Liz Fielding - The Billionaire Takes a Bride

“If you tell me what you’re looking for I might be able to help?” A voice, low and gravelly, had emerged from the heaped-up quilt.

Then more of the man emerged as he propped himself up on one arm. Naked shoulders, a naked chest with a splattering of dark hair that arrowed down to a hard, flat stomach….

“Um….” Ginny murmured, mesmerised.

“I’m sorry?” One of Richard Mallory’s brows kinked upwards. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

She swallowed hard. There was nothing to do but bluff it out and hope for the best.

“I was looking for my hamster.”

Dear Reader,

Quiet, studious Ginny Lautour and Sophie Harrington, privileged, lively, the natural class “princess,” were the two girls least likely to be friends. But Sophie’s natural kindness in rescuing a lost soul on her first day at school and clever Ginny’s aptitude for getting Sophie out of trouble forged the kind of bond that lasts a lifetime. So when Sophie begs for Ginny’s help to save her job, even though it means breaking into her sexy billionaire playboy neighbor’s apartment, she doesn’t hesitate.

And everything would have been fine if Richard Mallory was—as promised—away for the weekend. But then Sophie wasn’t being entirely honest with her best friend. She wasn’t in trouble. Just matchmaking!

As Sophie discovers, however, when you tell a big fat fib, even if it is with the best of intentions, it’s likely to come back and bite you. Homeless, jobless and with Ginny honeymooning with her beloved Richard, Sophie has no one to turn to. For the first time ever she has to live on what she can earn and, with Christmas coming, the only job on offer is that of dog walker to gorgeous grouch Gabriel York. But it’s the season for miracles and once he offers her a home, no matter how temporary, all things are possible.

I do hope you enjoy reading how best friends Ginny and Sophie find their very special happy endings in The Billionaire Takes a Bride and A Surprise Christmas Proposal.

With love,

Liz

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the ladies of the eHarlequin Writers’ Auxiliary and Hamster Circle. Thanks for the laughs.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

THIS was a mistake. A big mistake. Every cell in Ginny’s body was slamming on the brakes, digging in its heels, trying to claw its way back behind the safety of the rain-soaked hedge that divided her roof top terrace from the raked perfection of Richard Mallory’s Japanese garden, with its mossy rocks, carp pool and paper-walled pavilion.

Previous perfection.

Her boots had left deep impressions in the damp gravel. So much for stealth.

She was not cut out for burglary. Even her clothes were wrong. She should have been in svelte black and wearing lightweight tennis shoes that made no noise, her hair bolted down under a tight ski cap…

Oh, for heaven’s sake. It was the middle of the morning and the last thing she wanted to look like was a burglar.

In the unlikely event that she was discovered it was important that she looked exactly what she was. A distressed neighbour looking for her lost pet…

Somebody totally innocent. And an innocent person didn’t change shoes, or happen to be wearing the appropriate clothing to battle through a hedge. Her lace-ups, baggy jeans and a loose shirt in an eye-gouging purple—fifty pence from her favourite charity shop—screamed innocent. Of everything except bad taste.

She groaned.

Distressed was right.

She had promised herself that she would never volunteer to do anything like this ever again. Not even for Sophie. Famous last words.

Her mouth hadn’t been paying attention.

She took a deep steadying breath and firmly beat back the urgent desire to bolt. It would be fine. She had every angle covered and this was for a friend. A friend in trouble.

A friend who was always in trouble.

A friend who’d always been there for her, she reminded herself.

She took another deep breath, then stepped through the open French windows into the empty room.

‘Er, hello?’

Her voice emerged as a painful croak. A bit like a frog with laryngitis. She had her story all ready in the unlikely event that someone answered, but that didn’t stop her heart from pounding like the entire timpani section of the London Philharmonic…

‘Anyone home?’

The only response was the faint whirr of a washing machine hitting the spin cycle.

Apart from that no sound of any kind.

No turning back.

She had fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty if she was lucky. A brief window of opportunity while the cleaner, having opened up the French windows to let in the fresh air, as she did every morning—why had she mentioned that to Sophie?—and put on the washing, was downstairs flirting with the hall porter over a cup of coffee.

Okay. She wiped the sweat from her upper lip. She could do this. Fifteen minutes was more than enough time to find one little computer disk and save stupid Sophie’s stupid job.

Excuse me? Who exactly is the stupid one here?

The prod from her subconscious was unnecessary. She was the one burgling her neighbour’s apartment while ‘stupid’ Sophie was safely at work, surrounded by an office full of alibi-providing colleagues. Should the need for one arise.

While quiet, sensible Ginny—who should at this moment be safely tucked up in the British Library researching Homeric myths—was the one who’d be arrested.

All the more reason not to waste any more time wool-gathering. Even so, she took a moment to look around, get her bearings. This was not the moment to knock something over…

Mallory’s penthouse apartment, like his garden, tended towards the minimalist. There was very little furniture—but all of it so perfectly simple that you just knew it had cost a mint—a few exquisite pieces of modern ceramics and absolutely acres of pale polished wood floor.

Stay well away from the ceramics, she told herself. Don’t go near the ceramics…

There was only one ‘off’ note.

Spotlit by a beam of sunlight that had found its way through the scudding clouds, a black silk stocking tied in a neat bow around the neck of a champagne bottle next to two champagne flutes looked shockingly decadent in such an austere setting.

A linen napkin—on which something had been scrawled in what looked like lipstick—was tucked into the bow.

A thank you note?

She swallowed hard and firmly quashing her curiosity—she was in enough trouble already—resisted the temptation to take a look.

Whatever it said, the scene confirmed everything she’d heard about the man’s reputation. Not his reputation as a genius, or money machine. Those went without saying. The financial papers regularly genuflected to his brilliance while salivating over Mallory plc’s profits.

It was his reputation as a babe magnet that seemed to be confirmed by this still-life-with-champagne tableau.

Despite being his next door neighbour, albeit on a temporary basis, their paths hadn’t yet crossed so she’d had no opportunity to check this out for herself. Not that she was the kind of ‘babe’ he’d look at twice—she wasn’t any kind of ‘babe’, as she’d be the first to acknowledge.

Whether or not he magnetised her.

Not that he would. Magnetise her.

No matter how superficially attractive, she didn’t find anything appealing about a man who had a reputation for casual affairs, even if the gossip columns loved him for it. But then she didn’t think much of gossip columns, either.