Loe raamatut: «Claimed For The Billionaire's Convenience»

CHAPTER ONE

EVERY TIME HOLLY FROST looked at her younger sister’s engagement party invitation she wanted to emigrate. To Siberia. Not because she didn’t love her baby sister Belinda. She did. She loved all three of her sisters—Katie, Meg and Belinda were awesome. The best sisters a girl could ask for. Holly loved her parents too, and her grandparents. She’d been lucky in the family lottery, unlike a couple of her friends who had the sort of families you read about in crime novels. All of Holly’s family were supportive and loving. Katie and Meg were happily married, and now Belinda was joining them, which left Holly the odd one out.

Again.

Her baby sister was getting married, which meant everyone would look at Holly and ask when she was going to find herself a husband. Argh. Like she needed another man in her life after being jilted not once, but twice.

How could she get through another family gathering with no partner in tow? How could she bear the looks and pointed questions about her lack of a love life? Her family thought any young woman pushing thirty should have a husband on the horizon if not in hand. Especially if said young woman was a wedding florist and was surrounded by blissfully happy brides every day of the week, and yes, even on weekends.

Double argh.

Holly was the go-to wedding florist in London. Obsessed by all things bridal since childhood, she had built her business on wedding flowers. She also did flowers for funerals, parties, corporate functions and so on, but it was her wedding work that had lifted her profile. She’d done the flowers for a minor celebrity’s marriage four years ago. The reality-TV star had more followers on social media than the Kardashians.

Holly’s shop was her life. She didn’t have time for anything else. Being successful professionally made up for not being successful personally. Her failed relationships were as bad as having dead flowers on display in her shop window. Withered hope, dried-up dreams, bruised ego.

Why her family thought she couldn’t possibly be happy remaining single was a constant source of frustration to her. Plenty of people were happy being single. Lots and lots of people were single and loving it. Not everyone wanted the fairy tale. The fairy tale sucked if your handsome prince decided to run off with another woman the week before your wedding. It sucked even more if your second handsome prince—because who didn’t try things twice to see if they could get it right the second time?—also took off. But this time on the day before the wedding with his personal trainer.

Holly had been cured of fairy-tale fever by two fickle fiancés.

Permanently cured.

‘Will you be doing the flowers for your sister’s wedding?’ Jane, her chief assistant asked, coming in from the cool room with a bunch of white roses.

Holly cleared a space on her workbench for the roses. ‘Yep. And I’m chief bridesmaid. Again. Go me.’

‘Three times a bridesmaid...’ Jane stepped back as if she were trying to avoid contamination by association. ‘Glad it’s you and not me. Aren’t you worried you might jinx your chances of—’

‘No.’ Holly picked up one of the roses and snipped the stem. ‘Because I don’t want to get married.’

‘Don’t you want to have one more go? To see if this time—’

‘Nope.’ Holly took another rose and snapped off the stem. ‘I do not.’

Jane glanced at the invitation on Holly’s desk. ‘So who will be your plus-one for Belinda’s engagement party?’

Holly wrapped fine green wire around the stem of a rose like she was tying up one of her cheating exes. ‘I’m not taking anyone.’

Jane gave a series of exaggerated blinks. ‘You’re going alone? To one of your family’s parties? Isn’t that a bit...erm, risky after the last time?’

Holly pressed her lips together so hard she could have cracked concrete. ‘I told my mother in no uncertain terms she is to refrain from setting me up with techie nerds. The ones with dandruff who get blind drunk because they’re nervous about meeting a real woman in the flesh instead of an avatar on a computer screen. I’m fine being single.’ She picked up another rose and began wiring it. ‘Just because everyone in my family is partnered doesn’t mean I want to be.’

‘Speaking of the absence of partners...’ Jane handed over the printout of a new order that had come in overnight via the website. ‘You’ve been asked to do the flowers for a divorce party. That’s a first, isn’t it?’

Holly frowned and peered at the form. ‘Hmm, that’s from Kendra Hutchinson. She was one of my brides about four years ago, before you came to work for me. Big socialite wedding. Massive. I paid off my overdraft with that account. I was up two nights in a row doing the flowers. I knew she was wasting her time marrying that guy. She knew he was getting it on with one of the bridesmaids but she still went ahead with the wedding. She was so blinded by love she needed a guide dog. No. Two guide dogs and a white cane.’

‘Weddings are expensive things to cancel at the last minute.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Holly grimaced and snipped off another stem. And dead embarrassing.

‘Do you know who handled Kendra’s divorce?’ Jane’s tone and twinkling eyes were straight out of the schoolyard gossip handbook. ‘Zack Knight, the celebrity divorce lawyer who’s made his millions by dissolving peoples’ marriages. Maybe you’ll meet him at the party.’

Holly stretched her lips into a smile that felt like it belonged on a corpse. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ Not.

Jane’s expression lost some of its sparkle when she looked at the divorce party order printout again. ‘I hope we’re not going to only do divorce parties and funerals now...’

A clench of panic gripped Holly’s gut like a bad case of giardia. During the last week, three of her biggest clients had cancelled their wedding bookings without explanation. It had never happened before and she was trying not to worry. Yet. But she had a mortgage and expensive renovations on her new house to pay for. Staff to pay. Hell to pay if she failed. ‘It’ll be fine. All businesses go through downturns. Things will pick up now that it’s spring. Not that you’d notice by the weather.’

Jane chewed her lower lip, her finger absently flicking the corner of the paper. ‘It’s just with my nephew’s autism therapy costing so much I couldn’t bear to cut back my hours, or worse, to lose this job.’

Holly would rather live on the street than see Jane short of money to fund her young nephew’s therapy. She took Jane’s hand. ‘You are not going to lose your job. I can’t run this place without you.’ She let her assistant’s hand go to pick up her secateurs. ‘Anyway, I hear divorce parties are big business these days.’

‘But weddings are your speciality,’ Jane said. ‘You love everything to do with weddings. Everyone knows that. Do you think it’s because you’re so anti-men?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘You’ve not exactly made it a secret you think all men are bastards,’ Jane said. ‘A few of those social media posts of yours have been a little negative and you haven’t had a date in what...two and a half years? What if that’s putting off potential clients?’

Holly snipped another stem off a rose. ‘I hardly see what my opinion of men has to do with running a successful floristry business. I don’t need a man in my life. I’m fine. F-I-N-E. Fine.’

‘If you don’t get more wedding work, you’re finished.’ Jane’s tone was grim. Funereal grim. ‘There are other wedding florists in London, you know. Competition is tough. What you need is an image makeover. Or a man. Or both.’

Holly put her secateurs down. ‘What is this obsession with finding me a partner? Why does everyone think a woman is lacking something if she hasn’t got a man in her life?’

The computer pinged to say another order had come in. Jane moved across to read the screen and sighed. ‘There goes another one. The Mackie wedding in June. Cancelled.’

Holly came over and peered at the email, her stomach feeling like she’d ingested thorns. Hundreds and hundreds of prickly thorns. Like the other three cancellations, there was no explanation. Was it her fault? Had she been too vocal about her anti-men phase? She straightened from the computer. ‘Okay. So maybe I’ll shut up on social media about how much I hate two-timing men.’

Jane drummed her fingers on the bench like she was accompanying the cogs of her brain turning over. ‘Hey, I have an idea. Get someone to take a photo of you at the divorce party standing next to Zack Knight. Get Kendra to do it. She’s got gazillions of followers. A photo of you two flirting with each other would be sure to go viral. Then your problem’s solved.’

‘Brilliant suggestion, Jane, but as far as I’m concerned flirting is as bad as the other F-word. Anyway, I hung up my flirting boots a long time ago.’ Holly picked up the secateurs and wished she had both of her exes handy so she could prune off their most prized parts of their anatomy. ‘I don’t even know how to do it any more.’

And even if I did, I wouldn’t do it.

The divorce party was being held at a swanky hotel in the heart of London. The champagne was flowing like a fountain on fast-forward, but the lively chatter and party atmosphere did nothing to improve Holly’s mood. The tiny teeth of panic were nipping at her stomach lining like aphids on rose petals. What if she couldn’t meet her financial commitments? What if her business folded?

What if she failed? That was another F-word she hated. Failure.

Holly was tucking into her second slice of black forest cheesecake when Zack Knight arrived. She knew it was Zack because of the way the mostly female guests gave a collective gasp of awe when he entered the room. Holly would have gasped too if it hadn’t been for the mouthful of cheesecake she’d just spooned in. She could never resist cheesecake. It was her weakness. Well, one of them anyway. She had seen photos of Zack in the gossip pages but had never met him in the flesh. The photos hadn’t done him justice. Not one bit of justice. Had she ever seen a more gorgeous-looking man?

He was head and shoulders over everyone in the room, which was saying something because even though most of the women were wearing skyscraper heels, he still towered over them like a thoroughbred stallion surrounded by circus ponies. His jet-black hair was styled in one of those casual, just-got-out-of-bed-after-wild-sex styles that gave him a rakish air. He was clean-shaven but the rich dark pinpricks of stubble had a sexy urgency about them that suggested there was no lack of supply of potent male hormones pulsing through his blood. His skin had an olive tone that glowed with a light tan, which highlighted the healthy vital energy that surrounded him like an aura.

Holly could feel the energy he radiated all the way across the room. It was like his body was sending out a radio signal and hers was sending a response. Peep. Peep. Peep. Her skin lifted in a shower of goose bumps, even the backs of her knees tingled and something lying asleep deep and low in her belly woke and stretched its limbs like a languorous cat.

Zack’s mouth looked as if it was no stranger to smiling. Not just any old smiling. The sort of smiling that could melt the strongest of feminine willpower like a blowtorch through a block of ice.

His gaze swept the room and suddenly honed in on Holly’s. His dark brows rose ever so slightly in a do-I-know-you? fashion that made the sleepy cat in her belly start to purr. She could feel the vibrations inside her body. Deep inside her body, sending hot little flickers of awareness between her thighs. His gaze went to her mouth and then did an assessing sweep of her figure, and another frisson passed over her flesh as if he had reached across the room and touched her.

Holly couldn’t understand why her heart was flip-flopping like a frantic fish. Her breathing was shallow and hurried as if she’d run up a flight of stairs. Two flights. Possibly more. Her body felt like it was being heated up from the inside, making her skin hot and tight and so sensitive she became aware of every fibre of her clothing against her body.

She couldn’t remember meeting a more attractive-looking man. She might be over men, but even a confirmed celibate like her wasn’t completely immune from such an amazing vision of manhood. His body was toned from regular exercise or good genes or both. Or maybe it was from marathon sex sessions with his numerous lovers. Holly could see why women found him irresistible. She was half a room away and could feel his magnetic pull like she was a puny little florist pin and he an industrial-strength magnet.

His gaze came back to hers and his lips curved upwards in a confident smile that did strange things to her pulse and other parts of her anatomy. He crossed the floor towards her. He had a purposeful I-never-fail-to-meet-my-goals gait that more or less confirmed what she knew of him. He was a lethal opponent in a court of law. The word on the street: you engaged Zack Knight’s services—expensive as they were—before your ex-partner did. He worked overtime for his clients and, while they paid for it, he always delivered. Always. He acted on some of the dirtiest celebrity divorces in the country and always made sure his clients left court with a fist pump of victory.

Holly only realised she was holding her breath when she became light-headed. Or maybe it was the two glasses of champagne she’d drunk earlier. That was another one of her weaknesses—champagne. The drink of celebrations, even though she had nothing to celebrate and no one with whom to celebrate. Or maybe it was because Zack Knight had come to stand within half a metre of her and every cell in her body was jumping up and down like a hyperactive cheerleader and saying, Yippee!

‘I believe you’re responsible for the flowers tonight.’ His voice was a rich baritone, warm honey rolled over gravel. His eyes did a slow appraisal of her and he added, ‘Beautiful.’

Holly was so fixated on the startling colour of his eyes she couldn’t locate her voice. A smoky blue with flecks of navy in the irises and on the outer rim as if someone had drawn a precise circle around them with a felt-tip marker. She raised her chin a fraction. ‘You don’t strike me as a man who would stop long enough to smell the roses.’

A glint appeared in his eyes like twin diamond chips and the sound of his laugh rumbled down the entire length of her spine. ‘There’s nothing I love more than a prickly rose. The thornier the better.’

Holly tried not to look at his mouth but his smile made her think of how it would feel to have those lips move hotly, temptingly, passionately against her own. His lips were more or less evenly sized with well-defined vermillion borders. Firm and yet sensually sculptured and lethally attractive. And this close she could see the way his stubble peppered his jaw and around his nose and mouth. It had been more than two years since she had touched a man’s face. She hadn’t felt a man’s kiss in so long she could barely recall what it was like any more.

Zack held out his hand. ‘Zack Knight.’

Holly placed her hand in his and a zap of electric energy shot through her hand and straight to her core, buzzing there like a fizzing sparkler. Seriously, she had to get out more. She was acting like a sex-starved spinster, which she was, but still. His hand was warm and dry and large. His fingers closed around hers with the slightest pressure and she couldn’t stop thinking what it would feel like to have those strong masculine hands sliding over her flesh, over her breasts, over her belly and below...

‘Holly Frost.’ She made sure the don’t-mess-with-me tone was back in her voice and yet his smile lifted in a mocking slant, as if he knew how hard it was for her to keep from drooling.

Zack’s hand released hers first, which annoyed her because it made her look like she hadn’t wanted to let him go, which she hadn’t, but that was beside the point. But then she noticed he opened and closed his fingers a couple of times as if her touch had had the same effect on him. Something passed through his gaze—a flicker of surprise or was it intrigue? Either way, Holly couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. The citrus and wood fragrance of his aftershave flirted with her senses, the fresh sharpness as intoxicating as his presence. The deep blue of his sharply intelligent gaze only intensified his commanding presence. He was wearing a blue suit that made his eyes seem all the more striking, and the white business shirt with its casually open collar exposed the strong, tanned column of his throat.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Zack asked.

Holly didn’t need any more alcohol. She was tipsy from just looking at him. ‘No, thank you. I’ve had my two drinks for the evening.’

That diamond glint was back in his eyes as if her saying no had secretly delighted him.

‘Are you driving?’

‘No. I caught a cab.’

‘I can’t tempt you to break your two-drinks-only rule?’

Holly raised her chin and channelled her childhood Sunday school teacher’s prim Temperance Society tone. ‘No, Mr Knight. You cannot tempt me.’

Zack’s you-just-watch-me smile made something in Holly’s belly flutter like a breeze through the pages of an open book. ‘Are you here with anyone?’

‘No. I came alone.’

‘Is that usual for you?’ Something about the tone of his voice made her wonder if they were discussing her relationship status or something much more intimate. Thinking about sex while standing in front of a man as arrantly masculine as Zack Knight was like standing in front of flammable fuel with a lit match.

Dangerous.

Stupidly, recklessly dangerous.

Holly could feel her cheeks heating, her body tingling and her resolve limping away. She stretched her mouth into a stiff no-teeth-showing smile. ‘Don’t let me keep you from chatting up the other guests.’

‘I’m not interested in the other guests. I’m interested in you.’ His statement was underlined with determination and his gaze as steady as a marksman’s.

Holly mentally gave her resolve a pep talk but it was like trying to get a lame horse to finish a steeplechase. On crutches. ‘I can’t imagine why you’d be interested in me.’ Damn it. She sounded like she was flirting.

‘Zack!’ Kendra Hutchinson came click-clacking towards them in her terrifyingly high heels, her voice so shrill she sounded like a beginner on bagpipes. ‘And yay, you’ve found Holly.’ She beamed at Holly. ‘I told him all about you. I hope you don’t mind.’

Holly clenched her teeth behind a polite smile. ‘Why should I mind? If Mr Knight is in the market for wedding flowers, then I’m the woman he needs to call.’

Kendra laughed and shone her orthodontist-perfect smile at Zack. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous? I knew you two would hit it off.’

‘Undeniably gorgeous.’ Zack’s gaze met Holly’s, reminding her of a hunter who had just selected his prey.

‘Holly hasn’t been on a date in two and a half years,’ Kendra said to Zack. ‘Don’t you find that simply amazing?’

What Holly found amazing was how she stopped herself from grabbing one of Kendra’s heels, pockmarking her collagen-plumped cheeks with it and taking out a couple of those bright white tooth veneers while she was at it. She might have vented a little ire about men on her Facebook account now and again but she hadn’t said anything about how long she’d been celibate. That was no one’s business. Who had Kendra been talking to? Jane? Or Sabrina, her best friend, who ran the other arm of Holly’s Love Is in the Care business?

‘Let’s see if I can get her to change her mind about dating,’ Zack said with another I’ve-got-this-nailed smile.

Holly inched up her chin and sent him a haughty glare straight out of a Georgette Heyer novel. ‘You’d be wasting your time, Mr Knight.’

‘It’s my time to waste,’ he said.

Kendra took out her phone and held it up to take a picture. ‘Smile, you two.’

Holly frowned. ‘No. Wait. I don’t want my—’ Too late. The camera phone flashed and clicked. She could see it now. Hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of social media shares with her standing next to Zack Knight with her mouth hanging open as if she were a starstruck teenage fan at a boy band meet-and-greet.

Kendra checked the photo and smiled like a cat standing beside an empty aviary. She gave Holly and Zack a fingertip wave and turned on her spiky heels to join her other guests.

Holly turned to glower at Zack. ‘You should’ve stopped her. That will be all over Instagram or Twitter in minutes. She’ll have us flipping engaged before you know it.’

His shoulder lifted in a nonchalant shrug. ‘Who would believe it? I’m not the long-term commitment type.’

Holly wondered why he was so against commitment. Was there some reason behind his date-them-and-dump-them lifestyle? A rejection from a woman in his past that had stung a little too much? Was that why he was happy with hook-up sex but not emotional-connection sex?

Zack took two drinks from a passing waiter and turned back to Holly. ‘Still not willing to be tempted?’

She took the glass of champagne, trying not to touch his fingers in the process. If nothing else she could throw it in his face if he got too annoying. ‘I’m not the settling-down type either, but I suppose Kendra has already told you that?’

He took a slow sip of his drink and returned his gaze to hers. ‘She told me you’ve had your heart broken a couple of times.’

Argh. Why were people still talking about her doomed love life two and a half years on? It was pathetic. And embarrassing. ‘Actually, that’s not quite correct. Bruised is the terminology I would’ve used.’

‘Bruises still hurt.’

‘Is that the voice of experience or observation?’

He lifted his glass as if toasting an eternal truth. ‘It’s hard to get to the age of thirty-four without a little collateral damage.’

What had put that cynical gleam in his dark blue gaze? What had made his mouth smile in that mocking way?

‘So why family law? Why not commercial, criminal or conveyance?’

His gaze remained game shooter steady. ‘Why are you a florist?’

‘I love flowers.’

‘But why wedding flowers?’

Holly could feel her cheeks heating up when she thought of how wedding-obsessed she had been in the past. Her bedroom walls hadn’t been plastered with boy band posters but with bridal ones. She hadn’t doodled in class with boys’ names but had drawn wedding bouquets instead. ‘I might not want to get married any more but that doesn’t mean I don’t love weddings. They’re happy occasions where whole families get together to celebrate the commitment of a couple they know and love. I love being a part of that. Helping the bride choose what she wants, finding out her vision for the special day and making sure it happens. I love seeing the church or garden or wherever they’re getting married decked out with my designs. And the thought of the bride carrying a bouquet I’ve made specially for her is very rewarding, and no, I don’t just mean financially.’ Holly stopped to draw a breath and suddenly realised how much she had told him. And what a good listener he was. ‘But you didn’t answer my question. Why family law?’

‘It pays the bills.’

Holly flicked her gaze over his superb tailoring. ‘Apparently quite handsomely too.’

Zack’s lazy smile made something in her stomach flip. Damn the man for being so attractive. ‘The golden rule in making a success of your career is never to undersell yourself. If you’re good at what you do, then your fees should reflect that expertise.’

‘Isn’t there a fine line between charging a fee for a service and exploiting people during a vulnerable time?’ Holly raised her eyebrows and injected her tone with Sunday school–teacher disapproval.

He glanced at her mouth, then back to her gaze, his eyes going a deeper shade of blue. Sapphires with a backdrop of steel. ‘I don’t exploit my clients. I give them what they pay for—excellent service.’

Holly gave him one of her mortuary-slab smiles. ‘If ever I find myself in need of a divorce, then you’re apparently my go-to man.’

His eyes glinted and her stomach did another jerky somersault. ‘Likewise for wedding flowers.’

You’re flirting with him.

No, I’m not.

Yes, you are. And you’re loving it.

Holly took a sip of her champagne. ‘Don’t let me keep you.’

‘From?’

She waved a hand at the crowd of guests. ‘Hooking up with someone for a raunchy one-night stand.’

The glint of amusement was back in his eyes. ‘You don’t approve of raunchy one-night stands, Miss Frost?’

Holly’s cheeks were getting so hot she was worried all her fresh flower arrangements would wilt. Her fault for mentioning raunchy sex, but still. She had trouble thinking of anything but sex when standing near him. It was like her mind was stuck in a groove like a vinyl record under a turntable needle. Sex. Sex. Sex. She couldn’t look at his mouth without thinking of it clamped to hers. She couldn’t glance at his hands without imagining them touching her body. She couldn’t look at his body without wanting him to pin her to the nearest surface and have his wild and wicked way with her.