Exclusive. Elite. Always Discreet: Welcome to the Billionaires Club. In the final installment of The Billionaires Club quartet, British playboy billionaire Nicholas Rothsmore makes a deal that Billionaires Club owner Imogen Carmichael can’t refuse–four weeks of pleasure! One night of decadent, anonymous sex in the superluxe Billionaires Club–that was the deal. Then we would go back to our … go back to our busy lives, free of entanglements. How could I have known it would be the most intense sex of my life? A night that left me with a gnawing need only she could satisfy…
Miss Anonymous wanted to remain that way. But as the Rothsmore heir, I’ve learned that money can buy pretty much anything…including the help of Billionaires Club and Chance charity owner Imogen Carmichael. I was beyond surprised when the hardworking, straitlaced entrepreneur turned out to be the same woman who’d donned a pink wig, stilettos and a mask and taken me to unexpected heights!
Now I’m offering her a new deal: in return for helping me enjoy my last four weeks of freedom before I assume my family duties and marry the most appropriate candidate, I’ll educate her in the art of seduction, satisfying her every whim with four weeks of exquisite sex. Four weeks with the most intriguing woman I’ve ever met. Four weeks that will have to last a lifetime…
Take control. Feel the rush. Explore your fantasies – Harlequin Dare publishes sexy romances featuring powerful alpha males and bold, fearless heroines exploring their deepest fantasies.
Discover more wealthy, international heroes in the entire The Billionaires Club series;
The Debt by Jackie Ashenden
The Risk by Caitlin Crews
The Proposition by JC Harroway
The Deal by Clare Connelly
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I did not read the other books, so don’t know if vital information was in them, but I felt that way through most of this book. Perhaps, because of that, I had a hard time relating to Imogen Carmichael, the founder of The Billionaire Club.
Nicholas Rothsmore the Third, was left standing at the altar, his fiancee having her friend send a text to his cousin, that she wasn’t going to show. While it had started as an arranged engagement, Nicholas had thought that he had fallen in love with Saffron, but now not only humiliated, but heart broken, he decides that there is no such thing as love and he will never risk his heart again. He takes off for NYC and in the next few years, fills the family coffers. And while his father had not been at all sympathetic about his son being left at the altar, he does not like that his son is known as the Playboy of Manhattan and threatens to take away the title, if he doesn’t finish “sowing his oats” and return to England by the time he is 30, to do his duty.
Imogen is the creator and owner of The Billionaire Club, an exclusive club for the uber wealthy, where they can feel safe doing business, networking and relaxing and her charity Chance. She created The Billionaire Club to finance Chance. She wants to make the world a better place for children. She has been such a workaholic that she has not had a relationship, or sex in 4 years, so arranges to have a one time sexual encounter with Nicholas at the Sydney branch of the club, remaining anonymous with a wig and a mask. But the encounter is more than either expected and Nicholas manages to track her down and convince her to fake date him for a month, for some fun and sex before he has to return to England. Will the deal work?
Because the author kept leaving hints, but waited until the second half of the book to reveal why Imogen created both entities, I found her one dimensional and could not relate to her one mindedness. She also kept lapsing into British English, which was especially weird since she was the American of the couple.
I read an ARC from NetGalley.com. This is my unbiased and voluntary review.
The Deal is the fourth title in Harlequin Dare’s, The Billionaires Club series, it’s the third title in the series that I’ve read, as well as being only the second time I’ve read a book by Clare Connelly–and what a smoking hot, well-written, can’t put it down read it was. It gets 5 stars from this reader.
The Deal was a fabulous addition to this series, and this time it features the founder of The Billionaires Club, Imogen, and a stylish, elegant, sexy and exclusive club it is. Joining the Club costs $1 million dollars, and prospective members are very selectively screened by the club’s founder and CEO, Imogen, a savvy, wealthy, business owner who also founded the Chance charity organization, helping disadvantaged and troubled youth rise above their circumstances, get an education and make a success of their lives. Imogen hasn’t dated in years, and certainly has not dated any of the club members–yet.
The novel opens 5 years in the past, when Nicholas Rothsmore the Third, son of Lord and Lady Rothsmore, is left standing at the altar on his wedding day, with his prospective wife, Saffron, a no-show. Totally heartbroken, and humiliated in front of 500 guests, he vows to never again marry, and to never become emotionally involved with another woman, maintaining his active sex life with a series or one- or two-night stands, many of whom he finds at one of the Billionaires Club mansions around the world. Almost immediately after his non-wedding, he moved to New York City and is still there 5 years later, where he’s become known as the Playboy of Manhatten. Approaching age 30, he made a deal with his father to return to England after 5 years, marry a suitable partner, and produce the next Rothsmore heir, planning to return home by New Year’s Day.
While seeking a new sex partner with whom to spend his last month in NYC, he enters a chat room, where he strikes up a conversation with a woman who intrigues him, known to him only as Miss Anonymous. After several long chats with her, she and Nicholas agree to meet at New York’s Billionaires Club, but with stipulations. Miss Anonymous will not share her name with him, nor has he seen so much as a photo of her. She will be masked and will stay that way throughout their encounter–and what an sizzling encounter it is. After she leaves, Nicholas spends the next week trying to find her for another assignation, and has no luck, until he attends a Chance Charity function at the Club, and meets its CEO, Imogen, whom he soon realizes, by a simple turn of phrase, is his Miss Anonymous.
Her true Identity revealed, Nicholas now wants to see her again, but Imogen has a strict rule–she never dates members of the Club, who are her clients, but she’s as eager to see and experience more of Nicholas and their burn-down-the-house chemistry, as he is to see and experience more of her, and the two eventually strike a deal–they will date in secret, and keep their affair hidden for the one month Nicholas has left before returning to England. They set up strict boundaries, lines in the sand, that this “relationship” is for sex only, with no hope of anything beyond that, but you know what they say about best laid plans.
Ms. Connelly has created two interesting, likable, intelligent and charming characters in this novel, who like each other more and more with each date, and who learn more about each other as well. Nicholas can’t help but be impressed by Imogen’s smarts, her humor, and her commitment to the charity she created, but he’s fully aware of the fact that their time together is limited, and, so is Imogen, who, near the end of their time together, comes to a sudden and surprising revelation.
If you want to find out what comes from that revelation, you’ll have to do what I did, stay up most of the night reading it–who needs sleep when you’ve got an addictive read in your hands? Kudos to Ms. Connelly, I loved this novel and it’s characters. The proof of that is the fact that I didn’t want their story to end, which is why, if you’re a fan of character driven, sizzling hot romances, I highly recommend this one.
I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.
This is the perfect kind of Christmas love story I like to read best. It’s filled with lots of Grinch-y moments as Nicholas and Imogene are fighting off “feelings” with everything they possess. Both Nicholas and Imogene are powerfully driven people whose lives are too busy for the complications of a relationship. And they’re both certain sure that they can keep whatever this is between them strictly physical. And even though they repeatedly broke my heart, there was a part of me that took vindictive glee over the thought “yeah right, as if that’s really gonna work for you”. In the end we get to see those moments where their hearts grow three sizes. It’s in the little things where we see them falling under one another’s spell that I fell for them too.
I received a complimentary advanced copy of this book through NetGalley.
Hot, Hot, Hot! I loved Imogene and Nicholas. Interesting story line, good pacing, loads of hot steamy scenes …. what more could you ask for. Clare Connelly is a fabulous writer