by Faye Avalon
Evernight Publishing ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2015 Faye Avalon
ISBN: 978-1-77233-460-9
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Lisa Petrocelli
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
For AJ
AT HIS BIDDING
Romance on the Go TM
Faye Avalon
Copyright © 2015
Chapter One
“Oh, my God! This is a joke. It has to be a joke.”
At the incredulous tone, Petra Brooks snatched the bid slip from her friend’s trembling hand and stared down at the figure scribbled with a flourish beneath the details of the auctioned lot. Petra wanted to add her own shocked exclamation to Lizzie’s, but her stomach was free-falling with a mix of annoyance and incredulity.
“Does that say what I think it says?” Lizzie demanded, peering over Petra’s shoulder.
“The bastard think’s he’s clever,” Petra mumbled almost to herself. “Well, I’ll show him how bloody clever he is.”
She was about to rip the bid slip in two, when Lizzie snatched it away. “But what if it’s for real?”
Somehow Petra doubted that but realized she couldn’t take the chance. There was too much at stake. Lizzie was right to stop her from tearing it up.
“Zack Cunningham likes to play games,” Petra said, selecting the next bid slip from the auction box. “These last few years he’s amassed more damn money than you and I could earn in a lifetime. He thinks that gives him the right to play around with people.”
“But he’s been really generous,” Lizzie said, still eyeing the slip of paper. “Donating a weekend, all expenses paid, at one of his posh hotels, with a full program of treatments in the spa? That’s worth a small fortune. It’s probably the best donation we had, and most of the other local businesses have been incredibly kind too.”
They had. Donations of fishing trips, gourmet meals in five-star restaurants, hospitality tickets for big-name bands and sports events, designer handbags…the list went on. Petra never loved her fellow man quite as much as when they came together to help fund a small boy’s trip overseas for life-changing surgery. But Zack Cunningham was a different kettle of proverbial fish. She couldn’t imagine him doing anything unless there was something in it for him. And one look at the figure on that bid slip put her under no illusion as to what that something would be in this case.
What did a man who had everything, including a prestigious penthouse apartment with spectacular views of London, need of her services as housekeeper for a day? He likely had a whole team of them catering to his every need already.
No. He was playing games with her. Trying to exert his authority, showing her that no matter how many times she refused to have anything to do with him, he would exploit any and every chance to wield power over her.
Well, he could go to hell.
“Let’s check out all the other bids,” Petra decided. “See what we’ve got.”
The silent auction had been her idea, just one of many they had come up with in an effort to raise funds to send Lizzie’s little boy—Petra’s godson—to New York for treatment to help him walk again. So far, they had raised enough for the family’s airfare, but so much more was needed to cover the treatment and accommodations while they were Stateside, not to mention numerous peripherals they hadn’t even considered yet.
“I can’t believe how much we’ve raised,” Lizzie said an hour later after all the evening’s bids had been counted and tallied. “People are so amazing.”
As tears welled in her friend’s eyes, Petra put an arm around her shoulders. “Because they care about you, and they care about little Danny. Now, turn off the waterworks and help me make a list to read out after the raffle. People will want to know who won the bids and how much we raised.”
“What shall we do about this?” Lizzie picked up the now-infamous slip which Petra had been doing her best to ignore. But it sat on the side drawing her attention until she felt like ripping it into a million pieces and flushing it down the nearest toilet.
“We can tell him thank you, but he’s already done enough. Then we can accept the next highest bid, and that’ll be it.”
“The next highest bid is good, but it doesn’t come near a hundred thousand pounds.” Lizzie slapped a hand to her throat. “When you actually say it out loud like that, it gives me goose bumps.”
Petra had a few goose bumps of her own happening right then. Thinking about Zack Cunningham usually did that to her, which was one of the reasons she’d always given him a wide berth. He was hot, that was undeniable, but he was also a bad boy with a questionable past. To her, that made him well and truly off limits.
But could she reject what he was offering? Could she deny her little godson the chance to get the treatment he needed a lot sooner with an extra hundred grand in the pot?
“Let’s do it.” Petra decided, picking up the slip. “Let’s call his bluff. He wants me to clean and tidy? That’s exactly what I’ll do. The moron is stupid enough to offer this, he can bloody well cough up.”
She folded it carefully and stuffed it down her cleavage. “If he really is playing games and trying to get a rise out of me, I’m going to call him on it. I’ll make him feel bad for using a little boy to make a point.”
“I don’t think he’s doing that,” Lizzie said, in her best placating mode. “He’s always had the hots for you, but you’d never give him a chance.”
“Damn straight. Bad boys don’t do it for me. You should know that. Even if they’ve sworn they’ve gone legitimate and are all lily-white.”
Lizzie hefted the now-empty bid box and placed it on the floor. “He was never that bad. Only misdemeanor-type things. We all did stupid stuff as teenagers, and he was no different.”
She didn’t do stupid stuff, Petra thought. That was the prerogative of her father, now banged up for misappropriation of funds and racketeering. For as long as she could remember, Petra had lived with the fear that the police would knock on the door, and her father would be whisked away for yet another transgression, leaving her and her mother to face the sneering looks and nudge-nudge, wink-wink behaviour from their neighbors.
Well, she wasn’t about to undergo any more deprecating looks from anyone, especially not at the hands of Zack Cunningham. She could only imagine what people would think if they knew she had accepted a vast amount of money to do his so-called cleaning. “We’ll take his bid, and the second highest,” Petra decided, noting it down on the list of winners. “I’ll do both. That way we can get Cunningham’s money, but advertise that the actual winner was Mrs. Taylor at ninety-five pounds.”
“Can we do that?” Lizzie worried her bottom lip. “Is that ethical?”
“Who cares? That’s what we’re going to do. He can lump it or bugger off.”
“Good thing he’s prepared to lump it then.”
At the sound of the deep and gravelly voice, both women whirled around and faced the doorway leading from the hall. Zack Cunningham leaned against the frame, his arms folded across his always-impressive chest, and a lock of midnight black hair falling over his forehead. His mouth kicked up in that devilish smile which always had the girls flocking to him like bees to honey.
His clothes might now be designer, his car
s high-end prestige models, but that dangerous gleam in his eye still made him look like the kind of man who could pick someone’s pocket at a hundred places, or steal a bottle of the best champagne from a shelf at the supermarket right under the manager’s nose.
“What do you want?” Petra demanded, ignoring the way her stupid stomach pitched at the sight of him. “Members of the public aren’t allowed back here.”
His eyes on hers, he pushed away from the door and all but swaggered over toward her. “Just anxious to know how my bid went. Did I win?”
As if he didn’t know. How she’d love to wipe that arrogant smile off his admittedly handsome face, and if Lizzie hadn’t been there and Petra wasn’t keeping her godson’s well-being uppermost in her mind, she might have been tempted to do just that.
“Unofficially.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Unofficially?”
“Unless you specifically want people to know you’re the successful bidder. Is that a condition of your generosity? You want people to know what a paragon of virtue you’ve become? A pillar of the community?”
His eyes darkened a little, just a flash before it was gone. “No conditions. At least not regarding what I’m prepared to pay.”
Her stomach went into full-out lurch mode, whether from his close proximity or the ominous warning beneath the words he spoke. “Good,” Petra said, stepping away. “Then you won’t mind if we declare Mrs. Taylor the winner of my services. Officially.”
He stepped toward her, and she had no doubt his intention was to crowd her. “What’s the matter, Pet?” he asked, using the shortened version of her name, which she hated because it reminded her of her father. “Worried what people might think?”
Lizzie took that as her cue to leave. “I’ll…em…just go and make sure there’s enough biscuits to go round.” She widened her eyes at Petra, nodded toward Zack, and mouthed “give him a chance” before she turned and left.
“What do you think you’re doing,” Petra demanded as soon as the door closed behind Lizzie. “Nobody offers a hundred grand to have their home cleaned.”
“I do. I’m feeling in a generous mood.”
Hell and damnation, but the man smelled good. This close, she remembered his heady scent from the time he’d cornered her behind the bicycle shed at college and had planted a blistering kiss on her mouth before promptly trying to get his hand up her skirt.
“Have you taken a really good look at the bid sheet? You do know that the services I’m offering relate solely to domestic duties.”
He grinned. “I do. Petra Brooks,” he recited. “A day spent in domestic undertakings. Any tasks cheerfully accepted, to include cleaning, washing, ironing, and any other duties of a mutually acceptable nature. It’s indelibly carved on my psyche.”
She bet it was. Desperately, she did a mental search of the description she’d given for any subtext he might twist and use to his advantage. “Duties of a mutually acceptable nature” could be misconstrued, but thankfully, she’d put the mutually in there, so she was safe. If he thought he was going to try anything on, well, she would never in a million years agree to it.
“So, you’re serious about this?” she queried, her hands folded tight across her chest. “You’re going to cough up a hundred big ones to have me wash your socks and clean your bathrooms.”
“I’ve only got one wet room as it happens, and as for washing my socks, they go out to laundry. But yes, I’m willing to cough up the dough for your services.”
Since he put an inflection on the word “services,” Petra felt compelled to push the point buzzing in her head right then. “Don’t you go getting any ideas, Cunningham. Just so we’re clear, I’ve got no intention of getting between the sheets with you. If that’s what this whole thing is about, you might as well forget it now. If your money has strings attached, I’d rather raise it by doing a sponsored run through the streets. Naked.”
“Watching you run naked through the streets would certainly raise a few other things besides hard cash. At least from my viewpoint.”
When he waggled his eyebrows, Petra feared there were indeed strings attached to his bid. “Forget it. I’m not going anywhere near you or your money. You’ve already donated the weekend break, so your benefactor status is well and truly noted by all. Thank you for your donation.”
She made a pretense of checking her list of winners again, when his credit card landed on the table beside the pad.
“What’s this?” she asked, eyeing the platinum card as she would a deadly snake.
“For you to take a down payment.”
He leaned beside her, his elbows on the table. His damn scent washed over her again. The leather from his jacket, the faint smell of premium aftershave, the deadly scent of musk and man.
Her nipples hardened, and heat shot between her legs so that moisture gathered at her pussy. If she couldn’t get within a foot of the man without her body behaving like a wanton lunatic, how was she supposed to spend hours holed up in his apartment? She’d bet everything they’d made from the auction that night that he’d conveniently arrange to be there when she carried out her duties.
She straightened up and nodded to his card. “A down payment isn’t necessary. Because your bid is rejected.”
He looked up at her, that cocky grin in evidence. “You know you don’t mean that, Pet. You wouldn’t turn down that sort of money for such a good cause just to protect your delicate sensibilities.”
When she hesitated, he picked up his card and waved it.
Taunting her, she realized. Well, he could go to hell. But no matter what she thought of him, she couldn’t risk losing the amount he offered just because she considered him an obnoxious, overbearing, arrogant jerk. “You’re right,” she decided. “If you’re willing to pay to have your apartment spruced and tidied, so be it. We don’t need a deposit,” she said hiking her chin into the air. “As long as you’re a man of your word.”
He stuffed his wallet back and flashed her another grin. “Where finances are concerned, my word is my bond. Where everything else is concerned?” He flicked the tip of his finger against her chin. “All bets are off, Pet.”
He turned and strolled out, leaving Petra staring after him with her mouth open and her knees decidedly weak.
Chapter Two
“What the hell are you expecting me to do?” Petra demanded as she stood in the hallway of Zack’s apartment. “Everything is so pristine, you could eat your damn meals off the floors, for God’s sake.”
“Why don’t you start by making coffee,” Zack suggested, reaching for her coat as she slipped out of it.
She didn’t need to know he’d spent the last hour tidying and fussing and making sure his place was presentable. Shit. His mother would be proud of him.
But he had Petra Brooks, the subject of his wet dreams for too many years to count, in his home and at his mercy for the next eight hours. He’d damn well make it count. She’d turned him down every time he so much as sniffed the same air she did. It was time to do something about it.
He hung her coat and led her through to the kitchen. Because he’d lived there for two years now, he was always momentarily surprised when one of his visitors gasped with pleasure at the view through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
“Bloody hell.” Petra hurried across to the window, dumping her bag on the work-top. “What a fabulous view. You can see right along the Thames and, heck, I didn’t realize London had so many green spaces. It’s amazing.”
He liked that she was impressed. Liked that, at least in his choice of living accommodations, he had done something right in her eyes. “The view was the reason I bought it.” He moved up behind her, slipping his hands in his trouser pockets to stop from touching her. “There’s an even better outlook from the living room.”
And the bedroom, but while he planned on showing her that particular view, he thought suggesting it now might be pushing things too far, too fast. All in good time. He had plenty of tricks in his
persuasive arsenal, and they’d never failed him yet. Well, except where she was concerned, but he was going to change that.
Petra turned, her sultry blue eyes alive with the pleasure she’d found in the view. Then she spotted the breakfast bar and frowned. “What is that?”
For form, he followed the direction of her glance toward the two places he’d carefully laid earlier. “Breakfast. It’s just after eight. I figured you’d yet to eat.”
She shook her head. “I came here to work, not eat.”
“You can do both. Why don’t you put on that coffee, and I’ll pop the croissants in the oven to warm. Do you still like pain au chocolat?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “What are you trying to do?”
“Be a good host.”
He reached beyond her and switched on the coffee machine, letting his arm accidentally brush hers. She wore a white T-shirt and figure-hugging jeans ripped at the knee, and her scent wafted to him like nectar.
“You’re not expected to play host or to make me breakfast.” She shook her head again. “I knew this was a bad idea. I just knew it. What? Did you think that you’d get me here, and then start laying on the charm?”
“If you think offering a woman hospitality is laying on the charm, I dread to think what sort of moron you’re used to dealing with.”
“Morons who don’t skirt the law, that’s the sort.”
How was it that with a few choice words she could slice him in two unlike any other woman he’d known? “Nobody gets a second chance in your book, do they, Brooks? Once an offender, always an offender, that it?”
“In my experience, that’s about the truth of it.”
He knew about her father, about how the man had subjected his wife and daughter to all manner of difficulties caused by his inability to follow the path of the law. Shit. Seeing Petra so upset all those times had likely sown the seed toward his own salvation, opening his eyes to what he was putting his law-abiding parents through with his bad-boy ways.
