Lindsay Armstrong: The Billionaire Boss's Innocent Bride

Max said nothing, but his eyeswere hooded and heavy. ‘Perhapsthis will make you understandhow highly desirable you are,Alex, for once and for all.’ And heput his arms around her.

She stood frozen in the circle of them as his heavy blue gaze followed the line of her throat.

It was everything she’d dreamt about, their kiss. The taste, the feel, the joy at the sheer fineness of Max Goodwin, in all his tall, beautifully built splendour, thrilled her and filled her with exquisite sensations. But not only that. With the feeling that to be in his arms was like no other place on earth.

And all the complications of loving Max Goodwin melted away as if they’d never existed…

When he raised his head abruptly she thought it was so he could say something personal and intimate that would put the perfect seal on their togetherness.

He didn’t. He stared down at her, and she could see his tortured expression before he closed his eyes briefly and then put her away from him.

The look in his eyes was brooding and sombre. ‘I should never have done that.’

Lindsay Armstrongwas born in South Africa, but now lives in Australia with her New Zealand-born husband and their five children. They have lived in nearly every state of Australia, and have tried their hand at some unusual—for them—occupations, such as farming and horse-training—all grist to the mill for a writer! Lindsay started writing romances when their youngest child began school and she was left feeling at a loose end. She is still doing it and loving it.

Recent titles by the same author:

FROM WAIF TO HIS WIFE

THE RICH MAN’S VIRGIN

THE MILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE CLAIM

A BRIDE FOR HIS CONVENIENCE

THE AUSTRALIAN’S CONVENIENT BRIDE

BY

LINDSAY ARMSTRONG

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

ALEXANDRA HILL arrived home in Brisbane on a particularly chilly May morning.

She’d been on a skiing holiday in the Southern Alps with a group of friends. And while it had been freezing in Canberra when she’d boarded the flight muffled up in a scarf and ski jacket, she hadn’t expected to be grateful for these items of clothing in sub-tropical Brisbane even in winter.

But as it went on to be the coldest May day on record, she was still wearing her coat when she stepped out of the taxi she’d taken from the airport—to find her boss waiting for her on the doorstep of her small terrace house in Spring Hill.

Simon Wellford, ginger-haired and chubby and whose brainchild Wellford Interpreting Services was, threw his arms around her. ‘Thank heavens! Your neighbour wasn’t sure if you were due home today or tomorrow. I need you, Alex. I really need you,’ he said passionately.

Alex, who happened to know Simon was happily married, removed herself from his clutches and said prosaically, ‘I’m still on holiday, Simon, so—’

‘I know,’ he interrupted, ‘but I’ll make it up, I promise!’

Alex sighed. She worked for Simon as an interpreter and had come to know him as somewhat impulsive. ‘What emergency this time?’ she enquired.

‘I wouldn’t call it an emergency, definitely not,’ he denied. ‘Would you call Goodwin Minerals anything but an absolute coup?’

‘I don’t know anything about Goodwin Minerals and I don’t know what you’re talking about, Simon!’

He clicked his tongue. ‘It’s huge, it’s a blue-chip mining company and it’s going into China. Well—’ he waved a hand ‘—they’re about to embark on negotiations here in Brisbane with a Chinese consortium, but one of their Mandarin interpreters has fallen sick and they need a replacement. Almost immediately,’ he added.

Alex dropped her tote bag onto her roller suitcase. ‘On-site interpreting?’ she queried.

Simon hesitated. ‘Look, I know you’ve only done document and telephone work for me, Alex, but you’re damn good at it!’

Alex put her hands on her hips. ‘If we’re talking mining here, are we also talking technical terms?’

Simon glanced at her keenly as he thought, I wish we were—then said, ‘No. It’s for the social events they need you. They…’ he hesitated ‘…wanted to be assured you’d be comfortable in formal social circumstances.’

‘So you told them I don’t eat my peas with my knife,’ Alex remarked, then started to laugh at his injured expression.

‘I told them you came from a diplomatic background. That seemed to reassure them,’ he said a little stiffly because, if the truth be told, he did have one reservation about Alex and this job and it was neither her manners nor her fluency in Mandarin…it was the way she dressed.

He’d never seen her in anything but jeans, although she did have a variety of long scarves she liked to wind round her neck—and her hair was obviously a bit of a trial to her. She also wore glasses.

A classic bluestocking, one could be forgiven for thinking. Not that it had ever mattered how she dressed, because telephone interpreting and document translation were all behind-the-scenes stuff. In fact she did a lot of it from home. You would expect no less than a high social scene from the prominent Goodwin Minerals, though.

He broke his thoughts off with a jerk of his chin. He could sort that out later; getting the job was the important thing and he was running out of time.

‘Hop in the car, Alex,’ he instructed. ‘We’ve got an interview with Goodwins in about twenty minutes.’

She gazed at him. ‘Simon—you’re joking! I’ve just arrived home. I need to shower and change at least and I’m not even sure I want to do this!’

‘Alex…’ he strode across the pavement and opened the passenger door of his car ‘…please.’

‘No, hang on, Simon. Do you mean to tell me you committed me to an interview and you committed Wellford’s to this job with Goodwin Minerals when you weren’t even sure I was coming home today?’

‘I know it sounds a bit, well…’ He shrugged.

‘It sounds exactly like you, Simon Wellford,’ she told him wearily.

‘Great men seize the moment,’ he responded. ‘This could lead to an awful lot of work coming our way from Goodwins, Alex. It could be the making of Wellfords—and,’ he paused suddenly before saying, ‘Rosanna’s pregnant.’

Alex blinked at her boss. Rosanna was Simon’s wife and this would be their first child so the future of the interpreting service would be especially important now.

‘Why didn’t you say so at the beginning?’ she demanded, then her gaze softened and she beamed at him. ‘Oh, Simon, that’s wonderful news!’

Once in the car, some of the difficulties associated with this mission came back to her, however.

‘How am I going to explain the way I’m dressed?’

Simon glanced at her. ‘Tell ’em the truth. You’ve just arrived back from a skiing holiday. We’ll be dealing with a Margaret Winston, by the way. She’s Max Goodwin’s principal private secretary.’

‘Max Goodwin?’

‘The driving force behind Goodwin Minerals—don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him either?’

‘Well, I haven’t. Simon—’ Alex clutched the arm rest as he wove his way through the city traffic ‘—do you have to drive so fast?’

‘I don’t want to be late. He’s a very powerful man, Max Goodwin, and—’

‘ Simon! ’ Alex interrupted urgently, but it was too late. A delivery truck pulled out unexpectedly in front of them and, despite a liberal application of the brakes, they bumped into the back of it.

Simon Wellford clutched the steering wheel and groaned heavily as he stared at the crumpled tip of his bonnet. Then he turned his head to Alex. ‘Are you all right?’