The Playboy Boss's Chosen Bride

Too much testosterone, Jake thought, and wondered if his own hair would suffer the same fate as he grew older. Not that it mattered, he decided. He liked to think he’d still be sexually active when he was his grandfather’s age.

‘If you’ll just turn your chair around to face the terrace,’ he instructed, ‘your surprise is about to take centre stage.’

‘Centre stage?’ his grandfather mused as he rose to his feet, eyes flashing with excited speculation. ‘It’s got to be a troupe of dancing girls.’

‘Oh, Dad!’ his youngest daughter chided.

‘He’s never going to act his age,’ an older one advised her.

‘Why should he when he doesn’t have to?’ Jake’s mother slid in, giving her father a sweetly indulgent smile, bolstering her favourite daughter status.

‘Hey! Take a look at that!’ one of the party guests called out in amazement.

All attention was immediately swung towards the terrace, zeroing in on the monster cake which was making its appearance stage right. It was being wheeled in from the wide garden path by four guys dressed in white with Happy Birthday, surrounded by the outline of a heart, printed in red on their T-shirts.

Nice touch, Mel, Jake thought, and took a mental note to compliment her on it when she came back to work.

His grandfather laughed and clapped Jake on the shoulder. ‘You didn’t!’ he cried, his eyes dancing with the memory of his favourite movie.

‘I did!’ Jake answered with happy satisfaction in his grandfather’s delight.

‘Is she a match for Virna Lisi?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘I’m bursting with anticipation.’

So am I, Jake thought. The cake was a masterpiece of decorative art—scrolls and flowers, probably made of plaster of Paris, edging the tiers, red satin ribbon tied in bows beneath them. The candles actually held electric globes and were alight, which meant power had to be supplied by a small generator inside the cake. Another brilliant idea by Mel! So far this production had definitely upstaged the movie.

‘Eight tiers,’ Jake pointed out. ‘One for each decade of your life, Pop.’

‘And the best is yet to come,’ was the resounding reply.

Certainly a tribute to positive thinking! Jake hoped he’d feel the same way when he was eighty.

Grandfather and grandson stood side by side, watching the cake come to a halt. Once it was in position at the centre of the terrace, two of the stage-hands brought a roll of carpet from the back of the bottom tier.

‘Lay it out, boys!’ Byron called, happily stepping forward to meet the end of it.

Red carpet, of course! Another plus score for Mel’s initiative. She deserved a bonus for this.

Fortunately the orchestra had the sense to hold off starting to play until the scene was completely set. Jake couldn’t resist trailing his grandfather, standing just behind his shoulder to get a full frontal view of the quality woman Mel had hired. There was an excited buzz of anticipation from the party crowd behind them. Without a doubt, this act was going to be talked about for a long, long time. People actually gasped as the lid of the top tier slowly lifted back.

The orchestra swung into action, producing a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday.’ Everyone sang enthusiastically. A blonde head started to emerge from the top of the cake—lustrous shiny hair in a soft, wavy Marilyn Monroe style, a flyaway fringe swept across the forehead. Her eyes were lowered, lids shaded in a smoke-grey, crescents of long dark lashes brushing her cheeks. A very sexy mouth was emphasised by glossy red lipstick.

It wasn’t until her face and neck had completely emerged from the cake that recognition hit Jake and it came like a massive explosion inside his head.

Forget the deceptive blonde hair.

What he was looking at was Mel Rossi’s face.

Unmistakable!

The shock of it totally rattled Jake’s sense of reality. Never in a million years would he have imagined his prim and proper personal assistant taking on the role of blond bimbo in a birthday cake! It was completely beyond belief. Yet here she was, undeniably emerging, the lush curves of her body on stunning display.

The bikini she wore was fashioned out of red roses. They had to be artificial flowers but looked very real, and Jake’s mind instantly conjured up a vision of this Mel artfully posed nude on a red satin sheet being showered by American Beauty rose petals. With himself doing the showering. It was a stimulating vision. A very arousing vision.

She even had a red satin heart-shaped cushion dangling from a red ribbon around her wrist. Jake’s heart was not in such good shape. It was thumping wildly as his gaze followed Mel’s slow elevation from the cake, right down to sexy, red, high heeled sandals on her feet.

‘Wow!’ his grandfather breathed on a sigh of sheer awe. ‘You’ve outdone yourself, my boy!’

Jake was speechless.

He hadn’t heard the birthday song end but it obviously had because people were applauding, men whistling, cries of ‘Bravo!’ rang in his ears. His mesmerised gaze travelled back up to Mel’s face, just as she lifted her lashes.

And…choong!

Her eyes shot sizzling bolts of heat straight at him.

Nothing was suppressed in that look!

Even his toes curled.

Amid the chaos of the moment, some deeply intuitive sense in Jake Devila told him his relationship with Mel Rossi had just been changed…forever!

CHAPTER FOUR

A BLAZE of satisfaction settled Merlina’s quivering nerves. Jake looked completely stunned. And he wasn’t recovering quickly, either. Shock had blanked out the usual vitality of his playboy handsome face. There were no dimples in his cheeks. His mouth was absolutely still, not so much as a twitch of amusement. His dark eyes were not enlivened by mischievously teasing twinkles. He stared at her as though dazed. Mesmerised.

No doubt about it.

She had socked it to him with a vengeance.

And here she was, on show, in a bikini, and proud of herself for having dared to do it. A liberated woman. Her own person.

All the time and attention she had poured into producing this scenario had just paid off. She could retire from the battle scene of her employment with honours on her side. No sense of defeat at all!

But she still had to finish the act and do it absolutely right. She hoped all the rehearsals of stepping down the tiers of the cake in these sexy red shoes would stand her in good stead. Teetering would be terrible at this point. She fastened her gaze on Byron Devila, obviously the man standing at the end of the red carpet and just in front of Jake, then turned on a slow, sensual smile designed to warm the cockles of his eighty-year-old manhood.

Though he didn’t look eighty, more like a young sixty, and the smile he returned smacked of very lively male appreciation of how she looked. Which gave Merlina the encouragement she needed to set off descending to the red carpet which led directly to him.

Think Marilyn Monroe, she told herself. The orchestra took it upon itself to play ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ as she made her way down the steps, for which Merlina was intensely grateful. It was much easier to look sexily graceful moving to music than in silence with everyone watching. She arrived on the red carpet without a falter, and determinedly ignoring Jake, she walked straight towards his grandfather, growing in delicious confidence with every step.

She’d done it and it was wonderful!

She felt Jake’s gaze on her, felt a churning maelstrom of thoughts coming from him and swirling around her. Her nerves were very active again, not quivering with the fear of failure as before, but buzzing with elation at having thrown the puppet master into a wild tangle with his own strings.

And Byron Devila was looking at her as she’d always wished Jake would—with sparkling admiration and captivated interest. The triumph of it all was exhilarating. The smile on her face grew in brilliance. Her eyes danced with daredevil glee at the older man. He held out his hands in open welcome as her approach came to a halt. She unhooked the ribbon from her wrist and presented him with the red satin heart-shaped cushion.