about it. With good reason.

‘Easy to mistake for fluff in a dark corner,’ she added.

‘There is no fluff in any corner of this apartment,’ the woman declared indignantly.

‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean…’ Then, ‘I’m sure Mr Mallory will explain.’

‘Mr Mallory?’ Mrs Figgis blanched. ‘He’s still here?’ So she wasn’t the only one who’d been caught out. ‘He should have left hours ago.’

‘Really?’ she said. Oh, listen to her to pretending not to know! She was shocked at just how convincing she sounded. ‘Well, it’s still early.’ If you were a multi-millionaire businessman who’d just had a hard night with a girl who wore black silk stockings. ‘Actually, I think he might appreciate coffee. And he did mention something about scrambled eggs…’

She didn’t hang around to see whether Mrs Figgis considered it any part of her duties to make coffee rather than drink it. Instead, she headed swiftly in the direction of the French windows, legging it across the formerly immaculate raked gravel of Richard Mallory’s roof garden before scrambling through Her Ladyship’s now less than pristine hedge.

She didn’t stop until she was safely inside, with her own French windows shut firmly against the outside world.

Only then did she lean back against them and let out a huge groan.

Rich Mallory straightened under the shower, letting the hot water ease the knots in his shoulders, the ache from the back of his neck. These all-night sessions took it out of him. They were a young man’s game.

Then he grinned.

Okay, he was well past the downhill marker of thirty, but he could still teach the whizkids who worked for him a thing or two, even if he did need a massage to straighten out the kinks next morning.

Maybe he should have lived up—or was that down?—to his reputation and taken up the offer in Ginny Lautour’s disturbing eyes. They were curiously at odds with her clothes, her mousy, not quite blonde hair caught back in a kid’s scrunchy adorned with a velvet duck-billed platypus; he knew it was a duck-billed platypus because he’d been handbagged by his five-year-old niece into buying her one just like it.

But there was nothing childlike about her eyes. A curious mixture of grey and green and slightly slanted beneath finely marked brows, they were intense, witch’s eyes…

His grin faded as he shook his head, flipped the jet to cold and stood beneath it while he counted slowly to twenty. Only then did he reach for his robe, towelling his hair as he padded back to his bedroom, trailing wet footprints across the pale carpet.

Orange juice. Coffee. Eggs. In that order. He’d been wise to pass on the side order of sex. Not that he hadn’t been tempted. Beneath the shapeless clothes, Ginny Lautour’s body had hinted at the kind of curves that invited a man’s hand to linger. And her eyes had invited a lot more than that. But he wasn’t ready to be bewitched just yet.