Page 3 of In Bed with Her Billionaire Bodyguard

‘Christmas is only a few days away. Am I taking you away from your family?’

‘No,’ Luca replied without even a thought of the day he’d planned to spend in the office after visiting Alma and Pietro on Christmas Eve, as he did each year.

‘A girlfriend?’

‘You asking me out, Harcourt?’

‘And if I was?’

Luca let out a laugh. The English billionaire was a renowned womaniser. ‘Very kind of you to ask, but you’re not my type.’

‘No. I didn’t think so. And as long as my sister isn’t either, then we’re good.’

CHAPTER ONE

SWEATDRIPPEDDOWNher back and breath poured from her lungs and still Hope Harcourt pushed on. She flicked a gaze to the monitor, four point five kilometres, twenty-three minutes... So close. Her feet pounded against the treadmill in a rhythm that felt primal. She needed this. Needed the moment that effort became effortless, where her body felt fluid with the movements, and her mind felt calm. It didn’t last for long and she didn’t always get there, but when she did it was...perfect.

The monitor ticked five kilometres at twenty-five minutes and Hope hit the cooldown button. As her pace slowed to match the treadmill, she grabbed the towel she’d hung from the bar and wiped her face, her breathing coming back to normal just in time for the morning call from her assistant. She caught the time on the screen before answering. Six thirty a.m. on the dot.

Elise’s chirpy voice came through the wireless headphones as the treadmill slowed even more.

‘And how are we this morning?’ Elise asked.

‘We are wonderful,’ Hope replied, hitting the stop button on the treadmill and grabbing her bag. She’d been in the apartment for three years and not once seen anyone else using the building’s private gym. She left the blessed air-conditioning and made her way to the lift that would take her up to her sixteenth-floor apartment.

‘Was there anything in my inbox from Kinara this morning?’ Hope asked. It had taken several years to develop a work strategy that suited her, but now that she had, everything ran much more smoothly for it. She didn’t check emails until she got into work, but her assistant would give her a brief rundown before she got ready that day. She got top line info on what to expect, without the drama—thatcould wait until after she’d had coffee. But it helped to know what to dress for.

She’d learned that the hard way. Over the years, the press had made it a sport to catch her at her worst. Whether it was the sixteenth birthday party where she’d been photographed wearing an unflattering and inappropriately short dress, or the frumpy suit she’d worn to her graduation, she’d been shamed one way or another. By the time she’d come to Harcourts, she’d developed an iron-clad sense of fashion that had helped her in her role as Marketing Director just as much as her degree and master’s.

As Hope got into the lift she wondered why, of all the articles and hit pieces over the years, it was her sixteenth birthday that always stung that little bit more. Perhaps it was because the photos could only have come from the people around her—her friends.

‘Kinara wants to meet. They’re doing a shoot on Friday morning but it’s the only time they can make it.’

Hope mentally scanned her diary. ‘We can do that, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Brilliant. Put it in the diary.’

‘Doing it now.’

Hope and Harcourts’ buyer, Steven, had been trying to court Kinara ever since the deal Nate had tried to make with Casas Fashion had fallen through. And, just like that, her stomach roiled beneath the memory of the day that Nate had collapsed. She had been the one to call the private ambulance, had waited with him as he lay on the floor, his eyes unfocused, the quick, sharp mind that Hope knew almost as well as her own hazed and confused.

He was being treated by the best and, thankfully, on the road to recovery. But, outside of the medical facility, only two people knew about what had happened to her twin brother: her and their grandfather. A secret necessitated by the desperation of businessmen who would willingly step over her brother’s sick body to get one rung higher on the Harcourts’ ladder. Nate had people in place in his other businesses, but Harcourts was different. And in his absence she’d been fighting off those who would love nothing more than to usurp his position at Harcourts in order to further their own agenda and bank balance.

It was a strange thing to love where you worked but loathe a lot of the people who worked there. She shook her head at the way so many of the shareholders were out of touch with the customers and their needs, uncaring of anything but what ended up in their bank balance. It infuriated her that they couldn’t see that by taking the time now, by making smart decisions now they would secure the future of Harcourts for so much longer. But what would they care for that when they wouldn’t be around to see it?

‘Is there anything else?’ Hope asked as the lift let her off at her floor. She took a left and placed her thumb on the keypad beside her door.

The momentary pause from Elise was enough to stir a sense of unease.

‘Don’t check the socials.’

For a moment Hope’s head dropped against the wooden door, safe in the knowledge that she was alone, unseen. A momentary weakness she indulged in before clenching her jaw and pulling herself up. ‘What is it this time?’

‘Nothing that can’t wait.’

‘Elise.’

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