The Billionaire Boss's Innocent Bride Read Free Page B

flowers.’ He picked up a bunch and laid them back again. ‘So I’ll get going, if you don’t mind.’
    ‘Sure. Cheers!’ Max Goodwin saluted his domestic co-ordinator and sat down opposite Alex. ‘Well, how did you get on this afternoon?’
    ‘Fine,’ Alex said. ‘I think. But look, Mr Goodwin, if you’re running late again maybe we could find some other time for this?’
    ‘No, it doesn’t matter if I’m a bit late, there is no other time, and I’m determined to enjoy this drink.’
    Alex shrugged. ‘I just wouldn’t like to make you late for your date.’
    He looked amused. ‘My date, as you put it with a certain amount of disapproval, Miss Hill, is with my grandmother. She’s in a nursing home at the moment so the wine and the flowers are to cheer her up.’
    ‘Oh.’ Alex took her glasses off and polished them. Had she sounded disapproving and if so why? Had the subconscious impression been growing in her that Max Goodwin was something of a playboy? Helped along no doubt by the wine and the flowers, those good looks and that impressive physique and the fact that he wasn’t married. Along with, of course, that unexplained little trill of wariness she’d experienced at the interview this morning.
    But assuming she’d misread that, wasn’t all the rest of it akin to judging a book by its cover?
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said and smiled suddenly at him, ‘if I sounded disapproving. I, well, it seems one of my impressions of you is that you could be a bit of a playboy but I don’t really have any concrete evidence so I shall discard it.’
    For a long moment he was speechless.
    Alex glanced at her watch. ‘Should we begin the briefing?’ she suggested, her eyes a serious hazel behind her repositioned glasses, but with her lips still quirking. Max Goodwin recovered himself. ‘Thank you,’ he said gravely, ‘for being prepared to revise your opinions. Naturally, I don’t see myself as a playboy, although our definitions could vary—’ he grimaced ‘—but perhaps it’s not a good idea to go into that. And—’ a lightning look of wicked amusement flew Alex’s way ‘—to be honest, disapproval of any kind doesn’t often come my way so I’ll look upon it as a salutary experience. OK, on to the briefing.’
    When he stopped talking Alex had a fair idea of the gist of the negotiations he was undertaking as well as a familiarity with the territories they covered. It would be a huge coup for Goodwin Minerals if they scored this breakthrough into the Chinese market, she realized.
    Then he glanced at his watch and drained his beer.
    ‘I should get going. Thank you for your time, though.’ He stood up and retrieved the cooler bag from the bar and a colourful bunch of gerberas, white daisies and asparagus fern wrapped in cellophane.
    It was when they got to the foyer and she collected her bags and jacket that he said humorously, ‘I hope you haven’t parked too far away, Alex?’ He ushered her into the lift.
    ‘I don’t have a car.’
    He frowned and hesitated before pushing a button. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I don’t drive.’
    He looked at her for a moment as if she might have escaped a lunar landscape, and Alex had a secret desire to laugh.
    ‘So how do you get about?’
    ‘Buses,’ she said gravely. ‘I also have a bicycle. And, very occasionally, taxis.’
    ‘Where do you live?’
    She told him.
    ‘That’s on my way.’ He pushed the basement button and the doors closed. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’
    ‘You really don’t need to do that, Mr Goodwin,’ she protested. ‘I’m quite used—’
    ‘Alex,’ he said with his eyes glinting, ‘a piece of advice, don’t argue with me. Especially not when I’m being at my best because it may not last that long.’
    The lift came to rest at the basement floor and the doors slid open.
    ‘Well—’ She temporized.
    ‘Besides which,’ he added, eyeing her carrier bags, ‘you’ve got an awful lot of loot on you by the look of