Charlotte Phillips - All Bets Are On

The stakes are high, but the prize is worth it!

Ask Alice Ford to shine in the boardroom and it’s a done deal. Ask her to go on a first date, however, and she’s a quivering mess! So, when she discovers that she’s the target of an office bet—to get her into bed—it’s her professional nightmare!

Office legend Harry Stephens is her unlikely savior. He even volunteers to teach her just how to avoid a heartbreaker. After all, it takes one to know one….

But what is Harry really after? And when his kisses throw a curveball into the situation, is Alice ready to gamble everything for love?

ALL BETS ARE ON

“If you’re thinking about dating again, maybe you’d like to go for a drink,” he said.

“With you?”

The question exploded from her lips in the form of a laugh. Because it was laughable, wasn’t it? That after her past experiences she would look twice at someone like him?

“Your amusement could be construed as an insult, you know,” he said mildly.

“I can’t,” she said. “Sorry.”

In Harry Stephens’s world, of course, no meant maybe. He realized it was a simple matter of finding the right approach. Start small. And, most important of all, offer some kind of incentive. Make her think he could be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

“Just hear me out,” he said. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“What kind of proposition?”

The upset tone had slipped from her voice. He could almost hear the ticking over of her mind. Her attention had been raised because he’d given his question a detached work-style tone.

“I’m exactly what you need,” he said. “To help you get back out there.”

Dear Reader,

In my former life, I worked in a number of offices and I was always intrigued by the melting pot of personalities you get in that environment. People with different backgrounds and lives, who are thrown together and have to find a way to get along. The idea of writing an office romance really appealed to me, and I thought hard about the types of people I’d encountered at work over the years. I had a boss like Alice once. She was completely absorbed and focused on work to the exclusion of everything else, she had no social life and kept everyone at a professional distance. I found myself wondering what could have happened to drive someone to take refuge in their work like that.

Ten years ago a dodgy photo in unscrupulous hands might have been flashed around a table in a bar or shown to a few mates. In the world of social media that we live in now, dodgy photos have the potential to go viral at the click of a button and, once out there, can be impossible to get back. Tearing up a photo is no longer an end to it. What might have been a short-lived joke ten years ago can be a massive betrayal now.

What would it be like to find yourself “out there” on the internet, your privacy compromised by someone you trusted? Under those circumstances, it might make perfect sense to throw yourself into work, an area of your life where you are responsible for your own success or failure and where you can easily keep people at arm’s length.

Then imagine what might happen if someone irresistible came along and challenged that safety?

From these thoughts, Alice and Harry’s story grew.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Charlotte

All Bets

Are On

Charlotte Phillips

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT CHARLOTTE PHILLIPS

Charlotte Phillips has been reading romantic fiction since her teens, and she adores upbeat stories with happy endings. Writing them for Harlequin® is her dream job.

She combines writing with looking after her fabulous husband, two teenagers, a four-year-old and a dachshund. When something has to give, it’s usually housework.

She lives in Wiltshire.

This and other titles by Charlotte Phillips are available in ebook format—check out www.millsandboon.co.uk.

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This book is for Libby, gorgeous daughter,

lovely friend and expert brainstormer. With all my love.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Excerpt

ONE

Alice Ford opened the top drawer of the spare desk in the office, searched for a pen and found a bombshell.

With her temper tested because her entire team was late back from lunch, she was relegated to answering the telephone when she should at this very moment be leading a meeting on how to move forward with the biggest account Innova Brand Management had yet won.

Add to that the absence of her own work station with its colour-coordinated filing system, pen pot, To-Do list and diary managing every moment of her day. This desk was a paper-strewn, disorganised mess from hell, used as a dumping ground for filing by everyone else in the place. Not a pen in sight, hence the need to claw through goodness knew what in the rubbish-filled drawers just so she could note down a phone message. There were crumbs under her fingernails. Bleurgh. And then exasperation spilled over as she looked in disbelief at the crumpled sheet of paper in her hands.

An innocent-at-first-glance grid. Columns filled out with the names of colleagues, amounts of money. Understanding kicked in, swiftly followed by irritation. Why was she even surprised?

Yet another office betting ring.

Seriously, what was it going to take to instil a proper work ethic into these people? Leading by example clearly wasn’t enough. She ran a sensibly short and neutrally lacquered nail down the list of names. The whole office wasn’t here, not by a long stretch, but all the usual suspects were. Exclusively male. Obviously feeling the need to confirm their masculinity by indulging in this kind of primitive-caveman pastime.

She wondered what it was this time. Maybe something to do with Roger from Accounts—she’d heard he was giving up smoking again. Too much to hope that it might be in aid of a charitable cause.

Then she caught sight of the few sentences at the top of the page and sudden cold horror flushed through her, accompanied by the disorienting sick sensation of sliding backwards in time. The heat of humiliation rose in her cheeks.

‘Who can land Ice-Queen Ford? Proof required. In event of a tie, cash prize to be split equally.’

Alice swallowed hard and dug her nails hard into her palms until the prick of furious tears at the back of her throat subsided. Two things were clear:

Her male colleagues were betting on the dismal state of her love life, staking money on who could successfully have a crack at her.

The reputation she’d thought she held here was non-existent.

Far from being perceived as someone to look up to, she was apparently viewed as a dried-up frigid old spinster, enough of a challenge to wager money on, the perfect butt of a joke. Proof required? What the hell would that consist of? An item of underwear?