Buch lesen: «One Night in Paradise»

“Just for tonight,” she said, hating that she had to say it, but knowing she did. Because she knew for certain that there could be no romantic future for them.

She loved him. She was certain of it now. She had for a long time—possibly for most of the seven years she’d known him. It had been a slow thing, working its way into her system bit by bit. With every smile, every touch.

And he didn’t love her. Looking at him now, she saw the light in his eyes wasn’t anything deeper than lust. But if that was all she could have she would take it, and she wouldn’t think about the wisdom of it, or the consequences.

If he wanted her right now, then she’d take it. Because she was staring hard into a Zack-free future, and she would rather have all of him tonight, and carry the memory with her, than be nothing more than his trusty sidekick forever, standing by watching while he married another woman. Watching him make a life with someone else, someone he didn’t even love, while her heart splintered into tiny pieces with every beat.

“One night,” she repeated. “Here. Away from reality. Away from work and home. Because … we can’t keep going on like this. It can’t be healthy.”

ONE NIGHT IN …

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One Night In …

A night with these men is never enough!

About the Author

MAISEY YATES was an avid Mills & Boon^® Modern^™ Romance reader before she began to write them. She still can’t quite believe she’s lucky enough to get to create her very own sexy alpha heroes and feisty heroines. Seeing her name on one of those lovely covers is a dream come true.

Maisey lives with her handsome, wonderful, diaper-changing husband and three small children across the street from her extremely supportive parents and the home she grew up in, in the wilds of Southern Oregon, USA. She enjoys the contrast of living in a place where you might wake up to find a bear on your back porch and then heading into the home office to write stories that take place in exotic urban locales.

Recent titles by the same author:

GIRL ON A DIAMOND PEDESTAL

HAJAR’S HIDDEN LEGACY

THE ARGENTINE’S PRICE

Did you know these are also available as eBooks?

Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

One Night
In Paradise
Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my very best friend,

who I happened to be married to. Haven, I love you.

CHAPTER ONE

CLARA Davis looked at the uneaten cake, still as pristine and pink as the bride had demanded, sitting on its pedestal. A very precarious pedestal that had taken a whole lot of skill to balance and get set up. Not to mention have delivered to the coast-side hotel that sat twenty miles away from her San Francisco kitchen.

Everything would have been perfect. The cake, the setting, the groom, well, he was beyond perfect, as usual. And everyone who had been invited had come.

There had been one key person missing, though. The bride had decided to skip the event. And without her, it made it sort of tricky to continue.

Clara eyed the cake and considered taking a slice for herself. She’d worked hard on it. No sense letting it go to waste.

She sighed. The cake wouldn’t make the knot in her stomach go away. It wouldn’t ease any of the sadness she felt. Nothing had been able to shake that feeling, not since the groom, who was now officially jilted, had announced the engagement in the first place.

Though, ironically, watching him get stood up at the altar hadn’t made her feel any better. But how could it? She didn’t like seeing Zack hurt. He was her business partner—more than that, he was her best friend. And also, yeah, the man who kept her awake some nights with the kinds of fantasies that did not bear rehashing in the light of day.

But secret fantasies aside, she hadn’t really wanted the wedding to fall apart. Well, not this close to the actual ceremony. Or maybe she had wanted it. Maybe a small part of her had hoped this would be the outcome.

Maybe that was why she’d agreed to bake the cake. To stand by and watch Zack bind himself to another woman for the rest of his life. There wasn’t really another sane reason for it.

She blew out a breath and walked out of the kitchen and into the massive, empty reception hall. Her heart hit hard against her breastbone when she saw Zack Parsons, coffee mogul, business genius and abandoned groom, standing near the window, looking out at the beach, the sun casting an orange glow on his face and bleeding onto the pristine white of his tuxedo shirt.

He looked different, for just a moment. Leaner. Harder than she was used to seeing him. His tie was draped over his shoulders, his jacket a black puddle by his feet. He was leaning against the window, bracing himself on his forearm.

It shouldn’t really shock her that after being left at the altar he looked stronger in a strange way.

“Hey,” she said, her voice sounding too loud. Stupid in the empty room.

He turned, his gray eyes locking with hers, and she stopped breathing for a moment. He truly was the most beautiful man on the planet. Seven years of working with him on a daily basis should have taken some of the impact away. And some days she was able to ignore it, or at least sublimate it. But then there were other days when it hit her with the force of ten tons of bricks.

Today was one of those days.

“What kind of cake did I buy, Clara?” he asked, pushing off from the window and stuffing his hand into his pocket.

She forced herself to breathe. “The bottom tier was vanilla, with raspberry filling, per Hannah’s instructions. And there was pink fondant. Which I hand-painted, by the way. But the vanilla cake in the middle was soaked in bourbon and honey. And not a single walnut on the whole cake. Because I know what you like.”

“Good. Have someone wrap up the middle tier and send it to my house. And they can send Hannah her tier, too.”

“You don’t have to do that. You can throw it out.”

“It’s edible. Why would I throw it out?”

“Uh … because it was your wedding cake. For a wedding that didn’t happen. For most people it might … take the sweet out of it.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Cake is cake.”

She put her hand on her hip and affected a haughty expression, hoping to force a slight smile. “My cake is more than mere cake, but I get your point.”

“We’ve made a fortune off your cakes, I’m aware of how spectacular they are.”

“I know. But I can make a new cake. I can make a cake that says Condolences on Your Canceled Nuptials. We could put a man on top of it sitting in a recliner, watching sports on his flat-screen television, with no bride in sight.”

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly and she felt a small bubbly sensation in her chest. As though a weight had just been removed.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“That could be a new thing we offer in the shops, Zack,” she said, knowing business was his favorite topic, aborted wedding or no. “Little cupcakes for sad occasions.”

“I’m not all that sad.”

“You aren’t?”

“I’m not heartbroken, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Clara frowned. “But you got left at the altar. Public humiliation is … well, it’s never fun. I had something like that happen in high school when I got stood up by my date at a dance. People pointed and laughed. I was humiliated. It was all very Carrie. Without the pig’s blood or the mass murder.”

“Not the highlight of my life, Clara, I’ll admit.” He swallowed. “Not the lowest point, either. I would have preferred for her to leave me before I was standing at the altar, with the preacher, in a tux, in front of nearly a thousand people, but I’m not exactly devastated.”

“That’s … well, that’s good.” Except it was sort of scary to know that he could be abandoned just before taking his vows and respond to it with an eerie calm. She reacted more strongly to a recipe that didn’t pan out the way she wanted it to.

But then, Zack was always the one with the zenlike composure. When they’d first met, over a cupcake of all things, she’d been impressed by that right away. That and his beautiful eyes, but that was a different story.

She’d been working at a small bakery in the Mission District in San Francisco, and he’d been scoping out a new location for his local chain of coffee shops. He’d bought one of her peanut-butter-banana cupcakes, her experiment du jour. His reaction, like all of Zack’s reactions, hadn’t been overly demonstrative. But there had been a glint in his eye, a hint of that hard steel that lay just beneath the outer calm.

And he’d come back the next day, and the next. She’d never entertained, not for a moment, the idea that he’d been coming in to see her. It had been all about the cupcakes.

And then he’d offered her twice the money to come and work in his flagship shop, making the treats of her choice in his gorgeous, state-of-the-art kitchen. It had been the start of everything for her. At eighteen it had been a major break, and had allowed her to get out of her parents’ house, something she’d been desperate to do.

In the years since, it had been a whole lot more than that.

Roasted’s ten thousandth location had just opened, their first in Japan, and it was being hailed a massive success. Conceptualizing the treats for that shop had been a fun challenge, just like every new international location had been.

She and Zack hadn’t had a life since Roasted had really started to take off, nothing that went beyond coffee and confections, anyway. Of course, Zack was the backbone of the company, the man who got it done, the man who had seen it become a worldwide phenomenon.

They had drinks, coffee beans and mass-produced versions of her cupcakes and other goodies in all the major grocery chains in the U.S. Roasted was a household name. Because Zack was willing to sacrifice everything in his personal life to see it happen.

Hannah had been his only major concession to having a personal life, and that relationship had only started in the past year. And now Zack had lost her.

But he wasn’t devastated. Apparently. She was probably more devastated than he was. Again, cake related.

“I didn’t love her,” he said.

Clara blinked. “You didn’t … love her?”

“I cared about her. She was going to make a perfectly acceptable wife. But it wasn’t like I was passionately head over heels for her or anything.”

“Then why … why were you marrying her?”

“Because it was time for me to get married. I’m thirty. Roasted has achieved the level of success I was hoping for, and there comes a point where it’s the logical step. I reached that point, Hannah had, too.”

“Apparently she hadn’t.”

He gave her a hard glare. “Apparently.”

“Do you know why? Have you talked to her?”

“She can come and talk to me when she’s ready.”

Zack would have laughed at the expression on Clara’s face if he’d found anything remotely funny about the situation. The headlines would be unkind, and with so many media-hungry witnesses to the event, mostly on the absent bride’s side, there would be plenty of people salivating to get their name in print by offering their version of the wedding of the century that wasn’t.

Clara was too soft. Her brown eyes were all dewy looking, as though she were ready to cry on his behalf, her petite hands clasped in front of her, her shoulders slumped. She was more dressed up than he was used to seeing her. Her lush, and no he wasn’t blind so of course he’d noticed, curves complemented, though not really displayed, by a dress that could only be characterized as nice, if a bit matronly.

She did that, dressed much older than she needed to, her thick auburn hair always pulled back into a low bun. Because she had to have her hair up to bake, and it had become a habit. But sometimes he wished she’d just let her hair down. And, because he was a man, sometimes he wished she wouldn’t go to so much trouble to conceal her curves, either.

Although, in reality, her style of dress suited him. They worked together every day, and he had no business having an opinion on her physical appearance. His interest was purely for aesthetic purposes. Like opting for a room with a nice view.

That aside, Clara was all emotion and big hand gestures. There was nothing contained about her.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“I know. I believe you,” she said.

“No, you don’t. Or you don’t want to believe me because your more romantic sensibilities can’t handle the fact that my heart isn’t broken.”

“Well, you ought to love the person you’re going to marry, Zack.”

“Why? Give me a good reason why. So that I could be more broken up about today? So that I could be more suitably wounded if she had shown up, and we had said our vows, when ten years on the marriage fell on the wrong side of the divorce statistics? I don’t see the point in that.”

“Well, I don’t see the point at all.”

“And I didn’t ask.”

“You never do.”

“The secret to my success.” His tone came out a bit harsher than he intended and Clara’s expression reflected it. “You’ll survive this,” he said drily. “Breaking up is hard to do.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be. I’m not so breakable. Tell me, any big word on the Japan location go up online while I was busy getting my photo taken?”

“All good. Some of the pictures I’ve been seeing are showing that it’s absolutely slammed. And everything seems to be going over huge.”

“Good. That means the likelihood of expanding further there is good.” He sat down in one of the vacant, linen-covered chairs. They had pink bows. Also Hannah’s choice. He put his hands on the tabletop, moving his mind away from the fiasco of a wedding day and getting it back on business. “How are things going with our designer cupcakes?”

“Um … well, I was pretty busy getting the wedding cake together.” Clara felt like her head was spinning from the abrupt subject change.

Zack was in full business mode, sitting at the trussed up wedding-party table like it was the pared-down bamboo desk he had in his office at Roasted’s corporate headquarters.

“And?”

“I have a few ideas. But these are pretty labor-intensive recipes and they really aren’t practical for the retail line, or even for most of the stores.”

“Cupcakes are labor intensive?”

She shot him a deadly look. “Why don’t you try baking a simple batch and tell me how it goes?”

“No, thanks. I stick to my strengths, and none of them happen to involve baking.”

“Then trust me, they’re labor intensive.”

“That’s fine. My goal is to start doing a few boutique-style shops in some more affluent areas. We’ll have bigger kitchens so that we’ll have the capability to do more on-site baking.”

“That could work. We’ll have to have a more highly trained staff.”

“That’s fine. I’m talking about a few locations in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, that sort of thing. It will be more like the flagship store. A bit more personalized.”

“I really like the idea, not that you’d care if I didn’t.”

“I am the boss.”

“I know. I’m just the Vice President of Confections,” she said, bringing up a joke they’d started in the early days of the company.

A smile touched his lips again and her heart expanded. “A big job.”

“It is,” she said. “And you don’t pay me enough.”

“Yes, I do.”

She gave him a look. One she knew was less than scary, but she tried. “Anyway, go on.”

“I had made an appointment to speak to a man who owns a large portion of farmland in Thailand. Small clusters of coffee and tea. All of his plants receive a very high level of care and that’s making for extremely good quality roasts and brews. My goal is to set up a deal with him so we can get some limited-editions blends. We’ll sell them in select locations, and have them available for order online.”

Her mind skipped over all the details he’d just laid out, latching on to just one thing. “Weren’t you going to Thailand on your honeymoon?”

“That was the plan.”

Clara couldn’t stop her mouth from dropping open. “You were going to do business on your honeymoon?”

“Hannah had some work to do, as well. Time doesn’t stop just because you get married.”

“No wonder she left you at the altar.” She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“You did, and that’s fine. Unlike you, Hannah had no romantic illusions, you can trust me on that. Her reasons for not showing up today may very well have had something to do with a Wall Street crisis. There’s actually a good chance she’s at her apartment, in her wedding gown, screaming obscenities at her computer screen watching the cost of grain go down.”

She had to concede that the scenario was almost plausible. Hannah was all icy cool composure, and generally nice and polite, until someone crossed her in the corporate world. Clara had overheard the other woman’s phone conversations become seriously cutthroat in tense business situations. Threats of removal of tender body parts had crossed her lips without hesitation.

She admired her for it. For the the intense way she went after what she wanted. She’d done it with Zack. It had been sort of awe inspiring to watch. Mostly it had been awe-inspiringly depressing. Because Clara wasn’t cutthroat, or intense. And she hadn’t been brave enough to pursue what she really wanted. She’d never been brave enough to pursue Zack.

“I doubt that’s what happened,” Clara said, even though she couldn’t be certain.

“There was a reason I asked how the designer-cupcake thing was going.”

“Oh.” Back to business.

“I was trying to make sure you didn’t feel swamped by the amount of work you have to do.”

“No. Creating recipes is the best part of my job. I’ve been having fun with this one. I’ve actually done most of the experimental baking and tasting with our panel, and I have a few standout favorites, plus some that need to be improved. And then I’ll have to narrow down the selection, because it just won’t be feasible to have too many different kinds on the menu at once.”

“So that was the long, detailed version of you telling me you aren’t too busy at the moment?”

She shot him a deadly look. Jilted or not, he didn’t need to be a jerk. “No, I’m not too busy.”

“Good, because everything was set for me to head to Chiang Mai tonight.”

“And you need me to make sure everything is running smoothly at corporate?” That wasn’t usually the role she fulfilled. She wasn’t an administrator, not even close.

“No, I want you to get packed, because you’re coming with me.”

Her stomach honestly felt like it plummeted, squeezing as it made its way down into her toes. “You’re not serious. You’re not actually asking me to come on your honeymoon with you?”

“The trip is booked. I have appointments made. I’m not canceling the honeymoon just because my bride neglected to show up.” He looked at her, like he had thousands of times, but this time felt … It felt different. The inspection seemed closer somehow, his gray eyes more assessing, more intimate. She swallowed hard and tried to ignore the fact that her heart seemed to be trying to claw its way out of her chest. “I think you’ll make a more than fitting replacement.”

CHAPTER TWO

IF he had physically hit her he couldn’t have possibly hurt her worse. A replacement? The consolation prize. The stand-in for tall, lean, angular Hannah who possessed the cheekbones of a goddess. Not that Clara had noticed, or compared.

Well, she had. And in some ways, on some days, the fact they were so different made it easier because there was no question of what the other woman had that she didn’t.

But she had never, never put herself in the position of trying to vie for Zack’s attention, not in that way. Because she’d known that she would be the consolation prize if he ever did decide to look in her direction. And she’d decided that was one thing she couldn’t do to herself. The one thing worse than watching the man who meant the world to her tie himself to another woman. Being the one he’d settled for.

And now Zack was shoving her into that position. It made her want to gag.

“I’m not a replacement for anyone, Zack. And if you’re suggesting I am, then I think we’ve become a little bit too comfortable with each other.”

She turned and walked out of the reception hall. She left the cake. She didn’t care about the cake. The staff of the hotel could have it for an early, sugary breakfast when they came in tomorrow morning.

She breezed through the hall and out the front doors, into the damp, salty air. It had been a cool day, but now, with the sun dipping down below the horizon, the air coming in off of the bay was downright chilly. Which was good, because now, if anyone saw her lip tremble a little bit, she could blame the cold.

She didn’t want to be emotional, not over something that wasn’t even intentional, and with Zack, she knew it wasn’t. Zack wasn’t mean, more than that; he simply wasn’t all that emotional, so he never assumed that anyone else was.

Everything was so surface to Zack. Nothing seemed to get under his skin. Nothing seemed to throw him off, even for a moment. Not even a canceled wedding.

Anyway, she’d had enough intentional digs taken at her in her life to know that things could get far too dramatic if she didn’t make people have to work at hurting her feelings.

But since her feelings for Zack were a constant jumble, her reactions to anything involving him were always strong. Most of the time, though, she managed to keep that fact hidden from Zack. A lot of the time, she kept the extent of her feelings hidden from herself.

“Clara.”

She turned and saw him standing just behind her. She didn’t say anything. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and fixed him with her best glare.

“You’re the second woman to abandon me today.”

Her face flooded with prickly heat. “See, that comparison is not very flattering, considering you’ve already used the word replacement in regards to me.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“That I need someone to come with me, and actually, under the circumstances you’re a better fit than my ex-fiancée.”

For a full second she could only think of one thing his statement could possibly mean. Images clicked through her mind like close-up still-shots. Tan hands on a pale, bare hip. Masculine lips on a feminine throat. Blood roared through her body, into her cheeks, making her face burn. She was sure they were the color of ripe strawberries, broadcasting her thoughts to anyone who looked at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Hannah’s smart, don’t get me wrong, but she doesn’t know this market quite like you do. Prices on stocks, maybe, but it will be nice to have you on hand to offer an opinion about marketing and flavor.”

Business. He was talking about business. And somehow, to Zack, business was more important than romance and making love on his honeymoon?

At least he was pretending it was. There was something different about his expression, a dark light behind his gray eyes. She’d seen Zack nearly every day for the past seven years. She knew his moods, his expressions as well as she knew her own.

And this was a different Zack. Well, she thought it was. For some reason, the hardness, the intensity, seemed more true than what she thought she knew of him.

Strange. But then, the whole day had been strange. Starting with the interminably long silence after the strains of the Bridal March had faded from the air and the aisle remained vacant.

All right, he’d made her mad. It wasn’t the first time. He was bullheaded and a general pain in the butt sometimes. He was also the smartest man she knew, with a cutting wit that always kept her amused. He was one of the few people who’d never doubted that her ideas were good.

If she didn’t go with him, she would spend her evenings hanging out by herself, reading and experimenting with cupcake recipes and licking the batter off the spatula. Fun, sure, but not the kind of fun she could have in Thailand.

Again, those images, erotic and explicit, assaulted her. No, that wasn’t the kind of fun she would be having in Thailand. Zack had never looked twice at her in that way and for the most part, she was fine with that. She’d had a crush on him at first, but even then she hadn’t expected anything to come of it.

And, yes, Hannah had come in and stirred up some strange feelings. Because as long as Zack had simply been there, at work every day, and available for dinner meetings and a lot of other things, it had been comfortable. Zack was in every space in her life, at work and home.

But then along came Hannah, and she took up his time, and, Clara had assumed, that he loved her. And having to share Zack’s emotion with someone else had felt. It had felt awful. And it had made her jealous, which didn’t make sense because she’d never even tried to cross the boundaries of friendship with Zack. So it wasn’t like Hannah had been encroaching on her territory or anything. But she’d been so jealous looking at Zack and Hannah she’d felt like her stomach was turning inside out, and she knew, that even if she could never have Zack, she didn’t want anyone else to have him, either.

Which was just stupid and childish. About as stupid as going with a man on his honeymoon, platonically, in place of his bride, to conduct business with him. Platonically.

She needed her head checked. She needed some sanity. Maybe the problem was that Zack did take up all the spaces in her life. Maybe it would have to change.

Just the thought of that, of pushing him away, sent a sharp dose of pain through her system. She was addicted to him.

“All right. I’ll go. Because I would rather have a paid vacation in Thailand than spend the week hanging out in the office and orchestrating the return of all your wedding presents.”

“I’m not returning my wedding presents.”

“You can’t keep them, Zack.”

“Of course I can. I might need a food processor someday. What does a food processor do?”

“I’ll teach you sometime. Anyway, yes, I’ll go with you.”

The corner of his lip curved up into a wicked smile that made her stomach tighten in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “Excellent. Looks like I won’t be spending my wedding night alone, after all.”

It probably wasn’t nice of him to tease Clara. But he liked the way her cheeks turned pink when he slipped an innuendo into the conversation. And frankly, he was in need of amusement after the day he’d had.

But amusement hadn’t been his primary goal when he’d given her the wedding-night line out in front of the hotel. He’d been trying to atone for his ill-spoken remark about her being a replacement. In truth, he had more fun with Clara than he did with Hannah. It wasn’t as though he disliked Hannah; quite the opposite. But he hadn’t been marrying Hannah for the company.

She’d needed a husband to help her climb the corporate ladder, a little testosterone to help her out in a male-dominated field. And a wife … well, a wife like her was a convenience for a lot of reasons.

But Clara was not his wife. In a lot of ways, she was better. And he hadn’t intended to hurt her feelings. She’d been quiet on the ride from the hotel back to her town house by the bay, and once they’d gotten inside to her place she’d dashed into her bedroom to pack a few things “real quick” which, in his experience with women meant … not quick at all.

He sat in her white leather chair, the one that faced her tiny television. Not state of the art at all, nothing like his place. The home theater had been one of his first major purchases when Roasted had become solvent. Clara’s had been an industrial-grade mixer for her kitchen. That was where all her high-tech gear was. She had a stove with more settings than his stereo system.

“Ready.” He looked up and his stomach clenched.

Clara was standing at the end of the hallway, large, pink leather bag draped over her shoulder, dark jeans conforming to the curve of her hips, and a black knit top outlining the contours of her very generous breasts. He hadn’t gotten married today, so he was going to allow himself a longer look than he ever did. He’d noticed her body before, but he’d never allowed himself to really look at her as a man looked at a woman. He didn’t know why he was letting himself do it now. A treat in exchange for the day, maybe. Or exhaustion making him sloppy with his rules.

Clara was an employee. Clara was a friend. Clara was not a possible lover, and normally that meant no looking at her like she could be.

But tonight wasn’t normal. Not by a long stretch.

“Good.” He stood up and tried to keep his interest in her body sublimated. But he was just a man. A man who had been celibate for a very long time. A man who had been expecting a reprieve on that and had been sadly disappointed.

“Are we taking the company jet?” She smiled, her perfectly shaped brow raised.

She really was beautiful, and not just her curves. He didn’t stop to notice her looks very often. She was like … not furniture, but a fixture for sure. Someone who was always there, every day, no matter what. And when someone was always there, you didn’t stop and look at them very often.