Конкурент. Уровень 4: 1100 слов. Вэнь Цзиньхай

      

      Just a show. That was the key.

      Except it wasn't.

      Yes, the only reason his first kiss with his wife was taking place in front of a captive audience was to prove a point—to show them that Helena wasn't some sort of poor consolation prize. But that wasn't enough. He had to show Helena that too.

      And Helena knew the truth.

      If he wanted her to stick with this—to believe they had a real future together—well, that future started right now. With their first kiss.

      “Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”

      The chanting around them faded into nothing as he leant in closer, closing his eyes as he brushed his lips against hers, soft at first, not wanting to spook her. But then … God, then … Flynn's fingers clutched at her hip, the silk of her dress slipping against his skin as he deepened the kiss.

      She tasted like champagne and gold, expensive and sparkling, her mouth warm and willing under his.

      He'd wanted to prove a point with this kiss, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was.

      His Very Convenient Bride

      Sophie Pembroke

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      SOPHIE PEMBROKE has been dreaming, reading and writing romance for years—ever since she first read The Far Pavilions under her desk in chemistry class. She later stayed up all night devouring Mills & Boon^® books as part of her English degree at Lancaster University, and promptly gave up any pretext of enjoying tragic novels. After all, what's the point of a book without a happy ending?

      She loves to set her novels in the places where she has lived—from the wilds of the Welsh mountains to the genteel humour of an English country village or the heat and tension of a London summer. She also has a tendency to make her characters kiss in castles.

      Currently Sophie makes her home in Hertfordshire, with her scientist husband (who still shakes his head at the reading-in-chemistry thing) and their four-year-old Alice in Wonderland-obsessed daughter. She writes her love stories in the study she begrudgingly shares with her husband, while drinking too much tea and eating homemade cakes. Or, when things are looking very bad for her heroes and heroines, white wine and dark chocolate.

      Sophie keeps a blog at www.sophiepembroke.com, which should be about romance and writing but is usually about cake and castles instead.

      MILLS & BOON

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      For Pippa, for everything.

      Contents

       Cover

       Introduction

       Title Page

       About the Author

       Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       EPILOGUE

       EXTRACT

       Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

      FLYNN STARED AT HER, a hint of panic in his usually calm and collected brown eyes. Helena gazed back, hoping she looked slightly less like a small wild animal caught in the open by a predator than he did.

      She had to admit, though, that was unlikely. This was very new territory for both of them.

      ‘While I know that what we just did was very noble and right and championed the cause of true love and so on...what on earth do we do now?’ Flynn asked.

      Helena’s mind whirred with the possibilities, just as it had been doing since the moment her sister ran out of the door, leaving her holding both the pearl-encrusted ivory wedding dress and the proverbial baby. They didn’t have much in the way of options, and one choice kept rising to the top of the very short list.

      ‘Help me out of this dress.’ She placed Thea’s wedding dress carefully on a padded armchair, then twisted to try and reach the zip at the back of her own flamingo-pink bridesmaid’s dress. Not a chance. No one had arms that bent like that.

      She looked up at Flynn. He was still staring at her.

      Men. Hopeless in a crisis.

      Although, actually, before today she’d have wagered that Flynn would be pretty good in an emergency. By all accounts, he’d handled the discovery that his fiancée had slept with his brother less than twenty-four hours before their wedding with remarkable aplomb. He’d managed the news that he was about to inherit sole responsibility for a multinational media conglomerate without breaking a sweat. He’d even let the aforementioned fiancée, Helena’s sister, run out and elope with her true love moments before the wedding without looking particularly perturbed.

      But apparently Helena in her underwear was pushing him too far.

      With a sigh, she turned to present him with her back and the offending zip. ‘Just undo me, yeah?’

      Flynn hesitated a moment before she felt his warm fingertips against her back. ‘Why am I doing this?’

      ‘Because I need to get changed. Into that.’ She pointed at the wedding dress and felt Flynn’s hands