The Ultimate Playboy

She closed it and sat back, fighting the rising nausea.

Desperate was fast becoming her middle name but Ruby refused to accept that the answers to her woeful financial predicament would be found in a skin den.

Biting her inside lip, she exhaled and typed again: Where’s Narciso Valentino tonight?

Her breath caught as the search engine fired back a quick response. The first linked the domain of a popular tabloid newspaper—one she’d become rudely acquainted with when she’d received her first laptop at ten, logged on and seen her parents splashed over the home page. In the fourteen years since then, she’d avoided the tabloid, just as she avoided her parents nowadays.

Ignoring the ache in her chest, she clicked on the next link that connected to a location app.

For several seconds, she couldn’t believe how easily she’d found him. She read the extensive list of celebrities who’d announced their whereabouts freely, including one attending a movie premiere right now in Times Square.

Grabbing the remote, she flipped the TV channel to the entertainment news station, and, sure enough, the movie star was flashing a million-dollar smile at his adoring fans.

She glanced back at the location next to Narciso Valentino’s name.

Riga—a Cuban-Mexican nightclub in the Flatiron District in Manhattan.

Glancing at the clock above the TV, she made a quick calculation. If she hurried, she could be there in under an hour. Her heart hammered as she contemplated what she was about to do.

She despised confrontation almost as much as her parents thrived on it. But after weeks of trying to find a solution, she’d reached the end of her tether.

She’d won the NMC reality TV show and scraped together every last cent to come up with her half of the hundred-thousand-dollar capital needed to get her restaurant—Dolce Italia—up and running.

Any help she could’ve expected from Simon Whittaker, her ex-business partner and owner of twenty-five per cent of Dolce Italia, was now a thing of the past.

She clenched her fist as she recalled their last confrontation.

Finding out that the man she’d developed feelings for was married with a baby on the way had been shock enough. Simon trying to talk her into sleeping with him despite his marital status had killed any emotion she’d ever had for him.

He’d sneered at her wounded reaction to his intended infidelity. But having witnessed it up close with gut-wrenching frequency in her parents’ marriage, she was well versed in its consequences.

Cutting Simon out of her life once she’d seen his true colours had been a painful but necessary decision.

Of course, without his business acumen she’d had to take full financial responsibility of Dolce Italia. Hence her search for Narciso Valentino. She needed him to stand by his company’s promise. A contract was a contract....

* * *

A gleaming black limo was pulling up as she rounded the corner of the block that housed the nightclub. The journey had taken an extra half-hour because of a late-running train. Wincing at the pinch of her high heels on the uneven pavestones, she hurried towards Riga’s red-bricked façade.

She was navigating her way around puddles left by the recent April shower, when deep male laughter snagged her attention.

A burly bouncer held open the velvet rope cordon as two men, both over six feet tall, exited the VIP entrance in the company of two strikingly beautiful women. The first man was arresting enough to warrant a second look but it was the other man who commanded Ruby’s interest.

Jet-black hair had been styled to slant over the right side of his forehead in a silky wave that flowed back to curl over his collar.

Her steps faltered as the power of his presence slammed into her, and knocked air out of her lungs. His aura sent a challenge to the world, dared it to do its worst.

Dazed, she documented his profile—winged eyebrow, beautifully sculpted cheekbone, a straight patrician nose and a curved mouth that promised decadent pleasure—or what she imagined decadent pleasure looked like. But his mouth promised it and, well, this guy looked as if he could deliver on whatever sensual promises he made.

‘Hey, miss. You coming in any time this century?’

The bouncer’s voice distracted her, but not for long enough to completely pull her attention away. When she looked back, the man was turning away but it wasn’t before Ruby caught another quick glimpse of his breathtaking profile.

Her gaze dropped lower. His dark grey shirt worn under a clearly bespoke jacket was open at the collar, allowing a glimpse of a bronzed throat and mouth-watering upper chest.

Ruby inhaled sharply and pulled her coat tighter around her as if that could stem the heat rushing like a breached dam through her.

The drop-dead gorgeous blonde smiled his way. His hand dropped from her waist to her bottom, drifted over one cheek to cup it in a bold squeeze before he helped her into the car. The first man shouted a query, and the group turned away from Ruby. Just like that, the strangely intimate and disturbing link was broken.

Her insides sagged and she realised how tight a grip she’d held on herself.

Even after the limo swung into traffic, Ruby couldn’t move, nor could she stem the tingling suspicion that she’d arrived too late.

The bouncer cleared his throat conspicuously. She turned. ‘Can you tell me who that second guy was who just got into that limo?’ she asked.

He raised one are-you-serious? eyebrow.

Ruby shook her still-dazed head and smiled at the bouncer. ‘Of course you can’t tell me. Bouncer-billionaire confidentiality, right?’

His slow grin gentled his intimidating stature. ‘Got it in one. Now, you coming in or you just jaywalking?’

‘I’m coming in.’ Although the strong suspicion that she’d missed Narciso Valentino grew by the second.

‘Great. Here you go.’ The bouncer placed a Mayan-mask-shaped stamp on her wrist, glanced up at her, then added another stamp. ‘Show it at the bar. It’ll get you your first drink on the house.’ He winked.

She smiled in relief as she entered the smoky interior. If her guess had been wrong and she hadn’t just missed Narciso Valentino, she could nurse an expensive drink while searching him out.

She’d worked in clubs like these all through college and knew how expensive even the cheapest drinks were. Which was why she clutched an almost warm virgin Tiffany Blue an hour later as she accepted that Narciso Valentino was the man she’d seen outside.

Resigned to her fruitless journey, she downed the last of her drink and was looking for a place to set the glass down when the voices caught her attention.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I am. Narciso will be there.’

Ruby froze, then glanced into one of the many roped-off VIP areas. Two women dripping in expensive jewellery and designer dresses that would cost her a full year’s salary sat sipping champagne.

Unease at her shameless eavesdropping almost forced her away but desperation held her in place.

‘How do you know? He didn’t attend the last two events.’ The blonde looked decidedly pouty at that outcome.

‘I told you, I overheard the guy he was with this evening talking about it. They’re both going this time. If I can get a job as a Petit Q hostess, this could be my chance,’ her red-headed friend replied.

‘What? To dress in a clown costume in the hope of catching his eye?’

‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘Well, hell will freeze over before I do that to hook a guy,’ the blonde huffed.