The Tycoon's Marriage Deal. Melanie Milburne

       CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS THE best wedding cake Tillie had ever decorated but now there wasn’t going to be a wedding. Her dream wedding. The wedding she had planned and looked forward to for more years than she wanted to count. She looked at the triple-tier wedding cake with the intricate orange blossom petals she’d taken hours and hours to craft. They were so darn realistic you could almost smell them. The finely detailed lacework around the sides of the cake had all but made her cross-eyed. She had even given the marzipan bride on the top of the cake her chestnut hair and pale complexion and brown eyes, and used a tiny scrap of fabric from her own wedding dress and veil to make a replica outfit.

      Although...she’d taken a little licence with the bride’s figure and made her look as if she spent her life in the gym rather than hours in a kitchen surrounded by yummy cakes that had to be tasted to get the balance of flavours just right.

      The groom was exactly like Simon—blond and blue-eyed—although the tuxedo she’d painted on him was now pock-marked with pinholes.

      Tillie picked up another dressmaking pin and aimed it at the groom’s groin. ‘Take that, you cheat.’ Who knew marzipan figurines could make such great voodoo dolls? Maybe she could do a side line business for jilted brides, making break-up cakes with an effigy of their ex.

      There’s a thought...

      ‘Uh-oh.’ Joanne, her assistant, came into the kitchen. ‘Your favourite male customer is waiting for you. Maybe I should warn him you’re in your all-men-are-evil mood.’

      Tillie turned from the cake to look at Joanne. ‘Which male customer?’

      Joanne’s eyes sparkled so much they looked as if they belonged on a tiara. ‘Mr Chocolate Éclair.’

      Tillie could feel her cheeks heating up faster than her fan-forced oven. For the last two weeks, every time that man came into her cake shop he always insisted on being served by her. He always made her blush. And he always wanted the same thing—one of her Belgian chocolate éclairs. She didn’t know whether to dislike him for making sport out of her overactive capillaries or for him being able to eat a chocolate éclair a day and not put on a single gram of fat. ‘Can’t you serve him just this once?’

      Joanne shook her head. ‘Nope. He wants to speak to you and informs me he won’t leave until he does.’

      Tillie frowned. ‘But I told you I don’t want to be interrupted this afternoon. I have three kids’ birthday cakes to decorate and I have to squeeze in a visit to Mr Pendleton at the respite centre. I made his favourite marshmallow slice.’

      ‘This guy is not the sort to take no for an answer,’ Joanne said. ‘Anyway, you should see how clock-stopping gorgeous he looks today. Where on earth does he put all the calories you sell him?’

      Tillie turned back to the wedding cake and aimed a pin at the groom’s right eye. ‘Tell him I’m busy.’

      Joanne blew out an I’m-so-over-this breath. ‘Look, Tillie, I know Simon jilting you was rough on you, but it’s been three months. You have to move on. I think Mr Chocolate Éclair fancies you. He’s certainly paying you heaps of attention. Who knows? This might be your chance to get out and party like you’ve never partied before.’

      ‘Move on? Why should I move on?’ Tillie said. ‘I’m fine right where I am, thank you very much. I’m over men.’ Three more pins went into marzipan man’s manhood. ‘Over. Over. Over.’

      ‘But not all men are like—’

      ‘Apart from my dad and Mr Pendleton, men are a waste of time and money and emotion,’ Tillie said. When she thought of all the money she’d spent on Simon, helping him with yet another start-up business that ended going belly up. When she thought of all the effort she’d put into their relationship, her patience over his commitment to not have sex before marriage because of his faith, only for him to have an affair with a girl he’d met online.

      On a hook-up app.

      Grr.

      Years Tillie had spent being by his side, putting her own stuff on hold in order to be a good little girlfriend and then good little fiancée. Faithful. Loyal. Devoted.

      No. Moving on would mean she would have to trust a man again and that she was never going to do. Not in this lifetime. Not in this century. Not in this geological era.

      ‘So...do you want me to tell Mr Chocolate Éclair to come back some other time?’ Joanne said, wincing when she saw all the pins sticking out of Simon.

      ‘No. I’ll see him.’ Tillie untied her apron, tossed it to one side and stalked into her small shop front. Mr Chocolate Éclair was standing looking at the cakes and biscuits and slices in the glass cabinet underneath the shop counter. When he turned and made eye contact something zapped her in the chest like a Taser beam. Zzzztt. She double-blinked just as she did every time he looked at her. Was it actually possible to have eyes that unusual shade of blue? A light greyish-blue with a dark outline around the iris, as if someone had drawn a fine circle with a felt-tip marker. His hair was a rich dark brown with natural highlights as if he had recently spent time in the sun. Clearly not in England, given the summer so far had been dismal even though it was June. His skin was olive toned and tanned and the wrong side of clean-shaven, as if he had been too lazy to pick up a razor that morning. It gave him a rakish air that made her toes curl in her ballet flats.

      And he was tall.

      So tall he had to stoop when he came in the shop, and even now the top of his head was dangerously close to the light fitting.

      But it was his mouth that drew her eyes like a dieter to her cake counter. No matter how hard she tried, Tillie couldn’t stop staring at it. The top lip was sculpted and only a shade thinner than the lower one, suggesting his was a mouth that knew all there was to know about sensuality. Even the way it was curved upwards in a smile hinted at a man who was confident and assured of getting his own way in the boardroom and the bedroom or even on a park bench. If there were a blueprint for an international playboy he would be a perfect fit. He was so rampantly masculine he made the models in sexy aftershave ads look like altar boys.

      ‘The usual?’ Tillie said, reaching for a set of tongs and a white paper bag.

      ‘Not today.’ His voice was so deep it was clear he hadn’t been at the back of the queue when the testosterone was handed out. Rich and dark, honey and gravel with a side order of smooth Devonshire cream. His eyes twinkled. ‘I’m abstaining from temptation just this once.’

      Tillie’s cheeks were flaming hot enough to make toffee. ‘Can I tempt you with anything else?’

      Bad choice of words.

      His smile came up a little higher on one side. ‘I thought it was time I introduced myself. I’m Blake McClelland.’

      The name rang a bell. Not a drawing-room bell. A Big Ben type of bell. Blake McClelland—international playboy, super-successful businessman and renowned financial whizz. McClelland Park was the name of the country estate Tillie was housesitting for the elderly owner, Mr Pendleton. The estate had been reluctantly sold by Andrew McClelland when his young wife Gwen tragically died, leaving behind a ten-year-old son. The son had certainly done a heck of a lot of growing up. He would be thirty-four now, exactly ten years older than her. ‘How can I...erm...help you, Mr McClelland?’

      He held out his hand, and, after a brief hesitation, she slipped hers into its slightly calloused cage. The brush of warm male flesh closing around hers was as electrifying as a high-voltage current. The air suddenly became tighter, denser.

      ‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’ he said.

      Tillie was rapidly going beyond being able to think, much less talk. Even breathing was proving to be a challenge. Even though she pulled her hand out of his, the sensation of his touch was still travelling through her body like hot tentacles. One of them coiling