The Billionaire Takes a Bride
She could not believe she was saying this. Richard Mallory’s expression suggested he was having problems with it too, but was making a manful effort not to laugh out loud.
In an attempt to distract him, she took a step closer and extended her hand.
‘We haven’t met, Mr Mallory, but we’re temporarily neighbours. I’m Iphegenia Lautour.’ Only the most truthful person in the entire world would own up to a name like that voluntarily, right? ‘I’m looking after Sir William and Lady McBride’s apartment. For the summer. Next door,’ she added, in case he didn’t know his neighbours. ‘While they’re away. Flat-sitting. You know—dusting the whatnot, watering the houseplants. Feeding the goldfish,’ she added. Then, as if there was nothing at all out of the ordinary in the situation, she said, ‘How d’you do?’
‘I think—’ he said, looking slightly nonplussed as he took her hand, gripping it firmly for a moment, holding it for longer than was quite necessary ‘—that I need notice of that question.’
He sat up, leaned forward and raked his hands through his hair, as if somehow he could straighten out his thoughts along with his unruly curls.
It did nothing for the curls, but the sight of his naked shoulders, a chest spattered with exactly the right amount of dark hair, left her with an urgent need to swallow.
He dragged his hands down over his face. ‘Along with coffee, orange juice and a shower. In no particular order of preference. I’ve had a hard night.’
Ginny didn’t doubt it. She’d seen the evidence for herself…
She gave a little squeak as he flung back the covers and swung his feet to the floor. Backed hurriedly away. Knocked the lamp, grabbed to stop it from falling and only made things worse, flinched as it hit the carpet.
Mallory stood up, reached down and set it back on the table, giving her plenty of time to see that he wasn’t, after all, totally naked but wearing a pair of soft grey shorts.
Naked enough. They clung to his hips by the skin of their teeth, exposing a firm flat belly and leaving little else to the imagination.
It was definitely time to get out of there.
‘I’m disturbing you,’ she said, groping behind her for the door handle but succeeding only in pushing the door shut. With her on the wrong side.
‘You could say that,’ he agreed, picking up the remote and using it to draw back the curtains so that daylight flooded into the room.
‘Neat trick,’ she said. ‘Is that how you turned on the light?’ It was a mistake to draw attention to herself because he turned those searching blue eyes on her.
One of them was definitely disturbed.
‘I’m really sorry—’
‘Don’t be,’ he said, cutting off her apology. ‘I’d have slept all day if you hadn’t woken me. Iphegenia?’ he prompted, with a frown. ‘What kind of name is that?’
‘The kind that no one can spell?’ she offered. Then, ‘My mother’s a classical scholar,’ she added—at least she was, when she could spare the time—as if that explained everything. He looked blank. ‘Iphegenia was the daughter of King Agamemnon. He sacrificed her to the gods in return for a fair wind to Troy. So that he could grab back his runaway sister-in-law. Helen.’
‘Helen?’ he repeated. If not dumb, definitely founded…
‘Of Troy.’
‘Oh, right, “…the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium”?’
‘That’s the one,’ she said. Then, ‘He got murdered by his wife for his trouble. But you probably knew that.’ There was more, a lot more, but years of explaining her unusual name had taught her that was about as much as anyone wanted to know. ‘Homer was writing about the dysfunctional family nearly three thousand years ago,’ she offered.
‘Yes.’ He looked, for a moment, as if he might pursue her mother’s choice of name… Then, thinking better of it, said, ‘Tell me about your wandering hamster. What’s his name? Odysseus?’
Irony. He’d just woken up and he could quote Christopher Marlowe, recall the names of mythical heroes and do irony. Impressive.
But then he was a genius.
‘Good try, but a bit of a mouthful for a hamster, don’t you think?’ she asked, keeping her mouth busy while her mind did some fast footwork.
‘I’d say Iphegenia is a bit of a mouthful for a girl,’ he said, as if he knew she was simply playing for time. ‘The kind of name that suggests your mother was not feeling particularly warm towards your father when she gave it to you. If I gave it any serious thought.’
He wasn’t even close.
‘So what is this runaway rodent called?’ he asked when she made no comment, pushing her for an answer.
‘Hector,’ she said.
‘Hector? Not Harry—as in Houdini?’
No, Hector. As in heroic Trojan warrior prince slain by Achilles. Classical scholarship ran in the family but she thought she’d probably said more than enough on that subject.
‘Harry who?’ she asked innocently.
His eyes narrowed and for a moment she was afraid she’d gone too far. ‘Never mind,’ he said, letting it go. ‘He must be quite a mover if you chased him up here. Didn’t the stairs slow him down?’
She hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t thought, full stop. Certainly hadn’t even considered the possibility that Richard Mallory would be at home in bed recovering from a hot date instead of where he was supposed to be, in deepest Gloucestershire.
Thank you, Sophie…
She supposed she should be grateful that the woman with the black silk stockings wasn’t under the duvet with him. Although she would at least have offered a distraction.
Ginny attempted to recall exactly how large hamsters were. Four or five inches, perhaps, at full stretch? And she realised she was so deep in trouble that the only possibility of escape was to keep on digging in the hope of eventually tunnelling out.
‘Hector—’ she said, with a conviction she was far from feeling ‘—has thighs like a footballer. It’s all that running on his exercise wheel.’ Then, ‘Look, I’d better go—’ before his brain was fully engaged and he began to ask questions to which she had no answer ‘—and, um, let you have your shower.’
‘Oh, please, don’t rush off.’
He was across the room before she could escape, his hand flat against the door, towering over her as she backed up hard against it in an attempt to put some space between them so that he wouldn’t feel the wild, nervous hammering of her heart.
In an attempt to avoid the magnetic pull of his body.
‘I so rarely encounter this level of entertainment before breakfast.’
CHAPTER TWO
RICHARD MALLORY’S chest, those heroic shoulders, the warm male scent of his flesh, was making it very hard to breathe normally. A fact she was sure he knew only too well.
‘I—um—’
‘Why don’t you stay and join me?’
Join him?
With one hand keeping the door firmly shut, he used the other to deal with a wayward strand of hair that had been dragged from its scrunchy as she’d fought her way through the hedge and was now slowly descending across her face.
It wasn’t just his eyes that generated electricity. Her skin fizzed, tightened at his touch and not just on her cheek, her temple. Her entire body reacted as if it had been jump-started like some long dead battery.
No. Not long dead. Never charged.
‘Join you?’ she repeated, stupidly.
Did he mean in the shower?
Why didn’t that sound like a totally impossible idea? And what on earth was he doing to her hair?
She flattened herself against the door, moved her mouth in an attempt to form a coherent sentence. Something along the lines of What the hell do you think you’re doing? should do it. No, it would have to be something simpler. Stop…
He plucked a twig from her hair, holding it up for her inspection. ‘I hope you didn’t do Her Ladyship’s perfectly clipped hedge mortal damage.’ Then, without waiting for her to elaborate on the extent of the mayhem she’d caused in Lady McBride’s exquisite formal roof terrace, ‘I won’t be more than five minutes. Stay and tell me all about your athletic pet over some scrambled eggs—’
Five minutes? Eggs? Then reality sunk in.
‘Eggs?’ she repeated. ‘You meant join you for breakfast?’
His mouth widened in a lazy smile that deepened the lines bracketing his mouth.
‘What else?’
Her own mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before she finally managed to engage teeth and tongue and exclaim, ‘Are you serious?’ And feigning blank astonishment—which wasn’t difficult, blank perfectly described the state of her mind—she covered her blushes by snatching the twig from him and stuffing it into her pocket. ‘I had breakfast hours ago. It’s nearly lunchtime. I shouldn’t be here at all. I should be working…’
‘Plants to water, whatnots to dust…?’
‘A woman’s work…’ she agreed, leaving him to complete the saying. It wasn’t politically correct—her mother would have been shocked that she could even think such thoughts. But her mother wasn’t here to criticise and right at that moment she’d have said anything to escape…
All she had to do was move. All she had to do was remember how.
‘How did the McBrides find you?’ he asked while she was still thinking about it.
‘Find me?’ She hadn’t been lost… ‘Oh, I see. It was a personal introduction. I know their daughter-in-law. Philly. Slightly,’ she added. She wasn’t claiming any deep personal friendship. ‘She knew I needed somewhere to stay in London for the summer and they needed someone…’
‘To feed the goldfish?’
‘Look, I’d better go.’
But he wasn’t quite finished with her.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’
‘Am I?’
‘Hector?’ he prompted. ‘Surely you’re not going to abandon him?’
Drat with knobs on.
‘He could be anywhere,’ she offered just a little desperately, discovering too late that a make-believe pet could be as much trouble as a real one. ‘He’ll have found himself a quiet corner and gone to sleep by now.’ He was beginning to assume a presence and character all his own. ‘They’re nocturnal, you know.’ She swallowed. ‘H-hamsters.’
‘Is that a fact? Then I’ll be sure not to make too much noise. He must be tired after all that effort.’ And he finally straightened, releasing her from his personal force field which had held her fixed to the spot far more effectively than any door. When she still didn’t move he said, ‘Well, if you’re sure I can’t tempt you…’
‘No!’ Did that sound too vehement? She was beyond caring. ‘I really do have to go.’
‘If you insist.’ He made a gesture that suggested she was free to leave any time. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Iphegenia Lautour.’
He was laughing at her now and not making any real attempt to hide the fact. But that was okay. She’d been laughed at before and this was the warm, teasing kind that didn’t hurt. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if Sophie had misjudged him. He might be a shocking flirt, but he did seem to have the redeeming feature of a well-developed sense of humour…
‘Ginny,’ she said, her voice no longer crisp but unusually thick and soft.
It seemed to go with the tingling in her breasts, a curious weakness in her thighs. He had the most kissable mouth of any man she’d ever met, she decided. Not that she’d met many men she would cross the road to kiss.
Firm, wide, the lower lip a sensual invitation to help herself…
She caught her own lower lip between her teeth before she did something truly stupid, cooling it with her tongue.
‘People call me Ginny,’ she explained. ‘Usually. It’s shorter.’
‘And easier to spell.’ The muscles at the side of his jaw clenched briefly. Then, since she was clearly rooted to the spot, he opened the door and held it wide for her. ‘I’ll keep a look out for Hector, Ginny, and if I find him I’ll be sure to send him home.’
She was being dismissed. A minute ago she was desperate to escape. Now he was reduced to encouraging her to leave.
‘If Mrs Figgis, your cleaner—’ she added in case he wasn’t personally acquainted with the lady who kept his apartment free of dust ‘—doesn’t suck him up in her vacuum cleaner thinking he’s a lump of fluff,’ she said, before she could stop herself. Her urgent desire to flee evaporating the moment a swift exit offered itself.
‘Perhaps you’d better warn her,’ he suggested.
‘I will. And I’m, um, really sorry for disturbing you.’
‘I wouldn’t have—’ he paused, smiled ‘—um…missed it for the world. But now I really must take that shower, so unless you want to come and keep an eye on me, make sure I don’t drown the heroic Hector…’ He stood back, offering her a clear route to his bathroom.
This time there was no hiding the crimson tide that swept from her neck to her hairline as she finally caught on to what he already knew. That she’d become just one more case of iron filings clinging to his personal magnet.
‘No…’ She backed through the door, raising her hand, palm up, in a self-protective little gesture. ‘Really, Mr Mallory, I trust you.’
‘Rich,’ he said. ‘People call me Rich.’
‘Yes,’ she mumbled. ‘I know. I’ve seen it in the papers…’
Then she turned and fled.
Ginny couldn’t believe she’d just blundered into a strange man’s bedroom then lied shamelessly while he flirted with her. Worse, that she’d responded as if he’d reached out and flipped a switch—turning her on had been that easy. And, with the game so swiftly won, he’d lived up to his reputation and just as quickly become bored.
She groaned as she ran down the spiral staircase, wishing that it were possible to stop the clock, rewind time…
‘Miss Lautour?’ Mrs Figgis, standing at the foot blocking her way, a puzzled expression creasing her face, brought her to an abrupt halt. ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in?’
The voice of Rich Mallory’s cleaner had much the same instantly bracing effect as the proverbial cold shower. Allegedly. She’d never found the need for such self-abuse.
‘Through the French windows, Mrs Figgis,’ Ginny said, clinging to the truth. Her voice shocked back to crispness. Besides, having bearded the lion in his den and escaped in one piece, she wasn’t about to be scared by someone wielding nothing more dangerous than a duster.
Nevertheless, she held her position two steps up. Just to even up the cleaner’s height advantage.
A mistake. It just drew attention to her boots. Puzzlement instantly shifted to disapproval.
‘Can I ask you to be careful when you’re going round with a vacuum cleaner?’ she asked. Getting it in before she was on the receiving end of a lecture about leaving footwear at the door—particularly anything as unsuitable as boots—in keeping with the Japanese theme of the décor. ‘I’m afraid I’ve lost my hamster—’
‘Hamster?’
What was it about hamsters that was so unbelievable?
All across the country people kept hamsters as pets. As an undergraduate, she’d briefly shared rooms with a girl who’d kept one. It had escaped all the time. It had even got under the floorboards once. Life with a hamster was a constant drama.
That was where she’d got the idea in the first place…
‘Small, buff coloured rodent. About so big.’ She sketched the rough dimensions with her hands. ‘He’s called Hector,’ she said, her head distancing itself from her mouth as she elaborated unnecessarily. Or maybe not.
She probably thought a woman who kept a hamster as a pet would be a sad-sack obsessive—not true, her room-mate had been the life and soul of any party—but Richard Mallory would undoubtedly mention the incident, be suspicious if Mrs Figgis knew nothing about it. With good reason.
‘Easy to mistake for fluff in a dark corner,’ she added.
‘There is no fluff in any corner of this apartment,’ the woman declared indignantly.
‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean…’ Then, ‘I’m sure Mr Mallory will explain.’
‘Mr Mallory?’ Mrs Figgis blanched. ‘He’s still here?’ So she wasn’t the only one who’d been caught out. ‘He should have left hours ago.’
‘Really?’ she said. Oh, listen to her to pretending not to know! She was shocked at just how convincing she sounded. ‘Well, it’s still early.’ If you were a multi-millionaire businessman who’d just had a hard night with a girl who wore black silk stockings. ‘Actually, I think he might appreciate coffee. And he did mention something about scrambled eggs…’
She didn’t hang around to see whether Mrs Figgis considered it any part of her duties to make coffee rather than drink it. Instead, she headed swiftly in the direction of the French windows, legging it across the formerly immaculate raked gravel of Richard Mallory’s roof garden before scrambling through Her Ladyship’s now less than pristine hedge.
She didn’t stop until she was safely inside, with her own French windows shut firmly against the outside world.
Only then did she lean back against them and let out a huge groan.
Rich Mallory straightened under the shower, letting the hot water ease the knots in his shoulders, the ache from the back of his neck. These all-night sessions took it out of him. They were a young man’s game.
Then he grinned.
Okay, he was well past the downhill marker of thirty, but he could still teach the whizkids who worked for him a thing or two, even if he did need a massage to straighten out the kinks next morning.
Maybe he should have lived up—or was that down?—to his reputation and taken up the offer in Ginny Lautour’s disturbing eyes. They were curiously at odds with her clothes, her mousy, not quite blonde hair caught back in a kid’s scrunchy adorned with a velvet duck-billed platypus; he knew it was a duck-billed platypus because he’d been handbagged by his five-year-old niece into buying her one just like it.
But there was nothing childlike about her eyes. A curious mixture of grey and green and slightly slanted beneath finely marked brows, they were intense, witch’s eyes…
His grin faded as he shook his head, flipped the jet to cold and stood beneath it while he counted slowly to twenty. Only then did he reach for his robe, towelling his hair as he padded back to his bedroom, trailing wet footprints across the pale carpet.
Orange juice. Coffee. Eggs. In that order. He’d been wise to pass on the side order of sex. Not that he hadn’t been tempted. Beneath the shapeless clothes, Ginny Lautour’s body had hinted at the kind of curves that invited a man’s hand to linger. And her eyes had invited a lot more than that. But he wasn’t ready to be bewitched just yet.
He’d beaten off several attempts to break through his security cordon, steal the latest software his company had developed which was now going through the rigorous testing phase. He’d hoped that they, whoever they were, had given up. Apparently not.
But he was smiling again as he picked up a phone, hitting the fast dial to his Chief Software Engineer as he headed downstairs in the direction of the kitchen. Despite the fact that she had been lying through her pretty teeth—not even the most athletic hamster could have got into that drawer—he’d enjoyed watching Ginny getting into deeper and deeper water as she had tried to extricate herself from an impossible situation.
For a girl in the industrial espionage business she had a quite remarkable propensity to blush. It gave her a look of total innocence that was so completely at odds with the hot look in her eyes that a man might just be fooled into believing it.
Maybe he’d be a little less relaxed about it if there’d been anything of any value in his apartment for her to steal. As it was, he was rather looking forward to her next move.
‘Marcus.’ He jerked his mind back to more immediate concerns as his call was picked up. ‘I’ve finally cracked the problem we’ve been having.’
Then, as the spiral turned inward so that he was facing into the vast expanse of his living room, he saw the open bottle of champagne standing on the sofa table and belatedly remembered the luscious redhead he’d taken to the retirement party he’d thrown for one of his senior staff.
‘I’ll be with you in half an hour to bring the team up to speed,’ he said, not waiting for an answer before he disconnected.
Well, that explained the earring. It was Lilianne’s. She must have taken him at his word when he had told her that he’d just be five minutes, invited her to make herself comfortable.
How long had she lain in his bed, waiting for him to join her? How long before she’d stormed out in a huff? Even he could see that it would have to be a huff. At the very least.
Long enough to write him a note and tie it to the neck of the champagne bottle with one of her stockings, anyway. Presumably to emphasize what he’d missed.
He sighed. She’d been playing kiss-chase with him for weeks and he’d be lying if he denied that he’d enjoyed the game. Hard to get was so rare these days. He wasn’t fooled, of course. He understood the game too well for that. She believed the longer she held out, the greater would be her victory.
Not that he was objecting.
He’d been looking forward to the promised pay off. Which would have been last night if he hadn’t suddenly caught a glimpse of the answer to a problem that had been giving his entire development team a headache for the last couple of weeks. He checked his wristwatch. The best part of ten hours ago.
He tugged at the stocking, caught a hint of the musky scent she’d been wearing. He really needed to concentrate on one thing at a time, he decided, as the napkin fell into the melted ice.
Work—nine-till-five. Personal life—
Forget it. Work was his life.
He shrugged, picked up the napkin. Her note was short and to the point.
LOSER.
Succinct. To the point. No wasted words. He admired brevity in a woman.
However, there was still the earring found by his uninvited caller. An earring not meant to be found by a casual glance. It suggested that she’d given herself a chance to call him—after sufficient time had elapsed for him to understand that she was seriously annoyed—and offer him the opportunity to tease her into forgiving him. Resume the chase.
And he grinned.
Then, as the scent of coffee brewing reached him, his eyes narrowed. It seemed as if Ginny Lautour hadn’t been in as much of a hurry as she’d made out…
He left the note where it was and, tossing the stocking over the arm of the sofa, headed for the kitchen.
‘So, you decided to stay for breakfast after all—’
He came to an abrupt halt as he realised it was his cleaner—rather than his interesting new neighbour—who was making coffee. It left him with oddly mixed feelings.
Relief that she hadn’t, after all, taken up his casual invitation to stick around, taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity to get close to him. That she hadn’t been that obvious.
Disappointment…for much the same reason.
Not that he doubted she’d be back. Like the earring, Hector gave her all the excuse she needed to drop by any time she felt like it. Which was fine. He didn’t believe for one minute that she was a criminal mastermind. He simply wanted to know who was pulling her strings.
‘Good morning, Mr Mallory. I’ve made fresh coffee. Would you like me to cook breakfast for you?’
‘No. Thank you, Mrs Figgis.’ He’d lost his appetite. ‘I’ll have something at the office.’ Then, ‘You’ll keep a look-out for Miss Lautour’s hamster?’
‘Of course. I’m sorry she disturbed you,’ she said. ‘If I’d realised you were home…’
‘Late night. No problem.’
Far from it. If he’d left for the office at the usual time, or even taken this Friday off as he had originally planned and driven off into deepest Gloucestershire, Ginny Lautour could have searched his flat from top to bottom at her leisure and he doubted it would have crossed his cleaner’s mind to even mention it.
The hamster, he realised, was a clever excuse. It was possible he’d underestimated the girl. No, that wasn’t right, either. She might blush like a girl, but she had the eyes, the body of a woman…