At the Billionaire’s Wedding by Katharine Ashe Miranda Neville Caroline Linden Maya Rodale

rate.”
    That sounded great: a week in the Chinese bedroom in the family quarters, long walks in the park, no phone calls, meals in the kitchen with Nanny and Harry, evenings in the Gold Saloon…
    However much she dreaded the mounds of work that awaited her in New York, she shouldn’t abandon Valerie for much longer. “I need to get back to the city.”
    “You must find it very quiet and dull here.”
    “Are you kidding? I suppose it’ll be quiet once everyone’s left, but weddings themselves are always insanity.” He smoothed out a stubborn knot in her shoulder. “Oh, that’s good.”
    She stopped worrying about work and start imagining everyone gone except herself and Harry. Perhaps they could get together tonight, when the bachelor and bachelorette parties were out for their respective dinners.
    Then she remembered her mother. She needed to talk sense into Molly. And into herself, too.
    Harry was too good for a short vacation affair and there was no chance of anything else. Geography and background ensured that. Arwen wasn’t in kindergarten now and her parents no longer embarrassed her—at least not with their marital status—but Harry belonged to a different world. He had parents who had been chased by paparazzi. Did that happen to all lords or were they celebrities? It was just one more reason why it was sensible for her to keep her distance before she started getting ideas about a long-term relationship. Harry might claim that being a lord meant nothing to him, but he would find himself an English woman who understood English ways. He was handy at fixing things and great at sex, but there was a whole lot more to life than those two admirable skills. Unfortunately.
    “More?” His deep accents buzzed in her ear. She leaned back, sending the message yes . His fingers had unknotted all the tension in her neck and sent hot streaks through her veins. If only she could spend the whole day like this.
    Then she thought about the exciting jobs that could come her way once the success of this wedding made the gossip rounds. It was her passport to the kind of party planning she’d always dreamed of. She mustn’t forget what Luxe Events had at stake.
    “No,” she said. “I need to check on tomorrow’s menus before the tent people show up.”
    “Stay a while.”
    “And you need to prevent mayhem on the hunting field.”
    “You’re right. I need to get back to the shooting party,” he said. “I suppose I should go. Do you think we could have a quiet dinner tonight, just the two of us?”
    “I can’t.” Reluctantly Arwen stood up. “I’m joining the bachelorette party at the pub. I promised Jane.”
    A lie, but a necessary one. No way was she introducing her loony tunes mother to the future Lord Melbury.

    Walking a mile across country to the moor where the gamekeeper and his men had conveyed the shooting party, Harry reflected on the oddity of the tech billionaire’s chosen stag party. He’d have expected something more conventional, like strippers jumping out of computer-shaped cakes. If that had been Duke’s preference, he had no doubt Arwen would have laid it on without a blink.
    She’d been wearing another of her chic little dresses and all he could think about was getting her out of it. Well, not quite all. He found her stimulating in a number of ways, but the undressing option was always at the back of his dirty male mind. He was the one who needed ten minutes of meditation. Having her pressed against him reduced his mind to porridge.
    He was making progress. She’d pretty much forgiven him for being a lord-in-waiting and for his house’s killer lack of Wi-Fi. By the end of the week he trusted that clothes would be removed. All very satisfactory.
    Trouble was, he wanted more than that: to make her laugh and relax and stop worrying so much; to explore the vulnerability that peeped out from behind the tough (not hard-boiled!) exterior; to make her coffee in the kitchen every morning; to learn