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.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

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.

She pushed her spectacles up her nose and, putting her hand over her heart in an effort to cut down on the jack-hammer noise it was making, made a big effort to concentrate on what Sophie had told her.

He’d taken the disk home with him earlier in the week and it would be lying about on his desk somewhere. Probably.

Totally confident of her ability to find the thing—‘I mean, how difficult could it be?’—Sophie had been weak on actual details.

About as weak as her reason for not doing this herself. If this was such a breeze, why couldn’t she squeeze through the rain-soaked hedge—the very prickly rain-soaked hedge—and get it herself? After all, she only lived a few floors down, in the same apartment block.

‘But darling, you’re living next door to the man. It’s just so perfect. Almost as if it was fate. If he even suspects I was anywhere near his study I’ll not only lose my job, I’ll never get another one. The man’s a complete bastard. He has absolutely no tolerance for anything less than perfection…’

Right. Of course. She remembered now. Sophie couldn’t risk getting caught. The whole point was to save her job. The only mystery was why she was working for a computer software company in the first place. She usually preferred a little light PR work, or swanning about looking decorative in an art gallery…

Sophie had made it all sound so simple. A quick trip through the hedge that divided her roof garden from his and Bob, apparently, would be her uncle. Which was why Ginny had been nominated to ransack this ‘complete bastard’s’ apartment, ‘borrow’ the disk, copy and return it—thus saving Sophie’s job—without his ever knowing she’d been there.

Piece of cake.

A low groan escaped her lips. She wasn’t built for burglary. Or was it breaking and entering? When she hadn’t actually broken in?

A fine legal point that she was sure the magistrate would explain as he passed sentence if she didn’t find the disk and get out of there before Mrs Figgis returned from her daily dalliance over a double latte with the porter.

Unfortunately, although she was sending urgent ‘move’ messages from her brain to her feet, her synapses appeared to be on a go-slow. Or maybe they were just frozen with terror like the rest of her.

Never again, she vowed, as the message finally got through and her feet came unstuck from the spot to which she had been glued for what seemed like hours. This was positively, absolutely, totally the last time she would allow Sophie Harrington to talk her into trouble.

No. That was unfair. She’d managed to talk herself into trouble. But who could resist Sophie Harrington when she turned on the charm?

Twenty-four years old going on fifteen.

This was just like Ginny’s raid on the school secretary’s office all over again. That time it had been Sophie’s life-or-death need to reclaim her diary before the headmistress read it. Only an idiot would carry such an inflammatory document around with her. Only a complete idiot would be stupid enough to write it in class…

Except that on this occasion if she got caught pulling her best friend’s irons from the fire she risked a lot more than a shocked ‘I expected better from you’ lecture and a suspension of visits to the village for the rest of the term.

She dragged her mind back to reality. Cloakroom, kitchen… She came to a stunned halt as she took in the brushed steel and slate wonder of Mallory’s state-of-the-art kitchen. What couldn’t she do in a kitchen like that?

Richard Mallory wouldn’t need to use magnets on her, she decided, just offer her the run of his kitchen…

For heaven’s sake! She had less than fifteen minutes and she was wasting them drooling over his top of the range knives!

She moved quickly across the room and opened a door on the far side of the two-storey-high living space. Desk, laptop… Bingo!

Good grief, it looked as if a madman had been working without cease for a week. In contrast to everywhere else that had looked almost unlived in. Apart, that was, from the champagne bottle and flutes. One of them barely touched.

So, which of them had been in too much of a hurry…?

She really didn’t want to think about that and, dragging her mind back to the study, decided that untidy was good. It meant he probably wouldn’t be obsessive about locking stuff away.

It also meant there was a lot to look through. Empty water bottles, chocolate bar wrappers—he had seriously good taste in chocolate—and a ton of paper covered with figures littering the desk and floor.

Unfortunately, once she’d looked under all the papers, she could see that was all there was. Not a disk in sight.

She dragged her wandering mind back into line and tried the desk drawers. They didn’t budge. So much for the casual-about-security theory. And the key would be with him, on his long weekend in the country. Along with the owner of the black silk stocking.

Although, if that was the case, why the note? She jerked her curiosity back into line.

Why on earth would she care?

She checked her watch. Six precious minutes gone…

Okay. Keys came in sets of two so there had to be a spare somewhere. She ran her fingers beneath the desk, under the drawers, in case it was taped there. Well, no. First place a burglar would look, obviously. Even a first time burglar like her.

If you didn’t count the school secretary’s office…

Where would she keep the spare key to her desk drawer?

Safely in the drawer so she wouldn’t lose it, but then she didn’t have anything worth locking up. Okay, there were files and disks containing months of painstaking research. Nothing anyone would want to steal, though. But supposing she did…

In her bedside drawer seemed a likely place. Who would ever find it amongst all the clutter?

But would a man think that way? What did men put in their bedside drawers, anyway?

She had no way of knowing but, short of any other ideas, she abandoned the study and ran up the spiral staircase to the upper floor, emerging in a wide gallery where comfort had been allowed to encroach on the severity of the minimalist theme.

The floor was covered with a lovely old Turkish rug, there was a huge, much used leather armchair and the walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with shelves crammed with books that looked as if they’d been read, rather than arranged by an expensive decorator just for effect. She moved towards them on automatic, stumbling over a low table she hadn’t noticed and sending a heap of magazines slithering to the floor.

The noise was horrendous. But it brought her back to her senses. This was no time for browsing…

There was only one door leading from the gallery. Rubbing her shin, she opened it, stepping into a wide inner hallway lit from above by a series of skylights and groaned as she was confronted by half a dozen doors, opening the doors to an airing cupboard and two guest suites before she finally found Mallory’s room. It had to be his room. It was in darkness, the heavy curtains still shut tight against the feeble morning sunlight.

She left the door open to give her some light and looked around. There was very little furniture, which rather confused her.

The whole apartment was so different from the McBrides’ which, like the apartment block that Sir William had designed, had an art deco feel to it. Even the garden.

But it seemed that Mallory’s taste for minimalism extended even to his sleeping arrangements. A very low—and very large—unmade bed dominated the room. Mounded up with a mountainous quilt and pillows and flanked by a pair of equally low tables, each with a tall lamp.

She crossed quickly to the nearest one. At first, she couldn’t work out how to open the narrow, flush-fitting drawer. The lamp would have helped, but her hands were shaking so much with nerves that she was sure to knock it flying if she attempted to switch it on.

Instead, she got down on her knees and felt underneath, relieved to discover that the trick to it was nothing more complicated than a finger ledge.

She pulled and discovered the answer to her question. The drawer contained a quantity of products that suggested Richard Mallory was a man whose guiding principle in life was ‘be prepared’.

Frequently.

She closed it quickly. Okay. Enough was enough. She was running out of time here. And Sophie was running out of luck. She’d check the other table so that she could say she had done everything possible. After that, she was out of there.

Then, as she began to get to her feet, something caught her eye. A glint of something small and shiny under the table, right up against the wall, that might be a key. For a moment she was torn. What was the likelihood that this was the key she was looking for?

But then it had to fit something…

She had to lie down and stretch out flat before she could reach it. It felt right—long and narrow—and she emerged, flushed from the effort as she backed out, holding up the object to get a better look. Light, she needed more light. As she reached for the lamp it came on by itself. Startled, she stared at it for a moment, then grinned. That was so brilliant! She’d heard of lamps that did that…

But this was not the time to investigate. She turned her attention back to the small metallic object she’d picked up. ‘Oh, drat…’

‘Not one of yours, I take it?’

The voice, low and gravelly, had emerged from the heaped-up quilt, along with a mop of dark, tousled hair and a pair of heavy-lidded eyes. It was followed by a hand which tossed aside a remote and lifted the sliver of platinum from her open palm and, warm fingers brushing against her neck, held it up against her ear.

Not a key, but an earring. Long, slender…

And that was just his fingers.

‘No,’ he said, after looking at it and then at her for what seemed like an age, during which her heart took a unilateral decision not to beat—probably something to do with all the magnetism flowing from those electric blue eyes—before dropping it back into her hand. ‘Not your style.’

A sound—something incoherent that might have been agreement—emerged from Ginny’s throat. Recycled charity shop was cheap. That was its attraction. Whether it could be described as a style…

‘If you tell me what you’re looking for I might be able to help?’ he prompted.

More of Richard Mallory emerged from beneath the quilt as he propped himself up on one arm. Naked shoulders, a naked chest with a spattering of dark hair that arrowed down to a hard, flat stomach…

‘Um…’ she murmured, mesmerised.

‘I’m sorry?’ One brow kinked upward. ‘I didn’t quite catch that.’

The sleepy lids were deceptive. His eyes, she realised, were wide awake. How long had he been watching her? Had he witnessed her attack on his bedside drawer?

She swallowed hard. There was nothing to do but bluff it out and hope for the best. If she could handle a room full of eighteen-year-old undergraduates who thought they knew it all—and who almost certainly knew a lot more than her about pretty much anything other than Greek myth—she could surely handle one man…

As his eyes continued to burn into her, she decided she’d take the lecture hall any day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an option. Bluff would have to do it.

‘I said, “um”,’ she replied, pushing her glasses up her nose as she found her ‘teacher’ voice. After all he couldn’t sack her…

He could, of course, call the police.

‘Um?’ He repeated the word back at her as if it was from some foreign language. One he’d never before encountered.

Bluff, bluff.

It was easy. She did it all the time. It was how she had got through the lectures she had given to help support herself through her doctorate. All she had to do, she reminded herself, was use the classic technique of imagining that he was naked. From what she’d seen so far she wasn’t finding it difficult. He probably was naked…

Oh, bad idea.

Think of something else. Her mother…

‘Not the acme of clear thought translated into speech—’ she said, her thoughts—and vocal cords—snapping right back into line ‘—but then you did startle me, Mr Mallory.’

This, for some reason, appeared to entertain him. ‘Do you expect me to apologise?’

‘That really isn’t necessary.’ She finally wrenched her gaze from the wide expanse of his shoulders and, scrambling to her feet, put a little distance between them. ‘It’s entirely my fault, after all. I didn’t realise you were here, or I wouldn’t have just…’ Her desperate attempt to appear cool in a difficult situation buckled under his undisguised amusement. He was, she realised belatedly, teasing her…

‘Just?’ he prompted.

‘Um…’ That foreign word again…

‘Just um?’

‘I wouldn’t have just walked in,’ she snapped. Then, because that seemed to lack something, she said, ‘I’d have knocked first.’

‘Really?’ His eyebrows suggested he was seriously surprised. ‘That would be a first.’

She frowned, confused, unable to drag her gaze from his shoulders. Or the way the muscle, emphasized by deep shadows, bunched up as he shrugged.

Then she realised what he was implying and felt herself blush. Of all the arrogant, self-opinionated…She wasn’t some Richard Mallory ‘groupie’, intent on flinging herself on his irresistible body!

‘If it’s a regular problem maybe you should keep your bedroom door locked,’ she advised, perhaps more sharply than was wise under the circumstances.

‘Maybe I should,’ he agreed. Then, bringing her back to the point, ‘So? What were you looking for?’

Her heart—which was having a seriously bad morning—skipped a beat. She should have legged it while she had the chance, instead of sticking around to chat. He might have dismissed the whole incident as a bad dream. She’d had worse nightmares.

‘Looking for?’ she repeated.

‘Under my bed.’

‘Oh.’

Help…

Her excuse had sounded perfectly reasonable as she’d rehearsed it in the safety of her own apartment. But then she’d never expected to have to use it. She’d be in and out in a flash, Sophie had promised.

When would she ever learn?

What had sounded reasonable as a back-up story, in the event that the cleaner returned early from her morning flirtation with the porter, lacked any real credibility when confronted with the man himself.

Or maybe it was just guilt turning the words to ashes in her mouth.

That was silly.

It wasn’t as if she was a real burglar, for heaven’s sake. She was only going to borrow the disk—it would be back on his desk before he’d missed it. Hardly a matter for the Crown Court.

Unless, of course, she killed Sophie.

‘In your own time,’ he encouraged.

Faced with a pair of sharp blue eyes that suggested Richard Mallory would not be so easy to flannel as a ‘daily’ with dalliance on her mind, that seemed a very attractive idea. Right now, however, she had a more pressing problem and she trawled her brain in a desperate attempt to come up with a story that was just a little less…ridiculous.

Her brain had, apparently, taken the day off.

But then why else would she be here?

Please, please, she prayed, let the floor open up and swallow me now. The floor refused to oblige.

She was out of time and stuck with the excuse she’d prepared earlier.

‘I was looking for my hamster,’ she said.

‘Excuse me?’ He laughed. ‘Did you say your hamster?’

Faced with his amusement she felt a certain irritation. A need to defend her story. It wasn’t that ridiculous.

Okay, so maybe it was. A kitten would have been cuter, but the cleaner would have known she didn’t have a kitten. Nothing uncaged was allowed within the portals of Chandler’s Reach.

‘He escaped,’ she said. ‘He made a break for it through the hedge and headed straight for your French windows.’ And when this didn’t elicit polite concern…‘It took me longer to get through it. He’s smaller,’ she elaborated when Mallory remained silent. ‘He was able to scoot underneath.’ Then, in desperation, ‘It’s really scratchy…’