Deal With the Devil--3 Book Box Set

‘That…That sounds fine,’ Lucy managed to tell him, as she fought to sound businesslike and professional rather than giddy with the delight and relief she was actually feeling.

‘Here’s my card,’ Andrew Walker told her. ‘I have just bought a new property in Holland Park. It’s in the course of being renovated at the moment, but once the renovations are finished I intend to throw a large party there for my friends and my business contacts. If all goes as I hope it will, that event will be organised by

Prêt a Party, and will be a means of introducing our new joint venture to everyone.’

‘Brilliant,’ Lucy repeated, and meant it.

It was three o’clock before Lucy got back to her office, her head buzzing with excited thoughts and plans. She could scarcely believe her good luck, and all because Andrew had happened to see that spread about Prêt a Party in A-List Life.

The only down side to this wonderful piece of good luck was that she wasn’t going to be able to say anything about it to Marcus. Or at least not just yet. It would be such a relief to know that she didn’t have to plead with him to change his mind and allow her to use what was left of her trust fund to clear Prêt a Party’s overdraft and give her some much-needed working capital. She looked at the telephone. There was no message from Marcus, despite the fact that he had said he would be in touch with her. Had he changed his mind? Had he been thinking about last night and decided that he simply never wanted to see her again, just in case she tried to repeat her behaviour?

And if he did ring what was he likely to say?

She needed an espresso, Lucy decided.

Marcus frowned as he studied the view from his office window. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather and all those who had gone before them had occupied this office in their turn, and Marcus had known from the moment he had been old enough to know such things that one day he would have to take over responsibility for the bank and its clients. His father’s death when Marcus had been only six years old had meant that Marcus had been brought up by his mother and grandfather, who’d made sure that Marcus was aware of how important the bank was, and the fact that he was expected to dedicate his life to it. At twenty-one, fresh from university, Marcus had resented that responsibility, and the way that life had forced it on him, even while he had felt honour-bound to accept it. His grandfather at nearly eighty had needed to be allowed to retire, and he had a duty to take over from him.

And so he had put aside his dreams of travelling the world and focused instead on doing what he had to do.

He was nearly six years older than Lucy, and the first time she had walked into his office his feelings towards her had been a mixture of irritation and impatience. Irritation because he’d had enough on his plate without having to act as her trustee, and impatience because he had seen in her eyes the dazed look of a young woman about to develop a huge and unwanted crush on him.

Marcus did not consider himself to be vain. But he had had enough relationships to know what the look Lucy had given him meant. He might have had no choice other than to do what was expected of him and take over the bank, but he had grimly and determinedly held on to what independence he did have. Marriage, so far as he was concerned, was a necessary evil he wanted to put off for as long as he could. One day, yes, he would marry, and provide the bank with its future administrator, but not yet. And he certainly had no intention of ever allowing himself to fall in love.

His mouth hardened. Marcus had seen at first hand the destruction ‘falling in love’ could cause. His own father had fallen in love when Marcus was six, and he had left his wife—Marcus’s mother—abandoning her and his two children because of that ‘love’. He had destroyed their family and left Marcus feeling betrayed and bereft. And, since he had not been able to hate the father he had loved so much, his six-year-old mind had turned its hatred on the emotion that had caused him to leave instead.

Three weeks after he had left them Marcus’s father had been killed in an accident—along with his lover. Marcus had mourned him and promised himself that he would never make the same mistake as his father. He would never, ever allow himself to fall in love. Because of that he had made sure that the women he dated, the women he slept with, were sophisticated, slightly older than he was himself, often post-divorce and pre-second marriage. Women who enjoyed sex and were socially aware, women who understood the rules of the game as he chose to play it—women, in short, who were the complete opposite of Lucy.

Over the years the initial irritation and impatience he had felt towards Lucy had fused together to become a gut reaction which was activated every time he saw her, and it had been intensified to the point where it had been laced with incredulous disbelief and anger when she had married Nick Blayne.

She was supposed to be an intelligent young woman. She must have been able to see what Nick Blayne was. But she had obviously been too blinded by ‘love’ to care. Love and lust, if the newspaper photographs he had seen of her cavorting half naked with Blayne on the Caribbean island where she had first met him were anything to go by.

Irritation, impatience, anger—and, if he was honest with himself, perhaps a touch of guilt?

Guilt? What the hell did he have to feel guilty about? He hadn’t been responsible for her marrying Blayne, or the catastrophic events that had followed. He had done everything within his power to stop Lucy destroying her own financial security and allowing her now ex-husband to plunder the trust fund, but she had refused to listen to him.

But, ridiculously, he did feel guilty. And for some reason that made him feel even more intensely irritated and angry with Lucy.

He was, he reminded himself grimly, her trustee, and he was now ruthlessly determined to protect what was left of her inheritance—from Lucy herself, if that should prove necessary.

He was well aware that her original blushing, bashful self-consciousness and virginal sexual curiosity about him had turned to resentment edged with apprehension. He had made it clear to her that he was not going to be persuaded into allowing her to remove what was left of her trust fund to put into her ailing business, no matter how much pressure she put on him to do so.

Prêt a Party was suffering the natural death throes of a business ruined by greed and mismanagement. The only thing that could save it now was a massive injection of capital and a very firm hand grasping its control. That had translated in Marcus’s mind into his massive capital injection and his firm hand, but whilst he could quite easily spare the money, he could not spare the time to salvage the wreckage of Lucy’s once profitable business.

He had stood by and watched—first assessingly, then reluctantly and then grudgingly admiringly—as she built up Prêt a Party into a very nice little business, even if she had continued to irritate him with her almost aggressive post-crush antagonism towards him and her refusal to listen to his advice.

But all that had been before last night! Taking Lucy to bed had been the last thing on his mind when he had removed her from the party.

But he had done so. And now…

Marcus frowned heavily. He was almost thirty-five years old—an age by which all his male ancestors had already been married and had fathered the male heir who would ultimately take over the family bank. Since he had never been in love, it was hard for Marcus to envisage what being ‘in love’ might feel like. His observations of love in others inclined him to the view that he was better off not knowing. He had deliberately chosen relationships which allowed him to avoid marriage, but at the same time he had known that ultimately he must marry. And over this last year he had become increasingly aware of his duty to the bank and to the past. He needed a wife and he needed an heir.

Finding a wife would not be a problem, but finding the right kind of wife—who would adapt to his way of life and understand the duties and responsibilities it carried—could be one. Especially when the kind of marriage he wanted was one based on practicality rather than emotion. Especially when one considered his wish to father an heir.

It was time for him to find himself a woman. A woman with whom he was both socially and sexually compatible. A woman, perhaps, like Lucy.

Lucy? Had he gone mad? She exasperated him as no other woman could, and her marriage to Nick Blayne had only increased his impatient anger towards her.

But last night she had enticed and aroused him as no other woman had.

The truth was that Lucy needed protecting from herself. He would certainly be a far safer and more suitable husband for her than another Nick Blayne.

A marriage between them would benefit them both. He needed a wife, and Lucy certainly needed a husband—if only to prevent her from repeating the mistake she had made in marrying Blayne.

And Lucy loved children.

Actually, for them to marry one another was in many ways entirely logical. She understood the world he lived in because it was also her world. They both wanted children, and sexually he had sown all the wild oats he wanted to sow—even if a part of him still mourned the loss of his youthful dreams of travel and adventure.

His mind was made up, Marcus decided abruptly. He intended to marry Lucy. And the sooner the better.

All he had to do now was find a way to convince her that she needed to marry him. And Marcus though he knew exactly how to do that.

The sensuality Lucy had displayed last night had surprised him, as had the pleasurable intensity of her sexual response to him. Lucy was a woman with a warm sex drive, a woman currently without a sexual partner in her life and quite clearly a woman who wanted one.

All he had to do was make her need work in his favour, Marcus decided coolly. He walked over to his desk and picked up the telephone receiver.

The message light was flashing on her telephone when Lucy walked back into the office. She had been longer at the coffee shop than she had expected. Her heart slalomed the length of her chest cavity before skidding dangerously to a halt as she played the message and heard Marcus’s voice, telling her that he had arranged for them to visit his sister and that he would pick her up from her office at four o’clock.

Four o’clock? It was ten to now, Lucy saw, panic-stricken.

Thirteen and a half minutes later she was on her way downstairs, her hair combed, her lips glossed, and her heart thudding like a drum beat.

‘There you are—come on. There’s a traffic warden on the prowl and I don’t want to get a ticket.’

There was no time to object as Marcus took hold of her arm and hurried over to the Bentley parked illegally outside the office block, opening the passenger door for her so that she could scramble in whilst he strode round to the driver’s door.