Sophie Pembroke - His Very Convenient Bride

Just a show. That was the key.

Except it wasn't.

Yes, the only reason his first kiss with his wife was taking place in front of a captive audience was to prove a point—to show them that Helena wasn't some sort of poor consolation prize. But that wasn't enough. He had to show Helena that too.

And Helena knew the truth.

If he wanted her to stick with this—to believe they had a real future together—well, that future started right now. With their first kiss.

“Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”

The chanting around them faded into nothing as he leant in closer, closing his eyes as he brushed his lips against hers, soft at first, not wanting to spook her. But then … God, then … Flynn's fingers clutched at her hip, the silk of her dress slipping against his skin as he deepened the kiss.

She tasted like champagne and gold, expensive and sparkling, her mouth warm and willing under his.

He'd wanted to prove a point with this kiss, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was.

His Very Convenient Bride

Sophie Pembroke

www.millsandboon.co.uk

SOPHIE PEMBROKEhas been dreaming, reading and writing romance for years—ever since she first read The Far Pavilions under her desk in chemistry class. She later stayed up all night devouring Mills & Boon ®books as part of her English degree at Lancaster University, and promptly gave up any pretext of enjoying tragic novels. After all, what's the point of a book without a happy ending?

She loves to set her novels in the places where she has lived—from the wilds of the Welsh mountains to the genteel humour of an English country village or the heat and tension of a London summer. She also has a tendency to make her characters kiss in castles.

Currently Sophie makes her home in Hertfordshire, with her scientist husband (who still shakes his head at the reading-in-chemistry thing) and their four-year-old Alice in Wonderland-obsessed daughter. She writes her love stories in the study she begrudgingly shares with her husband, while drinking too much tea and eating homemade cakes. Or, when things are looking very bad for her heroes and heroines, white wine and dark chocolate.

Sophie keeps a blog at www.sophiepembroke.com, which should be about romance and writing but is usually about cake and castles instead.

For Pippa, for everything.

Contents

Cover

Introduction Just a show. That was the key. Except it wasn't. Yes, the only reason his first kiss with his wife was taking place in front of a captive audience was to prove a point—to show them that Helena wasn't some sort of poor consolation prize. But that wasn't enough. He had to show Helena that too. And Helena knew the truth. If he wanted her to stick with this—to believe they had a real future together—well, that future started right now. With their first kiss. “Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!” The chanting around them faded into nothing as he leant in closer, closing his eyes as he brushed his lips against hers, soft at first, not wanting to spook her. But then … God, then … Flynn's fingers clutched at her hip, the silk of her dress slipping against his skin as he deepened the kiss. She tasted like champagne and gold, expensive and sparkling, her mouth warm and willing under his. He'd wanted to prove a point with this kiss, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was.

Title Page His Very Convenient Bride Sophie Pembroke www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author SOPHIE PEMBROKE has been dreaming, reading and writing romance for years—ever since she first read The Far Pavilions under her desk in chemistry class. She later stayed up all night devouring Mills & Boon ® books as part of her English degree at Lancaster University, and promptly gave up any pretext of enjoying tragic novels. After all, what's the point of a book without a happy ending? She loves to set her novels in the places where she has lived—from the wilds of the Welsh mountains to the genteel humour of an English country village or the heat and tension of a London summer. She also has a tendency to make her characters kiss in castles. Currently Sophie makes her home in Hertfordshire, with her scientist husband (who still shakes his head at the reading-in-chemistry thing) and their four-year-old Alice in Wonderland-obsessed daughter. She writes her love stories in the study she begrudgingly shares with her husband, while drinking too much tea and eating homemade cakes. Or, when things are looking very bad for her heroes and heroines, white wine and dark chocolate. Sophie keeps a blog at www.sophiepembroke.com , which should be about romance and writing but is usually about cake and castles instead.

Dedication For Pippa, for everything.

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

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

FLYNN STARED AT HER, a hint of panic in his usually calm and collected brown eyes. Helena gazed back, hoping she looked slightly less like a small wild animal caught in the open by a predator than he did.

She had to admit, though, that was unlikely. This was very new territory for both of them.

‘While I know that what we just did was very noble and right and championed the cause of true love and so on...what on earth do we do now?’ Flynn asked.

Helena’s mind whirred with the possibilities, just as it had been doing since the moment her sister ran out of the door, leaving her holding both the pearl-encrusted ivory wedding dress and the proverbial baby. They didn’t have much in the way of options, and one choice kept rising to the top of the very short list.

‘Help me out of this dress.’ She placed Thea’s wedding dress carefully on a padded armchair, then twisted to try and reach the zip at the back of her own flamingo-pink bridesmaid’s dress. Not a chance. No one had arms that bent like that.

She looked up at Flynn. He was still staring at her.

Men. Hopeless in a crisis.

Although, actually, before today she’d have wagered that Flynn would be pretty good in an emergency. By all accounts, he’d handled the discovery that his fiancée had slept with his brother less than twenty-four hours before their wedding with remarkable aplomb. He’d managed the news that he was about to inherit sole responsibility for a multinational media conglomerate without breaking a sweat. He’d even let the aforementioned fiancée, Helena’s sister, run out and elope with her true love moments before the wedding without looking particularly perturbed.

But apparently Helena in her underwear was pushing him too far.

With a sigh, she turned to present him with her back and the offending zip. ‘Just undo me, yeah?’

Flynn hesitated a moment before she felt his warm fingertips against her back. ‘Why am I doing this?’

‘Because I need to get changed. Into that.’ She pointed at the wedding dress and felt Flynn’s hands still at her back.

‘No. No, you don’t. We’ll just go down to the church and...’

She spun round to face him. ‘And what? Tell every business associate you have plus a nice collection of reporters—not to mention both sets of parents—that the wedding of the year is off?’ Helena shook her head. That option was very firmly a last resort. Never mind the tabloid fallout, or the impact on company shares—her father would have a heart attack.

‘Surely that has to be better than us getting...’ He waved a hand between them and she rolled her eyes.

‘Married, Flynn. Go on, you can say it. It’s not actually a dirty word. You were all set to do it with my sister, and I suspect you weren’t any more in love with her than she was with you. As evidenced by the fact you just told her to elope with Zeke.’

‘That was different,’ Flynn argued. ‘Thea and I had a plan. There was...paperwork.’

The man was completely business bound. Grabbing the file the wedding planner had put together for Thea, Helena pulled out a spare invitation, grabbed the pen from its loop and scratched out her sister’s name to replace it with her own. Then, as an afterthought, she scribbled a few lines on the back on it. ‘Paperwork,’ she said, handing it to Flynn. ‘Happy now?’

‘“I, Helena Morrison, promise to marry Flynn Ashton purely to avoid the hideous fallout of my sister’s elopement,”’ Flynn read. ‘Helena, this is—’

‘Keep going.’ Helena reached behind her to try and work the zip down the last few inches, finally succeeding in wriggling the strapless dress past her hips and into a heap on the floor.

Flynn turned his back on her, and Helena bit back a smile. He was so proper.

‘“Furthermore, I agree to renegotiate this contract once the official Morrison-Ashton company business issue thing is dealt with. Signed, Helena Morrison.”’ He placed the makeshift contract carefully on the table as if it were a real and important document. ‘Company business issue thing?’ he asked, sounding puzzled.

‘You know—the whole reason you and Thea were supposed to be getting married in the first place. Whatever that was.’ Helena stepped into her sister’s wedding dress and prayed to God that it fitted well enough to avoid comment. Thea was taller by a couple of inches and Helena had more in the way of curves, but as long as it did up and she could avoid tripping over the hem she’d probably be okay.

‘To join both sides of the business and provide...well, to give the company an heir.’

An heir. A child. Maybe even children, plural. Helena swallowed, then pulled the wedding dress up over her chest. She’d cross that very high and scary bridge when she got to it. Or not. Maybe she could dig a tunnel instead...

Okay, thinking was clearly not her friend today. The exhilaration of Thea’s escape, of being the one left behind to fix things, of this whole crazy plan, thrummed through her veins. She felt high on excitement in a way she hadn’t since she was sixteen.

What she was about to do might be insane but at least it made her feel alive.

For now, at least. ‘This doesn’t have to be a permanent arrangement, anyway,’ she said, manoeuvring herself around to Flynn’s side, wedding dress still trailing. ‘Lace me up?’ No zips for the bride. Apparently corset ties were the order of the day.

He obliged without argument, yanking the ties more than tight enough to keep the dress up and tying them in a very efficient bow at the base of her spine. Apparently she was about to marry the one straight man in Europe more comfortable with putting clothes on a woman than taking them off.

‘That wasn’t the arrangement with Thea,’ he told her.

Helena spun round to face him, a fake smile on her face. ‘Yes, well. I’m not Thea, am I?’ Something she seemed to have been pointing out to disappointed friends, relatives and acquaintances for most of her life. Mostly her father, first wondering why she couldn’t be better behaved, more obedient, less trouble. Until trouble had caught up with her at last and suddenly she was perfectly happy to stay home, stay out of trouble, stay safe.

But it hadn’t been enough. Then he’d wanted to know why she couldn’t have her sister’s drive, or brains, or brilliance. Never mind that she was less trouble than Thea at last, that she kept their whole family on an even keel, dealing with the fallout from Thea’s latest romantic mishaps.