Margot Radcliffe lives in Columbus, Ohio, right now, but surrenders to wanderlust every couple of years, so it’s hard to say where she’ll end up next. Regardless of location, her apricot dog will be by her side while she writes fun romances that hopefully make readers laugh and space out for a bit. With heroines who aren’t afraid to take what they want and confident heroes who are up to a challenge, she loves creating complicated, modern love stories. She can be found @margotradcliffe on Twitter and @margot_radcliffe on Instagram.
If you liked Sinfully Yours, why not try
Unbreak My Hart by Clare Connelly
Bad Mistake by JC Harroway
Dirty Secrets by Regina Kyle
Also by Margot Radcliffe
Friends with Benefits
Sin City Seduction
Discover more at Harlequin.com
SINFULLY YOURS
MARGOT RADCLIFFE
To Christina and Potter,
for reading literally anything!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Excerpt from Dirty Secrets by Regina Kyle
Excerpt from Custom Built by Chantal Fernando
CHAPTER ONE
LAURA EDWARDS LOVED CHRISTMAS. Not just because she rivaled Mariah Carey as the queen of Christmas either, though that was very true, but because standing in the lobby of the hotel she’d been hired to transform into a winter wonderland made the foster-care past that always seemed to haunt her seem far behind. A time so faded from her memory that it was almost as if it hadn’t happened at all, which was just what she’d always wanted.
“Could you move the silver garland up a little farther?” Laura asked her assistant Maisey before she stepped forward to the massive twenty-foot tree and fixed the glittery beaded strands herself.
Maisey gave her a wry side-eye which Laura had received an inordinate number of since this particular hotel job began nine months ago. It might be possible that Laura’s level of micromanaging had skyrocketed since landing the lucrative #goals job for the exclusive WW hotel chain, but it would be worth it in the end. This client was going to catapult her business to the next level of success, her name synonymous with event decorating in every major city in the country. Since she’d moved to New York five years ago, she’d been building her business, taking any and all jobs she could, but this was the break that would take her from boutique business to industry go-to.
Once out of design school she’d started a staging business for Realtors and from there slowly built a company that designed window displays for department stores across the country. She’d competed against the biggest designers in the city to get the WW Hotels contract and she wasn’t going to let even a small, seemingly meaningless detail like garland placement go overlooked.
“It already looked perfect,” Maisey grumbled as Laura stepped away from the tree, “so how does it look better now that you’ve adjusted it?”
Laura laughed, still considering whether or not to relocate one of the shimmery crystal snowflakes to a less congested area of the tree. “You have an eye too, Maisey, that’s why I hired you.”
Maisey shook her head, still looking the tall evergreen up and down, all the silver-and-gold decorations sparkling like jewels beneath the multitude of crystal chandeliers. “No,” Maisey disagreed, “I can help you carry out a vision, but I couldn’t have dreamed this up in a million years.”
Laura slung her arm over her assistant’s shoulders, pulling her in for an encouraging squeeze. “You’ll be doing this same thing in no time, I promise. Look at the kind of stuff you were doing when you first came to me and what you’re creating now—we’re all constantly learning.”
Maisey shook her head, clearly not accepting the logic and compliment. Laura took her mentorship of Maisey very seriously and was prepared to settle into another meaningful life lesson that her young assistant would surely hang on and treasure forever when Maisey’s attention was pulled away.
Her blue eyes went wide as she gripped, not especially lightly, Laura’s hand. “Oh, my god, I think that’s him,” Maisey whispered furiously, nearly out of breath with excitement.
“Who?” Laura asked, leaning in closer to Maisey to hear her better, but also because her assistant was literally pulling on her arm which, because Maisey was much shorter than Laura, was causing Laura to hunch over as if she were playing an impromptu game of reverse limbo sans the stick and catchy tunes, and well, bending backward.
“Will Walker, our boss,” Maisey managed above a deep, yet silent gasp of excitement. “He’s headed this way.”
Laura’s stomach dropped basically all the way down onto her feet at the mention of Will Walker. The research she’d done on him while preparing for the job had produced photos of a man she’d known once upon a time in a life she’d spent a lot of time forgetting. But the intervening years and the fact that his name was different had made her unsure if she had the right person. More significantly, there was also the note that she’d left with his secretary that had gone unanswered and the countless letters and emails she’d sent him during the fifteen years since they’d seen each other that had always been returned.
That her old friend might be mere feet away from her now sent her pulse thundering in her veins like a marching-band drum line. As soon as he approached, her body instinctively knew it was him, the best friend she’d ever had in her life. And for a variety of reasons, but mostly because she’d had to abandon him to a shitty life with a foster family from hell without so much as a goodbye mere days before Christmas, she felt like she might vomit right onto the gleaming black onyx floor of his hotel.
“Do you like this tree?” a male voice asked. His voice was much deeper than it’d been when they were kids, but it was familiar all the same. The drawn-out vowel sounds and clipped consonants they’d grown up with in New Jersey were still apparent. Her own accent had softened years ago, mostly by design, to distance herself from a past she had hoped to outrun.
Maisey nearly broke Laura’s fingers before letting go of her hand completely, as if just now realizing that holding her boss’s hand in public was strange. But Laura had more pressing problems than Maisey being self-conscious. Mainly that she was about to come face-to-face with her first love, her first real friend and the first person in her life after the deaths of her parents who she’d ever considered family.
She struggled to breathe as he gazed up at the work of art she was privately referring to as Quirky Christmas because of its tongue-in-cheek play on luxury. WW Hotels were considered a playground for the rich and famous, so she’d found carved-crystal slides and platinum seesaws, sneakily nestling them alongside the hand-painted glass ornaments.
“I do like it, yes,” she finally answered, keeping her eyes focused on the tree as her chest tightened with fear and dread. Did he not know who she was or had he actually gotten the note she’d left him and finally come to see her? “Do you?”
Her heart stopped for a beat as she waited for his answer because considering that she now knew who he was, it would be awful if he hated her work. She’d always hoped that he’d be proud of who she’d become.
“I don’t know,” he answered, tone gruff. “People keep telling me it�
�s inspired, but fuck if I know what that means. It looks like just another Christmas tree to me. An expensive one, but a Christmas tree nonetheless.”
Laura could see Maisey’s mouth open to come to her defense, but Laura squeezed her hand to silence her.
When Maisey appeared to get the message, Laura peered at the tree again trying to see it from a man’s perspective, but it was impossible. All she saw were the months of hard work, planning and curation glittering like so much fairy dust under his modern black minimalist light fixtures.
“Well, it has a certain whimsical charm mixed with a modern flair that is in sync with the reputation of these hotels,” she told him, as if she were one of his hotel guests instead of the person who created just another Christmas tree. As if she weren’t melting from the inside out, terrified of revealing herself and receiving a blank stare of nonrecognition on his face, or worse, the contempt she knew she deserved for deserting him.
It didn’t help her peace of mind, either, that the electrical current she felt at being in close proximity to him was plucking her nerve endings up like a dog who heard his owner’s key in the front door. As hundreds of hotel guests rushed by them, Laura was experiencing every available human emotion within the course of five minutes.
On top of everything else, she’d been hoping for a better first meeting with her technical boss. Maybe one that included effusive accolades and shocked expressions of speechless wonder, but she’d deal with it. It was what she did, after all. That was her superpower. She dealt with whatever steaming pile of crap life threw at her, starting from the death of her parents at age four to the endless line of negligent foster parents all the way up to the one who nearly hit her. It just so happened that the reason she’d made it out of that life alive was due nearly entirely to the man standing beside her.
“Whimsical charm,” Will repeated, mulling the term over. “I guess anything would be lost on me since I hate Christmas.”
Maisey audibly gasped, the thought simply too much for her to bear.
“That’s a long season to dislike,” Laura pointed out.
“The fucking longest,” he muttered, the irritated statement uttered in his deep, gravelly voice so like the Will she remembered as a kid. He hadn’t minced words then either.
When she couldn’t stand not knowing her fate, she finally turned to face him but saw that he was already facing her. His dark brows were knitted and the muscles of his neatly squared-off jaw were ticking as he put the pieces together.
And when their eyes met, she knew they both knew.
“Laura?” he asked at the same time she said, “Will?”
It was as if someone had dropped her insides out of a thousand-story building without a parachute when she slowly locked gazes with the boy she’d thought she’d lost forever. The one up until this moment, she’d thought hated her and deliberately didn’t want her in his life.
The moment stretched, loaded with unresolved history, neither one of them knowing what to say.
“I thought it was you in all the Page Six photos,” she finally blurted. “But you look so different from when we were kids and you changed your name so I couldn’t be sure. Then you didn’t return the note I left with your assistant, so I figured I had the wrong guy after all.”
“Wow,” Will said, running a hand through his too-long black hair as he stared at her. “I can’t believe it’s really you. Shit, that you’re even alive, I—” His words trailed off as dark brown eyes roamed her face, taking in all the changes the years had made. She was still young, but she certainly wasn’t sixteen anymore like she’d been the last time they’d seen each other. When he met her eyes again, the tormented look in them was gone. Then he said, “Of course, if I’d gotten your note I would have gotten back to you. My assistant has strict instructions about what to push through to me.”
His response brought some relief that maybe he didn’t completely hate her, but all she could manage was, “I like the new name.”
Finally, he spoke. “Yeah, I figured my parents hadn’t done anything for me, so why should I do anything for them by keeping the name going?”
The callback to their childhood returned her to the grimy old apartment building and crappy foster parents who didn’t even care enough to buy food for her let alone put it on a table. It was no longer painful for her to think about those days; that work had been done in the years of therapy that followed, but seeing Will reminded her of how far she’d come. Of how far he’d come.
“Understood,” she said, fighting against throwing herself into his arms for the hug she so desperately wanted. To finally confirm that he was her friend, that he didn’t hate her was heady. “I, uh, changed my name too.”
He held her eyes as his hands slid into the pockets of the ripped jeans that still must have cost a fortune. He wasn’t a typical hotelier, more comfortable in leather jackets and jeans than Wall Street suits and the effect wasn’t insignificant. The worn leather conformed to his wide shoulders and made him look a touch dangerous while his ripped black jeans molded to muscular legs probably honed on the back of a motorcycle. He’d always looked like a brawler even as a teenager just trying to get by in their lousy neighborhood, but now the young boy she’d known was a man who was more likely to deliver a single cut to an assailant’s neck than use his fists.
His gaze flicked to Maisey, who seemed to drift away from them, realizing the import of the reunion. She imagined that pointed look of his sent many of his own employees scurrying away, as well. He had a presence.
“You look just the same, Laura,” he finally said.
“But you look different,” Laura smiled, trying to act normal. “You’re all grown up.”
Their eyes held and Laura felt a weird nostalgia for those days even though they’d been her worst ones on record. Will had been her bright light, her only friend for so many awful, harrowing years where the only thing she had to look forward to was turning eighteen and getting out on her own even though that most certainly meant an aimless and harder life on the streets.
“I missed you,” she blurted, saying the stupidest thing possible but unable to regret it. It was the truth. “When I left, that is.”
A corner of his wide mouth kicked up just like it always had when her mouth was faster than her head, which in those days had been often. “You too, Laura. But then I wasn’t the one who left without a word.”
A vise clamped around her heart, just like it had that day and a lot of the days after when she thought of Will. For five years, they’d been the best of friends. Will had gotten her food when she’d been hungry, forged signatures on papers for school when her foster parents had been too drunk or high to do it themselves, stolen her clothes when she’d outgrown the others, kept her safe from the thousands of threats that had visited a child. And she’d left him without so much as a goodbye.
“I wanted to leave you a note, but child protective services came to school to get me. There wasn’t time for anything but grabbing my stuff.” It wasn’t exactly the entire truth, but enough of it.
He nodded like he’d suspected as much. “Yeah, John and Nancy, upstanding citizens that they were, got caught with drugs and were carted off to jail when I got home that day. I figured someone had come to take you back to the center.”
Laura shook her head, skin crawling at the memory of her awful foster parents who vacillated between neglectful and downright mean. That day when child services came to get her hadn’t been easy because it meant abandoning Will, but she’d done the right thing. When she tried to find him at school to say goodbye, he hadn’t been in any of his typical hangouts and when she’d tried to leave a note for him in his room she’d found the window of his bedroom, the way they normally met up with each other, locked. Fast forward to the unanswered emails and returned letters and this was like some kind of fantasy where she got to right her past wrongs and also look at an insanely attractive man
as she repented.
Getting herself under control, she explained, “I got placed with a family way out in the suburbs, nearly to Pennsylvania.”
“Ah,” he said, absorbing the information of where she’d been all these years. “Good one?”
“The best,” she confirmed. “I’m heading home tomorrow for the holiday.”
That wry, half smile again. “Good, Laura. You deserved it.”
“You did, too, Will.”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but she knew it did and her heart broke all over again for how she’d left him. She had so many questions to ask and while the lobby of his hotel didn’t seem like the right place, she had to know.
“Did you—” she started to ask about what happened to him after she left, but he interrupted her with, “So that’s why you like a whimsical Christmas, huh? Because you got your own Christmas present that year. Out of the shithouse and into a home of your own.” He gestured to the tree. “Does this live up to your fantasies?”
She knew a deflection when she saw one, but allowed it. “Well, since I’m the one who designed it, I should hope so.”
He did a double take then and she had a moment of satisfaction at surprising him. “You’re Dream Designs?”
“That’s me.”
His eyes grazed hers again and she felt that tingle of electricity she’d begun to feel as soon as she hit fourteen. She’d loved him fiercely, like a brother when they’d first met and she’d been twelve but it had changed as she’d gotten older. And now he was looking at her like he knew what she looked like without clothes on and she liked it very much.
“Will,” she started, because she needed to thank him. For so many things really, but mostly for just being her friend and keeping her alive. “I’ve wondered about you all these years. I wish—”
“You did a good job,” he interrupted again, clearly not interested in talking about the past. “Everyone loves the lobby. You’ve given me the most talked about holiday display in the city. Not an easy feat.”
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