All He Wants For Christmas...: Flirting With Intent / Blame it on the Bikini / Restless
Flirting With Intent When Ruby Maguire meets Damon West, he tells her they can only be together for a week – he’s leaving for Singapore. At least, that was the intention…but something’s telling Damon that one week with Ruby might not be so easy to recover from…Blame it on the Bikini When his sister’s best friend accidentally sends Brad Davenport a very alluring photo, the hotshot lawyer sees a side of Mya Campbell he never knew existed. Workaholic Mya doesn’t date players…but seducing her is Brad’s brand-new project!RestlessStrait-laced lawyer Lizzie has had enough of being a good girl. Rugged musician Patrick Gauge is exactly the type of man Lizzie’s got on her Christmas wish list. What better way to take the plunge into being wild than by jumping right into his bed!
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All He Wants for Christmas
Flirting with Intent
Kelly Hunter
Blame it on the Bikini
Natalie Anderson
Restless
Tori Carrington
Table of Contents
Kelly Hunter
Accidentally educated in the sciences, KELLY HUNTER has always had a weakness for fairytales, fantasy worlds and losing herself in a good book. Husband … yes. Children … two boys. Cooking and cleaning … sigh. Sports … no, not really—in spite of the best efforts of her family. Gardening … yes. Roses, of course. Kelly was born in Australia and has travelled extensively. Although she enjoys living and working in different parts of the world, she still calls Australia home.
Kelly’s novels SLEEPING PARTNER and REVEALED: A PRINCE AND A PREGNANCY were both finalists for the Romance Writers of America RITA>® Award, in the Best Contemporary Series Romance category!
Visit Kelly online at www.kellyhunter.net.
CHRISTMAS was commerce and retail excess. Christmas was family and sometimes it was farce.
Add to the day a wide-open wallet and a city bathed in neon and the memory of a Hong Kong Christmas burned brightly for ever. Ruby Maguire—born to riches and living in Hong Kong for over six years now—knew this from experience. Which meant that she should have been able to organise a perfectly splendid Christmas for the children of one of Hong Kong’s foremost investment bankers in her sleep.
A trip to Hong Kong Disney or Ocean Park. A holographic Christmas tree or three. More presents than they knew what to do with, a mad mix of Christmas lanterns and fake winter wonderlands and, if Santa was really on the ball, maybe their charming, handsome, super-important father would put in an appearance and make their day.
Except that the West children were all grown up these days, and, from the snippets of information Russell West’s executive PA had let slip, Russell’s eldest son was unlikely to be in attendance, his firstborn daughter was recovering from serious injury, his other daughter was a reclusive genius, and his fourth-born—another son—was either a crime lord, a charming wastrel or James Bond.
So much for taking them to Disneyland.
Instead, Ruby had decked the halls of Russell West’s pristine marble penthouse with as much high-class folly as she could find. White orchids; real ones. Poinsettias; silk ones. Tapered white candles just waiting to be lit and more fat goldfish for the glass-covered pond. The pond ran beneath the base of the stairs and along the atrium wall until it reached the tiny rooftop terrace where the songbirds reigned supreme. The only thing missing from the scene was a pet cricket in a bamboo cage. For Australian-born Russell West, owning a pet cricket was taking cultural assimilation one chirrup too far.
December twenty-second already, with the three younger West siblings due to arrive tomorrow. Upon arrival they would find immaculately prepared rooms, festive touches in the strangest places, and reservations for one of Hong Kong’s premier restaurants, should they wish to dine out.
Ruby wasn’t a housekeeper or a cook, though her current job strayed into such territory at times. She far preferred to think of herself as Russell West’s social accountant—a position created just for her, out of pity most likely, but she’d tried to make herself useful, and the hefty bonus Russell had just presented her with gave credence to the notion that he thought her service of value.
She wrote Russell’s charity dinner speeches, briefed him on the changes in status of Hong Kong’s elite, and basically made his social engagements as stress-free and fruitful as possible.
Ruby’s latest challenge had been the buying of Christmas gifts for the children of Russell’s employees—an endeavour she had seen to with pleasure. Furthermore, Russell now had an up-to-date database citing the names, birthdates and interests of his employees’ spouses and children. She’d even done one for the wives and children of his major business contacts. Whether Russell would use the information remained to be seen.
Trust a financial wizard to pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to the little things that went such a long way towards the cultivation of solid business relationships in Hong Kong.
As for the choosing of gifts for his own children; be they genius, wounded, idle, or missing … that was Ruby’s job too and she had approximately twenty-four hours to do it in. Russell hadn’t even given her a price range, let alone a guide as to what type of gifts they might enjoy.
‘Not even a hint,’ she muttered to herself as she dumped the box of sparkling mineral water on the kitchen counter and opened the French doors leading out to the terrace. ‘It’s not right.’ She plucked a pair of thin plastic gloves from the terrace cupboard and headed for the songbird enclosure.
