The Ruthless Gentleman

by Louise Bay

  “I wish it wasn’t like this,” I said.

  She froze, her knees touching mine as I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her to my lap. “Like what?” she asked.

  “You having to wait on me. Pick up after me. You’re worth more than that.”

  She huffed out a breath and relaxed in my arms. “I’m worth exactly that. Anyway, I like doing it for you.” She ran her palms over my arms.

  “I don’t like the thought of you doing it for other people when I’m gone.”

  She tipped her head back and kissed my jaw. “You want me as your own personal chief stewardess?”

  “You make me sound like a pervert.”

  “That’s because you are a pervert.” She poked me in the ribs and I grabbed her hand, kissing the inside of her wrist as I ground my hips against her.

  “You never thought of what you might want to do other than this?”

  Her mouth fixed in place, a glaze of professional coating her expression. “This is my job. You ever thought of what you might want to do other than buy and sell companies? At least I get to see daylight in my job.”

  She had a point. I worked long hours in personality-less rooms for weeks on end. She was the one on a yacht off the coast of Italy. “Yeah, I accept that my job is ridiculous. You can’t make me feel bad about that—my brother was in the SAS, remember? I’ve learned to live with how shallow what I do can be. But it pays really well.”

  “Well then, I don’t see your point.”

  I traced the dip between her collarbones and trailed my fingers between her breasts. “I was thinking through logistics.”

  She pressed her lips together, trying not to smile. “You were thinking through logistics? Did anyone ever tell you how romantic you are?” Her fingers rippled through my hair and I closed my eyes, savoring her delicate touch.

  “Is that what you want? I’m not sure I’m very good at romance, but I can work on that.” I was going to have to shift a lot of things. I’d never done relationships, never loved anyone, but I would do whatever it took for Avery.

  “But even if I moved the head office, you’re not in one place all the time. We need to figure something out that’s going to work for both of us.”

  I bit at her neck and she moved toward me, asking for more. “I’m not sure romance is what you want,” I growled.

  She tucked her hand to the back of my neck where it fit so perfectly and stroked her thumb along my jaw. This. I could stay like this forever. It wasn’t fucking. It wasn’t talking. It was intimacy and something I wasn’t sure I’d ever had before.

  “I don’t have any answers. You and me beyond the Athena seems impossible. My life is split between three places—Sacramento, the Med and the Caribbean. You’re in London. I have my family to provide for and you have a business to run.” She squeezed her eyes shut and I pressed my mouth to her forehead. “I don’t see how it can work.”

  “We’ll make it work,” I said. “I can fly down to the Med between charters if I have to.”

  She sighed. “You can’t do that. And what happens when I’m three thousand miles away?”

  “I can do that. We’ll figure it out.”

  “You seem so sure, but I just don’t see a way,” she said, looking at me as though she wanted a solution right then and there.

  “Maybe I’ll buy an insurer based in Florida, so I can work out of the States. Perhaps you’ll get a job in London. We’ll make it work.”

  “I don’t know.” She sighed.

  Surely she couldn’t doubt how I felt? I’d laid myself bare to her more than I’d ever done in my life. “You don’t realize how special you are to me. I’ll find a way,” I whispered. “I promise. Trust me.” I didn’t want to agree with her, but our situation wasn’t an easy fix. I could give her the money she needed to care for her family or offer to employ her at Wolf Enterprises, but I knew her pride wouldn’t let her take either of those options. And short of becoming a deckhand, how was I supposed to spend time with her if she continued working on yachts? Would I have to accept I only saw her for days here and there during the season? I couldn’t imagine that would work in the long term. Along with closing the Phoenix deal and finding out who the leak was, I now had to figure out how I made sure I didn’t lose Avery. And the clock was ticking. I didn’t have long left.

  Twenty-Nine

  Hayden

  I was so close to the finish line with Phoenix, I could almost taste it. At the last minute they’d asked for an increase in price. I couldn’t get hold of the CEO and no one could explain why the change at the eleventh hour. I had a gun to my head—pay more or have wasted the last two months on an aborted deal. I couldn’t agree to the increase without my investors being on board and they were determined to torture me by going through some of the financials with a fine-toothed comb. When I’d arrived on the Athena, buying Phoenix had seemed like an almost-impossible task, and now I was within touching distance. It was torture. All I could do was wait and while I did, hopefully I could find out who was the leak at Wolf Enterprises. When Phoenix closed I couldn’t continue to do all my business from a superyacht. I dialed Landon’s number.

  “Looks like Cannon are spending a lot of time and effort on you,” Landon said before I’d even said hello. “They’ve got to one of the crew members.”

  “On the Athena?” My pulse began to throb in my neck.

  “As opposed to which other crew members?”

  “But nothing’s leaked. I’m just waiting for my investors. We’re nearly done.” Shit. I couldn’t lose things this late on, could I? Was this the reason Phoenix had asked for money? Had they had a better offer from Cannon?

  Mentally I scanned through which crew member it could be. The only one I’d anything to do with other than Avery was Skylar. Was it possible someone was sneaking about among my things when they thought I was sleeping or on the main deck?

  “Do you have the name of the crew member you think is compromised?” I asked.

  Taps on keyboards echoed down the phone. “Avery Walker. She’s the chief stewardess, right?”

  I tried to swallow but my throat constricted and I coughed. “No, it won’t be Avery. You’ve got it confused. Do you have a photo? Is it a woman? Does she have white-blonde hair?”

  “No, brown hair. It’s in a ponytail in one shot. Down in another.”

  My heart stammered in my chest, as if it were knocking at my ribcage, trying to get out. “No, there must have been a mistake.”

  “Have I ever steered you wrong?”

  “Yeah, but Avery wouldn’t betray me. And like I said, Cannon haven’t managed to disrupt this and steal this company from under me.” Not yet anyway.

  “Look, my man over there has spotted her three times with the same guy in different locations. We looked into him and he’s some kind of ex-MI5 guy. Works for a firm we know Cannon pay for intelligence. A Phil Dyer, but he uses various aliases. James Cree is a favorite. Alfie Molloy is another.”

  It couldn’t be true. There must be some mistake . . . but Landon didn’t get shit like this wrong. “You have photos of her and this guy? And even if you do, that doesn’t mean anything though, right? Perhaps he approached her, but that doesn’t mean she told him anything. He might have been coming on to her, trying to compromise her and failing.”

  Landon’s silence on the other end of the phone told me he thought I was being an idiot and was trying to piece together why.

  I ended his torture. “I’ve been sleeping with her.”

  “Jesus, you’re an idiot. I told you I’d arrange company if—”

  “Landon,” I growled. I didn’t want to hear how he thought I was a teenager who couldn’t do with my fist for a couple of months in exchange for a successful deal that would feature in my fucking obituary. It hadn’t been like that. Not that lust hadn’t played a part, but it was more than that. I couldn’t have stayed away from her if I’d tried. And I had tried.

  And she’d tried to keep away from me. As much as sh
e wore a mask, the way she fought against crossing the line between guest and crew couldn’t have been faked. Could it? If I’d not bumped into her at the theater, we may never have ended up spending the day and night together.

  Had she engineered that?

  Had she deliberately played coy to throw me off guard?

  Fuck. I didn’t know anything anymore.

  “You’re sure it’s Avery?”

  “Can you get to shore? I can have someone meet you with the evidence in thirty minutes.”

  “But it’s just photographs of her talking to some guy?”

  “In one of the photographs, she was given a satellite phone.”

  She’d told me the yacht only had one satellite phone and that she wasn’t allowed to use it much. That was why she’d had to use mine. Had that been another lie?

  “She has an established line of contact. This wasn’t a one-off.”

  My only hope was this wasn’t Avery. That Landon was confused. At a push, August’s hair could be described as brown, although it was so dark, wouldn’t most people call it black or at least dark brown?

  I stood up. I had to see more evidence. I trusted my brother, but it was hard for me to believe I’d been so wrong about someone. I had to find that phone, see those pictures with my own eyes and confront her. “I need to see the evidence.”

  Thirty

  Hayden

  Did she suspect I knew what she’d done? As much as I didn’t want to look, I couldn’t help but be drawn to Avery standing on the main deck as the tender got closer to the boat. As usual, her hair was scraped back into an efficient ponytail.

  Unfortunately, Landon hadn’t mistaken August for Avery. The photographs his contact had shown me had been conclusive. Avery had met with an ex-MI5 agent on three separate occasions. Once might be explainable. Twice even. But three times she’d spoken to this guy, once just after our night together in Taormina.

  Avery knew I was buying Phoenix. She’d seen the bloody documents. She could have worked out the price and the main terms . . . but the deal hadn’t been stolen from me. Not yet.

  Why hadn’t Cannon stepped in? Was Avery part of a longer-term approach? Perhaps there were plans in place I didn’t know about.

  I’d spoken to my investors onshore, and they’d agreed to the price increase. I was an inch away from completing the deal of the decade, the most significant transaction of my career, and yet I wasn’t elated. Adrenaline ran through my veins, but it wasn’t victory that had put it there. It was anger.

  Betrayal.

  I’d thought it cut like a knife when I found out I had a leak at Wolf Enterprises, but it was a flesh wound compared to the way my heart felt as if it had been yanked out of my chest and displayed on a stake right at that moment.

  The boat was booked until the end of the week, but I had no reason to stay after we completed the sale. Not anymore. But before I left, I wanted an explanation. To look Avery Walker in the eye and ask her how much they’d paid her to fuck me and whether that made her feel like the prostitute it made her.

  Avery

  Something was wrong.

  As much as Hayden and I were super careful, even when we were surrounded by others, I always knew he was aware of me. A look or the tilt of his head gave it away. But as he came aboard all I got was his averted eyes and the back of his head as he swept past me and into the main salon.

  Asking Eric to take him ashore with no notice and without telling me was weird enough, but now he was avoiding looking at me? Had his deal gone south? Last time I’d spoken to him they’d been about to finish things. Something must have gone wrong.

  Hayden was never anything but cool. Charming. In control. But he looked as if he wanted to circle his hands around someone’s neck and squeeze until he’d choked the life out of them.

  “Everything okay?” I asked Eric as he appeared at the top of the stairs, squinting into the sun.

  He shrugged and slipped his sunglasses over his eyes. “This is the weirdest fucking charter I’ve ever been on, that’s for sure.”

  “Did he collect something or meet someone or what?”

  “No idea. He disappeared as soon as we docked and came back forty minutes later. Didn’t say a word to me on the way there or back. He’s a weird son of a—”

  I put my hand up to him. “I’ll go check on him.”

  “I hope the tip is worth it.”

  The tip was the least of my worries. I hated seeing Hayden anything other than the man I knew him to be. Something must have gone seriously wrong and I was concerned about him.

  I knocked on the door to Hayden’s office as I’d done so many times this charter. Next week the office would be back to a bedroom and I’d be blushing thinking about all that had happened between us in this room.

  I’d miss him.

  I’d wish things were different.

  But as my dad always said, no one promised life would be fair. He also loved to tell me I had to play the hand I was dealt and then he’d fall back on a perennial favorite: suck it up, buttercup.

  “Come in,” Hayden barked. He usually met me at the door, dragged me inside, pushed me against the wall and kissed me raw. Something was definitely wrong.

  I turned the handle and stepped through. He was behind his desk, his gaze down. When I followed his eyes, I could see he was looking at photographs spread out on the white, glossy surface.

  I stepped forward and the upside-down images sharpened, their familiarity pulling me toward them.

  As I moved closer, he steepled his fingers over the images and spun them around so they were facing me.

  All were of me and the redheaded man who’d approached me and offered me money to spy on Hayden.

  “You care to explain?” he asked, raising his eyes to look at me. His anger rolled off him, but he was also in complete control. This was a man no one would want to go up against. This was a man ready to battle.

  I stepped forward and peered at the first image. It had been taken weeks ago in Saint Tropez. I hadn’t made the connection before, but the photographer who’d asked me who was on my boat had been the same redheaded guy who’d offered me a hundred and fifty grand to tell him which company Hayden was buying. “It’s the same guy,” I said almost to myself.

  “You two seem cozy.”

  I glanced up. Hayden towered over me, his eyes dark and heavy.

  “Why are you taking pictures of me?” Didn’t he trust me? Was he spying on me as well as this red-headed Phil guy who wouldn’t leave me alone? What the hell had happened and how was I the girl caught in the middle of it?

  He didn’t answer. He just stared at me as if he were about to unleash his wrath.

  “Have you been keeping tabs on me?” I asked.

  “Answer the question,” he said, his jaw tight and his words clipped.

  “He was offering me money,” I said, squinting at the first photograph, still confused as to why I hadn’t recognized that it had been the same guy who’d approached me in Taormina. I’d clearly just not thought anything of it. Perhaps the camera had thrown me off. I’d been excited to get off the boat and was looking forward to speaking to my dad. “This was the guy.”

  “Are you working for Cannon?”

  His question was like a jolt of electricity and I snapped upright and stepped back.

  “What?” He thought I was a spy? I must have misheard him. He knew every inch of me. We’d spent hours together, working, kissing, tracing the contours of each other’s bodies. He couldn’t think that I’d been faking all of that. Surely.

  “It’s a simple question. Yes or no.”

  “Who is Cannon? Who the hell do you think I am?”

  “Then explain the pictures. Why are you meeting this guy—who works for Cannon, but I imagine you already know that.”

  “I don’t know who this Cannon is, and this guy approached me. I never met with him. I told you about this time.” I tapped my finger on the middle photo.

  “You didn’t tell me you’d
spoken to him on at least three occasions.” His hand swept up, indicating the photos. “I guess telling me about once gave you cover in case you’d been spotted. Very clever.”

  Gave me cover from what exactly? “Did it occur to you that he kept coming back because I wouldn’t give him what he wanted?”

  My emotions ricocheted between panic and anger at being accused of something I hadn’t done, but mostly, I was so disappointed that Hayden would think I was capable of spying on anyone, let alone him.

  “I’m showing you the photographs and asking you to explain them. I think I’m being more than reasonable.” His tone was flat and lifeless, as though he was the boss of an organization and I was some faceless employee he’d never met before who he was about to fire. He’d already made up his mind about what those photographs meant. It pierced me to my core that we’d spent so much time together and yet he still thought I was capable of betraying him.

  I’d just have to explain. Surely when he heard what had happened, he’d chastise himself for being such an asshole.

  “This one?” I said, turning the glossy print around so it faced him. “This was the first time I left the yacht. You can see he’s wearing a camera around his neck. He looks like he’s paparazzi. He asked me who was on the Athena.”

  Hayden’s silence contained an unspoken question.

  “No, I didn’t tell him anything. It’s not unusual to get approached, especially in Saint Tropez. All of us do, but we don’t say anything.” I wasn’t sure that was true of some of my colleagues, but I certainly hadn’t. “Unless the guest wants us to.”

  “The guests want you to tell the press they’re on board?” Hayden asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

  I shrugged, taking a seat opposite him. “Sometimes. I mean, this lifestyle is expensive. People like to show off.”

  “So explain why you didn’t tell me you’d been approached?”