Was he saying what she thought

he was saying?

Was the gorgeous, emotionally unavailable, confirmed bachelor, billionaire Adam Tyler saying that he would like them to try each other on for size?

Adam watched her with his usual quiet patience. Well, he would have to wait. Her answer would be one of the most important of her life.

Think, Cara. Think!

Gorgeous—God, yes.

Emotionally unavailable—surely as much as ever. But aren’t you the same?

Confirmed bachelor—meaning he would never try to change you so as to keep you. Isn’t that perfect?

Billionaire.

That was where it all fell apart.

ALLY BLAKE

worked in retail, danced on television and acted in friends’ short films until the writing bug could no longer be ignored. And as her mother had read romance novels ever since Ally was a baby, the aspiration to write novels had almost been bred into her. Ally married her gorgeous husband, Mark, in Las Vegas (no Elvis in sight, thank you very much), and they live in beautiful Melbourne, Australia. Her husband cooks, he cleans and he’s the love of her life. How’s that for a hero?

How to Marry a Billionaire
Ally Blake

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To one grandmother for the treasure troves

of romance novels that were always to

be found under her spare bed, and to the other

for coloring my life with Dr. Seuss’s ABC.

CONTENTS

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS love at first sight.

‘I have never seen anything more beautiful,’ Cara said as she stared through the window of the stylish Chapel Street shoe store.

‘You simply have to have them,’ Gracie agreed, her nose pressed up against the window-pane.

‘They’re frivolous. Certainly not a necessity.’

‘So be frivolous, while you’re still young enough for it to be charming.’

‘But they’re Kate Madden Designs!’ Cara pointed out, hoping that at least would be argument enough to stop her from making such a rash purchase.

‘So?’

‘So, they cost more than my father used to earn in a week!’

Gracie turned to her. ‘Now that’s the strangest reason I have ever heard for not spending one’s own hard-earned money. Even from Cara, the Queen of Thrift.’

Cara decided it was best to keep focussing on the shoes.

‘And how much do you earn a week?’ Gracie asked as though talking to a two-year-old.

‘More than my father,’ Cara admitted.

‘So there you go!’ Gracie grabbed Cara by the upper arms and turned her so they were face to face, the shoes glistening on the periphery of their vision. ‘You have no choice. This is the big time. This is not mucking about with styling mousse and safety pins in converted warehouses, styling emaciated models for magazines. This is not getting kudos for finding designer clothes at bargain-basement prices. This is gold credit cards. This is limousines. This is television!’ Gracie spread her hands before her as though indicating the way of the future. ‘You want to make an impression and these are the shoes that will do it.’

Cara’s gaze was irresistibly drawn back to the stunning creations sitting atop their own black velvet stand. The shoes were elegant, they were red, they were embroidered satin, and they had heels one could use as a lethal weapon if ever one found the need. In a word, they were unforgettable.

‘And just think,’ Gracie said, leaning her head on Cara’s shoulder as she returned to her vigil before the coolest shoes ever made, ‘if you don’t get the job, at least you’ll have a killer pair of shoes to console you.’

Cara nodded. The thing was, she had to get the job. She would be twenty-seven in a couple of months, the same age her father was the first time he filed for bankruptcy, and if her serious plans to have the St Kilda Storeys apartment building paid off by that time were to come to fruition, bar winning the Lotto, this was the only way it would be done.

And it would be done. There were no two ways about it. The property would be hers. Every brick. Every roof tile. Every grain of dirt. Only then would she be free of the constant feeling that one of those bricks resided in her chest.

Gracie was right. The fact that Cara was infamous for scouting out vintage pieces at charity shop prices would not hold her in much stead in the new crowd in which she would be moving. Television was about being cutting edge, not thrifty. And if she was going to land the high-paying job styling the star of the biggest television show ever to hit Australian screens, she would have to be unforgettable or bust.

‘You have to be kidding me!’ Adam said, his voice a mix of shock and laughter.

‘Nope,’ Chris returned with a big sunny grin. ‘I’m going to be on TV as the main attraction in my very own dating programme.’

Adam’s laughter dried up the moment he realised this was no laughing matter. Though his friend and business partner was practically a genius when it came to creating cutting-edge telecommunications innovations, he was not a practical joker.

‘The contract was signed, sealed and delivered as of this morning,’ Chris said.

Adam shot from his chair and paced up and down the room. ‘I wish you had told me you were considering doing this, Chris. You really should have consulted me first.’

‘Ah, no, I shouldn’t have.’

Adam stopped pacing and glared at his friend. But Chris, who usually gave in to Adam’s will, stared right back. This would take some care. ‘You’re the one who put me in charge of the public face of this company, and, as such, if you plan on doing anything that might alter Revolution Wireless’s image in any way, you must consult me first.’

‘This is not about the company,’ Chris said. ‘This is about me. Thus it is officially none of your business as Head of Marketing for Revolution Wireless. But as my friend, I wanted you to know.’

‘Fine. Now, as your friend, I’m telling you it is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. A television dating show? Come on! If you’re looking for a girl, I’ll take you out and find you one. I know plenty of women who would be happy to escort one of Australia’s most eligible bachelors.’

When Chris didn’t budge, Adam grabbed him by the arm and made to tug him out the door. ‘There’s literally millions of them out there in the real world. I can find you one on any street corner right now!’

Chris shrugged out of Adam’s grasp, his fists clenched at his side. ‘I don’t want some escort girl I can pick up on any old street corner.’

Seeing how upset Chris was becoming, Adam took a moment to rein in his concern, which was fast running out of control. ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’

‘I want a woman with whom to spend my quiet moments,’ Chris explained. ‘I want a wife. I certainly don’t want one of your cast-offs. The women you date are the complete antithesis of what any sane man would want in a wife. Any man apart from your father, of course. While we’re talking about relationships, let’s talk about yours.’

Adam decided to ignore that final jab and focussed on the bits he wanted to focus on. ‘This is about you, mate, not me, and my point is you could have anyone you want. Where has this all come from all of a sudden? Why now?’

Chris shrugged and softened a very little, his palms flattening out until they hung straight by his side. ‘It’s time. I work too much to go the regular route of dating by numbers. The years have slipped away without my even knowing it. I’m turning thirty-five this year.’

‘I’m thirty-five already.’

That earned Adam two raised eyebrows.

‘Chris, by the way you’re acting anyone would think that was middle-aged. We’re still young men, with our whole lives in front of us.’

‘Exactly my point. While I am still a young man, I want someone with whom to share as much of that remaining time as possible.’

Adam felt himself running out of arguments and it bothered him to see Chris so certain. Sunny, cheery Chris, always glued to his laptop, creating brilliant business solutions for their hip, rising-star telecommunications company, was suddenly searching beyond the limits of his clever mind for satisfaction. The world outside had finally beckoned.

And despite his protestations about the effects Chris’s plans would have on the image of the company, that wasn’t really what had Adam spooked. He was perfectly aware that the big bad world could swallow a good-natured guy like Chris whole.

‘OK, then,’ Adam said, rallying his forces, focussing every lick of attention on his foolish friend, ‘please explain to me why you think you need to go on a TV dating show to find a wife?’

‘Because it’s the only way I can meet women who have no idea who I am.’

Adam shook his head. ‘Run that by me again.’

‘The producers have gone to incredible trouble to pick out thirty women from all over Australia. Thirty attractive, accomplished, interesting women who have been given extensive compatibility tests. Thirty women who have no clue who owns Revolution Wireless, and thus have no idea how much I am worth. They will get to know me just for me. Chris, everyday Aussie bloke. Not Chris Geyer, richest single Australian man under forty.’

And that Adam understood. As two of the young owners of the Revolution Wireless telecommunications giant, one of Australia’s fastest expanding business empires, he and Chris were considered prime pickings by the women in their regular social circles who knew exactly what they were worth.

Chris’s earlier comments slammed into his thoughts. So what if he dated women dripping in diamonds and lofty aspirations, just like the ones who had taken his father to the cleaners over and over again? That way at least he had no chance of ever mistaking his feelings for any of them and therefore would never succumb to the same fate. And he had no intention of allowing his kind-hearted, naive friend to fall into that trap either. Especially with some buck-toothed ignoramus chosen by a TV exec with nothing on his mind bar ratings.

‘I’m on my way to the television station now. Are you coming with me? I could do with some moral support, if that’s on offer,’ Chris said as he swung his jacket over his shoulder and headed for the door.

‘Oh, I’m coming,’ Adam said. ‘But only so that on the drive over there I can do everything in my power to talk you out of it.’

‘OK, but you’re not coming into the meeting with me,’ Chris said. ‘You’re too bloody good-looking. They’ll forget about me in a heartbeat and do everything they can to snap you up instead.’

‘Don’t panic, mate,’ Adam drawled. ‘I wouldn’t be in your shoes for the world.’

Cara checked her lip gloss in her compact mirror for the third time on the cab drive over.

She had dressed conservatively, as she figured that was how they would want her to dress their guy. She wore a vintage black jersey crossover dress and simple silver antique jewellery. Her short curly bob was pulled away from her face and anchored with a large red hibiscus, and her make-up was subtle, all so that nothing could take away from her new red satin Kate Madden Designs shoes, which were expensive enough to make that month’s mortgage payments a squeeze.

The feeling of a brick in her chest grew heavier at the recollection of the price she had paid for them. But if she got the job it wouldn’t matter—she would be free and clear. And that was the goal she had to keep dangling in front of herself like a carrot in front of a mule.

She closed the compact, smacked her lips together once more and found the taxi driver watching her in the rear-view mirror. She sent him a self-conscious smile.

‘Big date?’ he asked.

Cara shook her head. ‘Job interview.’

‘At the TV station? What sort of job? Are you a news-reader or something?’

‘No, nothing like that. I’m hoping to land a job on one of those new dating shows. I don’t even know the title or anything. It’s all pretty hush-hush, actually.’

She jolted forward lightly in her seat as he unexpectedly pumped the brakes.

‘Really?’ the driver said. ‘Are you going to be one of those girls in bikinis who sit in a hot tub all day?’

‘Gosh, no!’ she declared. ‘I’m a behind-the-scenes type. I’m going for the job of styling the male lead in the show.’

‘Oh,’ the driver said before focussing more fully on the road ahead. Obviously hot tubs and bikinis were much more his scene.

He soon pulled up outside the old concrete building that housed the television studios. Cara hopped out and handed the cash through the driver’s side window.

‘Good luck,’ the driver said. ‘And I’ll look out for you on the small screen.’

He gave her the once-over and Cara knew he didn’t believe her for a second and was happily measuring her up for a bikini. Knowing she looked more like a ballet dancer than a Baywatch babe didn’t stop her from blushing in humiliation as he gave a little shrug as if to say he’d seen better.

Cara tugged at her born-again dress, patted down her curls, took a deep breath, and headed inside.

Adam sat upstairs in the top-floor foyer of the television station, cracking his knuckles.

He could have waited in the car. He could have browsed in the shop windows near the television station. He could have taken advantage of the heretofore unheard-of spare time and chosen to stop and smell the flowers in the park nearby. But he hadn’t. He wanted to be where Chris was. And since Chris had been taken into a closed-door meeting, the foyer was as close as he was going to get.

After a good hour spent counting tiles on the ceiling of the open-plan waiting room Adam was itching to leave. And to take Chris with him. If there was even the slightest hint that Chris might change his mind, Adam wanted to be there to snap him up and take him back to the real world of stock prices and innovative technologies. A quantifiable world that never pretended to be anything other than what it was.

So Adam waited close to the source, his knuckles cracking, his eyes seeking out any movement that passed his way.

Cara checked her reflection in the lift doors.

She lifted a hand to pat down her hair. She was pleased to see the new caramel highlights in her curly chestnut bob gave her the exact hint of sophistication she was after. The huge red flower that held her hair back was securely fastened but still she dug it in deeper. It would be just like her to have the thing fall out of her hair and dangle at an illogical angle down her back for the whole day without her knowing, her intelligence and talent and new caramel highlights becoming blurred behind her often clumsy exterior.

Her best friends called her ‘classy Cara’ because she was always so put together, but it was also half a joke since they knew what it took for her to be that way.

She looked down at her unforgettable shoes for moral support. It took almost all of her concentration to remain upright, they were so high and delicate. And she was someone who had to lift her feet so as not to trip even when walking in bare feet.

The lift grumbled to a halt on the top floor and her stomach dropped away. At the last minute she closed her eyes, tapped the heels of her red shoes together and made a wish to whichever good fairies might have been listening.

‘Let me have this job and I will never want anything else again.’

The lift doors opened, as did her eyes, and she stepped ahead, unforgettable red shoes leading the way.

Adam looked up at the whir of the lift.

A woman exited, walking like a ballerina: head held high, shoulders back, deliberate, as if she had a book on her head and had no intention of letting that book fall.

This woman had enough going for her that Adam stopped cracking his knuckles and let his hands drift to rest casually across the back of the couch.

She stopped outside the lift and checked the staff listings, bending slightly from the waist and affording Adam a nice view of…a very nice view. Seeming satisfied she was in the right place, she walked his way.

Only when she came closer did he notice evidence of nerves. She swallowed too many times, her eyes flitting about the place as if she was cataloguing everything in the room, and her knuckles showed white against the sleek black portfolio she clutched in her hands like a lifeline.

Finally her fluttery gaze cut his way.

She managed half a smile, her smooth full lips kicking up at one side, highlighting the sexiest little smile line along one pale cheek.

‘Excuse me,’ she said in a charmingly husky voice, ‘but is this the place to wait for the guys from…?’ She paused, her mouth closing in an adorable little pout as she found the words she was looking for. ‘I don’t even know what it’s called. The new TV dating show?’ A concerned crease appeared above her dainty nose as she awaited his answer.

‘This is the place,’ he said, drawing his eyes from the crease to her blinking eyes. Green, they were, and magnetic. Like a cat’s eyes.

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ she said, a slim hand moving to her chest while her cat’s eyes went back to their dazzled flickering. ‘I’ve had one heck of a time finding where to go. Seems it’s all so secretive most of the staff in the building knew nothing about it. But after my bumbling efforts I’m sure the whole place knows by now.’

She took a seat on the opposite couch, sitting upright, with her portfolio still clutched in her hands.

‘Are you here to be interviewed?’ he asked.

‘That I am. And I can’t believe how nervous I feel. I’ve never done anything like this before.’

Ready to ask, Like what exactly? Adam suddenly realised that this woman could be one of Chris’s dates. And his first uncensored thought was that Chris was a lucky guy. Adam shifted in his seat, suddenly feeling a mite uncomfortable in the woman’s sparkling presence.

Then he also remembered that none of the women was to know whom they were going to be meeting on the show. Just some guy, some poor slob hankering for a woman. Not his friend Chris; sweet guy and a billionaire.

But the funny thing was this woman seemed like a sweet girl too. A sweet girl with eyes that deserved a double take and a mouth that begged to be kissed.

Adam shook his head to clear the muddy thoughts. What did it matter that she was seriously attractive? He was only finding himself so quickly riveted by her because of any possible harm she might bring to Chris.

It was a defence mechanism. That was all.

Chris was too nice to know what was best for him and it was Adam’s job to look out for the guy. He owed him that much. If not everything.

The door to the offices beyond opened, and a young, hip television-exec type, with unironed clothes and too much gel in his hair, popped his head out.

‘Cara Marlowe?’

Adam’s lady friend stood up.

‘That’s me.’

‘Great,’ the guy said with an encouraging smile. ‘Come on through.’

The woman shot Adam a parting grin that included the sexy smile line once more. ‘Wish me luck.’

Luck meant that within days this fresh-faced, sweet and seriously compelling woman could be dating his best friend. And he found that all he could say was, ‘Go get ’em.’

Cara followed the young guy, whose name was Jeff, through a maze of corridors and cubicles to his office within the bowels of the top floor of the television station.

‘Take a seat,’ he ordered.

She did.

‘Coffee?’

‘Ah, no, thanks.’ With caffeine in her veins she’d be bouncing off the walls in no time.

‘I’m not so good as you,’ Jeff said, waving his empty mug at her. ‘I’ll be back in a sec.’

Cara sat upright on the plain simple chair as she waited for Jeff to return. She stared down at her red shoes, which glistened prettily back at her. And she winced. Jeff had walked ahead of her the whole time and she was sure he had not even glanced at her feet once.

But the guy in the foyer had. She was sure of that. In fact she was sure he had compiled an internal data file of every inch of her, so intense had been his gaze. It was all she had been able to do to keep her footing. New shoes or no new shoes. A guy like that would make any rational woman’s knees go weak without even trying.

He had dark wavy hair, intense blue eyes, a solid build, hands that looked as though they could play the piano and change a light bulb. He was a hunk and a half. She wondered briefly what he was doing there, waiting in the foyer where those involved with the new secret show had been told to wait.

What if he was the single guy? The one she might have to style? She pictured him in his immaculate suit with his glossy shoes and his expensive haircut. If he was the one, her job would be redundant. She would have nothing more to do than straighten his tie and run her hands through his hair just before the cameras rolled.

The thought of getting so up close and personal with that particular gentleman made her suddenly uncomfortable. She shifted in her seat, then gave a little laugh out loud. What need would a guy like that have to go on a dating show? He was gorgeous. The strong, silent type. She imagined a wave of horror rolling across those deep blue eyes at the mere suggestion.

An alarm went off somewhere in the building and Cara clicked back to the present and remembered she was meant to be preparing for the most important job interview of her life. That was what she should have been focussed on, not daydreaming about the exact shade of some stranger’s blue eyes. But of course she was only thinking about him so much because of the possible boost he could provide her financial status.

It was a survival mechanism. That was all.

Her focus cleared and she saw her red shoes still gleaming up at her. She had more important things to think about then and there than some chance acquaintance with Mr Handsome out there. She had to make a grand impression on Jeff.

She crossed her legs one way but the shoes were still hidden, so she crossed them the other way instead.

She hadn’t even heard Jeff return so as she swung her right leg over her left she connected fully with the poor guy’s upper thigh. His coffee-cup did a triple back somersault over his desk, trailing steaming milky coffee over everything in its path. The accompanying ‘Oof’ that sprang from Jeff’s mouth told her that the connection had not been a light one. She leapt to her feet, disentangling herself as she went.

‘Jeff, I am so sorry! Here, sit down, please.’

She manoeuvred Jeff into her chair, then reached over to place his tilted empty cup upright, as though it made any difference.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked, her attention zeroing in on the guy who held her financial stability in his hands. Hands which were currently stuffed between his legs.

‘Did I hurt you a great deal? What can I do to help?’

He took a few moments to gather his breath before he finally said, ‘When can you start?’

‘Start what?’ she asked, suddenly worried what she might be called upon to do to help.

‘The job. The gig. The show.’

‘I’m hired?’ Cara asked, her squeaky voice showcasing her scepticism.

‘That you are,’ Jeff promised, his breathing returning to normal.

‘Don’t you want to see my portfolio?’

‘No need. We’ve seen what you can do and you come highly recommended by those who’ve worked with you, including Maya Rampling of Fresh magazine, who seems to think you are, and I quote, “a gift from the heavens”, and whose help we will certainly need for marketing the show later on. And that’s enough for us.’

Cara spun about on the spot but had to right herself against the table when her dainty shoes threatened to give way beneath her.

‘So, are you ours for the having?’

‘I am all yours, Jeff. You can have me now.’

The young guy glanced up at her with the beginnings of a smile on his face. Cara snapped her mouth shut and waited for the perfectly reasonable response to her unfortunate phrasing, but instead his kind glance hit the floor once more. He shook his head.

‘Those are some shoes you’re wearing there, Ms Marlowe. And it pains me to imagine what they might have done to me had we not given you the job.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘ADAM TYLER, right?’ a husky voice called from behind Adam.

Adam turned to find the lovely lady he had met half an hour before. He blinked. It was a delaying tactic. It gave him a moment to size up the opposition or the problem before he spoke. But whereas before the woman was all elegant nerves, now she was all big smiles and gorgeous dimples. And those were qualities in a woman that he had never seen as a problem.

‘That’s right,’ he said, many years of practice masking everything but nonchalance in his laconic voice.

‘Well, now, you see I got the job.’ She gave him a little curtsy before continuing. ‘And I was told that you were the man I needed to see.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘To get the dirt on our man of the hour.’

He stood up straight, his hands clasped behind his back, and watched as she shifted from one foot to the other, all but dancing on those high red shoes of hers. Then all of a sudden she stopped fidgeting, piercing him with a stare so sharp he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even blink. He just stood there and waited for the acute green gaze to give him a reprieve.

‘Adam Tyler,’ she repeated, her bright eyes flashing as the unexpectedly sharp mind behind them whirred to life. ‘Head of Marketing for Revolution Wireless?’

He watched her carefully as the cogs and wheels clicked in her mind. Revolution Wireless. Billionaire. Chris. She would have the whole deal figured out in no time. So much for them recruiting ignoramuses.

It slammed into his mind that nobody was meant to know anything about Chris. That was the whole point, the beauty of the idea, that Chris would be an unknown, just a guy meeting a girl. But suddenly that was all disintegrating before him.

And disintegration was just what Adam wanted.

Her gaze drifted away from him as, like a good girl, she put two and two together. ‘Chris Geyer. The name was familiar but I couldn’t place it before. He’s one of your partners, right?’

He decided to keep his mouth shut. Maybe the fates had put her here just for him. Maybe he didn’t need to convince Chris. She could be the spanner in the works all on her own.

‘So it’s not a joke,’ she said. ‘The Billionaire Bachelor is not some hook to get a bunch of poor girls all excited only to have the fake Persian rug whipped out from under them. The Billionaire Bachelor is the real deal.’

Adam cringed on the inside. If that was to be the title of the show, Chris was dead meat.

But instead of venting his infuriation with internal screams behind closed eyes, Adam paid close attention to the woman before him, anticipating the inevitable moment when those eyes of hers would skitter back his way, lit all the brighter by the glitter of dollar signs. He braced himself, willing her to get it over with. Willing her to show herself as nothing special, as one of the countless many.

Her glance landed upon him, their eyes clashed, and he took in a short anticipatory breath as he looked for the sly smile that would no doubt touch at the corner of that luscious mouth. The tension inside him grew by the second as he waited for her to feed his disenchantment with womankind.

But the moment never came. Instead of a sly smile, there was a furrowed brow and what he guessed were teeth biting at her inner cheek. She wasn’t looking at him as the answer to all her hopes and dreams, she was looking at him as though she felt sorry for him. And where he had been prepared to be disenchanted, instead he was stunned.

She finally collected herself and smiled, but her expression was infinitesimally cooler than when she had first burst from the inner room, all coltish legs and curtsies.

‘So, anyway,’ she said, her tone pleasant but no longer perky, almost as though she preferred to pretend the past two minutes hadn’t existed. ‘I have been told that the TV station has an account at a lovely little bistro around the corner and I was hoping that I could take you there for lunch.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Adam said, gathering his wits after being befuddled by her strange response, ‘but I don’t think that’s in the rules of the game.’

Her confusion was evident. She took in a short breath as though ready to question his comment, before she obviously figured it out for herself, her eyes brightening again with the realisation.

‘Please! I am not a contestant! The last thing I want or need is some brazen, bawdy billionaire breathing down my neck. Funny, though. You’re the second man today to think that. What is it about me that screams bikinis and hot tubs, I wonder?’ She said it more to herself than to him, but he still took a brief moment to consider the image.

Her conservative outfit did little to hide the long, lean curves and those unbelievable red shoes did things to her legs and her posture that made his mind turn easily to bikinis and hot tubs.

She moved over to the couch and sat down, patting the seat beside her, beckoning him to join her.

If she wasn’t a possible love interest for Chris, then who was she? His interest stirred, he did as he was told, sidling over and sitting beside her, one leg hooking up to cross on top of the other and his arms reaching out to lie across the back of the long leather couch.

‘I should have done this better,’ she said, holding out a slim ringless hand. ‘I’m Cara Marlowe.’

He shook her hand, taking a moment to enjoy the crisp, cool contact. But he waited for her to talk. He found that another good tactic. Most people could not leave silence well alone and they were more likely to fill it with interesting information than if they were questioned directly.

‘I am going to be Chris’s stylist for the duration of the shoot. It will be my job to dress him.’

‘Dress him?’

‘Choose his outfits,’ she explained. She then reached out and touched his knee, her voice affecting the tones of a New York gossip show host. ‘Honey, if I had to actually dress the guy, I’d be asking for a lot more money!’

Adam glanced at her slim hand resting on his knee. It felt nice until it recoiled as though scorched, then moved to slap across her unruly mouth.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m a tad overexcited right now. First I get the job of a lifetime and then I meet a real live Australian Businessman of the Year. I would love to talk to you about that some time. Sorry. There I go again. Taking liberties with a practical stranger. My tongue tends to have a mind of its own when my adrenalin is off and running.’

He gave her a slight nod, though he was again quietly stunned. She knew about his award too? And she was obviously a heck of a lot more impressed with that than with his bank balance. In Adam’s long experience with women, this one was proving to be more unusual with every word that came from her lovely mouth.

She was an enigma wrapped in a very enticing dress. A girl with a good head on her shoulders, and a seriously charming face to boot. A woman with such a sexy, husky kick to her voice it could lure sailors to dash their ships upon mountains of rock, whose words spoke, not of the expected sly seduction, but of exuberant enthusiasm for her job.

No matter whom Chris was destined to date on the show, it seemed he would have at least one socially aware woman on set with whom to shoot the breeze. Struck curiously dumb by the thought, Adam once more decided it best to let her do the talking.

And she did.

‘So, since they will have your friend Chris tied up for the next couple of hours, let’s get out of here and have a natter.’

Even despite becoming lost in those expressive eyes, he somehow managed to pick out the pertinent information. A couple of hours until he saw Chris again? If he had to sit in the dull room for a second longer he would explode even if he was in the company of such an engaging woman.

Secondly, Adam knew when a golden opportunity landed in his lap. He couldn’t hide the smile that began to warm him from the inside out. She was to be Chris’s stylist. Thoughts of Chris in bizarre golfing outfits or excessive amounts of tartan wove their way through his devious mind. If he couldn’t convince Chris he was doing the wrong thing, here was the perfect opportunity to interrupt the process from an entirely unrelated angle.

‘It seems that you and I are destined to have a lunch date.’

‘Excellent,’ she said.

Adam stood, holding out an elbow in invitation. ‘Well, then, Ms Marlowe, shall we?’

‘Only if you call me Cara,’ she said, standing, placing a hand lightly in the crook of his offered arm. Her beguiling smile giving him a third reason to accept the lunch offer with increasing pleasure.

Cara watched Adam from the corner of her eye as she perused the large menu in the lovely little bistro around the corner.

I am having lunch with Adam Tyler, she thought, knowing she would rather be picking his brains about his business practices than about his friend.

As a connoisseur of stories about locals made good, she knew the highlights of his career as reported inside and outside of the business pages. Inside were tales of a marketing guru, part-owner of the fastest growing company in Australia. Awards and plaudits followed in his wake like tin cans clattering along behind a wedding car. Outside the business pages he was more well known for being a playboy-billionaire type, not quite hip enough to make it onto the cover of any of the supermarket gossip magazines, but certainly fascinating enough to grace their social pages time and again.

No wonder too. In the flesh he was pretty darned gorgeous. He oozed manliness, from the woodsy scent of his aftershave, to the easy way he wore his suits. From the practised nonchalance of every effortless movement, to the fact that that very nonchalance could not cover up the fact that his mind did not miss a beat behind those fierce, hooded eyes. Beneath the cool exterior beat the pulse of a brilliant, shrewd, powerful man to whom success on every front would have come all too easily.

And all she’d been able to do was go goo-goo and paw him and talk about bikinis and hot tubs. It was not exactly the impression she would have hoped to make on someone whose business acumen she greatly admired.

She found him looking her way, his eyes faintly questioning, and she knew she had been caught staring. She shot him a big cheesy grin, then went back to flicking through the menu.

The last thing she wanted was to be turning all gooey over some guy with money. And a billionaire? That was entirely out of the question. Money meant power. Money meant control. And Cara was not about to give any of her hard-earned power and control away.

Especially to one who, above and beyond the whole gorgeous, blue-eyed, strapping, silent man thing, was so obviously involved in The Billionaire Bachelor project against his will. He was trouble in a three-piece suit. No doubt about it.

‘You made up your mind?’ Adam asked.

‘You bet I have,’ she said, her voice deep with determination.

Then after a few seconds of ensuing silence she looked up to find the waiter smiling blandly at her. She quickly picked the first thing that came into focus to cover up the fact that she’d had no idea Adam had been asking about the meal.

‘So how does this all work?’ Adam asked once they had settled and begun their starters.

Cara opened her mouth to answer but then Jeff’s smiling face popped into her mind. ‘Tell a soul a thing and you will be out on your backside,’ he had said. ‘Great recommendations or not.’

‘Sorry,’ Cara said, ‘I’m not sure what I can really tell you. My contract has confidentiality clauses up the wazoo.’

‘You’ve already given away the title of the show.’

Her hands flew to cover her warming cheeks. ‘Oh, heavens, I have, haven’t I? I’m going to blow this before it even starts. You have permission to stuff a napkin in my mouth if I let it run away from me again.’

‘Thank you,’ Adam said, ‘that’s always worth knowing.’ He eyed her warily over his herb bread. ‘Anyway, I don’t mean about the show itself. I know more than I would like to about all that. I was wondering about specifics. For example, will Chris be at work tomorrow?’

‘Well, I guess I can tell you that it will take about two weeks. By tomorrow morning at the latest, all of those involved will be sequestered in the Ivy Hotel in the city. And nobody will be able to come and go unless authorised by the producers.’

She watched for Adam’s reaction to this news. When Jeff had told her she had all but freaked out, her mind running over with everything she would have to do that night to get her regular life up to date before she disappeared from the face of the earth. But this guy merely nodded and blinked and she had no idea if he was happy or sad or freaking out behind those dark blue eyes.

‘Why will you be sequestered, do you think?’ he asked.

‘To keep any of us from blabbing to the press.’

‘About what?’

‘The juicy details. The name of the show…’

Adam smiled and it was all Cara could do to go on, the charming appeal it brought to his strong face was so unexpected.

‘The star of the show,’ she continued. ‘The fact there even is a show. When word gets out, the producers want to control the spin. I’ve worked in the fashion biz for a number of years now and what it boils down to is the fact that sex sells. Television is sexy. Secrets are sexy. There is nothing sexier to eighteen-to-thirty-five-year-old women than a man so in tune with himself that he is openly looking for love. And the producers of the show want to reap the benefits.’

She finished her statement with a deep intake of breath. Now she was certain of it. The way he was watching her, weighing her words so carefully—this guy had ulterior motive written all over him. He smiled easily enough, and his body language certainly showed that he was open to anything she had to offer. Any conversation topic, she thought, giving herself a mental slap. But if for some reason he wanted this all to go away, she was pretty sure he would have his way. And it made her so nervous her chest hurt.

It sure didn’t help her nerves that he continued to be just as unreservedly attractive as he was when she first laid eyes on him. It would have been more helpful for her jitters if he slouched, or fixed his hair an inordinate number of times, or if he professed a predilection for polka music.

She took a sip of water to stem the urge to babble and her mind whizzed back, hoping desperately she had not said anything idiotic or anything she shouldn’t have. She was pretty sure she had done well. ‘That’s all I’m prepared to tell,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

He shrugged. A movement so slight she didn’t know if he’d really shrugged at all or if she’d just caught his essential indifference.

‘OK, then, back to the reason why we’re here,’ Cara said, deciding it was about time she took control of the conversation if she was to get anything useful out of him. ‘Tell me about Chris.’

‘What would you like to know?’ Adam asked.

‘What does he look like, for starters?’ Though Adam was recognisable to her, she could not have picked the other owners of Revolution Wireless out of a line-up if her job depended on it.

Adam blinked. She had already pegged the fact that he did that when he was biding his time. Cara bit her bottom lip. Time-biding was not on her list of most favourite things.

‘Does he look anything like you, for instance?’

‘In some ways, yes. In other ways not at all.’

‘I see,’ she said. ‘And what does he do for fun?’

This time the blink was different. It was loaded with thought. But she knew not what about.

‘He creates telecommunications innovations,’ Adam finally said.

Her lip-biting increased to a calorie-burning rate.

‘OK. So how do you two know each other? Just from work? What rings his bells? What sort of woman do you think he is trying to land?’

Give me anything, please!

‘We know each other from school.’

She waited for more but…nothing came.

‘Fantastic,’ she said, her patience finally running down. Sure, she had the job, but the last thing she needed was for it to work out so badly that she never worked again. Even with a mortgage paid off, a girl had city council rates and amenities to keep her working ad infinitum. And this guy had nothing to offer her but a bit of a crush.

‘Well, that’s all I needed,’ she said, refolding her napkin and making ready to leave. ‘Now I know he looks exactly yet nothing like you, he invents stuff for a living and he once went to school, I’m all set. With those specifics in mind I can now make sure he doesn’t look like a complete dud for the millions of people who will watch him eagle-eyed every week.’

‘Wait,’ Adam said, his hand landing atop hers.

Cara let out a nervous breath, seriously glad her bluff had worked. She sat down slowly and shot him her best blasé expression, but she knew already she was up against a professional in that department.

This time she waited for him to talk. If she was sitting with the best she might as well learn from him. And after a few seconds of duelling silence she realised that his hand was still atop hers.

Her gaze flittered down. His hand captured her attention once again. It was big and broad and tanned, especially lying on top of her own, which was small and pale. As she stared the silence changed. It became thick and noisy with unuttered complications.

Slowly she slipped her hand away and he didn’t stop her. She bit her lip to bring herself back to the present, then looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Adam, please tell me about your friend so I can make this as easy for him as I can.’

Adam had been ready to convince the girl to have Chris decked out with spats and a walking stick if that was what it would take to have his friend give up the game. But with her looking at him like that, beseeching, pleading, he found himself wilting. He told himself it was only because she made a good point.

It was in her power to make Chris look like an idiot. And when she had asked what Chris did for fun, Adam had baulked because he knew that Chris did nothing. Chris had worked tirelessly for years to achieve their joint goal, and now he was simply asking for some ‘him’ time. Didn’t he deserve at least that much?

‘So you really don’t know what he looks like?’ Adam asked.

She shook her head, slowly, as though if she went any faster he would not be able to keep up. ‘Nope. Not a bit. I have no idea if he’s old, young, thin, fat, balding or has a glorious head of hair.’

It was fair enough that she didn’t. Come to think of it, he was the only one who seemed to end up in any of those other types of magazines, the ones that the guys at work liked to snip out and stick on the corkboard in the kitchenette.

Cara blinked at him, her lashes sweeping down onto her cheeks in a look that spoke of pure and simple time-biding. And it took him a second to recover. He had to remind himself of the good-head-behind-the-pretty-face theory he had stumbled onto earlier.

Adam shifted in his seat, unused to being on the receiving end of his own tricks. This woman was a quick learner and he knew then and there he would have to stay on his toes. If this was to go smoothly for Chris, and thus work out to Revolution Wireless’s best advantage, he would have to keep a close eye on this one.

‘OK, then,’ Adam began, ‘first things first, Chris ain’t anywhere near brazen, so wipe that idea out right now. Picture a man…’

Cara leant forward, resting her chin on the heel of her palms as the guy across the table gave a rundown of the life and times of Chris Geyer. Stories of childhood antics, of bad dates, of a love of education, of a twenty-year friendship ran thick and fast. Cara listened with half an ear, smiling in all the right places, building up the idea of a friendly teddy-bear type whom she was more and more looking forward to meeting.

But the other half of her mind was focussed on the man telling the story. All efforts at nonchalance put aside, he became a charismatic, vibrant story-teller. Her nerves dissolved with every captivating word and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

She could tell that he usually hid behind his laconic attitude so that he could measure the world without it measuring him. But behind the attitude lurked the guy who ran one of the most successful marketing campaigns the country had ever seen. This was the guy who could sell cookies to Girl Guides, he was just that compelling.

As she often did when she met new people, Cara pictured how she would light him. If ever, one day, she had the chance to do so, it would be all about shadows, taking advantage of those fantastic cheekbones and that straight nose. She would brush his hair back a tad further, knowing that he would only curl up more inside himself and make himself that much more intriguing. The carefully constructed remoteness, the seriously attractive mystery, the gorgeous depths of those navy-blue eyes…

‘Don’t you need to take any notes?’ Adam asked, his hands stopping mid-demonstration of how a mobile phone was built.

Cara snapped back to the present with such a jolt, her elbow slipped off the table and she had to catch herself before her chin followed in its wake.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, lifting from his seat, reaching for her, his expression bright with surprise.

Bad. Bad Cara. What on earth had she been doing, daydreaming like that? Her attention had become wrapped in the words of some strapping stranger when her focus for the next two weeks should be blissfully caught up in the ins and outs of the most challenging and significant job of her life.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘And no as well. I don’t need to take notes. Really.’ She jabbed furiously at her temple. ‘All stored up here.’

‘So are you a Cary Grant fan?’ he asked as he poured her a glass of wine.

Cara fought to remember a single word of his conversation and came up blank. ‘A who…what?’

Adam’s eyes narrowed. ‘Cary Grant. Chris’s favourite actor? He’s in The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday…’

Cara shook her head hard to clear out the soft and fuzzies that had gathered therein. ‘Sure. Of course. I love Cary Grant. I think he’s marvellous. I can even do an impression if you’d like.’

‘No need. Really.’

She fully deserved Adam’s bemused smile.

‘So to recap, Chris is a great guy who loves Cary Grant, collects bells—’

‘Shells,’ Adam corrected, pouring himself a glass of wine.

‘Shells,’ she said without missing a beat. ‘And shells…sells telephones for a living.’

Adam nodded slowly. ‘In a nutshell, yes. And he deserves a toast, don’t you think, for being the one to bring us together for this lovely lunch?’

‘Who?’ Cara asked, the soft and fuzzies winning hands down. ‘Cary Grant?’

Adam laughed, his head shaking, his eyes bright with amused confusion. ‘Why the heck not?’ He lifted his glass. ‘To Cary Grant.’

Cara had had enough. Another second of this conversation and she would probably forget her own name. She stood, dropped her napkin to the arm of her chair and then didn’t know where to put her hands. ‘You’ve been a fantastic help, but it’s time for me to be…elsewhere. Thanks for lunch. And I guess I’ll…see you ’round like a rissole!’

Before she could plant her foot deeper in her mouth Cara took off. She weaved through the tightly packed restaurant tables with her mind on the task ahead. Get to the television station. Meet Chris. Do the best job she could. Keep said job. Take home pay. Own St Kilda Storeys. So long as she kept that mantra going through her head, she was unstoppable. Surely?

Adam Tyler and his dreamy, distracting blue eyes did not come into the mantra once, so the bigger the distance between the two of them, the better.

Adam remained seated, debating internally whether it was better to watch her walk away, her lithe hips swinging as she mastered her outrageous shoes, or to watch her from front on, her lovely face so animated, her hands forever moving with nervous energy, and that huge flower bouncing about atop her head.

He dragged his interest away with some regret.

So, it looked as though Chris was going to be The Billionaire Bachelor. He cringed again. But that would have to be the last time. He had no choice. He was going to have to join bloody Chris on the set for the next two bloody weeks and act as babysitter to his bloody best friend.

‘Sex sells,’ Cara had said. He knew she was spot on. And if that feisty employee was anything to go by, he had the unsettling but mounting feeling that this show was going to produce fireworks…and that it would be in Revolution Wireless’s interest to be seen to be lighting the match.

CHAPTER THREE

CARA went home to St Kilda Storeys, her beloved apartment building that would very soon be truly hers. There was a note from Gracie on her apartment door. She took the steps, two at a time, to Gracie’s top-floor apartment and knocked.

Cara heard scuffling and snuffling as Minky got to the door first. Gracie was looking after the fluffy, almost-white, Maltese Terrier while their fellow Saturday Night Cocktails gang member Kelly and her husband Simon were out of town visiting friends in Fremantle.

Gracie finally opened the door with a wriggling Minky in her arms. ‘Well?’ she said.

‘I got the job.’

Cara was lost in hugs from Gracie, and tiny lapping kisses from Minky.

‘I knew it!’ Gracie said. ‘Or at least I wished and hoped super hard!’

Gracie grabbed Cara and steered her toward the small old couch that took up half of the tiny lounge. ‘I have ten minutes before I have to be at work. So tell me all about…everything.’

‘I can’t, actually. It’s all seriously under wraps.’

‘Even to me?’

‘Especially to you.’

Gracie had the good grace to nod. ‘Good plan. I can’t keep a secret to save my life. Keep it to yourself. So tell me something else. Who did you meet? Anybody famous? How about that guy who hosts the movie review programme? He’s a bit of a hottie.’

‘Wrong channel.’

‘Oh, yeah, right. Anyone else I can brag about?’

‘Umm, not really. Though you’ll be pleased to know that I did have an interesting lunch with this one guy…’

Cara went on to fill Gracie in on the important points of her lunch date—no names mentioned, of course: the ominous stare, the powerful grace, the serious good looks worthy of a menswear catalogue.

‘Armani or Target?’ Gracie asked, using their usual scale.

‘Armani, without a doubt.’

Gracie nodded in pleasant surprise. But either way the truth about this guy was immaterial. Cara was going to be holed up in a hotel for the next two weeks with way too much else to occupy her to care.

Adam went back to work.

Dean, the third partner in the Revolution Wireless giant, was pacing behind his desk. Where Chris was the ideas guy, and Adam was the salesman, Dean looked after the day-to-day blood, sweat and tears side of the operation, and it showed. His tie was long gone and his shirt sleeves were rolled up, his hands flying about him as he yabbered away into a telephone head set.

Adam took a seat at the desk and waited for the one-sided staccato conversation to finish.

‘Adam, my man,’ Dean said, giving his friend a hearty handshake, before resuming his pacing. ‘What’s up?’

‘It’s about Chris.’

‘And this dating show deal?’

Adam nodded.

Dean flapped a dismissive hand across his face. ‘Let him be.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Sure. It’s been over a year since he last took a holiday, so think of it that way if it helps.’

‘It doesn’t help. I have worked my backside off to sell Revolution Wireless as a serious company, as serious competition against the giants who have cornered the market for years, and just as we’ve made the leap Chris is about to go and make us all look like amateurs.’

‘Not amateurs,’ Dean said, eyeing Adam down. ‘Human. And human ain’t such a bad angle to give a company this size, if you ask me.’

Adam blinked and Dean cocked an eyebrow at the move.

‘So you back him on this?’ Adam asked.

‘A hundred per cent. I think he’s a brave, brave fellow. He’s putting it all out there and that takes guts. And I don’t see why Revolution Wireless should suffer for showing that one of our leading lights has guts to spare.’

Adam let the idea wash over him. He was being shot down from all angles and he knew it would not do anybody any good if he fought against such diminishing odds.

‘OK, then. If that’s your decision, I want us to sponsor the show.’

Dean stopped his pacing at once. He ran a hand through his sandy hair, though it fell back into the same shambles instantly. ‘You want us to sponsor the show?’

‘Well, it certainly looks like I can’t stop the show, so why not make the most of it? Why not take advantage of the fact that it will be a significantly supported prime-time television event with the opportunity for intensive branding that is set to rake in viewing numbers like none other has done before?’

And that way he could wangle his way onto the set, insist that he be able to stay in the hotel with the cast and crew, because only then could he keep an eye on Chris. Make sure his magnanimous friend did not lose his heart and along with it his wallet to some conniving, manipulative schemer. Because for the life of him he could not see how the whole episode could end any other way.

Dean’s smile dawned slowly. ‘Sure, why not? You’re the marketing guru, my friend, so if you think it will float, you have my vote.’

Adam nodded. Decision made. ‘So will you be OK with the two of us AWOL for the next couple of weeks?’

‘Of course. So long as you’re on the other end of the phone. I mean, if we couldn’t run our business by mobile phone and email we would be in a heap of trouble!’

Adam could not help but smile. ‘Too true.’

Three of Dean’s phone lines lit up almost simultaneously.

Adam stood. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

Dean nodded, and his pacing resumed. He gave Adam a brief wave as he left the room.

Cara had her assistant offload the couple of jobs she had pencilled in for the next fortnight. But she called her main client, Maya Rampling, the editor of Fresh magazine, herself.

‘Cara, darling! I hear congratulations are in order!’

‘Maya, you are the darling. I know you’re half the reason I got this job. Even though it means I have had to pass the styling of your lingerie shoot onto a colleague.’

‘I will miss your light touch, Cara, but don’t give it another thought. This job was simply made for you.’

‘Did they call you or did you call them?’

‘Darling, they would be afraid for me to find out anything after everyone else. Just take this one piece of advice. Watch your back. TV jobs are notoriously precarious. Half the crew will be turned around by the end of the shoot. It’s like the big boys are so scared of losing their jobs themselves, they have to keep everyone else on their toes.’

‘OK…’ Cara felt the brick in her chest grow a kilogram heavier.

‘So be good. Keep your head down. Don’t cause trouble. Do your job with a minimum of fuss and you’ll be fine. Above all have fun, and I’ll see you soon.’

Then Maya hung up.

Have fun? Cara thought. With those last pieces of advice hanging over her she would be afraid to smile at the wrong person in case she did the wrong thing. No. She would keep her head down and do her job. She would keep her job and she would pay off her mortgage. Her mantra well and truly re-established, she felt ready again.

She showered, changed into cut-off denim jeans, a white collared T-shirt and white flat Mary-Janes, closed her suitcase, checked all the electrics at home were shut off, and then left.

A big black limousine awaited her at the front door. She wound down the window so she could have a good look at her old red stucco building. A smattering of coloured perennials swayed lightly in the front garden. Lights shone from most of the windows. Music spilled from a second-floor apartment. The next time she would see it, she would own it outright.

The car took off, its engine humming softly. They drove past girls in G-string bikinis parading the beach. Boys lined the walkways, acting as though they were simply pausing to check out the ships in the distance, but the girls in the G-string bikinis knew better.

It drove Cara to wonder about the mysterious Chris Geyer, putting himself on the line for love. She wondered what it would take for someone to go to that sort of length to find themselves a partner.

She, who had never considered going on a dating show, had never looked up an internet dating agency, had only gone to nightclubs for the dancing with her friends, simply could not see herself in his shoes. When it came down to it she knew she was actually spending a good deal of time not looking to find herself a partner.

Still, no matter what Chris’s reasons were, they had afforded her the opportunity of a lifetime and for that she would be for ever indebted to his romantic nature. So long as the anti-romantic nature of his friend did not turn the idea sour.

As the big car turned towards the city, Cara sank back into the soft seat feeling as if the rest of her life were waiting around the next corner.

‘It’s a done deal,’ Adam said as he shook hands with Jeff of the unironed clothes and the too much hair gel. ‘Revolution Wireless will be the main sponsor of this series of The Billionaire Bachelor and as such I will be allowed access to all areas of the set.’

‘So long as you stay at the hotel,’ Jeff qualified, ‘and are bound by the same rules as the rest of us for the next two weeks, that’s fine.’

Adam shot the younger man a wry smile. ‘Of course. That went without saying.’

‘Yet I said it anyway,’ Jeff said, returning the smile. ‘So if you can be at the hotel by eight o’clock tonight we will have a room for you—’

‘On the same floor as Chris.’

‘You will have the suite next door,’ Jeff agreed. ‘So here is a copy of the schedule, a timetable of the events that will occur within the confines of the show.’

Adam flicked through the document, which had no header and no front page. If anyone on the street found it they would think it a terribly dull, unimportant business memo, not the breakdown of the best-kept secret in Australian television.

‘The Billionaire Bachelor is going to be huge,’ Jeff promised. ‘You won’t regret this.’

No matter that Adam was now officially one of the gang, all the connotations implied by that title still made him fume. Chris sure needed him if he was going to come through this ordeal unscathed. And if Adam had anything to do with it, his friend would come out of this a billionaire and a bachelor still.

The front doors of the Ivy Hotel were guarded with big burly bouncers and a metal detector. They scanned the bar-code on Cara’s pass and let her through the doors. Once inside, a whole other set of security guards searched her luggage for recording equipment and found only a Polaroid camera, which was listed against her name as an allowable item. The place was really locked down tight. And she was being let through to the inner sanctum. Her whole body hummed with excitement and she hoped it had nothing to do with the metal detectors.

And then her suitcase began to ring.

The security guard, whose nametag read “Joe Buck, licence number 2483”, had been about to pass over her case and let her through. But at the ringing he tightened his grip. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Marlowe, but mobile phones are not allowed as per your contract.’

They had a brief game of tug of war before Cara let go. ‘But I didn’t bring my phone,’ she said, sure she had left it at home on her ironing-board.

Her case stopped ringing.

They looked at each other for a moment, both kind of hoping the other would agree that maybe they had imagined it.

‘OK, then, Ms Marlowe,’ Joe the security guard said. He handed the suitcase over again before the ringing resumed. ‘Ms Marlowe, I’m terribly sorry, but—’

Cara felt herself blushing to her toes. ‘I know. I know. I’m sorry. Just give me a second. I really do not remember packing it.’

With Maya’s words—keep your head down, don’t cause trouble, minimum of fuss—ringing in her head, she wanted to get this spectacle over with as quickly as possible. She lobbed her suitcase onto the ground, bent from the waist, unzipped the case, peeked around her neatly folded clothes and found…nothing.

A distinctive murmur invaded her ears. She glanced between her knees and saw a line had formed behind her. What a fantastic first impression she was making on her new colleagues: bum in the air, being searched for contraband.

The ringing stopped. She shook her case and the ringing began all over again. Not having any luck with checking under her clothes with care, she began to scoop them out in a flurry, hanging them messily over her shoulder. Her just-washed hair kept hanging in her eyes and she had to constantly blow it out of her face. Added to that she was getting hot from the unusual lifting movements that felt agonisingly like exercise. She was in first-day-on-the-job hell.

‘Is everything all right here?’

At the sound of the familiar deep voice, Cara stood up so fast the blood took longer than necessary to reach her head. She held out a hand to steady herself as the world turned fuzzy and black. Since Adam Tyler was the closest pillar to hand, he had to do.

Her vision slowly cleared. She looked into her nemesis’s dark blue eyes and bit back a self-effacing groan. He would hardly want to talk seriously about his time as Australian Businessman of the Year with a woman who could barely put one foot in front of the other without something going awry.

It just wasn’t fair that she had to be at her most klutzy around someone so smooth. Her last words to him had been ‘see you ‘round like a rissole,’ for goodness’ sake! Who said that bar eight-year-olds and grown-ups with limited sophistication?

It only made him all the more intimidating and she did not stand for feeling that way with anyone. She was talented. She was sought after. She was focussed. She was ambitious. She was self-made. She was leaning against him, her hand splayed across his unexpectedly sculpted chest, with half her clothes strewn over her shoulder and a pair of plain white cotton panties hanging from her finger.

She whipped her hand away and tucked it behind her, shaking madly until the underwear plopped back into her suitcase.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, reaching out to take her by the shoulder as though he was afraid she might collapse atop his shiny shoes.

Finding herself flummoxed, she pulled away, crouched down and began to pile her clothes back into her suitcase.

‘Low blood pressure,’ she said, frantically shoving her entire collection of cotton pants that had managed to make their way out of her suitcase back into her suitcase. ‘Stood up too fast. Should have known better. Gives me blackouts.’

‘Ah, Ms Marlowe,’ Joe the security guard cut in. ‘Your mobile phone?’

She threw the rest of her clothes atop the suitcase and stepped away. ‘You look for it. Please. Be my guest.’

The guard looked to Adam as though hoping perhaps he would prefer to rifle through her intimates instead. Adam backed behind Cara. But then the ringing sound returned and the guard took a deep breath and went searching.

As Cara watched in mortified silence, it finally occurred to her that she was once again in the vicinity of the man she had been looking forward to never seeing again.

‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she asked under her breath.

‘You’re the one who needed the leaning post,’ he said from right behind her.

‘Not here. But here, in the hotel.’

At that moment Joe the security guard came up with something jingling in his hand. It was not a mobile phone. It was a card. It had a huge ‘CONGRATULATIONS!’ scrawled across the front. And when the guard opened it the card played a very good imitation of a mobile phone ring tone.

Cara, Adam, and a good number of those in line craned over the guard’s shoulder for a closer look, to find the long gushy note Gracie had written and hidden in her case before Cara had left.

Every one of the big burly men turned to Cara with mushy looks on their faces. Cara just tapped her foot and held out a hand. Blushing, Joe handed over her private mail.

‘I am terribly sorry, Ms Marlowe.’

‘That’s OK, Joe,’ she said, swallowing down her indignation and embarrassment. There was no reason to make him feel bad. He hadn’t done anything wrong, though Gracie would receive a tongue-lashing along with a hug for this particular stunt. Cara gave the guard a pat on the back and smiled until she sensed him relaxing. ‘You were doing your job. And with impressive thoroughness. You are a credit to your post.’

Joe blushed and scuffed his toe on the carpet.

‘Can I have my case now?’ Cara asked.

‘Sure. Of course.’ Joe returned to his packing with extra special care.

Cara cleared her throat. ‘Thanks, Joe, but I can look after it from here.’

Joe stood up, his blush growing by the second. While he went back to checking the bags of the growing line of guests, Cara continued to repack her case. But of course she could no longer get it closed. She looked about her for help. Joe was going through Adam’s bag and naturally everything seemed to be going swimmingly for him.

Adam glanced her way. She bit back her pride and waved him over. ‘If I sit, can you zip?’

A knowing smile lifted his mouth and she wanted nothing more than to slap it away. ‘Of course,’ he said.

She sat, having to lift her legs when he rounded the front, so that he could duck beneath them. Would there never be an end to her humiliation when he was about?

‘Come on, say it,’ she insisted.

‘What?’

‘Whatever it is you’re thinking.’ Some smartypants comment about my backside, or falling into your arms, or about my white cotton underwear.

‘I was thinking you handled Joe’s embarrassment brilliantly. You are one very nice lady, Ms Marlowe.’

‘Oh.’

Adam tugged the zip through the last few centimetres. Taking a hold of her ankles, he pulled her feet back to the ground. ‘There. All done.’

He kept a hold of her bare ankles for several long moments before releasing his grip with a final soft pat. Cara had to swallow to wet her suddenly parched throat.

‘Adam, you never did say what you were doing here?’

‘Not surprisingly, considering the floor show was a heck of a lot more interesting than anything I had to say.’

Cara felt a growl growing in her chest but Adam got there first.

‘Revolution Wireless is sponsoring the show.’

Now that statement deserved a hesitant blink.

‘Wow. That’s some turn-round. At lunch I could have sworn you thought the show the most ludicrous idea you had ever come across.’

‘I did. And I still do. But, nevertheless, people who know more about these sorts of things than I do tell me that it will be the biggest thing on television bar the Aussie Rules Grand Final. So I am here as Revolution Wireless’s representative.’

‘For the whole two weeks?’ Cara asked, trying to rein in her hysterical voice.

He nodded.

‘Mr Tyler,’ the security guard called out. ‘Mobile phone, laptop, printer, all on the list. You’re right to go through.’

Adam watched her for a few moments longer before standing and returning to his bags without another word.

Seeing her chance to retire as gracefully as possible, Cara stood, and dragged her suitcase to the lift as quickly as she could.

Adam watched her walk away.

The woman was good entertainment value if nothing else. He watched her shuffle from one foot to the other as though the floor were covered in hot coals, and then as the lift doors slowly opened she bolted like a cat with her tail on fire.

Joe the security guard cleared Adam to go on through into the hotel proper. Adam sauntered to the lift recalling what a cute tail it was, squeezed into pale denim cut-offs that had been washed so many times they fit her like second skin. Though she was a slim woman, she certainly curved just where she ought. He had been well aware of that when walking up to the front door of the hotel and seeing those very curves wiggling so engagingly at him.

The moment he had realised just whose curves they were, he had instantly jumped in to help. Or, if he was honest with himself, he had instantly leapt to shield her considerable temptations from appreciative eyes other than his own.

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