About the Authors

KANDY SHEPHERD swapped a career as a magazine editor for a life writing romance. She lives on a small farm in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, with her husband, daughter and lots of pets. She believes in love at first sight and real-life romance—they worked for her! Kandy loves to hear from her readers. Visit her at kandyshepherd.com.

ALISON ROBERTS is a New Zealander, currently lucky enough to live near a beautiful beach in Auckland. She is also lucky enough to write for both the Mills & Boon Romance and Medical Romance lines. A primary schoolteacher in a former life, she is also a qualified paramedic. She loves to travel and dance, drink champagne and spend time with her daughter and her friends.

Reading and writing have always been a big part of BARBARA HANNAY’s life. She wrote her first short story at the age of eight for the Brownies’ writer’s badge. It was about a girl who was devastated when her family had to move from the city to the Australian Outback.

Since then, a love of both city and country lifestyles has been a continuing theme in Barbara’s books and in her life. Although she has mostly lived in cities, now that her family has grown up and she’s a full-time writer she’s enjoying a country lifestyle. Barbara records her country life in her blog, Barbwired, and her website is: www.barbarahannay.com.

One Winter’s Sunrise

Gift-Wrapped in Her Wedding Dress

Kandy Shepherd

The Baby Who Saved Christmas

Alison Roberts

A Very Special Holiday Gift

Barbara Hannay

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08542-7

ONE WINTER’S SUNRISE

Gift-Wrapped in Her Wedding Dress © 2015 Kandy Shepherd The Baby Who Saved Christmas © 2015 Alison Roberts A Very Special Holiday Gift © 2014 Barbara Hannay

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Title Page

Copyright

Gift-Wrapped in Her Wedding Dress

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

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Baby Who Saved Christmas

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

A Very Special Holiday Gift

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Gift-Wrapped in Her Wedding Dress

Kandy Shepherd

To all my Christmas magazine colleagues, in

particular Helen, Adriana and Jane—

the magic of the season lives on!

CHAPTER ONE

SO HE’D GOT on the wrong side of the media. Again. Dominic’s words, twisted out of all recognition, were all over newspapers, television and social media.

Billionaire businessman Dominic Hunt refuses to sleep out with other CEOs in charity event for homeless.

Dominic slammed his fist on his desk so hard the pain juddered all the way up his arm. He hadn’t refused to support the charity in their Christmas appeal, just refused the invitation to publicly bed down for the night in a cardboard box on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House. His donation to the worthy cause had been significant—but anonymous. Why wasn’t that enough?

He buried his head in his hands. For a harrowing time in his life there had been no choice for him but to sleep rough for real, a cardboard box his only bed. He couldn’t go there again—not even for a charity stunt, no matter how worthy. There could be no explanation—he would not share the secrets of his past. Ever.

With a sick feeling of dread he continued to read onscreen the highlights of the recent flurry of negative press about him and his company, thoughtfully compiled in a report by his Director of Marketing.

Predictably, the reporters had then gone on to rehash his well-known aversion to Christmas. Again he’d been misquoted. It was true he loathed the whole idea of celebrating Christmas. But not for the reasons the media had so fancifully contrived. Not because he was a Scrooge. How he hated that label and the erroneous aspersions that he didn’t ever give to charity. Despaired that he was included in a round-up of Australia’s Multi-Million-Dollar Misers. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

He strongly believed that giving money to worthy causes should be conducted in private—not for public acclaim. But this time he couldn’t ignore the name-calling and innuendo. He was near to closing a game-changing deal on a joint venture with a family-owned American corporation run by a man with a strict moral code that included obvious displays of philanthropy.

Dominic could not be seen to be a Scrooge. He had to publicly prove that he was not a miser. But he did not want to reveal the extent of his charitable support because to do so would blow away the smokescreen he had carefully constructed over his past.

He’d been in a bind. Until his marketing director had suggested he would attract positive press if he opened his harbourside home for a lavish fund-raising event for charity. ‘Get your name in the newspaper for the right reasons,’ he had been advised.

Dominic hated the idea of his privacy being invaded but he had reluctantly agreed. He wanted the joint venture to happen. If a party was what it took, he was prepared to put his qualms aside and commit to it.

The party would be too big an event for it to be organised in-house. His marketing people had got outside companies involved. Trouble was the three so-called ‘party planners’ he’d been sent so far had been incompetent and he’d shown them the door within minutes of meeting. Now there was a fourth. He glanced down at the eye-catching card on the desk in front of him. Andrea Newman from a company called Party Queens—No party too big or too small the card boasted.

Party Queens. It was an interesting choice for a business name. Not nearly as stitched up as the other companies that had pitched for this business. But did it have the gravitas required? After all, this event could be the deciding factor in a deal that would extend his business interests internationally.

He glanced at his watch. This morning he was working from his home office. Ms Newman was due to meet with him right now, here at his house where the party was to take place. Despite the attention-grabbing name of the business, he had no reason to expect Party Planner Number Four to be any more impressive than the other three he’d sent packing. But he would give her twenty minutes—that was only fair and he made a point of always being fair.

On cue, the doorbell rang. Punctuality, at least, was a point in Andrea Newman’s favour. He headed down the wide marble stairs to the front door.

His first impression of the woman who stood on his porch was that she was attractive, not in a conventionally pretty way but something rather more interesting—an angular face framed by a tangle of streaked blonde hair, a wide generous mouth, unusual green eyes. So attractive he found himself looking at her for a moment longer than was required to sum up a possible contractor. And the almost imperceptible curve of her mouth let him know she’d noticed.

‘Good morning, Mr Hunt—Andie Newman from Party Queens,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the pass code that got me through the gate. Your security is formidable, like an eastern suburbs fortress.’ Was that a hint of challenge underscoring her warm, husky voice? If so, he wasn’t going to bite.

‘The pass code expires after one use, Ms Newman,’ he said, not attempting to hide a note of warning. The three party planners before her were never going to get a new pass code. But none of them had been remotely like her—in looks or manner.

She was tall and wore a boldly patterned skirt of some silky fine fabric that fell below her knees in uneven layers, topped by a snug-fitting rust-coloured jacket and high heeled shoes that laced all the way up her calf. A soft leather satchel was slung casually across her shoulder. She presented as smart but more unconventional than the corporate dark suits and rigid briefcases of the other three—whose ideas had been as pedestrian as their appearances.

‘Andie,’ she replied and started to say something else about his security system. But, as she did, a sudden gust of balmy spring breeze whipped up her skirt, revealing long slender legs and a tantalising hint of red underwear. Dominic tried to do the gentlemanly thing and look elsewhere—difficult when she was standing so near to him and her legs were so attention-worthy.

‘Oh,’ she gasped, and fought with the skirt to hold it down, but no sooner did she get the front of the skirt in place, the back whipped upwards and she had to twist around to hold it down. The back view of her legs was equally as impressive as the front. He balled his hands into fists by his sides so he did not give into the temptation to help her with the flyaway fabric.

She flushed high on elegant cheekbones, blonde hair tousled around her face, and laughed a husky, uninhibited laugh as she battled to preserve her modesty. The breeze died down as quickly as it had sprung up and her skirt floated back into place. Still, he noticed she continued to keep it in check with a hand on her thigh.

‘That’s made a wonderful first impression, hasn’t it?’ she said, looking up at him with a rueful smile. For a long moment their eyes connected and he was the first to look away. She was beautiful.

As she spoke, the breeze gave a final last sigh that ruffled her hair across her face. Dominic wasn’t a fanciful man, but it seemed as though the wind was ushering her into his house.

‘There are worse ways of making an impression,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m interested to see what you follow up with.’

* * *

Andie wasn’t sure what to reply. She stood at the threshold of Dominic Hunt’s multi-million-dollar mansion and knew for the first time in her career she was in serious danger of losing the professional cool in which she took such pride.

Not because of the incident with the wind and her skirt. Or because she was awestruck by the magnificence of the house and the postcard-worthy panorama of Sydney Harbour that stretched out in front of it. No. It was the man who towered above her who was making her feel so inordinately flustered. Too tongue-tied to come back with a quick quip or clever retort.

‘Th...thank you,’ she managed to stutter as she pushed the breeze-swept hair back from across her face.

During her career as a stylist for both magazines and advertising agencies, and now as a party planner, she had acquired the reputation of being able to manage difficult people. Which was why her two partners in their fledgling business had voted for her to be the one to deal with Dominic Hunt. Party Queens desperately needed a high-profile booking like this to help them get established. Winning it was now on her shoulders.

She had come to his mansion forewarned that he could be a demanding client. The gossip was that he had been scathing to three other planners from other companies much bigger than theirs before giving them the boot. Then there was his wider reputation as a Scrooge—a man who did not share his multitude of money with others less fortunate. He was everything she did not admire in a person.

Despite that, she been blithely confident Dominic Hunt wouldn’t be more than she could handle. Until he had answered that door. Her reaction to him had her stupefied.

She had seen the photos, watched the interviews of the billionaire businessman, had recognised he was good-looking in a dark, brooding way. But no amount of research had prepared her for the pulse-raising reality of this man—tall, broad-shouldered, powerful muscles apparent even in his sleek tailored grey suit. He wasn’t pretty-boy handsome. Not with that strong jaw, the crooked nose that looked as though it had been broken by a viciously aimed punch, the full, sensual mouth with the faded white scar on the corner, the spiky black hair. And then there was the almost palpable emanation of power.

She had to call on every bit of her professional savvy to ignore the warm flush that rose up her neck and onto her cheeks, the way her heart thudded into unwilling awareness of Dominic Hunt, not as a client but as a man.

She could not allow that to happen. This job was too important to her and her friends in their new business. Anyway, dark and brooding wasn’t her type. Her ideal man was sensitive and sunny-natured, like her first lost love, for whom she felt she would always grieve.

She extended her hand, willing it to stay steady, and forced a smile. ‘Mr Hunt, let’s start again. Andie Newman from Party Queens.’

His grip in return was firm and warm and he nodded acknowledgement of her greeting. If a mere handshake could send shivers of awareness through her, she could be in trouble here.

Keep it businesslike. She took a deep breath, tilted back her head to meet his gaze full-on. ‘I believe I’m the fourth party planner you’ve seen and I don’t want there to be a fifth. I should be the person to plan your event.’

If he was surprised at her boldness, it didn’t show in his scrutiny; his grey eyes remained cool and assessing.

‘You’d better come inside and convince me why that should be the case,’ he said. Even his voice was attractive—deep and measured and utterly masculine.

‘I welcome the opportunity,’ she said in the most confident voice she could muster.

She followed him into the entrance hall of the restored nineteen-twenties house, all dark stained wood floors and cream marble. A grand central marble staircase with wrought-iron balustrades split into two sides to climb to the next floor. This wasn’t the first grand home she’d been in during the course of her work but it was so impressive she had to suppress an impulse to gawk.

‘Wow,’ she said, looking around her, forgetting all about how disconcerted Dominic Hunt made her feel. ‘The staircase. It’s amazing. I can just see a choir there, with a chorister on each step greeting your guests with Christmas carols as they step into the house.’ Her thoughts raced ahead of her. Choristers’ robes in red and white? Each chorister holding a scrolled parchment printed with the words to the carol? What about the music? A string quartet? A harpsichord?

‘What do you mean?’ he said, breaking into her reverie.

Andie blinked to bring herself back to earth and turned to look up at him. She smiled. ‘Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. It was just an idea. Of course I realise I still need to convince you I’m the right person for your job.’

‘I meant about the Christmas carols.’

So he would be that kind of pernickety client, pressing her for details before they’d even decided on the bigger picture. Did she need to spell out the message of ‘Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly’?

She shook her head in a don’t-worry-about-it way. ‘It was just a top-of-mind thought. But a choir would be an amazing use of the staircase. Maybe a children’s choir. Get your guests into the Christmas spirit straight away, without being too cheesy about it.’

‘It isn’t going to be a Christmas party.’ He virtually spat the word Christmas.

‘But a party in December? I thought—’

He frowned and she could see where his reputation came from as his thick brows drew together and his eyes darkened. ‘Truth be told, I don’t want a party here at all. But it’s a necessary evil—necessary to my business, that is.’

‘Really?’ she said, struggling not to jump in and say the wrong thing. A client who didn’t actually want a party? This she hadn’t anticipated. Her certainty that she knew how to handle this situation—this man—started to seep away.

She gritted her teeth, forced her voice to sound as conciliatory as possible. ‘I understood from your brief that you wanted a big event benefiting a charity in the weeks leading up to Christmas on a date that will give you maximum publicity.’

‘All that,’ he said. ‘Except it’s not to be a Christmas party. Just a party that happens to be held around that time.’

Difficult and demanding didn’t begin to describe this. But had she been guilty of assuming December translated into Christmas? Had it actually stated that in the brief? She didn’t think she’d misread it.

She drew in a calming breath. ‘There seems to have been a misunderstanding and I apologise for that,’ she said. ‘I have the official briefing from your marketing department here.’ She patted her satchel. ‘But I’d rather hear your thoughts, your ideas for the event in your own words. A successful party plan comes from the heart. Can we sit down and discuss this?’

He looked pointedly at his watch. Her heart sank to the level of the first lacing on her shoes. She did not want to be the fourth party planner he fired before she’d even started her pitch. ‘I’ll give you ten minutes,’ he said.

He led her into a living room that ran across the entire front of the house and looked out to the blue waters of the harbour and its icons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Glass doors opened out to a large terrace. A perfect summer party terrace.

Immediately she recognised the work of one of Sydney’s most fashionable high-end interior designers—a guy who only worked with budgets that started with six zeros after them. The room worked neutral tones and metallics in a nod to the art deco era of the original house. The result was masculine but very, very stylish.

What an awesome space for a party. But she forced thoughts of the party out of her head. She had ten minutes to win this business. Ten minutes to convince Dominic Hunt she was the one he needed.

CHAPTER TWO

DOMINIC SAT ANDIE NEWMAN down on the higher of the two sofas that faced each other over the marble coffee table—the sofa he usually chose to give himself the advantage. He had no need to impress her with his greater height and bulk—she was tall, but he was so much taller than her even as he sat on the lower seat. Besides, the way she positioned herself with shoulders back and spine straight made him think she wouldn’t let herself be intimidated by him or by anyone else. Think again. The way she crossed and uncrossed those long legs revealed she was more nervous than she cared to let on.

He leaned back in his sofa, pulled out her business card from the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket and held it between finger and thumb. ‘Tell me about Party Queens. This seems like a very new, shiny card.’

‘Brand new. We’ve only been in business for three months.’

‘We?’

‘My two business partners, Eliza Dunne and Gemma Harper. We all worked on a magazine together before we started our own business.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Now you’re “party queens”?’ He used his fingers to enclose the two words with quote marks. ‘I don’t see the connection.’

‘We always were party queens—even when we were working on the magazine.’ He quirked an eyebrow and she paused. He noticed she quirked an eyebrow too, in unconscious imitation of his action. ‘Not in that way.’ She tried to backtrack, then smiled. ‘Well, maybe somewhat in that way. Between us we’ve certainly done our share of partying. But then you have to actually enjoy a party to organise one; don’t you agree?’

‘It’s not something I’ve given thought to,’ he said. Business-wise, it could be a point either for her or against her.

Parties had never been high on his agenda—even after his money had opened so many doors for him. Whether he’d been sleeping rough in an abandoned building project in the most dangerous part of Brisbane or hobnobbing with decision makers in Sydney, he’d felt he’d never quite fitted in. So he did the minimum socialising required for his business. ‘You were a journalist?’ he asked, more than a little intrigued by her.

She shook her head. ‘My background is in interior design but when a glitch in the economy meant the company I worked for went bust, I ended up as an interiors editor on a lifestyle magazine. I put together shoots for interiors and products and I loved it. Eliza and Gemma worked on the same magazine, Gemma as the food editor and Eliza on the publishing side. Six months ago we were told out of the blue that the magazine was closing and we had all lost our jobs.’

‘That must have been a shock,’ he said.

When he’d first started selling real estate at the age of eighteen he’d lived in terror he’d lose his job. Underlying all his success was always still that fear—which was why he was so driven to keep his business growing and thriving. Without money, without a home, he could slide back into being Nick Hunt of ‘no fixed abode’ rather than Dominic Hunt of Vaucluse, one of the most exclusive addresses in Australia.

‘It shouldn’t have come as a shock,’ she said. ‘Magazines close all the time in publishing—it’s an occupational hazard. But when it actually happened, when again one minute I had a job and the next I didn’t, it was...soul-destroying.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘I soon picked myself up.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s quite a jump from a magazine job to a party planning business.’ Her lack of relevant experience could mean Party Planner Number Four would go the way of the other three. He was surprised at how disappointed that made him feel.

‘It might seem that way, but hear me out,’ she said, a determined glint in her eye. If one of the other planners had said that, he would have looked pointedly at his watch. This one, he was prepared to listen to—he was actually interested in her story.

‘We had to clear our desks immediately and were marched out of the offices by security guards. Shell-shocked, we all retired to a café and thought about what we’d do. The magazine’s deputy editor asked could we organise her sister’s eighteenth birthday party. At first we said no, thinking she was joking. But then we thought about it. A big magazine shoot that involves themes and food and props is quite a production. We’d also sometimes organise magazine functions for advertisers. We realised that between us we knew a heck of a lot about planning parties.’

‘As opposed to enjoying them,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ she said with a smile that seemed reminiscent of past parties enjoyed. ‘Between the three of us we had so many skills we could utilise.’

‘Can you elaborate on that?’

She held up a slender index finger, her nails tipped with orange polish. ‘One, I’m the ideas and visuals person—creative, great with themes and props and highly organised with follow-through.’ A second finger went up. ‘Two, Gemma trained as a chef and is an amazing food person—food is one of the most important aspects of a good party, whether cooking it yourself or knowing which chefs to engage.’

She had a little trouble getting the third finger to stay straight and swapped it to her pinkie. ‘Then, three, Eliza has her head completely around finances and contracts and sales and is also quite the wine buff.’

‘So you decided to go into business together?’ Her entrepreneurial spirit appealed to him.

She shook her head so her large multi-hoop gold earrings clinked. ‘Not then. Not yet. We agreed to do the eighteenth party while we looked for other jobs and freelanced for magazines and ad agencies.’

‘How did it work out?’ He thought about his eighteenth birthday. It had gone totally unmarked by any celebration—except his own jubilation that he was legally an adult and could never now be recalled to the hell his home had become. It had also marked the age he could be tried as an adult if he had skated too close to the law—though by that time his street-fighting days were behind him.

‘There were a few glitches, of course, but overall it was a great success. The girl went to a posh private school and both girls and parents loved the girly shoe theme we organised. One eighteenth led to another and soon we had other parents clamouring for us to do their kids’ parties.’

‘Is there much money in parties for kids?’ He didn’t have to ask all these questions but he was curious. Curious about her as much as anything.

Her eyebrows rose. ‘You’re kidding, right? We’re talking wealthy families on the eastern suburbs and north shore. We’re talking one-upmanship.’ He enjoyed the play of expressions across her face, the way she gesticulated with her hands as she spoke. ‘Heck, we’ve done a four-year-old’s party on a budget of thousands.’

‘All that money for a four-year-old?’ He didn’t have anything to do with kids except through his anonymous charity work. Had given up on his dream he would ever have children of his own. In fact, he was totally out of touch with family life.

‘You’d better believe it,’ she said.

He was warming to Andie Newman—how could any red-blooded male not?—but he wanted to ensure she was experienced enough to make his event work. All eyes would be on it as up until now he’d been notoriously private. If he threw a party, it had better be a good party. Better than good.

‘So when did you actually go into business?’

‘We were asked to do more and more parties. Grown-up parties too. Thirtieths and fortieths, even a ninetieth. It snowballed. Yet we still saw it as a stopgap thing although people suggested we make it a full-time business.’

‘A very high percentage of small businesses go bust in the first year,’ he couldn’t help but warn.

She pulled a face that told him she didn’t take offence. ‘We were very aware of that. Eliza is the profit and loss spreadsheet maven. But then a public relations company I worked freelance for asked us to do corporate parties and product launches. The work was rolling in. We began to think we should make it official and form our own company.’

‘A brave move.’ He’d made brave moves in his time—and most of them had paid off. He gave her credit for initiative.

She leaned forward towards him. This close he could appreciate how lovely her eyes were. He didn’t think he had ever before met anyone with genuine green eyes. ‘We’ve leased premises in the industrial area of Alexandria and we’re firing. But I have to be honest with you—we haven’t done anything with potentially such a profile as your party. We want it. We need it. And because we want it to so much we’ll pull out every stop to make it a success.’

Party Planner Number Four clocked up more credit for her honesty. He tapped the card on the edge of his hand. ‘You’ve got the enthusiasm; do you have the expertise? Can you assure me you can do my job and do it superlatively well?’

Those remarkable green eyes were unblinking. ‘Yes. Absolutely. Undoubtedly. There might only be three of us, but between us we have a zillion contacts in Sydney—chefs, decorators, florists, musicians, waiting staff. If we can’t do it ourselves we can pull in the right people who can. And none of us is afraid of the hard work a party this size would entail. We would welcome the challenge.’

He realised she was now sitting on the edge of the sofa, her hands clasped together and her foot crossed over her ankle was jiggling. She really did want this job—wanted it badly.

Dominic hadn’t got where he was without a fine-tuned instinct for people. Instincts honed first on the streets where trusting the wrong person could have been fatal and then in the cut-throat business of high-end real estate and property development. His antennae were telling him Andie Newman would be able to deliver—and that he would enjoy working with her.

Trouble was, while he thought she might be the right person for the job, he found her very attractive and would like to ask her out. And he couldn’t do both. He never dated staff or suppliers. He’d made that mistake with his ex-wife—he would not make it again. Hire Andie Newman and he was more than halfway convinced he would get a good party planner. Not hire her and he could ask her on a date. But he needed this event to work—and for that the planning had to be in the best possible hands. He was torn.

‘I like your enthusiasm,’ he said. ‘But I’d be taking a risk by working with a company that is in many ways still...unproven.’

Her voice rose marginally—she probably didn’t notice but to him it betrayed her anxiety to impress. ‘We have a file overflowing with references from happy clients. But before you come to any decisions let’s talk about what you’re expecting from us. The worst thing that can happen is for a client to get an unhappy surprise because we’ve got the brief wrong.’

She pulled out a folder from her satchel. He liked that it echoed the design of her business card. That showed an attention to detail. The chaos of his early life had made him appreciate planning and order. He recognised his company logo on the printout page she took from the folder and quickly perused.

‘So tell me,’ she said, when she’d finished reading it. ‘I’m puzzled. Despite this briefing document stating the party is to be “A high-profile Christmas event to attract favourable publicity for Dominic Hunt” you still insist it’s not to reference Christmas in any way. Which is correct?’

* * *

Andie regretted the words almost as soon as they’d escaped from her mouth. She hadn’t meant to confront Dominic Hunt or put him on the spot. Certainly she hadn’t wanted to get him offside. But the briefing had been ambiguous and she felt she had to clarify it if she was to secure this job for Party Queens.

She needed their business to succeed—never again did she want to be at the mercy of the whims of a corporate employer. To have a job one day and then suddenly not the next day was too traumatising after that huge personal change of direction she’d had forced upon her five years ago. But she could have put her question with more subtlety.

He didn’t reply. The silence that hung between them became more uncomfortable by the second. His face tightened with an emotion she couldn’t read. Anger? Sorrow? Regret? Whatever it was, the effect was so powerful she had to force herself not to reach over and put her hand on his arm to comfort him, maybe even hug him. And that would be a mistake. Even more of a mistake than her ill-advised question had been.

She cringed that she had somehow prompted the unleashing of thoughts that were so obviously painful for him. Then braced herself to be booted out on to the same scrapheap as the three party planners who had preceded her.

Finally he spoke, as if the words were being dragged out of him. ‘The brief was incorrect. Christmas has some...difficult memories attached to it for me. I don’t celebrate the season. Please just leave it at that.’ For a long moment his gaze held hers and she saw the anguish recede.

Andie realised she had been holding her breath and she let it out with a slow sigh of relief, amazed he hadn’t shown her the door.

‘Of...of course,’ she murmured, almost gagging with gratitude that she was to be given a second chance. And she couldn’t deny that she wanted that chance. Not just for the job but—she could not deny it—the opportunity to see more of this undoubtedly interesting man.

There was something deeper here, some private pain, that she did not understand. But it would be bad-mannered prying to ask any further questions.

She didn’t know much about his personal life. Just that he was considered a catch—rich, handsome, successful. Though not her type, of course. He lived here alone, she understood, in this street in Vaucluse where house prices started in the double digit millions. Wasn’t there a bitter divorce in his background—an aggrieved ex-wife, a public battle for ownership of the house? She’d have to look it up. If she were to win this job—and she understood that it was still a big if—she needed to get a grasp on how this man ticked.

‘Okay, so that’s sorted—no Christmas,’ she said, aiming to sound briskly efficient without any nod to the anguish she had read at the back of his eyes. ‘Now I know what you don’t want for your party, let’s talk about what you do want. I’d like to hear in your words what you expect from this party. Then I can give you my ideas based on your thoughts.’

The party proposals she had hoped to discuss had been based on Christmas; she would have to do some rapid thinking.

Dominic Hunt got up from the sofa and started to pace. He was so tall, his shoulders so broad, he dominated even the large, high-ceilinged room. Andie found herself wondering about his obviously once broken nose—who had thrown the first punch? She got up, not to pace alongside him but to be closer to his level. She did not feel intimidated by him but she could see how he could be intimidating.

‘The other planners babbled on about how important it was to invite A-list and B-list celebrities to get publicity. I don’t give a damn about celebrities and I can’t see how that’s the right kind of publicity.’

Andie paused, not sure what to say, only knowing she had to be careful not to babble on. ‘I can organise the party, but the guest list is up to you and your people.’

He stopped his pacing, stepped closer. ‘But do you agree with me?’

Was this a test question? Answer incorrectly and that scrapheap beckoned? As always, she could only be honest. ‘I do agree with you. It’s my understanding that this party is aimed at...at image repair.’

‘You mean repair to my image as a miserly Scrooge who hoards all his money for himself?’

She swallowed a gasp at the bitterness of his words, then looked up at him to see not the anger she expected but a kind of manly bewilderment that surprised her.

‘I mightn’t have put it quite like that, but yes,” she said. ‘You do have that reputation and I understand you want to demonstrate it’s not so. And yes, I think the presence of a whole lot of freeloading so-called celebrities who run the gamut from the A to the Z list and have nothing to do with the charities you want to be seen to be supporting might not help. But you are more likely to get coverage in the social pages if they attend.’

He frowned. ‘Is there such a thing as a Z-list celebrity?’

She laughed. ‘If there isn’t, there should be. Maybe I made it up.’

‘You did say you were creative,’ he said. He smiled—the first real smile she’d seen from him. It transformed his face, like the sun coming out from behind a dark storm cloud, unleashing an unexpected charm. Her heartbeat tripped into double time like it had the first moment she’d seen him. Why? Why this inexplicable reaction to a man she should dislike for his meanness and greed?

She made a show of looking around her to disguise her consternation. Tamed the sudden shakiness in her voice into a businesslike tone. ‘How many magazines or lifestyle programmes have featured this house?’ she asked.

‘None. They never will,’ he said.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘The house is both magnificent and unknown. I reckon even your neighbours would be willing to cough up a sizeable donation just to see inside.’ In her mind’s eye she could see the house transformed into a glittering party paradise. ‘The era of the house is nineteen-twenties, right?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was originally built for a wealthy wool merchant.’

She thought some more. ‘Why not an extravagant Great Gatsby twenties-style party with a silver and white theme—that gives a nod to the festive season—and a strictly curated guest list? Guests would have to dress in silver or white. Or both. Make it very exclusive, an invitation to be sought after. The phones of Sydney’s social set would be set humming to see who got one or not.’ Her eyes half shut as her mind bombarded her with images. ‘Maybe a masked party. Yes. Amazing silver and white masks. Bejewelled and befeathered. Fabulous masks that could be auctioned off at some stage for your chosen charity.’

‘Auctioned?’

Her eyes flew open and she had to orientate herself back into the reality of the empty room that she had just been envisioning filled with elegant partygoers. Sometimes when her creativity was firing she felt almost in a trance. Then it was her turn to frown. How could a Sydney billionaire be such a party innocent?

Even she, who didn’t move in the circles of society that attended lavish fund-raising functions, knew about the auctions. The competitive bidding could probably be seen as the same kind of one-upmanship as the spending of thousands on a toddler’s party. ‘I believe it’s usual to have a fund-raising auction at these occasions. Not just the masks, of course. Other donated items. Something really big to up the amount of dollars for your charity.’ She paused. ‘You’re a property developer, aren’t you?’

He nodded. ‘Among other interests.’

‘Maybe you could donate an apartment? There’d be some frenzied bidding for that from people hoping for a bargain. And you would look generous.’

His mouth turned down in an expression of distaste. ‘I’m not sure that’s in keeping with the image I want to...to reinvent.’

Privately she agreed with him—why couldn’t people just donate without expecting a lavish party in return? But she kept her views to herself. Creating those lavish parties was her job now.

‘That’s up to you and your people. The guest list and the auction, I mean. But the party? That’s my domain. Do you like the idea of the twenties theme to suit the house?’ In her heart she still longed for the choristers on the staircase. Maybe it would have to be a jazz band on the steps. That could work. Not quite the same romanticism and spirit as Christmas, but it would be a spectacular way to greet guests.

‘I like it,’ he said slowly.

She forced herself not to panic, not to bombard him with a multitude of alternatives. ‘If not that idea, I have lots of others. I would welcome the opportunity to present them to you.’

He glanced at his watch and she realised she had been there for much longer than the ten-minute pitch he’d allowed. Surely that was a good sign.

‘I’ll schedule in another meeting with you tomorrow afternoon,’ he said.

‘You mean a second interview?’ she asked, fingers crossed behind her back.

‘No. A brainstorming session. You’ve got the job, Ms Newman.’

It was only as, jubilant, she made her way to the door—conscious of his eyes on her back—that she wondered at the presence of a note of regret in Dominic Hunt’s voice.

CHAPTER THREE

TRY AS SHE MIGHT, Andie couldn’t get excited about the nineteen-twenties theme she had envisaged for Dominic Hunt’s party. It would be lavish and glamorous and she would enjoy every moment of planning such a visually splendid event. Such a party would be a spangled feather in Party Queens’ cap. But it seemed somehow wrong.

The feeling niggled at her. How could something so extravagant, so limited to those who could afford the substantial donation that would be the cost of entrance make Dominic Hunt look less miserly? Even if he offered an apartment for auction—and there was no such thing as a cheap apartment in Sydney—and raised a lot of money, wouldn’t it be a wealthy person who benefited? Might he appear to be a Scrooge hanging out with other rich people who might or might not also be Scrooges? Somehow, it reeked of...well, there was no other word but hypocrisy.

It wasn’t her place to be critical—the media-attention-grabbing party was his marketing people’s idea. Her job was to plan the party and make it as memorable and spectacular as possible. But she resolved to bring up her reservations in the brainstorming meeting with him. If she dared.

She knew it would be a fine line to tread—she did not want to risk losing the job for Party Queens—but she felt she had to give her opinion. After that she would just keep her mouth shut and concentrate on making his event the most memorable on the December social calendar.

She dressed with care for the meeting, which was again at his Vaucluse mansion. An outfit that posed no danger of showing off her underwear. Slim white trousers, a white top, a string of outsize turquoise beads, silver sandals that strapped around her ankles. At the magazine she’d made friends with the fashion editor and still had access to sample sales and special deals. She felt her wardrobe could hold its own in whatever company she found herself in—even on millionaire row.

‘I didn’t risk wearing that skirt,’ she blurted out to Dominic Hunt as he let her into the house. ‘Even though there doesn’t appear to be any wind about.’

Mentally she slammed her hand against her forehead. What a dumb top-of-mind remark to make to a client. But he still made her nervous. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake that ever-present awareness of how attractive he was.

His eyes flickered momentarily to her legs. ‘Shame,’ he said in that deep, testosterone-edged voice that thrilled through her.

Was he flirting with her?

‘It...it was a lovely skirt,’ she said. ‘Just...just rather badly behaved.’ How much had he seen when her skirt had flown up over her thighs?

‘I liked it very much,’ he said.

‘The prettiness of its fabric or my skirt’s bad behaviour?’

She held his cool grey gaze for a second longer than she should.

‘Both,’ he said.

She took a deep breath and tilted her chin upward. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she said with a smile she hoped radiated aplomb. ‘Thank you, Mr Hunt.’

‘Dominic,’ he said.

‘Dominic,’ she repeated, liking the sound of his name on her lips. ‘And thank you again for this opportunity to plan your party.’ Bring it back to business.

In truth, she would have liked to tell him how good he looked in his superbly tailored dark suit and dark shirt but she knew her voice would come out all choked up. Because it wasn’t the Italian elegance of his suit that she found herself admiring. It was the powerful, perfectly proportioned male body that inhabited it. And she didn’t want to reveal even a hint of that. He was a client.

He nodded in acknowledgement of her words. ‘Come through to the back,’ he said. ‘You can see how the rooms might work for the party.’

She followed him through where the grand staircase split—a choir really would be amazing ranged on the steps—over pristine marble floors to a high-ceilinged room so large their footsteps echoed as they walked into the centre of it. Furnished minimally in shades of white, it looked ready for a high-end photo shoot. Arched windows and a wall of folding doors opened through to an elegant art deco style swimming pool and then to a formal garden planted with palm trees and rows of budding blue agapanthus.

For a long moment Andie simply absorbed the splendour of the room. ‘What a magnificent space,’ she said finally. ‘Was it originally a ballroom?’

‘Yes. Apparently the wool merchant liked to entertain in grand style. But it wasn’t suited for modern living, which is why I opened it up through to the terrace when I remodelled the house.’

‘You did an awesome job,’ she said. In her mind’s eye she could see flappers in glittering dresses trimmed with feathers and fringing, and men in dapper suits doing the Charleston. Then had to blink, not sure if she was imagining what the room had once been or how she’d like it to be for Dominic’s party.

‘The people who work for me did an excellent job,’ he said.

‘As an interior designer I give them full marks,’ she said. She had gone to university with Dominic’s designer. She just might get in touch with him, seeking inside gossip into what made Dominic Hunt tick.

She looked around her. ‘Where’s the kitchen? Gemma will shoot me if I go back without reporting to her on the cooking facilities.’

‘Through here.’

Andie followed him through to an adjoining vast state-of-the-art kitchen, gleaming in white marble and stainless steel. The style was sleek and modern but paid homage to the vintage of the house. She breathed out a sigh of relief and pleasure. A kitchen like this would make catering for hundreds of guests so much easier. Not that the food was her department. Gemma kept that under her control. ‘It’s a superb kitchen. Do you cook?’

Was Dominic the kind of guy who ate out every night and whose refrigerator contained only cartons of beer? Or the kind who excelled at cooking and liked to show off his skills to a breathlessly admiring female audience?

‘I can look after myself,’ he said shortly. ‘That includes cooking.’

That figured. After yesterday’s meeting she had done some research into Dominic Hunt—though there wasn’t much information dating back further than a few years. Along with his comments about celebrating Christmas being a waste of space, he’d also been quoted as saying he would never marry again. From the media accounts, his marriage in his mid-twenties had been short, tumultuous and public, thanks to his ex-wife’s penchant for spilling the details to the gossip columns.

‘The kitchen and its position will be perfect for the caterers,’ she said. ‘Gemma will be delighted.’

‘Good,’ he said.

‘You must love this house.’ She could not help a wistful note from edging her voice. As an interior designer she knew only too well how much the remodelling would have cost. Never in a million years would she live in a house like this. He was only a few years older than her—thirty-two to her twenty-eight—yet it was as if they came from different planets.

He shrugged those impressively broad shoulders. ‘It’s a spectacular house. But it’s just a house. I never get attached to places.’

Or people?

Her online research had showed him snapped by paparazzi with a number of long-legged beauties—but no woman more than once or twice. What did it matter to her?

She patted her satchel. Back to business. ‘I’ve come prepared for brainstorming,’ she said. ‘Have you had any thoughts about the nineteen-twenties theme I suggested?’

‘I’ve thought,’ he said. He paused. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot.’

His tone of voice didn’t give her cause for confidence. ‘You...like it? You don’t like it? Because if you don’t I have lots of other ideas that would work as well. I—’

He put up his right hand to halt her—large, well sculpted, with knuckles that looked as if they’d sustained scrapes over the years. His well-spoken accent and obvious wealth suggested injuries sustained from boxing or rugby at a private school; the tightly leashed power in those muscles, that strong jaw, gave thought to injuries sustained in something perhaps more visceral.

‘It’s a wonderful idea for a party,’ he said. ‘Perfect for this house. Kudos to you, Ms Party Queen.’

‘Thank you.’ She made a mock curtsy and was pleased when he smiled. How handsome he was without that scowl. ‘However, is that a “but” I hear coming on?’

He pivoted on his heel so he faced out to the pool, gleaming blue and pristine in the afternoon sun of a late-spring day in mid-November. His back view was impressive, broad shoulders tapering to a tight, muscular rear end. Then he turned back to face her. ‘It’s more than one “but”,’ he said. ‘The party, the guest list, the—’

‘The pointlessness of it all?’ she ventured.

He furrowed his brow. ‘What makes you say that?’

She found herself twisting the turquoise beads on her necklace between her finger and thumb. Her business partners would be furious with her if she lost Party Queens this high-profile job because she said what she wanted to say rather than what she should say.

‘This party is all about improving your image, right? To make a statement that you’re not the...the Scrooge people think you are.’

The fierce scowl was back. ‘I’d rather you didn’t use the word Scrooge.’

‘Okay,’ she said immediately. But she would find it difficult to stop thinking it. ‘I’ll try again: that you’re not a...a person lacking in the spirit of giving.’

‘That doesn’t sound much better.’ She couldn’t have imagined his scowl could have got any darker but it did. ‘The party is meant to be a public display of something I would rather be kept private.’

‘So...you give privately to charity?’

‘Of course I do but it’s not your or anyone else’s business.’

Personally, she would be glad if he wasn’t as tight-fisted as his reputation decreed. But this was about more than what she felt. She could not back down. ‘If that’s how you feel, tell me again why you’re doing this.’

He paused. ‘If I share with you the reason why I agreed to holding this party, it’s not to leave this room.’

‘Of course,’ she said. A party planner had to be discreet. It was astounding what family secrets got aired in the planning of a party. She leaned closer, close enough to notice that he must be a twice-a-day-shave guy. Lots of testosterone, all right.

‘I’ve got a big joint venture in the United States on the point of being signed. My potential business partner, Walter Burton, is the head of a family company and he is committed to public displays of philanthropy. It would go better with me if I was seen to be the same.’

Andie made a motion with her fingers of zipping her lips shut. ‘I... I understand,’ she said. Disappointment shafted through her. So he really was a Scrooge.

She’d found herself wanting Dominic to be someone better than he was reputed to be. But the party, while purporting to be a charity event, was simply a smart business ploy. More about greed than good-heartedness.

‘Now you can see why it’s so important,’ he said.

Should she say what she thought? The scrapheap of discarded party planners beckoned again. She could imagine her silver-sandal-clad foot kicking feebly from the top of it and hoped it would be a soft landing.

She took a deep steadying breath. ‘Cynical journalists might have a field-day with the hypocrisy of a Scrooge—sorry!—trying to turn over a new gilded leaf in such an obvious and staged way.’

To her surprise, something like relief relaxed the tense lines of his face. ‘That’s what I thought too.’

‘You...you did?’

‘I could see the whole thing backfiring and me no better off in terms of reputation. Possibly worse.’

If she didn’t stop twisting her necklace it would break and scatter her beads all over the marble floor. ‘So—help me out here. We’re back to you not wanting a party?’

She’d talked him out of the big, glitzy event Party Queens really needed. Andie cringed at the prospect of the combined wrath of Gemma and Eliza when she went back to their headquarters with the contract that was sitting in her satchel waiting for his signature still unsigned.

‘You know I don’t.’ Thank heaven. ‘But maybe a different kind of event,’ he said.

‘Like...handing over a giant facsimile cheque to a charity?’ Which would be doing her right out of a job.

‘Where’s the good PR in that?’

‘In fact it could look even more cynical than the party.’

‘Correct.’

He paced a few long strides away from her and then back. ‘I’m good at turning one dollar into lots of dollars. That’s my skill. Not planning parties. But surely I can get the kind of publicity my marketing department wants, impress my prospective business partner and actually help some less advantaged people along the way?’

She resisted the urge to high-five him. ‘To tell you the truth, I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking that exact same thing.’ Was it wise to have admitted that?

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I tossed and turned all night.’

A sudden vision of him in a huge billionaire’s bed, all tangled in the sheets wearing nothing but...well nothing but a billionaire’s birthday suit, flashed through her mind and sizzled through her body. Not my type. Not my type. She had to repeat it like a mantra.

She willed her heartbeat to slow and hoped he took the flush on her cheekbones for enthusiasm. ‘So we’re singing from the same hymn sheet. Did you have any thoughts on solving your dilemma?’

‘That’s where you come in; you’re the party expert.’

She hesitated. ‘During my sleepless night, I did think of something. But you might not like it.’

‘Try me,’ he said, eyes narrowed.

‘It’s out of the ball park,’ she warned.

‘I’m all for that,’ he said.

She flung up her hands in front of her face to act as a shield. ‘It...it involves Christmas.’

He blanched under the smooth olive of his tan. ‘I told you—’

His mouth set in a grim line, his hands balled into fists by his sides. Should she leave well enough alone? After all, he had said the festive season had difficult associations for him. ‘What is it that you hate so much about Christmas?’ she asked. She’d always been one to dive straight into the deep end.

‘I don’t hate Christmas.’ He cursed under his breath. ‘I’m misquoted once and the media repeat it over and over.’

‘But—’

He put up his hand to halt her. ‘I don’t have to justify anything to you. But let me give you three good reasons why I don’t choose to celebrate Christmas and all the razzmatazz that goes with it.’

‘Fire away,’ she said, thinking it wasn’t appropriate for her to counter with three things she adored about the festive season. This wasn’t a debate. It was a business brainstorming.

‘First—the weather is all wrong,’ he said. ‘It’s hot when it should be cold. A proper Christmas is a northern hemisphere Christmas—snow, not sand.’

Not true, she thought. For a born-and-bred Australian like her, Christmas was all about the long, hot sticky days of summer. Cicadas chirruping in the warm air as the family walked to a midnight church service. Lunch outdoors, preferably around a pool or at the beach. Then it struck her—Dominic had a distinct trace of an English accent. That might explain his aversion to festivities Down Under style. But something still didn’t seem quite right. His words sounded...too practised, as if he’d recited them a hundred times before.

He continued, warming to his point as she wondered about the subtext to his spiel. ‘Then there’s the fact that the whole thing is over-commercialised to the point of being ludicrous. I saw Christmas stuff festooning the shops in September.’

She almost expected him to snarl a Scrooge-like Bah! Humbug! but he obviously restrained himself.

‘You have a point,’ she said. ‘And carols piped through shopping malls in October? So annoying.’

‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘This whole obsession with extended Christmas celebrations, it...it...makes people who don’t celebrate it—for one reason or another—feel...feel excluded.’

His words faltered and he looked away in the direction of the pool but not before she’d seen the bleakness in his eyes. She realised those last words hadn’t been rehearsed. That he might be regretting them. Again she had that inane urge to comfort him—without knowing why he needed comforting.

She knew she had to take this carefully. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I know what you mean.’ That first Christmas without Anthony had been the bleakest imaginable. And each year after she had thought about him and the emptiness in her heart he had left behind him. But she would not share that with this man; it was far too personal. And nothing to do with the general discussion about Christmas.

His mouth twisted. ‘Do you?’

She forced her voice to sound cheerful and impersonal. Her ongoing sadness over Anthony was deeply private. ‘Not me personally. I love Christmas. I’m lucky enough to come from a big family—one of five kids. I have two older brothers and a sister and a younger sister. Christmas with our extended family was always—still is—a special time of the year. But my parents knew that wasn’t the case for everyone. Every year we shared our celebration with children who weren’t as fortunate as we were.’

‘Charity cases, you mean,’ he said, his voice hard-edged with something she couldn’t identify.

‘In the truest sense of the word,’ she said. ‘We didn’t query them being there. It meant more kids to play with on Christmas Day. It didn’t even enter our heads that there would be fewer presents for us so they could have presents too. Two of them moved in with us as long-term foster kids. When I say I’m from five, I really mean from seven. Only that’s too confusing to explain.’

He gave a sound that seemed a cross between a grunt and a cynical snort.

She shrugged, inexplicably hurt by his reaction. ‘You might think it goody-two-shoes-ish but that’s the way my family are, and I love them for it,’ she said, her voice stiff and more than a touch defensive.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I think it...it sounds wonderful. You were very lucky to grow up in a family like that.’ With the implication being he hadn’t?

‘I know, and I’m thankful. And my parents’ strong sense of community didn’t do us any harm. In fact those Christmas Days my family shared with others got me thinking. It was what kept me up last night. I had an idea.’

‘Fire away,’ he said.

She channelled all her optimism and enthusiasm to make her voice sound convincing to Sydney’s most notorious Scrooge. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you opened this beautiful home on Christmas Day for a big lunch party for children and families who do it hard on Christmas Day? Not as a gimmick. Not as a stunt. As a genuine act of hospitality and sharing the true spirit of Christmas.’

CHAPTER FOUR

DOMINIC STARED AT Andie in disbelief. Hadn’t she heard a word he’d said about his views on Christmas? She looked up at him, her eyes bright with enthusiasm but backlit by wariness. ‘Please, just consider my proposal,’ she said. ‘That’s all I ask.’ He could easily fire her for straying so far from the brief and she must know it—yet that didn’t stop her. Her tenacity was to be admired.

Maybe she had a point. No matter what she or anyone else thought, he was not a Scrooge or a hypocrite. To make a holiday that could never be happy for him happy for others had genuine appeal. He was aware Christmas was a special time for a huge percentage of the population. It was just too painful for him to want to do anything but lock himself away with a bottle of bourbon from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day.

Deep from within, he dredged memories of his first Christmas away from home. Aged seventeen, he’d been living in an underground car park beneath an abandoned shopping centre project. His companions had been a ragtag collection of other runaways, addicts, criminals and people who’d lost all hope of a better life. Someone had stolen a branch of a pine tree from somewhere and decorated it with scavenged scraps of glittery paper. They’d all stood around it and sung carols with varying degrees of sobriety. Only he had stood aloof.

Now, he reached out to where Andie was twisting her necklace so tightly it was in danger of snapping. Gently, he disengaged her hand and freed the string of beads. Fought the temptation to hold her hand for any longer than was necessary—slender and warm in his own much bigger hand. Today her nails were painted turquoise. And, as he’d noticed the day before, her fingers were free of any rings.

‘Your idea could have merit,’ he said, stepping back from her. Back from her beautiful interesting face, her intelligent eyes, the subtle spicy-sweet scent of her. ‘Come and sit outside by the pool and we can talk it over.’

Her face flushed with relief at his response and he realised again what spunk it had taken for her to propose something so radical. He was grateful to whoever had sent Party Planner Number Four his way. Andie was gorgeous, smart and not the slightest in awe of him and his money, which was refreshing. His only regret was that he could not both employ her and date her.

He hadn’t told the complete truth about why he’d been unable to sleep the night before. Thoughts of her had been churning through his head as much as concerns about the party. He had never felt so instantly attracted to a woman. Ever. If they had met under other circumstances he would have asked her out by now.

‘I really think it could work,’ she said as she walked with him through the doors and out to the pool area.

For a heart-halting second he thought Andie had tuned into his private thoughts—that she thought dating her could work. Never. He’d met his ex-wife, Tara, when she’d worked for his company, with disastrous consequences. The whole marriage had, in fact, been disastrous—based on lies and deception. He wouldn’t make that mistake again—even for this intriguing woman.

But of course Andie was talking about her party proposal in businesslike tones. ‘You could generate the right kind of publicity—both for your potential business partner and in general,’ she said as he settled her into one of the white outdoor armchairs that had cost a small fortune because of its vintage styling.

‘While at the same time directly benefiting people who do it tough on the so-called Big Day,’ he said as he took the chair next to her.

‘Exactly,’ she said with her wide, generous smile. When she smiled like that it made him want to make her do it again, just for the pleasure of seeing her face light up. Not a good idea.

Her chair was in the shade of one of the mature palm trees he’d had helicoptered in for the landscaping but the sun was dancing off the aqua surface of the pool. He was disappointed when she reached into her satchel, pulled out a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed sunglasses and donned them against the glare. They looked ‘vintage’ too. In fact, in her white clothes and turquoise necklace, she looked as if she belonged here.

‘In principal, I don’t mind your idea,’ he said. ‘In fact I find it more acceptable than the other.’

Her smile was edged with relief. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased that makes me.’

‘Would the lunch have to be on actual Christmas Day?’ he said.

‘You could hold it on Christmas Eve or the week leading up to Christmas. In terms of organisation, that would be easier. But none of those peripheral days is as lonely and miserable as Christmas Day can be if you’re one...one of the excluded ones,’ she said. ‘My foster sister told me that.’

The way she was looking at him, even with those too-perceptive green eyes shaded from his view, made him think she was beginning to suspect he had a deeply personal reason for his anti-Christmas stance.

He’d only ever shared that reason with one woman—Melody, the girl who’d first captivated, then shredded, his teenage heart back in that car park squat. By the time Christmas had loomed in the first year of his marriage to Tara, he’d known he’d never be sharing secrets with her. But there was something disarming about Andie that seemed to invite confidences—something he had to stand guard against. She might not be what she seemed—and he had learned the painful lesson not to trust his first impressions when it came to beautiful women.

‘I guess any other day doesn’t have the same impact,’ he reluctantly agreed, not sure he would be able to face the festivities. Did he actually have to be present on the day? Might it not be enough to provide the house and the meal? No. To achieve his goal, he knew his presence would be necessary. Much as he would hate every minute of it.

‘Maybe your marketing people will have other ideas,’ she said. ‘But I think opening your home on the actual December twenty-five to give people who really need it a slap-up feast would be a marvellous antidote to your Scrooge...sorry, miser... I mean cheap reputation.’ She pulled a face. ‘Sorry. I didn’t actually mean any of those things.’

Why did it sting so much more coming from her? ‘Of course you did. So does everyone else. People who have no idea of what and where I might give without wanting any fanfare.’ The main reason he wanted to secure the joint venture was to ensure his big project in Brisbane would continue to be funded long after his lifetime.

She looked shamefaced. ‘I’m sorry.’

He hated that people like Andie thought he was stingy. Any remaining reservations he might hold about the party had to go. He needed to take action before this unfair reputation become so deeply entrenched he’d never free himself from it. ‘Let’s hope the seasonal name-calling eases if I go ahead with the lunch.’

She held up a finger in warning. ‘It wouldn’t appease everyone. Those cynical journalists might not be easily swayed.’

He scowled. ‘I can’t please everyone.’ But he found himself, irrationally, wanting to please her.

‘It might help if you followed through with a visible, ongoing relationship with a charity. If the media could see...could see...’

Her eyes narrowed in concentration. He waited for the end of her sentence but it wasn’t forthcoming. ‘See what?’

‘Sorry,’ she said, shaking her head as if bringing herself back to earth. ‘My thoughts tend to run faster than my words sometimes when I’m deep in the creative zone.’

‘I get it,’ he said, though he wasn’t sure what the hell being in the creative zone meant.

‘I meant your critics might relent if they could see your gesture was genuine.’

He scowled. ‘But it will be genuine.’

‘You know it and I know it but they might see it as just another publicity gimmick.’ Her eyes narrowed again and he gave her time to think. ‘What if you didn’t actually seek publicity for this day? You know—no invitations or press releases. Let the details leak. Tantalise the media.’

‘For a designer, you seem to know a lot about publicity,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘When you work in magazines you pick up a lot about both seeking and giving publicity. But your marketing people would have their own ideas, I’m sure.’

‘I should talk it over with them,’ he said.

‘As it’s only six weeks until Christmas, and this would be a big event to pull together, may I suggest there’s not a lot of discussion time left?’

‘You’re right. I know. But it’s a big deal.’ So much bigger for him personally than she realised.

‘You’re seriously considering going ahead with it?’

He so much preferred it to the Z-list celebrity party. ‘Yes. Let’s do it.’

She clapped her hands together. ‘I’m so glad. We can make it a real dream-come-true for your guests.’

‘What about you and your business partners? You’d have to work on Christmas Day.’

‘Speaking for me, I’d be fine with working. True spirit of Christmas and all that. I’ll have to speak to Gemma and Eliza, but I think they’d be behind it too.’ Securing Dominic Hunt’s business for Party Queens was too important for them to refuse.

‘What about caterers and so on?’ he asked.

‘The hospitality industry works three hundred and sixty-five days a year. It shouldn’t be a problem. There are also people who don’t celebrate Christmas as part of their culture who are very happy to work—especially for holiday pay rates. You don’t have to worry about all that—that’s our job.’

‘And the guests? How would we recruit them?’ He was about to say he could talk to people in Brisbane, where he was heavily involved in a homeless charity, but stopped himself. That was too connected to the secret part of his life he had no desire to share.

‘I know the perfect person to help—my older sister, Hannah, is a social worker. She would know exactly which charities to liaise with. I think she would be excited to be involved.’

It was her. Andie. He would not be considering this direction if it wasn’t for her. The big glitzy party had seemed so wrong. She made him see what could be right.

‘Could we set up a meeting with your sister?’ he asked.

‘I can do better than that,’ she said with a triumphant toss of her head that set her oversized earrings swaying. ‘Every Wednesday night is open house dinner at my parents’ house. Whoever of my siblings can make it comes. Sometimes grandparents and cousins too. I know Hannah will be there tonight and I’m planning to go too. Why don’t you come along?’

‘To your family dinner?’ His first thought was to say no. Nothing much intimidated him—but meeting people’s families was near the top of the list.

‘Family is an elastic term for the Newmans. Friends, waifs and strays are always welcome at the table.’

What category would he be placed under? His memory of being a real-life stray made him wince. Friend? Strictly speaking, if circumstances were different, he’d want to be more than friends with Andie. Would connecting with her family create an intimacy he might later come to regret?

He looked down at his watch. Thought about his plan to return to the office.

‘We need to get things moving,’ she prompted.

‘I would like to meet your sister tonight.’

Her wide smile lit her eyes. ‘I have a really good feeling about this.’

‘Do you always go on your feelings?’ he asked.

She took off her sunglasses so he was treated to the directness of her gaze. ‘All the time. Don’t you?’

If he acted on his feelings he would be insisting they go to dinner, just the two of them. He would be taking her in his arms. Tasting her lovely mouth. Touching. Exploring. But that wouldn’t happen.

He trusted his instincts when it came to business. But trusting his feelings when it came to women had only led to bitterness, betrayal and the kind of pain he never wanted to expose himself to again.

No to feeling. Yes to pleasant relationships that mutually fulfilled desires and were efficiently terminated before emotions ever became part of it. And with none of the complications that came with still having to work with that person. Besides, he suspected the short-term liaison that was all he had to offer would not be acceptable to Andie. She had for ever written all over her.

Now it was her turn to look at her watch. ‘I’ll call my mother to confirm you’ll be joining us for dinner. How about I swing by and pick you up at around six?’

He thought about his four o’clock meeting. ‘That’s early for dinner.’

‘Not when there are kids involved.’

‘Kids?’

‘I have a niece and two nephews. One of the nephews belongs to Hannah. He will almost certainly be there, along with his cousins.’

Dominic wasn’t sure exactly what he was letting himself in for. One thing was for certain—he couldn’t have seen himself going to a family dinner with any of Party Planners Numbers One to Three. And he suspected he might be in for more than one surprise from gorgeous Party Planner Number Four.

Andie got up from the chair. Smoothed down her white trousers. They were nothing as revealing as her flyaway skirt but made no secret of her slender shape.

‘By the way, I’m apologising in advance for my car.’

He frowned. ‘Why apologise?’

‘I glimpsed your awesome sports car in the garage as I came in yesterday. You might find my hand-me-down hatchback a bit of a comedown.’

He frowned. ‘I didn’t come into this world behind the wheel of an expensive European sports car. I’m sure your hatchback will be perfectly fine.’

Just how did she see him? His public image—Scrooge, miser, rich guy—was so at odds with the person he knew himself to be. That he wanted her to know. But he could not reveal himself to her without uncovering secrets he would rather leave buried deep in his past.

CHAPTER FIVE

DOMINIC HAD FACED down some fears in his time. But the prospect of being paraded before Andie’s large family ranked as one of the most fearsome. As Andie pulled up her hatchback—old but in good condition and nothing to be ashamed of—in front of her parents’ home in the northern suburb of Willoughby, sweat prickled on his forehead and his hands felt clammy. How the hell had he got himself into this?

She turned off the engine, took out the keys, unclipped her seat belt and smoothed down the legs of her sleek, very sexy leather trousers. But she made no effort to get out of the car. She turned her head towards him. ‘Before we go inside to meet my family I... I need to tell you something first. Something...something about me.’

Why did she look so serious, sombre even? ‘Sure, fire away,’ he said.

‘I’ve told them you’re a client. That there is absolutely nothing personal between us.’

‘Of course,’ he said.

Strange how at the same time he could be relieved and yet offended by her categorical denial that there ever could be anything personal between them.

Now a hint of a smile crept to the corners of her mouth. ‘The thing is...they won’t believe me. You’re good-looking, you’re smart and you’re personable.’

‘That’s nice of you to say that,’ he said. He noticed she hadn’t added that he was rich to his list of attributes.

‘You know it’s true,’ she said. ‘My family are determined I should have a man in my life and have become the most inveterate of matchmakers. I expect they’ll pounce on you. It could get embarrassing.’

‘You’re single?’ He welcomed the excuse to ask.

‘Yes. I... I’ve been single for a long time. Oh, I date. But I haven’t found anyone special since...since...’ She twisted right around in the car seat to fully face him. She clasped her hands together on her lap, then started to twist them without seeming to realise she was doing it. ‘You need to know this before we go inside.’ The hint of a smile had completely dissipated.

‘If you think so,’ he said. She was twenty-eight and single. What was the big deal here?

‘I met Anthony on my first day of university. We were inseparable from the word go. There was no doubt we would spend our lives together.’

Dominic braced himself for the story of a nasty break-up. Infidelity? Betrayal? A jerk in disguise as a nice guy? He was prepared to make polite noises in response. He knew all about betrayal. But a quid pro quo exchange over relationships gone wrong was not something he ever wanted to waste time on with Andie or anyone else.

‘It ended?’ he said, making a terse contribution only because it was expected.

‘He died.’

Two words stated so baldly but with such a wealth of pain behind them. Dominic felt as if he’d been punched in the chest. Nothing he said could be an adequate response. ‘Andie, I’m sorry,’ was all he could manage.

‘It was five years ago. He was twenty-three. He...he went out for an early-morning surf and didn’t come back.’ He could hear the effort it took for her to keep her tone even.

He knew about people who didn’t come back. Goodbyes left unsaid. Personal tragedy. That particular kind of pain. ‘Did he...? Did you—?’

‘He...he washed up two days later.’ She closed her eyes as if against an unbearable image.

‘What happened?’ He didn’t want her to think he was interrogating her on something so sensitive, but he wanted to find out.

‘Head injury. An accident. The doctors couldn’t be sure exactly how it happened. A rock? His board? A sandbank? We’ll never know.’

‘Thank you for telling me.’ He felt unable to say anything else.

‘Better for you to know than not to know when you’re about to meet the family. Just in case someone says something that might put you on the spot.’

She heaved a sigh that seemed to signal she had said what she felt she had to say and that there would be no further confidences. Why should there be? He was just a client. Something prompted him to want to ask—was she over the loss? Had she moved on? But it was not his place. Client and contractor—that was all they could be to each other. Besides, could anyone ever get over loss like that?

‘You needed to be in the picture.’ She went to open her door. ‘Now, let’s go in—Hannah is looking forward to meeting you. As I predicted, she’s very excited about getting involved.’

Her family’s home was a comfortable older-style house set in a chaotic garden in a suburb where values had rocketed in recent years. In the car on the way over, Andie had told him she had lived in this house since she was a baby. All her siblings had. He envied her that certainty, that security.

‘Hellooo!’ she called ahead of her. ‘We’re here.’

He followed her down a wide hallway, the walls crammed with framed photographs. They ranged from old-fashioned sepia wedding photos, dating from pre-Second World War, to posed studio shots of cherubic babies. Again he found himself envying her—he had only a handful of family photos to cherish.

At a quick glance he found two of Andie—one in a green checked school uniform with her hair in plaits and that familiar grin showing off a gap in her front teeth; another as a teenager in a flowing pink formal dress. A third caught his eye—an older Andie in a bikini, arm in arm with a tall blond guy in board shorts who was looking down at her with open adoration. The same guy was with her in the next photo, only this time they were playing guitars and singing together. Dominic couldn’t bear to do more than glance at them, aware of the tragedy that had followed.

Just before they reached the end of the corridor, Andie stopped and took a step towards him. She stood so close he breathed in her scent—something vaguely oriental, warm and sensual. She leaned up to whisper into his ear and her hair tickled his neck. He had to close his eyes to force himself from reacting to her closeness.

‘The clan can be a bit overwhelming en masse,’ she said. ‘I won’t introduce you to everyone by name; it would be unfair to expect you to remember all of them. My mother is Jennifer, my father is Ray. Hannah’s husband is Paul.’

‘I appreciate that,’ he said, tugging at his collar that suddenly seemed too tight. As an only child, he’d always found meeting other people’s families intimidating.

Andie gave him a reassuring smile. ‘With the Newman family, what you see is what you get. They’re all good people who will take you as they find you. We might even get some volunteers to help on Christmas Day out of this.’

The corridor opened out into a spacious open-plan family room. At some time in the last twenty years the parents had obviously added a new extension. It looked dated now but solid—warm and comfortable and welcoming. Delicious aromas emanated from the farmhouse-style kitchen in the northern corner. He sniffed and Andie smiled. ‘My mother’s lasagne—wait until you taste it.’

She announced him with an encompassing wave of her arm. ‘Everyone, this is Dominic. He’s a very important new client so please make him welcome. And yes, I know he’s gorgeous but it’s strictly business between us.’

That was met with laughter and a chorus of ‘Hi, Dominic!’ and ‘Welcome!’ Andie then briefly explained to them about the party and Hannah’s likely role in it.

There were so many of them. Andie’s introduction had guaranteed all eyes were on him. About ten people, including kids, were ranged around the room, sitting in comfortable-looking sofas or around a large trestle table.

Each face came into focus as the adults greeted him with warm smiles. It wasn’t difficult to tell who was related—Andie’s smile was a strong family marker that originated with her father, a tall, thin man with a vigorous handshake. Her mother’s smile was different but equally welcoming as she headed his way from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron before she greeted him. Three young children playing on the floor looked up, then kept on playing with their toys. A big black dog with a greying muzzle, lying stretched out near the kids, lifted his head, then thumped his tail in greeting.

Andie’s sister Hannah and her husband, Paul, paused in their job of setting the large trestle table to say hello. His experience with social workers in his past had been good—a social worker had pretty much saved his life—and he was not disappointed by Hannah’s kind eyes in a gentle face.

‘I straight away know of several families who are facing a very grim Christmas indeed,’ she said. ‘Your generous gesture would make an immense difference to them.’

Andie caught his eye and smiled. Instinctively, he knew she had steered him in the right direction towards her sister. If all Andie’s ideas for his party were as good as this one, he could face the Christmas Day he dreaded with more confidence than he might have expected.

* * *

Andie’s policy of glaring down any family member who dared to even hint at dating possibilities with Dominic was working. Except for her younger sister, Bea, who could not resist hissing, ‘He’s hot,’ at any opportunity, from passing the salad to refilling her water glass. Then, when Andie didn’t bite, Bea added, ‘If you don’t want him, hand him over to me.’ Thankfully, Dominic remained oblivious to the whispered exchanges.

Her family had, unwittingly or not, sat Dominic in the same place at the table where Anthony had sat at these gatherings. Andie and Ant—always together. She doubted it was on purpose. Dominic needed to sit between Hannah and her and so it had just happened.

In the years since he’d died, no man had come anywhere near to replacing Anthony in her heart. How could they? Anthony and she had been two halves of the same soul, she sometimes thought. Maybe she would never be able to love anyone else. But she was lonely. The kind of loneliness that work, friends, family could not displace.

In the months after Anthony’s death her parents had left Anthony’s customary seat empty out of respect. Unable to bear the emptiness that emphasised his absence, she had stopped coming to the family dinners until her mother had realised the pain it was causing. From then on, one of her brothers always occupied Anthony’s chair.

Now she told herself she was okay with Dominic sitting there. He was only a client, with no claim to any place in her heart. Bringing him along tonight had worked out well—one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions she mightn’t have made if she’d given it more thought.

Dominic and Hannah had spent a lot of time talking—but he’d managed to chat with everyone else there too. They were obviously charmed by him. That was okay too. She was charmed by him. Tonight she was seeing a side of him, as he interacted with her family, that she might never have seen in everyday business dealings.

Her sister was right. Dominic was hot. And Andie was only too aware of it. She was surprised at the fierce urge of possessiveness that swept over her at the thought of ‘handing over’ Dominic to anyone else. Her sister could find her own hot guy.

Even at the dinner table, when her back was angled away from him to talk to her brother on her other side, she was aware of Dominic. His scent had already become familiar—citrus-sharp yet warm and very masculine. Her ears were tuned into the sound of his voice—no matter where he was in the room. Her body was on constant alert to that attraction, which had been instant and only continued to grow with further contact. On their way in, in the corridor, when she’d drawn close to whisper so her family would not overhear, she’d felt light-headed from the proximity to him.

It had been five years now since Anthony had gone—the same length of time they’d been together. She would never forget him but that terrible grief and anguish she had felt at first had eventually mellowed to a grudging acceptance. She realised she had stopped dreaming about him.

People talked about once-in-a-lifetime love. She’d thought she’d found it at the age of eighteen—and a cruel fate had snatched him away from her. Was there to be only one great love for her?

Deep in her heart, she didn’t want to believe that. Surely there would be someone for her again? She didn’t want to be alone. One day she wanted marriage, a family. She’d been looking for someone like Anthony—and had been constantly disappointed in the men she’d gone out with. But was it a mistake to keep on looking for a man like her teenage soulmate?

Thoughts of Dominic were constantly invading her mind. He was so different from Anthony there could be no comparison. Anthony had been blond and lean, laidback and funny, always quick with a joke, creative and musical. From what she knew of Dominic, he was quite the opposite. She’d dismissed him as not for her. But her body’s reaction kept contradicting her mind’s stonewalling. How could she be so certain he was Mr Wrong?

Dessert was being served—spring berries and home-made vanilla bean ice cream—and she turned to Dominic at the precise moment he turned to her. Their eyes connected and held and she knew without the need for words that he was happy with her decision to bring him here.

‘Your family is wonderful,’ he said in a low undertone.

‘I think so,’ she said, pleased. ‘What about you? Do you come from a large family?’

A shadow darkened his eyes. He shook his head. ‘Only child.’

She smiled. ‘We must seem overwhelming.’

‘In a good way,’ he said. ‘You’re very lucky.’

‘I know.’ Of course she and her siblings had had the usual squabbles and disagreements throughout their childhood and adolescence. She, as number four, had had to fight for her place. But as adults they all got on as friends as well as brothers and sisters. She couldn’t have got through the loss of Anthony without her family’s support.

‘The kids are cute,’ he said. ‘So well behaved.’

Her nephews, Timothy and Will, and her niece, Caitlin, were together down the other end of the table under the watchful eye of their grandmother. ‘They’re really good kids,’ she agreed. ‘I adore them.’

‘Little Timothy seems quite...delicate,’ Dominic said, obviously choosing his words carefully. ‘But I notice his older cousin looks after him.’

A wave of sadness for Hannah and Paul’s little son overwhelmed her. ‘They’re actually the same age,’ she said. ‘Both five years old. Timothy just looks as though he’s three.’

‘I guess I don’t know much about kids,’ Dominic said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

She lowered her voice. ‘Sadly, little Timothy has some kind of rare growth disorder, an endocrine imbalance. That’s why he’s so small.’

Dominic answered in a lowered voice. ‘Can it be treated?’

‘Only with a new treatment that isn’t yet subsidised by the public health system. Even for private treatment, he’s on a waiting list.’ It was the reason why she drove an old car, why Bea had moved back home to save on rent, why the whole family was pulling together to raise the exorbitant amount of money required for tiny Timothy’s private treatment.

But she would not tell Dominic that. While she might be wildly attracted to him, she still had no reason to think he was other than the Scrooge of his reputation. A man who had to be forced into a public display of charity to broker a multi-million-dollar business deal. Not for one moment did she want him to think she might be angling for financial help for Timothy.

‘It’s all under control,’ she said as she passed him a bowl of raspberries.

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ he said, helping himself to the berries and then the ice cream. ‘Thank you for inviting me tonight and for introducing me to Hannah. The next step is for you and your business partners to come in to my headquarters for a meeting with my marketing people. Can the three of you make it on Friday?’

CHAPTER SIX

ANDIE AND HER two business partners, Gemma and Eliza, settled themselves in a small waiting room off the main reception area of Dominic’s very plush offices in Circular Quay. She and her fellow Party Queens had just come out of the Friday meeting with Dominic, his marketing people and senior executives in the boardroom and were waiting for Dominic to hear his feedback.

Situated on Sydney Cove, at the northern end of the CBD, the area was not just one of the most popular harbourside tourist precincts in Sydney—it was also home to the most prestigious office buildings. Even in this small room, floor-to-ceiling glass walls gave a magnificent close view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a luxury cruise liner in dock.

Andie couldn’t help thinking the office was an ideal habitat for a billionaire Scrooge. Then she backtracked on the thought. That might not be fair. He hated the term and she felt vaguely disloyal even thinking it. Dominic was now totally committed to the Christmas Day feast for underprivileged families and had just approved a more than generous budget. She was beginning to wonder if his protestation that he was not a Scrooge had some truth in it. And then there was his gift to her mother to consider.

As she pondered the significance of that, she realised her thoughts had been filled with nothing much but Dominic since the day she’d met him. Last night he had even invaded her dreams—in a very passionate encounter that made her blush at the hazy dream memory of it. Did he kiss like that in real life?

It was with an effort that she forced her thoughts back to business.

‘How do you guys think it went?’ she asked the other two. ‘My vote is for really well.’ She felt jubilant and buoyant—Dominic’s team had embraced her idea with more enthusiasm than she could ever have anticipated.

‘Considering the meeting was meant to go from ten to eleven and here it is, nearly midday, yes, I think you could say that,’ said Eliza with a big smile splitting her face.

‘Of course that could have had something to do with Gemma’s superb macadamia shortbread and those delectable fruit mince pies,’ said Andie.

‘Yes,’ said Gemma with a pleased smile. ‘I thought I could describe until I was blue in the face what I wanted to serve for the lunch, but they’d only know by tasting it.’

Party Queens’ foodie partner had not only come up with a detailed menu for Dominic’s Christmas Day lunch, but she’d also brought along freshly baked samples of items from her proposed menus. At the end of the meeting only a few crumbs had remained on the boardroom’s fine china plates. Andie had caught Dominic’s eye as he finished his second pastry and knew it had been an inspired idea. The Christmas star shaped serviettes she had brought along had also worked to keep the meeting focused on the theme of traditional with a twist.

‘I think they were all-round impressed,’ said Eliza. ‘We three worked our collective socks off to get our presentations so detailed and professional in such a short time. Andie, all the images and samples you prepared to show the decorations and table settings looked amazing—I got excited at how fabulous it’s going to look.’

‘I loved the idea of the goody bags for all the guests too,’ said Gemma. ‘You really thought of everything.’

‘While we’re doing some mutual backslapping I’m giving yours a hearty slap, Eliza,’ said Andie. ‘Their finance guy couldn’t fault your detailed costings and timelines.’

Eliza rubbed her hands together in exaggerated glee. ‘And I’m sure we’re going to get more party bookings from them. One of the senior marketing people mentioned her daughter was getting married next year and asked me did we do weddings.’

‘Well done, Party Queens,’ said Andie. ‘Now that the contract is signed and the basic plan approved I feel I can relax.’ Her partners had no idea of how tight it had been to get Dominic across the line for the change from glitz and glamour to more humble with heart.

She and her two friends discreetly high-fived each other. The room was somewhat of a goldfish bowl and none of them wanted to look less than professional to any of Dominic’s staff who might be walking by.

Eliza leaned in to within whispering distance of Andie and Gemma. ‘Dominic Hunt was a surprise,’ she said in an undertone. ‘I thought he’d be arrogant and overbearing. Instead, I found myself actually liking him.’

‘Me too,’ said Gemma. ‘Not to mention he’s so handsome. I could hardly keep my eyes off him. And that voice.’ She mimed a shiver of delight.

‘But he couldn’t keep his eyes off Andie,’ said Eliza. ‘You’d be wasting your time there, Gemma.’

Had he? Been unable to keep his eyes off her? Andie’s Dominic radar had been on full alert all through the meeting. Again she’d that uncanny experience of knowing exactly where he was in the room even when her back was turned. Of hearing his voice through the chatter of others. She’d caught his eye one too many times to feel comfortable. Especially with the remnants of that dream lingering in her mind. She’d had to force herself not to let her gaze linger on his mouth.

‘Really, Andie?’ said Gemma. ‘Has he asked you out?’

‘Nothing like that,’ Andie said.

Eliza nodded thoughtfully. ‘But you like him. Not in the way I liked him. I mean you really like him.’

Andie had no intention of admitting anything to anyone. She forced her voice to sound cool, impartial—though she doubted she would fool shrewd Eliza. ‘Like you, I was surprised at how easy he is to get on with and how professional he is—even earlier this week when I switched the whole concept of his party into something he had never envisaged.’ That overwhelming attraction was just physical—nothing more.

‘And you totally didn’t get how hot he was?’ said Gemma. ‘Don’t expect me to believe that for one moment.’

Eliza rolled her eyes at Andie. ‘I know what’s coming next. He’s not your type. How many times have I heard you say that when you either refuse a date or dump a guy before you’ve even had a chance to get to know him?’

Andie paused. ‘Maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s why I’m still single. I’m beginning to wonder if I really know what is my type now.’

Her friendships with Gemma and Eliza dated from after she’d lost Anthony. They’d been sympathetic, but never really got why she had been so determined to try and find another man cast in the same mould as her first love. That her first love had been so perfect she’d felt her best chance of happiness would be with someone like Anthony.

Trouble was, they’d broken the mould when they’d made Anthony. Maybe she just hadn’t been ready. Maybe she’d been subconsciously avoiding any man who might challenge her. Or might force her to look at why she’d put her heart on hold for so long. Dominic would be a challenge in every way. The thought both excited and scared her.

Eliza shook her head. ‘It’s irrelevant anyway,’ she said. ‘It would be most unwise for you to start anything with Dominic Hunt. His party is a big, important job for us and we don’t have much time to organise it. It could get very messy if you started dating the client. Especially when I’ve never known you to stay with anyone for more than two weeks.’

‘In my eagerness to get you fixed up with a handsome rich guy, I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Gemma. ‘Imagine if you broke up with the billionaire client right in the middle of the countdown to the event. Could get awkward.’

‘It’s not going to happen, girls,’ Andie said. ‘I won’t lie and say I don’t think he’s really attractive. But that’s as far as it goes.’ Thinking of last night’s very intimate dream, she crossed her fingers behind her back.

‘This is a huge party for us to pull together so quickly. We’ve got other jobs to get sorted as well. I can’t afford to get...distracted.’ How she actually stopped herself from getting distracted by Dominic was another matter altogether.

‘I agree,’ said Eliza. ‘Eyes off the client. Okay?’

Andie smiled. ‘I’ll try,’ she said. ‘Seriously, though, it’s really important for Dominic that this party works. He’s got a lot riding on it. And it’s really important for us. As you say, Eliza, more work could come from this. Not just weddings and private parties. But why not his company’s business functions too? We have to think big.’

Gemma giggled. ‘Big? Mr Hunt is way too big for me anyway. He’s so tall. And all those muscles. His face is handsome but kind of tough too, don’t you think?’

‘Shh,’ hissed Eliza, putting her finger to her lips. ‘He’s coming.’

Andie screwed up her eyes for a moment. How mortifying if he’d caught them gossiping about him. She’d been just about to say he wasn’t too big for her to handle.

Along with the other two, she looked up and straightened her shoulders as Dominic strode towards them. In his dark charcoal suit he looked every inch the billionaire businessman. And, yes, very big.

She caught her breath at how handsome he looked. At the same time she caught his eye. And got the distinct impression that, of the three women in the room, she was the only one he really saw.

* * *

Did Andie get more and more beautiful every time he saw her? Dominic wondered. Or was it just the more he got to know her, the more he liked and admired her?

He had been impressed by her engaging and professional manner in the boardroom—the more so because he was aware she’d had such a short time to prepare her presentation. Her two business partners had been impressive too. It took a lot to win over his hard-nosed marketing people but, as a team, Party Queens had bowled them over.

The three women got up from their seats as he approached. Andie, tall and elegant in a deceptively simple caramel-coloured short dress—businesslike but with a snug fit that showed off her curves. Her sensational legs seemed to go on for ever to end in sky-high leopard-skin-print stilettos. He got it. She wanted to look businesslike but also let it be known who was the creative mind behind Party Queens. It worked.

Gemma—shorter, curvier, with auburn hair—and sophisticated, dark-haired Eliza were strikingly attractive too. They had a glint in their eyes and humour in their smiles that made him believe they could enjoy a party as well as plan them. But, in his eyes, Andie outshone them. Would any other woman ever be able to beat her? It was disturbing that a woman who he had known for such a short time could have made such an impression on him.

He addressed all three, while being hyper aware of Andie as he did so. Her hair pulled back in a loose knot that fell in soft tendrils around her face, her mouth slicked with coral gloss, those remarkable green eyes. ‘As I’m sure you’re aware,’ he began, ‘my marketing team is delighted at both the concept for the party and the way you plan to implement the concept to the timeline. They’re confident the event will meet and exceed the target we’ve set for reputation management and positive media engagement.’

It sounded like jargon and he knew it. But how else could he translate the only real aim of the party: to make him look less the penny-pincher and more the philanthropist?

‘We’re very pleased to be working with such a professional team,’ said Eliza, the business brains of the partnership. But all three were business savvy in their own way, he’d realised through the meeting.

‘Thank you,’ he said. He glanced at his watch. ‘The meeting ran so late it’s almost lunchtime. I’m extending an invitation to lunch for all of you,’ he said. ‘Not that restaurants around here, excellent as they are, could match the standard of your cooking, Gemma.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gemma, looking pleased. ‘But I’m afraid I have an appointment elsewhere.’

‘Me too, and I’m running late,’ said Eliza. ‘But we couldn’t possibly let you lunch alone, Mr Hunt, could we, Andie?’

Andie flushed high on those elegant cheekbones. ‘Of course not. I’d be delighted to join Dominic for lunch.’

Her chin tilted upwards and he imagined her friends might later be berated for landing her in this on her own. Not that he minded. The other women were delightful, but lunch one-on-one with Andie was his preferred option.

‘There are a few details of the plan I need to finalise with Dominic anyway,’ she said to her friends.

Dominic shook hands with Gemma and Eliza and they headed towards the elevators. He turned to Andie. ‘Thank you for coming to lunch with me,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘Be warned, I’m starving. I was up at the crack of dawn finalising those mood boards for the presentation.’

‘They were brilliant. There’s only one thing I’d like to see changed. I didn’t want to mention it in the meeting as it’s my personal opinion and I didn’t want to have to debate it.’

She frowned, puzzled rather than worried, he thought. ‘Yes?’

He put his full authority behind his voice—he would not explain his reasons. Ever. ‘The Christmas tree. The big one you have planned for next to the staircase. I don’t want it.’

‘Sure,’ she said, obviously still puzzled. ‘I thought it would be wonderful to have the tree where it’s the first thing the guests see, but I totally understand if you don’t want it there. We can put the Christmas tree elsewhere. The living room. Even in the area near where we’ll be eating. Wherever you suggest.’

He hadn’t expected this to be easy—he knew everyone would expect to see a decorated tree on Christmas Day. ‘You misunderstood me. I mean I don’t want a Christmas tree anywhere. No tree at all in my house.’

She paused. He could almost see her internal debate reflected in the slight crease between her eyebrows, the barely visible pursing of her lips. But then she obviously thought it was not worth the battle. ‘Okay,’ she said with a shrug of her slender shoulders. ‘No tree.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, relieved he wasn’t going to have to further assert his authority. At this time of year, Christmas trees were appearing all over the place. He avoided them when he could. But he would never have a tree in his home—a constant reminder of the pain and loss and guilt associated with the festive season.

They walked together to the elevator. When it arrived, there were two other people in it. They got out two floors below. Then Dominic was alone in the confined space of the elevator, aware of Andie’s closeness, her warm scent. What was it? Sandalwood? Something exotic and sensual. He had the craziest impulse to hold her closer so he could nuzzle into the softness of her throat, the better to breathe it in.

He clenched his fists beside him and moved as far as he could away from her so his shoulder hit the wall of the elevator. That would be insanity. And probably not the best timing when he’d just quashed her Christmas tree display.

But she wouldn’t be Andie if she didn’t persevere. ‘Not even miniature trees on the lunch table?’ she asked.

‘No trees,’ he said.

She sighed. ‘Okay, the client has spoken. No Christmas tree.’

The elevator came to the ground floor. He lightly placed his hand at the small of her back to steer her in the direction of the best exit for the restaurant. Bad idea. Touching Andie even in this casual manner just made him want to touch her more.

‘But you’re happy with the rest of the plan?’ she said as they walked side by side towards the restaurant, dodging the busy Sydney lunchtime crush as they did.

‘Very happy. Except you can totally discard the marketing director’s suggestion I dress up as Santa Claus.’

She laughed. ‘Did you notice I wrote it down but didn’t take the suggestion any further?’ Her eyes narrowed as she looked him up and down in mock inspection. ‘Though it’s actually a nice idea. If you change your mind—’

‘No,’ he said.

‘That’s what I thought,’ she said, that delightful smile dancing around the corners of her mouth.

‘You know it’s been a stretch for me to agree to a Christmas party at all. You won’t ever see me as Santa.’

‘What if the marketing director himself could be convinced to play Santa Claus?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘He volunteered to help out on the day.’

‘This whole party thing was Rob Cratchit’s idea so that might be most appropriate. Take it as an order from his boss.’

‘I’ll send him an email and say it’s your suggestion,’ she said with a wicked grin. ‘He’s quite well padded and would make a wonderful Santa—no pillow down the front of his jacket required.’

‘Don’t mention that in the email or all hell will break loose,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry; I can be subtle when I want to,’ she said, that grin still dancing in her eyes as they neared the restaurant.

In Dominic’s experience, some restaurants were sited well and had a good fit-out; others had excellent food. In this case, his favourite place to eat near the office had both—a spectacular site on the top of a heritage listed building right near the water and a superlative menu.

There had been no need to book—a table was always there for him when he wanted one, no matter how long the waiting list for bookings.

An attentive waiter settled Andie into a seat facing the view of Sydney Harbour. ‘I’ve always wanted to eat at this restaurant,’ she said, looking around her.

‘Maybe we should have our meetings here in future?’

‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Though I’ll have to do a detailed site inspection of your house very soon. We could fit in a meeting then, perhaps?’

‘I might not be able to be there,’ he said. ‘I have a series of appointments in other states over the next two weeks. Any meetings with you might have to be via the Internet.’

Was that disappointment he saw cloud her eyes. ‘That’s a shame. I—’

‘My assistant will help you with access and the security code,’ he said. He wished he could cancel some of the meetings, but that was not possible. Perhaps it was for the best. The more time he spent with Andie, the more he wanted to break his rules and ask her on a date. But those rules were there for good reason.

‘As you know, we have a tight timeline to work to,’ she said. ‘The more we get done early the better, to allow for the inevitable last-minute dramas.’

‘I have every confidence in you that it will go to plan.’

‘Me too,’ she said with another of those endearing grins. ‘I’ve organised so many Christmas room sets and table settings for magazine and advertising clients. You have to get creative to come up with something different each year. This is easier in a way.’

‘But surely there must be a continuity?’ he asked, curious even though Christmas was his least favourite topic of conversation.

‘Some people don’t want to go past traditional red and green and that’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve done an entire room themed purple and the client was delighted. Silver and gold is always popular in Australia, when Christmas is likely to be sweltering—it seems to feel cooler somehow. But—’

The waiter came to take their orders. They’d been too busy talking to look at the menu. Quickly they discussed their favourites before they ordered: barramundi with prawns and asparagus for him; tandoori roasted ocean trout with cucumber salsa for her and an heirloom tomato salad to share. They each passed on wine and chose mineral water. ‘Because it’s a working day,’ they both said at the exact time and laughed. It felt like a date. He could not let his thoughts stray that way. Because he liked the idea too much.

‘You haven’t explained the continuity of Christmas,’ he said, bringing the conversation back to the party.

‘It’s nothing to do with the baubles and the tinsel and everything to do with the feeling,’ she said with obvious enthusiasm. ‘Anticipation, delight, joy. For some it’s about religious observance, spirituality and new life; others about sharing and generosity. If you can get people feeling the emotion, then it doesn’t really matter if the tree is decorated in pink and purple or red and green.’

How about misery and fear and pain? Those were his memories of Christmas. ‘I see your point,’ he said.

‘I intend to make sure your party is richly imbued with that kind of Christmas spirit. Hannah told me some of the kids who will be coming would be unlikely to have a celebration meal or a present and certainly not both if it wasn’t for your generosity.’

‘I met with Hannah yesterday; she mentioned how important it will be for the families we’re inviting. She seems to think the party will do a powerful lot of good. Your sister told me how special Christmas is in your family.’ It was an effort for him to speak about Christmas in a normal tone of voice. But he seemed to be succeeding.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Andie. ‘Heaven help anyone who might want to celebrate it with their in-laws or anywhere else but my parents’ house.’

‘Your mother’s a marvellous cook.’

‘True, but Christmas is well and truly my dad’s day. My mother is allowed to do the baking and she does that months in advance. On the day, he cooks a traditional meal—turkey, ham, roast beef, the lot. He’s got favourite recipes he’s refined over the years and no one would dare suggest anything different.’

Did she realise how lucky she was? How envious he felt when he thought about how empty his life had been of the kind of family love she’d been gifted with. He’d used to think he could start his own family, his own traditions, but his ex-wife had disabused him of that particular dream. It involved trust and trust was not a thing that came easily to him. Not when it came to women. ‘I can’t imagine you would want to change a tradition.’

‘If truth be told, we’d be furious if he wanted to change one little thing,’ she said, her voice warm with affection for her father. She knew.

He could see where she got her confidence from—that rock-solid security of a loving, supportive family. But now he knew she’d been tempered by tragedy too. He wanted to know more about how she had dealt with the loss of her boyfriend. But not until it was appropriate to ask.

‘What about you, Dominic—did you celebrate Christmas with your family?’ she asked.

This never got easier—which was why he chose not to revisit it too often. ‘My parents died when I was eleven,’ he said.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said with warm compassion in her eyes. ‘What a tragedy.’ She paused. ‘You were so young, an only child...who looked after you?’

‘We lived in England, in a village in Norfolk. My father was English, my mother Australian. My mother’s sister was staying with us at the time my parents died. She took me straight back with her to Australia.’ It was difficult to keep his voice matter of fact, not to betray the pain the memories evoked, even after all this time.

‘What? Just wrenched you away from your home?’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t my call to say that. You were lucky you had family. Did your aunt have children?’

‘No, it was just the two of us,’ he said and left it at that. There was so much more he could say about the toxic relationship with his aunt but that was part of his past he’d rather was left buried.

Wrenched. That was how it had been. Away from everything familiar. Away from his grandparents, whom he didn’t see again until he had the wherewithal to get himself back to the UK as an adult. Away from the dog he’d adored. Desperately lonely and not allowed to grieve, thrust back down in Brisbane, in the intense heat, straight into the strategic battleground that was high school in a foreign country. To a woman who had no idea how to love a child, though she had tried in her own warped way.

‘I’d prefer not to talk about it,’ he said. ‘I’m all grown up now and don’t angst about the past.’ Except when it was dark and lonely and he couldn’t sleep and he wondered if he was fated to live alone without love.

‘I understand,’ she said. But how could she?

She paused to leave a silence he did not feel able to fill.

‘Talking about my family,’ she finally said, ‘you’re my mother’s new number one favourite person.’

Touched by not only her words but her effort to draw him in some way into her family circle, he smiled. ‘And why is that?’

‘Seriously, she really liked you at dinner on Wednesday night. But then, when you had flowers delivered the next day, she was over the moon. Especially at the note that said she cooked the best lasagne you’d ever tasted.’

‘I’m glad she liked them. And it was true about the lasagne.’ Home-made anything was rarely on the menu for him so he had appreciated it.

‘How did you know pink was her favourite colour in flowers?’

‘I noticed the flowers she’d planted in her garden.’

‘But you only saw the garden so briefly.’

‘I’m observant,’ he said.

‘But the icing on the cake was the voucher for dinner for two at their local bistro.’

‘She mentioned she liked their food when we were talking,’ he said.

‘You’re a thoughtful guy, aren’t you?’ she said, tilting her head to the side.

‘Some don’t think so,’ he said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.

She lowered her voice to barely a whisper so he had to lean across the table to hear her, so close their heads were touching. Anyone who was watching would think they were on a date.

She placed her hand on his arm in a gesture of comfort which touched him. ‘Don’t worry. The party should change all that. I really liked Rob’s idea that no media would be invited to the party. That journalists would have to volunteer to help on the day if they wanted to see what it was all about.’

‘And no photographers allowed, to preserve our guests’ privacy. I liked that too.’

‘I really have a good feeling about it,’ she said. She lifted her hand off his arm and he felt bereft of her touch.

He nodded. If it were up to him, if he didn’t have to go ahead with the party, he’d cancel it at a moment’s notice. Maybe there was a touch of Scrooge in him after all.

But he didn’t want Andie to think that of him. Not for a moment.

He hadn’t proved to be a good judge of women. His errors in judgement went right back to his aunt—he’d loved her when she was his fun auntie from Australia. She’d turned out to be a very different person. Then there’d been Melody—sweet, doomed Melody. At seventeen he’d been a man in body but a boy still in heart. He’d been gutted at her betrayal, too damn wet behind the ears to realise a teenage boy’s love could never be enough for an addict. Then how could he have been sucked in by Tara? His ex-wife was a redhead like Melody, tiny and delicate. But her frail exterior hid an avaricious, dishonest heart and she had lied to him about something so fundamental to their marriage that he could never forgive her.

Now there was Andie. He didn’t trust his feelings when he’d made such disastrous calls before. ‘What you see is what you get,’ she’d said about her family.

Could he trust himself to judge that Andie was what she appeared to be?

He reined in his errant thoughts—he only needed to trust Andie to deliver him the party he needed to improve his public image. Anything personal was not going to happen.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘ANDIE, I NEED to see you.’ Dominic’s voice on her smartphone was harsh in its urgency. It was eight a.m. and Andie had not been expecting a call from him. He’d been away more than a week on business and she’d mainly communicated with him by text and email—and only then if it was something that needed his approval for the party. The last time she’d seen him was the Friday they’d had lunch together. The strictly business lunch that had somehow felt more like a date. But she couldn’t let herself think like that.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I just have to—’

‘Now. Please. Where do you live?’

Startled at his tone, she gave him the address of the apartment in a converted warehouse in the inner western suburb of Newtown she shared with two old schoolfriends. Her friends had both already left for work. Andie had planned on a day finalising prop hire and purchase for Dominic’s party before she started work for a tuxedo-and-tiara-themed twenty-first birthday party.

She quickly changed into skinny denim jeans and a simple loose-knit cream top that laced with leather ties at the neckline. Decided on her favourite leopard-print stilettos over flats. And make-up. And her favourite sandalwood and jasmine perfume. What the heck—her heart was racing at the thought of seeing him. She didn’t want to seem as though she were trying too hard—but then again she didn’t want to be caught out in sweats.

When Dominic arrived she was shocked to see he didn’t look his sartorial best. In fact he looked downright dishevelled. His black hair seemed as if he’d used his fingers for a comb and his dark stubble was one step away from a beard. He was wearing black jeans, a dark grey T-shirt and had a black leather jacket slung over his shoulders. Immediately he owned the high-ceilinged room, a space that overwhelmed men of lesser stature, with the casual athleticism of his stance, the power of his body with its air of tightly coiled energy.

‘Are you alone?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. Yes!

Her first thought was that he looked hotter than ever—so hot she had to catch her breath. This Dominic set her pulse racing even more than executive Dominic in his made-to-measure Italian suits.

Her second thought was that he seemed stressed—his mouth set in a grim line, his eyes red-rimmed and darkly shadowed. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘I’ve come straight from the airport. I just flew in from Perth.’ Perth was on the other side of Australia—a six-hour flight. ‘I cut short my trip.’

‘But are you okay?’ She forced her voice to sound calm and measured, not wanting him to realise how she was reacting to his untamed good looks. Her heart thudded with awareness that they were alone in the apartment.

With the kind of friendly working relationship they had now established, it would be quite in order to greet him with a light kiss on his beard-roughened cheek. But she wouldn’t dare. She might not be able to resist sliding her mouth across his cheek to his mouth and turning it into a very different kind of kiss. And that wouldn’t do.

‘I’m fine. I’ve just...been presented with...with a dilemma,’ Dominic said.

‘Coffee might help,’ she said.

‘Please.’

‘Breakfast? I have—’

‘Just coffee.’

But Andie knew that sometimes men who said they didn’t want anything to eat needed food. And that their mood could improve immeasurably when they ate something. Not that she’d been in the habit of sharing breakfast with a man. Not since... She forced her mind back to the present and away from memories of breakfasts with Anthony on a sun-soaked veranda. Her memories of him were lit with sunshine and happiness.

Dominic dragged out a chair and slumped down at her kitchen table while she prepared him coffee. Why was he here? She turned to see him with his elbows on the tabletop, resting his head on his hands. Tired? Defeated? Something seemed to have put a massive dent in his usual self-assured confidence.

She slid a mug of coffee in front of him. ‘I assumed black but here’s frothed milk and sugar if you want.’

‘Black is what I need,’ he said. He put both hands around the mug and took it to his mouth.

Without a word, she put a thick chunk of fresh fruit bread, studded with figs and apricots, from her favourite baker in King Street in front of him. Then a dish of cream cheese and a knife. ‘Food might help,’ she said.

He put down his coffee, gave her a weary imitation of his usual glower and went to pick up the bread. ‘Let me,’ she said and spread it with cream cheese.

What was it about this man that made her want to comfort and care for him? He was a thirty-two-year-old billionaire, for heaven’s sake. Tough, self-sufficient. Wealthier than she could even begin to imagine. And yet she sometimes detected an air of vulnerability about him that wrenched at her. A sense of something broken. But it was not up to her to try and fix him. He ate the fruit bread in two bites. ‘More?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘It’s good,’ he said.

Andie had to be honest with herself. She wanted to comfort him, yes. She enjoyed his company. But it was more than that. She couldn’t deny that compelling physical attraction. He sat at her kitchen table, his leather jacket slung on the back of the chair. His tanned arms were sculpted with muscle, his T-shirt moulded ripped pecs and abs. With his rough-hewn face, he looked so utterly male.

Desire, so long unfamiliar, thrilled through her. She wanted to kiss him and feel those strong arms around her, his hands on her body. She wanted more than kisses. What was it about this not-my-type man who had aroused her interest from the moment she’d first met him?

When he’d eaten two more slices of fruit bread, he pushed his plate away and leaned back in his seat. His sigh was weary and heartfelt. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise I was hungry.’

She slipped into the chair opposite him and nursed her own cooling cup of coffee to stop the impulse to reach over and take his hand. ‘Are you able to tell me about your dilemma?’ she asked, genuinely concerned.

He raked his hands through his hair. ‘My ex-wife is causing trouble. Again.’

In her research into Dominic, Andie had seen photos of Tara Hunt—she still went by his name—a petite, pale-skinned redhead in designer clothes and an over-abundance of jewellery.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, deciding on caution in her reaction. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ Was that why he wanted to see her? To cry on her shoulder about his ex-wife? Dominic didn’t seem like a crying-on-shoulders kind of guy.

He went to drink more coffee, to find his mug was nearly empty. He drained the last drops. ‘You make good coffee,’ he said appreciatively.

‘I worked as a barista when I was a student,’ she said.

She and Anthony had both worked in hospitality, saving for vacation backpacker trips to Indonesia and Thailand. It seemed so long ago now, those days when she took it for granted they had a long, happy future stretched out ahead of them. They’d been saving for a trip to Eastern Europe when he’d died.

She took Dominic’s mug from him, got up, refilled it, brought it back to the table and sat down again. He drank from it and put it down.

Dominic leaned across the table to bring him closer to her. ‘Can I trust you, Andie?’ he asked in that deep, resonant voice. His intense grey gaze met hers and held it.

‘Of course,’ she said without hesitation.

He sat back in his chair. ‘I know you’re friends with journalists, so I have to be sure what I might talk to you about today won’t go any further.’ The way he said it didn’t sound offensive; in fact it made her feel privileged that he would consider her trustworthy. Not to mention curious about what he might reveal.

‘I assure you, you can trust me,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Tara found out about my impending deal with Walter Burton and is doing her best to derail it.’

Andie frowned. ‘How can she do that?’

‘Before I married Tara, she worked for my company in the accounts department. She made it her business to find out everything she could about the way I ran things. I didn’t know, but once I started dating her she used that knowledge to make trouble, hiding behind the shield of our relationship. None of my staff dared tell me.’

‘Not good,’ Andie said, wanting to express in no uncertain terms what she thought of his ex, yet not wanting to get into a bitching session about her.

‘You’re right about that,’ he said. ‘It’s why I now never date employees.’

His gaze met hers again and held it for a long moment. Was there a message in there for her? If she wasn’t a contractor, would he ask her out? If she hadn’t promised her partners to stay away from him, would she suggest a date?

‘That policy makes...sense,’ she said. What about after Christmas, when she and Dominic would no longer be connected by business? Could they date then? A sudden yearning for that to happen surprised her with its intensity. She wanted him.

‘It gets worse,’ he continued. ‘A former employee started his own business in competition with me—’ Andie went to protest but Dominic put up his hand. ‘It happens; that’s legit,’ he said. ‘But what happened afterwards wasn’t. After our marriage broke up, Tara used her knowledge of how my company worked to help him.’

Andie couldn’t help her gasp of outrage. ‘Did her...her betrayal work?’

‘She gave him the information. That didn’t mean he knew how to use it. But now I’ve just discovered she’s working with him in a last-minute rival bid for the joint venture with Walter Burton.’

Andie shook her head in disbelief. ‘Why?’ Her research had shown her Tara Hunt had ended up with a massive divorce settlement from Dominic. Per day of their short marriage, she had walked away with an incredible number of dollars.

Dominic shrugged. ‘Revenge. Spite. Who knows what else?’

‘Surely Walter Burton won’t be swayed by that kind of underhand behaviour?’

‘Traditional values are important to Walter Burton. We know that. That’s why we’re holding the party to negate the popular opinion of me as a Scrooge.’

‘So what does your ex-wife have to do with the deal?’

Dominic sighed, a great weary sigh that made Andie want to put comforting arms around him. She’d sensed from the get-go he was a private person. He obviously hated talking about this. Once more, she wondered why he had chosen to.

He drew those dark brows together in a scowl. ‘Again she’s raked over the coals of our disastrous marriage and talked to her media buddies. Now she’s claiming I was unfaithful—which is a big fat lie. According to her, I’m a womaniser, a player and a complete and utter bastard. She dragged out my old quote that I will never marry again and claims it’s because I’m incapable of settling with one woman. It’s on one of the big Internet gossip sites and will be all over the weekend newspapers.’ He cursed under his breath.

Andie could see the shadow of old hurts on his face. He had once loved his ex enough to marry her. A betrayal like this must be painful, no matter how much time had elapsed. She had no such angst behind her. She knew Anthony had been loyal to her, as she had been to him. First love. Sometimes she wondered if they might have grown apart if he’d lived. Some of their friends who had dated as teenagers had split when they got older. But she dismissed those thoughts as disloyal to his memory.

Andie shook her head at Dominic’s revelations about his ex—it got worse and worse. ‘That’s horrible—but can’t you just ignore it?’

‘I would ignore it, but she’s made sure Walter Burton has seen all her spurious allegations set out as truth.’

Andie frowned. ‘Surely your personal life is none of Mr Burton’s business? Especially when it’s not true.’ She believed Dominic implicitly—why, she wasn’t completely sure. Trust went both ways.

‘He might think it’s true. The “bed-hopping billionaire”,’ the article calls me.’ Dominic growled with wounded outrage. ‘That might be enough for Burton to reconsider doing business with me.’

Andie had to put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile at the description.

But Dominic noticed and scowled. ‘I know it sounds ludicrous, but to a moralistic family man like Walter Burton it makes me sound immoral and not the kind of guy he wants to do business with.’

‘Why do you care so much about the deal with Mr Burton? If you have to pretend to be someone you’re not, how can it be worth it?’

‘You mean I should pretend not to be a bed-hopping billionaire?’

‘You must admit the headline has a certain ring to it,’ Andie said, losing her battle to keep a straight face.

That forced a reluctant grin from him. ‘A tag like that might be very difficult to live down.’

‘Is...is it true? Are you a bed-hopping guy?’ She held her breath for his reply.

‘No. Of course I’ve had girlfriends since my divorce. Serial monogamy, I think they call it. But nothing like what this scurrilous interview with my ex claims.’

Andie let out her breath on a sigh of relief. ‘But do you actually need to pursue this deal if it’s becoming so difficult? You’re already very wealthy.’

Dominic’s mouth set in a grim line. ‘I’m not going to bore you with my personal history. But home life with my aunt was less than ideal. I finished high school and got out. I’d tried to run away before and she’d dragged me back. This time she let me go. I ended up homeless, living in a squat. At seventeen I saw inexplicably awful things a boy that age should never see. I never again want to be without money and have nowhere to live. That’s all I intend to say about that.’ He nodded to her. ‘And I trust you not to repeat it.’

‘Of course,’ she said, rocked by his revelations, aching to know more. Dominic Hunt was a street kid? Not boring. There was so much more about his life than he was saying. She thought again about his scarred knuckles and broken nose. There had been nothing about his past in her online trawling. She hoped he might tell her more. It seemed he was far more complex than he appeared. Which only made him more attractive.

‘My best friend and first business partner, Jake Marlow, is also in with me on this,’ he said. ‘He wants it as much as I do, for his own reasons I’m not at liberty to share.’

‘Okay,’ she said slowly. ‘So we’re working on the party to negate the Scr...uh...the other reputation, to get Mr Burton on board. What do you intend to do about the bed-hopper one?’

‘When Burton contacted me I told him that it was all scuttlebutt and I was engaged to be married.’

She couldn’t help a gasp. ‘You’re engaged?’ She felt suddenly stricken. ‘Engaged to who?’

‘I’m not engaged. I’m not even dating anyone.’

‘Then why...?’ she said.

He groaned. ‘Panic. Fear. Survival. A gut reaction like I used to have back in that squat. When you woke up, terrified, in your cardboard box to find some older guy burrowing through your backpack and you told him you had nothing worth stealing even though there was five dollars folded tiny between your toes in your sock. If that money was stolen, you didn’t eat.’

‘So you lied to Mr Burton?’

‘As I said, a panic reaction. But it gets worse.’ Again he raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Burton said he was flying in to Sydney in two weeks’ time to meet with both me and the other guy. He wants to be introduced to my fiancée.’

Andie paused, stunned at what Dominic had done, appalled that he had lied. ‘What will you do?’

Again he leaned towards her over the table. ‘I want you to be my fiancée, Andie.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

DOMINIC WATCHED ANDIE’S reactions flit across her face—shock and indignation followed by disappointment. In him? He braced himself—certain she was going to say no.

‘Are you serious?’ she finally said, her hands flat down on the table in front of her.

‘Very,’ he said, gritting his teeth. He’d been an idiot to get himself into a mess like this. Panic. He shouldn’t have given in to panic in that phone call with Walter Burton. He hadn’t let panic or fear rule him for a long time.

Andie tilted her head to one side and frowned. ‘You want me to marry you? We hardly know each other.’

Marriage? Who was talking about marriage? ‘No. Just to pretend—’ Whatever he said wasn’t going to sound good. ‘Pretend to be my fiancée. Until after the Christmas party.’

Andie shook her head in disbelief. ‘To pretend to be engaged to you? To lie? No! I can’t believe you asked me to...to even think of such a thing. I’m a party planner, not a...a...the type of person who would agree to that.’

She looked at him as though she’d never seen him before. And that maybe she didn’t like what she saw. Dominic swallowed hard—he didn’t like the feeling her expression gave him. She pushed herself up from the chair and walked away from the table, her body rigid with disapproval. He was very aware she wanted to distance herself from him. He didn’t like that either. It had seemed so intimate, drinking coffee and eating breakfast at her table. And he had liked that.

He swivelled in his chair to face her. ‘It was a stupid thing to do, I know that,’ he said. He had spent the entire flight back from Perth regretting his impulsive action. ‘But it’s done.’

She turned around, glared at him. ‘Then I suggest you undo it.’

‘By admitting I lied?’

She shrugged. ‘Tell Mr Burton your fiancée dumped you.’

‘As if that would fly.’

‘You think it’s beyond belief that a woman would ever dump you?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Though it was true. Since it had ended with Melody, he had always been the one to end a relationship. ‘It would seem too...sudden.’

‘Just like the sudden engagement?’

‘It wouldn’t denote...stability.’

‘You’re right about that.’ She crossed her arms in front of her chest—totally unaware that the action pushed up her breasts into an enticing cleavage in the V-necked top she wore. ‘It’s a crazy idea.’

‘I’m not denying that,’ he growled. He didn’t need to have his mistake pointed out to him. ‘But I’m asking you to help me out.’

‘Why me? Find someone else. I’m sure there would be no shortage of candidates.’

‘But it makes sense for my fiancée to be you.’ He could be doggedly persistent when he wanted to be.

He unfolded himself from the too-small chair at the kitchen table. Most chairs were too small for him. He took a step towards her, only for her to take a step back from him. ‘Andie. Please.’

Her hair had fallen across her face and she tossed it back. ‘Why? We’re just client and contractor.’

‘Is that all it is between us?’

‘Of course it is.’ But she wouldn’t meet his gaze and he felt triumphant. So she felt it too. That attraction that had flashed between them from the get-go.

‘When I opened the door to the beautiful woman with the misbehaving skirt—’ that got a grudging smile from her ‘—I thought it could be more than just a business arrangement. But you know now why I don’t date anyone hired by the company.’

‘And Party Queens has a policy of not mixing business with...with pleasure.’ Her voice got huskier on the last words.

He looked her direct in the face, pinning her with his gaze. ‘If it ever happened, it would be pleasure all the way, Andie, I think we both know that.’ She hadn’t quite cleared her face of a wisp of flyaway hair. He reached down and gently smoothed it back behind her ear.

She trembled under his touch. A blush travelled up her throat to stain her cheeks. ‘I’ve never even thought about it, the...the pleasure, I mean,’ she said.

She wouldn’t blush like that if she hadn’t. Or flutter her hands to the leather laces of her neckline. Now who was lying?

She took a deep breath and he tried to keep his gaze from the resulting further exposure of her cleavage. ‘I don’t want to be involved in this mad scheme in any way,’ she said. ‘Except to add your pretend fiancée—when you find one—to the Christmas party guest list.’

‘I’m afraid you’re already involved.’

She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

Dominic took the few steps necessary back to his chair and took out his smartphone from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. He scrolled through, then handed it to Andie.

She stared at the screen. ‘But this is me. Us.’

The photo she was staring at was of him and her at a restaurant table. They were leaning towards each other, looking into each other’s faces, Andie’s hand on his arm.

‘At the restaurant in Circular Quay, the day of the Friday meeting,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. The business lunch that had felt like a date. In this photo, it looked like a date.

She shook her head, bewildered. ‘Who took it?’

‘Some opportunistic person with a smartphone, I expect. Maybe a trouble-making friend of Tara’s. Who knows?’

She looked back down at the screen, did some scrolling of her own. He waited for her to notice the words that accompanied the image on the gossip site.

Her eyes widened in horror. ‘Did you see this?’ She read out the heading. ‘“Is This the Bed-Hopping Billionaire’s New Conquest?”’ She swore under her breath—the first time he had heard her do so.

‘I’m sorry. Of course I had no idea this was happening. But, in light of it, you can see why it makes sense that my fake fiancée should be you.’

She shook her head. ‘No. It doesn’t make any sense. That was a business lunch. Not the...the romantic rendezvous it appears to be in the picture.’

‘You know that. I know that. But the way they’ve cropped the photo, that’s exactly what it seems. Announce an engagement and suddenly the picture would make a whole lot of sense. Good sense.’

Her green eyes narrowed. ‘This photo doesn’t bother me. It will blow over. We’re both single. Who even cares?’ He’d been stunned to see the expression in his eyes as he’d looked into her face in the photo. It had looked as if he wanted to have her for dessert. Had she noticed? No wonder the gossip site had drawn a conclusion of romantic intrigue.

‘If you’re so indifferent, why not help me out?’ he said. ‘Be my fake fiancée, just until after Christmas.’

‘Christmas is nearly a month away. Twenty-five days, to be precise. For twenty-five days I’d have to pretend to be your fiancée?’

‘So you’re considering it? Because we’ve already been “outed”, so to speak, it wouldn’t come out of the blue. It would be believable.’

‘Huh! We’ve only known each other for two weeks. Who would believe it?’

‘People get married on less acquaintance,’ he said.

‘Not people like me,’ she said.

‘You don’t think anyone would believe you could be smitten by me in that time? I think I’m offended.’

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I... I believe many women would be smitten by you. You’re handsome, intelligent—’

‘And personable, yes, you said. Though I bet you don’t think I’m so personable right now.’

She glared at him, though there was a lilt to the corners of her mouth that made it seem like she might want to smile. ‘You could be right about that.’

‘Now to you—gorgeous, sexy, smart Andie Newman.’ Her blush deepened as he sounded each adjective. ‘People would certainly believe I could be instantly smitten with such a woman,’ he said. ‘In fact they’d think I was clever getting a ring on your finger so quickly.’

That flustered her. ‘Th...thank you. I... I’m flattered. But it wouldn’t seem authentic. We’d have to pretend so much. It would be such deception.’

With any other woman, he’d be waiting for her to ask: What’s in it for me? Not Andie. He doubted the thought of a reward for her participation had even entered her head. He would have to entice her with an offer she couldn’t refuse. And save the big gun to sway her from her final refusal.

‘So you’re going to say “yes”?’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘No. I’m not. It wouldn’t be right.’

‘What’s the harm? You’d be helping me out.’

She spun on her heel away from him and he faced her back view, her tensely hunched shoulders, for a long moment before she turned back to confront him. ‘Can’t you see it makes a mockery of...of a man and a woman committing to each other? To spending their lives together in a loving union? That’s what getting engaged is all about. Not sealing a business deal.’

He closed his eyes at the emotion in her voice, the blurring of her words with choking pain. Under his breath he cursed fluently. Because, from any moral point of view, she was absolutely right.

‘Were you engaged to...to Anthony?’ he asked.

Her eyes when she lifted them to him glistened with the sheen of unshed tears. ‘Not officially. But we had our future planned, even the names of our kids chosen. That’s why I know promising to marry someone isn’t something you do lightly. And not...not for a scam. Do you understand?’

Of course he did. He’d once been idealistic about love and marriage and sharing his life with that one special woman. But he couldn’t admit it. Or that he’d become cynical that that kind of love would ever exist for him. Too much rode on this deal. Including his integrity.

‘But this isn’t really getting engaged,’ he said. ‘It’s just...a limited agreement.’

Slowly she shook her head. ‘I can’t help you,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

Dominic braced himself. He’d had to be ruthless at times to get where he’d got. To overcome the disadvantages of his youth. To win.

‘What if by agreeing to be my fake fiancée you were helping someone else?’ he said.

She frowned. ‘Like who? Helping Walter Burton to make even more billions? I honestly can’t say I like the sound of that guy, linking business to people’s private lives. He sounds like a hypocrite, for one thing—you know, rich men and eyes of needles and all that. I’m not lying for him.’

‘Not Walter Burton. I mean your nephew Timothy.’ The little boy was his big gun.

‘What do you mean, Timothy?’

Dominic fired his shot. ‘Agree to be my fake fiancée and I will pay for all of Timothy’s medical treatment—both immediate and ongoing. No limits. Hannah tells me there’s a clinic in the United States that’s at the forefront of research into treatment for his condition.’

Andie stared at him. ‘You’ve spoken to Hannah? You’ve told Hannah about this? That you’ll pay for Timothy if I agree to—’

He put up his hand. ‘Not true.’

‘But you—’

‘I met with Hannah the day after the dinner with your family to talk about her helping me recruit the families for the party. At that meeting—out of interest—I asked her to tell me more about Timothy. She told me about the American treatment. I offered then to pay all the treatment—airfares and accommodation included.’

The colour rushed back into Andie’s cheeks. ‘That...that was extraordinarily generous of you. What did Hannah say?’

‘She refused.’

‘Of course she would. She hardly knows you. A Newman wouldn’t accept charity. Although I might have tried to convince her.’

‘Maybe you could convince her now. If Hannah thought I was going to be part of the family—her brother-in-law, in fact—she could hardly refuse to accept, could she? And isn’t it the sooner the better for Timothy’s treatment?’

* * *

Andie stared at Dominic for a very long moment, too shocked to speak. ‘Th...that’s coercion. Coercion of the most insidious kind,’ she finally managed to choke out.

A whole lot more words she couldn’t express also tumbled around in her brain. Ruthless. Conniving. Heartless. And yet...he’d offered to help Timothy well before the fake fiancée thing. Not a Scrooge after all. She’d thought she’d been getting to know him—but Dominic Hunt was more of a mystery to her than ever.

He drew his dark brows together. ‘Coercion? I wouldn’t go that far. But I did offer to help Timothy without any strings attached. Hannah refused. This way, she might accept. And your nephew will get the help he needs. I see it as a win-win scenario.’

Andie realised she was twisting the leather thronging that laced together the front of her top and stopped it. Nothing in her life had equipped her to make this kind of decision. ‘You’re really putting me on the spot here. Asking me to lie and be someone I’m not—’

‘Someone you’re not? How does that work? You’d still be Andie.’

She found it difficult to meet his direct, confronting gaze. Those observant grey eyes seemed to see more than she wanted him to. ‘You’re asking me to pretend to be...to pretend to be a woman in love. When...when I’m not.’ She’d only ever been in love once—and she didn’t want to trawl back in her memories to try and relive that feeling—love lost hurt way too much. She did have feelings for Dominic beyond the employer/contractor relationship—but they were more of the other ‘l’ word—lust rather than love.

His eyes seemed to darken. ‘I suppose I am.’

‘And you too,’ she said. ‘You would have to pretend to be in love with...with me. And it would have to look darn authentic to be convincing.’

This was why she was prevaricating. As soon as he’d mentioned Timothy, she knew she would have little choice but to agree. If it had been any other blackmailing billionaire she would probably have said “yes” straight away—living a lie for a month would be worth it for Timothy to get the treatment her family’s combined resources couldn’t afford.

But not this man. How could she blithely pretend to be in love with a man she wanted as much as she wanted him? It would be some kind of torture.

‘I see,’ he said. Had he seriously not thought this through?

‘We would be playing with big emotions, here, Dominic. And other people would be affected too. My family thinks you hung the moon. They’d be delighted if we dated—a sudden engagement would both shock and worry them. At some stage I would have to introduce you to Anthony’s parents—they would be happy for me and want to meet you.’

‘I see where you’re going,’ he said, raking his hand through his hair once more in a gesture that was becoming familiar.

She narrowed her eyes. ‘And yet...would it all be worth it for Hannah to accept your help for Timothy?’ She put up her hand to stop him from replying. ‘I’m thinking out loud here.’

‘And helping me achieve something I really want.’

There must be something more behind his drive to get this American deal. She hoped she’d discover it one day, sooner rather than later. It might help her understand him.

‘You’ve backed me into a corner here, Dominic, and I can’t say I appreciate it. How can I say “no” to such an incredible opportunity for Timothy?’

‘Does that mean your answer is “yes”?’

She tilted her chin upwards—determined not to capitulate too readily to something about which she still had serious doubts. ‘That’s an unusual way to put it, Dominic—rather like you’ve made me a genuine proposal.’

Dominic pulled a face but it didn’t dull the glint of triumph in his eyes. He thought he’d won. But she was determined to get something out of this deal for herself too.

Andie had no doubt if she asked for recompense—money, gifts—he’d give it to her. Dominic was getting what he wanted. Timothy would be getting what he so desperately needed. But what about her?

She wasn’t interested in jewellery or fancy shopping. What she wanted was him. She wanted to kiss him, she wanted to hold him and she very much wanted to make love with him. Not for fake—for real.

There was a very good chance this arrangement would end in tears—her tears. But if she agreed to a fake engagement with this man, who attracted her like no other, she wanted what a fiancée might be expected to have—him. She thought, with a little shiver of desire, about what he’d said: pleasure all the way. She would be fine with that.

‘Would it help if I made it sound like a genuine proposal?’ he said, obviously bemused.

That hurt. Because the way he spoke made it sound as if there was no way he would ever make a genuine proposal to her. Not that she wanted that—heck, she hardly knew the guy. But it put her on warning. Let’s be honest, she thought. She wanted him in her bed. But she also wanted to make darn sure she didn’t get hurt. This was just a business deal to him—nothing personal involved.

‘Do it,’ she said, pointing to the floor. ‘The full down-on-bended-knee thing.’

‘Seriously?’ he said, dark brows raised.

‘Yes,’ she said imperiously.

He grinned. ‘Okay.’

The tall, black denim-clad hunk obediently knelt down on one knee, took her left hand in both of his and looked up into her face. ‘Andie, will you do me the honour of becoming my fake fiancée?’ he intoned in that deep, so-sexy voice.

Looking down at his roughly handsome face, Andie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Yes, I accept your proposal,’ she said in a voice that wasn’t quite steady.

Dominic squeezed her hand hard as relief flooded his face. He got up from bended knee and for a moment she thought he might kiss her.

‘But there are conditions,’ she said, pulling away and letting go of his hand.

CHAPTER NINE

ANDIE ALMOST LAUGHED out loud at Dominic’s perplexed expression. He was most likely used to calling the shots—in both business and his relationships. ‘Conditions?’ he asked.

‘Yes, conditions,’ she said firmly. ‘Come on over to the sofa and I’ll run through the list with you. I need to sit down; these heels aren’t good for pacing in.’ The polished concrete floor was all about looks rather than comfort.

‘Do I have any choice about these “conditions”?’ he grumbled.

‘I think you’ll see the sense in them,’ she said. This was not going to go all his way. There was danger in this game she’d been coerced into playing and she wanted to make sure she and her loved ones were not going to get hurt by it.

She led him over to the red leather modular sofa in the living area. The apartment in an old converted factory warehouse was owned by one of her roommates and had been furnished stylishly with Andie’s help. She flopped down on the sofa, kicked off the leopard stilettos that landed in an animal print clash on the zebra-patterned floor rug, and patted the seat next to her.

As Dominic sat down, his muscular thighs brushed against hers and she caught her breath until he settled at a not-quite-touching distance from her, his arm resting on the back of the sofa behind her. She had to close her eyes momentarily to deal with the rush of awareness from his already familiar scent, the sheer maleness of him in such close proximity.

‘I’m interested to hear what you say,’ he said, angling his powerful body towards her. He must work out a lot to have a chest like that. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to splay her hands against those hard muscles, to press her body against his.

But it appeared he was having no such sensual thoughts about her. She noticed he gave a surreptitious glance to his watch.

‘Hey, no continually checking on the clock,’ she said. ‘You have to give time to an engagement. Especially a make-believe one, if we’re to make it believable. Not to mention your fake fiancée just might feel a tad insulted.’

She made her voice light but she meant every word of it. She had agreed to play her role in this charade and was now committed to making it work.

‘Fair enough,’ he said with a lazy half-smile. ‘Is that one of your conditions?’

‘Not one on its own as such, but it will fit into the others.’

‘Okay, hit me with the conditions.’ He feinted a boxer’s defence that made her smile.

‘Condition Number One,’ she said, holding up the index finger of her left hand. ‘Hannah never knows the truth—not now, not ever—that our engagement is a sham,’ she said. ‘In fact, none of my family is ever to know the truth.’

‘Good strategy,’ said Dominic. ‘In fact, I’d extend that. No one should ever know. Both business partners and friends.’

‘Agreed,’ she said. It would be difficult to go through with this without confiding in a friend but it had to be that way. No one must know how deeply attracted she was to him. She didn’t want anyone’s pity when she and Dominic went their separate ways.

‘Otherwise, the fallout from people discovering they’d been deceived could be considerable,’ he said. ‘What’s next?’

She held up her middle finger. ‘Condition Number Two—a plausible story. We need to explain why we got engaged so quickly. So start thinking...’

‘Couldn’t we just have fallen for each other straight away?’

Andie was taken aback. She hadn’t expected anything that romantic from Dominic Hunt. ‘You mean like “love at first sight”?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Would that be believable?’

He shook his head in mock indignation. ‘Again you continue to insult me...’

‘I didn’t mean...’ She’d certainly felt something for him at first sight. Sitting next to him on this sofa, she was feeling it all over again. But it wasn’t love—she knew only too well what it was like to love. To love and to lose the man she loved in such a cruel way. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure she wanted to love again. It hurt too much to lose that love.

‘I don’t like the lying aspect of this any more than you do,’ he said. He removed his arm from the back of the sofa so he could lean closer to her, both hands resting on his knees. ‘Why not stick to the truth as much as possible? You came to organise my party. I was instantly smitten, wooed you and won you.’

‘And I was a complete walkover,’ she said dryly.

‘So we change it—you made me work very hard to win you.’

‘In two weeks—and you away for one of them?’ she said. ‘Good in principle. But we might have to fudge the timeline a little.’

‘It can happen,’ he said. ‘Love at first sight, I mean. My parents...apparently they fell for each other on day one and were married within mere months of meeting. Or so my aunt told me.’

His eyes darkened and she remembered he’d only been eleven years old when left an orphan. If she’d lost her parents at that age, her world would have collapsed around her—as no doubt his had. But he was obviously trying to revive a happy memory of his parents.

‘How lovely—a real-life romance. Did they meet in Australia or England?’

‘London. They were both schoolteachers; my mother was living in England. She came to his school as a temporary mathematics teacher; he taught chemistry.’

Andie decided not to risk a feeble joke about their meeting being explosive. Not when the parents’ love story had ended in tragedy. ‘No wonder you’re clever then, with such smart parents.’

‘Yes,’ he said, making the word sound like an end-of-story punctuation mark. She knew only too well what it was like not to want to pursue a conversation about a lost loved one.

‘So we have a precedent for love at first sight in your family,’ she said. ‘I... I fell for Anthony straight away too. So for both of us an...an instant attraction—if not love—could be feasible.’ Instant and ongoing for her—but he was not to know that.

That Dominic had talked about his parents surprised her. For her, thinking about Anthony—as always—brought a tug of pain to her heart but this time also a reminder of the insincerity of this venture with Dominic. She knew what real commitment should feel like. But for Timothy to get that vital treatment she was prepared to compromise on her principles.

‘Love at first sight it is,’ he said.

‘Attraction at first sight,’ she corrected him.

‘Surely it would had to have led to love for us to get engaged,’ he said.

‘True,’ she conceded. He tossed around concepts of love and commitment as if they were concepts with which to barter, not deep, abiding emotions between two people who cared enough about each other to pledge a lifetime together. Till death us do part. She could never think of that part of a marriage ceremony without breaking down. She shouldn’t be thinking of it now.

‘Next condition?’ he said.

She skipped her ring finger, which she had trouble keeping upright, and went straight for her pinkie. ‘Condition Number Three: no dating other people—for the duration of the engagement, that is.’

‘I’m on board with that one,’ he said without hesitation.

‘Me too,’ she said. She hadn’t even thought about any man but Dominic since the moment she’d met him, so that was not likely to be a hardship.

He sat here next to her in jeans and T-shirt like a regular thirty-two-year-old guy—not a secretive billionaire who had involved her in a scheme to deceive family and friends to help him make even more money. If he were just your everyday handsome hunk she would make her interest in him known. But her attraction went beyond his good looks and muscles to the complex man she sensed below his confident exterior. She had seen only intriguing hints of those hidden depths—she wanted to discover more.

Andie’s thumb went up next. ‘Resolution Number Four: I dump you, not the other way around. When this comes to an end, that is.’

‘Agreed—and I’ll be a gentleman about it. But I ask you not to sell your story. I don’t want to wake up one morning to the headline “My Six Weeks with Scrooge”.’

He could actually joke about being a Scrooge—Dominic had come a long way.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I promise not to say “I Hopped Out of the Billionaire’s Bed” either. Seriously, I would never talk to the media. You can be reassured of that.’

‘No tacky headlines, just a simple civilised break-up to be handled by you,’ he said.

They both fell silent for a moment. Did he feel stricken by the same melancholy she did at the thought of the imagined break-up of a fake engagement? And she couldn’t help thinking she’d like a chance to hop into his bed before she hopped out of it.

‘On to Condition Number Five,’ she said, holding up all five fingers as she could not make her ring finger stand on its own. ‘We have to get to know each other. So we don’t get caught out on stuff we would be expected to know about each other if we were truly...committing to a life together.’

How different this fake relationship would be to a real relationship—getting to know each other over shared experiences, shared laughter, shared tears, long lazy mornings in bed...

Dominic sank down further into the sofa, his broad shoulders hunched inward. ‘Yup.’ It was more a grunt than a word.

‘You don’t sound keen to converse?’

‘What sort of things?’ he said with obvious reluctance. Not for the first time, she had a sense of secrets deeply held.

‘For one thing, I need to know more about your marriage and how it ended.’ And more about his time on the streets. And about that broken nose and scarred knuckles. And why he had let people believe he was a Scrooge when he so obviously wasn’t. Strictly speaking, she probably didn’t need to know all that about him for a fake engagement. Fact was, she wanted to know it.

‘I guess I can talk to you about my marriage,’ he said, still not sounding convinced. ‘But there are things about my life that I would rather remain private.’

What things? ‘Just so long as I’m not made a fool of at some stage down the track by not knowing something a real fiancée would have known.’

‘Fine,’ he grunted in a response that didn’t give her much confidence. She ached to know more about him. And yet there was that shadow she sensed. She wouldn’t push for simple curiosity’s sake.

‘As far as I’m concerned, my life’s pretty much an open book,’ she said, in an effort to encourage him to open up about his life—or past, to be more specific. ‘Just ask what you need to know about me and I’ll do my best to answer honestly.’

Was any person’s life truly an open book? Like anyone else, she had doubts and anxieties and dumb things she’d done that she’d regretted, but nothing lurked that she thought could hinder an engagement. No one would criticise her for finding love again after five years. In truth, she knew they would be glad for her. So would Anthony.

She remembered one day, lying together on the beach. ‘I would die if I lost you,’ she’d said to Anthony.

‘Don’t say that,’ he’d said. ‘If anything happened to me, I’d want you to find another guy. But why are we talking like this? We’re both going to live until we’re a hundred.’

‘Why not schedule in a question-and-answer session?’ Dominic said.

She pulled her thoughts back to the present. ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Excellent idea, in fact.’

Dominic rolled his eyes in response.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You weren’t serious. I... I was.’

‘No, you’re right. I guess there’s no room for spontaneity in a fake engagement.’ It was a wonder he could get the words out when his tongue was so firmly in his cheek. ‘A question-and-answer session it is. At a time to be determined.’

‘Good idea,’ she said, feeling disconcerted. Was all this just a game to him?

‘Are there any more conditions to come?’ he asked. ‘You’re all out of fingers on one hand, by the way.’

‘There is one more very important condition to come—and may I remind you I do have ten fingers—but first I want to hear if there’s anything you want to add.’

She actually had two more conditions, but the final condition she could not share with him: that she could not fall for him. She couldn’t deal with the fallout in terms of pain if she were foolish enough to let down the guard on her heart.

* * *

Andie’s beautiful green eyes had sparkled with good humour in spite of the awkward position he had put her into. Coerced her into. But now her eyes seemed to dim and Dominic wondered if she was being completely honest about being an ‘open book’.

Ironically, he already knew more about Andie, the fake fiancée, than he’d known about Tara when he’d got engaged to her for real. His ex-wife had kept her true nature under wraps until well after she’d got the wedding band on her finger. What you see is what you get. He so wanted to believe that about Andie.

‘My condition? You have to wear a ring,’ he said. ‘I want to get you an engagement ring straight away. Today. Once Tara sees that she’ll know it’s serious. And the press will too. Not to mention a symbol for when we meet with Walter Burton.’

She shrugged. ‘Okay, you get me a ring.’

‘You don’t want to choose it yourself?’ He was taken aback. Tara had been so avaricious about jewellery.

‘No. I would find it...sad. Distressing. The day I choose my engagement ring is the day I get engaged for real. To me, the ring should be a symbol of a true commitment, not a...a prop for a charade. But I agree—I should wear one as a visible sign of commitment.’

‘I’ll organise it then,’ he said. He had no idea why he should be disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm. She was absolutely right—the ring would be a prop. But it would also play a role in keeping it believable. ‘What size ring do you wear?’

‘I haven’t a clue,’ she said. She held up her right hand to show the collection of tiny fine silver rings on her slender fingers. Her nails were painted cream today. ‘I bought these at a market and just tried them on until I found rings that fitted.’ She slid off the ring from the third finger of her right hand. ‘This should do the trick.’ She handed it to him. It was still warm with her body heat and he held it on his palm for a moment before pocketing it.

‘What style of engagement ring would you like?’ he asked.

Again she shrugged. ‘You choose. It’s honestly not important to me.’

A hefty carat solitaire diamond would be appropriate—one that would give her a good resale value when she went to sell it after this was all over.

‘Did you choose your ex-wife’s engagement ring?’ Andie asked.

He scowled at the reminder that he had once got engaged for real.

Andie pulled one of her endearing faces. ‘Sorry. I guess that’s a sensitive issue. I know we’ll come to all that in our question-and-answer session. I’m just curious.’

‘She chose it herself. All I had to do was pay for it.’ That alone should have alerted him to what the marriage was all about—giving her access to his money and the lifestyle it bought.

‘That wasn’t very...romantic,’ Andie said.

‘There was nothing romantic about my marriage. Shall I tell you about it now and get all that out of the way?’

‘If you feel comfortable with it,’ she said.

‘Comfortable is never a word I would relate to that time of my life,’ he said. ‘It was a series of mistakes.’

‘If you’re ready to tell me, I’m ready to listen.’ He thought about how Andie had read his mood so accurately earlier this morning—giving him breakfast when he hadn’t even been aware himself that he was hungry. She was thoughtful. And kind. Kindness wasn’t an attribute he had much encountered in the women he had met.

‘The first mistake I made with Tara was that she reminded me of someone else—a girl I’d met when I was living in the squat. Someone frail and sweet with similar colouring—someone I’d wanted to care for and look after.’ It still hurt to think of Melody. Andie didn’t need to know about her.

‘And the second mistake?’ Andie asked, seeming to understand he didn’t want to speak further about Melody. She leaned forward as if she didn’t want to miss a word.

‘I believed her when she said she wanted children.’

‘You wanted children?’

‘As soon as possible. Tara said she did too.’

Andie frowned. ‘But she didn’t?’

Even now, bitterness rose in his throat. ‘After we’d been married a year and nothing had happened, I suggested we see a doctor. Tara put it off and put it off. I thought it was because she didn’t want to admit to failure. It was quite by accident that I discovered all the time I thought we’d been trying to conceive, she’d been on the contraceptive pill.’

Andie screwed up her face in an expression of disbelief and distaste. ‘That’s unbelievable.’

‘When I confronted her, she laughed.’ He relived the horror of discovering his ex-wife’s treachery and the realisation she didn’t have it in her to love. Not him. Certainly not a child. Fortunately, she hadn’t been clever enough to understand the sub-clauses in the pre-nuptial agreement and divorce had been relatively straightforward.

‘You had a lucky escape,’ Andie said.

‘That’s why I never want to marry again. How could I ever trust another woman after that?’

‘I understand you would feel that way,’ she said. ‘But not every woman would be like her. Me...my sisters, my friends. I don’t know anyone who would behave with such dishonesty. Don’t write off all women because of one.’

Trouble was, his wealth attracted women like Tara.

He was about to try and explain that to Andie when her phone started to sound out a bar of classical music.

She got up from the sofa and headed for the kitchen countertop to pick it up. ‘Gemma,’ she mouthed to him. ‘I’d better take it.’

He nodded, grateful for the reprieve. Tara’s treachery had got him into this fake engagement scenario with Andie, who was being such a good sport about the whole thing. He did not want to waste another word, or indeed thought, on his ex. Again, he thanked whatever providence had sent Andie into his life—Andie who was the opposite of Tara in every way.

He couldn’t help but overhear Andie as she chatted to Gemma. ‘Yes, yes, I saw it. We were having lunch after the meeting that Friday. Yes, it does look romantic. No, I didn’t know anyone took a photo.’

Andie waved him over to her. ‘Shall I tell her?’ she mouthed.

He gave her the thumbs-up. ‘Yes,’ he mouthed back as he got up. There was no intention of keeping this ‘engagement’ secret. He walked over closer to Andie, who was standing there in bare feet, looking more beautiful in jeans than any other woman would look in a ball gown.

‘Actually, Gemma, I...haven’t been completely honest with you. I...uh...we...well, Dominic and I hit it off from the moment we first saw each other.’

Andie looked to Dominic and he nodded—she was doing well.

She listened to Gemma, then spoke again. ‘Yes. We are...romantically involved. In fact...well...we’re engaged.’ She held the phone out from her ear and even Dominic could hear the excited squeals coming from Gemma.

When the squeals had subsided, Andie spoke again. ‘Yes. It is sudden. I know that. But...well...you see I’ve learned that you have to grab your chance at happiness when you can. I... I’ve had it snatched away from me before.’ She paused as she listened. ‘Yes, that’s it. I didn’t want to wait. Neither did he. Gemma, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone just yet. Eliza? Well, okay, you can tell Eliza. I’d just like to tell my family first. What was that? Yes, I’ll tell him.’ She shut down her phone.

‘So it’s out,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No denying it now.’

‘What did Gemma ask you to tell me?’

She looked up at him. ‘That she hoped you knew what a lucky guy you are to...to catch me.’

He looked down at her. ‘I know very well how lucky I am. You’re wonderful in every way and I appreciate what you’re doing to help me.’

For a long moment he looked down into her face—still, serious, even sombre without her usual animated expression. Her eyes were full of something he couldn’t put a name to. But not, he hoped, regret.

‘Thank you, Andie.’

He stepped closer. For a long moment her gaze met his and held it. He saw wariness but he also saw the stirrings of what he could only read as invitation. To kiss his pretend fiancée would probably be a mistake. But it was a mistake he badly wanted to make.

He lifted his hand to her face, brushed first the smooth skin of her cheek and then the warm softness of her lips with the back of his knuckles. She stilled. Her lips parted under his touch and he could feel the tremor that ran through her body. He dropped his hand to her shoulder, then dipped his head and claimed her mouth in a firm gentle kiss. She murmured her surprise and pleasure as she kissed him back.

CHAPTER TEN

DOMINIC WAS KISSING her and it was more wonderful than Andie ever could have imagined. His firm, sensuous mouth was sure and certain on hers and she welcomed the intimate caress, the nudging of his tongue against the seam of her lips as she opened her mouth to his. His beard growth scratched her face but it was a pleasurable kind of pain. The man knew how to kiss.

But as he kissed her and she kissed him back she was shocked by the sudden explosion of chemistry between them that turned something gentle into something urgent and demanding. She wound her arms around his neck to bring him closer in a wild tangle of tongues and lips as she pressed herself against his hard muscular chest. He tasted of coffee and hot male and desire. Passion this instant, this insistent was a surprise.

But it was too soon.

She knew she wanted him. But she hadn’t realised until now just how much she wanted him. And how careful she would have to be to guard her heart. Because these thrilling kisses told her that intimate contact with Dominic Hunt might just become an addiction she would find very difficult to live without. To him, this pretend engagement was a business ploy that might also develop into an entertaining game on the side. She did not want to be a fake fiancée with benefits.

When it came down to it, while she had dated over the last few years, her only serious relationship had been with a boy who had adored her, and whom she had loved with all her heart. Not a man like Dominic, who had sworn off marriage and viewed commitment so lightly he could pretend to be engaged. Her common sense urged her to stop but her body wanted more, more, more of him.

With a great effort she broke away from the kiss. Her heart was pounding in triple time, her breath coming in painful gasps. She took a deep steadying breath. And then another.

‘That...that was a great start on Condition Number Six,’ she managed to choke out.

Dominic towered over her; his breath came in ragged gasps. He looked so darkly sensual, her heart seemed to flip right over in her chest. ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘Stopping when we’d just started?’

‘No. I... I mean the actual kiss.’

He put his hand on her shoulder, lightly stroking her in a caress that ignited shivers of delight all through her.

‘So tell me about your sixth condition,’ he said, his deep voice with a broken edge to it as he struggled to control his breathing.

‘Condition Number Six is that we...we have to look the part.’

He frowned. ‘And that means...?’

‘I mean we have to act like a genuine couple. To seem to other people as if we’re...we’re crazy about each other. Because it would have to be...something very powerful between us for us to get engaged so quickly. In...real life, I mean.’

She found it difficult to meet his eyes. ‘I was going to say we needed to get physical. And we just did...get physical. So we...uh...know that there’s chemistry between us. And that...that it works.’

He dropped his hand from her shoulder to tilt her chin upwards with his finger so she was forced to meet his gaze. ‘There was never any doubt about that.’

His words thrummed through her body. That sexual attraction had been there for her the first time she’d met him. Had he felt it too?

‘So the sixth condition is somewhat superfluous,’ she said, her voice racing as she tried to ignore the hunger for him his kiss had ignited. ‘I think we might be okay, there. You know, holding hands, arms around each other. Appropriate Public Displays of Affection.’ It was an effort to force herself to sound matter of fact.

‘This just got to be my favourite of all your conditions,’ he said slowly, his eyes narrowing in a way she found incredibly sexy. ‘Shall we practise some more?’

Her traitorous body wrestled down her hopelessly outmatched common sense. ‘Why not?’ she murmured, desperate to be in his arms again. He pulled her close and their body contact made her aware he wanted her as much as she wanted him. She sighed as she pressed her mouth to his.

Then her phone sang out its ringtone of a piano sonata.

‘Leave it,’ growled Dominic.

She ignored the musical tone until it stopped. But it had brought her back to reality. There was nothing she wanted more than to take Dominic by the hand and lead him up the stairs to her bedroom. She intended to have him before this contract between them came to an end.

But that intuition she usually trusted screamed at her that to make love with him on the first day of their fake engagement would be a mistake. It would change the dynamic of their relationship to something she did not feel confident of being able to handle.

No sooner had the ringtone stopped than it started again.

Andie untangled herself from Dominic’s embrace and stepped right back from him, back from the seductive reach of his muscular arms.

‘I... I have to take this,’ she said.

She answered the phone but had to rest against the kitchen countertop to support knees that had gone shaky and weak. Dominic leaned back against the wall opposite her and crossed his arms against his powerful chest. His muscles flexed as he did so and she had to force herself to concentrate on the phone call.

‘Yes, Eliza, it’s true. I know—it must have been a surprise to you. A party?’ Andie looked up to Dominic and shook her head. He nodded. She spoke to Eliza. ‘No. We don’t want an engagement party. Yes, I know we’re party queens and it’s what we do.’ She rolled her eyes at Dominic and, to her relief, he smiled. ‘The Christmas party is more than enough to handle at the moment,’ she said to Eliza.

We. She and Dominic were a couple now. A fake couple. It would take some getting used to. So would handling the physical attraction between them.

‘The wedding?’ Eliza’s question about the timing of the wedding flustered her. ‘We...we...uh...next year some time. Yes, I know next year is only next month. The wedding won’t be next month, that’s for sure.’ The wedding—wouldn’t a loved-up fiancée have said our wedding?

She finished the call to Eliza and realised her hands were clammy. ‘This is not going to be easy,’ she said to Dominic.

‘I never thought it would be,’ he said. Was there a double meaning there?

‘I have no experience in this kind of deception. The first thing Eliza asked me was when are we getting married. She put me on the spot. I... I struggled to find an answer.’

He nodded slowly. ‘I suggest we say we’ve decided on a long engagement. That we’re committed but want to use the engagement time to get to know each other better.’

‘That sounds good,’ she said.

The deceptive words came so easily to him while she was so flustered she could scarcely think. She realised how hopelessly mismatched they were: he was more experienced, wealthier, from a completely different background. And so willing to lie.

And yet... That kiss had only confirmed how much she wanted him.

Her phone rang out again. ‘Why do I get the feeling this phone will go all day long?’ she said, a note of irritation underscoring her voice. She looked on the caller ID. ‘It’s my fashion editor friend, Karen. I knew Gemma wouldn’t be able to stop at Eliza,’ she told Dominic as she answered it.

The first part of the conversation was pretty much a repeat of the conversation she’d had with Gemma. But then Karen asked should she start scouting around for her wedding dress. Karen hunted down bargain-priced clothes for her; of course she’d want to help her with a wedding. ‘My wedding dress? We...uh...haven’t set a date for the wedding yet. Yes, I suppose it’s never too early to think about the dress. Simple? Vintage inspired? Gorgeous shoes?’ She laughed and hoped Karen didn’t pick up on the shrill edge to her laughter. ‘You know my taste only too well, Karen. A veil? A modest lace veil? Okay. Yes. I’ll leave it to you. Thank you.’

‘Your friends move fast,’ Dominic said when she’d disconnected the call.

‘They’re so thrilled for me. After...after...well, you know. My past.’ Her past of genuine love, unsullied by lies and deception.

‘Of course,’ he said.

She couldn’t bring herself to say anything about the kisses they’d shared. It wasn’t the kind of thing she found easy to talk about. Neither, it appeared, did he.

He glanced down at his watch. The action drew her attention to his hands. She noticed again how attractive they were, with long strong fingers. And thought how she would like to feel them on her body. Stroking. Caressing. Exploring. She had to stop this.

‘I know I’m breaking the terms of one of your conditions,’ he said. ‘But I do have to get to the office. There are cancelled meetings in other states to reschedule and staff who need to talk to me.’

‘And I’ve got to finalise the furniture hire for the Christmas party. With two hundred people for lunch, we need more tables and chairs. It’s sobering, to have all those families in need on Christmas Day.’

‘Hannah assures me it’s the tip of a tragic iceberg,’ said Dominic.

They both paused for a long moment before she spoke. ‘I also have to work on a tiaras-and-tuxedos-themed twenty-first party. Ironic, isn’t it, after what we’ve just been saying?’ But organising parties was her job and brought not only employment to her and her partners but also the caterers, the waiting staff and everyone else involved.

‘I didn’t think twenty-first parties were important any more, with eighteen the legal age of adulthood,’ Dominic said.

‘They’re still very popular. This lovely girl turning twenty-one still lives at home with her parents and has three more years of university still ahead of her to become a veterinarian. I have to organise tiaras for her dogs.’

‘Wh...what?’ he spluttered. ‘Did you say you’re putting a tiara on a dog?’

‘Her dogs are very important to her; they’ll be honoured guests at the party.’

He scowled. ‘I like dogs but that’s ridiculous.’

‘We’re getting more and more bookings for dog parties. A doggy birthday boy or girl invites their doggy friends. They’re quite a thing. And getting as competitive as the kids’ parties. Of course it’s a learning curve for a party planner—considering doggy bathroom habits, for one thing.’

‘That is the stupidest—’

Andie put up her hand. ‘Don’t be too quick to judge. The doggy parties are really about making the humans happy—I doubt the dogs could care less. Frivolity can be fun. Eliza and I have laid bets on how many boys will arrive wearing tiaras to the vet student’s twenty-first.’

She had to smile at his bah-humbug expression.

‘By the time I was twenty-one, I had established a career in real estate and had my first million in sight.’

That interested her. ‘I’d love to know about—’

He cut her off. ‘Let’s save that for the question-and-answer session, shall we?’

‘Which will start...?’

‘This afternoon. Can you come to my place?’

‘Sure. It doesn’t hurt to visit the party site as many times as I can.’

‘Only this time you’ll be coming to collect your engagement ring.’

‘Of...of course.’ She had forgotten about that. In a way, she dreaded it. ‘And to find out more about you, fake fiancé. We have to be really well briefed to face my family tomorrow evening.’

She and Anthony had joked that by the time they’d paid off their student loans all they’d be able to afford for an engagement ring would be a ring pull from a can of soft drink. The ring pull would have had so much more meaning than this cynical exercise.

She felt suddenly subdued at the thought of deceiving her family. Her friends were used to the ups and downs of dating. A few weeks down the track, they’d take a broken engagement in their stride. If those kisses were anything to go by, she might be more than a tad upset when her time with Dominic came to an end. She pummelled back down to somewhere deep inside her the shred of hope that perhaps something real could happen between them after the engagement charade was done.

‘When will you tell your parents?’ Dominic asked.

‘Today. They’d be hurt beyond belief if they found out from someone else.’

‘And you’ll talk to Hannah about Timothy?’

‘At the family dinner. We should speak to her and Paul together.’

‘I hope she won’t be too difficult to convince. I really want to help that little boy.’

‘I know,’ she said, thinking of how grateful her family would be to him. How glad she was she’d agreed to all this for her tiny nephew’s sake. But what about Dominic’s family? This shouldn’t be all about hers. ‘What about your aunt? Do we need to tell her?’

The shutters came slamming down. ‘No. She’s out of the picture.’

The way he said it let her know not to ask more. Not now anyway.

Dominic shrugged on his leather jacket in preparation to go. She stared, dumbstruck, feasting her eyes on him. He was so hot. She still felt awkward after their passionate kissing session. Should she reach up and kiss him on the cheek?

While she was making up her mind, he pulled her close for a brief, exciting kiss on her mouth. She doubted there could be any other type of kiss but exciting from Dominic. ‘Happy to fulfil Condition Number Six at any time,’ he said, very seriously.

She smiled, the tension between them immediately dissipated. But she wasn’t ready to say goodbye just yet.

‘Before you go...’ She picked up her smartphone again. ‘The first thing my friends who don’t know you will want to see is a photo of my surprise new fiancé.’

He ran his hand over his unshaven chin. ‘Like this? Can’t it wait?’

‘I like your face like that. It’s hot. No need to shave on my behalf.’ Without thinking, she put her fingers up to her cheek, where there was probably stubble rash. His kiss had felt so good.

‘If you say so,’ he said, looking pleased.

‘Just lean against the door there,’ she said. ‘Look cool.’

He slouched against the door and sent her a smouldering look. The wave of want that crashed through her made her nearly drop the phone. ‘Do I look cool?’ he said in a self-mocking tone. ‘I thought you liked hot?’

‘You know exactly what I mean.’ She was discovering a light-hearted side to Dominic she liked very much.

Their gazes met and they both burst into laughter. He looked even more gorgeous when he laughed, perfect teeth white in his tanned face, and she immediately captured a few more images of him. Who would recognise this good-humoured hunk in jeans and leather jacket as the billionaire Scrooge of legend?

‘What about a selfie of us together?’ she asked. ‘In the interests of authenticity,’ she hastily added.

Bad idea. She stood next to him, aware of every centimetre of body contact, and held her phone out in front of them. She felt more self-conscious than she could ever remember feeling. He pulled her in so their faces were close together. She smiled and clicked, and as she clicked again he kissed her on the cheek.

‘That will be cute,’ she said.

‘Another?’ he asked. This time he kissed her on the mouth. Click. Click. Click. And then she forgot to click.

After he had left, Andie spent more minutes than she should scrolling through the photos on her phone. No one would know they were faking it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DOMINIC NOW KNEW more about diamond engagement rings than even a guy who was genuinely engaged to be married needed to know. He’d thought he could just march into Sydney’s most exclusive jewellery store and hand over an investment-sized price for a big chunk of diamond. Not so.

The sales guy—rather, executive consultant—who had greeted him and ushered him into a private room had taken the purchase very seriously. He’d hit Dominic with a barrage of questions. It was unfortunate that the lady was unable to be there because it was very important the ring would suit her personality. What were the lady’s favourite colours? What style of clothes did she favour? Her colouring?

‘Were you able to answer the questions?’ Andie asked, her lips curving into her delightful smile.

She had just arrived at his house. After she’d taken some measurements in the old ballroom, he had taken her out to sit in the white Hollywood-style chairs by the pool. Again, she looked as if she belonged. She wore a natural-coloured linen dress with her hair piled up and a scarf twisted and tied right from the base of her neck to the top of her head. It could have looked drab and old-fashioned but, on her, with her vintage sunglasses and orange lipstick, it looked just right.

Last time she’d been there he’d been so caught up with her he hadn’t thought to ask her would she like a drink. He didn’t want a live-in housekeeper—he valued his privacy too much—but his daily housekeeper had been this morning and the refrigerator was well stocked. He’d carried a selection of cool drinks out to the poolside table between their two chairs.

‘You’re finding this story amusing, aren’t you?’ he said, picking up his iced tea.

She took off her sunglasses. ‘Absolutely. I had no idea the rigmarole involved in buying an engagement ring.’

‘Me neither. I thought I’d just march in, point out a diamond ring and pay for it.’ This was a first for him.

‘Me too,’ said Andie. ‘I thought that’s what guys did when they bought a ring.’

‘Oh, no. First of all, I’d done completely the wrong thing in not having you with me. He was too discreet to ask where you were, so I didn’t have to come up with a creative story to explain your absence.’

‘One less lie required anyway,’ she said with a twist of her lovely mouth. ‘Go on with the story—I’m fascinated.’

‘Apparently, the done thing is to have a bespoke ring—like the business suits I have made to measure.’

‘A bespoke ring? Who knew?’ she said, her eyes dancing.

‘Instead, I had to choose from their ready-to-wear couture pieces.’

‘I had no idea such a thing existed,’ she said with obvious delight. Her smile. It made him feel what he’d thought he’d never feel again, made him want what he’d thought he’d never want.

‘You should have been there,’ he said. ‘You would have had fun.’ He’d spent the entire time in the jewellery store wishing she’d been by his side. He could imagine her suppressing giggles as the consultant had run through his over-the-top sales pitch.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, but her eyes dimmed. ‘You know my reasons for not wanting to get involved in the purchase. Anyway, what did you tell them about my—’ she made quote marks in the air with her fingers ‘—“personal style”? That must have put you on the spot?’

‘I told the consultant about your misbehaving skirt—only I didn’t call it that, of course. I told him about your shoes that laced up your calves. I told him about your turquoise necklace and your outsized earrings. I told him about your leopard-print shoes and your white trousers.’

Andie’s eyes widened. ‘You remember all that about what I wear?’

‘I did say I was observant,’ he said.

Ask him to remember what Party Planners Numbers One to Three had been wearing for their interviews and he would scarcely recall it. But he remembered every detail about her since that errant breeze at his front door had blown Andie into his life.

At the jewellery store, once he’d relaxed into the conversation with the consultant, Dominic had also told him how Andie was smart and creative and a touch unconventional and had the most beautiful smile and a husky, engaging laugh. ‘This is a lucky lady,’ the guy had said. ‘You must love her very much.’

That had thrown Dominic. ‘Yes,’ he’d muttered. Love could not enter into this. He did not want Andie to get hurt. And hurt wasn’t on his personal agenda either. He didn’t think he had it in him to love. To give love you had to be loved—and genuine love was not something that had been part of his life.

‘So... I’m curious,’ said Andie. What kind of ring did you—did I—end up with?’

‘Not the classic solitaire I would have chosen. The guy said you’d find it boring.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t have found it boring,’ she said not very convincingly.

‘Why do I not believe you?’ he said.

‘Stop teasing me and show me the darn ring,’ she said.

Dominic took out the small, leather, case from his inside suit jacket pocket. ‘I hope you like it,’ he said. He wanted her to like it. He didn’t know why it was suddenly so important that she did.

He opened the case and held it out for Andie to see. Her eyes widened and she caught her breath. ‘It...it’s exquisite,’ she said.

‘Is it something you think you could wear?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I love it.’

‘It’s called a halo set ring,’ he said. ‘The ring of little diamonds that surround the big central diamond is the halo. And the very narrow split band—again set with small diamonds—is apparently very fashionable.’

‘That diamond is enormous,’ she said, drawing back. ‘I’d be nervous to wear it.’

‘I got it well insured,’ he said.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘If I lost it, I’d be paying you back for the rest of my life and probably still be in debt.’

‘The ring is yours, Andie.’

‘I know, for the duration,’ she said. ‘I promise to look after it.’ She crossed her heart.

‘You misunderstand. The ring is yours to keep after...after all this has come to an end.’

She frowned and shook her head vehemently. ‘No. That wasn’t part of the deal. Timothy’s treatment was the deal. I give this ring back to you when...when I dump you.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ he said, not wanting to get into an argument with her. As far as he was concerned, this ring was hers. She could keep it or sell it or give it away—he never wanted it back. ‘Now, shouldn’t I be getting that diamond on your finger?’

He was surprised to find his hand wasn’t steady as he took the ring out of its hinged case. It glittered and sparkled as the afternoon sunlight danced off the multi-cut facets of the diamonds. ‘Hold out your hand,’ he said.

‘No’, she said, again shaking her head. ‘Give it to me and I’ll put it on myself. This isn’t a real engagement and I don’t want to jinx myself. When I get engaged for real, my real fiancé will put my ring on my wedding finger.’

Again, Dominic felt disappointed. Against all reason. He wanted to put the ring on her finger. But he understood why he shouldn’t. He felt a pang of regret that he most likely would never again be anyone’s ‘real fiancé’—and a pang of what he recognised as envy for the man who would win Andie’s heart for real.

He put the ring back in its case. ‘You do want to get married one day?’

He wasn’t sure if she was still in love with the memory of her first boyfriend—and that no man would be able to live up to that frozen-in-time ideal. Melody had been his first love—but he certainly held no romanticised memories of her.

‘Of course I do. I want to get married and have a family. I... I... It took me a long time to get over the loss of my dreams of a life with Anthony. I couldn’t see myself with anyone but him. But that was five years ago. Now... I think I’m ready to move on.’

Dominic had to clear his throat to speak. ‘Okay, I see your point. Better put on the ring yourself,’ he said.

Tentatively, she lifted the ring from where it nestled in the velvet lining of its case. ‘I’m terrified I’ll drop it and it will fall into the pool.’ She laughed nervously as she slid it on to the third finger of her left hand. ‘There—it’s on.’ She held out her hand, fingers splayed to better display the ring. ‘It’s a perfect fit,’ she said. ‘You did well.’

‘It looks good on you,’ he said.

‘That sales guy knew his stuff,’ she said. ‘I can’t stop looking at it. It’s the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.’ She looked up at him. ‘I still have my doubts about the wisdom of this charade. But I will enjoy wearing this magnificent piece of jewellery. Thank you for choosing something so perfect.’

‘Thank you for helping me out with this crazy scheme,’ he said. The scheme that had seemed crazy the moment he’d proposed it and which got crazier and crazier as it went along. But it was important he sealed that deal with Walter Burton. And was it such a bad thing to have to spend so much time with Andie?

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