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Jack nodded in response to her question, though every cell in his body screamed, Are you crazy?
“You think my father offered me this job to exert some sort of influence on you?” Paris stared at him narrow-eyed for a moment, then in several brisk strides she was out the door, but not before Jack detected the hurt in her eyes.
Her pride was hurt, he suspected. Same as six years ago. Except her offer then had been hugely different. Then she’d spoken of love. She’d wanted to gift him with her innocence and that had scared the hell out of him. Now she only wanted a quick affair to cure an old infatuation.
Well, tough.
He didn’t do one-night stands and he didn’t need to prove what he’d suspected all along—that having Paris Grantham would be addictive and way too consuming….
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the world of Silhouette Desire, where you can indulge yourself every month with romances that can only be described as passionate, powerful and provocative!
The ever-fabulous Ann Major offers a Cowboy Fantasy, July’s MAN OF THE MONTH. Will a fateful reunion between a Texas cowboy and his ex-flame rekindle their fiery passion? In Cherokee, Sheri WhiteFeather writes a compelling story about a Native American hero who, while searching for his Cherokee heritage, falls in love with a heroine who has turned away from hers.
The popular miniseries BACHELOR BATTALION by Maureen Child marches on with His Baby!—a marine hero returns from an assignment to discover he’s a father. The tantalizing Desire miniseries FORTUNES OF TEXAS: THE LOST HEIRS continues with The Pregnant Heiress by Eileen Wilks, whose pregnant heroine falls in love with the investigator protecting her from a stalker.
Alexandra Sellers has written an enchanting trilogy, SONS OF THE DESERT: THE SULTANS, launching this month with The Sultan’s Heir. A prince must watch over the secret child heir to the kingdom along with the child’s beautiful mother. And don’t miss Bronwyn Jameson’s Desire debut—an intriguing tale involving a self-made man who’s In Bed with the Boss’s Daughter.
Treat yourself to all six of these heart-melting tales of Desire—and see inside for details on how to enter our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest.
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
In Bed with the Boss’s Daughter
Bronwyn Jameson
BRONWYN JAMESON
spent much of her childhood with her head buried in a book. As a teenager, she discovered romance novels, and it was only a matter of time before she turned her love of reading them into a love of writing them. Bronwyn shares an idyllic piece of the Australian farming heart-land with her husband and three sons, a thousand sheep, a dozen horses, assorted wildlife and one kelpie dog. She still chooses to spend her limited downtime with a good book.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
One
He missed her entrance, but Jack knew she’d made one. She would have made one even without arriving fashionably late on her father’s arm…and even if that man wasn’t Kevin “K.G.” Grantham, billionaire property developer and host of this shindig.
Paris Grantham made entrances because she was, quite simply, 180 centimeters of spectacular construction.
Jack rolled his tense shoulders, ran his tongue around his dry mouth and cursed the sudden scarcity of drink waiters. He scanned the crush for a white jacket or a tray held aloft but instead found her. Again. Dressed in something bronze and lacy, she shimmered like old gold against the backdrop of cocktail-party black, all long legs and sleek curves, as poised and graceful as a fashion model.
Except she would never cut it as a model. Not without kissing all those gorgeous curves goodbye.
Jack tugged at his collar to ease the stiff constriction of his bow tie and wished for an equally simple solution to another hot, tight pressure—the one spreading south. He blessed the appearance of a waiter and snagged a drink from his tray. Maybe the champagne would cool his blood.
Yeah, right! Maybe he should just have stayed the hell away!
All Grantham executives were expected to attend all project launches, but Jack usually ignored that unwritten rule. He despised black-tie as much as he hated small talk and the absurd excuse for food they served at these things. He took a long sip of champagne and surveyed the sole reason he had come tonight over the top of his glass. Objectively. With his mind instead of his body.
The hair she used to wear loose was piled high in an elaborate style that accentuated the regal tilt of her head, the high angle of her chin, the way she looked down her nose…and how her fine, straight nose was custom-built for the purpose. A tiara wouldn’t look out of place on that golden head.
Yeah, he snorted, K.G. should have set a tiara on his prodigal daughter’s head and stood her on the spotlit dais instead of the model for Grantham’s newest city-living complex. The Acacia Project wasn’t the star of this show.
Jack’s gaze fixed on her face, watching for some chink in that classic semibored expression favored by the born rich, something to show she’d adopted the look to fit tonight’s occasion, not because she’d changed. But nothing shifted. Not a flicker of her carefully arched brows nor a waver of her glossy half smile.
And he realized the tightness in his gut had changed from heated awareness to disappointment. No. Disappointment came nowhere near describing this acid gnawing.
What had he expected?
Simple.
He’d expected a grown-up version of the Paris he remembered, the one whose smile filled the room, whose widely spaced smoky eyes mirrored her every emotion. The one who dared wear a tiny leather skirt to a Grantham’s Christmas party, who swigged Bollinger straight from the bottle and danced like she’d swallowed the music with it.
The girl-woman who’d rocked his foundations with her clear, honest proposition and then, before he could grasp the concept of the boss’s daughter all grown-up and suddenly wanting him, had run away to London to live with her mother.
He’d expected to see that Paris and to declare, without reservation, the rumors false.
But this Paris looked like the kind of woman who would dump her fiancé when his money ran out. She looked like the kind of woman who would come running home to the comforting arms of Daddy’s billions.
Jack drained his glass and wished he’d swallowed something harsh like tequila to match his mood. He fought the urge to wade through the sea of dinner suits and designer dresses, to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. To remind her how he’d told her to grow up, not grow into a Grantham!
Carefully he loosened his clenched fingers from the delicate stem of crystal in his hand. What did he know about Paris Grantham, anyway? For years she’d been the gangly limbed kid hanging about the edges of her father’s weekend house parties, parties that were no more than business summits in casual dress with drinks. He’d noticed her, he’d felt sorry for her, he’d encouraged her to talk to him. When she went away to boarding school, he didn’t see her for two years, not until that night six years ago when she’d made her feelings for him extravagantly clear.
Feelings or intentions?
It didn’t matter. At twenty-six his goal of snagging Grantham’s top project-management job was so close he could taste it. At eighteen she’d been too young and too wild and too much the boss’s daughter to be anything but trouble.
Six years on, she was still the boss’s daughter, although everything else about her had changed. Jack unclenched his jaw and told himself the changes should please him. This woman wouldn’t mess with his head at a time when he needed it clear and focused.
But pleasure was not part of the volatile cocktail of emotions curdling his gut. He recognized intense disappointment, a sense of loss and, seething through it, an irritation bordering on anger. And he knew he couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to know why she’d left so suddenly…and why she’d come back.
Paris shook her head slightly to stop her eyes crossing, not from boredom so much as sleep deprivation. If only she could summon up a dash of the anticipation that had kept her awake through most of yesterday’s twenty-four-hour flight, a skerrick of the excitement that had kept her flying sky-high long after the plane touched down.
It seemed as if her head had barely touched the pillow when K.G. pulled the curtains wide on a bright October morning. Caroline, her latest wannabe-stepmother, couldn’t wait to meet her. Caroline then insisted they shop and do lunch and that Paris mustn’t sleep or her whole body clock would be out of whack.
At this moment she longed for “out of whack.” It sounded a vast improvement over her current state of totally whacked. She needed to perk up before she nodded off on the lord mayor’s shoulder. The thought of her mother’s reaction to such a breach of etiquette brought a wry half smile to her mind if not her lips.
Lady Pamela definitely would not approve!
Up until now she’d done her mother proud. The Collette Dinnigan cocktail dress might be a tad revealing for her mother’s taste, but she had accessorized perfectly…and the upswept hair was consummate Lady Pamela. Paris couldn’t wait to shake it loose, but in the meantime it served a purpose. Its weight prompted her to hold her head high, which reminded her to keep her smile in check and to answer every welcome-home platitude with polite good grace. And whenever her smile slipped a smidgen, she restored it with a quick reminder of why she was here.
Because you will soon be part of the Grantham team.
Years after she’d given up trying to convince her father she had capabilities beyond the ornamental, K.G. had asked her to come home and help with a special project.
With her smile suitably restored, she allowed K.G. to steer her toward another group.
“Princess, I’d like you to meet…”
She exchanged greetings with Hugh and Miffy and Miranda and Bob—or was that Bill? Her weary brain whirled with names and faces and titles. Was there anyone here she hadn’t met? In response, the crowd split as if cleaved in two and she found herself looking directly into a pair of deep, dark, angry eyes.
Of course, she’d known he was there, somewhere across the crowded reception room.
About one nanosecond after arriving, as though they had some Jack-Manning-sensing radar capabilities, her eyes had zeroed in on his broad shoulders, the narrow band of white collar above his jacket and the thicker band of very tanned neck. The changes had sizzled through her body—he’s cut his hair; he’s wearing a suit—before she snapped herself back to reality.
Did you think he’d go six years without a haircut? Did you think Grantham’s manager of construction projects would turn up to a project launch in jeans and hard hat?
Now she could see he’d changed in other ways. He didn’t wink or grin crookedly or lift his glass in greeting, and she neither recognized nor understood the fierce anger burning in his eyes. He handed his glass to someone on his left and started toward her with steady purpose.
Oh, help!
For all her anticipation when choosing a dress to knock his socks off, despite her practice of witty opening lines, she wasn’t ready to face him. Not now. Not tired and fuzzy-headed.
She turned and excused her way through the crowd, but her skirt was too slim and her heels too high for a rapid escape. Finally she fell out the door into the wide and refreshingly empty lobby, but she paused only long enough to recall the resolve on Jack’s face. Then she headed straight for the Ladies sign. When she pushed through the door into the anteroom, the air rushed from her lungs in a heartfelt whoosh.
Sanctuary with a plump suede lounge setting.
She slumped into the nearest chair, took off her shoes, propped her bare feet on the occasional-table, and closed her eyes.
“Hiding, princess?”
Paris jolted upright. Only one person ever applied such mocking emphasis to K.G.’s pet name for her…and he was helping himself to the seat directly opposite. Had she really thought a Ladies sign would give him pause?
“Not hiding, resting,” she corrected. “My feet.”
His gaze dropped to her feet, and she stared in horrified fascination as his long, dark fingers circled her ankle. She stopped breathing when his thumb traced a strap mark across the bridge of her foot. A languorous warmth stole up her leg, past her knees, into her thighs….
“No wonder your feet hurt,” he growled. “Your shoes are too tight.”
Abruptly he let her go, and somehow Paris managed to slide both feet from the table. She jammed them solidly on the floor and pressed her knees together, as if that might prevent the spread of traitorous heat.
“My feet are swollen from the flight,” she said archly. And it felt as if her tongue might be, too. “Which is why I’m sitting here resting them.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction, but they didn’t leave hers, not even for a heartbeat. “Funny. I had the impression you were running away from me.”
“And why would I do that?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe running away has become a habit with you.”
His mocking tone needled, but she didn’t allow herself to respond. Instead she ran through her mother’s checklist. Posture straight. Head up. Smile in place. Cool retort. Except she couldn’t think of a cool retort. Her brain felt as foggy as a London morning.
“Nothing to say, princess? Don’t you want to talk about running away?”
“I thought we’d established I was resting my feet.”
“I didn’t mean tonight.”
Paris wished he would lean back in his chair. From this close she could feel his irritation whipping across the table and snapping at the edges of her composure. Stay cool, she intoned silently. Then, as if his meaning had only just gelled, she allowed her eyes to widen. “Surely you don’t mean I ran away to London. I’d been thinking of going for ages.”
“K.G. never mentioned it.”
“I hadn’t told him.”
“No?” He drew the word out so long she had time to spell skeptical.
“I hadn’t seen my mother for years. I decided to spend some time with her, to get to know her again.”
“It took six years to get to know Lady Pamela?” he asked derisively.
No. It took six years to learn the benefits of hiding my emotions and looking out for my pride. She fixed Jack with a frosty look. “Actually, it took six years to take your advice and grow up.”
“This is the grown-up Paris Grantham?” One corner of his mouth lifted in an almost sneer as his gaze slid down her body. It was obvious he didn’t care for what he saw.
“Isn’t this what you had in mind?” she asked with a defensive lift of her chin.
“No.”
His bald answer shouldn’t have hurt, but it did. Dashed expectations smarted at the back of her throat and eyes. Jet lag makes one tired and emotional, she justified as she bent to retrieve her shoes. He moved more quickly. Her shoes already dangled from his left hand.
“D’you really want to put these back on?”
Paris swallowed to ease the constriction in her throat. She seriously considered making a lunge for the shoes, but the thought of missing and landing headfirst in his lap stopped her. She took a deep breath and glared across at him. “What do you want, Jack? Why did you follow me in here?”
“To talk, princess.”
“About ancient history?”
“One night of it.”
“We can talk if you like, but my memory’s not so good.”
No way would she ever admit how much she remembered, how clearly she remembered everything about that night. His closemouthed fury when he dragged her from the table. Her feeling of smug jubilation as she snuggled in close in the back of the taxi he hired to take her home. Her heartfelt request, his horrified rejection, her humiliation. Six years and she still remembered every feeling, every word, as keenly as if it had happened yesterday.
“You remembered the bit about growing up,” he said evenly. “I imagine you haven’t forgotten what came before.”
“I gather I made some sort of proposition, although I’d drunk too much champagne to recall what,” she countered with a dismissive shrug.
“You invited me into your bed, and it was no mindless drunken proposition.”
Paris’s heart jolted. She hadn’t expected him to pursue this, to take issue with her. As though it mattered to him.
“You said you wanted me as your first lover,” he continued, his intonation slow and deliberate.
“Like you said, I needed to grow up. Don’t read too much into it.” While her pounding heart rushed the heat of remembered humiliation into her face, Paris gathered her pride, pushed to her feet and reached for the shoes, but he swung them out of her reach and slowly rose to face her.
“You said you loved me.”
“I was young and foolish.” She stepped around the table and lunged for the shoes, but he must have moved sideways, too, because they ended up toe-to-toe.
“And what are you now, princess? Old and smart?”
“What I am is grown-up and over it!”
“Are you?” When he reached out and cupped her face in one hand, she was too surprised to react. “Is this your idea of grown-up? Wearing your hair this way?” His fingers threaded into her hair and slid slowly back toward her crown. Paris gritted her teeth to stop any sound—like a groan of pleasure—escaping her mouth. Some pins gave, and a thick swathe of hair fell free, blocking half her vision.
Now she could see only half his square whisker-darkened jaw, half the nose he’d broken in a site accident and hadn’t bothered having straightened, half the mouth that was too full-lipped and sensual for the blunt strength of the rest of his face.
But his beautiful mouth wasn’t smiling. It was set in a grim line, and his deep-set eyes weren’t the warm, molten chocolate she remembered. The laughter lines still sprayed from the corners, but he didn’t look like a man who did much laughing these days. He looked like a man who worked more on the worry lines between his brows.
Paris did not want to smooth those lines away.
“Do you mind?” She wrenched free of his tormenting touch and glared at him through narrowed eyes. “Is there anything else you’d like to wreck, apart from my hairdo? My dress, maybe? It’s part of the new grown-up me!”
Big mistake, Paris thought, the moment his eyes dropped to the dress.
“Oh, yes,” he murmured gruffly. “This dress is extremely you.”
His knuckles brushed across her neckline, and Paris felt the slight resistance as some rough skin caught in the georgette. He stroked a fingertip over the pulled thread, and Paris swallowed. He’d barely touched her, yet her breasts were tight and tingly, needy.
Needy?
What she needed was her head examined for responding to such a cynical touch. She drew herself up to her full height. “What’s with you, Jack? I don’t understand your attitude and, quite frankly, I’m sick of this…this…” Paris searched around but couldn’t find any suitable description. “I’ve just flown halfway around the world, I’ve spent all day auditioning another bloody stepmother contender, and now—” she took a deep breath, because the last one had run out “—and now I have to put up with you glowering at me and pawing me and ruining my hair… What are you—don’t you da—”
His mouth descended to hers, swallowing the rest of the word and the rest of her complaints. Not that Paris remembered what they were. They fled her brain the instant his lips closed over hers. Some dim recess registered the soft thump of her shoes hitting the carpeted floor, the rough strength of his hands on her shoulders, the brush of his unbuttoned jacket against her body, the accelerated thud of her heartbeat.
For a time she managed to concentrate on the taste of frustrated anger—and then she needed to breathe. With her nose hard up against his cheek, she inhaled the scent of his skin, discovered it hadn’t changed. No fancy cologne to match the fancy suit, no conservative aftershave to match the barbershop cut, just strong elemental outdoors male. She uncurled her fingers from the tight fists crushed between their bodies and gripped his jacket, anchoring herself against a sudden weakness in her knees.
His mouth eased its rough pressure, and for the barest moment Paris savored his gentled caress, the fleeting brush of his thumbs against her neck, the fullness of his lips on hers. And then those lips retreated as suddenly as they’d advanced, leaving her swamped by conflicting emotions. Shocked confusion registered in his eyes, too, but was quickly displaced by the same old fierce-eyed irritation.
Carefully Paris released her grip on his lapels. Casually she smoothed out the creases. Deliberately she coaxed her mouth into a facsimile of a smile. “If that’s a sample of what I missed out on six years ago, I can count myself lucky,” she drawled.
His eyes glinted dangerously, and his hold on her shoulders tightened. “You want to talk samples?”
A disturbing sense of anticipation washed through Paris’s body as his head ducked and his gaze lit on her lips. Her legs wobbled, and she swore that the only thing holding her up was his grip on her shoulders, a grip that felt like a curious mix of support and restraint, holding her up and him back.
But he didn’t kiss her. Instead he slowly and deliberately ran his tongue across her bottom lip, before pulling back and rocking on his heels. He flashed a tight smile and declared, “Yep, tastes exactly like saccharine!”
Paris’s mouth fell open, then slammed shut.
“Now why do you suppose that is? Too much time with Lady Pamela or with poor old Teddy?”
“Edward’s neither poor nor old!”
“No?” He lifted one brow. “Bankrupt, but not poor. An interesting concept. Is that why you dumped him?”
Paris shook her head slowly, hoping to clear the confusion. He was mad because she’d run away six years ago? Because he didn’t like her hairdo? Because she’d dumped her fiancé?
“You think I dumped him because of the bankruptcy thing?” she asked slowly. Then she almost laughed out loud at the irony.
Yes, she had dumped “poor Teddy” because of his money troubles. Because he’d wanted her money, her father’s money, to rescue his crumbling fortune. That was the only reason he’d wanted to marry her in the first place.
If there had been any easing of the contempt on Jack’s face, she might have told him all about “poor old Teddy.” But his mouth held its tight line, and his eyes brimmed with contempt, so she lifted her chin and looked down her nose at him. “I could have bought Edward ten times over.”
“Your father could have bought him ten times over.”
“If you want to be pedantic.” She shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel.
“Is that why you came home? To play the heiress?”
“I don’t intend playing anything,” Paris said, her tone as sharp as the hurt in her chest. She’d never played the heiress; she’d never played poor little rich girl; she’d never played victim nor victor. “I came home because K.G. asked me to, because he has a job for me.”