Beauty in the Billionaire's Bed

by Louise Fuller

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

  But he didn’t need to ask the question. He already knew what—who—Davey was talking about.

  ‘I’m talking about Frankie.’

  Arlo felt his heart twist. Hearing her name out loud hurt more than he would have thought possible. Hearing it out loud seemed to make her absence more vivid, more real. Too real.

  Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, he said stiffly, ‘I don’t want to talk about Frankie—’

  ‘Well, I do.’ He heard Davey take a breath. ‘Serena called her. Just to find out if she wanted to ride before lunch on Saturday. Apparently, she’s going out to LA to see Johnny.’

  Arlo swore silently. He’d forgotten all about lunch. ‘I should have called. I’m sorry—’

  ‘I don’t care about lunch. We don’t care about lunch. We care about you, and why you ended things with Frankie.’

  ‘I didn’t end anything,’ he said flatly. ‘It wasn’t that kind of relationship.’

  ‘What kind? You mean the kind where you can’t take your eyes off one another?’

  Arlo bent his head, struggling against the truth of Davey’s words. ‘Exactly. It was a physical thing, and it burned out.’

  He had never lied to his cousin before, and the lie tasted bitter in his mouth.

  There was a long silence, and then Davey said quietly, ‘It didn’t burn out. You snuffed it out. Like you always do. Only it never mattered before. But Frankie’s different. She loves you—really loves you.’

  ‘I know—’ The words were torn from his mouth.

  His heart contracted as he remembered the moment he’d given her the bracelet and how she’d been upset for giving him nothing in return.

  She had given him something. She had given him her love and her trust. She was a gift—beautiful, unique, irreplaceable.

  ‘And you love her.’ The anger had faded from Davey’s voice. ‘I know you don’t want to admit it, and I know why.’

  Picturing the moment when he’d rejected Frankie, Arlo felt a pain sharper than any physical injury he’d ever endured. He had told her he wanted to be honest and then he had lied to her face.

  ‘I can admit it, but it doesn’t change anything. I tried marriage, commitment, love—whatever you want to call it.’ His chest tightened, and remembered misery and panic reared up at him. ‘It was a disaster.’

  ‘Yes, it was. Because you were young and you were grieving and you made a mistake. And if you’d been like everyone else on the planet—like me and Johnny and Arthur—you would have known that was all it was.’

  He heard Davey sigh.

  ‘But you hadn’t ever made a mistake. You were always so smart, and so in control, and you didn’t like how it felt. And when you got divorced you didn’t just walk away from Harriet. You walked away from love.’

  Arlo felt his throat tighten. His eyes were burning. He hadn’t walked. He had run. He had turned and run away from love and kept on running until some cosmic force had put Frankie in his path...or rather in his bed.

  Frankie, with her fiery curls and freckles, her permafrost-melting smile and her teasing laughter, which trailed a promise of happiness like the tail of a kite high in the bluest sky.

  More than anything he wanted to turn and follow her, but—

  ‘I have to keep on walking because nothing’s changed,’ he said slowly.

  He couldn’t change his past.

  Davey cleared his throat. ‘Everything’s changed. Frankie is not Harriet, for starters. But what’s changed the most is you. You’re different with her.’

  Different because of her, Arlo thought, his fingers tightening around the phone.

  ‘And you don’t need me to tell you what to do. Just to tell you that it’s not too late,’ Davey said softly.

  But Davey was wrong, he thought, his heart swelling against his ribs. It had been too late from the moment he first saw Frankie. All this panic and doubt was just him struggling to catch up with the truth.

  For so long he’d been so fixed on the idea of absolutes that he’d been blind to the beautiful potential of a life where random events simply challenged you to take new directions. Like down a causeway in the middle of a storm. Or to a crowded family party.

  He swallowed past the lump in his throat. ‘Then I should probably get going if I’m going to stop Frankie catching that plane.’

  Hanging up, he glanced at his watch. If he left now, he could catch her at the airport...

  It took him less than ten minutes to grab his jacket, find the keys to the Rolls, and more or less run outside to where the huge gold car sat slumbering on the warm driveway.

  His heart was leaping.

  Three days ago the past—his and hers—had felt like insurmountable obstacles to a future where he and Frankie could be together. But she had been right. Love conquered everything, even the obstacles around his heart, and now nothing would stop them being together.

  He knew now that he didn’t need or want to chase what his parents had shared.

  He wanted and needed Frankie.

  Together, they would make a life that was rich and enticing and joyful—but not perfect. Why would he want perfect? It was their flaws, their failings, that had brought them together, and it was in failing that they’d found strength in themselves and one another.

  Turning the car around, he began rumbling over the cobblestoned causeway, tensing his muscles to stop himself from just putting his foot down on the accelerator pedal and flooring it.

  There was plenty of time.

  He had a full tank of fuel so he would only need to stop once.

  He frowned. What was happening? The steering wheel was turning in his hands like a dog pulling on its lead, and there was an ominous choking sound coming from the engine.

  His hands clenched around the wheel, urging the big car on. But he could feel the power dying, and he watched as with slow, agonising inevitability the Rolls slid slowly to a standstill.

  Switching off the engine, he yanked up the handbrake and threw himself out of the car. He flipped open the bonnet and stared down at the engine. He had no idea what was wrong with it. The alternator, maybe?

  But that wasn’t something he could fix right here and now. He needed another car.

  He began to run back to the house. He would take the Land Rover.

  His footsteps faltered. Except he couldn’t. Constance had taken it to go shopping in Newcastle. Even if he called her it would take her at least an hour and ten minutes to get back and that was too long.

  The train would take even longer.

  What he needed was a taxi—only of course there was no phone signal out here, and it would take him twenty minutes to run back to the house...

  Heart hammering against his ribs, he squinted into the pale sunlight. He must be seeing things.

  Except he wasn’t.

  There really was a London black cab rumbling slowly over the cobblestones.

  It stopped in front of the Rolls and he stared in shock—not at the car, but at the woman stepping into the sunlight.

  ‘Do you need some help?’ she asked.

  Frankie was standing there, her red hair gleaming in the sunlight.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  He watched without blinking as she walked towards him, scared to blink in case she disappeared. His throat tightened with love and longing as she stopped in front of him.

  ‘Oh, you know... I was in the area.’

  ‘But you’ll miss your flight.’

  Frankie nodded. ‘That’s the plan. Although it only really became a plan this morning, when I was on my way to the airport.’

  Arlo swallowed. His mouth was dry, and he felt breathless with shock and hope. ‘I was on my way there too.’

  Her face tensed. ‘To go to Svalbard?�
�

  ‘No.’ He took a step forward. ‘I’m not going to Svalbard. I was coming to find you. To stop you from leaving.’

  She took a step forward too, and now he could see his love and longing reflected in her beautiful blue eyes.

  ‘And why do you want to stop me from leaving?’ she said shakily.

  Lifting his hands, he cupped her face. ‘Because I love you and I need you. And I want to spend my life with you.’

  ‘You love me!’ Frankie echoed, and then she started to cry. All the way up in the taxi she had been picturing Arlo’s face, imagining what he might say, but the simple, absolute truth of his words were more than she could have wished for.

  ‘I want to spend my life with you too. More than anything. I love you so much.’

  ‘Not as much as I love you.’

  His face creased and she saw that he was crying too.

  ‘I can’t believe that I let you go. Or that you came back—’

  ‘Of course I came back. Everything else in my life is optional. But you—you’re like air to me. I can’t breathe without you.’

  * * *

  Arlo pulled her closer, his mouth finding hers. ‘I can’t breathe without you either.’

  He could hardly believe what was happening. Not just that she was here, and that she loved him and he loved her, but that love had come so simply and completely.

  ‘I made everything a struggle,’ he said softly. ‘I fought the past, my family, and most of all myself, because I was scared of being proved right. But I’ve never been happier to be proved wrong.’

  He felt her hands slide around his body and they looked into each other’s eyes, both of them certain that here in each other’s arms they were in the right place—the only place they would ever want to be.

  * * *

  Enchanted by Beauty in the Billionaire’s Bed? Get wrapped up in these other Louise Fuller stories!

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  Available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Only King to Claim Her by Millie Adams.

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  The Only King to Claim Her

  by Millie Adams

  CHAPTER ONE

  MAXIMUS KING LOOKED across the ballroom at Arianna Lopez, who up until tonight had been a disgraced starlet working her way back into the good graces of society. Optics were everything in this age of social media. Constant visibility.

  Arianna had made the terrible mistake of being beautiful, rich, and seeming selfish. And so, had fallen out of favor with the clambering masses on the internet who saw her as a property belonging to them.

  And rehabilitating image was his business. Tonight had been a sterling success. The charity event was sparkling, and perfect. And she now looked more Madonna than whore.

  His job was done.

  She was the same shallow, ridiculous creature she’d been when they’d met two weeks ago. But now the world had forgotten her tantrum about the roses she was given not being entirely white, and so it didn’t matter what was in her heart.

  Only what people saw.

  Optics, after all, were everything.

  With every aspect of a person’s life available for public consumption nowadays, it had to be so.

  Perhaps it was why he took such great, perverse delight in using optics as his cover.

  For no one, not even his family, knew the truth about Maximus King.

  He straightened his tie and turned, beginning to walk out of the room. He heard the click of high heels behind him.

  He paused. He knew that it was Arianna; he had noted the sound her shoes made against the marble floor. No one ever took him off guard.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I thought that we might...leave together. After all, our working relationship was so satisfactory. I thought we might be able to...transition it.” She put one delicate, manicured hand on his shoulder, and her touch left him cold.

  But he smiled. That charming grin of the playboy that all the world took him to be. “Not tonight.”

  “Not tonight?” Her eyes widened. “I was under the impression you’re up for it every night.”

  He gave her his best, most practiced grin. Nothing to see here, just a playboy. Not a care in the world. “There’s already a woman waiting in my bed, sweetheart.” He winked for good measure. “You have to book early.”

  He turned and continued to walk out of the ballroom. His car was there at the front of the hotel waiting for him. He scanned the street, a habit. Then got into the vehicle, maneuvering through the San Diego streets, making his way back to his glittering mansion in the hills. He had a spectacular view of the ocean from the front, and the protection of the mountains in the back.

  Lots of windows.

  With bulletproof glass.

  Again, part of the facade. An appearance of vulnerability, of openness. Without actually offering it.

  He parked his car in front of the house and got out, using the fingerprint sensor to allow him entry into the home.

  And the moment he stepped into the darkened room, he felt something was off.

  He paused and reached into his suit jacket. He had a small gun there with a silencer. He always carried it.

  As he walked deeper into the house, he heard nothing. Rather, he sensed a ripple of disturbance in the air. He had learned to listen to his gut. It was the difference between life and death. And he was still alive.

  “I would quite rather you did not shoot me.”

  The voice coming from the darkness was feminine, accented and sweet.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  He heard a rustle of movement, coming from inside the living room, and then he saw a figure, dressed in white, moving toward him. She stepped into a shaft of moonlight that filtered in from the windows that faced the sea. Small, with long blond hair and a round, pale face, he could not make her features out in the dim light.

  “I am Princess Annick, formerly of the lower dungeon. Lately of the palace proper.”

  Something echoed inside of him.

  “Annick,” he repeated.

  He knew the name Annick. Princess Annick.

  “Who sent you?”

  “I sent me,” she said. “A perk, I suppose, of being free. And I am free.” She made a small sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Peculiar, that. I am not accustomed to it.”

  “You’re the Princess of Aillette, correct?” He knew.

  He didn’t need her to confirm. He’d taken an assignment there only a year ago. That meant he’d learned the history of the country and he would not forget it. He took his work seriously, and that meant he didn’t go in and perform the task unless he was quite clear on what was being done.

  As far as the US government was concerned, there was no Maximus King enlisted in their ranks. His work, and any trail that could be traced back to him, was so coded it would take a mastermind to track him down.

  Granted, he had always known it was possible. Hence the bulletproof glass.

  But he still could not quite figure out how this woman was here, now, and with full knowledge of both his lives.

  “Oui,” she said. “It is me.”

  “I have already done a service for your country, Annick. I’m not certain why you are here.”

  “Oh
, it is in regard to that service, Mr. King.”

  “I don’t do follow-up visits.”

  “Ah, but you see, you have created a problem.”

  “Removing dictators from power is the solution. Not the problem.”

  “What of the vacuum that is left behind?”

  “Not my responsibility.”

  “Eh,” she said. “Then what is?”

  “Just as I said. I receive orders from military intelligence. I gather a team, or simply myself, depending on the situation. I carry out orders. I leave. I assume that the government sends a crew in after to handle the rest.”

  “Ha! Lip service at best,” she said. “Three months of transitional assistance and then what? Gone. I am left with few resources, and little path to rule a country that still scarcely believes I am mentally well enough to rule. Though I believe I have been perfectly wonderful in the year since I have begun to rule.”

  “You claim to have few resources, and yet here you are.”

  “I am very sneaky,” she said. “And that comes from many years of imprisonment and secret plotting for how I might make amends when I was released.”

  “Were you not complicit in the regime?”

  “I was certainly not. As I said, I was primarily ensconced in the lower dungeon. I was trotted out as a figurehead on rare occasions. Proof of life and all. And I confess, if I have one weakness it is that I do care a bit for my life. I did not wish to be dead.”

  “A common wish,” he said.

  “Quite.”

  “So what is it you want, Annick? Other than to not be dead.”

  She looked up at him, and for a moment, he thought he saw her falter. For a moment, he saw vulnerability. “I would like for you to come back to Aillette with me.”

  “No.”

  “You have not even heard my proposition.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “You should hear my proposition, I think.”

  “You are perhaps overrating your proposition. I have so much here,” he said, indicating the mansion that he did not care about at all. He was dead inside. And when you were dead inside, you did not fear death, not overmuch. But Annick did not need to know that. Annick only needed to know what the rest of the world knew about him. Though she did know a few things, which he found disturbing. She knew that he was responsible for the death of the dictator of Aillette.