Cinderella for the Miami Playboy

  “How long would we have to pretend to be married?”

  “Not long. Within a few weeks, we’ll issue a statement that the media attention is putting too much pressure on our marriage and we’re taking a break. Do you need a lawyer?” He picked up his phone.

  For a marriage that wasn’t real? Bianca’s brain was tripping over her heart, trying not to hit the hard ground of how quickly he was planning on dumping her:

  “And what—” She cleared her throat. “What are the rules?”

  “Rules?”

  “You told me to move into your room. What do you expect will happen there?” She sat straighter, affecting a look of objective interest, but her pulse was swerving all over the map.

  She didn’t know what answer she was hoping for. Yes, she did. No, she didn’t. Did she want to sleep with him again? Yes. But no. She wanted to sleep with the man he’d been the first time they met, the one who wasn’t so enigmatic and remote. She wanted to be the woman she used to be, the one with a life and a career, friends and a home. One who knew who she was. These days, she was a stray. An orphan. A pariah in some circles. A ghost of the woman she’d been.

  Canadian Dani Collins knew in high school that she wanted to write romance for a living. Twenty-five years later, after marrying her high school sweetheart, having two kids with him, working at several generic office jobs and submitting countless manuscripts, she got The Call. Her first Harlequin novel won the Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First in Series from RT Book Reviews. She now works in her own office, writing romance.

  Books by Dani Collins

  Harlequin Presents

  Confessions of an Italian Marriage

  Innocent in the Sheikh’s Palace

  What the Greek’s Wife Needs

  Her Impossible Baby Bombshell

  One Snowbound New Year’s Night

  Signed, Sealed...Seduced

  Ways to Ruin a Royal Reputation

  The Secret Sisters

  Married for One Reason Only

  Manhattan’s Most Scandalous Reunion

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Dani Collins

  Cinderella for the Miami Playboy

  To all the readers who asked me if Everett from Confessions of an Italian Marriage would get his own story, this one’s for you! xo

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM THEIR ONE-NIGHT RIO REUNION BY ABBY GREEN

  PROLOGUE

  New York, six months ago...

  EVERETT DRAKE WAS in the worst possible mood for a man like him. He was bored. Bored was one step away from making trouble purely to stay awake.

  You’re lucky. You’ll enjoy it, had been the refrain from the few people who knew of his retirement. I’m so glad you’re out of it, his mother had said of the end of his career handling agents and informants for the U.S. Government.

  He was not glad. He was livid. Men twice his age moved to Miami to tinker with cars. He was in the prime of his life and ought to be doing something more meaningful, but he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. He was punishing himself and that was as it should be. He would live quietly. Authentically. The way normal people lived.

  Well, normal people with buckets of wealth from multiple sources. Given his deep pockets, he could do anything he wanted, even be the dissolute playboy he had used as his cover for the last fifteen years.

  Nothing about any of that appealed, though. Not the travel, not the parties. It was all empty as hell. He couldn’t even race cars or hydrofoils. His mother would drag him out by the collar and run him over herself.

  Given his current ennui, that didn’t sound half-bad.

  He gave up his overnight bag to the flight attendant as he climbed aboard the executive jet. The automotive parts he’d come to New York to source himself—because he was that desperate for something to do—were already stowed below.

  Old habits had him glancing at the manifest to read the names of his fellow passengers. Only one. Bianca Palmer. The name was unfamiliar, and it didn’t matter, he reminded himself. He was no longer on guard against those who might seek to unmask him, or digging to find those who carried secrets like smuggled cargo.

  He stepped into the main cabin, glanced at the woman in the luxury armchair on the left and a thousand impressions hit him at once, many of them the visceral reaction of a healthy male spotting an apparently fertile female. Alluring curves on a lithe build. Slender calves beneath a narrow skirt. Her ankles were crossed carefully to avoid scuffing her designer shoes. Her silk blouse was open at her throat, providing a view of her honey-gold upper chest, unadorned by any chain or locket.

  That other more analytic part of him noted that her clothes were priced comparably to the bespoke suit and Italian shoes he wore. He judged her age at seven or eight years younger than his thirty-five. She was a professional, but not in a conservative career like banking. Something creative, given the way her rich brunette hair was side-parted and woven into a braid from one ear around the back of her head to the other, ending in a wavy waterfall behind her hoop earring.

  She understood the value of appearances and how a style like that conveyed an eye for beauty and attention to detail. Sophisticated makeup emphasized her features. Bronze dusted her eyelids and playful cat tails decorated the corners of her eyes. Her complexion was a flawless, golden tan, almost olive. Her nose held an elegant curve at the bridge and her jawline was strong yet very feminine. Merlot-colored lipstick coated her wide mouth, glossy enough that her lips looked kiss-dampened and pillowy. Inviting.

  Her dark chocolate gaze lifted absently from dropping something into her handbag and locked with his for no reason other than that they were sexually compatible. He wasn’t coy about such things. He had been told many times he was handsome, and he had zero problems dressing well and shaving daily to heighten that impression. She was vibrant and beautiful, and chemistry was a wonderful thing when it struck both parties equally, as it was doing right now.

  A satisfying billow of desire moved through his chest like smoke before sinking into his belly and groin.

  He watched her throat flex as she swallowed. Her eyes widened slightly before her gaze flickered all over him like an indecisive butterfly, leaving tickling touches at his shoulders and the middle of his chest, on to his tense abdomen and lower, following the sharp crease in his trousers to his freshly shined shoes.

  As her gaze made its way back, the delicious tightness of arousal invaded the flesh behind his fly and climbed his spine, releasing an urge to pursue into his blood.

  “Good morning,” he greeted.

  “Good morning.” Her voice held a husky note. He wasn’t sure if it was natural or because they were having such an effect on each other. She dropped her gaze into her lap, where she was twisting her fingers.

  A fresh impression struck him like a slap, one that was an even sharper cat nip than carnal hunger. He read tension, vulnerability, wariness. Secrets.

  The hair on the back of his neck lifted, and there was a tang in his nostrils like the whiff off an extinguished match.

  His ability to scent danger had kept him and others alive more often than he could count—and that one time when he had ignored it—

  No.

  He brushed that incident aside, staying in the moment because that’s how you stayed alive when this happened, but his sexual interest had collided straight into that part of him he had severed like a limb. The part that chased intrigue and answers and knew that knowledge was power. The part that liked that power and enjoyed skating on the edge of icy cliffs.

  He was an addict. That’s what he was. Whatever was going on with this woman was nothing to do with him. Ignore her. Go live your life, he ordered himself.

  What life, though? The banality of his existence was likely to kill him quicker than his old life might have, but he had made his choices. He would live with the consequences.

  “May I bring champagne? Mimosas?” The flight attendant arrived behind him and accepted the jacket he removed.

  “Nothing for me, thank you,” Bianca said in her sensual voice.

  “Coffee,” Everett requested, and seated himself across from her, resisting the urge to swivel his chair so he could see her better. Not for him. Not today. Not ever.

  Bianca turned her face to the window and knotted her hands in her lap.

  Ringless hands, Everett noted. Why couldn’t there be a band or a diamond there? He would have dismissed his attraction without another thought. Even in his previous life, he only lied as much as he absolutely had to. Entangling himself with a woman who happened to be cheating on her partner fell into unnecessary deceit.

  But given the absence of rings or last-minute texting or chatty I love yous before switching to airplane mode, his libido urged him to make a pass. He didn’t get nearly as much sex as the profligate playboy he pretended to be. If she was amenable, why the hell shouldn’t he spend
a night with her? He could stay at a hotel rather than take her home. Keep it to one night.

  Just one drink. Just dinner. Just enough to find out what her story was.

  It truly was the rationalization of someone with a substance abuse problem. Just no.

  He was so damned aware of her, though. It was as if he sat next to a radiator that softly pinged as it baked his right side.

  The ladder came up and the seal of the door locked them into a bubble of charged air. He knew she was chewing her bottom lip. Her head was still tilted toward the window, but he knew she was as aware of him as he was of her. A special sort of tension emanated off her. He knew she was sliding surreptitious glances from the corner of her eye because he was doing the same.

  Nope, nope, nope.

  Was he even reading her correctly? Or was his latent horniness tasting all this electricity and turning it into something it wasn’t? Maybe she was just a nervous flyer.

  As the plane taxied and the attendant buckled into her own seat for takeoff, he remarked, “I use this charter company all the time. These jets are very reliable. You won’t feel any turbulence.”

  In fact, he owned shares in the company. In his previous life, he would volunteer a detail like that. He had always liked to nurture the impression his fortune was inherited, passive and mildly obnoxious. That way he avoided inconvenient questions about what he did for a living. People presumed “nothing.”

  That’s exactly what he did now, but he balked at this woman viewing him as shallow and aimless. He wasn’t sure why. It rarely bothered him what anyone thought of him.

  She shot him a culpable glance, seeming briefly rattled before she visibly took hold of herself, stacking her hands and relaxing her shoulders, pasting on a smile.

  “Am I that obvious?”

  Wow. That blanket of false calm was such a deliberate application of control, as though she were sitting in a high-stakes poker game and realized she was betraying herself with a tell. His most sharply honed synapses fired in his brain.

  Definitely not this one, his logic brain said firmly.

  His lizard brain shifted his ankle onto his knee, hiding the fact he was growing hard. She was caressing all his buttons with that serene mask that disguised a mystery and the way her breath subtly hitched, causing her breasts to quiver.

  “Allow me to distract you,” he suggested. Because if he was going to fall off the wagon, it ought to be with premium, hundred-year-old Scotch, right? Look at her. “Are you heading to Miami for business or pleasure? Visiting family?”

  Surprise bloomed behind her eyes as she realized he was hitting on her.

  He didn’t like to waste time, he informed her with a sideways pull of his mouth, but how could she be surprised? Women with that much sex appeal were inundated with advances. They knew how to shut them down very quickly and he always respected that, but he found himself holding his breath as he awaited her reaction.

  She blinked in disconcertion, and her finger and thumb worked the spot at the base of her naked ring finger as she considered how to handle his attention.

  Ah. There was no ring, but there was a commitment in place, one that typically shielded her from sexual interest. Pity.

  It was for the best—he knew it was—but he couldn’t remember ever feeling his inner animal rising so urgently with desire. He made himself sip his hot coffee to burn away the pall of disappointment in the back of his throat.

  She didn’t mention a partner, however. Nor did she grasp at the armrest or show any sort of nerves as the engine roar grew and the plane gathered speed. She seemed perfectly relaxed as they were pressed into their seats by the climbing jet.

  He didn’t take credit for taking her mind off her trepidation, though. Flying wasn’t what she was afraid of. He knew that in his gut, but all his willpower seemed to have been left on the ground. His entire being was awake and alive in a way he hadn’t been in months.

  “I’m not sure how to answer,” she confided as they leveled off, forcing his mind back to the question he’d asked. “It’s a little bit of all of those. Business, pleasure and family. My grandmother passed recently.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said politely.

  “I didn’t know her,” she dismissed, but the corners of her mouth briefly tilted down. “She stopped speaking to my mother when Mom got pregnant and wasn’t married. We reached out a few times, but we never heard back. Then, out of the blue, I got a letter saying my grandmother had left me her apartment. I’m going to Miami to sell it.”

  Her glance reflected resignation and... Damn. He knew that cagey look. She was hoping he was satisfied with what she’d given him. She was holding something back.

  They were strangers, though. Sometimes that allowed a person to open up without reserve, but not all the time. Family was complicated, and convoluted stories didn’t always reap useful information. He left room for her to elaborate by saying, “That sounds troubling.”

  “It is. Thank you for acknowledging that.” Her brows came together with annoyance. “Everyone seems to think I’ve won the lottery. All I can think is that I would have preferred a relationship with her. I mean, she didn’t even send me a card when her daughter died, but she made me her beneficiary? That’s bizarre, isn’t it?”

  Perhaps that was the source of her tension. Her conscience must be bothered by accepting a windfall from someone who had hurt her mother.

  “You can never be sure why someone holds others at arm’s length. Shame. Anger. Secrets.” Self-loathing. Guilt. Everett eschewed intimate relationships for all of those reasons.

  “I know, but...” Her mouth twisted with frustration.

  This time, as their gazes met, a deeper curiosity crept into her expression, one that stoked the heat in his gut. Her attention strayed over his clean-shaven face again and reassessed his shoulders and chest and thighs, all of which he ruthlessly kept in fighting form.

  She tellingly eyed his left hand, which bore neither ring nor tan line.

  Everett had tried long-term relationships. They had always withered from neglect, mostly due to work getting in the way. He had all the time in the world now, though, and a soft blush of attraction had risen under her skin, one that pleased him immensely as did the implied interest in her next words.

  “And you? Why are you going to Miami?”

  I live there. That’s what he should have said, but old instincts had him prevaricating.

  “There’s a yacht I’m thinking of buying. I’m only in town the one night—” He always liked to be clear about his limitations and in this case, he should have shut his mouth ten minutes ago, but there was a war going on inside him. He knew, he knew not to ignore the way his scalp was tightening, but his interest in her was galloping like a wild stallion, determined to catch her and have her.

  Lust won over logic.

  “I’ll be free by six and dining alone unless you’d like to join me?”

  Her head tilted as she considered his invitation. For one second, he had the impression of looking in a mirror. She was definitely hiding more than she was revealing.

  Tension invaded his muscles. He ought to be hoping for a rebuff. It rarely happened, but when it did, it didn’t bother him. If she turned him down, however, he would be more than disappointed. He’d be thwarted.

  Her guardedness relaxed a few notches as she offered a shy smile. “I would like that.” She leaned out to offer her hand. “I’m Bianca, by the way.”

  As he took her hand, a punch of desire struck his middle. Her breath caught as though she experienced a similar impact. He swept his thumb across the back of her knuckles before releasing her, absorbing the fact she posed a type of danger he hadn’t ever experienced.

  He really should retract and retreat. This was madness.

  “Everett,” he provided. “I’ll make a reservation at my hotel.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Present day, Miami

  BIANCA PALMER HAD what anyone would consider an ideal job, especially when one was hiding from the law, reporters and the white-collar criminals she had implicated when she had blown the whistle on them.