Buch lesen: «The Debt»

CHAPTER ONE
Ellie

I WIPED MY palms surreptitiously down my black trousers and adjusted my black suit jacket, briefly touching my head to make sure the chauffeur’s cap was in place. Mentally, I went over the address the chauffeur company had given me: The Gustave Eiffel Suite of the Shangri-La, Paris.

Yep. I was in the right place.

I took a deep breath.

Okay, here went nothing.

It had taken me a month of careful planning to get to this point—including relocating from Australia to England—but now I was here I wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip through my fingers.

I had two days to convince one of the UK’s most difficult billionaires to give my father more time before withdrawing the venture capital his firm had invested in our family’s company. It was capital we desperately needed in order to stay solvent. And it was not going to be easy.

Ash Evans, billionaire property developer, investor and slave driver, was as famous for his ruthlessness as he was for his temper, not to mention his unapologetic pride in the fact that he came from a poor background.

He was also notorious for never forgiving a debt.

Still, I liked a challenge and, apart from anything else, this was for Dad’s sake and for Australis, our super car company, and that was more important than any qualms I had about confronting some self-important rich guy.

Not that I had qualms. I was a Little, and Littles were tough. We could get through anything. The key was to put your head down, not make a fuss, and keep going.

Keeping my fuss-making to a minimum, I gave my jacket another tweak then raised my hand and knocked sharply on the suite door.

There was no response.

There was also no one around, which was unusual.

I’d been driving for the rich and famous for a couple of years now—a second job to supplement my position as a designer at Australis because I liked driving—and I knew they tended to be always surrounded by people. Assistants, bodyguards and all kinds of hangers-on.

Apparently not Mr Evans.

But then, given what I knew about him from the research I’d done, that wasn’t completely unexpected.

He was a self-made man who’d grown up in one of London’s most notorious council estates and who’d risen to the top through a combination of ruthlessness, hard-headed business sense and a fight-to-the-death attitude that people whispered had come from his days as a street fighter.

A scary dude by all accounts.

Took a lot to scare me, though—I had four brothers after all—and I was prepared to do what I had to do in order to keep the company solvent. Dad was counting on me since he didn’t want my brothers to know the true state of the company finances, and I was very conscious of the fact that I didn’t want to let him down.

Mine was a ropey plan, but it was the best I could come up with: sign myself on with the chauffeur company that Mr Evans used and hope that I would be assigned to him. It had taken a month for that to happen, but a combination of luck and the fact that he was enough of a prick that no one wanted to drive for him had worked in my favour and I’d been given the assignment of driving him in Paris for two days.

It was a sneaky move, but I’d run out of options, not to mention patience. I’d tried all the usual ways to get a meeting with him to talk about the investment face-to-face, but apparently that was impossible and all I’d managed to score were a couple of interviews with some minor flunkey who hadn’t given a shit about either me or my dad.

Driving for him was the only way I could think of to meet with him in person, to convince him somehow to give us more time before withdrawing his money, because, with the current state of Australis’s finances, we would go under the moment he withdrew.

Yeah, and you know whose fault that is.

I ignored that thought and glared at the shut door instead, raising my hand to knock again.

It was suddenly jerked open.

A man stood on the threshold, the height and breadth of him filling the entire doorway.

I blinked, getting a confused impression of an expanse of bare skin and hard-cut muscle. Then a pair of fierce blue eyes met mine and all the air in my lungs mysteriously vanished.

He stared at me suspiciously for a second and it occurred to me that every single aspect of me had just been observed, catalogued and filed away for future reference.

Then, just as suddenly as he’d opened the door, the man turned and strolled back into the suite, talking to someone on his phone as he went, his voice a deep, gritty rumble. He appeared to be wearing only a pair of worn blue jeans that sat low on his lean hips, leaving his massively muscled shoulders and back bare. A Chinese dragon had been inked into the smooth olive skin, the colours all brilliant blues, reds and greens.

I blinked again, staring, oddly shaken though I had no idea why. Because it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen a shirtless man before. I’d also seen a fair number of tattoos in my time—my brothers all had them, plus I was involved in the car industry where it was practically de rigueur. Still, I hadn’t seen anything quite as beautiful as that one.

I swallowed, for a second unsure whether to follow him or wait. But since I wasn’t the waiting type I stepped into the suite, shutting the door behind me as I followed him into the lounge area.

He stood with his back to me, still talking on his phone and so I took a moment to study him.

Okay, so this was the scary Ash Evans.

I’d seen pictures of him—who hadn’t? He was built like a heavyweight boxer with the height of a basketball player, his face scarred all to hell from an encounter with the wrong end of a knife back when he’d been a teenager. He was an absolute beast of a man—at least according to one gushing female journalist who’d been granted the rare privilege of an interview and had obviously been bowled over by him.

I’d scoffed at all the over-the-top language in the article—honestly, the way some women got when it came to men, I couldn’t understand it. But being in his presence now, I could see what she was talking about.

Even though he had his back to me, he stood in the middle of the lavishly appointed room as if he owned it. No, more as if he owned all of Paris. A fierce kind of energy radiated from him, kinetic and masculine and utterly compelling.

I knew what it was. Two of my brothers were race car drivers and they both had it in spades: pure male confidence.

Luckily, I’d had plenty of practice in dealing with it and my solution was simply to be as confident and in-your-face as they were.

I waited patiently for Mr Evans to wrap up his conversation, staring at his beautiful Chinese tattoo until finally he’d finished and turned to face me.

Intense blue eyes met mine and my breath caught for the second time that day.

The pictures of him were one thing, but the reality was a whole different ball game. His features were blunt, but roughly handsome and somehow made even more compelling by the famous scars that bisected them. One scar narrowly missed his right eye, while another caught one end of his mouth and twisted it, making it look as if he was sneering. A third highlighted his hard, square-cut jaw. But it was those eyes that really dominated his rough-hewn face. They were so blue, electric almost, reminding me weirdly of lightning in a thunderstorm.

Hot.

The thought came out of nowhere, hitting me like a gut punch. Because he was, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d even noticed a guy in that way.

Since the Mark incident I’d put my love life on hold because I simply couldn’t be bothered dealing with all the drama involved, and, so far, I hadn’t met anyone who’d made me want to change my stance.

Not that Ash Evans was even in my league.

I didn’t actually have a league.

Conscious that I’d been standing there, staring at him like an idiot, I shoved my momentary fluster away and I stuck out my hand. ‘G’day, Mr Evans,’ I said, going full Aussie. ‘I’m Ellie Little. I’m—’

‘What do you want?’ His voice was as rough and gritty as sandpaper, and his stare skewered me like a pin through a butterfly. ‘I told the hotel I wasn’t to be disturbed.’

Obviously I was getting a taste of Mr Evans’s famous rudeness. So far, so billionaire. And to be honest, nothing I hadn’t come across before either driving or in the Australis workshop.

‘I’m not from the hotel,’ I said cheerfully. ‘I’m your chauffeur.’

‘Chauffeur?’ He ignored the hand I was still holding out. ‘I usually have Bill.’

‘He wasn’t able to make it to Paris. One of your assistants okayed a replacement.’ I lowered my hand since it didn’t look as if he were going to shake it. ‘Don’t worry, sir. I’ve been given a full rundown of your—’

‘Don’t call me sir. I’m Mr Evans to you.’ He shoved his phone into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘And my assistant never mentioned this.’

With some dudes if you gave them an inch, they took a mile, and clearly Evans was in this camp. I’d found the best way to deal with it was to be as laid-back as possible, all the while making it clear that you were not there to be walked over.

‘I’m sorry you weren’t contacted, Mr Evans,’ I said easily, giving him a wide smile. ‘But that’s not really my problem. I’m just here to do my job.’ And to fix Dad’s little investment issue. But I couldn’t ask him about that now; I needed to build up a little rapport with him first.

There was a silence.

Clearly he did not like my answer, because his gaze became arctic, the electricity in his eyes taking on a bright, cold glint. A sense of threat gathered around him and I could suddenly see why people might be scared of him because that, combined with his height and scarred face, made him pretty damn intimidating.

I wasn’t intimidated, though. I’d dealt with plenty of difficult men in my time and not making things into a drama was the way to handle it.

So I simply stared back and kept my smile easy-going. Letting him know that I wasn’t a threat so he didn’t need to bristle at me the way he was doing now.

His eyes narrowed and I had the oddest feeling that his focus had shifted, zeroing in on me like a laser sight on a high-powered rifle.

It was unnerving since I didn’t much like being stared at, but I didn’t let my unease show. Keep it fuss-free, that was the Little way.

‘Do you speak to all your employers like that?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ I said, with absolute truth. ‘And they’ve all appreciated my laid-back attitude.’ I grinned wider. ‘That’s a direct quote by the way.’

A deep blue spark glinted in his eyes for a second and for some reason I felt an unfamiliar heat rise into my cheeks.

Weird. Why was I blushing? I kept my smile pasted firmly on and hoped the blush would go away.

‘Fair enough.’ He gave me a brief up and down glance then reached out to pick up the black T-shirt that had been draped over the back of a luxurious white couch. ‘Though if you speak to me like that again, you won’t last the night.’

I wasn’t listening. I was too busy being oddly mesmerised by the flex and release of the chiseled muscles of his chest and abs.

Which wasn’t like me at all. It was only that he was just so very...powerful. Like one of the Pythons, Dad’s latest model supercar. Super charged and sleek, with a big V8 engine. The most perfect design. Dangerous in the wrong hands, yet an adrenaline junkie’s dream in the right ones...

‘Do you understand?’

I nearly jumped as the edge in his voice caught me, making me realise I’d been standing there gawping at him with my mouth open.

Dude. Zoning out staring at his body? What is wrong with you?

Purely from a design perspective he was an impressive specimen. Built for strength and power, with not an ounce of fat on him. He could probably deliver the maximum amount of force with maximum efficiency too—

You’re not in the workshop now, idiot, and he’s not a bloody car.

Oh, hell. Of course he wasn’t. And now he’d caught me staring.

I struggled to find my normal chill, trying to think of a jokey way to defuse the situation.

‘Uh, yes,’ was all I could come up with.

His gaze narrowed further. ‘You’d better,’ he said, his upper-class British accent completely at odds with the roughness of his voice, his scarred face and worn jeans. ‘I’m not accustomed to repeating myself.’

Concentrate, fool! It’s like you’ve never seen a man before.

Well, to be fair, I hadn’t seen a man like him before.

‘Sorry, Mr Evans.’ I grinned like an idiot, pretending I wasn’t still blushing furiously. ‘I was thinking about something else.’

He stared at me with the same intense focus as when he’d opened the suite door earlier. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Ellie. Ellie Little.’

Would my surname mean anything to him? Probably not. Evans Investment, his venture capital firm, invested money in a lot of different projects so there was no reason he’d know about our company in particular.

Sure enough, there was no recognition in his eyes as he unexpectedly put out his hand. ‘Good to meet you, Miss Little.’

Now, he wanted to shake? A small, rebellious part of me was very tempted to refuse, which would have been stupid given the massive favour I had to ask of him at some point.

So I ignored the urge, reaching out to take his hand politely instead. Yet as his big palm and long fingers wrapped around mine, the weirdest thing happened.

A jolt of electricity shot straight up my arm, making me jerk my hand out of his before I could stop myself.

Good one, fool.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘Damn static.’

An odd expression I couldn’t quite decipher crossed his face, making the unsettled feeling inside me deepen.

My heart was beating fast and my skin was tingling where he’d touched me. It felt sensitive, as if I’d been scorched by his fingers.

It wasn’t static, you idiot.

But I didn’t want to think about what else it might have been so I shoved that thought away and put my hands behind my back instead. ‘Ready when you are, Mr Evans,’ I said, as if nothing had happened.

He gave me another of those intense searching looks, though what he was searching for I had no idea.

‘Go down and wait in the car,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

With one last dismissive glance, he turned away, the colours of the tattoo on his back flashing, leaving me with no other option but to do as I was told.