At the Argentinean Billionaire's Bidding

At the Argentinean Billionaire's Bidding
India Grey

A self-confessed romance junkie, India Grey was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon

writers’ guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox, and subsequently whiled away many a dull school day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept those guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January, and beginning every list of New Year’s Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she also gained a degree in English Literature from Manchester University, and, in a stroke of genius on the part of the gods of romance, met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity, and heaps of pink washing generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. She’s just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!

Recent titles by the same author:

TAKEN FOR REVENGE, BEDDED FOR PLEASURE

MISTRESS: HIRED FOR THE BILLIONAIRE’S PLEASURE

THE ITALIAN’S CAPTIVE VIRGIN

THE ITALIAN’S DEFIANT MISTRESS

Dear Reader

When I was invited to write one of the books in Mills & Boon’s rugby series I was seriously thrilled. I grew up in a family where rugby was a passion, and from a very young age would go with my dad and my older brother to Murrayfield to watch Scotland internationals. Of course at the time I wasn’t old enough to fully appreciate those magnificent, muscular men, but I guess they must have made a pretty lasting impression, because when I began to write my first Mills & Boon

novel at the grand old age of thirteen it featured a hero who was a rugby player!

The book never got finished, and I’ve long since lost the manuscript (handwritten, in a blue exercise book), but I’ve never forgotten the hero, with his aura of constrained power and intense focus. Having the chance to reincarnate him in the form of brooding Argentinean Alejandro D’Arienzo was a bit like rediscovering my first love.

Rugby is such a hard, sexy game. It demands not only phenomenal physical strength (mmm…hold that thought…) but huge amounts of courage and mental endurance, which I think are all essential ingredients for the perfect hero. My heroine, Tamsin Calthorpe, would definitely agree; she lost her heart to Alejandro when she was just fifteen years old, the first time she set eyes on him out on the rugby pitch. Now, after nine lonely years, she’d actually quite like it back, so she can move on with her life… The trouble is, rugby players are also driven to win at all costs—and Alejandro’s not going to give up anything without a fight!

This book was such a lot of fun to write—especially the day I spent at Twickenham with two of the lovely editors from Mills & Boon, seeing some of the places that feature in the book. It was great for research, but not so good for my mud and muscle obsession. Oh, dear. Time to rush off for my meeting at Rugby Players Anonymous…

India

AT THE ARGENTINEAN BILLIONAIRE’S BIDDING

BY

INDIA GREY

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For my dad (1940–1981) who loved rugby so much,

and for my mum, who supports me with the same

unfailing enthusiasm as she supports Scotland.

With love and thanks.

PROLOGUE

TAMSIN paused in front of the mirror, the lipstick held in one hand and the magazine article on ‘How to seduce the man of your dreams’ in the other.

Subtlety, the article said, is just another word for failure. But, even so, her stomach gave a nervous dip as she realised she hardly recognised the heavy-lidded, glittering eyes, the sharply defined cheekbones and sultry, pouting mouth as her own.

That was a good thing, right? Because three years of adoring Alejandro D’Arienzo from afar had taught her that there wasn’t much chance of getting beyond ‘hello’ with the man of her dreams without some drastic action.

There was a quiet knock at the door, and then Serena’s blonde head appeared. ‘Tam, you’ve been ages, surely you must be ready by—’ There was a pause. ‘Oh my God. What in hell’s name have you done to yourself?’

Tamsin waved the magazine at her sister. ‘It says here I shouldn’t leave anything to chance.’

Serena advanced slowly into the room. ‘Does it specify you shouldn’t leave much to the imagination, either?’ she croaked. ‘Where did you get that outrageous dress? It’s completely see-through.’

‘I altered my Leaver’s Ball dress a bit, that’s all,’ said Tamsin defensively.

‘That’s your balldress?’ Serena gasped. ‘Blimey, Tamsin, if Mama finds out she’ll go mental—you haven’t altered it, you’ve butchered it.’

Shrugging, Tamsin tossed back her dark-blonde hair and, holding out the thigh-skimming layers of black net, executed an insouciant twirl. ‘So? I just took the silk overskirt off, that’s all.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Well, I shortened the net petticoat a bit, too. Looks much better, doesn’t it?’

‘It certainly looks different,’ said Serena faintly. The strapless, laced bodice of the dress, which had looked reasonably demure when paired with a full, ankle-length skirt, suddenly took on an outrageous bondage vibe when combined with above-the-knee net, black stockings, and the cropped black cardigan her sister was now putting on over the top.

‘Good,’ said Tamsin firmly. ‘Because tonight I do not want to be the coach’s pathetic teenage daughter, fresh out of boarding school and never been kissed. Tonight I want to be…’ She broke off to read from the magazine. ‘“Mysterious yet direct, sophisticated yet sexy”.’

From downstairs they could hear the muffled din of laughter and loud voices, and distant music wound its way through Harcourt Manor’s draughty stone passages. The party to announce the official England international team for the new rugby season was already underway, and Alejandro was there somewhere. Just knowing he was in the same building made Tamsin’s stomach tighten and her heart pound.

‘Be careful, Tam,’ Serena warned quietly. ‘Alejandro’s gorgeous, but he’s also…’

She faltered, glancing round at the pictures that covered Tamsin’s walls, as if for inspiration. Mostly cut from the sports pages of newspapers and from old England rugby programmes, they showed Alejandro D’Arienzo’s dark, brooding beauty from every angle. Serena shivered. Gorgeous certainly, but ruthless too.

‘What, out of my league? You don’t think this is going to work, do you?’ said Tamsin with an edge of despair. ‘You don’t think he’s going to fancy me at all.’

Serena looked down into her sister’s face. Tamsin’s green eyes glowed as if lit by some internal sunlight and her cheeks were flushed with nervous excitement.

‘That’s not it at all. Of course he’ll fancy you.’ She sighed. ‘And that’s exactly what’s bothering me.’

Above the majestic carved fireplace in the entrance hall of Harcourt Manor was a portrait of some seventeenth-century Calthorpe, smiling smugly against a backdrop of galleons on a stormy sea. Across the top, in flamboyantly embellished script, was written: God blew and they were scattered.

Alejandro D’Arienzo felt his face set in an expression of sardonic amusement as he looked into the cold, hooded eyes of Henry Calthorpe’s forebear. There was no discernible resemblance between the two men, although they obviously shared a mutual hatred of the Spanish. Alejandro could just remember his father’s stories, as a child in Argentina, of how their distant ancestors had been amongst the original conquistadors who had sailed from Spain to the New World. Those stories were one of the few tiny fragments of family identity that he had.

Moving restlessly away from the portrait, he ran a finger inside the stiff collar of his shirt and looked around at the impressive hallway, with its miles of intricate plasterwork ceiling and acres of polished wooden panelling. His team-mates stood in groups, laughing and drinking with dignitaries from the Rugby Football Union and the few sports journalists lucky enough to make the guest list, while the same assortment of blonde, well-bred rugby groupies circulated amongst them, flirting and flattering.

Henry Calthorpe, the England rugby coach, had made a big deal about holding the party to announce the new squad at his stunning ancestral home, claiming it showed that they were a team, a unit, a family. Remembering this now, Alejandro couldn’t stop his lips curling into a sneer of savage, cynical amusement.

Everything about Harcourt Manor could have been specifically designed to emphasise exactly how much of an outsider Alejandro was. And he was damned sure that Henry Calthorpe had reckoned on that very thing.

At first Alejandro had thought he was being overly sensitive, that years in the English public school system had made him too quick to be on the defensive against bullying and victimization— but lately the coach’s animosity had become too obvious to ignore. Alejandro was playing better than he’d ever done, too well to be dropped from the team without reason, but the fact was that Calthorpe wanted him out. He was just waiting for Alejandro to slip up.

Alejandro hoped Calthorpe was a patient man, because he had no intention of obliging. He was at the top of his game and he planned to stay there.