Katherine Garbera - Billion-Dollar Baby Bargain / The Moretti Arrangement

“Great.” The beaming smile she turned on him transformed her face. “Let’s get dancing.”

Connor stared at her, poleaxed by the wattage of her smile. It made her look almost beautiful.

He blurted out, “You should smile more often,” and in a daze followed her onto the dance floor.

Michael slowed to a shuffle and mouthed, “Everything okay?”

Crap, she was right. Again. He was being selfish. Forcing a smile, Connor gave Michael the thumbs-up.

Everything was great.

Right.

Somehow the maid of honor was in his arms, swaying into the wedding waltz, her dress soft and silky under the hands he hadn’t even realized he’d placed on her waist.

“How did you meet Michael?” she asked, still smiling up at him.

He again noticed how lovely her mouth was and forgot the sheer fury she aroused in him. It was, after all, a very distracting mouth. One taste…it would surely rid his tongue of the aftertaste of that awful champagne.

“We’re members of the same squash club. When our original partners stopped playing—” Paul had preferred the gym “—we were both at a loose end, so we teamed up.” That had been six years ago. Despite seeing his business partner every day of his life, Connor realized Michael had proved to be the better friend. He switched off that train of thought before the bleakness that had hovered over him for the past three days descended again.

No Paul or Dana today.

Not even dreaming up grisly plans for revenge.

“Do you work with Suzy?” he asked, determined to get his mind out of the rut it kept drifting back to. Maybe Michael was right and a date with Victoria would be a good distraction.

The smile faded and her eyes turned cool. “I’m an accountant—Michael told you that, remember?”

“That’s right.” No, a date with Victoria would be a very bad idea. “But should you have reminded me? Isn’t that rude?” He gave her a sharklike smile that held no humor.

“Not as impolite as your evident disinterest—you can’t even remember my name.”

Touché. He took in the flare of rosy color on her cheeks, the sparkle of spirit in her eyes. How had he ever thought she was dreary? “Your name is Victoria. And I can’t think why I thought you were a teacher.”

“Perhaps because I know Suzy?”

No, it was that silent reserve, and the way she didn’t hesitate to correct him. He wasn’t accustomed to that—except from his assistant Iris. And that was different; Iris was a friend of his mother’s and had known him for three decades.

“It’s the way you told me off.”

She slanted him an upward glance. “Yesterday or just now? Either way, you deserved it.”

Connor tried to convince himself that yesterday’s scene had been her fault, but he couldn’t shrug off the discomfort that lingered at the memory of the expression in Suzy’s eyes. Telling himself that Victoria had provoked him didn’t wash. He was accountable for his own actions, and the fact that his life was in chaos was irrelevant.

Instead of responding, he simply shrugged.

“I think you need people to stand up to you more often.”

She pursed that luscious mouth again and Connor had a wild desire to shake her out of her righteous complacency.

“Everyone seems to know what I need.” Her lips parted and Connor got the impression she, too, was about to tell him exactly what she thought he needed. Wickedly determined to silence her, he drew her closer into his arms, bent his head and murmured in her ear, “Michael thinks I need a woman.”

Alone with Suzy in the hotel’s honeymoon suite where they’d retreated to mend the flounce of Suzy’s wedding dress, Victoria couldn’t forget the heady excitement that dancing with Connor had aroused—or the words he’d whispered in her ear.

Michael thinks I need a woman.

His touch on her waist…the way he made her feel so fragile and feminine in his arms…the glorious male scent of him that had surrounded her. She shivered.

Heavens, it had been too long since she’d dated if a man she despised could reduce her to quivering desire, she decided acerbically. Victoria pulled the final stitch tight and savagely snapped off the thread. “There, that should hold as long as you don’t put a heel through the hem again.”

“Victoria, I need a favor.”

Glancing up from where she knelt beside Suzy, Victoria met Suzy’s eyes in the floor-to-ceiling mirrored closet doors. “What’s the favor?”

“Don’t feel you have to agree.”

“How bad can it be? Come on, spit it out.”

There was a pause as Victoria arranged the skirts around Suzy’s legs, waiting. Then, “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

At the hesitant note in Suzy’s voice, Victoria’s attention sharpened. She rocked back on her heels—no easy task given the close-fitting sheath dress she’d chosen to wear. “You can ask me anything—you know that.”

“This is different…it’s difficult. And I’m going to swear you to secrecy if you agree. You can never, ever tell anyone about it.”

Curiouser and curiouser. “Can it be more difficult than asking me to tell your mother you’d driven over her rose-bushes? Did I refuse then?” Victoria raised an eyebrow, inviting Suzy to smile with her. “Granted, you didn’t swear me to secrecy that time.”

But Suzy didn’t laugh.

“You can’t be having second thoughts about your wedding?” Victoria’s heart sank at the thought. “You’re not about to run out on Michael, are you?”

Suzy’s blue eyes grew round. “Oh, no! I’d never do that. How could you even think that, Tory? Michael’s everything I ever dreamed of finding.”

The certainty in Suzy’s voice caused a sudden flare of envy. Pushing herself up off the carpet, Victoria suppressed it. She’d made her choices. After a string of disastrous relationships had ended in accusations that she was too ambitious, she’d decided there were more rewarding ways to fill her life.

She had her job. A fantastic job where she’d built up an impressive client list. And she had Suzy, the best and most loyal friend anyone could wish for.

She didn’t need a man…or a wedding.

So why on earth was she envying Suzy?

And realistically what chance did she have of finding the kind of man she wanted? A man who would let her keep the independence she craved, and love her for it? The memory of a pair of hard hands at her waist, a harsh whisper in her ear, stole over her. Certainly not a man like Connor North. Arrogant. Demanding. A man who didn’t even believe in love.

Drawing a shaky breath, Victoria forced herself to focus on Suzy, on the issue at hand rather than on the illusion of finding someone who would love her forever. “I just thought you might’ve belatedly remembered your vow never to marry again.”

“That was years ago.” Suzy waved a dismissive hand and turned to the mirror to study herself. “I’d just come from the lawyer’s office and a horrible fight about the divorce settlement with Thomas. Of course I was feeling a little sore about marriage.”

A little sore? Victoria almost laughed at the understatement but the tension in her friend’s shoulders warned against it. Suzy had studiously avoided weddings for a year after that first disastrous attempt at matrimony.

“I love Michael. I want… need …this time to work.” Suzy spun back, her dress whirling around in a froth of white, and slanted Victoria an imploring look. “You of all people must know that I want what Mum and Dad had.”

How had Suzy unerringly known to pick on the one thing that would silence Victoria?

Suzy’s parents had adored each other—and they’d been loving and incredibly kind. Whenever Victoria’s father had been overcome by a bout of wanderlust, her mother had retreated into a sobbing self-pity. It had been Suzy’s parents who had offered Victoria a bed for the night, cooked meals for her and ensured that she made it to school with her clothes clean and her homework done.