Kitabı oku: «The Billionaire's Virgin Temptation»
An untouched Cinderella...
Until his irresistible seduction!
For Ruby Clarkson, a lavish masquerade ball is the perfect opportunity to forget her shy innocence and become someone else for the night. She’s stunned when billionaire Sam Ventura sweeps her from the dance floor into an anonymous seduction that’s red-hot magic! But when Ruby realizes her incognito hero is her new boss, and they’re stranded together for a weekend, Sam’s forbidden touch could be powerful enough to unravel Ruby forever...
Sparks will fly in this sinful tale of seduction...
With two university degrees and a variety of false career starts under her belt, MICHELLE CONDER decided to satisfy her lifelong desire to write and finally found her dream job. She currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, with one super-indulgent husband, three self-indulgent but exquisite children, a menagerie of over-indulged pets, and the intention of doing some form of exercise daily. She loves to hear from her readers at michelleconder.com.
Also by Michelle Conder
Girl Behind the Scandalous Reputation
His Last Chance at Redemption
Living the Charade
Duty at What Cost?
The Most Expensive Lie of All
Prince Nadir’s Secret Heir
Hidden in the Sheikh’s Harem
Defying the Billionaire’s Command
The Italian’s Virgin Acquisition
Bound to Her Desert Captor
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
The Billionaire’s Virgin Temptation
Michelle Conder
ISBN: 978-1-474-08765-0
THE BILLIONAIRE’S VIRGIN TEMPTATION
© 2019 Michelle Conder
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
To Hilary and Marnie, writing partners in crime.
Thanks for the late nights out talking shop,
eating divine food and drinking great wine.
Chin Chin is calling again!
Love always, M.C.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Extract
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
SAM FELT UNACCOUNTABLY agitated as he boarded his jet bound for Sydney. It was later than he would have liked and he was impatient to get underway.
‘Will you be requiring dinner service during the flight, Mr Ventura?’
Sam folded his powerful frame into one of the leather tub chairs and tossed his mobile phone onto the table beside him before addressing his co-pilot. ‘No, thanks, Daniel. Just a Scotch.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
The flight from LA to Sydney would take about fourteen hours, give or take, during which Sam planned to catch up on work and sleep before he had to hit the ground running the following day. Not an uncommon occurrence for him.
Delivering his Scotch, the co-pilot headed back to the cockpit to prepare for take-off, leaving Sam to nurse his crystal tumbler and uncharacteristic edginess. As a general rule he wasn’t the kind of person to second-guess himself once a decision had been made, but the question had crossed his mind more than once as to whether relocating to Sydney was the best thing to do right now.
He had a good life in LA. He surfed regularly, had a thriving legal practice that spanned two continents, lived on a great property on Malibu Beach and had any number of beautiful women he could call upon when he was in the mood for company—all drawn to the combination of power, money and good looks he’d been told he had in abundance.
Not that any of that mattered to his family, who were over the moon that he was returning home. After two years living in the City of Angels they were of the belief that he should settle back in his hometown and were more than happy with his decision to merge his highly successful legal practice with a large Australian enterprise.
The idea had been presented to him by his old university pal, Drew Kent, during a late-night dinner. Drew’s father was retiring and Drew didn’t want to take on the running of their law firm by himself. He was all about work-life balance ever since he’d married, and Sam, who had been in the market for a new challenge, had readily agreed to the idea.
He stared out at the night-dark sky as the plane banked hard to the right. Marriage had a way of changing a man’s perspective on life. He’d seen it happen with colleagues at work and even his own brother, who had fallen in love and then, twelve months ago, got married. Valentino had gone from confirmed bachelor to happily married man with a baby faster than Sam’s Maserati could hit a hundred clicks. Since then Tino had been unfailingly devoted to his lovely wife and son.
Was that what had set off the restlessness inside of him? The fact that Valentino was married and happy about it? Not that Sam begrudged Tino his happiness; quite the contrary. He loved seeing his older brother so fulfilled, and maybe one day he’d even take the plunge into matrimony himself. One day in the distant future when he met a woman who wasn’t either completely obsessed with her own career, or the potential lifestyle his could provide for her.
Of its own accord his mind travelled back to the night, two years ago, when Valentino had met Miller, his now wife. Sam and Tino had been catching up in a Sydney bar when a stunning blonde in come-take-me stilettos had approached them. Ruby Clarkson had introduced herself and explained how Miller needed a date for an up-and-coming business event. Tino had jumped at the chance to help her best friend, leaving Sam and the blonde woman at a loose end. Since they both worked for the same law firm, but had never met, they’d spent the night talking shop and trading war stories until the bar had closed and kicked them out. Not wanting the night to end, Sam had offered to walk Ruby home and that was when the trouble had started.
His blood heated predictably at the memory of what had happened outside her apartment building. Or what had nearly happened outside her apartment building. Despite being incredibly attracted to her, he’d meant only to bid her goodnight, tell her it had been nice to meet her and good luck with her current case, but somehow she’d ended up in his arms and as soon as his lips had touched hers he’d been lost. She’d lit a flame in him that had only been doused when a neighbour had come out on to her balcony calling for her errant cat.
Later his brother would tell him that he had looked as if he’d been hit over the head with a golf club when he’d first caught sight of Ruby at the bar, and Tino had been right. From the moment Sam’s dark eyes had collided with her wide-spaced intelligent green ones he’d completely lost his train of thought.
It had been the same at Miller and Tino’s wedding just last year. He’d taken one look at Ruby in her dusky pink bridesmaid gown with the tantalising thigh-high split and decided to hell with it, he’d finish what they’d started the night they’d met and be done with it. That was until her date, some urbane banker-type, had stepped up beside her and ruined that particular fantasy.
Sam had downed a glass of champagne he hadn’t wanted and told himself to forget it. Told himself that it was for the best. Ruby was his new sister-in-law’s best friend and nothing good would come of them having a brief affair and things becoming potentially awkward later on down the track. Instead he’d forced himself to become interested in a gorgeous Sydney socialite and he’d been about to leave with her when Ruby had come rushing back into the reception room.
A small smile played at the edges of his lips. She’d been in such a flap she hadn’t seen him at first and Sam hadn’t stepped out of her path, choosing instead to let her run headlong into the circle of his arms as if he were just as startled by the contact as she was.
She’d stared up at him, a beguiling combination of sophistication and innocence, her gorgeous body pressed against his like Velcro on felt, her breathing laboured, and the memory of the night he’d nearly devoured her shining brightly in her lovely green eyes. For a split second his overly active imagination had caused him to believe that she’d come rushing back to find him. To tell him that she’d ditched her date and wanted to leave with him. Wanted to take him back to her place for the ‘coffee’ he’d stupidly passed up on the night they’d first met.
Then his oldest brother, Dante, had walked into the empty room and completely obliterated the moment.
‘Sam, we’re leav—Uh...sorry, junior, am I interrupting something?’ he’d said smoothly.
Considering Sam had been a breath away from finding out if Ruby still tasted as delicious as he remembered, of course his brother had been interrupting, and the big idiot had known it!
Ruby’s eyes had gone from glazed to mortified in the space of a heartbeat and she’d pushed out of his arms just as her date had arrived to find out what had delayed her.
Extreme sexual attraction, Sam had wanted to tell the other man.
Ruby had mumbled something about her jacket, quickly grabbed it from the back of her chair and hadn’t looked back as she’d walked away. She’d been cool to him the whole day, he remembered now, and he often wondered why that was.
He also wondered what it was about her that made his libido override his iron-clad self-control where she was concerned, but he knew he’d work it out one day. And, given their shared profession, and personal connections, it would probably be soon.
His heart pounded slow and heavy inside his chest just at the thought of seeing her again. He’d deliberately not asked Valentino about her over the past couple of years. Why give his loved-up brother any indication that he had a thing for the beautiful lawyer? He’d only make more out of it than there was and the last thing Sam wanted was to raise Miller’s awareness of how attractive he found her best friend.
But their paths would surely cross and he was curious as to how he would feel about her when it happened. Who knew, perhaps the incendiary attraction that sent his system into overdrive whenever she was in the room would have finally worn off? He’d lost interest in plenty of other women before. Surely Ruby wouldn’t be any different in the end.
He swirled the Scotch in his glass. Did Ruby still remember the night they’d met? Did she still think about it? And did she still work for Clayton Smythe or had she moved on to new pastures? He’d left the firm himself shortly after that night to start his own practice in LA and had ruthlessly suppressed all interest in her, so he had no idea what she was up to now. Some sixth sense warned him that, for all her bold confidence, Ruby was a soft touch deep down and therefore not to be trifled with. Not that he planned to trifle with her on any level. It would be pointless in the end and Sam had stopped chasing pointless passions after watching his world-famous father chase his motor-racing dreams to the exclusion of all else.
Theirs had never been a close relationship, his father dying in a tragic racing accident before Sam had been able to gain his attention or his approval—though God knew he’d wasted enough time trying to win both. He still remembered the time he’d trailed his father around the racetrack on his ninth birthday. It had been a disaster waiting to happen. He’d sat there all day, waiting to spend time with his father, only to have his old man drive off at the end of the day without him. As usual his father had been so preoccupied with work he’d completely forgotten Sam was even there. Fortunately one of the office girls had eventually noticed him sitting on a sofa, swinging his legs, and called his father on the phone. Sam had then been stuck in a taxi and delivered home alone.
His mother had been furious with his father but Sam had brushed it off. That had been the last time his father had kicked his pride to the kerb, Sam had made sure of it. Not that it mattered now. He’d learned a valuable lesson that day and he’d never hung himself out to dry like that again. Never made anything so important that he couldn’t walk away from it at the end of the day.
‘A good thing,’ he muttered into the ensuing silence, pulling out his phone and switching his mind from the past, where it didn’t belong, to the present, where it did.
He was due to arrive in Sydney around noon and head straight into meetings with his new business partner before changing into some fancy-dress costume for a party he’d promised to attend.
A few months back he’d won a huge copyright case for Gregor Herzog and his wife—Australia’s darling couple of the theatre world—when someone had tried to pass the couple’s costume designs off as their own. Over the course of the case the Herzogs had become firm friends and they had invited him to their annual masquerade ball—a huge charity extravaganza that just happened to coincide with Gregor’s fiftieth birthday celebration this year.
‘Please come, Sam, my good friend. It would be an honour to raise a toast to you on my birthday.’
Sam already regretted his somewhat rash agreement to attend but a promise was a promise and Sam’s word was his law.
Fortunately, he rarely suffered jet lag, but still, he hoped that Gregor and Marion wouldn’t mind if he only made a fly-in and fly-out appearance. What with family obligations to fulfil the rest of the weekend, and a new company to take control of on Monday morning, he didn’t have a lot of time for frivolities like masquerade balls. Or thinking about gorgeous blondes with long legs, he mused, that strange, restless feeling returning as Ruby Clarkson once again jumped into his head.
He shook her image loose, unfolded his large frame from the chair and fetched his laptop from where his co-pilot had stowed it prior to take-off. The fact that the woman could turn him on from twelve thousand miles away should be mildly disconcerting—and it was! It made him realise that at some point he was going to have to figure out how to get the troublesome blonde out of his head. Something he hoped to put off for as long as possible.
CHAPTER ONE
THE THEME ON the gold-leaf invitation for Sydney’s most renowned masquerade ball this year had been ‘daring, romantic, seductive...’
Tick, tick and tick, Ruby thought, stifling a yawn and giving a smile she hoped conveyed Having a great time and not I wish I was sipping this glass of Riesling at home on my sofa in front of the latest instalment of Law & Order.
And wearing comfy pyjamas, Ruby mused longingly as she took in the packed ornate ballroom.
A lavish ball was the last place she wanted to be after a gruelling eighty-hour working week that had gone from bad to worse and still required more hours to be put in, but she was here in support of her sister, so leaving wasn’t an option just yet.
And she supposed it was an interesting interlude from her everyday life sitting in her poky little law office, fighting the good fight. When else would she get the chance to join the who’s who of the theatre world in a multimillion-dollar Point Piper mansion with unrivalled harbour views beyond the infinity pool?
Everywhere Ruby looked there was a dazzling display of elaborately costumed guests milling about and talking in a profusion of excitement and colour. It was like stepping back in time with women in wigs and masks and men with feather-plumed hats drinking impossibly elegant flutes of champagne that sparkled like liquid gold beneath the light of a thousand chandeliers. Frescoes of cherubs and deer stared down from the ceiling and the iconic gunmetal-grey Sydney Harbour Bridge glowed through the open French doors, reminding everyone that they were in fact in Sydney and not visiting some Venetian mansion on the banks of the Grand Canal during Carnevale.
Ruby surreptitiously adjusted the neckline of her fitted gown, which kept slipping to reveal a little too much cleavage for her liking. She was supposed to be Marie Antoinette but her mirror had deemed that she looked more like Little Bo Peep on steroids, making her thankful she was well-hidden behind an elaborate black lace mask.
‘You know I really appreciate you coming along with me tonight, don’t you?’ Molly murmured.
Thanks to live music from the twenty-piece band where a well-known pop star was belting out her latest hit, Ruby had to lean in close to catch her sister’s words.
‘I’m enjoying myself,’ she fibbed, not wanting Molly to feel guilty about roping her into accompanying her. Molly was on a personal quest to waylay some in-demand director and convince him that she really needed to star in his next award-winning Hollywood epic. Molly had paid her dues at drama school and appeared in small-to-medium theatre productions and TV shows, and Ruby would do anything to help make her sister’s dreams come true.
‘No, you’re not,’ Molly said, shrugging good-naturedly. ‘But I appreciate the lie. I’m also under strict instructions to make sure you have fun and relax for once.’
‘Let me guess.’ Ruby gave her sister that look, knowing full well where her instructions had come from. ‘Mum told you to find me a nice man I can fall in love with so I can produce lots of grandbabies.’ Nothing new there. ‘Which is so not going to happen, and, for the record, I take serious umbrage at the insinuation that I don’t normally relax and have fun because I do. All the time!’
‘Oh, did I only insinuate that last bit?’ Molly feigned a shocked expression. ‘I meant to say it outright.’
‘Ha-ha.’ Ruby narrowed her eyes menacingly. ‘I know how to relax.’ She had a yoga class booked the following morning, didn’t she? ‘And how to have fun.’
‘You work,’ Molly corrected. ‘But that’s okay. Tonight I will ply you with drinks and ensure that you meet some tall, dark and handsome man to while the evening away with.’
Ruby grimaced. As any self-respecting lawyer knew, weekend work was par for the course. Particularly with the big cases, and Ruby had just embarked on one of the biggest of her career, so men were not a priority for her right now. If they ever had been.
‘You can’t tell if a man is handsome or not while he’s wearing a mask,’ Ruby pointed out, ‘and you already know that I don’t hold to Mum’s mantra that a woman isn’t complete without a man on her arm.’
‘Mum is old-school,’ Molly agreed. ‘You can’t hold that against her.’
‘I don’t hold it against her. I’m just not intending to follow in her footsteps.’
‘By not dating at all?’
‘I date,’ Ruby defended, tucking a recalcitrant strand of her blonde hair back under her poufy white wig. ‘When I have the time.’
Molly gave her a good-natured eye-roll. ‘The last time you went on a date, dinosaurs roamed the earth.’
Ruby laughed at the visual. ‘I’m not a romantic like you and Mum. I don’t see “the one” in every man who looks my way.’
‘That’s because you never give any guy a decent chance. You find something wrong with all of them and quickly move on. But seriously, Rubes, just because Dad left Mum for another woman it doesn’t mean every man will do the same to us.’
Ruby couldn’t deny that their father’s desertion had left her somewhat jaded when it came to romance, but that wasn’t the only reason. In her experience men wanted more from a woman than they were prepared to give and she had yet to meet a man who challenged that theory.
Even Sam Ventura.
Especially Sam Ventura—even if he now was her best friend’s brother-in-law.
And why did his name leap into her head every time the conversation turned to men and marriage? He was the very last man she should be thinking about in that way. Two years ago he’d charmed her and kissed her senseless before making a trite promise to call and then failing to follow through on it.
Not that she should have been surprised. She’d been taken in by his good looks and intelligent conversation, but neither of those things was a precursor to nice manners and true decency. At least not where he was concerned!
Lord, but it still made her blush to recall how she had invited him up to her apartment for coffee.
Coffee!
She might as well have just said bed and been done with it.
His failure to call and the subsequent photo she’d seen of him with his arm around another woman the following day at a polo match had solidified for her that men weren’t worth the effort. The worst thing for Ruby was that she had let Sam in that night. She’d let down her guard with him in a way she never had before, and worse, she’d thought they’d shared a connection. A connection that had transcended the physical.
Fool that she was.
She’d found out via a visiting LA attorney that Sam had a reputation for being a charming rogue who made Casanova look like a good bet. Something she wholeheartedly believed after how easily he had nearly seduced her that night. He’d made her feel like a besotted thirteen-year-old in the throes of her first crush, carrying her phone around for a whole week, waiting for a phone call he’d never intended to make.
Her extreme reaction to him was something that had scared her witless because she had always imagined herself immune to the romantic vagaries that governed her mother’s life. She supposed she had Sam to thank for showing her otherwise. Showing her that if she wasn’t careful she could be just as susceptible to a pretty face and buff body as the next woman.
Not that she would thank him. She didn’t want to have anything to do with him again. He was too big and too male and definitely too full of himself to be of interest to her. Something she hoped she’d made crystal clear by ignoring him at Tino and Miller’s wedding last year.
‘I don’t think every man is an EC,’ she denied to Molly now, using their shorthand for Emotional Coward. ‘But I do wonder how we’re even sisters. You’re like Snow White, talking to all the animals and skipping through the flowery fields, and I’m—’
‘The Wicked Queen,’ Molly filled in. ‘Only you’re not afraid of ageing, you’re afraid of commitment.’
‘I am not afraid of commitment.’
Molly’s eyebrow rose above her white mask as if to say I’m not getting into that argument again. But it wasn’t true.
‘I’m cautious,’ Ruby countered. ‘I don’t feel the need to leap into something before I’ve had a chance to study it from all angles.’
‘You’re not supposed to study love,’ Molly laughed. ‘You feel it. You experience it. You live it.’
Ruby shuddered. ‘You might. I don’t.’ And what would Molly say, she wondered, if she knew Ruby hadn’t even gone all the way with a man yet? That she was still a virgin like an old maid from the Victorian era!
Suddenly a loud honking sound drew her attention. Molly giggled as an irate swan cut a swathe through the glittering crowd and started pecking at the golden tassels hanging from an unsuspecting woman’s gown. The woman reeled back and would have slipped if the man standing beside her hadn’t put his hands out and swiftly caught her.
Ruby felt the breath back up in her lungs as she took in the man’s height and the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his leonine head and dark hair styled in loose layers that could only have come from an upmarket salon.
‘Oh, my,’ Molly murmured. ‘Would you get a load of that?’
Ruby watched as the man wearing a masculine bronze mask competently corralled the indignant bird outside and returned to check if the woman was okay.
‘He’s gorgeous,’ her sister added on a sigh.
‘You can’t possibly know that,’ Ruby scoffed. ‘He’s wearing a mask that covers half his face.’
‘He carries himself like a man who doesn’t need to be handsome but is. Look at those shoulders—’
‘Padding.’
‘And the way his thighs fill out his dark suit trousers. No padding there, I’m guessing.’
Despite Ruby’s protestations, Molly was right—the man exuded power and confidence and his square-cut jaw, smooth olive complexion and sensual mouth conveyed that he was likely very good-looking behind the bronzed mask. He was also very familiar...
It’s not him, she assured herself, her eyes taking in the way his lips twisted into a half-cynical, half-sexy grin as the grateful woman gripped his arm and whispered something into his ear.
It couldn’t be him. Sam Ventura lived in LA and, even if he was visiting Sydney, what would he be doing at a fancy-dress ball thrown by theatre people?
Well, he wouldn’t be here, she reasoned. It was her imagination running overtime. Again. ‘Men like that only want one thing from a woman,’ she told Molly with lofty finality.
‘I know.’ Molly sighed. ‘Do you think he would want it from me?’
‘Molly!’
Ruby was saved from reminding her sister that she’d just ended a relationship with one feckless boyfriend and hardly needed another when one of Molly’s friends approached her. Perturbed by how very much the dark-haired man reminded her of Sam Ventura, Ruby offered to go to the bar, where they were serving on-demand cocktails.
‘Cosmopolitan,’ Molly requested.
‘Same,’ her friend added.
Leaving them to their excited chatter, Ruby headed for the gilt-edged bar that looked as if it was a permanent fixture but was most likely shipped in from Italy especially for the night.
She sighed as she joined the queue at the bar. Molly truly believed that love awaited her around every corner, while Ruby was of the view that danger awaited her. She wasn’t looking for romance and happy-ever-after. Her independence had been too hard-won to hand over to some man who would want her to compromise everything she had and then most likely walk away without a backward glance anyway. A man like her father. And like Sam Ventura.
No, that wasn’t fair. She might not like Sam very much but she didn’t know him well enough to tar him with her father’s particular brush. Still, why give a man who had heartbreaker written all over his too handsome face the chance to prove that he was? And why was he still on her mind? she wondered grouchily.
Love turned thinking women into veritable psych-ward patients, she knew that. Just look at how she had been after only kissing the man that one foolhardy night. He’d pulled her into his arms and she’d nearly lost her dignity and her panties in one fell swoop! Not that she’d been in love with him, but she’d certainly been in lust with him and that had been more than enough to keep her up late some nights.
‘Sorry, darling,’ a male voice crooned too close to her ear as she was jostled from behind. Ruby glanced over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of four colourful characters wearing Zorro-style masks with their eyes on her cleavage.
Very original, she thought, turning away and steadfastly ignoring them as she waited for the woman in front of her to collect her drinks order. If there was one valuable lesson Ruby had learned from watching her mother all these years, it was not to let her emotions do the thinking for her. Only fools rushed in and when they did they were often sorry with the results.
‘So I said, listen, doll-face.’ The guy who had jostled her spoke behind her with an over-the-top drawl. ‘You want it, you know where to find it. On your knees.’
His companions guffawed as if they were smug private school boys at a secret frat party instead of a posh event. Ruby rolled her eyes. Boys masquerading as men, she thought, half listening as they traded stories about their sexual exploits that were clearly too far-fetched to be believed.
Ücretsiz ön izlemeyi tamamladınız.
