The Billionaire Takes a Bride

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.