He’s getting married!

  To let anything come of this searing desire to sleep with a guy on the cusp of choosing a royal wife wouldn’t do.

  But...there was no actual woman in Malik’s life, not even a name or a face, just a possibility. Yes, he would marry, and he would be out of Lucy’s reach forever, but right now...

  In an instant, her mind flew ahead and a series of events unraveled at supersonic speed.

  A wedded Malik would mean the end of her job, whatever he said. He would surely have to spend a lot more time in Sarastan, and how would she fit into that scenario on a long-term basis? He might even emigrate completely: Would his aristocratic new wife really want to up sticks and move to London?

  Lucy was facing the end of her career as she knew it, whether that end happened in a week, in a month or in agonizingly slow motion over a period of time.

  And then...she would never see this man again.

  But she was seeing him now, wasn’t she?

  Secrets of Billionaires’ Secretaries

  Unbuttoned by the off-limits boss...

  Behind every man there’s a great woman. And behind Gabriel and Malik are their skillful secretaries, Helen and Lucy. They keep not only Gabriel’s and Malik’s nonstop schedules in check, but the billionaires themselves!

  But while Helen’s and Lucy’s abilities to put the playboys in their place are unquestioned, their newfound attraction to their bosses has them questioning everything...

  When Helen is mistaken as Gabriel’s fiancée, they are forced to maintain the wedding charade in order to clinch a vital business deal!

  A Wedding Negotiation with Her Boss

  And might an unexpected return to Malik’s kingdom put Lucy in line for promotion—at the royal altar?

  Royally Promoted

  Both available now!

  Royally Promoted

  Cathy Williams

  Cathy Williams can remember reading Harlequin books as a teenager, and now that she is writing them, she remains an avid fan. For her, there is nothing like creating romantic stories and engaging plots, and each and every book is a new adventure. Cathy lives in London, and her three daughters—Charlotte, Olivia and Emma—have always been, and continue to be, the greatest inspirations in her life.

  Books by Cathy Williams

  Harlequin Presents

  Desert King’s Surprise Love-Child

  Consequences of Their Wedding Charade

  Hired by the Forbidden Italian

  Bound by a Nine-Month Confession

  A Week with the Forbidden Greek

  The Housekeeper’s Invitation to Italy

  The Italian’s Innocent Cinderella

  Unveiled as the Italian’s Bride

  Bound by Her Baby Revelation

  Secrets of Billionaires’ Secretaries

  A Wedding Negotiation with Her Boss

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM NINE-MONTH NOTICE BY JENNIE LUCAS

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘YOU’RE WET. WHY? Why are you soaking wet? You’re also late.’

  The door to Malik’s office had been pushed open with its usual vigour and there she was, dripping on his pale-grey carpet, her blonde hair clinging to her in strands as she did her best to wring it out into semi-dried submission. He sat back in the leather chair, steepled his fingers and looked at his secretary with his head tilted to one side.

  Lucy Walker, who had been working for him for a little over three years, was a force of nature. She was petite and curvy, with curly, bright blonde hair that had a will of its own, and a dimpled smile that had a disconcerting tendency to throw Malik off-track when he was taking her to task.

  Right now was an excellent example.

  Malik had long stopped asking himself how it was that she had stayed the course for as long as she had when, in every way, shape and form, she was precisely the sort of PA who normally wouldn’t come close to being shortlisted for the high-powered role she occupied.

  But she had shown up for the interview, impressed him with her in-depth knowledge of negotiating the stock market, informed him that there was nothing she couldn’t turn her hand to, smiled that dimpled smile and challenged him to set any task so that she could prove her worth.

  Malik had duly given her ten minutes to work out projections for investing several million over several companies. She’d proven her worth in half the time. She was outspoken to a fault and was impressively immune to what, Malik knew, was a forbidding side to him that made most people think twice about saying anything of which he might disapprove. In every single walk of life, he was respected and feared in equal measure. But not by her.

  She rid herself of her waterproof, which she dumped on the chair she occupied when in his office. The coat, too, was dripping onto his expensive carpet.

  ‘Can you believe this weather, Malik? It’s a disgrace. Why don’t those overpaid people ever get the forecast right? No mention of a storm this morning when I switched on the telly—sunshine and showers!’

  ‘Perhaps you should have paid more attention to the showers part of the weather report. It’s after nine-thirty.’

  ‘I would have texted, but my phone was low on juice. Still, I’m here now and ready to go! Lots of thoughts about that IT company you’re looking to get hold of, by the way.’

  ‘You need to go and get into some dry clothes.’

  Lucy grimaced. ‘That would involve a trip to the shops. I took the spare stuff I keep here back with me a couple of weeks ago and I completely forgot to replace them. I was bored of blues and greys. I thought that, with Christmas just round the corner, more festive colours might be in order.’

  ‘We’re in September.’ Malik sighed heavily and sat back in the chair to look at her in brooding silence, before buzzing through to one of his other employees, who scuttled in at speed to stare with badly disguised laughter at his dripping secretary.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You need to go and get some dry clothes for Lucy,’ he said, looking at Julia, who was secretary to one of the guys who worked for him. ‘I don’t care where. Put it on Robert’s company card and be quick.’

  ‘Malik...’

  Malik looked at Lucy with an impatient frown. ‘I need you here right now. I can’t spare you for an hour hunting down a replacement outfit.’

  ‘Duly noted.’

  ‘Get one of the towels from the cloakroom and wrap it around you. I can’t afford to have you off work with flu.’

  ‘Trust me, flu is the last thing I want to have.’

  Julia had hurried out, breathlessly promising to be back in under half an hour, which made Malik wonder how it was that his own secretary could be as stubborn as a mule when a snap of his fingers had every other person on the face of the earth jumping to attention.

  ‘Off you go, Lucy. I have things to discuss with you of some importance, and time’s moving along.’

  Lucy ignored him to sit on the chair, causally pushing the wet waterproof off it and onto the ground.

  ‘First, you deserve an explanation or else you’re going to be in a grumpy mood with me all day.’ She dimpled. ‘I thought I’d walk in this morning. It was so lovely and sunny, not a hint of those showers Carol on the telly mentioned at seven when I left home—and, actually, I need the exercise, if I’m honest with myself. I don’t get nearly enough fresh air these days and—’

  ‘Cut to the chase, Lucy.’

  ‘So I headed off. Normally, it would have taken forty-five minutes, but then it clouded over, and forget about showers; this was a deluge. To top it all, the Tube drivers are on strike, which meant no Tube, and the buses were all packed out. Wasted nearly half an hour waiting at the bus stop. In the end, I had no option but to try and be as quick as I could on foot, but with the aforementioned deluge... You want to see the streets out there, Malik. They’ve turned into canals. We could be in Venice.’

  ‘Did it occur to you at all to buy an umbrella?’ He sincerely did not want to be amused.

  ‘Not really, no. I kept thinking it would blow over. Anyway, it was all a bit chaotic.’

  ‘I don’t pay you handsomely to be chaotic.’

  ‘Point taken.’ She stood up, grimaced as she looked down at her wet outfit and told him that she’d be a minute, that the towel was a good idea and might warm her up.

  ‘Can I get you a coffee on my way back?’ she asked brightly.

  ‘Just get yourself dried off, and you might just as well wait for Julia to get back with whatever she’s got for you.’ He dismissed her with a wave of his hand but continued to look at her as she hustled out of his office, closing the door behind her with a smart click.

  This was not how he had anticipated starting the morning. Indeed, the entire day had kicked off to an unpredictable and nightmarish start, with his mother calling him at a little after four in the morning to inform him that his father had been rushed to hospital with a heart attack.


/>   As usual, she had delivered the news coolly, calmly and without emotion. The only hint as to what was going on beneath the surface was the slight tremor in her voice when, after a moment’s hesitation, she had told him that the doctors had been unable to confirm whether he would pull through. It was going to be a long night ahead.

  ‘I’ll come immediately,’ Malik had said, already thinking ahead to the repercussions of his father’s situation now staring him in the face.

  They were not inconsiderable. Malik, at thirty-two, returned to his country of birth on a reasonably infrequent basis. Here in London, he ran the family house, where the vast wealth of his family was invested with military precision by a team of highly trained hedge-fund managers and investment bankers. He oversaw the lot of them, whilst handling his own pet projects: investments into green energy and property that would had made him a billionaire in his own right, regardless of his vast family fortune.

  He liked it this way. Returning to Sarastan, where his parents lived in palatial splendour as dictated by their royal status, always came with the down side of their tacit disapproval about his marital status—or lack thereof. In their eyes, time was running out for him to continue the family name.

  It was just the way it was.

  Here in London, though, he could shove that inconvenient truth to the back of his mind. But now...?

  He scowled as he waited for Lucy to return.

  His father had been rushed to hospital and Malik knew exactly what that meant. His time for relaxing was over. Yes, he would still be able to live in London, with perhaps more frequent trips back to supervise the running of the various arms of the family businesses, and make sure the oil was still pumping and still being exported as it should be—not to mention all the other concerns that sheltered under the Al-Rashid umbrella. But the time to take a wife had come.

  He wondered whether his mother would address the elephant in the room head-on, given the circumstances. She was a cold and regal woman, not inclined to indulge in conversations of a personal nature, always preferring him to get whatever message she wanted to convey via a combination of telling silence and disapproving asides.

  His father was hardly any more communicative. Duty and obligation lay at the forefront of their rigidly controlled lives. With his father in hospital and facing an uncertain outcome, the weight of duty and obligation that they shouldered was bearing down fast on Malik, and he knew that he was stsanding at a crossroads, like it or not.

  Lost in a sequence of unpleasant thoughts, he looked up to see his secretary framed in the doorway of his office, as dry as could be expected and in a different outfit: a thick grey skirt, a white blouse and a grey V-necked jumper.

  Julia, he surmised, had been intentionally mischievous in the purchase and had managed to get hold of precisely the sort of clothes her friend would have made a point of shunning.

  ‘Sit.’

  ‘You’re not still annoyed over my late arrival, are you?’

  Malik watched as she tugged at the skirt and shoved up the arms of the jumper.

  ‘Consider it forgotten, just so long as there isn’t a repeat performance. You might want to check if the Tube is running next time you decide to walk to work and, while you’re at it, you could also look at the weather forecast.’

  ‘I’ll definitely do the former but I won’t bother with the latter. As I told you, no one mentioned a storm, and I could have happily coped with a light shower. You have a point, though. I might invest in an umbrella.’

  She sat down, settled her laptop on the desk so that they were facing one another, flipped it open and proceeded to scrutinise him over the lid.

  She had truly amazing eyes, cornflower-blue and fringed by the thickest, darkest lashes that contrasted spectacularly with the vanilla-blonde of her hair. She was intensely pretty, an impression that was compounded by the generosity of her curves and the way she dimpled whenever she smiled.

  ‘You’ll be impressed to hear,’ she was saying now, ‘That not only have I sorted out all those back reports you gave me on Friday, but I’ve also managed to get through to the bio-fuel company you’re looking at reaching out to and persuaded them to forward me their latest balance of accounts. That’s in addition to the tech company you’re thinking of acquiring.’

  ‘You spent the weekend working?’

  ‘A couple of hours, that’s all. No need to thank me.’

  Malik hesitated.

  * * *

  That was the first inkling Lucy had that the day was not going to go to plan.

  Staring at him, at the sharp lines of his incredibly beautiful face, she felt momentarily disconcerted because hesitation really didn’t feature in his database.

  She had been working for him for three years and she could say, in all honesty, that she had never met anyone as focused, as single-minded, as crazily sharp or as utterly self-assured as the guy sitting opposite her. He could be ruthless, forbidding and cold but, for Lucy, those traits were eclipsed by other, more compelling ones.

  She knew that he scared a lot of people but, oddly, he didn’t intimidate her and he never had—even when she had walked into his office all those years ago, having made it through the gruelling preliminary interviews, to face the final hurdle for the job she had hoped to secure.

  He had thrown her a challenge, something to do with the stock market, and she had met the challenge in half the allotted time, tempted to ask him if he had anything harder up his sleeve. Just as she was leaving, he’d asked her why she thought she deserved the job when there were more qualified candidates desperate for it. She hadn’t batted an eyelid. She’d smiled and told him that that was a question that wouldn’t even cross his mind in a year’s time because she would have long since proved herself.

  Lucy knew that, whether he would ever agree with her or not, her ability to answer him back and speak her mind went a long way to earning his respect...whether she had a university degree or not.

  Speaking her mind was something that came naturally to her. Sandwiched between four sisters, speaking her mind was the only tool she’d had ever been able to use to get heard.

  As the only non-graduate in her entire family, and that included her parents, she’d had to find her voice from very early on to make sure she wasn’t squashed by her much more academic sisters with their strident opinions, all of whom wanted to be one step ahead of the others.

  A sprawling family of girls had come with other disadvantages, along with the amazing up sides, but being invisible had never been one of those disadvantages.

  ‘You’re looking at me as though you want to tell me something but can’t figure out how,’ she said now, direct as always, even though just voicing those thoughts made her feel a little uneasy. ‘You’re not about to sack me, are you?’

  ‘I’m not about to sack you.’

  ‘Thank goodness. I couldn’t face jumping back into the job market. It’s a shark pit out there.’

  ‘I had a call very early this morning, Lucy. My mother telephoned to tell me that my father has been rushed to hospital—his heart. He’s had a triple bypass, and they’re waiting overnight to see whether the operation has been successful.’

  ‘Oh. My. Goodness...’ She half-stood, hesitated, then sat back down. She knew that she was emotional, but her boss was not, and a hug was the last thing he would welcome.

  Thinking about it, hugging him was also something that made a curious tingle feather up and down her spine.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Malik,’ she said with genuine sympathy. ‘You must be devastated. How is your mother taking it?’

  ‘As well as can be expected.’

  ‘You’ll want to think about going over, I suppose. Do you want me to arrange a flight for you?’ Her voice was uncharacteristically subdued.

  ‘Yes. I’ll have to return, and possibly for a matter of several weeks. I’ll have to see how the land lies, and naturally I’ll be returning to London, but in the interim arrangements will have to be put in place while my father recuperates—and that is if there’s no worst-case scenario.’

  ‘Worst-case scenario?’

  ‘If he doesn’t pull through,’ Malik said bluntly and was unsurprised when she paled.