To redeem his notorious reputation...
She’ll agree to wear his ring!
When headlines mistakenly announce florist Holly Frost’s engagement to ruthless celebrity divorce lawyer Zack Knight, she’s stunned. His lethal charisma may have ignited a fire in her blood, but she’s finished with fairy tales. Yet Zack seems determined to turn this scandal, and their red-hot attraction, to their mutual advantage... Swept away to Paris, Holly must remember this alliance is only temporary—even while wearing his diamond!
Escape to Paris with this marriage of convenience story!
“Have you heard about our engagement?”
Holly’s cheeks went the same shade of pink as the peonies on display in the window. “I had nothing to do with that tweet. Kendra sent it before I could stop her.” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry if it’s embarrassed you. If we ignore it, hopefully it will go away.”
“What if I told you I didn’t want it to go away?”
Her big brown eyes rounded. “What?”
Zack leaned down to smell the vase of roses sitting on the counter. He straightened and gave her a winning smile. “What if it suited me to be engaged for a while?”
Melanie Milburne read her first Harlequin novel at the age of seventeen, in between studying for her final exams. After completing a master’s degree in education, she decided to write a novel, and thus her career as a romance author was born. Melanie is an ambassador for the Australian Childhood Foundation and a keen dog lover and trainer. She enjoys long walks in the Tasmanian bush. In 2015 Melanie won the HOLT Medallion, a prestigious award honoring outstanding literary talent.
Books by Melanie Milburne
Harlequin Presents
The Tycoon’s Marriage Deal
A Virgin for a Vow
Blackmailed into the Marriage Bed
Tycoon’s Forbidden Cinderella
Conveniently Wed!
Bound by a One-Night Vow
One Night With Consequences
A Ring for the Greek’s Baby
The Ravensdale Scandals
Ravensdale’s Defiant Captive
Awakening the Ravensdale Heiress
Engaged to Her Ravensdale Enemy
The Most Scandalous Ravensdale
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Melanie Milburne
Claimed for the Billionaire’s Convenience
To Bernice (B) Dodds. You have been a part of my journey as a writer from my very first RWAustralia conference. I am so glad we are friends and writing colleagues. This one is for you with much love. Xxxxx
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EXCERPT FROM ONE NIGHT WITH THE FORBIDDEN PRINCESS BY AMANDA CINELLI
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.
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