Miranda Lee – The Playboy In Pursuit (страница 1)

“What is it that you want of me?”

Lucille composed herself to take the plunge. “I want what you offered me on the phone.”

“And what was that? Please remind me…”

“A strictly sexual and very private affair,” she bit out.

“Ah, yes,” he drawled. “I do recall. I’m to be your secret lover and you, my secret playmate. So for how long would you envisage this…arrangement…lasting?”

Forever, came the involuntary thought.

Dear Reader,

I admit it! I find playboys fascinating. I love reading about their glamorous lives, their beautiful women, their many affairs. There’s something exciting about these wicked devils who dare to do what an ordinary man wouldn’t—or couldn’t.

I’ve always thought a playboy makes an excellent romantic hero, because he is the ultimate challenge. Can one special woman make an often cynical man reassess his lifestyle and yearn for something finer, deeper and more permanent?

When my editor asked me to write a trilogy, I happily chose playboys for my heroes. Three handsome Aussie males who seem to have it all but find, once they meet that one special woman, that they want her…her respect, her love. Only this time getting what they want isn’t so easy as it usually is.

I hope you enjoy AUSTRALIAN PLAYBOYS. Do write to Harlequin Presents^® and let us know what you think—and which heroes personally appeal to you!

Miranda Lee

The Playboy in Pursuit

CONTENTS

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 ONE

‘LUCILLE, when are you going to start dating again?’ Michele asked between sips of her cappuccino.

Oh-oh, Lucille thought ruefully. Here we go again.

‘Surely you don’t mean to stay single and celibate for the rest of your life,’ Michele swept on, ‘just because you had one bad marriage. I don’t doubt your Roger was a right royal pig, but not all men are like that. Take my darling Tyler, for instance…’

‘No, thanks,’ Lucille said with a dry laugh, then downed the last delicious mouthful of jam and cream doughnut. ‘He’s all yours.’

Michele plonked her coffee cup down with an exasperated sigh. ‘When are you going to believe that Tyler really loves me? That he’s really changed? That his playboy days are well and truly over?’

Lucille was tempted to say in thirty years or so. But that would have been too cruel. Michele was only three weeks back from her honeymoon and still glowing. Lucille didn’t have the heart to destroy her best friend’s romantic illusions about her handsome new husband.

But, truly, what chance did that marriage have of going the distance? Sure, Tyler seemed to be madly in love with Lucille at the moment. But would he feel the same in six months’ time, when the heat of the honeymoon cooled down and old habits kicked in?

The son and heir to the Garrison media fortune had a long history of throw-away girlfriends and Lucille had no faith in a wedding ring changing that. She’d warned her friend at the outset not to fall in love with such a man, just to have an affair and enjoy the sex—which was reportedly fantastic—without getting emotionally involved.

But of course that had been futile advice with someone like Michele. The girl was too nice for her own good. Heck, she’d stayed loving and loyal to her first boyfriend for ten years. And he’d been a total rat. What chance had Michele’s sweet heart had against the golden boy of Sydney’s social set, once he’d set his sights on her?

Yes, Michele’s marriage was doomed, in Lucille’s opinion. But she wasn’t about to say so. She regretted not being clever enough so far at pretending to believe it was a case of true love all round.

‘Don’t take any notice of me,’ Lucille said swiftly. ‘I’m just an old cynic. If anyone could make a man change it would be you.’ Michele might be twenty-eight-years old, and a brilliant advertising executive to boot, but underneath the brunette’s surface sophistication snuggled a soft, sweet soul. Life hadn’t made her hard, or cynical, as it had Lucille.

Maybe that was why Lucille enjoyed the other girl’s company so much. Because, for a while, she could soak in the warmth of her sweetness, rather like a lizard basking in sunshine.

She missed Michele no longer living in the flat next to her. She hated seeing the ‘For Sale’ sign out at the front of the building. Now she was really living alone, with no other close friends, just nodding acquaintances. Thank God their respective workplaces were both in North Sydney, so they could have regular lunches together, plus the odd shopping expedition.

Still, their friendship would never be quite the same now that Michele was married.

‘Don’t think you can avoid answering my first question.’ Michele resumed determinedly. ‘You’re only thirty years old, Lucille. And, might I say, one stunning-looking woman. I want to know when you’re going to get over Roger and move on with your life.’

Lucille might have resented any other person saying such things to her. But she knew Michele meant well and wasn’t just being a busybody.

‘I am over Roger,’ Lucille replied, coolly wiping her sugared lips with a serviette. ‘And I have moved on with my life. I have a challenging and satisfying career, a nice place to live, which is wonderfully close to my office, and a great girlfriend I can bitch to when I feel like it. I’d date if I wanted to. But the truth is, Michele, I’m just not interested in the opposite sex any more. I’m quite happy being single and celibate.’

‘What a load of old rubbish! You are not happy being single and celibate. You’re lonely as hell. And you are interested in the opposite sex. Women who aren’t don’t dress like you do. Just take a look at the outfit you’re wearing today.’

Lucille’s eyes blinked with surprise, then dropped to her favourite cream woollen suit. ‘This old thing? You have to be kidding. Okay, so the skirt’s on the short side, but the jacket’s thigh-length and not at all tight. I’d hardly call it a provocative outfit. My boobs are well hidden. I consider this suit on the conservative side of my wardrobe, actually.’ As opposed to the seriously sexy clothes she’d bought when she’d first left Roger and had gone through her wildly defiant stage.

Back then, she’d been determined to go out and paint Sydney red, but she had found when men made passes at her she just went cold all over.

‘Your boobs might be well hidden but your legs sure aren’t,’ Michele argued back. ‘And your legs are just as provocative, attached as they are today to five-inch heels. Haven’t you noticed the looks you’ve been getting from the male passers-by?’

They were sitting at an outdoor café on the main street in North Sydney, whose central business district was beginning to rival Sydney’s city centre across the bridge. Streams of office workers were always on the move at this hour, more than half of them male.

Lucille was used to male attention—the type that tall, voluptuous green-eyed blondes invariably got—so she really hadn’t noticed. Neither did she care.

‘Let them look,’ she said coldly. ‘Because that’s all they’ll ever get to do. Look.’

‘Lord, Lucille, what on earth happened in that marriage of yours to make you so bitter and twisted?’

Lucille stiffened, then shrugged. ‘I could never explain it in a million years. You have to live some things to understand them.’

Michele looked alarmed. ‘Your husband didn’t…abuse you, did he?’

‘Abuse me?’ Lucille considered that concept for a few moments. She’d never thought of her ex’s behaviour as abuse before. But of course that was exactly what it had been. Emotional abuse. That was why it had taken her so long to crawl out from under it. She’d been a type of battered wife for years, with all its accompanying loss of self-esteem and confidence.

But that was in the past now. Lucille saw no point in dragging it up for continual analysis. Her marriage to Roger was best forgotten.

‘No, of course not,’ she told her worried-looking friend. ‘He was just a low-down, cheating scumbag, okay?’

‘Okay. Look, I’m sorry I brought him up. I know you hate talking about him. And I’m sorry I nagged you about dating again. I just want you to be happy.’

‘Happiness doesn’t always come in the shape of a man, Michele,’ Lucille pointed out.

‘Agreed. But misery doesn’t always come in the shape of a man, either. It all depends on the man in question. And I don’t believe you’ve given up all hope in that regard. You yourself described your dream man to me one day a few months ago. If I recall rightly, aside from him being tall, dark and handsome, you said he’d have hot blood running through his veins, not cold beer. He’d genuinely like women and always put you first, even before his mates and his golf and his car.’

Lucille laughed. ‘Did I say that? I must have been day-dreaming. Such a species of male doesn’t exist. Not in Australia, anyway.’

‘Yes, he does. I married one.’

‘Tyler’s tall, fair and handsome.’

‘Don’t split hairs. I’m sure there are some fantastic dark-haired blokes around. But who knows? Maybe your dream man won’t be from Australia. You deal with a lot of foreign men in your job, don’t you?’