The good clothes, expensive cars, beautiful women had come swiftly, but this had been something else.

He hadn’t been foolish enough to believe that Candy had fallen in love with him-love caused nothing but heartache and pain, as he knew to his cost-but it had seemed like the perfect match. She’d had everything except money; he had more than enough of that to indulge her wildest dreams.

It had been while he was away securing the biggest of those-guilt, perhaps for the fact that he’d been unable to get her wedding planner out of his head-that she’d taken to her heels with the chinless wonder who was reduced to working as an events assistant to keep a roof over his head. How ironic was that?

But then he was an aristocratic chinless wonder.

The coronet always cancelled out the billions.

When it came down to it, class won. Sylvie Smith had, after all, been chosen to coordinate the wedding for no better reason than that she’d been to school with Candy.

That exclusive old boy network worked just as well for women, it seemed.

Sylvie Smith. He’d spent six months trying not to think about her. An hour trying to make himself send her away without seeing her.

As he appeared to concentrate on the papers in front of him, she slipped the buttons on her jacket to reveal something skimpy in dark brown silk barely skimming breasts that needed no silicone to enhance them, nervously pushed back a loose strand of dark blonde hair that was, he had no doubt, the colour she’d been born with.

She crossed her legs in order to prop up the folder she had on her knee and for a moment he found himself distracted by a classy ankle, a long slender foot encased in a dark brown suede peep-toe shoe that was decorated with a saucy bow.

And, without warning, she wasn’t the only one feeling the heat.

He should write a cheque now. Get her out of his office. Instead, he dropped his eyes to the invoice in front of him and snapped, ‘What in the name of blazes is a confetti cannon?’