We’re delighted to share an exclusive extract from, The Maid Married To The Billionaire by Lynne Graham. Skye is the only person that ruthless Italian billionaire Enzo has opened his heart to…Except he’s her boss!

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‘You’ve got to eat the ice cream quickly or it melts all over your hands.’ As Skye licked her pink lips clean she encountered Enzo’s scorching golden gaze. ‘What?’ she prompted.

‘Throw out the cone and lick me instead,’ Enzo stunned her by suggesting.

‘Enzo!’ she exclaimed in stark reproof.

Then she stilled as she collided with smouldering dark golden eyes. Her heart jumped inside her chest, her mouth running dry as a bone. Little tingles of awareness unlike anything she had ever felt travelled through her slender and now very tense frame.

‘Your ice cream is melting,’ Enzo warned her as she sat there frozen and staring back at him with wide lilac eyes.

‘You took me by surprise…you shocked me,’ she muttered unevenly, struggling to catch her breath, thoroughly unnerved by the sensations that had shimmied up through her taut body and then down again to a place that had ignited with a burst of warmth that mortified her to the very bone.

Enzo released his breath on a measured hiss. ‘Relax. For a moment, I was tempted. But nothing is going to happen unless you want it to. I’m attracted to you. I know I shouldn’t be but I’m not perfect, in fact it seems I’m all too human. But you are completely safe with me, piccolo mio.’

‘Maybe I don’t need to be safe…with you,’ Skye muttered uncertainly. ‘You make me feel things I didn’t expect to feel. You make me curious. I know, like you said, I shouldn’t be in these circumstances. But the truth is, I am and I’m attracted too.’

Literally trembling from her own daring in being that candid, Skye swallowed convulsively and dropped her head, ashamed of the sheer power of his draw for her. She had barely escaped alive from her last entanglement and wouldn’t dream of embarking on another. But… There was definitely a huge ‘but’ enmeshed in all her thoughts about Enzo, as if he belonged in a category all of his own. Would one kiss hurt? Men and women kissed all the time. It would hardly be a major event.

‘So…’ Enzo breathed a touch raggedly, his breathing audible. ‘What do you want to do about this?’

‘We…we could try a kiss…just one,’ she stressed, evidently fearful that more than one kiss might push him past all restraint. ‘Just to satisfy our curiosity, and we’ll probably find out it’s not worth our while.’

‘Not worth our while,’ Enzo repeated thickly, afraid that if he didn’t speak, he would laugh out loud at her naivety. One kiss. One kiss. Even as a teenager, girls had offered him a great deal more than that. And one kiss wasn’t going to do anything to tackle his raging arousal, was it? But then, he reminded himself, it wasn’t about what he wanted, it was about what she wanted and all she could apparently envisage was a very brief, controlled experiment. It was ridiculous. He knew it was. And yet…and yet, he was as fascinated and as aroused as if she’d ripped off her clothes and propositioned him.

‘Agreed. One kiss,’ he asserted not quite levelly.

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The Maid Married To The Billionaire by Lynne Graham

When Italian billionaire Enzo stops to help with a broken-down car, he’s shocked to discover Skye, frightened and on the run with her tiny siblings. Enzo’s honour dictates he offer them all sanctuary—and Skye a job. But could their simmering attraction solve another problem? His need for a bride!

By Lauren Gardiner