The Playboy Boss's Chosen Bride

‘Yes,’ she answered, refusing to be baited, as usual.

Always being correct was a shield, too. Jake dearly wanted to blow that shield apart and get to some really vulnerable part of Mel Rossi—revelations of the woman within. ‘Take a seat,’ he invited with relish.

Only bucket armchairs in blue-grey leather were available so she had to settle in one of them. Jake suspected she would have preferred a straight-backed wooden kitchen chair. Instead of relaxing into the chair, she perched on the front of the seat and crossed her legs so she could prop her notebook on her uppermost knee.

The fullness of her skirt fell on either side, and Jake discovered, with satisfaction, that he actually could see her legs through the floaty floral fabric. Not that he’d never seen them before. It was simply more alluring to view them this way.

‘I’m ready,’ she declared—a warning that he should stop looking at her legs and get on with business.

Jake lifted his gaze to hers and smiled. ‘Of course you are,’ he almost sang, overflowing with good humour. ‘Ready, willing and waiting for the challenges I’m about to put to you today.’

And his smile grew into a huge grin.

I hate him.

The thought burned through Merlina’s mind.

Jake Devila was never going to take her seriously as a person, or as a woman, or even as another human being who had feelings to be considered. He didn’t care about her. He simply amused himself playing with her.

It was just plain crazy to be sitting here with her heart thumping like mad and her stomach all gooey because he had looked her over with very male appreciation, and his dimples were winking at her. That grin on his face was a sure sign he had diabolical mischief on his mind.

He rolled his chair forwards and lay his forearms on the desk, leaning towards her, his eyes twinkling, and she waited like a besotted fool to hear his brilliant ideas, then ran around like a maniac to meet whatever challenges he threw at her today.

I’m just a puppet on a string dancing to his tune, she told herself. Which probably wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t the only tune in her life but it was. And she had to move on from it. Her sense of self-worth insisted it was the only way to survive as an individual. But right now he had her locked into this moment, almost breathless with anticipation for what would come next.

‘We need a think-tank meeting later this morning,’ he said. ‘All departments to attend. I want to throw around ideas for targeting the older market.’

It was a relief to hear him talking business. ‘What time for the meeting will I put on the memo?’ she asked matter-of-factly.

‘Eleven-fifteen. After morning coffee to get their brains active and before lunch so they can then chew over what’s been discussed,’ came the prompt reply.

‘Right!’ she said, making a note of the time.

‘Get that memo out first, Mel.’

‘Will do. Anything else before I attend to it?’

‘Yes. Yes, there is,’ he drawled, a wicked gleam in his eyes.

She concentrated on keeping her composure while waiting for him to elaborate.

He sat back in his chair, waving one hand casually as he said, ‘My grandfather’s birthday is coming up.’

So is mine, she thought.

‘He’ll be eighty.’

I’ll be thirty.

‘I want to do something special for him.’

He paused, watching her like a hawk, waiting to see which way its prey would jump.

Merlina patiently returned his gaze with limpid eyes, deliberately emptied of all emotion. She wasn’t going to let him feed off her this morning! However, he paused for so long, she finally said, ‘Are you asking me for suggestions?’

He laughed. ‘Oh, I doubt very much you’d be tuned into what entertains my grandfather, Mel. He still drinks champagne at breakfast. In fact, when I was a little boy, he told me to call him Pop instead of Grandpa because he was such an expert at popping corks.’

Her tightly guarded mind had a malfunction and lost control of her tongue, letting wayward words roll off it. ‘Perhaps you also have an equally pertinent reason for calling me Mel instead of Merlina.’

‘Lethal weapon,’ he rolled out, grinning at her again.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The movie, Lethal Weapon. Stars Mel Gibson.’

‘You associate me with a male actor?’

Granted Mel Gibson always gave great performances in his movies, but he was a man, and how on earth could Jake Devila look her over the way he did if he thought of her as a man? Merlina wished she hadn’t opened up on this sore point. She was just sick to death of being called Mel instead of her proper name. That particular thorn had been in her side throughout the whole period of her employment at Signature Sounds and obviously the urge to take it out and deal with it had got the better of her.

‘Never mind,’ she muttered, raising her guard again. ‘I apologise for deviating from your grandfather’s birthday. Please go on.’

‘Believe me…the image I have of you has nothing to do with Mel Gibson’s masculinity,’ he said provocatively.

‘I’m relieved to hear it.’ Though she didn’t want to hear any more. Clearly he was enjoying himself at her expense and frustrating him by not rising to the bait was the safer course. However, she couldn’t resist a hit back before dismissing the subject. ‘I was beginning to wonder how perverse your perception was. But again I apologise. Totally irrelevant. You were saying you wanted to do something special for your grandfather,’ she reminded him with determined purpose.

‘You don’t want your curiosity satisfied?’ he teased.

‘I’m quite sure I don’t,’ she said dismissively.

‘Because curiosity killed the cat and you won’t risk it?’

His eyes danced mockingly.

Her brain overheated. Retaliation steamed straight out of it. ‘When you were a little boy, Jake, someone should have taught you not to toy with cats. They have claws.’

‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘I should have had a nanny just like you, Mel. No doubt you would have turned me into a fine upstanding man.’

He was loving this exchange. Absolutely exulting in it.

She kept her mouth firmly shut. Not another word was going to escape her lips until he got back to business. His lips were twitching with amusement and his dimples were flashing devilment. She couldn’t stop herself from glowering back at him but she did keep her mouth firmly shut.

He pointed a finger at her. ‘Now that’s just what I mean…why you remind me of Mel Gibson. Lots of pent-up energy that you know is going to explode into action when its fuse is lit.’

His eyes were dancing with excitement at the prospect of her losing her cool and blowing up. Merlina was sizzling inside but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a steaming reply. That would mean he’d won his point. She grimly maintained her dignity and he finally sighed his surrender to her brick wall defence.

‘Right! To get back to my grandfather…’

Ah, yes, Merlina thought, still glowering. The champagne cork-popping Byron Devila was notorious for his numerous marriages, just about rivalling King Henry the Eighth on that score. Jake probably took after him in the playboy stakes. The only difference was his grandfather married his playthings. Probably a generational thing. It wouldn’t have been so socially acceptable to have a string of temporary bed-partners in the years of his prime.

‘…I want you to organise a cake.’

‘A cake,’ she repeated, tearing her smouldering gaze from the twinkling mischief in his and assiduously writing the word in her notebook.

‘A very special cake. Eight tiers should do it,’ he went on. ‘One for each decade of his life.’

Merlina wrote 8 tiers. She thought it a bit excessive, but…hers not to reason why, hers but to do or die!

‘And I want eighty candles spread around the edge of the tiers.’

‘That’s going to make it hard for him to blow them all out,’ she remarked.

‘You’d be surprised how hale and hearty my grandfather is,’ came the bland reply.

She flicked a derisive glance at him. ‘Do you really want to give his lungs such a demanding workout on his birthday?’

He smiled. ‘Good of you to care about him, Mel, but I didn’t mean for the candles to be real.’

‘Just decorative candles? They’re not to be lit?’

‘Decorative, yes. Very decorative.’

She rolled her eyes and wrote decorative only.

‘They won’t be real, any more than the cake will be real,’ Jake said helpfully.

It didn’t help. Merlina felt her mind moving towards meltdown. Her hand tightened its grip on the solid reality of her pen and very slowly she lifted her gaze from the notebook on her knee, intent on staring her tormentor down until he behaved himself as a proper boss should. ‘Please explain,’ she said in a dead-pan voice.

He laughed, setting off fireworks in her head—fizzy Roman candles and rockets that zoomed up and exploded.

She hated him, hated him, hated him.

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

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

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

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

She remained silent, waiting for appropriate instructions.

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

A fabricated cake, not a real one.

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

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

A woman!

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

He wanted a woman coming out of the cake!

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

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

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

A gift of a woman to his playboy Pop!

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

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

‘As long as you get it right.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll get it right.’

‘Okay! Now the woman…’

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

‘She has to be a blonde.’

Of course. Jake had obviously inherited his taste in blondes from his grandfather.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bikini…

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

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

She smiled, liking the description.

Quite acceptable.

And achievable.

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

Her smile broadened as she uncrossed her legs and rose to her feet. ‘Now that I’ve got the full picture, I’ll go to work on it.’

He looked surprised at her willingness to proceed.

‘What date is your grandfather’s birthday?’ she asked, since he hadn’t yet given it.

‘Next month. Fourteenth of February. St Valentine’s Day.’

‘Then maybe we should have the tiers of the cake shaped like hearts instead of circles,’ she blithely suggested.

He jolted forward, leaning his forearms and his elbows on the desk again, his gaze trying to penetrate the workings of her mind. Apparently she’d given him a reaction he had not anticipated and Merlina felt giddily triumphant.

‘St Valentine’s Day is for lovers,’ she trilled at him. ‘Hearts and flowers. Agreed?’

He sighed and slumped back in his chair, sardonically muttering, ‘Agreed. I take it you’ll do this for me.’

‘Oh, yes. I’ll do it, Jake. Trust me. I’ll do it.’

She was grinning as she sailed towards the door, gleefully knowing she’d beaten him at his own game this time. It didn’t occur to her that she might have just been sucked more deeply into the whirlpool. Her exhilaration said she was on top of it, making her way out. With a bang!

‘Don’t forget the memo,’ he threw at her grumpily.

She opened the door before looking back to resoundingly declare, ‘I never forget.’

Jake broodingly watched her step out of his office and close the door behind her, punctuating her exit-line.

Somehow she’d turned the tables on him.

Mel Rossi was, without a doubt, the most provoking woman he’d ever met!

He’d had her simmering, even boiling, on the edge of blowing her top, then Kaput!—all sweetness and light, ready to play ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.’

He’d have to come up with another idea because he refused to be defeated by her. He was going to break into the woman she was inside. It was just a matter of time.

CHAPTER THREE

JAKE had to hand it to his grandfather. He certainly knew how to throw a party. The old Vaucluse mansion and its magnificently landscaped grounds had been designed for hospitality on a grand scale and even at eighty—probably because he was eighty—Byron Devila was not about to give up his reputation of being the host with the most! He was still going strong and demonstrably proving it this afternoon.

The old man had not lost his pulling power, either. Not only was the crème of Sydney society here, but all the establishment from Melbourne, as well, along with a full complement of A-list celebrities. Jake noted that the Devila family had also come in force—four generations of them. He was running into relatives everywhere amongst the guests. Not that he was close to any of them—too many divorces fragmenting ties.

‘Your grandfather is a real romantic, isn’t he?’ his partner for the party—Vanessa Hall of catwalk modelling fame—remarked, lifting her hand to smell the red rose attached to the white lace wrist-band she’d been presented with on arrival, along with all the other female guests.

Jake couldn’t help smiling cynically as he answered, ‘He knows the way to a woman’s heart.’

Mel had been right about playing the St Valentine’s Day card with the cake. His grandfather was using it big-time at this party. The florist who’d supplied the masses of roses arranged on pedestals everywhere had surely made a fortune from this one order. A silver dish of heart-shaped Belgium chocolates sat on the drinks trays being carried around by the waiters. French champagne bubbled in every glass. And a string orchestra was playing old love songs.

Vintage stuff on the romance front!

‘Fantastic idea—having an English tea-party,’ Vanessa burbled on. ‘I just love dressing up like this. So feminine!’

With filmy hats and frills and flounces, and men in morning suits and top hats, it could have been a day at Royal Ascot, or Ladies’ Day at Melbourne Cup week—definitely playtime for the rich and famous.

‘You look radiantly beautiful in pink, Vanessa,’ Jake rolled out, responding to the coquettish glance she fluttered at him.

Her blue eyes twinkled delight. Jake privately thought that if she’d wanted to go all girly, she should have had her long blond hair curled into ringlets instead of leaving it straight. Attention to detail was the keynote of a successful image. Mel was an expert at that.

‘And you look absolutely divine in your pin-striped morning suit,’ Vanessa tossed back at him.

Ah, the fun of flirting, Jake thought, but not nearly as much fun as the verbal duelling battles with Mel Rossi. He was going to miss them while she was away on vacation. The temporary assistant she had organised would not provide anything like the same stimulating challenges. All next month without Mel would be dead flat.

Vanessa did not give his mind any exercise. On the other hand, she certainly provided considerable physical exercise in bed, enjoying sex every bit as much as he did. Strait-laced Mel would probably only approve of the missionary position. Though sometimes when those golden-amber eyes of hers cast him a particularly sultry look, hot and heavy with suppressed passion, he wondered…

She’d given him that look just before he’d left work yesterday.

‘Everything set for tomorrow?’ he’d asked.

‘If the plan you supplied of your grandfather’s place is correct and the cake can be easily wheeled out to the rear terrace, the presentation should go without a hitch,’’ she’d stated with confidence.

‘That was a stiff fee for the woman you’ve hired,’ he’d remarked—not criticising, just commenting, but it had raised Mel’s hackles.

‘She had to have fittings for the floral bikini, rehearsals to ensure the lift mechanism in the cake is worked properly and I didn’t think your grandfather would appreciate anyone who came cheaply. I decided on quality.’ Her eyebrows had arched in challenge. ‘Do you have a problem with that, Jake?’

‘Not if she’s worth her hire.’

‘Well, you can be the judge tomorrow.’

This final declaration had been accompanied by the sultry look—positively burning with passion. Maybe she had resented being given a task reeking of male chauvinism, and was making him pay for it in her own way. Not that he cared about the cost. Only the result mattered. And no doubt Mel’s professionalism would produce the goods. Nevertheless, he now had a hot interest in the quality of the woman who emerged from the cake.

Red and white candy-striped umbrellas shaded the tables set out on the back lawn for afternoon tea. It was a glorious day, the heat of the summer sun alleviated by a light cooling breeze from the harbour—perfect for sitting outside and enjoying the ambience.

White lace cloths adorned the round tables. Chairs upholstered in red surrounded them. Each place was set with a plate, cup and saucer in delicate bone china, accompanied by brilliantly polished silver cutlery and a starched white linen napkin in a silver holder.

When everyone was seated, the waiters served tea from elegant silver teapots and placed ornate five-tiered cake-stands on the tables. From top to bottom, the tiers provided cucumber sandwiches, shortbread kisses, date scones, savoury puff pastries and a selection of rich cakes.

‘This reminds me of High Tea at the Empress Hotel on Vancouver Island,’ one of Jake’s fellow guests at his table commented appreciatively, setting off comparisons with other grand hotels around the world.

From the happy buzz around the tables, it was obvious the party was a huge success. Speeches were merrily called for and merrily given. Jake waited until the final pièce de résistance—dishes of chocolate coated strawberries with clotted cream—had been served before excusing himself from the table and using his cell-phone to give the ‘Go’ command to the stage-hands whose job was to wheel in the birthday cake.

He quickly alerted the orchestra to start playing ‘Happy Birthday’ when the cake came to a halt, then moved to his grandfather’s table where Byron Devila was playing host to his four daughters—by different wives—and their current spouses.

Jake’s mother had long ago discarded his father, a musician who’d been a mistake of her youth. Not that she didn’t still look youthful in her fifties. Her artfully blond hair took years off her age and her relatively unlined face was as pretty as ever. Amazing what cosmetic surgery and almost unlimited funds could achieve.

‘I’ve got a special surprise coming up for you, Pop,’ Jake announced.

‘Splendid! I do love surprises!’

His grandfather was in fine form. No doubt he’d stirred the jealousy pot amongst the four half sisters, mischievously pitting them against each other. He’d also done a lot of table-hopping, spreading his charm around all the female guests. Jake wondered if he’d already targeted his next wife now that his seventh divorce had been finalised.

He was still a fine figure of a man. And handsome. His flashing brown eyes had not lost their sparkle. The lines on his well-tanned face—no age spots in evidence—were mostly laughter lines and whatever sag he had around his jaw was hidden by the neatly trimmed grey and black beard. His nose retained its perky tilt and the moustache beneath it accentuated the captivating sensuality of his strongly carved mouth. Highly mobile black and grey eyebrows made up for the fact he was almost bald.

Too much testosterone, Jake thought, and wondered if his own hair would suffer the same fate as he grew older. Not that it mattered, he decided. He liked to think he’d still be sexually active when he was his grandfather’s age.