PROLOGUE
Katie, I need your help! It’s an emergency!
KATHERINE MEDFORDWRAPPEDthe large black trench coat around her red velvet cape to shield it from the spitting rain as she shot out of the Tube at Leicester Square while reading her sister Beatrice’s eighth text in a row.
What was the problem this time? That Katie would have to fix? Because she was already late for her booking. And unlike Bea, who had their father Lord Henry Medford’s considerable financial largesse to rely on, Katie could not afford to lose this job or the twenty-pounds-an-hour commission. The phone began to buzz. Katie’s thumb hovered over the ‘reject call’ button as she dodged pedestrians along Charing Cross Road, en route to the children’s bookshop where she was supposed to be reading fairy tales to an audience of four-to five-year-olds in ten minutes and counting.
But, as she went to press her thumb down, the image of Bea from years ago aged fourteen, tears streaking down her cheeks, her face a sodden mess of confusion and fear as Katie was marched out of Medford Hall by their father, tugged at Katie’s chest. She sighed and clicked the ‘accept call’ button as she broke into a jog.
‘Bea, what’s the problem?’ she said breathlessly, the corset of her costume holding her ribcage in a vice. ‘I’m late. I don’t have time for this, unless it really is an emergency—’
‘It’s Jack Wolfe,’ her sister said, getting straight to the point for once and mentioning the billionaire corporate raider Katie had never met—because why would she, they hardly moved in the same circles. But she knew her sister had got engaged to him a week ago because of the pictures of Bea and her new fiancé all over the Internet.
An irritating ripple streaked down Katie’s spine.
Wolfe had been hotness personified in a rough, untamed, wildly charismatic way wearing a perfectly tailored tuxedo. The mysterious scar on his cheek which marred his chiselled features and the tattoo on his neck—just visible above the pristine white dress-shirt—made him look even more darkly compelling next to Bea’s bright, willowy blonde beauty. Katie would almost have been jealous of her sister, except she didn’t have to meet Jack Wolfe to know he had to be a man like her father.
No, thanks. One overbearing bully is all I need in my life.
‘He’s invited me for dinner tonight at his penthouse on Hyde Park Corner, just the two of us,’ her sister rushed on. ‘And I’m scared he’s going to want to take our relationship to the next level.’
Katie stopped dead in the street, her heeled boots skidding on the rain-slick pavement. Her fingers tightened on the phone as she registered the panic in Bea’s voice.
‘What do you mean, you’re scared?’ Katie gentled her tone to contain her own panic. ‘Has Wolfe done something to frighten you, Bea?’
Wolfe was well known for being a rough diamond, with the looks of a fallen angel to go with his stratospheric rise from an East End council estate to the high-flying business circles in which her father moved. But Wolfe was also a big man, tall and strong, with a muscular physique that filled out his tux to perfection.
And that was without even factoring in the scar and the tats. How exactly had he got that scar which the tabloids had been speculating about for years? Was he violent, aggressive, dangerous?
Her own breathing became ragged as she was thrust back to a time long ago when she’d still been a little girl, hazy half-formed memories lurking on the edges of her consciousness. She swallowed down the wave of humiliation that those stupid nightmares still had the power to wake her up on occasion, struggling to escape something she couldn’t see but knew was right there, ready to hurt her if she let it. She evened out her breathing... Don’t go there. Focus on Bea.
‘No, Katie, don’t be silly. Jack’s not like that,’ Bea replied with more conviction than Katie felt. ‘He’d never hurt me.’
‘Then why are you scared of being alone with him?’
Bea huffed out a breath. ‘Because he’ll probably want to have sex and I’m not sure I’m ready. To be honest, I’m pretty sure I won’t ever be ready. He’s just a bit too much for me. He’s ridiculously smart, and he can be very witty, and he’s exciting to be with, but underneath all that there’s an intensity about him. I have no idea what he’s thinking. He’s so guarded, it’s like a super power. He’s way too deep for me. You know how shallow I am.’ Bea’s manic babbling finally stopped.
There were so many things to unpick in what Bea had confided, Katie didn’t even know where to start—not least because she absolutely did not want this much information about Jack Wolfe. But perhaps the most astonishing thing was the two of them hadn’t had sex yet. While Bea was pretty flaky, she had dated before. And Jack Wolfe didn’t strike her as the kind of guy to remain celibate for months while dating anyone...especially someone he’d asked to marry him. The guy oozed sex appeal. He could probably give a woman an orgasm from thirty paces.
So not the point, Katie.
‘You’re not shallow, Bea,’ Katie said, because she hated it when her sister put herself down. That was their father talking.
‘Whatever,’ Bea said, sounding exasperated. ‘But I still don’t think we’d be a good match,’ she added. ‘At all.’ She huffed. ‘I’m worried I’ll fall in love with him and he would never love me back.’
Say, what now?
‘Then why on earth did you agree to marry him?’ Katie asked, walking briskly again as she remembered the children who were sat in a bookstore eagerly waiting for Little Red Riding Hood to put in an appearance. She was glad Bea wasn’t in an abusive relationship. But she did not have time to debate her sister’s confusing love life right now.
‘Because Daddy insisted I say yes,’ Bea murmured sheepishly. ‘Jack has loaned Daddy some money on generous terms. If Daddy finds out I’ve broken it off, and if Jack changes the terms, he’ll be furious...’
Katie’s pace slowed again. She might have guessed their father had engineered this situation. Why couldn’t Bea just stand up to him? But she knew why. Bea was scared of their father’s temper tantrums, and with good reason... ‘Surely you must know you can’t marry Jack Wolfe if you don’t love him, Bea?’ Katie said softly.
‘I know I have to break it off, but Katie, it’s the pressure. Jack is very hot, but I’m sure he plans to seduce me tonight. And I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist him. And once we’ve slept together it will be that much harder to dump him. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.’
Whoa... What the...?
‘Bea, you’re not serious? Jack Wolfe has built a fortune on being an absolute bastard. His business strategy is to chew up smaller companies and spit them out. You said yourself you don’t think he could ever love you. If the guy even has feelings, I’ll be astonished.’
‘Everyone has feelings, Katie,’ Bea countered gently, making Katie wonder if her sister’s airhead act was actually an act. ‘Even Jack.’
‘Do you think he has feelings for you, then?’ Katie asked, the stupid ripple turning to a deep pulsing ache in her chest. What was that even about?
‘No.’ Bea sighed. ‘He’s very attentive. But he’s not at all romantic. He pretty much told me he only asked me to marry him because he thinks I’ll make a good trophy wife.’
Oh, for the love of...
‘Bea, he sounds worse than Father,’ Katie said, exasperated. At least Henry Medford had pretended to love their mother once. ‘You shouldn’t have let Father bully you into saying yes.’
‘I know...’ Katie could hear her sister’s huff of distress even over the blast of a taxi horn. ‘Which brings me to why I rang,’ Bea added, her voice taking on a desperate tone that Katie recognised only too well, because it was usually the precursor to Bea asking her to do something outrageous or ridiculous or both. ‘Could you go to Jack’s place tonight at seven?’
‘Why would I do that?’ Katie asked. Did her sister need moral support to tell Wolfe the engagement was off?
‘He’s flying in from New York,’ Bea said, bulldozing over Katie’s question. ‘But I told the doorman, Jeffrey, to expect you so you can wait for him in his penthouse—which is spectacular, by the way,’ Bea added, her tone segueing neatly from desperate to wheedling. ‘If you’re there instead of me when he gets home, you can tell him I’m not going to marry him and I won’t have to worry. Then I can tell Daddy he broke off the engagement.’
Katie stopped dead again. So shocked she didn’t know what to say. Bea had asked her for huge favours before. Favours she’d almost always agreed to because she wanted Bea to be happy, and she knew her sister had a massive problem standing up for herself—thanks to their broken childhood.
Katie had always been there to stand up for Bea when her sister’s courage or determination had failed her. But this was...
‘You have got to be joking!’ Katie cried. ‘I can’t turn up at his place unannounced to dump him on your behalf. I’ve never even met the guy.’ But even as she said it she felt the little frisson of something... Something electric and contradictory and wholly inappropriate rippling through her tired, over-corseted body. The same something that had rippled through her when she’d studied the photos of her sister and Jack Wolfe together a bit too forensically. ‘Plus I won’t have time to change out of my Little Red Riding Hood costume,’ she added a little desperately. She lived in north North London and she was supposed to be reading fairy tales until six. Assuming, of course, she hadn’t already been fired for being late. ‘I won’t do it, Bea. Absolutely no way...’
But even as she said the words the corset cinched tightly around her thundering heart and Katie could feel her fierce determination not to make an absolute tit of herself slipping out of her grasp.
Bea was her sister and if there was one thing she would always be prepared to do, it was her sister’s dirty work. Because Bea had been there for her when she’d needed her most.
And there was also the matter of the ripple that was still playing havoc with her senses at the thought of a brooding, overbearing billionaire who was the very last guy on earth who should inspire a ripple in a smart, grounded, totally pragmatic, tycoon-despising woman like herself.
Perhaps she needed to meet the man to discover exactly how overbearing, arrogant and annoying he really was, and sort out this ripple once and for all.