Penny Jordan has been writing for more than twenty years and has an outstanding record: over one hundred and thirty novels published, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit The Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Penny Jordan was born in Preston, Lancashire, and now lives in rural Cheshire.
One of Mills & Boon’s best-loved writers, Penny writes for the Modern™ series and contributes to M&B™.
The Boss’s Marriage Arrangement
by
Penny Jordan
MILLS & BOON
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CHAPTER ONE
AS ALWAYS when she had to walk past her boss’s open office door, Harriet felt her body tense and she forced herself to look straight ahead and not into the room.
She should never have agreed to work for Matthew Cole, she admitted, reflecting darkly as she did so that if it hadn’t been for her best friend then she wouldn’t have done. That was the trouble with best friends; sometimes—too many times, in her experience—they tended to believe that they knew what was best! Her particular best friend certainly did, which was why he had coaxed, cajoled and generally used every trick in the book to get her to submit her CV for Matthew Cole’s personal appraisal.
Yes, that was right, her best friend was male! She and Ben had been friends since their junior school days, and that friendship had strengthened when they had both chosen to go to the same university.
Now, four years after they’d left university, their friendship was as strong as ever—which was why she had taken Ben’s advice and applied for the job at the firm of architects and design consultants, which he had insisted would be perfect for her.
And, to be fair to him, in all probability it would have been. If the job hadn’t come with strings. Strings that were firmly held in the uncompromising grip of the company’s owner, Matthew Cole. And strings which Matthew Cole had absolutely no compunction about pulling extremely hard when he felt like it. Take the way he had dictatorially announced that her desk was to be on the opposite side of the room from Ben’s, even though they were collaborating on the same office design project.
She should have listened to her own inner feelings right from the start, Harriet admitted, her green eyes shadowing as sunlight spilled through the window, burnishing her conker-coloured shoulder length hair. The thickness of her long black eyelashes gave her eyes a certain smouldering sensuality, which was echoed by the warm fullness of her mouth.
As she passed Mathew Cole’s office she let out a sigh of relief. She knew without looking in that he wasn’t there. For some reason she had developed a very sensitive early-warning system that told her very explicitly whenever Matt was about.
If she had had any sense she would have paid far more attention to that stab of shocked awareness and its ricocheting fall out when he had first interviewed her. She should have done, but when Ben had asked her jovially if she had been, as he put it, ‘knocked out by Matt’s sexiness, like every other woman who sets eyes on him,’ she had of course denied being so much as remotely aware of any such thing, never mind affected by it!
Ben had been hugely amused by her reaction, shaking his head and laughing as he told her how women normally reacted to his boss. And that had been her downfall. Because of course when she had been offered the job her own pride had not allowed her to refuse to accept it.
Despite the shock that Matthew Coles’s potent air of sexuality and masculine power had given her, she was totally immune to it—and to him, Harriet assured herself, with blatant disregard for the truth, as she walked into the open plan office she shared with Ben and other members of their team.
‘Nice weekend?’ Ben asked as she sat down.
‘Fine,’ Harriet assured him. ‘Everyone at home sends their love, and your mother has sent some of her damson jam for you.’
Ben groaned. ‘I’ve got a shelf full of the stuff already. You’d think that after twenty-six years she’d know I don’t like damson jam.’
‘Perhaps she’s trying to convert you. Which reminds me—she wants to know when she and your dad are going to get to meet Cindi!’ Harriet laughed, but her laughter died on her lips as she studied Ben’s haggard face.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, her concern intensifying as he shook his head. ‘Come on, Ben,’ she cajoled, ‘this is me—remember!’
She hadn’t forgotten, even if Ben had, how he had helped and comforted her through the break up of her own first big romance during their first year at university.
‘It’s Cindi,’ Ben admitted unhappily. ‘We had a bit of row over the weekend. And it isn’t the first one either. Harry, I just don’t understand her,’ he said vehemently as he swung around in his chair to look at her. ‘I mean, one minute she’s “let’s move in together and start planning a future” and then the next she’s saying, “I’m out with my friends and I don’t want to know you.” And all because…’
‘Because what?’ she pressed, but Ben shook his head. Harriet sighed. Cindi, the girl Ben was dating, had recently joined the company too, although since they were working on different projects, and she herself had been away on holiday, Harriet hadn’t had any opportunity to get to know her as yet. She knew that Cindi and Ben had been dating, and that they had fallen head over heels in love with one another.
‘Everyone has lovers’ tiffs, Ben.’ She tried to comfort him. ‘Perhaps give yourselves a chance to talk the problem through together…?’
‘This isn’t a tiff. She’s being totally unreasonable and she knows it. And as for talking it through—!’ His normally easygoing expression hardened. ‘No way I am going to be given ultimatums about the way I live my life!’
Harriet could see that he genuinely believed he had a grievance, but she still tried to lighten his mood by teasing, ‘What has she done? Told you all your old sports stuff has to go?’
When he didn’t respond she looked worriedly at him and said quietly, ‘Okay, so it’s something serious and I’m out of order trying to joke about it, but you can be a stubborn so-and-so at times, and if it’s a matter of giving a bit or losing someone special to you then—’
‘It isn’t as simple as that, Harry, and if she genuinely loved me she wouldn’t need to make such bloody ridiculous conditions because she’d know…’
‘She’d know what?’ Harriet demanded, mystified.
For a minute she thought that Ben wasn’t going to answer, and then, as though he couldn’t help himself, he burst out furiously, ‘She’d know that you’re the closest thing I’ve got to a sister, as well as my best friend, and that no way do you feel any differently about me than I do about you. Hell, just because she’s never had any close friends of the opposite sex doesn’t mean that— And as for saying that you might secretly be in love with me—well, that’s