Yvonne Lindsay - A Silken Seduction

The Fine Art of Temptation

London-based artist Avery Cullen refuses to sell her late father’s art collection. But bold, brash Marcus Price will try everything to get her to reconsider. He even launches an all-out sexual siege on the lonely heiress in the gilded cage.

Securing the collection would be a coup for his auction house, but for Marcus, it would settle a lifelong score. He’s managed to keep his true motives hidden along with his family’s skeletons…and now he’s so close, he can taste success in Avery’s kiss. But after their torrid night of passion, is Marcus prepared for the outcome?

Avery in his arms…

The memory was all he could handle.

She got to him on so many levels. Him, the original user. The guy who’d used his unmistakable charm to fake his way to a pedigree no one questioned. He was immune to the vulnerable; he’d trained himself to be. Because Marcus Price never took his eye off the prize, and he was always prepared to work hard to get whatever he wanted.

You want Avery Cullen.

Sure, he wanted Avery. She was a goddess, with a body that promised untold sexual delight, yet she maintained an air of naivety, of untapped raw passion, that was enough to entice even the most jaded of souls.

But there was something he wanted even more.…

Dear Reader,

I was delighted to be invited to participate in The Highest Bidder continuity. The opportunity to work with authors I admire is something I like to grasp firmly whenever it is presented to me. While we’re always given the skeleton of our stories, and the continuity overview, seeing how everyone fleshed out their characters and cleverly wove the threads of the mysteries of the Gold Heart statue was fascinating.

In A Silken Seduction, Avery Cullen and Marcus Price are such different people. She’s gentle, shy and perhaps a little naive. He’s confident, determined and very, very aware of what he wants in life. She’s from old money, lots of it. He, most definitely, is not. Yet their attraction to one another is something neither can ignore.

Can their growing attraction for one another survive Marcus’s driving ambition, or will one of them pay the ultimate price and have their heart irrevocably broken? I do hope you enjoy finding out the answers as you delve into A Silken Seduction.

Happy reading,

Yvonne Lindsay

A Silken Seduction

Yvonne Lindsay

www.millsandboon.co.uk

New Zealand born, to Dutch immigrant parents, YVONNE LINDSAY became an avid romance reader at the age of thirteen. Now, married to her ‘blind date’ and with two fabulous children, she remains a firm believer in the power of romance. Yvonne feels privileged to be able to bring to her readers the stories of her heart. In her spare time, when not writing, she can be found with her nose firmly in a book, reliving the power of love in all walks of life.

She can be contacted via her website:

www.yvonnelindsay.com

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Special thanks and acknowledgment to Yvonne Lindsay for her contribution to The Highest Bidder miniseries.

To my fellow authors—Maureen, Charlene, Paula, Cat

and Barbara. It’s been a genuine pleasure, thank you.

And, to CG and JA—

working with you guys is always a delight.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Bonus Story

One

“Miss Cullen is not taking visitors!”

Avery started at the outraged voice of her housekeeper—the action making her blotch a daub of the yew-green paint at the end of her brush. The sound of footsteps came swiftly on the ancient paved path behind her. She sighed and put the paintbrush down. On this overcast and suddenly autumnal London day she was already losing the light and, interruptions aside, the painting wasn’t going well anyway. If only passion for a subject made up for a lack of everything else, she thought as she reached for the linseed-oil-scented rag on the shelf of her easel and wiped her hands before turning to see what the fuss was about.

Her housekeeper usually had no trouble heading off visitors at the front door. The woman was fiercely protective of Avery and fully respected the younger woman’s wish for privacy. But it seemed someone had managed to cut past Mrs. Jackson’s normally effective defense. The man walking a clear yard ahead of the stout housekeeper had his eyes on only one thing. Avery.

Tall, with dark blond hair that, while short, managed to look like he’d just rolled out of bed, and a light beard that suggested he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, there was no doubt he was disreputably good-looking. There was also something vaguely familiar about him. No, surely not. She would have remembered meeting him before. She didn’t know him at all. Sure you do, a tiny voice whispered from deep inside. Wasn’t he that guy Macy had pointed out when they were in New York for the Tarlington auction? Avery shoved the voice back down where it belonged as a shiver of something undefined shimmered up her neck. Not fear. Not even apprehension over the stranger striding so determinedly toward her, strangely enough.

No, this was something else. Something she had about as much trouble putting a name to as she’d had capturing the beauty of her father’s favorite garden in oils on canvas. Whatever it was, it made a bloom of heat kiss her cheeks and she felt her pulse rate lift a notch. Irritation at being disturbed, she told herself, but she knew it was anything but.

“I’m sorry, Miss Cullen, I informed Mr. Price you aren’t taking visitors but he just wouldn’t listen.” Disapproval was clear in every vowel of the housekeeper’s London East End origins. She gave an indignant sniff. “He says he has an appointment.”

Mrs. Jackson’s rosy cheeks glowed even brighter than usual at this clear invasion of her mistress’s privacy.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Jackson. He’s here now,” Avery answered as soothingly as she could and, summoning the hospitality that had been drummed into her from an early age, she offered, “perhaps our guest might like some tea on the terrace before he leaves?”

“Coffee, please, if you have it,” the man said, his voice pure Boston Brahmin all the way, but it was his name that finally filtered through her memory and caught her attention.

As Mrs. Jackson bustled off to prepare the coffee, still bristling with outrage and muttering under her breath, Avery gave him her full consideration.

“Price? So you’d be Marcus Price, of Waverly’s in New York?” she asked.

Waverly’s was the auction house that had handled her friend Macy’s mother’s estate sale. Seeing what Macy had gone through over the sale had made Avery all the more determined to hold on to the treasures that made up her past—whether she liked them or not. At least she had the luxury, literally, of not having to sell those memories as poor Macy had.

“I’m flattered you remember my name,” he said with an easy smile that made her stomach do an uncomfortable flip in response.