But when her toes dug into the soft, silky sand for the last time and she prepared to lift her hand in a final goodbye, she didn’t see Oliver anywhere on the deck, which shredded any remaining pieces of her heart. With a sigh, she waved in the direction of the boat anyway, her mind unwilling to even contemplate the future without Oliver that was almost upon her as soon as she left the piece of shore.
She lifted a corner of her shirt to wipe the tears off her face so she wouldn’t look like a crazy person walking through a clubhouse full of yacht owners. Having gotten hold of herself, she turned to head back to the dock but as soon as her foot left the sand, she heard shouting coming from behind her. Turning toward the boat again, she saw a speedboat slicing through the blue water, traveling far too fast in her direction.
“Molly!” a voice cried and she saw Oliver quickly approaching her in the water. “Don’t go!”
She started for the water as Oliver brought the boat to a stop. Barely waiting for the other deckhand to take the boat’s controls, he dived into the water and started swimming to shore. Molly’s feet were moving before she even knew what she was doing and she was knee-deep in water when Oliver surfaced and walked the rest of the way toward her. They met waist-deep in the ocean, eyes locked.
“I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t let you go,” he choked, water dripping off his eyelashes and rivulets flowing from the drenched locks of hair down his bare neck and throat.
Molly stared at him, prepared with the same farewell speech she’d just given him on the boat but found that the words simply wouldn’t leave her mouth.
“I don’t want to go, either,” she admitted, her lack of breath making her voice barely audible. The waves pushed against her waist but she hardly noticed the water splashing onto her face. “But I don’t want you to lose your dream just because I’m in your life.”
A wet hank of hair dropping cutely over his furrowed forehead. “Molly,” he groaned, his voice pleading as his eyes bored into hers. “Trust me to find a way to keep you safe, to make it work.” He took a step toward her, taking her hands in his. “Jump with me, please.”
When she didn’t say anything, couldn’t get anything past the avalanche of emotion that had her chest collapsing, she saw tears form in his eyes. “At least tell me I’m not alone here, that you have feelings for me—” He cut himself off then, his gaze downcast. “That you at least love me a little,” he finished, his eyes tortured as they met hers again.
Her heart had been broken before when she’d tried to leave him, but now the weight of how she’d walked away from him without letting him know just how very much she loved him was agony.
Tears came harder now as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Of course I love you, Oliver,” she assured him, kissing his lips, his nose, his cheeks, anything she could find to make up for not being as brave as she should have been. “I love you so much. I was just too scared that I would be a disappointment to you when we left the yacht and it would kill me to know that I was the reason you couldn’t have the life you wanted.”
Oliver shook his head, touching his wet lips to hers, the heat from the sun beating down on them as the water sparkled all around them. This whole vacation had been like a fairy tale, and win or lose, the moment she thought she might never see him again was all she needed to know that she had to make the dream a reality.
“I love you, Molly,” he told her. “You could never be a disappointment to me even if we moved back to New York and did what my parents wanted. But I don’t want that anyway. I’ve only ever wanted a life with you, someone who just loves me for me. I’ve never had that before, Molly, and you’ve given it to me. So I hate to tell you this, but I’m never letting you go.”
“Let me go?” she asked, smiling as she met his eyes. “I thought you were coming with me to Colorado.”
He nodded. “Yes, because we’re keeping each other forever. And if Colorado is where you’re going then it’s where I am, Prada hiking boots and all.”
She took a deep breath and dived into her future for real. “You can skip the boots,” she advised. “I’ll design your boats, Oliver. We’ll take on your parents and the yacht world together because I’m not leaving you to do it alone. I have a fair amount of savings to invest in the company as well. We’re partners now, in everything.”
Oliver brushed a thumb over her cheek, his eyes wide. “Are you sure, Molly?”
She nodded, never more sure of anything. Leaning in, she kissed him, lingering and letting all her love for him show. Finally, after the bosun had secured Chance’s second speedboat that Oliver had left in the water and the sun set lower in the sky, Molly came up for air, murmuring against his lips. “We definitely need to get your sister back for ruining the end of our vacation, though, right?”
Oliver shook his head. “It might be the end of our vacation, but it’s the beginning of the rest of our lives together.”
Molly melted and hugged him tighter. “You really know the way to a girl’s heart, Oliver.”
A corner of his mouth kicked up. “If that were more true, you wouldn’t have left the first time and both of us wouldn’t be fully clothed in the ocean right now. And besides, the truth is that I’ve been yours since we met, Molly, so just don’t leave again or else I’ll be forced into a kind of entrapment scenario to get you back, which will look really bad for the company we’re creating together.”
“You don’t have to worry. I’m not going anywhere,” she laughed, wrapping her legs around his waist as hope flared deep and enduring in her chest. “Especially since it seems like the best way to get your parents off your back and to get me out of danger is for us to get married, right?”
Oliver’s eyes widened, the same hope she felt expanding her chest in rolling waves of joy reflected back at her. “Are you saying that you would?”
She shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to ask to find out.”
Oliver released her legs around his waist and dragged her back to shore, nearly pulling her arm out of the socket, so he could kneel on sand and not drown.
“Molly,” he asked, her hand in his and water dripping off both of them to pool around their feet. “Will you marry me?”
On a vacation from her real life, Molly couldn’t believe she’d ended up finding her new one with a man she’d fallen in love with so long ago, but now that she had she couldn’t wait to get started.
“Maybe,” she told him, laughing. “If we start this new adventure by not leaving your boat for another month.”
Smiling hugely, Oliver rose and picked her up in his arms. “I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
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CHAPTER ONE
‘I CAN TRUST you to behave yourself, can’t I?’
Shit.
I dragged my gaze from the statuesque brunette weaving her way through the one-hundred-plus guests sipping vintage champagne on a chilly autumn evening. The five heating towers positioned around the terrace and immediate lamplit grounds of the Surrey mansion were doing their damnedest to warm up the abysmal temperature and failing, but I, for one, didn’t need their help.
My body had heated up the moment I spotted Wren Bingham, wearing a clingy jumpsuit that lovingly followed every curve of her spectacular body. Fringed, shoulder-length jet-black hair brushed the frilly-looking scarf wrapped around her shoulders. Stilettos on her feet and a diamond bracelet circling her wrist completed her outfit. Her guests wore double and triple layers but she was obviously nowhere near cold, either.
I didn’t mind one bit because she looked fuckable in the extreme—
‘Jasper?’
I reeled myself in at Aunt Flo’s sharper tone. An apologetic glance her way showed pursed lips and a disapproving glint in her eye. I was usually more circumspect but being in the same vicinity as Wren Bingham always scuppered my concentration.
I cleared my throat. ‘Of course I’ll behave. Scouts’ honour.’ The woman who’d been more of a mother to me than my own living parent snorted her disbelief.
‘As if they’d have let you anywhere near a Scouts camp. You’d have scandalised them all within an hour.’
I grinned at her no-nonsense reply because her tone was couched in familiar, reassuring warmth. Warmth I let wash over me to disperse the soul-shrivelling chill that came from thinking about my birth mother, which inevitably led to thoughts about my father. Specifically, their arctic wind of rejection, far more brutal than any winter I’d experienced since their desertion. No, tonight most definitely wasn’t the time to dwell on that noxious period of my childhood and how it’d ruined not just me but my siblings, too.
Tonight was about bringing recalcitrant business partners to heel. Mostly...
After another search failed to reveal my elusive prey, I focused once more on Wren, that compulsion since Aunt Flo and I had walked through the impressive double doors of the Bingham mansion in Esher forty-five minutes ago pulling at me.
So far I hadn’t spotted Wren’s brother, Perry Bingham, my primary reason for being here. Sure, I’d nodded and reassured my favourite aunt that accompanying her to this soirée was my pleasure and the right Mortimer thing to do. Also because, on some weird rota only Aunt Flo was privy to, it was apparently my turn to escort her to another social function. What I’d failed to mention was that I was on the hunt for Perry Bingham, CEO of Bingham Industries, who had stopped answering my calls for nearly two weeks, thereby threatening to throw one serious spanner into my latest project.
With my patience wearing thin, I’d grasped the opportunity to track him down at his family estate. Except it looked as if he was a no-show here, too.
But Wren was here, and I intended to drill his sister about his whereabouts. My choice of words brought an inner smirk I wisely kept off my face as I downed my whisky and turned to my aunt.
‘Can I get you another drink?’ I indicated her half-empty glass of sherry.
Several waitstaff circulated with trays of drinks but I didn’t plan to grab one from them. Not when Wren stood next to the bar, chatting with two of her guests. As I watched, she threw her head back in laughter, her smooth, swanlike neck thrown into perfect relief.
Immediately, I imagined my lips there, beneath her jawline, tasting her silky skin, then lower, tonguing her pulse. Would she cry out in delight or moan with pleasure?
‘We both know that’s an excuse to get away from me. Go on, then. Just don’t do anything we’d both be ashamed of come morning, would you? I could do without a Mortimer tabloid scandal before Christmas,’ Aunt Flo said.
Brushing a kiss on a well-preserved cheek, I muttered, ‘You’ve taught me the importance of not making promises I can’t keep. Don’t make me start now.’
She rolled her eyes but her smile deepened.
I grinned again as I made a beeline for the bar, and I wasn’t one little bit ashamed to admit that I was hard as stone.
I made sure to wipe the smile off my face, my eyes settling in the middle distance to prevent business acquaintances engaging me in conversation. A few feet from Wren, I paused to ponder why this woman, amongst so many others, had fired me up ever since she’d crossed my path five years ago.
Perhaps it was discovering that, far from being a superficial heiress and supermodel flitting around the globe between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three, she’d attained a master’s degree in business while slaying the runways of the fashion capitals of the world. More besides, she’d graduated top of her class and was, at twenty-eight, now on course to become one of the youngest power executives in the city. Or perhaps it was some twisted attraction born from our family being embroiled in a generations-old feud, which dictated we should hate each other on sight like some pathetic Roman tragedy.
Whatever. All I knew was that Wren had intrigued me with increasing intensity over the past few years.
Intense empire-building in order to establish my role in my family’s company as President of New Developments in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and perhaps even the arrogant belief that our chemistry was a passing whim and wasn’t worth turning my family upside down for, had so far kept me from pursuing Wren, but each encounter only deepened whatever this phenomenal chemistry was that stopped me from seeing any other woman but her whenever we were in each other’s orbit.
Lately, I’d accepted that it simply wasn’t going to go away by itself, as I’d assumed. Not until I did something about it.
I realised my motionless state was drawing curious attention from nearby guests, not to mention Aunt Flo’s disapproving glare from across the terrace.
Discarding my glass, I stepped beside Wren. ‘Good evening, Wren. You look incredible.’ I said, my voice pitched low.
She tried not to stiffen, but didn’t quite succeed, nor could she disguise the flare of awareness in her vivid green eyes when she turned to me. She didn’t reply immediately, instead she scrambled for the jaded expression that had been her trademark in her modelling days.
I stifled the urge to tell her not to bother. Witnessing a demonstration of her fiery passion and stiletto-sharp business acumen five years ago across a boardroom table for an unforgettable fifteen minutes had etched a different Wren Bingham in my mind from the façade she wore for the public.
‘Jasper Mortimer.’
The way she said my name, striving to be curt when different textures sizzled beneath, ramped up my tempera
ture. I wanted her attempting to say my name just like that while she was tied to my bed with silken restraints, naked and wet.
‘I don’t recall seeing your name on the guest list.’
Pausing just as long as she did before answering, I snagged a glass of champagne from the bar. ‘Because it wasn’t there. I’m privileged to be my aunt’s plus one. What I haven’t had the privilege of is being acknowledged by the hostess since my arrival. I’m feeling sorely neglected.’
She tried to look through me, as if that would stop the arc of electricity zapping between us. As if she hadn’t performed a quick once-over of my body as I got my drink. I planted myself in her line of vision until she had no choice but to focus on me, her nostrils flaring slightly as her green eyes—alluringly wide and sparkling with an interest she was trying to hide—connected with mine.
I barely heard her guests murmur their excuses and drift away, leaving us in a tight little cocoon.
‘Perhaps I would’ve already greeted you, if you hadn’t arrived half an hour late.’
I curbed a smile, inordinately pleased she’d noticed my arrival. ‘I’m willing to make amends by doubling my donation to tonight’s cause.’
One elegantly shaped eyebrow arched. ‘Name it.’
I frowned. ‘Name what?’
‘The beneficiary of tonight’s cause. What’s this mixer in aid of?’ she challenged.
Crap. I’d tuned Aunt Flo out when she’d mentioned it in the car, my frustrated attention on the echo of the ringing phone Perry was—yet again—refusing to answer. ‘Something to do with pandas in Indonesia?’ I hazarded.
Sparks gathered in her eyes. ‘Why am I not surprised you don’t know?’
Heat surged through me. ‘That suggests a curious level of personal knowledge. Have you been attempting to get to know me behind my back, Wren?’
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