Mistletoe Man: Big City Billionaires, #4

By Michele de Winton

With cosmetic brands to build and millions to grow, a man AIN'T on Kati Kanakaris' Christmas list, yet when she decides to fake-date herself out of a family mess, it seems a Mistletoe Man is just what she needs.

 

With a jaw so sharp you could put it in a national park and call it a mountain range, Mark Dalton is chiseled, smart and very organized. Oh, and he's absolutely loaded. After his wife died, Mark struggled to let go of his need for precise planning, despite his promise to her to live life like his pants were on fire. When he meets Kati, her glorious chaos tips his world sideways and he must decide whether to grasp the chance of a brightly wrapped Christmas, or watch the holiday season pass him by.

 

Full of make-up, making up and big-city passion, Mistletoe Man is a fun, fast ride like the others in the Big City Billionaire series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shelfword Publications
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201377168

Michele de Winton

Michele loves sunshine, chardonnay, (preferably together), chocolate, beaches, trees, great vegetarian food, steamy writing and happy endings. She’s been known to be an all-round arty type, dancing and producing theatre around the globe so it's no wonder that her first romance had a little sparkle of the stage tucked into its pages.  Being a writer was not was she was supposed to be when she ‘grew up' but then neither was being a dancer. Her poor parents. They thought that when she toddled off to law school they'd bred a responsible, useful adult and instead they got a performer and word junkie. Sometimes her performing past jumps into the dress up box and requires attention. But most of the time she’s content to stay in her PJs. All day. She writes surrounded by the whisper of trees from her home in New Zealand and with only intermittent interruptions from her two young sons and husband. (Okay more like regular interruptions, but dreaming is free.) You can check out her other work or get in touch at www.micheledewinton.com Thanks so much for reading! Luck Stuck the next book from the Big City Billionaires Series is coming September 2017. To find out about this, and other work ranging from Motorcycle Gangs to Dream Destination Romantic Comedy, follow Michele on Facebook or twitter or sign up to her newsletter for updates, giveaways and bonus reads.

Book preview

About Mistletoe Man

With cosmetic brands to build and millions to grow, a man AIN’T on Kati Kanakaris’ Christmas list, yet when she decides to fake-date herself out of a family mess, it seems a Mistletoe Man is just what she needs.

With a jaw so sharp you could put it in a national park and call it a mountain range, Mark Dalton is chiseled, smart and very organized. Oh, and he’s absolutely loaded. After his wife died, Mark struggled to let go of his need for precise planning, despite his promise to her to live life like his pants were on fire. When he meets Kati, her glorious chaos tips his world sideways and he must decide whether to grasp the chance of a brightly wrapped Christmas, or watch the holiday season pass him by.

Full of make-up, making up and big-city passion, Mistletoe Man is a fun, fast ride like the others in the Big City Billionaire series.

Chapter one

If I wanted the chairs the color of a baboon’s butthole, I would have asked for them!

Mark Dalton almost spat out his coffee at the colorful diatribe coming from behind the white screen in front of him. The accent was different? Australian? Kiwi maybe?

Then there was a mumbled reply from the poor schmuck who’d obviously read the wrong memo for the cosmetics shoot. This was the order on the...

Please tell me you know the different between this... there was a pause, cacophony of visual vomit, and the colorway I’ve been developing for the last six months? I know you’re not an idiot so please, stop it with this arsery.

PFFFFWASHOUCH. The coffee was hot, and coming out his nose, it was even hotter. Mark yelped. But, arsery? The woman deserves a gold for imaginative expletives. He looked frantically around the small unit area of the expansive white studio and found a stack of napkins. The glare of the lights in the studio proper crept over the screened off greenroom area, a promise of the glamour these sorts of cosmetic shoots chased.

Oh, for the love of... The woman’s voice stopped abruptly.

Mark put his coffee on the table in front of him. He liked his nose. Snorting coffee out of it surely wasn’t good for it. But there was no follow up rebuke from behind the screen. In fact, the silence in the studio beyond its white wall was unnerving.

A shudder ran up Mark’s back, like a small animal looking for a hiding place in his thick, dark hair. He put a hand to the back of his neck. There was nothing there, of course, except the new growth of hair that he still hadn’t got used to after years of a short back and sides. Turning, the reason for the sensation of small-animal-up-spine became clear. A woman stood in front of him, her eyes drilling into him as if she were looking for oil.

Baboon noises? Really?

Mark looked behind him, and, yes, the vision of fuchsia was definitely talking to him. Dressed entirely in almost blinding pink, the woman pulled off a look that should have been more at home in a cartoon. Yet she managed to toe the line between costume and caricature. Perhaps because she seemed so totally at home in her body, the pink sat as easily on her as denim and a tank top. She towered over the few others of the crew in the unit area, close to five nine if she was anything he figured. Yet she didn’t stoop. She was confident, shoulders back, eyes alive. Her dark hair framed a round, open face; her olive skin held a glow that was sunny in spite of the cold outside. And despite the frown that held her eyebrows hostage, she was, majestic, like a well petted cat.

Majestic? What are you, a natural wild-life photographer now? Mark smiled. Then realized that was a bad idea.

Were you intentionally taking the piss or was it an accident?

Mark dropped his smile. He was here to work. And to be fair his yelp had been two parts pain and one-part strangled animal. The coffee... he started, pointing at his nose, but the woman didn’t let him finish. Baboons shouldn’t drink coffee, she said, I have it on good authority it gives them a pain in the arse.

His second smile probably was imprudent, but Mark couldn’t help it. The woman’s retort was as sharp as her vicious looking nails, but there was a glint in her eye that made her less acerbic than she seemed to be going for. The accent, Kiwi, he was sure now, made her softer too. There was definitely a warmth in there covered by something; grief, fear, frustration?

The words were out before he remembered he was the noob here. I’ll remember to pass that on should I ever meet a baboon in the wild.

Madam Fuchsia held her steely gaze on him a moment longer, then raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow in a sharp question mark, but not before he saw the flicker of a smile flash across her lips.

Lips.

Look away Dalton, look away. But Mark couldn’t bring himself to. The woman’s mouth was painted pink, obviously, but it was so luscious, glistening with whatever product she’d layered on, that he couldn’t help think about...stop it, now. Dragging his eyes away from her mouth, Mark made the terrible mistake of looking at her eyes instead. BAM. Green. Pale green, ethereal against her deep olive skin, her thick, dark hair, and, utterly, perfect. They were pools of warm water somewhere tropical; they were...

Got anything else to say?

Mark pulled his head back up from the gutter and flattened his smile into something he knew from years of boardroom meetings was appeasing. Would you like a coffee? It’s pretty good.

The woman rolled her eyes and spun on her pink Chucks. She was a walking mash up of Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga he decided. Sure, the shoes and lips and dress were all in tones of full blush, a devotion to pink he wouldn’t usually get behind, but they seemed perfectly acceptable on her. Moreover, that confident glare caught and kept his attention and...and something more. The way she hadn’t shied away from staring him down? The way she left a scent of something floral but not cloying that beat out the coffee for his nose’s attention? The way her softly swelling hips moved as she walked? The way...oh shit. She’d turned as if she felt his gaze on her butt and Mark found himself without any plausible way of hiding that he’d been ogling her. He raised his hands in apology and turned the heck away. What is wrong with you?

It was a question his sixteen-year-old daughter Matilda, or Mads as she had insisted on being called as soon as she could talk, had asked him that very morning. Truth was, he wasn’t sure of the answer.

Mark looked down at his gear and took a final gulp of coffee before putting a new card in his camera and slinging the bag with another camera and lenses over his shoulder. He picked up the stack of meticulous notes he’d made about what he was going to shoot, and the floorplan of the studio he’d managed to get beforehand. Whoever the heck Madam Fuchsia was or why she affected him like she did was wasn’t his concern. He was here to show that he could make a go of this new career move, end of story. If he