The Billionaire's Convenient Wife Bundle by Kim Lawrence

Author:Kim Lawrence
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2003-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Timber Baron’s Virgin Bride

By Daphne Clair

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“RACHEL?” BRYN DONOVAN’S grey-green eyes sharpened as he met his mother’s cornflower-blue gaze.

Black brows drawing closer together, he sat slightly forward on the dark green velvet of the wing-chair that, like most of the furniture in the room, had been in the family for as long as the big old house. “You don’t mean Rachel Moore?”

Pearl, Lady Donovan spread her hands in a surprised gesture. Her slight frame seemed engulfed by the wide chair that matched the one her son occupied on the other side of the brass-screened fireplace.

“Why not?” Her mouth, once a perfect cupid’s bow, today painted a muted coral, firmed in a way Bryn knew well. Behind the scarcely lined milk-and-roses complexion and artfully lightened short curls was a keen brain and a will of solid iron.

Bryn said, “Isn’t she rather young?”

His mother laughed as only a mother can at a thirty-four-year-old man whose name in New Zealand’s business and financial circles engendered almost universal respect. The nay-sayers were mostly competitors jealous of the way he had expanded his family company and increased its already substantial fortunes, or employees who had fallen foul of his rigidly enforced standards. “Bryn,” she chided him, “it’s ten years since her family left us. Rachel is a highly qualified historian, and I’m sure I told you she’s already written a book—in fact, two, I think.”

He could hardly tell her he’d tried to expunge all information about the girl from his mind.

Pearl pressed on. “You know your father always intended to write a family history.”

“He talked about it.” It had been one of the old man’s planned retirement projects, until an apparently harmless penchant for the best wines and liqueurs had wreaked a sudden and fatal revenge.

“Well—” the widow’s prettily determined chin lifted “—I want to do this as a memorial to him. I thought you’d be pleased.” A suspicious sheen filmed her eyes.

Bryn’s reputation as a hard-headed though not unprincipled businessman wasn’t proof against this feminine form of assault. His mother had emerged from a year and a half of grieving to at last show real interest in something. Her expression today was less strained and her movements more purposeful than since his father’s death.

That Rachel Moore’s barely seventeen-year-old face under a halo of soft, unruly dark hair, her trusting brown eyes and shockingly tempting, too-young mouth occasionally entered Bryn’s dreams, and left him on waking with a lingering guilt and embarrassment, was his own problem. He couldn’t in conscience pour cold water on his mother’s new project.

He said, “I thought she was in America.” Rachel had gone to the States for postgraduate study after gaining her MA in English and history, and had since been teaching university students there.

“She’s back.” Pearl looked pleased. “She’s taking up a lectureship in Auckland next year, but she needs something to tide her over for six months or so because of the different semesters from America. It’s ideal, and so nice that we can get someone who isn’t a stranger to do this for us.

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