Christmas With The Billionaire Read Online Free PDF

“Now, come on Kate, let me help you. We’ve got a lot of people here to feed.”

    He had brought a crystal glass of his favorite single malt onto the balcony, and was sipping it contentedly, breathing deep on success, when a clown’s face swam in front of him. Was he drunk already?  
    Drunk on success was a metaphor, surely?  
    And then, utterly incomprehensible to him, in London on a winter’s night, a steel band started up.  
    “Canapé, sir?”
    He was going mad. The twelve-foot clown, against every safety regulation in the book, was balanced precariously on a pair of stratospheric stilts planted on the balcony below. There were streamers flying from his top hat and a ridiculously exaggerated happy smile on his face as he offered a plate piled high with party snacks.  
    “No, thank you.” Downing his drink in one, he headed back inside.
    As the noise levels rose downstairs it occurred to him that this was like a really disturbing replay of A Christmas Carol , with him in the unsavory role of Scrooge. He had to ask himself how he had ever imagined he could avoid Christmas with Ms. Black downstairs. She had sent Christmas to find him.  

Chapter Five

    The noise was deafening outside Lady Vallender’s apartment. Inside it was packed and rowdy. He wasn’t even going to waste his time thinking about the man in a circus strongman’s outfit who let him in. He was royally pissed to see everyone having such a great time. Ms. Black standing in the center of the room, directing proceedings like a ringmaster, whilst dressed like a stripper in a too-tight green suit, didn’t help his mood. Drink and food abounded. Exuberance threatened to erupt onto the street. He put the energy down to an excess of alcohol, which he blamed on Ms. Black and her punch. Those fucking oranges!
    Hadn’t he made it clear that parties were expressly forbidden? A steel band. Seriously? People lining up to do the limbo beneath a sweeping-brush pole—
    “Come on—join in—don’t be a party pooper,” a city gent in a suit with his tie around his ears implored him.  
    “I clearly told the occupant of this apartment no rowdy parties—” No one was listening.  
    He didn’t have time for this. “Excuse me, please. I’ve got urgent business to attend to,” he told a black-cloaked vampire standing in his way. Muscling past a large lady dressed as Britannia, complete with spear and shield, he homed in on his target.  
    “Jason!” Ms. Black smiled. “How good to see you. I didn’t think you’d turn up.”  
    “Clearly.” His voice was ice. “You didn’t need to send the clown on stilts to alert me. The noise was rocking the paintings off my walls.”
    “I didn’t send him.” Eyes wide, she pretended surprise as she recovered fast and took him on. “I think he used his initiative. Fabulous, isn’t he?”
    “Fabulous.” He gave her a look that let Ms. Black know exactly what he thought of the clown, as well as the chaos erupting around them.  
    “Please don’t,” she said as he swung around to call for quiet. “Can’t you see how everyone’s enjoying themselves?”
    She was standing on tiptoe, looking at him with such a pleading expression on her face that for once in his hard-bitten life, he hesitated. Against his better judgment, he gave way. She did look so cute with that insincere expression of helplessness on her face.  
    Cute? Ms. Black was off the scale in the most erotic Christmas elf outfit he’d ever seen. In lurid green, he might have wondered where she’d gotten it at such short notice if the room hadn’t been full of people in equally bizarre outfits. The full skirt barely covered her well-formed rump, and gave him an excellent view of her shapely legs, which ended bizarrely in pixie boots with bells jingling on the turned-up toes. Ms. Black obviously had no ego to protect, and was prepared to sacrifice everything in the service of entertaining her guests. And he was entertained. Her top half was