Hired: A Bride for the Boss: The Playboy Boss's Chosen Bride / The Corporate Marriage Campaign / The Boss's Urgent Proposal

Most of all, she hated how deeply he affected her.

Every cell in her body was jangling with awareness of him, the rippling joy in his laughter and the brilliant vivacity it brought to his all too handsome face.

I’m possessed by the devil, she thought, and somehow,somehow, I have to expunge him from my consciousnessand be totally free of him.

‘I’m afraid a call to Cakes for Special Occasions won’t do it, Mel,’ he drawled, having finally sobered up enough to speak.

She remained silent, waiting for appropriate instructions.

‘You’ll have to scout around, but I’m guessing that stage prop people could supply what I want.’

A fabricated cake, not a real one.

She refocussed her scattered mind and asked, ‘What height do you have in mind and how wide should the bottom tier be?’

‘I think six feet high should do it. And the top tier should be wide enough for a woman to emerge from the top of it.’

A woman!

‘The tiers should graduate down to complement that width and provide steps for the woman to descend.’

He wanted a woman coming out of the cake!

‘Inside, there should be some mechanism that opens the lid of the cake and slowly lifts the woman up to her full height above the top tier. Like a mini elevator.’

No doubt a woman in spangles and a G-string!

‘And the cake should be on rollers so it can be wheeled out to my grandfather at the optimum moment.’

A gift of a woman to his playboy Pop!

‘You’re not writing any of this down, Mel,’ he chided.

‘It’s being imprinted on my brain,’ she answered truthfully.

‘As long as you get it right.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll get it right.’

‘Okay! Now the woman…’

Oh, yes, having unwrapped the decorative cake, whatprecisely was to emerge on cue?

‘She has to be a blonde.’

Of course. Jake had obviously inherited his taste inblondes from his grandfather.

He grinned at her. ‘And curvy like you, Mel. A Marilyn Monroe type.’

A treacherous thrill ran through her entire body. Jake was comparing her to the number one sex goddess of the movie world.

‘Pop doesn’t like his women skinny,’ he went on, bursting her bubble.

Jake did like his women skinny. No doubt about that. Every one he took up with was pencil-thin. She had no chance at all of ever being taken up by him. Only her family thought she was skinny. Besides, she obviously had Mel Gibson’s dangerous edge—Lethal Weapon—which wasn’t sexy to a man who liked his women easy come, easy go, no complications.

‘You should be able to hire one from the models who do photo shoots for Playboy-type magazines,’ Jake suggested.

Merlina was goaded into speaking out. ‘You realise this cake act is very old-hat stuff. And male chauvinism at its worst.’

‘Absolutely,’ he agreed, then waved his hand in an appeal for understanding. ‘My grandfather still believes in marriage. Can you believe it?’ He shook his head. ‘Very old-hat. He’ll love this. It’s a scene from his favourite movie, made in 1966.’

She arched her eyebrows, aiming to get a hit at him. ‘You seem to have movies on the brain this morning.’

‘They mirror life,’ he flipped back at her.

‘Right!’ Her teeth snapped. She ground them open enough to ask, ‘What is the title of this movie? If I can find it in a video shop, I’ll watch it in order to know exactly what you’re describing.’

‘It’s called How to Murder Your Wife, starring Jack Lemmon and Virna Lisi.’

‘I can understand why it’s your grandfather’s favourite movie,’ she remarked with silky savagery. ‘He’s had seven wives so far, hasn’t he?’

‘Divorce from his seventh is about to come through,’ Jake confirmed.

And how many playmates are you up to? Seventy-seven?

The problem was, she’d probably become the seventy-eighth if he focused that kind of interest on her. But he wouldn’t. She knew he wasn’t going to. Ever. Yet sometimes when he looked her over…

‘There’s no real murder in it,’ Jake informed her. ‘It’s a comedy. Jake Lemmon is at a bachelor party and the cake is wheeled in. Virna Lisa pops out of it, their eyes meet, and choong!’ He raised his arms in mock despair. ‘It’s the end of his swinging bachelor life.’

What she needed was some choong-power over Jake Devila. Before she rode off into the sunset of employment elsewhere, she would really like to sock it to him. Just once. Ending his swinging bachelor life was probably in the realm of pure fantasy. Maybe choong-power was, too, but…a wild idea was dawning in her mind, spreading light in the dark places she had nursed for the past eighteen months.

‘Just for the record, in case I can’t get a copy of the movie, what was Virna Lisi wearing when she emerged from the cake?’ It couldn’t have been too risqué, she thought. Not in an American film made back in the sixties.

‘A bikini.’ His brow wrinkled as he worked on the recollection.

A bikini…

To Merlina’s whirling mind, it represented the final liberation, absolutely appropriate as the cut-off line to the Jake Devila experience which had served to break many conservative shackles from her upbringing. Wearing one in such a public spotlight would definitely be a mark of the confidence she would take with her when she left him. And her family would never know. It would just be for herself.

‘I think it was made out of flowers. Very feminine,’ he said.

She smiled, liking the description.

Quite acceptable.

And achievable.

Jake’s frown deepened, his eyes sharply scanning hers, suspicious of her sudden good humour.