Page 6 of Three Hard-to-Handle Aristocrats and a Bossy Girl

Until the earth looked too close, and she was certain she was going to break every bone in her body.

Except she didn’t.

She had no idea how Henry did any of it, but he had unbuckled her in an instant, swung her around to face him, and then twisted his body so that when they fell to the ground, she lay perfectly on top of him, nestled between his thighs, with not even a toe of hers touching the dirt underneath them.

She could have died. She could have died. She could have died.

She would have been so mad at him if she had died.

Scrambling off him with the need to give him a piece of her mind was thwarted when Anthony pulled up in the car right alongside them.

“I got this, Anthony,” Asher said to the chauffeur, leaning over to open the door for them. She was further thrown off course when Henry unzipped his pockets and removed her shoes. He then bent down on his haunches and slipped them back onto her feet. Then he unzipped his suit and shrugged it off, leaving him in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

Did they have to look that way?

“Thank you,” she said, although he didn’t deserve anything nice from her, including her good manners.

She took a few sobering breaths. All that mattered was getting them to New York as per her assignment.

“Does this mean you’ll be accompanying us to New York, Lord Bailey?”

“Henry, please, and I just want to see if you can get Simon to do your bidding,” he said, chuckling.

“I’m sure he will be similarly copasetic,” she said confidently, climbing into the car. The two men sat opposite her, and she hoped they couldn’t hear her heart still beating out of her chest from her unsolicited skydiving event. She was by far having the weirdest day ever.

But never mind. She was all about going the extra mile to get her work done.

Two down. One to go. The odds were nicely in her favor.

Chapter Four

All Blakely wanted was to finish her task and get back to New York. Two of them had already driven her to the brink of madness. And she had no idea what to expect for the third one. Would he try to throw her from his high-rise company building, where he was the billionaire owner?

She realized anything could happen now, especially when she had to redo her hair after her surprise skydiving event and then had to blink away the image of Asher’s naked cock from her mind.

“Good luck,” Asher said with a killer smile on his lips. Clearly, he didn’t think she would be coming down with the Marquis of Haroldcot in tow.

“Do not leave this car,” she said, meaning every word. She was not going to run after them if they decided to scatter. “Please.”

Argh, why did it feel as if her battle had only begun? Asher and Henry were clearly humoring her. They had no intention of boarding their father’s private jet with her, bound for the States. They just wanted to see how far she got.

She needed a contingency plan. Pity chloroform was out of the question, which would be a mild thing compared to what they had done to her. But she immediately came up with the next best thing.

As she entered the lobby of Cunningham Enterprises, she whipped out her phone and texted a message to Anthony. He replied immediately and said he knew just the place and that it was within walking distance.

It wasn’t going to be the conventional kind, but it would work the same way. She didn’t care about convention, so she told him to go ahead and be surreptitious about his purchase. She didn't want the other two lords to catch on.

If only the two lords waiting in the car were as well-behaved as the chauffeur, she’d have no problems at all. Anthony was definitely going to be getting a Christmas present from her from now on.

Of course, getting to see Simon Cunningham, the Marquis of Haroldcot, in his company’s skyscraper masterpiece was harder than breaking into the Louvre.

The security guard at the reception desk kept telling her he couldn’t allow her to go up unless Lord Cunningham gave him instructions to do so. And he was damn adamant about it too. He didn’t care who she was or that she worked for Simon Cunningham’s father.

A bulky man, nearly seven feet tall, when he blocked her way, heblockedall of it.

But in her attempt to be seen by his big boss, she slipped around to his desk with the intention of negotiating with him one-on-one.

It was then that she saw a picture of a teenage girl, obviously his daughter, since the resemblance was so strong. She also noticed he had hastily put in a gift bag a copy of a book by a very popular author.

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