Miss Prim and the Billionaire

Miss Prim and the Billionaire
Lucy Gordon

When first love…Years ago, successful model Cassie was deeply in love with the mysterious Marcel, until their affair ended disastrously. Now Cassie is prim divorcee Mrs Henshaw, a super-efficient assistant whose new boss is going to shake up her whole world……has a second chance Powerful tycoon Marcel can hardly recall the carefree man he once was, but behind the steel-rimmed glasses and severe bun of his new assistant something seems hauntingly familiar…

Mills & Boon are excited to present this new family saga from award-winning author Lucy Gordon

The Falcon Dynasty

Five successful brothers looking for brides!

Amos Falcon is a proud, self-made man who wants his legacy to live on through his five sons. Each son is different, for they have different mothers, but in one aspect they are the same: he has raised them to be ruthless in business and sensible in matters of the heart.

But one by one these high-achieving brothers will find that when the right woman comes along love is the greatest power of them all …

Dear Reader,

Paris is one of my favourite cities and I really enjoyed setting a book there. Its beauty and its aura of romance contain a magic that always works for me. Frenchmen, of course, have an especially romantic reputation. An eye for the ladies, an appreciation of a pretty face. We love them for it.

Marcel, my hero, seems to be just like that: a man who plays love like a game. But only on the surface. Deep in his heart is a despair that has never left him since he was betrayed by Cassie, his one true love. And when he meets her again it causes an earthquake inside him.

She too is devastated. She was innocent of betrayal, but how can she convince him? The years have changed them. Can their new selves still love as their old selves did? And who are they inside?

I sympathise with that question because it’s one that a writer often asks herself. Who am I? Cassie, reaching out to the man who still rules my heart? Or Marcel, trying to resist the love that both alarms and tempts me? The answer, of course, is that I am both, moving between them, and delighted when they find the joy that once seemed lost for ever.

But now they’ve achieved their happy ending and it’s time for me to become someone else.

Warmest wishes,

Lucy Gordon

About the Author

LUCY GORDON cut her writing teeth on magazine journalism, interviewing many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Charlton Heston and Sir Roger Moore. She also camped out with lions in Africa and had many other unusual experiences which have often provided the background for her books. Several years ago, while staying Venice, she met a Venetian who proposed in two days. They have been married ever since. Naturally, this has affected her writing, where romantic Italian men tend to feature strongly. Two of her books have won the Romance Writers of America RITA

award. You can visit her website at www.lucy-gordon.com

Miss Prim and

the Billionaire

Lucy Gordon

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

PROLOGUE

AS THE soft light of dawn crept into the room the young man looked down on the girl, asleep beside him, her long blonde hair cascading across the pillow, her face soft and sweet. He kissed her lips gently and she stirred, murmuring, ‘Marcel.’

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘I just want to tell you—’

‘Mmm?’

‘—lots of things. Some of them I can’t say when you’re awake. When I look at you I’m struck dumb. I can’t even find the words to tell you how lovely you are—but then, you already know that.’

He drew the sheet back to reveal her glorious form, both slender and voluptuous.

‘There are plenty of people to praise your beauty, those photographers, and so many other men who’d take you from me if they could. But you don’t let them. Bless you, my darling, my sweet Cassie.’

Without opening her eyes, she gave a sleepy smile that made Marcel’s heart turn over. He was in his early twenties with a face that was still boyish, and as gentle as her own. His naked body was lean, almost too much so. Time would fill out his shape and bring maturity to his features, but perhaps he would never be better than he was now, his dark eyes full of adoration as he gazed down at her.

‘Can you hear me? I have something to tell you. You may be cross with me for concealing it, but you’ll forgive me, I know you will. And then I’ll ask—no, I’ll beg you to become my wife. What we have now is wonderful, but I want more. I want to claim you in the sight of the world, to climb to the top of the highest tower and cry aloud that you belong to me. To me! Nobody else. We’ll marry as soon as possible, won’t we, my darling? And all the world will know that you’re mine as completely as I am yours.

‘That time will come soon, but first I have to explain what I’ve been hiding. The fact is that I—no, let me keep my secret a little longer. In truth I’m a coward. I’m so afraid that you’ll be angry with me when you know that I deceived you, just a little, that I let you think—never mind. I’ll tell you when the right moment comes.

‘For this moment I just want to say that I love you, I belong to you, and nothing will ever part us. My darling, if you knew how I long to call you my wife. I pray that our wedding will happen soon.

‘But sleep now, just a little longer. There’ll be time later. We have all our lives to love each other.’

CHAPTER ONE

‘THE trouble with weddings is that they bring out the idiot in people.’

The cynical remark made Marcel Falcon glance up, grinning with agreement. The man who’d come to sit beside him was a business associate with whom he was on cordial terms.

‘Good to see you, Jeremy,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the drinks. Waiter!’

They were at a table in the bar of the Gloriana Hotel, one of the most luxurious establishments in London, providing not only rooms but wedding facilities for those who could afford them. Marcel gave his order, signed for it to go onto his bill and turned back to his companion, saying, ‘You’re right about weddings. No good to anyone. I’d just as soon have avoided this one, but my brother, Darius, is the bride’s ex-husband.’

Jeremy stared. ‘And he’s a guest at her wedding to another man? I’ve heard of sophisticated, but that takes the biscuit.’

‘It’s for the children, Frankie and Mark. They need to see their parents acting friendly despite the divorce.’

‘And I’ll bet your father had a hand in the decision.’

‘There aren’t many decisions my father doesn’t have a hand in,’ Marcel agreed wryly. ‘He actually got them to delay the wedding until a certain date had passed, so that he could come to England without incurring a huge tax bill.’

Amos Falcon was so extravagantly wealthy that he’d had to flee to the tax haven of Monaco where he lived for most of the time, venturing back to England for only ninety days of the year.

‘Frankie and Mark are his only grandchildren,’ Marcel said, ‘so he’s determined to stay part of their lives.’

‘Strange, that. A man with five sons and only one of them has carried on the line so far.’

‘He says the same thing. He’s always urging us to marry, preferably Freya.’

‘Who’s Freya?’

‘His stepdaughter, the closest thing to a daughter that he has, and he’s set on marrying her to one of us, and so binding her into the family.’

‘Don’t any of you get a say in your choice of wife?’