The Bride's Baby

The receptionist didn’t answer but a prickle of awareness as the woman’s gaze shifted to somewhere over her right shoulder warned her that they were no longer alone.

Turning, she found her view blocked by a broad chest, wide shoulders encased in a white linen shirt. It was open at the neck and the sleeves had been rolled back to the elbow to reveal brawny forearms, strong wrists.

A silk tie had been pulled loose as if its owner had been wrestling with some intractable problem. She didn’t doubt that, whatever it was, he’d won.

Despite the fact that she’d spent the last six months planning Tom McFarlane’s wedding, this was only the second time she’d actually seen him face to face.

Make that forehead to chin, she thought, forced, despite her highest heels, to look up. She’d known this was going to be a difficult afternoon and had felt the need to armour herself with serious clothes.

The chin was deeply cleft.

She already knew that. She’d seen photographs long before she’d met the man. Tom McFarlane wasn’t much of a socialite, but no billionaire bachelor could entirely escape the attention of the gossip magazines, especially once his marriage to the daughter of a minor aristocrat—one who’d made a career out of appearing in the glossies—had been announced.

The cleft did nothing to undermine its force; on the contrary, it emphasised it and, for the second time, her only thought was, What on earth was Candy thinking?

Stupid question.

From the moment she’d bounced into her office demanding that SDS Events organise her wedding to billionaire businessman Tom McFarlane, Sylvie had known exactly what Candy had been thinking.

This was the fulfilment of her ‘life plan’. The one with which, years ago, she’d enlivened a school careers seminar by announcing that her ‘career plan’ was to marry a millionaire. One with a house in Belgravia, a country estate and a title. The title was negotiable; one should apparently be flexible—the size of the bank account was not.

Why waste her time sweating over exams when she had no intention of going to university? Students saddled with overdrafts and loans held no interest for her. All her effort was going to be put into perfecting her natural assets—at which point she’d performed a pouty, cheesecake pose—and making the perfect marriage.

Everyone had laughed—that was the thing about Candy, she always made you laugh—but no one had actually doubted that she meant it, or that she was capable of achieving her goal.

She’d already looked like coming close a couple of times. Maybe, rising thirty, she’d realised that time was running out and she’d jettisoned everything but the core plan although, inflation being what it was, she’d upgraded her ambition to billionaire.

A better question might have been, What on earth had Tom McFarlane been thinking?

An even dumber question.

It was a truth universally acknowledged that a smile from Candy Harcourt’s sexy mouth was enough to short-circuit the brain of any man who could muster more than one red blood cell. She might have bypassed her exams but she hadn’t stinted on the midnight oil when it came to enhancing her career assets which were, it had to be admitted, considerable.

Gorgeous, funny—who could possibly resist her? Why would any man try?

And while Tom McFarlane might give the impression that he’d been rough-hewn from rock—and eyes that were, at that moment, glittering like granite certainly added to the impression of unyielding force—she had absolutely no doubt that he was a male with red blood cells to spare.

Something her own red blood cells had instantly responded to with the shocking eagerness of a puppy offered something unspeakable to roll in.

As their eyes had met over Candy’s artfully tumbled blonde curls, the connection had short-circuited all those troublesome hormones which had been in cold storage for a decade and they’d instantly defrosted.

She was not a puppy, however, but a successful businesswoman and she’d made a determined effort to ignore the internal heatwave and stick to the matter in hand. Fortunately, the minute he’d signed her contract, Tom McFarlane—who obviously had much more important things to do—had made his excuses and left.

Just thinking about those ten long minutes left the silk of the camisole she was wearing beneath her linen jacket sticking to her skin. But she’d got through it then and she could do it again.

It was part of the job. As an event planner she was used to handling awkward situations—and this certainly came under the heading of ‘awkward’. She just needed to concentrate on business, even if, feeling a little like the space between the rock and the hard place, it took all her composure to stiffen her knees, stand her ground, keep the expression neutral.

‘If you don’t leave now?’ he prompted.

‘I’ll be in trouble…’ Wrong. She was already in trouble, but with the hardwood reception desk at her back and the rock blocking her exit she was stuck with it. Reminding herself that drooling was a very bad look, she summoned up a professional smile and extended a hand. ‘Good afternoon, Mr McFarlane. I was just explaining to your receptionist—’

‘I heard.’ He ignored the hand. ‘Call whoever’s expecting you and tell him he’ll have to wait. You’re mine until I say otherwise.’

What? That was outrageous but the glitter in those eyes warned her that provocation had been his intent. That he was waiting for the explosion. That he would welcome it.

Not in this life, she thought, managing a fairly creditable, ‘She. Delores Castello,’ she added, naming the pop diva. ‘So you’ll see why your request is quite impossible.’ She wanted this over and done with, not dragged out, but when a man started tossing orders around as if he owned the world, it was a woman’s duty to stand her ground and prove to him that he did not.

Even if the knees had other ideas.

‘I do have a window in my diary,’ she began, flipping open the side pocket of her bag.

If she’d hoped to impress him with her client list the strategy signally failed. Before she could locate her diary he said, ‘What’s impossible, Miss Smith, is the chance of you getting another chance to talk me into settling your outrageous account.’

Sylvie grabbed her bottom lip with her teeth before she said something she’d regret.

The man was angry. She understood that. But her account was not outrageous. On the contrary, she’d worked really hard to negotiate the best possible cancellation deals, pushing people to the limit. She hadn’t had to do that but she had felt just the smallest bit responsible for what had happened.

She would have told him so if her lip hadn’t been clamped between her teeth.

‘Your call, Miss Smith,’ he prompted, apparently convinced that he’d proved his point. ‘But if you walk away now I promise you you’re going to have to sue me all the way to the House of Lords to get your money.’

He had to be kidding.

Or, then again, maybe not.

Glacial, his voice went with the raw cheekbones, jutting nose, a mouth compressed into a straight line. It did nothing to cool her. Like a snow-capped volcano she knew that, deep beneath the surface, molten lava bubbled dangerously. That if she wasn’t careful the heat would be terminal.

Tom McFarlane was made from the same stuff that centuries ago had driven men across uncharted oceans in search of glory and fortune. He was their modern equivalent—a twenty-first-century legend who’d worked in the markets as a boy, had been trading wholesale by the time he’d been in his teens, making six-figure deals by the time he’d left school. His first million by the time he’d been twenty. The expression ‘self-made man’ could have been invented just for him.

He was the genuine article, no doubt, but, much as she admired that kind of drive and tenacity, his humble beginnings had made him a very odd choice of mate for Candy.

He might be a billionaire but he had none of the trappings of old money. None of the grace. He wasn’t a man to sit back and idle his time away playing the squire.

There was no country estate or smart London town house. Just a vast loft apartment which, according to an exasperated Candy, was on the wrong side of the river.

Apparently, when she’d pointed that out to him, he’d laughed, ridiculing those who paid a fortune for a classy address to look across the river at him.

She’d been forced to hide a smile herself when Candy had told her that. Had thought, privately, that there had to be billionaires out there who would be less abrasive, easier to handle.

But maybe not quite so much of a challenge.

The chase might have been chillingly calculated but Sylvie was pretty sure that when the quarry had been run to earth and the prize claimed, the result would have been hot as Hades.

Maybe Candy was, when it came right down to it, as human as the next woman and had fallen not for the money, but for the testosterone.

The fact that Tom McFarlane had exactly the same effect on her, Sylvie thought as, not waiting for her answer, he turned and walked across reception to the wide-open doors of his office—leaving her to follow or not, as she chose—did not make her feel one whit better.

On the contrary.