MILLS & BOON

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      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 FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      “DO YOU have to play poker every Friday night, come rain, hail or shine?”

      Charles glanced in the mirror at the reflection of the very beautiful blonde lying face down across his bed, her glorious golden hair spread out over her slender shoulders, her delicately pointed chin propped up in her hands. Her eyes, which were as big and blue as the sky, locked on to his, their expression beseeching.

      Charles hesitated only slightly before continuing to button up his grey silk shirt. As much as the idea of joining her back on that bed was very tempting, his Friday-night poker game was non-negotiable.

      “My poker buddies and I made a pact some time back,” he explained. “If we’re in Sydney on a Friday night, we have to show up. Actually, if we’re in Australia, we have to show up. We can only cancel if we’re overseas or in hospital. Although when Rico was in hospital after a skiing accident last winter, he insisted we all come and play in his room.”

      Charles smiled wryly to himself as he thought of his best friend and his mad passion for the game. “I suspect on the unlikely event of Rico marrying again he’d ask us to accompany him on the honeymoon, just to get his weekly fix. I, however, was more than happy to give up poker during the entire month of my honeymoon,” he pointed out rather smugly.

      “Your wife would have been seriously displeased if you hadn’t.”

      “Would she?” He turned and smiled down at her. “How displeased?”

      “Very displeased.”

      “And are you displeased tonight, Mrs Brandon?”

      She shrugged, then rolled over onto her back, stretching languorously against the ivory satin sheets, her hands lifting up over her head to flop against the side of the king-sized bed. Charles tried not to look at her simply perfect body. But it was difficult not to wallow in her physical beauty. Dominique was every man’s fantasy come true. And she was all his.

      Charles still could not believe his luck in winning the hand—and the love—of such a glorious creature.

      And Dominique did love him. He’d dated enough fortune hunters in the past to know the real thing when he found it.

      Dominique sighed as she glanced up at him through her long lashes. “I suppose I can spare you for a few hours. I’m going to have to get used to being by myself, anyway, since you’re going back to work next Monday.”

      Back to work…

      Charles groaned at the thought, which was a first. For the past twenty years he’d devoted his life to the family brewery business after it had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by his profligate father. And he’d loved every difficult, challenging, frustrating moment.

      From the age of twenty to forty he’d lived and breathed Brandon Beer. Marriage and a family had been relegated to the back-burner as he’d gone from being a near penniless undergraduate to one of Australia’s most successful businessmen, putting Brandon Beer back on the world map and buying half a dozen Sydney hotels along the way, each of which now earned him a sizeable fortune from the recent addition of poker machines.

      Since meeting and marrying Dominique, however, business had taken a back seat in Charles’s life. His mind had been focused on things other than investment opportunities, market projections and expansion programmes. Even now, with the honeymoon over, his focus remained on things other than work.

      The prospect of starting a family in the near future excited him almost as much as did the woman he planned having that family with. Dominique wanted at least two children and had decided to stop taking the Pill next month, which pleased him no end, as did her decision not to go back to work herself after their honeymoon. She’d quit her job in the PR department at Brandon Beer’s head office shortly after she’d said yes to his proposal, saying she didn’t feel right, working there any more.

      Charles was well aware, however, that with her looks and personality Dominique could secure another PR or PA job in Sydney at the drop of a hat. And he’d said as much, not wanting her to think he was the kind of chauvinistic husband who expected his wife not to work.

      But she’d said no to that suggestion, stating that for the next few years her career was being his wife, and the mother of his children. Maybe, when their last child went off to school, she would consider returning to the workforce.

      Whilst not believing himself an old-fashioned