Czytaj książkę: «The Tycoon's Marriage Deal»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS THE best wedding cake Tillie had ever decorated but now there wasn’t going to be a wedding. Her dream wedding. The wedding she had planned and looked forward to for more years than she wanted to count. She looked at the triple-tier wedding cake with the intricate orange blossom petals she’d taken hours and hours to craft. They were so darn realistic you could almost smell them. The finely detailed lacework around the sides of the cake had all but made her cross-eyed. She had even given the marzipan bride on the top of the cake her chestnut hair and pale complexion and brown eyes, and used a tiny scrap of fabric from her own wedding dress and veil to make a replica outfit.

Although...she’d taken a little licence with the bride’s figure and made her look as if she spent her life in the gym rather than hours in a kitchen surrounded by yummy cakes that had to be tasted to get the balance of flavours just right.

The groom was exactly like Simon—blond and blue-eyed—although the tuxedo she’d painted on him was now pock-marked with pinholes.

Tillie picked up another dressmaking pin and aimed it at the groom’s groin. ‘Take that, you cheat.’ Who knew marzipan figurines could make such great voodoo dolls? Maybe she could do a side line business for jilted brides, making break-up cakes with an effigy of their ex.

There’s a thought...

‘Uh-oh.’ Joanne, her assistant, came into the kitchen. ‘Your favourite male customer is waiting for you. Maybe I should warn him you’re in your all-men-are-evil mood.’

Tillie turned from the cake to look at Joanne. ‘Which male customer?’

Joanne’s eyes sparkled so much they looked as if they belonged on a tiara. ‘Mr Chocolate Éclair.’

Tillie could feel her cheeks heating up faster than her fan-forced oven. For the last two weeks, every time that man came into her cake shop he always insisted on being served by her. He always made her blush. And he always wanted the same thing—one of her Belgian chocolate éclairs. She didn’t know whether to dislike him for making sport out of her overactive capillaries or for him being able to eat a chocolate éclair a day and not put on a single gram of fat. ‘Can’t you serve him just this once?’

Joanne shook her head. ‘Nope. He wants to speak to you and informs me he won’t leave until he does.’

Tillie frowned. ‘But I told you I don’t want to be interrupted this afternoon. I have three kids’ birthday cakes to decorate and I have to squeeze in a visit to Mr Pendleton at the respite centre. I made his favourite marshmallow slice.’

‘This guy is not the sort to take no for an answer,’ Joanne said. ‘Anyway, you should see how clock-stopping gorgeous he looks today. Where on earth does he put all the calories you sell him?’

Tillie turned back to the wedding cake and aimed a pin at the groom’s right eye. ‘Tell him I’m busy.’

Joanne blew out an I’m-so-over-this breath. ‘Look, Tillie, I know Simon jilting you was rough on you, but it’s been three months. You have to move on. I think Mr Chocolate Éclair fancies you. He’s certainly paying you heaps of attention. Who knows? This might be your chance to get out and party like you’ve never partied before.’

‘Move on? Why should I move on?’ Tillie said. ‘I’m fine right where I am, thank you very much. I’m over men.’ Three more pins went into marzipan man’s manhood. ‘Over. Over. Over.’

‘But not all men are like—’

‘Apart from my dad and Mr Pendleton, men are a waste of time and money and emotion,’ Tillie said. When she thought of all the money she’d spent on Simon, helping him with yet another start-up business that ended going belly up. When she thought of all the effort she’d put into their relationship, her patience over his commitment to not have sex before marriage because of his faith, only for him to have an affair with a girl he’d met online.

On a hook-up app.

Grr.

Years Tillie had spent being by his side, putting her own stuff on hold in order to be a good little girlfriend and then good little fiancée. Faithful. Loyal. Devoted.

No. Moving on would mean she would have to trust a man again and that she was never going to do. Not in this lifetime. Not in this century. Not in this geological era.

‘So...do you want me to tell Mr Chocolate Éclair to come back some other time?’ Joanne said, wincing when she saw all the pins sticking out of Simon.

‘No. I’ll see him.’ Tillie untied her apron, tossed it to one side and stalked into her small shop front. Mr Chocolate Éclair was standing looking at the cakes and biscuits and slices in the glass cabinet underneath the shop counter. When he turned and made eye contact something zapped her in the chest like a Taser beam. Zzzztt. She double-blinked just as she did every time he looked at her. Was it actually possible to have eyes that unusual shade of blue? A light greyish-blue with a dark outline around the iris, as if someone had drawn a fine circle with a felt-tip marker. His hair was a rich dark brown with natural highlights as if he had recently spent time in the sun. Clearly not in England, given the summer so far had been dismal even though it was June. His skin was olive toned and tanned and the wrong side of clean-shaven, as if he had been too lazy to pick up a razor that morning. It gave him a rakish air that made her toes curl in her ballet flats.

And he was tall.

So tall he had to stoop when he came in the shop, and even now the top of his head was dangerously close to the light fitting.

But it was his mouth that drew her eyes like a dieter to her cake counter. No matter how hard she tried, Tillie couldn’t stop staring at it. The top lip was sculpted and only a shade thinner than the lower one, suggesting his was a mouth that knew all there was to know about sensuality. Even the way it was curved upwards in a smile hinted at a man who was confident and assured of getting his own way in the boardroom and the bedroom or even on a park bench. If there were a blueprint for an international playboy he would be a perfect fit. He was so rampantly masculine he made the models in sexy aftershave ads look like altar boys.

‘The usual?’ Tillie said, reaching for a set of tongs and a white paper bag.

‘Not today.’ His voice was so deep it was clear he hadn’t been at the back of the queue when the testosterone was handed out. Rich and dark, honey and gravel with a side order of smooth Devonshire cream. His eyes twinkled. ‘I’m abstaining from temptation just this once.’

Tillie’s cheeks were flaming hot enough to make toffee. ‘Can I tempt you with anything else?’

Bad choice of words.

His smile came up a little higher on one side. ‘I thought it was time I introduced myself. I’m Blake McClelland.’

The name rang a bell. Not a drawing-room bell. A Big Ben type of bell. Blake McClelland—international playboy, super-successful businessman and renowned financial whizz. McClelland Park was the name of the country estate Tillie was housesitting for the elderly owner, Mr Pendleton. The estate had been reluctantly sold by Andrew McClelland when his young wife Gwen tragically died, leaving behind a ten-year-old son. The son had certainly done a heck of a lot of growing up. He would be thirty-four now, exactly ten years older than her. ‘How can I...erm...help you, Mr McClelland?’

He held out his hand, and, after a brief hesitation, she slipped hers into its slightly calloused cage. The brush of warm male flesh closing around hers was as electrifying as a high-voltage current. The air suddenly became tighter, denser.

‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’ he said.

Tillie was rapidly going beyond being able to think, much less talk. Even breathing was proving to be a challenge. Even though she pulled her hand out of his, the sensation of his touch was still travelling through her body like hot tentacles. One of them coiling deep and low in her belly. ‘I’m really busy right now so—’

‘I won’t take up too much of your time.’

She wanted to refuse but she was a businesswoman. Being polite to customers was important to her—even the most annoying ones. What if he wanted to order a speciality cake? Not that she made cakes that big-breasted bunny girls jumped out of, but still. Maybe he wanted her to cater for an event or something. It would be churlish to refuse to speak to him just because he made her feel a little...undone.

‘My office is through here,’ Tillie said and led the way back to the workroom, every cell of her flesh conscious of him only a few steps behind her.

Joanne looked up from the child’s birthday cake she was pretending to decorate with the handmade marzipan toys Tillie had worked on every night for the past week. ‘I’ll watch over the shop, will I?’ she said with a smile so bright it looked as if she were advertising toothpaste.

‘Thanks,’ Tillie said, opening the office door that led off the workroom. ‘We won’t be long.’

Well, she’d used to think of it as an office.

Now with Blake McClelland occupying a ridiculous amount of space inside it she rapidly downgraded it to the size of a cake box. A cupcake box.

Tillie waved her hand at the chair in front of her desk. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

So I don’t have to dislocate my neck to maintain eye contact?

‘Ladies first.’ Something about the sparkle in his eyes made her think of another context entirely.

She gritted her teeth behind her polite closed-lip smile, and instead of sitting on her own chair, held onto the back of it like a lion tamer about to take on a rogue lion. ‘What can I do for you, Mr McClelland?’

‘Actually, it’s more what I can do for you.’ There was an enigmatic quality to his voice and his expression that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up and pirouette.

‘Meaning?’ Tillie injected enough cool hostility into her tone to have sent a pride of lions scampering for cover, chair or no chair.

Blake glanced at the stack of bills lying on her desk. Three of them were stained with a red stamp marking them as final notices. He would have to be colour blind not to have noticed.

‘Local gossip has it you’re undergoing a difficult financial period,’ he said.

Tillie kept her spine straighter than the ruler on her desk. ‘Pardon me if this sounds rude, but I fail to see how my current financial circumstances have anything to do with you.’

His eyes didn’t waver from hers. Not even to blink. He reminded her of a marksman who had taken aim, his finger poised on the trigger. ‘I noticed the wedding cake on my way in here.’

‘Hardly surprising since this is a cake shop,’ Tillie said, sounding as tart as the lemon meringue pies she’d made that morning. ‘Weddings, parties, anything—it’s what I do.’

‘I heard about your fiancé getting cold feet on the morning of the wedding,’ he said, still holding her gaze with that unnerving target-practice intensity.

‘Yes, well, it’s hard to keep something like that quiet in a village this size,’ she said. ‘But again—pardon me for being impolite—what exactly do you want to speak to me about? Because if it’s to talk about my ex and his tarty little girlfriend who is barely out of preschool, then you’d better leave right now.’

His smile tilted his mouth in a way that made the base of Tillie’s spine tingle and her hand want to rise up and slap him. She curled her fingers into her palms just in case. She was annoyed with herself for allowing him to see how humiliated she was by her ex’s choice of partner.

‘So here’s your chance to get even,’ Blake said. ‘Pretend to be my fiancée for the next month and I’ll take care of those debts for you.’

‘Pretend to be your...what?’

He picked up the sheaf of papers off her desk and proceeded to read out the amounts owing, whistling through his teeth when he got to the biggest one. He tapped the bills against his other hand and looked at her again with that startlingly direct grey-blue gaze. ‘I will pay off your debts and the only payment I want in return is for you to tell your old buddy Jim Pendleton we’re engaged.’

Tillie widened her eyes until she thought her eyeballs would pop right out of her head and bounce along the floor like ping-pong balls. ‘Are you out of your mind? Pretend to be engaged to you? I don’t even know you.’

He gave a mock bow. ‘Blake Richard Alexander McClelland at your service. Formerly of McClelland Park estate and now on a mission to buy back my ancestral home, which, up until twenty-four years ago, had been in the McClelland family since the mid-seventeen-hundreds.’

Tillie frowned. ‘But why don’t you make an offer to Mr Pendleton? He’s been talking about selling since he had a stroke two months ago.’

‘He won’t sell it to me.’

‘Why not?’

His eyes continued to hold hers but this time there was a devilish glint. ‘Apparently my reputation as a love-them-and-leave-them playboy has annoyed him.’

Tillie could well imagine Blake McClelland had done some serious damage to a few hearts in his time. Now she realised why he’d seemed familiar the first time he’d come into her shop. She recalled reading something recently about him at a wild party in Vegas involving three burlesque dancers. He had a fast-living lifestyle that would certainly be at odds with someone as old and conservative as Jim Pendleton, whose only misdemeanours in eighty-five years were a couple of parking fines. ‘But Mr Pendleton would never believe you and I were a couple. We’re total opposites.’

His smile was crooked. ‘But that’s the point—you’re exactly the type of girl Jim would want me to fall in love with and settle down.’

As if that would ever happen.

Tillie knew she wasn’t responsible for any shattered mirrors about the place, but neither would she be asked to model a bikini on a catwalk. Her girl-next-door looks wouldn’t stop a clock or even a wristwatch. Not even an egg timer. The likelihood of attracting someone as heart-stoppingly handsome and suave and sophisticated as Blake McClelland was as likely as her becoming a size zero. But she didn’t know whether to be insulted or grateful. Right now, the thought of paying off her debts was more tempting than a whole tray of Belgian chocolate éclairs. Two trays. And even better, it would send a middle finger in the air to her ex. ‘But won’t Mr Pendleton suspect something if we suddenly come out as a couple? He might be elderly and suffering from a stroke, but he’s not stupid.’

‘The old man’s a romance tragic,’ Blake said. ‘He was married fifty-nine years before his wife died. He fell in love with her within ten minutes of meeting her. He’ll be thrilled to see you move on from your ex. He talked about you non-stop—called you his little guardian angel. He said you were minding his house and his dog and visiting him every day. That’s how I came up with the plan. I can see the headlines now.’ He put his fingers up in air quotes. ‘“Bad boy tamed by squeaky clean girl next door.”’ His grin was straight off a cosmetic orthodontist’s website. ‘It’s win-win.’

Tillie gave him a look that would have soured her shop’s week’s supply of milk. ‘I hate to put a dent in that massive ego of yours, but my answer is an emphatic, irreversible no.’

‘I don’t expect you to sleep with me.’

Tillie didn’t care for the way he said it as if she was being a gauche fool for thinking otherwise. Why didn’t he expect her to sleep with him? Was she that hideous? ‘Good, because I wouldn’t do it even if you paid those debts fifty gazillion times over.’

Something about the spark of light in his eyes sent a shuddering tremor over the floor of her belly. His slanted smile was star student of charm school. ‘Although, if you ever change your mind I’ll be happy to get down to business.’

Business? Tillie dug her fingers into the back of her office chair so hard she thought her knuckles would explode. She wanted to slap that I-can-have-you-any-time-I-want-you smile off his face. But another part—a secret, private part—wanted him. Wanted. Wanted. Wanted him. ‘I’m not going to change my mind.’

He picked up a pen off her desk, tossed it in the air and deftly caught it in one hand. ‘And when the time comes to end it, I will allow you the privilege of dumping me.’

‘Big of you.’

‘I’m not being magnanimous,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be run out of town by a bunch of villagers wielding baseball bats.’

Tillie wished she had a baseball bat handy right now to beat her resolve back into shape. But the chance to let her ex know she could land a guy was proving a little hard to resist.

And not just any old guy.

Someone rich and gorgeous and sexy as sin on a sugar-coated stick. It was only for a month. How hard could it be? Her thoughts were seesawing in her head. Do it. Don’t. Do it. Don’t.

‘Think about it overnight,’ Blake said, apparently undaunted because his smile didn’t falter. ‘I want a walk around the Park some time. For old times’ sake.’

‘I’d have to ask Mr Pendleton if that’s okay with him.’

‘Fine.’ He took a business card from his wallet and handed it to her. ‘My contact details. I’ve checked in at the bed and breakfast down the road.’

Tillie took the card from him, desperately trying not to touch his fingers. Those long tanned fingers. Those long tanned masculine fingers. She couldn’t stop thinking about how those fingers would feel on her skin...on her body. On her breasts. Between her legs.

She gave herself a concussion-inducing mental slap. Why was she thinking about intimate stuff like that? The only person who’d ever touched her between the legs—apart from herself—was her gynaecologist.

‘I wouldn’t have thought cottage flowers and cosy fireplaces and fancy china teacups would be to your taste,’ Tillie said.

Blake’s eyes glinted again. ‘I don’t plan to stay there long.’

What was he hinting? That he would be staying with her? Tillie inched up her chin, trying to ignore the way the backs of her knees were fizzing in reaction to the satirical light in his gaze. ‘I’m sure you’ll find much more suitable accommodation for your...erm...needs in the next town.’

The less you think about his ‘needs’, the better.

‘Perhaps, but I’m not leaving this village until I get what I want.’ Something about the set of his jaw made her realise he had the steely will and determination to achieve whatever he put his mind to. And the ruthlessness.

She kept her gaze on his. ‘Haven’t you heard that wise old adage you can’t always get what you want?’

Blake glanced at her mouth, then to the swell of her breasts behind her conservatively buttoned cotton shirt, lingering there for a nanosecond before returning his gaze to hers in a lock that ignited something deep inside her body. It was as if his eyes were communicating on an entirely different level—a primal, instinctive level that was as thrilling to her as it was foreign.

No one ever looked at her like...that.

As if he were wondering what her mouth would feel like against his. As if he were wondering what she looked like without her practical, no-nonsense clothing. As if he were wondering how she would taste and feel when he put his mouth and tongue to her naked flesh.

Even Simon had never given her The Look. The I-want-to-have-bed-wrecking-sex-with-you-right-now look. She’d always put it down to the fact he’d staunchly committed to celibacy, but now she wondered if the chemistry had ever been there. Their kisses and cuddles seemed somehow...vanilla. Unlike her, Simon had had sex previously as a young teenager, but he’d felt so guilty he’d made a pledge not to do it again until he was married. They’d occasionally petted but never without clothes. The only pleasure she’d had during the last eight years had been with herself.

But nothing about Blake McClelland was vanilla. He was dark chocolate fudge and tantalising, willpower-destroying temptation. She couldn’t imagine him being celibate for eight minutes, let alone eight years. Which made it all the more laughable he wanted her to pretend to be his fiancée.

Who would ever believe it?

‘Just for the record,’ Blake said in a voice so deep it made Simon’s baritone sound like a boy soprano, ‘I always get what I want.’

Tillie suppressed an involuntary shiver at the streak of ruthless determination in his tone. But she kept her expression in starchy schoolmistress mode. ‘Here’s the thing, Mr McClelland. I’m not the sort of girl to be toyed with for a man’s entertainment. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’re a bored playboy who’s looking for the next challenge. You thought you could waltz in here and brandish your big fat bank account and get me to fall on my knees with gratitude, didn’t you?’

His eyes did that twinkling, glinting thing. ‘Not on our first date. I like to have something to look forward to.’

Tillie could feel her blush shoot to the roots of her hair. She almost expected it to be singed right off her scalp. She could barely speak for the anger vibrating through her body.

Or maybe it wasn’t anger...

Maybe it was a far more primitive emotion rushing through her in blazing, electrifying streaks. Desire. A pulse-throbbing sexual energy that left no part of her untouched. It was as if her blood were injected with its bubbling hot urgency. She shot him a glare as deadly as one of her metal cake skewers. ‘Get out of my shop.’

Blake tapped his index finger on the stack of bills on her desk. ‘It won’t be your shop for much longer if these aren’t seen to soon. Give me a call when you’ve changed your mind.’

Tillie lifted one of her brows as if she were channelling a heroine in a period drama. ‘When? Don’t you mean if?’

His eyes held hers in an iron will against iron will tug of war, making her heart skip a beat. Two beats. Possibly three. If she’d been on a cardiac ward they would have called a Code Blue.

‘You know you want to.’

Tillie wasn’t sure they were still talking about the money. There was a dangerous undercurrent rippling in the air. Air she couldn’t quite get into her lungs. But then he picked up his business card, which she’d placed on her desk earlier, and, reaching across the small space the desk offered, slid it into the right breast pocket of her shirt. At no point did he touch her, but it felt as if he had stroked her breast with one of those long, clever fingers. Her breast fizzed as if a firework were trapped inside the cup of her bra.

‘Call me,’ he said.

‘You’ll be waiting a long time.’

His smile was confident. Brazenly confident. I’ve-got-this-in-the-bag confident. ‘You think?’

That was the whole darn trouble. Tillie couldn’t think. Not while he was standing there dangling temptation in front of her. She’d always prided herself on her resolve, but right now it felt as if her resolve had rolled over and was playing dead.

She owed a lot of money. More money than she earned in a year. Way more. She had to pay her father and stepmother back the small loan they’d given her because as missionaries living abroad they were living on gifts and tithes as it was. Mr Pendleton had offered to help her but it didn’t sit well with her to take money off him when he had already been incredibly generous by allowing her to stay at McClelland Park rent-free and to use his kitchen for baking when she ran out of time at the shop. Besides, he would need all his money and more if he didn’t sell McClelland Park, because an old Georgian property that size needed constant and frighteningly expensive maintenance.

But to take money off Blake McClelland in exchange for a month pretending to be his fiancée was a step into territory so dangerous she would need to be immediately measured for a straitjacket. Even if he didn’t expect her to sleep with him she would have to act as if she were. She would have to touch him, hold hands or have him—gulp—kiss her for the sake of appearances.

‘Good day, McClelland,’ Tillie said, as sternly as if she were dismissing an impertinent boy from the staffroom.

Blake was almost out of her office when he turned around at the door to look back at her. ‘Oh, one other thing.’ He fished in his trouser pocket and took out a velvet ring box and tossed it to her desk to land on top of her stack of bills with unnerving accuracy. ‘You’ll be needing this.’

And without stopping to see her open the box, he turned and left.