Billionaire's Bride for Revenge (Billionaire?s Bride for Revenge)

by Michelle Smart

  ‘Get out.’

  She stormed to the door. ‘With pleasure.’

  ‘No, I mean get out for good. Pack your things and leave.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Oui, ma douce, more serious than you could ever comprehend. You are not welcome in my home any more. I should have left you alone to marry Javier. That would have been the best revenge on him, to let him spend his life with Carabosse.’

  For an age they stared at each other, all the loathing that had been there at the beginning of their relationship brought back to life for its dying gasps.

  ‘You need to let it go,’ she said in as hard a tone as she could muster. ‘This vendetta is not going to destroy the Casillas brothers, it’s going to destroy you. It’s already destroyed your soul.’

  Then she walked out of the office, slamming the door behind her.

  She was opening the door to her quarters when she heard the most enormous crash ring out from his.

  She didn’t pause to worry what it could be.

  By the time she’d shoved as much of her possessions as she could into her cases, a car and driver were waiting for her in the courtyard.

  As she was driven out of the estate she didn’t look back.

  * * *

  Only through iron will did Freya make it through the dress rehearsal.

  Her performance was not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but Mikael had only screamed in her face once so the improvement was there.

  But she wasn’t feeling it. She heard the music but it didn’t find her soul the way it always used to do.

  Had she lost her soul?

  That was a question she had asked herself countless times the last few days.

  She had accused Benjamin of having lost his. Had the deal she’d made with the devil caused her to lose hers too?

  If he really were the devil then why had he transferred ten million euros into her account the day after he’d thrown her out of his chateau?

  Her instinct had been to transfer it straight back but she’d resisted, having the frame of mind to remember her mother.

  She had been who he’d transferred the money for. Not Freya.

  Benjamin would never let her mother suffer out of spite for Freya because, fundamentally, he was a decent man.

  A decent man who had been crossed by his closest friends.

  She had asked him to sit in the theatre owned by the men who had caused so much damage to him, when she knew how much he hated them.

  She lay back on the huge bed he had never seen let alone shared with her and put a hand to her chest to still her racing heart, her thought drifting to Vicky Page, the role she would perform to the public for the first time tomorrow night. The Red Shoes was a fabulous, iconic production but Freya had spent so long learning the choreography and then frantically working to retain it that the storyline itself had passed her by.

  Or had she wilfully blocked it out because of the parallels with her own life...?

  The story, in its essence, was about ambition. In it, Vicky, a ballerina starring in her first lead role, finds herself torn, forced to choose between love and her career.

  Freya had chosen career over everything since before she had developed breasts.

  Vicky chose love.

  Vicky made the wrong choice.

  Freya feared she had made the wrong choice too.

  She had fought against letting Benjamin into her heart from the beginning because the danger had been there right from the very first look between them in Javier’s garden. She had pushed against it and fought and fought but all that fight had been for nothing.

  Everything she had feared about marrying Benjamin had come to bear. That pull she had felt towards him from that very first glance had grown too strong. Without him she had become untethered, as if her anchor had been sliced away and she were drifting out to sea without a way of steering herself back to land.

  If it looked like a duck, talked like a duck and walked like a duck then it was a duck. That was what she had said to him.

  ‘Ducks can’t talk,’ he’d retorted.

  No, ducks couldn’t talk, but fools could fall in love even when it was the very worst thing they should do, and she was the biggest fool of all.

  Benjamin hadn’t just stolen her body, he’d stolen her heart.

  She didn’t just need him. She loved him.

  She’d fallen in love with every vengeful, cruel, generous, thoughtful part of him and to deny it any longer would be like denying the duck its existence.

  And now her greatest fear about falling in love had come to bear too. Her dancing had gone to pieces. That was why the music no longer worked its magic in her soul, she realised. She’d given her heart and soul to Benjamin.

  The music no longer worked its magic without the man who thought she was the reincarnation of the wicked Carabosse.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BENJAMIN CLICKED HIS pen moodily. He’d read the news article spread out on the table before him so many times he could recite it.

  A burst of something suddenly pummelled him and he grabbed the offending newspaper, scrunched it into a tight ball and threw it on the floor at the exact moment one of his maids appeared to clear away his breakfast coffee.

  She looked at him for a moment then walked straight back out again.

  He didn’t blame her. He hadn’t been in the best of moods lately and was aware of it affecting his entire household.

  That didn’t stop him getting up from his seat and kicking the ball of paper.

  He would tell Pierre he no longer needed to send someone into town to collect him a newspaper any more. Who even read their news in this old-fashioned format any more anyway? It was all there on the Internet, news from all corners of the globe available at his fingertips.

  If he stopped getting it he could avoid all news about the arts. There would be no danger of him turning a page and seeing a news article about the grand opening of Compania de Ballet de Casillas’s new theatre that night. There would be no danger of him turning the page to be greeted with his estranged wife’s striking face staring at him, the face of Compania de Ballet de Casillas.

  The face of the ballet company owned by the two men he hated. The face he could not expel from his mind even though he refused to think about her. He’d had every last trace of her removed from the chateau and her studio door locked.

  How dared she ask such a thing of him? She wanted him to put his vendetta aside when she didn’t spare two thoughts for him outside their contracted hours?

  I need you.

  Of course she did. Just as his mother and his two closest friends had needed him, all of whom had only ever wanted him for what he represented or could give them and not for himself. He didn’t add his father to that list. He had never pretended he needed him.

  And then to say she’d wished she’d married Javier?

  If that comment had been designed to cut through him it had...

  Suddenly he found his legs no longer supported him and he sat back down with a thud.

  Freya was used to doing everything on her own and being single-minded. She’d had to dedicate her life to get where she was, turning her body black and blue in the process.

  She had lost control in his office.

  He had only ever seen her lose control before in the bedroom.

  The rest of the time she was fully in command of herself and her actions. She never did or said anything without thought.

  She had wanted to hurt him with that comment.

  Because he had hurt her, he realised with a rapidly thumping heart.

  She had come to him for help. She had begged him.

  Freya had never asked for anything from him before but his jealousy over her love and commitment to her job, his automatic disbelief that she should need him, added to his fury at what she had asked of him, had all done the talking for him. And the thinking.

  She was going to star in the most important performance of her life th
at night and she was terrified.

  His beautiful, fiercely independent wife was terrified.

  But how could she need him?

  And after everything he had done to her.

  He had called her selfish but that was far from the truth.

  He was the selfish one.

  He’d been wrong to think she should change habits formed over a lifetime just to suit his ego in a marriage she had never wanted to a man she had never wanted.

  And he was wrong to allow his vendetta to destroy her life.

  Slumping forward, he rubbed at his temples and willed the drums and cymbals crashing in his head to abate.

  He willed the throbbing ache in his heart to abate too. He had been willing that since he had watched her be driven out of his life.

  The press would be out in force that night and the spotlight would be on her, the heir to Clara Casillas’s throne.

  She would see Javier that night too. Everyone would be watching them both to see how the mercurial Javier Casillas dealt with the dancer who had dumped him for his oldest friend.

  No one knew their marriage was already over.

  Over...

  He had thrown her out.

  The banging in his head got louder, his chest tightening so hard he could no longer draw breath.

  Dear God, what had he done?

  Freya would have to deal with all the press attention and Javier on her own while trying to find a way to get her unwilling body to do the performance of its life.

  How could he let her go through that alone?

  She did need him.

  She needed him to fix the damage he had caused with his bitter selfishness and untrammelled jealousy.

  * * *

  Freya sat at her dressing table applying colour to her whitened cheeks. She liked to do her own hair and make-up before a performance, liked that she had a private dressing room in which she could concentrate on nothing but her breathing. She was fully warmed up, her costume had been fitted and in two minutes she would join her fellow dancers in the wings. From the apprehension she found whenever she looked in anyone’s eyes, they were as terrified about her performance as she was.

  Strangely, admitting her feelings for Benjamin had had a positive effect on her psyche. It had been like removing the weights that had turned her limbs to lead. She felt sicker in her stomach but freer in her arms and legs. She could only pray it translated to the stage.

  She blinked rapidly and dragged her thoughts away from Benjamin before the tears started up again.

  No tears tonight, Freya, she told herself sternly.

  A short knock on the door was followed by one of the stagehands poking her face into the room. ‘More flowers for you.’

  Her dressing room was already filled with enough bouquets to open her own florist’s and this was the largest bunch by a clear margin.

  Accepting them with a forced smile, she was about to put them on her dressing table when she caught the scent of lavender.

  She put her nose into the bunch, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, memories of Provence and Benjamin flooding her.

  Lavender was the scent she would always associate with him. If she made it to old bones she already knew it was a scent that would still hurt her.

  Her hands shook as she sniffed again and looked at the bunch properly.

  Flowers of all different colours and varieties were in the beautiful bouquet but overwhelming it all were purple lavender flowers.

  Placing the bouquet on her lap, she fought her fingers to open the envelope they had come with.

  You are a shining star, ma douce. Every heart will belong to you tonight but mine will beat the strongest.

  Her heart thumping, she stared around the small dressing room as if he would suddenly appear.

  Did that mean he was here?

  ‘Who gave you these?’ she asked the stagehand, who was still at her door.

  ‘A tall man in a tuxedo.’

  ‘That narrows it down,’ she said with a spurt of laughter that wasn’t the least bit humorous. Every person there would be dressed in their finest clothes. ‘Can you be more specific?’

  The stagehand’s face scrunched up in thought. ‘Black hair. Thick eyebrows. Scary-looking.’

  It was him!

  Benjamin was here!

  She could hardly believe it.

  Joy and dread converged together to set off a new kaleidoscope of butterflies in her belly.

  He was here! Here to support her. Under the same roof as the two men who had caused him such harm for her.

  The stagehand looked at her watch. ‘They’re waiting for you.’

  With a start, Freya realised she was in danger of missing her cue.

  She ran to the wings, whispering her apologies to everyone she passed.

  The orchestra played the opening beats and then it was time for the performance to begin.

  * * *

  From the private box Benjamin, who had paid an extortionate amount of money to procure it from a richly dressed couple in the theatre lobby, large glass of Scotch in hand, watched Freya dance on the stage with more pride than he had ever known he possessed.

  Seeing her in her studio practising alone and clips on the Internet were no substitute for what he witnessed now, beauty expressed in its purest form, a witty portrayal of ambition and a heart-wrenching portrayal of love.

  Freya flew as if she had wings. No one else watching would believe the pain she put her feet and limbs through to create something so magical and here, seeing it with his own eyes, he understood for the first time why she put herself through the torture.

  She captivated him and, from the faces in the rows below him, she had captivated everyone else too. When the tragedy at the end occurred he doubted there was a dry eye around.

  He sipped the last of his Scotch to burn away the lump that had formed in his throat.

  If anything were to happen to Freya for real...

  It would kill him.

  She wouldn’t give him a second chance, he knew that. He didn’t deserve it and wouldn’t ask for it. But as long as he knew she was living the life she had worked so hard for and creating the magic he had witnessed that night, he could live his own life with some form of peace.

  It was only as he left the box to search for her and caught sight of Javier and Luis that he realised he hadn’t thought about either of them once that evening. His entire focus had been on Freya.

  This could be his moment, he thought, heart thumping, blood pumping. The opportunity to punch them both in their treacherous faces, to show his utter contempt for them with the world’s press there to witness it in all its glory...

  He turned on his heel and walked in the other direction.

  * * *

  Freya accepted the warm embraces from her colleagues and told them, one after the other, that no she wouldn’t be attending the after-show party but yes, of course she would keep in touch.

  The best embrace had come from Mikael, who had thrown her in the air before planting a massive kiss on her lips. ‘I knew you could do it!’ he had said in his thick Slavic accent. ‘You were magnificent!’

  And then she had set off to the privacy of her dressing room reflecting that this would be the last time she would walk these corridors. There was none of the sadness she’d expected that this chapter of her life was over.

  She still didn’t know what her future held dance-wise. She’d put everything on hold to get through that performance.

  And she had done it!

  She felt giddy. And sick.

  Because the other part of her future was also an unknown.

  Now the euphoria of the performance was dissipating, the relief at having Benjamin there somewhere within the packed theatre was leaving her too.

  If there was any chance he had feelings for her, and her gut told her he did, she knew it wasn’t enough for them. How could it be when they both wanted and needed such different things?

  Their ending had been fated from
their beginning. How could any union forged on hate ever end in anything but disaster?

  But still she longed to see him.

  Where was he?

  Would he seek her out?

  She had no idea how she would react or what she would say if he did.

  Her heart sank to find her dressing room empty of everything but the dozens and dozens of bunches of flowers. They would be forwarded to her apartment in the morning.

  By the time she’d stripped her costume and make-up off and donned a pair of skinny jeans and a black shirt her heart had fallen to her feet.

  He hadn’t sought her out.

  Unnoticed by anyone, she slipped out of the theatre and hailed a taxi.

  The short journey to her apartment took for ever.

  Had she imagined the note from Benjamin? If she hadn’t then where was he? Why had he not come to find her?

  So lost in her desolate thoughts was she that when she stepped out of the elevator across from her apartment, she almost didn’t register the figure sitting on the floor by her door.

  The keys she had in her hand ready to let herself in almost slipped through her fingers.

  Benjamin lifted his head and stared at the woman he had been waiting for.

  He got to his feet while she walked slowly towards him. Her face didn’t give anything away but her eyes...they were filled with a thousand different emotions.

  ‘I apologise for leaving the theatre without seeing you,’ he said, breaking the silence. ‘Javier and Luis were there. I didn’t want to create a scene so thought it best to leave before anything could happen. Please, can I come in?’

  She inhaled then nodded and unlocked the door with a shaking hand.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she asked politely, no longer looking at him.

  Grateful that her first words to him weren’t of the get the hell out variety, he answered with equal politeness. ‘If it isn’t too much trouble.’

  ‘Wine?’

  ‘You have alcohol?’

  Her gaze darted to his. The glimmer of a smile quirked on her lips. ‘I had a glass last night. There’s three quarters of the bottle left.’

  ‘You will have a glass with me?’

  ‘Do I need it?’

  ‘Probably. I know I do.’

  A sound like a muted laugh came from her lips but the way she tore her eyes from him and blinked frantically negated it.