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USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–nominated author CAITLIN CREWS loves writing romance. She teaches her favorite romance novels in creative-writing classes at places like UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally gets to utilize the MA and PhD in English literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at caitlincrews.com.
REGINA KYLE knew she was destined to be an author when she won a writing contest at age ten with a touching tale about a squirrel and a nut pie. By day, she writes dry legal briefs. At night, she writes steamy romance with heart and humor. She is a two-time winner of the Booksellers’ Best Award. A lover of all things theatrical, Regina lives in Connecticut with her husband, daughter and two melodramatic cats. When she’s not writing, she’s most likely singing, reading, cooking or watching bad reality television.
Lifelong romance addict JC HARROWAY lives in New Zealand. Writing feeds her very real obsession with happy endings and the endorphin rush they create. You can follow her at jcharroway.com, Facebook.com/jcharroway, Instagram.com/jcharroway and Twitter.com/jcharroway.
New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author CATHRYN FOX is a wife, mom, sister, daughter, aunt and friend. She loves dogs, sunny weather, anything chocolate (she never says no to a brownie), pizza and red wine. Cathryn lives in beautiful Nova Scotia with her husband, who is convinced he can turn her into a mixed martial arts fan. When not writing, Cathryn can be found Skyping with her son, who lives in Seattle (could he have moved any farther away?), shopping with her daughter in the city, watching a big action flick with her husband, or hanging out and laughing with friends.
Also by Caitlin Crews
Filthy Rich Billionaires
Teach Me
The Billionaires Club
The Risk
Hotel Temptation
Unleashed
Undone
Untamed
Also by JC Harroway
A Week to be Wild
Her Dirty Little Secret
One Night Only
The Billionaires Club
The Proposition
Billionaire Bachelors
Forbidden to Want
Forbidden to Taste
Forbidden to Touch
Also by Cathryn Fox
On His Knees
On Her Terms
Under His Touch
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
The Dare Collection May 2020
Take Me
Caitlin Crews
Dirty Work
Regina Kyle
Bad Business
JC Harroway
Under His Obsession
Cathryn Fox
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-0-008-90742-6
THE DARE COLLECTION MAY 2020
Take Me © 2020 Caitlin Crews Dirty Work © 2020 Regina Kyle Bad Business © 2020 JC Harroway Under His Obsession © 2020 Cathryn Fox
Published in Great Britain 2020
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Take Me
Back Cover Text
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
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dirty Work
Back Cover Text
Dedication
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
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
Bad Business
Back Cover Text
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
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EPILOGUE
Under His Obsession
Back Cover Text
Dedication
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
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
About the Publisher
Take Me
Caitlin Crews
“You need to be absolutely certain you want to open this door, Jenny. Because once it’s open, I don’t think you can close it again…”
Random spontaneity is not Lady Jenny Markham’s style. Her blue-blooded self-possession permits her to think with her head—never her heart. It’s precisely why she’s engaged to the perfect man she doesn’t love. And yet Jenny just flew ten thousand miles to Sydney, Australia. On a whim. To see the green eyes and devilish grin of her best friend, up-for-anything Dylan Kilburn…and to forget the words ringing in her head. You’ve never been shagged properly.
Of course, that’s exactly why Jenny’s here. Why Jenny’s body is engulfed by hot, aching need. Because she wants Dylan to show her what she’s missing before she locks herself into a loveless marriage.
Jenny promised that nothing would change between them. Dylan promised that he wouldn’t fall in love with her. But the moment his mouth takes hers, all hunger and raw, molten lust, Jenny knows that there’s no going back. Not from this. And now she’s well and truly screwed. Because just as Jenny finally starts thinking with her heart, she realizes she’s about to lose it…to her best friend.
Harlequin DARE publishes sexy romances featuring powerful alpha heroes and bold, fearless heroines exploring their deepest fantasies.
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CHAPTER ONE
IT WASN’T UNTIL she’d landed in Sydney after the long-haul flight from London, pale from all the recycled air and a bit drunk from the mess of time zones, that it occurred to Lady Jenny Markham to worry about her welcome.
“Don’t be silly,” she told herself, astonished by the raspy sound of her own voice in the too-bright corridor, lost somewhere deep in the Sydney Airport. “It’s Dylan.”
And the one thing she knew to be true, no matter what else happened or how life kicked her around, was that Dylan Kilburn was always happy to see her. Always. That was why she always kept her visa to enter Australia current. On the off chance she might pop off down under and visit the man who’d been her best friend since their university days.
In all the years since Dylan had moved to Australia, she’d never done it. But here she was at last. Wilted straight through, but here.
Jenny had packed light, mostly because she’d been in denial about what she was doing. She’d thrown a few things in a shoulder bag in her flat in Central London, that was all, because she wasn’t taking a trip. She’d set off on a happy little lark and could as easily have simply wandered about London for a while, playing tourist. Maybe she’d pretended that was exactly what she was doing.
Though she didn’t usually head off to enjoy the sights and sounds of the city with her passport in hand.
She was being spontaneous, and that felt weird only because Jenny was rarely spontaneous. Make that never. But she was an engaged woman now and her life was changing, and there was no time like the present to do things she’d never done before—because she never would again.
She certainly wasn’t running from anything, she assured herself as she made it through customs and immigration and officially entered Australia for the first time.
Everyone deserved a little time to themselves before getting married. An engagement ought to come with bit of reflection and preparation, surely, before standing up before all and sundry and making vows to become legally bound forever. Some people went off to extreme yoga retreats or some such at times like these, where they could twist themselves into alarming shapes and slug down green concoctions that tasted of mud and self-righteousness. Jenny accidentally found herself at Heathrow.
But thinking about her own impending marriage was depressing, so she busied herself with finding and hiring a cab when she wasn’t sure she had access to her own brain. It was possible she’d left it somewhere over the northern hemisphere.
Once she located a taxi and climbed in, she directed the driver to take her to Dylan’s address. Assuming he still lived in the house he’d bought on the coast, south of Sydney proper.
Jenny doubted he would have moved without telling her. They texted all the time. When Dylan had bought this place, right after what he’d called his wee start up went public, he’d sent her pictures.
Just bought nauseatingly posh bachelor pad, complete with ocean views, he’d written. Guest room always available, should milady find herself in NSW.
Who wants to visit a bachelor pad? she’d texted back. That sounds medically questionable. Also, it’s lovely.
She remembered white, stark, modern lines and a gorgeous view of the sea, everything sunny and sweet and bursting with vivid color. As everything Australian always was when she thought of it. That or the red hot desolation of the outback.
Sydney had always been on Jenny’s list of places to see, but she’d spent most of her time before and after university filling the role of her father’s hostess and companion. Her mother had died when Jenny was twelve, and she’d considered it an honor that she got to accompany her father to his business events. There was a part of her that would always be that grief-stricken twelve-year-old in a pretty dress and her mother’s pearls, pretending to be grown up while her father’s usually dour friends and associates acted as if it was a great privilege to meet her.
Lord Markham was not a man given to having feelings, much less expressing them. Jenny rather thought what few emotions he’d had must have died with her mother. But she always remembered those first few years. And how he’d included her when it would have been so much easier to leave her at home. She always remembered that he’d cared for her as best he could, in a way that had made them both breathe a bit better, for a time.
Maybe it wasn’t surprising she felt duty bound to do the same for him, now it was her turn.
She had gone on all the dates he’d set up for her. She had smiled and had awkward conversation—or, more often, listened in appropriately reverent silence as her date banged on about himself. It was better than subjecting herself to a dating app. At least the men her father set her up with were vetted, in some form or another. They weren’t pretending to be someone else—they really were that boring.
But Jenny didn’t mind. Her passion wasn’t for men, it was for her work. Once she’d left uni she’d gotten a job in a worthy charity—meaning, one that supported something that wouldn’t embarrass her father at a business dinner. Jenny’s provided aid and care to children in war zones. And that meant that most of Jenny’s trips were to places that did not glitter or attract highflyers like Dylan.
She’d always told herself—and him—that it was her work that kept her from coming down under. No matter how many times Dylan told her she was more than welcome to come and make an adventure out of it.
You’re making an adventure of it now, she told herself a bit wryly as she settled into her seat, the cab lurching a bit as it headed away from the airport.
For the first time in years, she hadn’t given the charity a thought. She’d simply…gotten on the plane.
It had to be an adventure because she couldn’t take it back.
She blew out a breath and looked out the window. It was coming up on half six in the morning in Sydney, and the sun was only just making its appearance. Jenny was sure that once it rose, her head would feel less fuzzy. That the strange weighted feeling tugging on all her limbs, and the odd sensation that she was scraped raw, was a gift of her long plane ride. No one could possibly spend nearly twenty-four hours on two planes and not feel like an alien. Even her feet felt as if they belonged to someone else.
You felt equally worn out in London, a voice inside her piped up. It wasn’t the flight.
The voice sounded suspiciously like Erika Vanderburg, her other best friend.
Erika had looked at Jenny almost pityingly the last time they’d seen each other. Jenny had been perhaps too enthusiastic about Erika’s plan to return to Oxford to finish her degree course, all these years after she’d left her degree course.
Geography isn’t going to cure anything but your location, Erika had said gently.
Because the new version of Erika was not the messy creature Jenny was used to, always drunk and inappropriate, scandalous and fun. The new version of Erika was settled in her relationship with the intimidating Dorian Alexander, best friend to Erika’s older brother, Conrad. Easygoing in a way Jenny would not have believed possible if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. Even having seen it, she wasn’t sure she believed it. How could she? The new Erika was so self-possessed it made Jenny’s lifelong pretense of self-possession look like exactly what it was. A sham.
But as the cab navigated the early morning streets, she stared down at the enormous ring on her hand that she kept meaning to get fixed so it wouldn’t slide about so much, blinding unwary passersby, and wondered if it was as simple as the fact Erika was in love.
Love was something not even Jenny could fake.
Luckily, her engagement—to Conrad Vanderburg, Erika’s chilly older brother, whose success in business made Lord Markham as close to giddy as a man not given to such displays could get—was practical, not passionate. No faking required.
“Dylan will sort it all out,” she told herself, muttering staunchly beneath her breath so as not to alarm the driver. “He always does.”
Erika had always been Jenny’s most vivid friend, the mad one who could go out for chips and end up dancing on tabletops in a different city at dawn. She was ardently loyal, she was passionate about everything and Jenny had wanted to be her, some years. But Dylan had always been her stalwart. He listened. He gave good advice. He’d been keeping Jenny grounded as long as she’d known him.
If he couldn’t help her, no one could.
Not that she needed help, she corrected herself as the cab continued east. She was fine. Her life was carrying on according to plan. Some people—Erika, for example—might think that was a bad thing, but Jenny knew better. This was life.
Dylan would take the rawness inside of her, name it and laugh at it, and in so doing, make it feel better. And make her feel better.
She looked around as they drove, trying to take in architecture that looked both brand new and comfortingly familiar at once. It was like looking at proper British streets, but with a certain overlay that was distinctly Australian. She couldn’t have said what that was. The extra filigreed bits on the gratings and railings, perhaps? Or all the years she’d spent sneaking episodes of Neighbours, more like. Everything was Ramsay Street, if she squinted.
Eventually, the car went around a bend and she realized that wasn’t only sky in the distance, it was the sea. And Jenny had to remind herself, with a kick of wonder, that it was the Pacific, deep and blue. Not the gray North Atlantic she knew better.
And for the first time since she’d jumped on a plane in Heathrow, on a whim, the fact that she’d taken herself off across the planet hit her.
Hard enough that she found herself quite glad she was sitting down.
She worried that huge ring on her hands instead of thinking about all the likely reactions back home, turning it around and around and telling herself that she was exhausted. Obviously. And that was why the weight of the ring, which had never been light to begin with, seemed more like a brick.
The cab wound around through narrower streets, with houses built up high on hillsides that sloped toward the sea. All of them made mostly of windows, to make the best of the view from every angle. And what a view it was, with neighborhoods clinging to rugged cliffs, and sandy beaches stretching in between. It was nothing at all like an English seaside.
The driver pulled up before a sleek white building. The street was at garage level, and the only thing to see was the wooden door to the garage and beside it, a closed entryway. Jenny paid the driver, climbed out with her small case and stood there as the cab drove off.
There were butterflies leaping around inside her, and she told herself she didn’t know why.
It was only Dylan. One of her two best friends from her Oxford days. They’d been first years on the same stair, along with Erika, and Jenny had been close with both of them ever after. She and Erika saw more of each other, it was true, but only because Dylan had relocated here, built himself a fortune and liked to call himself an accidental billionaire.
Before anyone else can, he’d told her when she’d asked him why. And then had texted something incomprehensible about Californian tech giants.
Jenny had spent several hours on the plane thinking about when she’d seen Dylan last. In person. She was sure it had been in Cape Town, a year or so back. She’d been at a charity ball and he’d been in town for business meetings. They’d met up at a lovely restaurant with panoramic views of Signal Hill, had a typically uproarious dinner, had laughed until Jenny had tears streaming down her face and had parted on their usual merry, friendly terms. Because that was Dylan. Always easy and fun, and the most undemanding person in her life.
Which meant there was absolutely no reason for her to be standing there as the rising sun streaked the sky in the colors of candy floss, wracked with…nerves.