The Billionaire Bundle

by Michele De Winton

  Ricardo ground his teeth with anger and revulsion. “What exactly do you think you’re going to achieve by breaking in here and slandering my wife? You’ve never even met her. Have you no dignity? I’ll say this once and for all—I am not interested in you.”

  She placed the bottle of brandy onto a nearby wooden dresser with deliberate precision. “Oh but I have met her, darling. We went to the same school. Talk about a small world. Who’d have thought you’d end up marrying the local druggy tart? Of course, I’m sure she’s cleaned up her act these days, but could you credit it? Marshall never got caught shifting the stuff in that barn, but that was where plenty of unsuspecting college kids got hooked. And then she sent the big boys in when they couldn’t pay up. ”

  “You’re mad, psychotic.”

  “It must be an Almanza thing, drawn to the same sort of colorful women,” she said excitedly. “Brave old you, Ricardo, you finally managed to tame her, but don’t get yourself into a total pickle like Primeiro, will you, darling? We all saw the headlines at head office when that happened. Such a tragedy. She may seem sweet, but she’s not. I’d hate to see history repeating itself. One family destroyed is enough, you have no idea what she’s capable of.”

  “I’ve heard enough of your disgusting lies.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” She threw her phone down onto a sofa and began to unbutton her blouse.

  “Of course I don’t believe you, you’re just being malicious. A stalker gone mad with jealously.”

  “Then I suggest you ask your beautiful new bride all about it.” She peeled off her top to reveal a scarlet lace bra, and dropped it on the floor. “Ask her about Roger Humby in the barn and then watch your little bride blush.”

  “I can destroy you, Kat.”

  She pouted. “Don’t call me Kat anymore. I hate that common name.”

  Ricardo clenched his fists as she slipped the bra straps down over her shoulders. “I can think of a few names that would suit you right now.”

  She began to slide down the zip of her skirt. “Call me baby,” she breathed and licked her lips. “Or your bitch…”

  “Stop this ridiculous charade immediately!”

  “You don’t mean that, Ricky. I know you don’t,” she said and stepped out of her skirt as she drew closer. “I wore my best underwear for you, darling. She’d never do that for you, not in a million years, but I will. I’ll do anything.”

  Ricardo gave her shoulder a firm shove with the flat of his hand as she reached out to touch him. “Then put your clothes back on, get out, and stay away from us or you’ll regret it.”

  She glared at him and there was a silent impasse until she sulkily picked up her skirt. “We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we? Well, good luck with Miss Snooty Drawers and when it’s all over, you now have my number. Tell that Rottweiler secretary of yours to put me through next time.”

  He nodded towards the brandy bottle. “How much of that have you had?”

  “Nothing yet. I pinched it from your miserable cook when she wasn’t looking, Thought we could enjoy it together. In bed.”

  “You thought wrong. You’re fit to drive, so…” He thrust her blouse at her. “Drive away fast before I call the police.”

  “But the Condesa—”

  “I’ll deal with her.”

  “You know where I am,” she said defiantly over her shoulder as she went to leave. “And I’ll do anything, remember. Anything…”

  Once out of sight, Ricardo slammed down the silent phone he’d been clutching throughout the clumsy striptease, his head ready to burst with anger and confusion. Could there be any truth in what she had said? Was it possible that Helen had been involved with drugs? The woman he had fallen in love had been a supplier? Like the scum that had lived off his brother’s wife before it destroyed her?

  He angrily threw the phone onto the polished table and it slithered with a crash to the floor. If that were true, Helen was probably responsible for destroying others’ lives and families. If it hadn’t been for dealer trash like that he would still have a brother and a mother, maybe even his dad would still be alive. And Pirro…poor innocent little baby Pirro would have grown up with his real parents.

  This couldn’t be happening! Just ten minutes earlier he’d had been on the verge of asking Helen Marshall to remain his wife, because he had fallen in love with her. But how could that happen now, with so many questions that needed to be answered? How could he explain to Pirro that he had married such a woman, a woman who peddled death, one of the parasites of the world were responsible his parents’ deaths? Ricardo’s love for her could never be enough to get him through that sort of emotional storm.

  His blood ran cold as his mind began to race faster. If there was any truth to this, who was to say Helen was off the drugs? They’d met in Ibiza, the White Isle, where sex, drugs, and parties were the norm. She’d been his captive for a couple of weeks and, now he thought about it, she was behaving strangely. Irritable, irrational, especially about that stupid old handbag. The handbag she took with her everywhere…she was agitated they’d left it behind at their picnic. What could it contain that was so important to her that he couldn’t easily replace? Or wouldn’t replace. His heart turned to stone. Could her behavior be withdrawal symptoms? It would explain everything, including the money. One million euros on ‘bills.’ Some bills…

  Ricardo slammed his hands painfully onto his desk in a desperate attempt to feel something, anything but the sickening lurch in his stomach.

  How could he have screwed up so badly? Maybe it was genetic, this male Almanza self-destructive tendency, their weakness for evil women. His smart big brother hadn’t spotted it, neither had Dad, so why the hell did Ricardo think he was immune? Arrogance, that was why. Arrogance and stupidity. He had always lambasted gullible people, but look at the bloody state of him now. On his knees, emotionally. He was a disaster.

  “I’m not accepting this,” he muttered to the empty room and was disturbed by the emotion in his own voice. “I’m not going to let this happen.” He had to clear this up, give her a chance to prove that it was all a pack of lies. It had to be lies.

  …

  Ricardo reached the terrace and silently watched Helen pour herself another glass of wine. The bottle was half-empty already.

  “You made it back then,” Helen said when he appeared next to her. “I suspected you’d be gone all afternoon attending to ‘business’.”

  “Obviously,” Ricardo said with a frown and glanced at the bottle. “But we need to talk.”

  “Oh not about the rights and wrongs of property development again, please,” Helen said, and took a large drink from her glass.

  “No.” He put his elbows firmly onto the table. “I want to talk about Roger Humby.”

  Helen’s head jerked backwards in surprise and then she couldn’t stop an incredulous laugh escaping. “Oh, I can guess who you’ve been talking to! Popped in to see you too, did she? It really is a small world when it comes to backhanded property development, isn’t it?” She didn’t think she could stomach his deceit much longer, not when he was looking at her with the beautiful hazel eyes that never failed to melt her resolve. Until now, the bastard. He’d obviously been cooking up his next move with Lidia, Kat, whatever persona she’d been using to get to him. Right under her nose practically, the pair of them. What nerve! Perhaps they’d planned today’s horrible visit together from the very start. What next? Blackmail?

  “You don’t deny knowing her?”

  “Of course not, why should I? We were in the same year at school.”

  “Best friends, I heard.”

  “Hardly that,” Helen said. “She was queen of all the bullies. Still is. And I guess it’s now safe for me to believe her when she says that you two have also met?”

  Ricardo nodded. “It’s a small world.”

  “Isn’t it? I’m surprised you haven’t invited her to join us here for cocktails. Or dinner maybe, that would really make my
day.”

  “She left some time ago,” he said and then his voice grew quiet. “You partied, you two? In your parents’ barn?”

  “Only in a small way and it happened in everybody’s barn,” Helen said and pushed her sunglasses back on her head. She didn’t care if he noticed her eyes were dull and red. “I don’t know what she’s been telling you, but it’s bound to be an exaggeration. She was never invited to our little parties, even her brother couldn’t stand her in those days.”

  Ricardo took a deep breath and knotted his fingers together tightly. “She alluded to a level of substance abuse, your supply…”

  Helen sat stunned for a moment and absentmindedly took another swig of Prosecco. Why on earth had the little witch dragged up the illicit bottle of cider incident? It had been naughty, pinching it from the cupboard, but she’d only had one sip before Kat swanned off with it into the woods with a French exchange student.

  “Hardly a big deal, Ricardo!” Helen shrugged at the pettiness of it all. “Everyone does it at some time or another, don’t they? Part of growing up, but if we’re getting puritanical here, I admit it was probably a silly thing to do. If I’d been caught Dad would have hit the roof, but I don’t really regret it. Schoolgirl hijinks, that’s all.

  Ricardo glared angrily at her. “What if someone got out of their depth?”

  He really was sanctimonious when he wanted to be. “I hardly think anyone needed me to introduce them to the delights of underage indulgence. I was by far the youngest and least experienced of our crowd.” She looked at him crossly. “So where’s all this leading? That all happened a long time ago, kids being kids. I do hope you’re not going to make an issue out of it.”

  “You seem almost proud of what you did.”

  She was tempted to giggle at the craziness of the situation, and the wine was doing its worst on her empty stomach. “Oh come on! Millions of teenagers do the same sort of thing every single day, and don’t go off the rails, they do it for a while, get sick and then grow up.” She suddenly remembered what he’d told her about his sister-in-law, which would explain why his expression was so bleak, his eyes so angry. “Look, I don’t want to sound flippant, but not everyone ends up going down the drain like Arabella. Some people are destined to push things too far. For all you know her finger had been on the self-destruct button for years.”

  “You seem particularly unmoved by the appalling tragedy of it all,” Ricardo replied bitterly.

  “I’m sorry if it seems that way, but I didn’t know her. I didn’t know your brother and mother either. In fact, I’m not sure I know you as well as I thought I did.”

  Ricardo’s expression was unreadable. “Can I assume you still enjoy such social stimulants?”

  Helen regarded her half-empty glass, irritated by his absurdly highhanded tone. He was treating her like a child, like someone helpless he could control. “Yes, I bloody do. I’m an adult, aren’t I?” She rebelliously topped it up and slammed the bottle back into the ice bucket. Ricardo was turning out to be more of a control freak than she had expected. He’d sent Lucia up with the wine, hadn’t he? Was he expecting her to ask permission?

  “You’ve had too much to drink, Helen. I don’t like it.”

  “Grounds for divorce, is it?”

  “I think maybe it will do, yes,” Ricardo said coldly.

  Helen’s breath caught for a second. “What are you saying?”

  “What I am saying, Helen, is that I might as well bring the divorce forward if you insist on behaving like this. There’s no reason why we have to drag this unpleasant sham out for three months if you’re not happy after all.” He pushed his chair abruptly away from the table and Helen’s wine glass wobbled. “I’ll get on to the lawyers as soon as possible and have an addendum drawn up.”

  Helen’s head was spinning. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” He sniffed and stood up, overshadowing her with an air of menace. “Unless you have anything you wish to add.”

  Helen began to panic slightly. He’d turned the tables on her so quickly she hadn’t been able to deal with the other poisonous seed that The Bully had planted.

  “I need some assurance regarding what’s mine and yours. I should have read the small print, I know.”

  “Anything you can put on your body is yours. Everything else we brought into this marriage reverts to its original owner. That is the point of a pre-nup after all.” He let out a hollow laugh. “Christ! You don’t want some more money already, do you?”

  “No, Ricardo, I just need to be sure you have no claim on anything in the UK,” she said stiffly.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Why on earth would I want anything of yours? I don’t want anything you have to offer, Helen. I don’t even want to look at you anymore.”

  His words hurt, but anger gave her courage. “You do bore quickly.”

  Ricardo looked down on her with a disgusted expression on his face. “You might as well finish that,” he said, pointing at the Prosecco.“ It’s the last thing you’re ever going to get out of me.”

  He stiffly turned and walked away back towards the villa, his tall angular frame silhouetted for a few seconds against the pale blue sunset. She watched him go with a twisted sense of longing and anger. She wanted to run after him and say she forgave him for treating her so abysmally, that she’d do anything, be anything he wanted, if she could only stay with him for a little longer.

  But she had known this was going to happen in the end. It had been inevitable and Ricardo had made no secret of the fact from the very beginning. If only she hadn’t allowed herself that small grain of hope that there could be some sort of a happy ending.

  A chill was settling like mist over the hard stones and metal of the terrace and Helen swallowed back the tears when she heard the sound of an engine being started and then tires spinning on gravel.

  She would probably never see him again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The clouds were beginning to gather everywhere when Helen arrived back at Primrose Farm. Although she’d cleared the legal bills and given her parents a fighting fund to finish the initial court case, the aggravation was still rumbling slowly on. It had never really gone away. Something new seemed to be around every corner to cause anxiety.

  It had been three weeks since Helen had returned from Spain and the Skiptree estate was blatantly running their animals over the Marshall’s land, causing damage and upsetting their livestock. And then there were the “travelers” that seemed to be spookily well-heeled with their Range Rovers and designer clothes, intimidating the local families and setting fires all over the place. They were clever, of course. The police appeared to have their hands tied and the legal system was way too slow and cumbersome to tackle the ever-changing nature of the harassment.

  All the landowners knew was that if the trespassers were allowed to continue in this way, eventually commoner’s rights would prevail and the land would be lost to them forever. But the costs of fighting their corner were crippling. It was unfair and it was bullying, but it was like trying to hold back the rising tide. However long they battled, they would never win, not up against the cold-blooded millions that were behind it all. It was just a question of who fell first. And then the Skiptree Estate and Fothergill Enterprises would have their marina.

  Helen hated to admit it, but maybe it was getting to the stage where they should consider their position and quit while they could. It would never be that simple though. Her father was approaching retirement age officially, although he’d always said he’d die on the job. It had been his entire life, he loved it, and he wanted to spend his last days here on Primrose Farm.

  Her mother’s voice interrupted her thoughts as she stood in the farm kitchen. “So when are you planning on telling us, Helen?”

  “What do you mean, Mum?” Helen rubbed a cloth round a cracked mug and pretended to inspect it closely.

  Mrs. Marshall beat some cake batter more vigorously. “It’s not like you to avoid ey
e contact with me, dear.”

  Helen frowned and rubbed the mug harder. “Don’t be daft. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then look me straight in the face and tell me you’re not pregnant then, will you?”

  “What?” She hadn’t seen that question coming, and it heralded a sweep of pent up emotion she hadn’t realized was there. Suddenly the previous few weeks seemed to crash down upon her and Helen was horrified to feel a tear tip over her bottom lashes and trickle down her cheek. She put the mug down on the drainer with a clunk and rubbed at her eye with the heel of her hand.

  “Oh come here.” Mrs. Marshall gathered her only child into her arms and tucked her damp face against her chest. “It’ll be all right, love. You didn’t think we’d be angry, did you?”

  Helen tasted the cold salt drip that rolled into her mouth and her throat ached. “I don’t know what to think. I’ve made such a mess of everything.”

  “Everything will be fine, we’ll manage somehow, assuming that you…?”

  Helen stared up and felt completely empty. “I’m not pregnant, Mum.”

  Her mother looked anxious and stroked Helen’s hair. “Are you sure? You seem different. I can sense a change in you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Are you? Completely?” The older woman’s tone became suspiciously cheerful as she squeezed Helen’s shoulder before saying, “I’ve always dreamt of there being a new baby on Primrose Farm.”

  “I put on quite a bit of weight in Spain, that’s all. Too much high living. It’ll come off soon enough.”