Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 87513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Troy Harrington has Olympic medals, a billion-dollar sports empire, and a reputation for being the most irresistible bad boy in San Francisco. What he doesn't have? A romantic bone in his body. So when his meddling younger sister Gabby challenges him to a bet over who will fall in love first, Troy turns to the only woman he knows who can manipulate love like a science — billionaire matchmaker Michaela Killian.
Michaela built her matchmaking empire from both hard work and her understanding that dating — and marrying — a billionaire is a dream of possibly every woman on the planet. Every woman but her, that is. Michaela has deep seated reasons for her vow to never, ever date a billionaire. When Troy Harrington walks into her office asking her to find his sister a soulmate, she smells trouble. And when she learns it’s all part of a bet? Absolutely not. Well...unless Gabby agrees.
Of course, Gabby and Michaela can't resist having fun by flipping the rules: Michaela will agree to match Gabby with a billionaire client only if Michaela can also find a match for Troy. And in order for her to succeed, he has to agree to go on every single date Michaela sets up. No bailouts. No backing down.
Game on.
The only problem? Troy is a truly impossible Infuriatingly cocky, dismissive of love, and wholly uninterested in the idea of soulmates. Except, it seems, when he’s looking at her with his smolderingly sexy gaze.
Worse? Michaela is very, very tempted to look right back.
As their sizzling chemistry threatens to combust, Michaela faces the one risk she swore she'd never falling for a billionaire client. But Troy isn’t just any client. He’s the one man who could either make her believe in true love for herself again...or break her completely.
This slow-burn billionaire romance will leave your heart racing with forbidden attraction and one heck of a high-stakes bet!
TEMPTED IN LOVE is part of Bella Andre and Jennifer Skully’s bestselling series about The Maverick Billionaires. While it can easily be read as a standalone story, you'll likely enjoy reading the other books too
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Chapter One
Michaela Killian was the most beautiful woman Troy Harrington had ever seen. She was a tall woman, and her high heels—he’d glanced down long enough when he first entered to take the measure of those sexy spiked heels—turned her into a statuesque model, though she didn’t have the bone-thin structure. Not with those luscious breasts and delectable curves. Her midnight-black hair was twisted into an elegant knot on the top of her head, and his whole being ached to pull out the pins and see it fall over her shoulders in a silky wave. The darkness of her hair added depth and intensity to her lush green eyes, giving her a striking look that would turn any man’s head.
She had definitely turned his, almost making him forget his mission: to hire a matchmaker. Not that she was like any matchmaker he could have imagined. She looked not just like a million bucks, but a billion bucks. Which was probably how she got the title of the billionaire matchmaker rather than the fact that she was a matchmaker for billionaires.
His image of a matchmaker was someone much older, with cat’s-eye glasses hanging on a chain around her neck and a bouffant hairdo that would have been all the rage when she was young. But Michaela Killian looked to be only a couple of years younger than his thirty-five.
Troy certainly hadn’t expected her to steal the breath right out of his chest.
When he finally found his voice, it came out as a ridiculous croak. And his question had nothing to do with his matchmaking mission. “Do you get coffee at Santa Cruz Nine?”
His regular haunt sat on the corner of Santa Cruz Avenue and Highway 9 in Los Gatos, a quaint town next to San Jose. He’d purchased his home in the Los Gatos hills six months ago. The proximity to his San Jose office made sense, along with the fact that the community was nestled against the Santa Cruz Mountains, which were great for hiking and biking.
He knew her answer even before she tipped her head slightly and said, “Yes, I do frequent Santa Cruz Nine.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen you there.” He sounded so suave—not.
His head felt foggy with her delicious scent, and his tongue seemed stuck to the roof of his mouth. And he was not a man who couldn’t find his words. Except with her. There was something about seeing her in this setting, smelling her instead of the scent of brewing coffee, hearing her velvet voice instead of the sound of grinding coffee beans.
She smiled politely. “Oh.”
So he hadn’t made any impression on her. None. But then, he usually came to the coffee shop straight after his run, with sweat plastering his dark hair to his head. And who the hell knew how he smelled?
Then again, every time he’d seen her, she’d been on her phone, talking, checking email, maybe even going over her task list for the day.
He heard that for the excuse it was; he was just trying to shore himself up after learning she hadn’t noticed him.
Hooking a thumb over his shoulder, he said, “Yeah, I go there a lot. I live up in the hills.” Wow, great conversationalist here.
She didn’t miss a beat. “I have a townhouse nearby. The coffee shop is convenient on the way to my office. And the hills are out of my price range.”
He wasn’t sure if that was a smackdown. But even if she couldn’t afford the hills, buying a townhouse in Los Gatos, a rather expensive bedroom community, was no mean feat.
Her business must be doing well, her office elegantly furnished with teak furniture, comfortable chairs and sofa, colorful prints of faraway destinations, a minimalist desk beside which she stood, and a state-of-the-art computer ready for her touch. Her third-floor window offered an enchanting view of a creek below, its babbling waters glittering in the early June light, exuding serenity and perhaps promising she would make all her clients’ dreams come true.
She was not only doing well for herself, she was smart. Amid the colorful travel posters hung her Stanford diploma, the words with distinction clear to him, which meant she’d graduated at the top of her class.
Beautiful, accomplished, and highly intelligent. What more could a guy ask for in a matchmaker?
“And how may I help you this morning, Mr. Harrington?” she asked in that sweet but sexy voice that made him forget how to speak. Until she tapped a pencil on the desktop with a hint of impatience.
Oh yeah. Now he remembered why he was here. His mission.
Finding out his mystery woman from the coffee shop was his matchmaker had thrown him, but he pulled himself back on track. “My friend Dirk Pendergast gave me your name.” Troy had done his Olympic training with Dirk, who was now blissfully wed, thanks to her.