Anna DePalo - An Improper Affair

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my aunt Angela Dagostino, and

my editors, Melissa Jeglinski and Jessica Alvarez

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Cooling his heels in a backwater like Hunter’s Landing wasn’t Ryan’s idea of a good time, but then, nothing was these days.

He was so close to victory he could almost taste it, and since revenge was a dish best served cold, he intended to take his time savoring the triumph.

In the meantime, he didn’t intend to let his prey off the hook. Webb Sperling—CEO and chairman of the board of Sperling department stores, and the man he was forced to call his father—would never know what hit him.

Now he walked along one of the main shopping drags around south Lake Tahoe, keeping his eye out for a place where he might pick up a wedding gift. If he was stuck in Hunter’s Landing for the month of June, he might as well figure out what amusements lay nearby.

There were precious few amusements to be had in Hunter’s Landing itself, that was for sure. He figured the locals in such a quiet little place depended on their cable service for access to television, the Internet and the world.

Cable interested him. Cable had made him rich. His company, El Ray Technology, was among the bigger players in California’s fabled Silicon Valley.

A store sign hanging from a metal bar up the street caught his eye. Distressed Success, it announced in flowery type.

His lips curved in sardonic amusement.

The sign summed up his life.

When he drew even with the store, he was able to see it was a tidy little shop devoted to home furnishings. Its facade was white with light blue and yellow trim, like an Easter egg, and both its store windows presented cozy tableaus of domestic bliss.

The window on the left showcased a table set for tea with mismatched cups and saucers. The table had a distressed finish and was covered with a chintz tablecloth and set for four.

The window on the right displayed an old-fashioned settee—something that looked as if it had been salvaged from a garage sale—strewn with an outrageous assortment of silk, beaded and tasseled pillows.

It was domesticity with a hint of sin, he thought, his gut tightening.

The look would have suited a room tinged with Eastern exoticism—or a madam’s boudoir. Here, on the California border with Nevada, where regulated brothels were legal in some localities, the decor would have found a ready market.

Intrigued by the storefront, he decided to have a look inside.

A chime above the door announced his entrance.

“These raw-silk photo albums just came in last week—”

The woman’s voice, with just a hint of huskiness, washed over him, along with the faint scent of a flowery blend.

He walked around a display table and came face-to-face with the owner of that voice.

She glanced up, smile in place, and he felt the air leave him as if he’d taken a sucker punch to the stomach.

Hello.

“Good afternoon…”

Her voice trailed off as they stared at each other.

He went tense, the elemental reaction of a male who’s gone too long without a mate.

He looked at her hand, noticed she wasn’t wearing a ring and felt his spirits lift.

Things were looking up for his enforced month-long stay in sleepy Hunter’s Landing, he thought bemusedly.

Tall and curvaceous, she had hair that flowed past her shoulders in loose curls. He had to call it titian colored, for lack of a better word.

She was a latter-day Venus—a model for the goddess of love that would have made even Botticelli proud. She had a pale heart-shaped face and symmetrical features.

She was dressed in a brown velvet top, ruffled skirt and high-heeled sandals. The look was professional but with a hint of the bohemian, and it dovetailed with the image of her shop.

She stood with a well-dressed, middle-aged female customer, the two of them flanking a waist-high white counter upon which were arrayed a number of albums.

She cleared her throat and righted the smile that had wavered. “Please take a look around and let me know if you need anything.”

She hesitated a second, as if she belatedly realized how the words could be interpreted, and he felt his lips twitch.

“I’ll be able to assist you as soon as I’m done,” she said.

He thought about how he’d like her to assist him and smiled with lazy assurance. “No problem. Take your time.”

She looked momentarily uncertain, then turned back to deal with the customer in front of her.

The mood broken, he sauntered around the shop, at the same time taking the opportunity to study her.

Over the years, he’d had plenty of confirmation that women found him attractive. Still, his charm was rusty from lack of use. His last relationship—if a three-month fling could be called that—had ended nearly a year ago.

Her voice reached him from the back of the shop. “These are interleaved with acid-free pages—”

He eyed a floor lamp with a tasseled flower-print shade, then a wrought iron chandelier with beaded glass strands of blue and green.

He felt as if he’d entered a fantasyland, one with a profusion of colors and textures.

Still, her shop couldn’t compare to her. She interested him as no woman had for a long time.

“—we also have some leather-bound albums you might like—”

Her voice caressed his mind like the stroke of a petal.

He’d definitely been too long without sex, he thought. Too long without anything except work.

And now, thanks to his old college buddy Hunter—who’d gone to his grave too young—he had too much time to think about it.

At Harvard, he and Hunter and five other guys had formed a small band—a fraternity unto themselves. One night, across a table strewn with beer bottles, they’d vowed to make their own marks on the world, though they’d come from families of distinction and wealth. They’d vowed to come together again in ten years to celebrate their friendship and success.

But shortly before graduation, Hunter’s sudden and shocking death from melanoma had ripped the group apart, and they’d eventually lost touch.

That is, until a few months ago, when he and the remaining Seven Samurai had gotten letters from a Los Angeles law firm representing the Hunter Palmer Foundation.

Before his death, Hunter had apparently made arrangements for a lodge to be built near Lake Tahoe, and now, reaching from beyond the grave, he expected his friends, as they reached their milestone decade past graduation, to honor the vow they’d made to one another.

By the terms of Hunter’s will, if each guy spent a month at the lodge, at the end of six months, twenty million dollars would go to charity and the lodge itself would be bequeathed to the town of Hunter’s Landing so it could be used as a restorative place by cancer survivors and patients.

Twenty million was a lot of moola, and not even Ryan, hard-hearted millionaire that he was, could say no.

So that was how he found himself in this predicament. He was trapped in Hunter’s Landing at the precise moment he was closing in on the goal he’d worked years to achieve—making Webb Sperling pay and then pay some more.

His mouth twisted. Of course, leave it to Hunter to find a place called Hunter’s Landing for his old college buddies to serve their time. Hunter had always had a peculiar sense of humor.