Playboy's Lesson

Welcome to The Chatsfield, Monte Carlo! When the Chatsfield heir comes to play…

Lucca Chatsfield has one simple motto: no rings, no strings. Adored wherever he goes, he has yet to meet a woman who can resist him. Until he’s sent to the small principality of Preitalle and meets his greatest challenge ever….

Poised and polished, princess Charlotte does not
do
drama. The very last person she needs interfering in her life is this reckless playboy! Lottie is determined to resist Lucca’s seduction, but his charm is potent, and practically perfect Lottie finds herself risking everything for just one more touch….

“I do not wish to have anything further to do with you,” Lottie said in clearly enunciated tones. “Please leave.”

“Listen, sweetheart,” Lucca said with a cavalier disregard for protocol. “Way I see it, we’re stuck with each other, at least for the sake of appearances. Your big sister seems pretty keen on us working together, and I get the feeling that what she says around here goes. Quite frankly, I’d rather be working on my tan on one of your beaches, preferably with a couple of blonde beach bunnies peeling grapes for me. So kick me out if you dare. I’m cool with it, but you can say goodbye to using the Chatsfield.”

She turned and gave him a look one would do when a cockroach appears on the table in the middle of a formal dining setting. “You are the most disreputable man I have ever met.”

“Looks like you need to get out more.” He gave her his fallen angel’s smile. “I can assure you there’s plenty more out there like me.”

Her eyes slitted like a cat facing a feral dog, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “Get out before I have you thrown out by my security team.”

He gave an indolent shrug as he ambled over to the door. “I’ll be staying in the penthouse at the Chatsfield if you want me.” He turned and blew her a kiss across his open palm. “Ciao.”

Step into the opulent glory of the world’s most elite hotel, where the clients are the impossibly rich and exceptionally famous.

Whether you’re in America, Australia, Europe or Dubai our doors will always be open…

Welcome to

The Chatsfield

Synonymous with style, sensation…and scandal!

For years, the children of Gene Chatsfield—global hotel entrepreneur—have shocked the world’s media with their exploits. But no longer! When Gene appoints a new CEO, Christos Giatrakos, to bring his children into line, little does he know what he is starting.

Christos’s first command scatters the Chatsfields to the farthest reaches of their international holdings—from Las Vegas to Monte Carlo, Sydney to San Francisco…. But will they rise to the challenge set by a man who hides dark secrets in his past?

Let the games begin!

Your room has been reserved, so check in to enjoy all the passion and scandal we have to offer.

Enter your reservation number:

00106875

at

www.TheChatsfield.com

The Chatsfield

Sheikh’s Scandal
Lucy Monroe
Playboy’s Lesson
Melanie Milburne
Socialite’s Gamble
Michelle Conder
Billionaire’s Secret
Chantelle Shaw
Tycoon’s Temptation
Trish Morey
Rival’s Challenge
Abby Green
Rebel’s Bargain
Annie West
Heiress’s Defiance
Lynn Raye Harris

Eight volumes to collect—you won’t want to miss out!

MELANIE MILBURNE

Playboy’s Lesson

All about the author…
Melanie Milburne

From as soon as
Melanie Milburne
could pick up a pen she knew she wanted to write. It was when she picked up her first Harlequin Mills and Boon® book at seventeen that she realized she wanted to write romance. Distracted for a few years by meeting and marrying her own handsome hero, surgeon husband Steve, and having two boys, plus completing a master’s of education and becoming a nationally ranked athlete (masters swimming), she decided to write. Five submissions later she sold her first book and is now a multipublished, award-winning,
USA TODAY
bestselling author. In 2008 she won the Australian Romance Readers Association’s most popular category/series romance, and in 2011 she won the prestigious Romance Writers of Australia R*BY Award.

Melanie loves to hear from her readers via her website,
www.melaniemilburne.com.au
, or on Facebook,
www.facebook.com/pages/Melanie-Milburne/351594482609
.

Other titles by Melanie Milburne available in ebook:

NEVER GAMBLE WITH A CAFFARELLI (Those Scandalous Caffarellis)
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE A CAFFARELLI (Those Scandalous Caffarellis)
NEVER SAY NO TO A CAFFARELLI (Those Scandalous Caffarellis)
HIS FINAL BARGAIN

To my fellow Chatsfield authors Lucy Monroe, Michelle Conder, Lynn Raye Harris, Chantelle Shaw, Annie West, Abby Green and Trish Morey. Wasn’t this huge fun? I loved doing this continuity with you all. xxx

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EXCERPT

CHATSFIELD AUTHOR Q&A

CHATSFIELD CHARACTER Q&A

THE CHATSFIELD MR & MRS QUIZ

NEWSPAPER CLIPPING

CHAPTER ONE

EVEN BY CHATSFIELD standards Lucca had to admit this latest one of his to hit the London tabloids was a doozy. He lounged in the chair opposite his father’s new broom, Christos Giatrakos, and gave one his trademark lazy smiles. ‘What was it that got up your nose? The handcuffs or the studded leather codpiece?’

What the newly appointed CEO of the Chatsfield Hotel chain lacked in terms of a sense of humour was more than made up for in ice-cold ruthlessness. The Greek’s face was set like marble, his blue eyes glacial and his mouth set in a line so thin it hinted at a streak of cruelty underpinning his intractable personality. ‘We’re used to reading your sordid exploits in the tabloids, but this news is all over the internet. You’ve brought nothing but shame to the brand of this hotel with the way you carry on your affairs.’

Yeah, yeah, yeah
. Lucca didn’t bother disguising a yawn.
Bor-ing
. Heard it all before. A hundred...probably trillions of times. He rocked back on the legs of the chair, expertly balancing his weight as he kept his gaze trained on the hardened CEO. He was used to showdown meetings like this. He enjoyed them. It was his way of making up for the way he had disgraced himself by wetting his pants when he was called into the headmaster’s office at boarding school when he was seven. He never allowed himself to be intimidated.

Never
.

‘The only thing that’s predictable about you is your unpredictability,’ the CEO continued. ‘Since you’ve consistently refused to clean up your act, it will now be cleaned up for you.’

‘It was just a party that got a little out of hand,’ Lucca said. ‘The press made it out to be an orgy. I didn’t even sleep with any of those girls. Well, maybe just the one, but that was because I was handcuffed to the bed at the time, so what else was I supposed to do?’

A muscle in the CEO’s jaw pulsed. On. Off. ‘Your father is refusing to give you a single penny of your allowance from the Chatsfield Family Trust unless you agree to fulfil the assignment I have appointed you. It will make quite a change for you working for a living instead of being a professional party boy with nothing better to do than get laid by a host of wannabe starlets and trashy gold-diggers.’

Lucca set his chair legs back down on the carpeted floor with a little thump. He had an exclusive art auction he wanted to attend in Monte Carlo next week. He was building a private collection of miniature paintings and there was one in particular he wanted to get his hands on. His gut instinct told him it would be worth millions in a few years. He didn’t want to be exiled to some godforsaken place and miss out on the deal of a lifetime, but neither did he want to forfeit his allowance.

The way he saw it, his family—his train wreck of a family—owed it to him.

‘What sort of mission?’

‘A month working at the Chatsfield Hotel on the island of Preitalle in the Mediterranean.’

Lucca mentally breathed out a sigh of relief. The royal principality of Preitalle was a short ferry trip or helicopter ride to Monte Carlo. But he figured it might be in his interests to appear unhappy about being exiled. His father’s CEO wanted to dish out punishment and he clearly was enjoying doing it. Just like that headmaster.

Bastard.

‘Doing what?’ He feigned a suitable amount of apprehension. That was all part of his game. Give the opponent what they want but only on the outside. Inside he was totally in control. Totally.

The CEO’s cold eyes gleamed with malice. ‘Working alongside Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte as she plans her sister Madeleine’s wedding at the end of the month.’

Lucca threw his head back and laughed so loudly the sound bounced off the walls and came back at him like an echo in a canyon. ‘You’re joking, right?
Me?
Plan a wedding? I know nothing about wedding planning. Parties? Yes. Weddings? Zilch. Can’t even remember the last time I went to one.’

‘Then this will be a perfect opportunity to learn.’ Christos clicked his pen on and off again as he eyeballed him. On. Off. The annoying sound was in perfect time with that muscle in his jaw. On. Off. ‘You’re reputedly an expert at knowing what women want. Here’s your chance to finally put that expertise to good use.’

Lucca decided to play along. How hard could it be? With the wedding this close, the bulk of the planning would have already been done. He would leave the last-minute work to the people who knew how to do this sort of stuff while he had a bit of time out on one of the beaches on Preitalle.

He was getting a bit tired of the London scene in any case. It used to be so much fun, courting scandal, poking fun at the establishment, doing the most outrageous things he could think of just for the heck of it. Exploiting every situation to his advantage. But there was only so much partying and nightclubbing and sleeping around any man could do. It was exhausting.

Even—dared he say it—boring?

Besides, he wanted more time to concentrate on his art. Not just the ones he was collecting but his own etchings. His passion for drawing had been present from the moment he had been old enough to hold a pencil in his hand. Drawing was his way of retreating into a private world where he could be quiet and centred. It had been his way of anchoring himself during his chaotic childhood. The eye of the family storm could bluster and blow all around him but he could always escape to his inner world of creative peace. He had spent hours sitting cross-legged beneath Graham Laurent’s painting of his mother, desperately trying to capture the features that were fast fading from his memory, yet somehow resolutely captured for all time in the portrait before him. He enjoyed the process of creating those first scratches of a pencil on a tiny canvas to the end result of having a framed miniature painting with his signature in the right-hand corner.

Spending the month of June in the Mediterranean would be just the ticket to indulge that passion instead of his more base ones. It would be easy. He would jump through the hoops and have a whoop of a time doing it.

‘So—’ he rocked back in his chair again ‘—what does the little princess think about having an offsider?’

* * *

‘An offsider?’
Lottie looked at her sister, Madeleine, in wounded affront. ‘Why do you think I need someone to help me? Don’t you think I’m up to the task of planning your wedding? Did Mama suggest it? Papa? One of the palace officials?’

Madeleine held up her hands as if warding off a barrage of enemy fire. ‘Whoa, there! No need to shoot the messenger. It’s part of the deal with conducting the reception at the Chatsfield Hotel. It’s come from the top level of management but I’ve given it my full approval. The CEO is sending a representative of the Chatsfield family to work alongside you in the interest of public relations.’