Buch lesen: «The Billionaire's Ruthless Affair»

Contents

COVER

INTRODUCTION

Rich, Ruthless and Renowned

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

EXTRACT

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

I SHOULD BE HAPPIER, Alex thought as he picked up his mug of coffee and carried it out onto the terrace of his penthouse apartment, shivering slightly when the crisp air hit his face. Not that it would be cold for long, the sun already peeping over the horizon. Winter in Sydney was a picnic compared to winter in London. He was glad to be back home. But not all that happy, for some reason.

Alex surveyed the panoramic view of the city skyline, telling himself that a man would have to be a fool not to be happy when he’d finally achieved everything he’d ever vowed to achieve.

At thirty-four, Alex was no fool. He was, in fact, a very successful businessman.

A Rhodes scholar, Alex had first become an entrepreneur back in England over a decade earlier, going into partnership with his two best friends from Oxford in a dilapidated old wine bar, which probably should have been demolished, but which they’d turned into a going concern. As it turned out, one wine bar had eventually become two, then three, then ten, till finally they’d formed a franchise.

Sergio’s idea, that.

Alex smiled for the first time that morning. Thinking of Sergio always brought a smile to his face. Jeremy, too. Yet those two were as different as chalk and cheese. Sergio was inclined to take life way too seriously at times, whereas Jeremy... Lord, where did one start with Jeremy? Though some people might describe him as a playboy, Alex knew Jeremy was a decent man at heart, generous and loyal, though with way too much charm and money for his own good. And he’d have even more money now, the recent sale of their wine bar franchise having made them all billionaires.

Alex’s smile faded somewhat as he realised that the sale of their franchise had now severed the main connection between the three men. Whilst he didn’t doubt they would always remain friends, it would not be the same as when they’d gathered together in London on a regular basis. Sergio had now returned to Milan to take up the reins of his family’s ailing manufacturing business, whilst he himself would have no reason to return to England.

Still, that was life, Alex supposed. Nothing stayed the same. Time and tide waited for no man, he knew, a quick glance at his watch showing that it was almost eight.

He was going to be late for work, which was a rarity.

Harry would be wondering where he was. Alex hoped she wasn’t upset over the way he’d spoken to her yesterday. Not that she’d seemed offended. Though relatively young, she was without doubt the best, most sensible PA he’d ever had.

Gulping down the rest of his coffee, he hurried back inside, stashed his mug in the dishwasher, snatched up his phone and keys, then headed for the lift. Just as the lift doors opened, his phone rang. A wry smile lit up Alex’s face when he saw that it was Jeremy.

Speak of the devil!

‘Jeremy...mate...I was just thinking about you.’ Alex strode into the lift and pressed the button for the basement car park.

‘That’s a worry,’ Jeremy replied in that deeply masculine voice which always surprised people. ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do with your life? You should be out there making more millions. Though, perhaps not. You’d only give the lot away.’

Alex grinned. ‘You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’ It would be late evening in London.

‘You could say that. I’m at a party. An engagement party.’

Alex suppressed a groan at the thought that another one of Jeremy’s brothers—perhaps even his mother or father—were on their way to the altar again. You didn’t have to look far to understand Jeremy’s negative attitude towards love and marriage. Clearly, he didn’t trust either to last.

Alex wasn’t into love and marriage himself, either, but not for reasons of scepticism and cynicism. He knew full well that true love existed and lasted, if you found the right person. Alex just wasn’t interested in finding his soul mate. He had personal reasons for staying a bachelor, the main one being the promise he’d made to his mother on her deathbed.

‘God made you extra smart for a purpose, son,’ she’d told him with her last breath. ‘Promise me you won’t waste your talents. Use them for good. Make a difference.’

Alex had done just that. But being a dedicated philanthropist took a lot of time and energy. He simply didn’t have enough left over for a wife and family. Though, if he was strictly honest, Alex liked being a bachelor. Liked living by himself. Liked being free of emotional entanglements.

The lift doors opened at the basement and Alex headed for his nearby SUV at a clip.

‘So who’s getting hitched this time?’ he asked Jeremy. ‘Not your mother, I hope.’ Jeremy’s mother had divorced her third husband last year after she’d discovered he was sleeping with his personal trainer.

‘No, thank God. No, this is someone far more surprising.’

‘Really?’ The mind boggled. ‘Look, hold it a sec. Have to get in my car. I’m on my way to work.’ Alex jumped in behind the wheel and swiftly connected his phone to Bluetooth. ‘Right. All systems go,’ he said as he backed out of his spot.

‘Do you ever do anything except work?’ Jeremy said drily.

‘Sure I do. I eat out, work out and have lots of great sex. A bit like you, dear friend.’

‘Are you still dating that Lisa chick, the girl you told me about with the grating giggle? Or did you break up with her as you said you were going to as soon as you got back to Sydney?’

‘Yeah, she’s gone,’ Alex said with a scowl on his face. Lisa was still a sore point with him. He’d been going to tell her tactfully this last weekend that it was over between them when she’d actually had the hide to break up with him first, informing him that she’d taken a job on a cruise ship that was setting sail for Asia that very week.

He should have been relieved. Instead, he’d felt decidedly disgruntled. ‘I don’t want to talk about Lisa,’ Alex ground out. ‘I want to know which surprising person is getting married.’

‘Trust me when I say that you’re going to be more than surprised. It’s Sergio. He’s the one getting married.’

Though slightly taken aback, Alex was not exactly shocked. ‘What’s so surprising about that? He said he was going to find himself a wife when he got back to Italy. It is a bit quick, though.’

Jeremy laughed. ‘You don’t know the half of it. The wedding’s set for just over two weeks’ time.’

‘Good grief! Why all the hurry? The bride-to-be can’t possibly be pregnant. He’s only been back in Italy a little over a fortnight.’

‘As far as I know, Bella’s not pregnant.’

Alex’s foot slammed on the brake, bringing an angry hoot of the horn from the car behind him. He was on the car park exit ramp at the time. Gathering himself, he drove on, trying to stay calm and not cause an accident.

‘You shouldn’t tell me something like that when I’m driving,’ he said a lot more calmly than he was feeling. For Bella was the Bella, the darling of Broadway and Sergio’s one-time stepsister. Sergio had confessed to his friends a couple of years back that he’d always had the hots for her. Naturally, they’d both urged him to move on and forget her.

Clearly, he hadn’t taken their advice.

‘Trust me, I’m just as shocked as you are,’ Jeremy said in droll tones. ‘Even worse, I’ve had to witness Sergio’s crazed obsession first-hand.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I knew Sergio was staying at his villa on Lake Como, so I decided to fly over yesterday and surprise him for his birthday.’

‘Oh, God, his birthday. I forgot, as usual.’

‘You always forget birthdays. Anyway, back to my story. Naturally, I thought Sergio would be alone. He’d said he wanted a holiday before tackling the family business. Apparently, I’d got that wrong. Because when I arrived, he was in Milan, with Bella installed at the villa. She claimed she was suffering from burnout and had tried to rent the villa from Sergio, but he’d invited her to stay as his guest instead.’

Alex’s teeth clenched down hard in his jaw. ‘So the upshot is she wangled her way back into Sergio’s life and then seduced him.’

‘That’s not how Sergio tells it. He says he seduced her.’

‘That doesn’t sound like Sergio.’

‘I agree, but apparently he did. And then the poor bastard fell in love with her.’

‘Yes, but did she fall in love with him back, or is this a case of like mother like daughter?’ Bella’s mother was a cold-blooded, ambitious woman who’d married Sergio’s widowed father to finance her daughter’s singing and dancing career, then divorced him once Bella’s career had taken off. ‘Does Bella know he’s a billionaire now?’

‘Don’t know. It’s been a madhouse here.’

Alex rolled his eyes. ‘You must have got some impression of Bella’s sincerity. Or lack of it.’

‘Well, as unlikely as this will sound coming from an old cynic like me, I think she might be genuinely in love with Sergio.’

‘Don’t forget she’s an actress,’ Alex pointed out sharply.

‘Now who’s being a cynic? Anyway, the wedding’s set for the thirty-first of July. I have no doubt that Sergio will be in contact with you shortly. He wants us both to be his best men. I told him we’d be honoured. So when he asks you, try to act thrilled, because there’s no way he’s going to change his mind about this. The man’s crazy about her. All we can do is be there for him to pick up the pieces if and when everything goes belly-up.’

Alex wasn’t sure how much help he could be from Australia. But of course he would go to the wedding. He would be proud to stand at Sergio’s side as his best man.

‘Just book a flight that will get you to Lake Como the day before the wedding. No, make that two days before. I want to take you into Milan and have you fitted with a decent dinner suit. This might prove to be a disastrous marriage, but that’s no excuse not to look our very best. We must do Sergio proud on the day. We are, after all, his best men.’

A lump formed in Alex’s throat, rendering him speechless for a moment. Fortunately, Jeremy wasn’t similarly afflicted.

‘Have to go now, Alex. Claudia has just come out onto the terrace looking for me. Now, don’t forget to book your flight, and for pity’s sake sound thrilled when Sergio calls you. Ciao,’ he said with a wry laugh. ‘When in Rome, you know.’ And he hung up.

Alex groaned at the thought of having to sound thrilled when Sergio contacted him. But he would do it for Sergio’s sake. Fate wasn’t being kind to him, letting him fall for a woman like Bella. Their getting married was a disaster waiting to happen.

Such thinking reinforced Alex’s own decision never to get tangled up in the whole ‘love and marriage’ thing. Loving and losing someone—either through death or divorce—was never going to be on his agenda. No way would he risk ending up like his father, or becoming the victim of some clever gold-digger. That was why he always dated girls who never had a hope of ensnaring his heart. Girls who just wanted to have fun.

Alex quickly realised there would be no time for fun during the next two weeks. His nose would be pressed to the grindstone every single day. At least it would be when he finally got to the damned office. Poor Harry. She was probably close to sending out a search party!

* * *

Harriet didn’t mind at all that her boss was running late that morning. When she’d arrived at the office shortly before eight, she’d been dreading having to tell him her news, news which she should have told him when he’d first come back from London. But at the time her emotions had been too raw. She would have wept in front of him. She knew she would. And she didn’t want to do that. Alex would have been embarrassed. And so would she.

So she’d let the days tick away without confessing that her engagement to Dwayne was no more, her anxiety increasing as each day passed. She’d rather hoped her boss might notice that she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring, but he hadn’t. Alex didn’t notice personal details like that. He was a man with tunnel vision most of the time. When at work, he worked.

It did irk Harriet slightly that no one else at Ark Properties had noticed, either. But that was her fault. Whilst she was friendly with everyone who worked there, she didn’t socialise with the rest of the staff. She never went with them for drinks on a Friday night. Harriet had her own group of girlfriends she had drinks with, Emily of course being the main one. Then of course, up till recently, she’d had Dwayne.

Naturally, things would be different from now on, with no Dwayne to complain if she didn’t hurry home after work. It worried Harriet, however, that her suddenly single status would change the wonderful working relationship she’d always had with Alex. He was a great boss. She liked him a lot and felt sure that he liked her back. Yet when she’d walked into his office to be interviewed for the job last year, Harriet had gained the immediate impression that she was a non-starter. Alex had looked her up and down with sceptical eyes. With hindsight, maybe he’d been worried that she might make a play for him. He was, after all, one of Sydney’s most eligible bachelors.

Whatever; as soon as he’d discovered she was engaged, his attitude had changed. Though he’d still put her through the mill during the interview. She must have pleased him with her answers, because he’d hired her on the spot.

Of course, her résumé had been second to none—provided you overlooked her poor pass in her Higher School Certificate. Which Alex had, once she’d explained that her dad—who was a miner—had lost his job during her high school years and that the family finances had been so tight that she’d taken not one but three part-time positions to help make ends meet, her studies suffering as a result. A little white lie, that. But not one she felt guilty about. The boss of Ark Properties didn’t need to know the ins and outs of her past life. Alex had seemed suitably impressed by her work ethic, plus her career in real estate. He didn’t care that she’d never actually been a PA before. He wanted someone who could take over the office whenever he was away, which up till recently had been quite often. He had business ties in England which she wasn’t privy to; Alex could be secretive at times.

But those business ties had apparently been wound up and he was back in Sydney permanently. Harriet might have felt pleased if she hadn’t been in a state of apprehension at the time. That apprehension had now reached such a level that it was interfering with her sleep. So Harriet had resolved last night to bite the bullet and tell Alex the truth this morning. Which would have happened already if he’d been here when she’d arrived, she thought with a flash of irritation. All of a sudden, his being late didn’t seem quite so desirable, the delay in confessing twisting her stomach into more knots.

Sighing at the sight of Alex’s empty office, she headed straight for the staff room, where she filled the kettle in readiness for the mug of black coffee Alex always wanted first thing on arriving. He’d probably send her out for a bagel, too. That man was a bagel addict! Maybe she’d leave off telling him her news till he’d downed his coffee and bagel. Alex wasn’t at his best till he’d eaten. The kettle on, she opened the overhead cupboard and took down one of the small tins of quite expensive cat food she kept there. The snapping sound of the ring pull had a rather large moggy dashing into the room, purring his welcome as he wound his way around Harriet’s ankles.

‘Hungry, Romany?’ Harriet said, quickly scraping the food out onto a saucer and putting it down on the floor. The cat pounced, gobbling up the food like he was starving.

‘You spoil that cat.’

Harriet whirled at the sound of Alex’s voice, surprised that she hadn’t heard him come in. He looked impossibly handsome as usual, dressed in a dark blue business suit which deepened the blue of his eyes and contrasted nicely with the fair hair. His shirt was a dazzling white, his tie a stylish blue-and-silver stripe.

‘You ought to talk,’ Harriet said, thinking of all her boss had done for Romany. ‘Might I remind you that you were the one who insisted on buying all the top-of-the-line cat accessories.’

‘Had to do something to stop my PA from crying her eyes out.’

‘I wasn’t doing any such thing.’

‘You were close to,’ he reminded her.

I suppose I was, she thought as she picked up the plate, washed it thoroughly and put it away, not wanting any of the staff to start complaining about the smell of fishy cat food. Not that they would. They all loved Romany. Unlike Dwayne. He hadn’t loved Romany at all; had complained like mad when Harriet had brought the poor starving animal home a couple of months ago after she’d found him cowering and crying under her car one Saturday night. He’d insisted she take it to the RSPCA the very next day, which she had, hopeful that they would find him a good home.

Impossible, they’d said. No one would want a seriously old cat like Romany. Unable to bear leaving him there to be put down, in desperation she’d taken him to work on the Monday, where she’d asked if anyone would give him a home. When no one had put their hand up, Alex had said he could be the office cat. Always a man of action, he’d immediately had a cat flap installed in the store room, then had taken Harriet out to buy whatever was necessary to keep the cat happy and clean. The cleaners had been informed of Romany’s presence so that precautions could be taken for him not to escape.

Harriet recalled feeling overwhelmed by Alex’s generosity and kindness at the time whilst seething with resentment over Dwayne’s meanness. As she bent and scooped the cat up in her arms, she realised that the incident with Romany had been the beginning of the end of their relationship. Being an animal lover was, after all, one of her checklist points. After that, she’d begun to look at Dwayne with different eyes. The rose-coloured glasses that came with falling in love had definitely come off. His constant refusal to give any money to charity was a sore point. So was his not doing his share of housework around the flat. When she’d complained to Emily about this, she’d just laughed, saying Harry expected way too much from men.

‘They expect their women to look after them,’ her best friend had told her. ‘It’s in their DNA. They’re the protectors and providers, whilst their women are the homemakers and nurturers.’

Harriet hadn’t agreed with Emily, hoping the world had moved on from expecting women to be happy with such narrow roles in life. No way was she going to settle for less than what she wanted in life, which was an interesting career, as well as a husband who ticked all of the boxes on her Mister Right checklist. Dwayne had certainly ticked the first three, but had begun seriously falling down on the rest. His suggestion a month ago that she buy her wedding dress second-hand on the Internet had been the last straw!

‘So has the kettle boiled?’ Alex asked, interrupting Harriet’s none-too-happy thoughts.

‘Should have,’ she said.

Dropping the cat gently on the tiled floor, she set about getting two mugs down from the overhead cupboard. ‘It’s not like you to be late,’ she added, doing her best to ignore the instant churning in her stomach. Maybe she wouldn’t tell him today after all...

‘I slept in,’ he replied. ‘Then traffic was bad. I’m going to need a bagel with my coffee.’

‘Fine. Oh, and, Alex...’ she said before he had the opportunity to walk away and before she could procrastinate further. ‘When you have a minute, I...um...I need to talk to you about something.’

He sighed a rather weary-sounding sigh. ‘Look, Harry, if you’re going to complain about the way I spoke to you yesterday, then don’t bother. I’m sorry. All right? I was in a bad mood and I took it out on you, which I realise was unforgiveable, but I’m only human. If you must know, I broke up with Lisa at the weekend.’

‘Oh,’ she said, not really surprised. Of the three girls Alex had dated during the time she’d worked for him, Lisa had been the most annoying with that silly laugh of hers, not to mention the way she would drop into the office unannounced. Alex hadn’t liked that, and neither had Harriet. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added a little belatedly.

‘I’m not. Not really.’ Alex stared at her hard for a long moment. ‘You’re not going to quit, are you?’

Her shocked expression must have soothed him, for his eyes immediately softened. But it underlined to Harriet that Alex was not a man who responded well to being crossed or thwarted. She’d always known he was a tough businessman, but she’d never seen him seriously angry. It wasn’t in his nature to be mean, but she suspected he had a temper, like most men.

‘No, nothing like that,’ she said quickly.

‘Then out with it, Harriet. I don’t like to wait for bad news.’

‘It’s not bad news,’ she said, startled by his calling her Harriet like that. She’d always liked the way he called her Harry. There was a subtle intimacy about it which made her feel like his friend as well as his assistant. Obviously, she’d been deluding herself in that regard.

‘Well, not bad news for you,’ she went on sharply, doing her best to control a whole range of emotions which began bombarding her. The sudden lump in her throat alarmed her.

‘The thing is, Alex, I...I’ve broken off my engagement to Dwayne.’

His expression carried a measure of shock, quickly followed by one of genuine sympathy.

When tears pricked at her eyelids, panic was only a heartbeat away.

‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Harry,’ he said gently. ‘Very sorry indeed.’

His calling her Harry like that completed her undoing, bringing a wave of emotion which shattered her pretend composure and sent a torrent of tears into her eyes.