Page 1 of His Innocent Unwrapped In Iceland

CHAPTER ONE

ISLAKENDRICK,DRAPEDINthe delicate ivory silk of her wedding gown, stood in the narthex of the ancient abbey where she was about to get married and clutched at her bouquet of delicate pink peonies as if they were a lifeline.

Orion North, the man who for the past year had been angling to take over Kendricks’ Family Christmas, the company that had been in David Kendrick’s family for generations and provided much of the Christmas-themed products and services around the world, surveyed her dispassionately, his amber gaze cold as it always was.

He’d simply appeared in the narthex as if by magic, and she didn’t know what he was doing here. She certainly hadn’t invited him to the wedding, and her adoptive father wouldn’t have either. She’d met him across the boardroom table, of course, during his negotiations to buy Kendricks’ off her father, and also at a few business functions she’d attended. She’d found him cold and distinctly unlikeable.

She liked him even less now.

Her two bridesmaids—her father’s two secretaries, since she didn’t have any sisters—were fussing with her train, but as soon as Orion had stepped into the narthex they’d stopped and stared at him instead. Unsurprisingly.

He was a man who commanded if not demanded attention, and that was only one of the reasons Isla found him so irritating.

He was six-five and broad-shouldered, built like a warrior rather than the multibillion-dollar businessman he actually was, and he towered over most people like an ancient oak towers over just about every tree in the forest. Then again, he was one of the world’s most feared corporate raiders and had the cold, acquisitive gaze to match, so maybe the warrior simile was more apt.

He was also devastatingly attractive, which didn’t make her any more well disposed towards him. Taken by themselves, his features were too rough and blunt for handsomeness, but there was something about their arrangement, something to do with the straight black brows and the proud jut of his nose, the curve of his lower lip, and the fact that his eyes were the colour of ancient amber that made people turn and stare.

Isla didn’t want to stare. She didn’t want her breath to catch every time he entered a room she was in. He was a wolf, a stone-cold predator, and she hated how he made her feel like prey. Not that he’d ever made any move towards her. Sometimes she noticed him staring at her disconcertingly from across the boardroom table, but he never said anything to her, so why he was even here she had no idea.

Just as she had no idea why he’d been circling Kendricks’ for so long, not unlike a vulture circling a lion that wasn’t quite dead. He hadn’t made a move, though, which had made her father jumpy since North had a reputation for a quick kill when it came to acquiring companies.

He glanced at her bridesmaids and nodded towards the doors that led into the church proper. The unspoken command was clear, so they stopped fussing with Isla’s train and went, leaving Isla alone with him.

A shiver of trepidation went through her, a cold feeling settling in her gut.

She’d been full of nerves this morning, wondering if she was doing the right thing in marrying Gianni, one of her father’s protégés. Her father had introduced them six months earlier and Isla had known immediately that this was the sign that David thought it was time for her to settle down. Family was important for Kendricks’ and most especially for the Kendricks’ board. It wouldn’t do for the heir to remain single, and since Gianni had been nice enough and was clearly on her father’s list of approved suitors, she’d started seeing him.

And when he’d proposed six months later, she’d said yes.

She didn’t love him, but that didn’t matter. David thought he’d make a good husband and son-in-law and since Isla wanted to do David proud, she’d agreed. She wanted a family of her own, so why not? Except her prewedding jitters hadn’t agreed, and now Orion’s sudden appearance hadn’t helped.

Today, he wore an expertly tailored dove-grey morning suit that made him look even more devastatingly attractive than he already was and that unsettled her even further. She was about to get married. She shouldn’t be looking at other men. She shouldn’t even be aware of them.

Ignoring the slow creep of ice in her gut, Isla lifted her chin and stared at the man who’d so casually interrupted the proceedings. ‘What on earth are you doing here, Mr North?’ She consciously tried to imitate the note of cool command her father used in the boardroom. Cool didn’t come naturally to her, but she was trying. ‘I’m about to get married in case you hadn’t noticed and I don’t believe you were invited.’

Orion’s harshly carved features betrayed nothing, though there was a strange gleam in his wolf-gold eyes. ‘No,’ he said calmly. ‘I was not.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Isla. But your groom isn’t coming.’

The words didn’t make any sense. ‘Not coming?’ she repeated blankly. ‘What do you mean he’s not coming?’

‘I mean, he took a private jet out of Stansted early this morning, bound for Rome.’ Orion’s cold voice was full of harsh edges and deep chasms. ‘I advised him not to poach on my territory and offered him a significant amount of money to go away. So he did.’

Isla blinked. His territory? Poaching? What on earth was he talking about? ‘Excuse me? You did what?’

Orion didn’t move, but that odd, hot light in his eyes glinted again. ‘He will not be marrying you, Isla. Not today, not tomorrow and not next week. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he will not be marrying you at all.’

A deafening silence fell in the narthex and yet Isla was conscious of a roaring in her ears. The bouquet of peonies slipped from her nerveless fingers to land in a shower of petals on the stone floor. ‘What?’ Her voice came out scratchy, a raw scrape of sound. ‘I don’t understand.’

Orion calmly bent and retrieved her bouquet from the floor just as some footsteps echoed on the stone and a man she didn’t recognise came through the front door of the church. Orion murmured a few words to him and the man left again, this time going through into the church proper and closing the doors behind him.

Something was happening. Something wasn’t right.

‘Mr North,’ she said, forcing away the cold clutch of shock. ‘I want an explanation. Where is Gianni? Why isn’t he here? And what do you mean you paid him to go away?’

A rustling sound was coming from the church and the low buzz of shocked conversation. There were five hundred people out there waiting to see her get married, the cream of London high society, as well as many of her father’s business cronies, not to mention Gianni’s family. But something was happening there too, because they’d been silent before and they weren’t now.

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