Nicola Marsh - Marrying the Enemy

It had to be her subconscious telling her she belonged behind the scenes rather than a genuine physiological reaction. She only used the finest metals and gems. Gems that were harder to come by these days thanks to Maroney Mine, the corporate mining giant devouring everything and everyone in its path.

If she ever got her hands on Jax Maroney, the CEO, she’d throttle him.

Speaking of getting her hands on a guy... She darted a glance over her shoulder at the truculent Adonis propped against the far wall, deliberately detached from the milling crowd.

He might be wearing a charcoal pinstriped suit, baby-blue business shirt and indigo tie, but that was where his respectability ended.

With unreadable ebony eyes, an inscrutable expression and that imperceptible curl of disgust to a very sexy top lip, the guy had bad boy written all over him.

Along with the folded arms and ominous glare, he’d been rudely brusque when she’d approached. He didn’t want to be here. Which begged the question why he’d turned up. And who was he?

The Seaborns had built their reputation on exclusivity. Every person here tonight had lineage and class and money. Money to burn.

Money her family’s jewellery business needed desperately if they were to survive.

She stared a fraction too long, her gaze locking with his, and as he slowly raised a mocking eyebrow a shiver skittered over her skin, making it prickle from more than the necklace.

Unaware she’d been holding her breath, she exhaled and saluted before turning away. She slipped a finger beneath the front-fastening choker-style necklace that seemed to have a stranglehold.

It didn’t help, his potent stare eliciting a heat that coursed through her body like a power surge.

He exuded something raw, something primitive, and she unwittingly responded on a visceral level, the tug of excitement deep inside unexpected and unwelcome.

She’d usually toy with a guy like him, have her fun then move on. He so wasn’t her type.

But with Sapphie convalescing on enforced leave, she’d assumed more duties than she could handle. Creating the pieces she loved had been surpassed by spokeswoman and modelling tonight, with more to come. Much more.

Even now, several months since her sis had almost collapsed and she’d learned the truth, she wished the last year had been different.

She wished Mum and Sapphie had trusted her.

Dealing with grief over losing their mum had been tough and she’d admired Sapphire assuming CEO duties of Seaborn’s as well as being the face of the company. After all, it was what Saph had been groomed to do since she could walk.

She’d never envied her sister the responsibility, preferring to indulge her creative side, happy to be the scatty, carefree Seaborn.

Thanks to Sapphie’s bombshell before she had an enforced recuperation, Ruby now had more responsibility than she could possibly want or imagine.

And it made her mad as hell it’d taken her sister’s near breakdown for her to discover the truth.

Throw in Seaborn’s ever-decreasing profit margins as chain stores flourished under a worsening economy, and Maroney Mine doing its best to drive them out of business, and the last few months had sucked.

But she had twelve weeks while Sapphie recuperated to turn Seaborn’s around, twelve weeks to prove to her sister and the rest of the corporate world she wasn’t the flighty airhead they thought, and kick some business butt.

As Ruby moved through the crowd, accepting air-kisses and congratulations for her latest creations, her gaze drifted towards the surly stranger too many times for her liking.

Worse, whenever it did, he was staring straight at her.

Determined to shake the feeling they were inexplicably linked by a force of attraction bigger than the both of them, she flitted from one group to another, laughing at nothing, smiling at anything.

All too soon the event ended and she sagged on a stool in relief. Until her cousin Opal tapped her on the shoulder and shoved a manifesto under her nose.

‘How many pieces did we sell?’

Her heart sank as Opal frowned and shook her head. ‘Not enough.’

‘Damn.’ She snatched the listing and scanned it, the lack of gold foil sale stickers making her stomach gripe with angst.

Seaborn’s was seriously floundering and nothing, even their biggest launch and her best pieces yet, could save it.

Opal squeezed her arm. ‘It’ll be okay.’

Unexpected tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away, not trusting herself to speak until she did. ‘It’ll have to be.’

For Sapphie’s sake, for her sake, for the sake of a family business she had no intention of losing.

Unbeknown to her until recently, Sapphie had made a promise to their mum on her death bed last year when Mathilda Seaborn, the matriarch of Seaborn’s for the last fifteen years, had been pumped full of morphine but completely lucid.

The pancreatic cancer might have ravaged her body but it hadn’t touched her astute business brain; her mum had made Sapphire promise to do whatever it took to make her legacy survive. For them. For their children.

Considering Ruby couldn’t sustain a long-term relationship any longer than Sapphie, nor did she want to, kids were a long way off.

Irrelevant now, with her sister under strict doctor’s orders after collapsing from stress and exhaustion because she’d shouldered a burden they both should’ve shared.

It had been a double shock, learning of Seaborn’s grim financials, and the fact she’d been inadvertently responsible for Sapphie’s collapse.

And she had been, no matter which way she looked at it. She’d always been the indulged Seaborn, the one allowed to follow her dreams and travel and kick back with Sapphie happily shadowing Mum, learning everything she could.

While Sapphie had studied hard to obtain straight As, she’d coasted, lucky to pull her usual Cs up to an occasional B.

While Sapphie had done a master’s in Economics as a foregone conclusion, she’d breezed through an Arts major, not really caring whether she finished or not because she’d already started creating signature pieces for Seaborn’s.

While Sapphie had no social life due to Seaborn’s commitments, she’d danced and partied her way around Melbourne with a hip crowd as laid-back as her.

Little wonder Mum hadn’t trusted her with Seaborn’s viability.

Time to prove her mum and Sapphie wrong.

She might’ve been too self-absorbed in her carefree, creative life before. Now she had a chance to set things right by taking Seaborn’s out of the red and firmly into the black.

Opal nudged her. ‘By the way, we’ve got a hanger-on.’

Ruby glanced over her shoulder in time to see Security hassling Happy Face. The fact he’d waited around made her pulse skitter and she clamped down the urge to grin in triumph despite the dastardly news Opal had just delivered.

Men were so predictable. A little light-hearted flirtation and they thought you’d handed them your heart on a plate.

‘I’ll take care of this.’

Opal frowned as Happy Face glowered at their security guard, towering over him by a foot. ‘Sure?’

‘Yeah, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.’ Opal’s frown eased at her cliché as she hugged her. ‘Thanks for your help, hun, couldn’t have done it tonight without you.’

‘I’ll have to add hostess with the mostest to my geologist credentials.’

Ruby bumped her with her hip. ‘You bet. Now off you go, head home and I’ll take care of our recalcitrant guest.’

Casting one last doubtful glance in Happy Face’s direction, Opal headed out the back.

Ruby squared her shoulders to do battle. The necklace still made her neck itch, her feet ached from wearing stilettos rather than the ballet flats she preferred and the satin sliding over her hips set off some strange static reaction that zapped her at inopportune moments.