CHAPTER ONE

      OLIVIA NOBLE WALKED behind the elderly professor, passing through the chrome-and-glass doors etched with the name of the swanky restaurant on the thirty-first floor of The Shard, London’s tallest building. Her belly, jittery enough from the long, hair-raising elevator ride, flipped at the panoramic views dotted with the city’s iconic landmarks. As a native New Yorker she accepted gravity-defying skyscrapers as part of life, but she avoided ones of this magnitude wherever possible.

      ‘Ah, the others are still at the bar.’

      Professor McBride gestured Libby ahead of him, towards the party of suits. Libby’s legs wobbled on her four-inch heels as she crossed the plush carpet, trying to master the hold adrenaline had on her body. Her poor adrenal glands were wrung dry. This sophisticated, elegant restaurant might as well have been a roadside diner for all she noticed.

      Head of her own marketing business in New York, she was used to public speaking. That didn’t mean she enjoyed it, or that nerves hadn’t gripped her for the whole forty-minute presentation she’d given this morning at the London Business School. In fact, she’d been blown away when invited to speak at such a prestigious seminar, unaware that anyone across the pond had even heard of her small up-and-coming company.

      The rest of the speakers were clustered at the bar, forming small huddles, deep in conversation. Several glanced up as Libby and Professor McBride approached—faces she recognised from the seminar, and one face in particular that demanded more than a fair share of her attention. A face that was hard to ignore.

      Alex Lancaster.

      His stare lifted from the conversation taking place before him, settling on her over the tops of the heads separating them and practically stripping her bare. A shiver originated in her ovaries and snaked south to join the wobble in her legs. Those eyes… The intensity with which they pierced the recipient of his undivided attention…

      Wow. Close up he was… Wow. A movie-star bad boy, a gentleman rogue and a geeky surfer dude all rolled into one mouthwatering package. Not that he had much of the surfer dude on display at the moment, attired as he was in a tailored three-piece suit that had probably cost more than the annual mortgage payment on her modest six-hundred-square-foot apartment. The only nod to his wilder side was the slightly dishevelled flop of dark hair, which looked as if it refused to be tamed, no matter what he did.

      Libby clenched her thighs together, her twitchy fingers gripping her bag.

      ‘Glass of wine, my dear?’ Professor McBride asked.

      Libby nodded, her eyes hot as she stared back at Alex Lancaster for longer than was polite or wise. Likely she was not the only woman in the room who found that staring at this disarmingly attractive specimen of manhood pushed semipornographic visions into her head.

      She rolled her shoulders and looked away, blinking the burn from her eyes. A snort gusted over her top lip. Who was she kidding? Her thoughts veered firmly towards the absolutely pornographic where he was concerned. She tugged at the hem of her tailored jacket. Time to get her head back in the game.

      She was a professional, a well-respected member of the business community who owned her own successful marketing business—credentials that had prompted her invitation to London to speak at the ‘Inspiring Business Leaders of the Future’ seminar.

      She darted her attention back to Professor McBride and his lengthy introductions to those closest, all the while willing her greedy eyes to stay away from the lure of Mr Lancaster, the only other person close to her age in the group.

      Libby zoned out of the tedious conversation, discreetly blowing through pursed lips and lifting wisps of escaped hair from her too-warm face. How could that man have such a profound effect on her? Perhaps her PA was right, and she did need a ‘good seeing to’. She’d have to give the perceptive Scotsman a raise, or finally sign up to that dating app he kept shoving in front of her.

      Mmm…maybe not.

      Fickle thoughts drifted back to the smokin’ billionaire across the restaurant. Forget swiping left or right. She could just swipe him out of that suit, tangle her fingers in that too-long hair while she directed his smart, arrogant head south… The dark scruff covering his angular face scraping across her sensitive inner thighs…

      Whew! Potent stuff. There must be something in the English water—it was the only explanation for her train of thought.

      She cleared her perilously tight throat, yanking her mind out of the gutter, her gaze from the toes of her favourite shoes and her attention back to the drone of Professor McBride’s voice.

      ‘…and this is Alex Lancaster, one of our former golden boys, university benefactor