Sexy Billionaires

by Carol Marinelli

  He could see the red weals on the backs of her heels; they still looked sore and angry.

  ‘No,’ he said gruffly, vowing then that if anyone so much as looked at her strangely for wearing flip-flops that they’d go somewhere else. ‘It’s fine. They obviously need to heal.’

  The relief on her face made him feel very strange, even as the unsavoury events of the day warred for supremacy in his chest. This woman was making a serious habit of turning his life upside down. And he was letting her.

  ‘They should be better by tomorrow; I’ve been putting cream on them all day. It’s my own fault; I’m not used to wearing those kind of shoes.’

  He looked away from her huge brown eyes and hardened his heart. He cursed himself for the umpteenth time that day for letting her and her complications into his life. The woman was like a sledgehammer between his eyes; he couldn’t see straight or think straight with her around.

  In the restaurant, once they’d ordered, Alicia forced herself to relax and looked around. She caught Derek’s eye and smiled but he blushed a little and then looked away guiltily. This was so far removed from the genial joky man she knew that she reached over without thinking. Dante and Patricia were deep in conversation beside them.

  ‘Derek? What is it—is something wrong?’

  He looked at her again and now looked unbelievably guilty and worried. The conversation stopped beside them and Alicia caught Patricia nudging Derek, as if to tell him to behave. Now she looked guilty too when she caught Alicia’s look. Alicia felt sick to her stomach.

  ‘What is it? Please.’

  Even Dante beside her couldn’t distract her from this.

  Eventually he was the one who bit out, ‘You may as well tell her; we already spoke about it this morning.’

  Her insides froze. And she beseeched Patricia with her eyes.

  With extreme reluctance and a very apologetic smile, she spoke. ‘Alicia, dear, I’m afraid there’s a very nasty rumour going around…about you.’

  Her chest felt tight and hard. ‘Let me guess. Serena Gore-Black.’

  Patricia nodded. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s nobody’s business what your history is, but there is the fear that the paparazzi will get a hold of the story. Gossip will always flourish where money, power and the media are prevalent…’ Her voice trailed away and now Alicia felt doubly sick.

  ‘My goodness, I never thought—’

  ‘That your misdeeds would catch up with you?’ Dante asked harshly.

  Patricia jumped to her defence. ‘Dante, that’s no way to talk—’

  Alicia put out a shaky hand, her head pounding with the implications of this hitting her like a truck. ‘Patricia, please. The truth is…the truth is…it is true.’

  Alicia knew she couldn’t act the martyr—didn’t want to. Dante would believe the worst of her in connection with Melanie until that baby was born, but this…she could try and do something about.

  ‘In one way,’ she said, her voice strong.

  Everyone looked at her and she decided to focus on Patricia, her ally.

  ‘The truth is yes, I did have an affair with a married man, Dr Raul Carro. But the other side of it—’ her voice became bitter ‘—is that I had no idea he was married.’

  She felt Dante go still beside her and couldn’t bear to look and see blatant disbelief on his face. She continued, faltering. ‘He came over for just a couple of months from Spain. No wedding ring, no mention of a wife and family…’

  She shrugged minutely, bitterly aware of the glaring parallels between that situation and now this one when she said, ‘He was tall, dark and handsome. In grim and grey January, in a bleak part of Oxford, he seemed like some kind of god, and when he asked me out…’

  ‘You couldn’t resist…’ Patricia smiled with innate feminine understanding and she reached for Alicia’s hand. ‘Oh, my dear, you must have been devastated when you found out.’

  Alicia sent a quick glance to Dante but he was staring into his drink.

  ‘It was pretty horrendous.’ She forced a hard smile. ‘Especially when it turned out that he’d been seeing not only me, but half of the hospital staff, it seemed. I only found out at the very end. Serena Cox, as she was then, was one of his casualties and the first one to find out he was married. She made the phone call to his wife…but was very careful to absolve herself of any crime. She always denied her affair with him.’

  Alicia felt icy-cold. It became actually potentially even worse. She continued faintly, avoiding Dante’s eyes, ‘Serena even leaked the story to a local rag and named people in an effort to deflect attention from herself.’

  Alicia didn’t have to remind herself that she had been one of those most prominently named and shamed. ‘It didn’t make the nationals…but…’In her mind’s eye she could still see the lurid headline:

  Dirty Doc does it with half the hospital while poor wifey waits at home…

  Dante muttered caustically, ‘This just gets better and better.’

  For the first time, Alicia thought of how this would affect Derek too, with the welfare of his own company hinging on this merger, and had an image of their four children. She felt as if she were going to vomit.

  Derek’s voice boomed and he gasped with comic affront, ‘And now that cow is trying to make you look bad!’

  Alicia shrugged, barely keeping her panic contained. She could feel an icy wind coming from Dante’s direction—no doubt he didn’t believe a word of this. ‘We’d never got on working together; it was obviously too good an opportunity for her to miss.’

  Derek mopped his sweaty brow with a napkin and said forcibly, ‘I don’t have a problem with Gore-Black; he’s a good man, just married to an unfortunate wife. She’ll have to go home, of course. We do not need people here who want to distract and disrupt proceedings with foul play, do we, Dante?’

  Dante looked at Alicia and his eyes were hard. She barely registered Derek’s words. After a long moment he said, ‘No. No, we don’t.’

  He was obviously regretting his decision to bring her after all and, as much as she would have welcomed a scenario which would have given her an out, Alicia was sickened to be the cause of creating a scandal within the negotiations—the very kind of scandal that could cause their collapse.

  Later, as they said goodnight to the other couple, Patricia said, ‘Alicia, don’t worry, Derek is so angry that I wouldn’t be surprised if that woman will be on a plane home tomorrow.’

  Alicia grasped her hand, her face going pale. ‘Oh, no, please; that’ll just made things ten times worse.’

  But Patricia just patted her cheek and said goodnight, telling her not to worry.

  Later, when Alicia emerged into the bedroom after having a bath, the room was empty. Wrapping the towel tight around herself, she walked to the glass doors and found Dante sitting on the balcony, a glass of wine in his hand. He looked so cold and remote that she felt scared.

  Did he think she’d made it all up? She couldn’t bear for him to think that. She came out hesitantly. ‘Dante…’

  His head came up and his look sliced through her, telling her exactly what he thought of her. This was the lowest point she’d hit. She knew that.

  ‘Go to bed, Alicia. I’m not in the mood for any more lies and revelations.’

  Mute and stung and heartsore, Alicia turned around and went back inside. She curled up into a tight ball and only fell asleep when she heard Dante come in a long time later. He got in beside her but made no move to pull her close or make love to her.

  Feigning sleep the following morning, Alicia only got up when she was sure Dante had gone. She got dressed and paced the room. She hated this—not only was her own private humiliation now public knowledge but it was putting Dante in a very awkward position.

  She would have to go. Leave. That was it, there was no other recourse. She couldn’t stay and give that vindictive cow, Serena Gore-Black, a reason to undermine Dante and Derek. She couldn’t feel angry; even she could see how her story might l
ook. Derek and Patricia were lovely people who had had no reason to mistrust her on sight, as Dante had, so of course they would give her the benefit of the doubt. And she loved them for that.

  Ignoring the ache in her heart—in every limb—she packed her bag and then thought, what was the point? She didn’t even own these clothes anyway. She dressed in the shabbiest clothes she could find, which, of course, were a pair of exquisite linen trousers and a beautiful white shirt. She dug out her phone and her credit card. She should have enough to get her home, with any luck.

  She sat down and wrote a note to Dante, telling him that she was sorry she’d caused his own reputation to come into disrepute when he’d needed to be so careful about appearances. She wished him luck with the rest of the meetings, saying that she hoped that there wouldn’t be any adverse effects. She didn’t have any doubt that he’d be only too happy to see the back of her, after seeing the way he’d looked at her last night, when he believed she’d lied…she shivered.

  Alicia used the last of her cash getting to the airport. She’d managed to evade the ever present paparazzi outside the hotel by getting a lift with one of the hotel workers from the back entrance to the main road in town. When she finally got to the ticket desk to ask for a one way fare to the UK, she could have wept with relief when the card was accepted. It was surely maxed to the hilt by now.

  She made her way, following a long queue to the security desks and boarding gates. She caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of her eye and looked around. Her mouth dropped open when she saw Serena and her husband Jeremy with a mountain of luggage and about three people helping them. Her husband looked very red in the face and Serena was sulky, and then she looked over and saw Alicia.

  Alicia had to blink. Surely she was seeing things? But no, Serena was stalking over in her high heels, venom in her blue eyes, spittle coming out of her mouth as she shrieked at Alicia, ‘Are you happy now? Now that everyone knows that I was duped as well?’ She flung a hand back to her embarrassed looking husband. ‘I’ve been sent packing like a naughty child—’

  And like something from a cartoon, suddenly Serena was gone, moved bodily out of the way, and Dante stood in front of her. She looked up and up. The queue was now snaking around Alicia, people looking at her and the little drama avidly.

  He arched a brow. ‘Going somewhere?’

  ‘Home,’ she said faintly. Someone jostled her and Dante took her arm and, picking up her bag, he walked her away from the line of people. She stopped in her tracks. ‘Hang on a second. What are you doing here? Didn’t you get my note?’

  ‘I got your note and threw it out.’

  ‘But why? I’m going home.’ She crossed her arms and looked at him mutinously. ‘I’m not going back there to be the cause of your embarrassment.’

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ he asked, as if talking to a small child.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Serena is going home.’

  ‘But that’s just going to make things worse,’ she wailed, her arms going down by her sides. ‘What’s to stop her going to the press at home?’

  Dante shook his head, the light in his eyes making her breath stop. ‘She won’t be doing anything of the sort. Her husband is so mortified that he’s threatened to cut her off and divorce her if she so much as breathes a further word of this. Derek went to them this morning. Of course her husband knew the full real story; she would have had to defend herself to him in case he ever found out about it. It didn’t take much to get her to make a confession that she had maliciously twisted the truth to make you look bad. She deliberately caused the rumour but luckily it hasn’t reached Buchanen’s ears.’

  Alicia’s mouth dropped open again, her eyes wide. ‘But how on earth…?’

  Dante shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I owe you an apology. I’m sorry for doubting you, Alicia.’

  She just looked at him. The way he was looking at her now was making her blood melt and flow like molten liquid.

  He held out a hand. ‘So please, will you come back with me?’

  Alicia looked at his hand and then back at the queue snaking behind her. She knew if she’d ever had a chance of leaving, this was it. She looked at him briefly. ‘I know I agreed to come and be…with you for the conference…but…’ Her mind seized up, the awful reality was that she couldn’t even contemplate walking away.

  Dante could see the struggle on her face, in her eyes. If she turned and walked away now…But at that moment he felt her small hand creep into his palm and he closed his tight around it, relief shocking him as it surged through him. Before she could change her mind, he pulled her outside and into the car.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AS HE drove back into the city Alicia tried to take in everything that had just happened. She could feel him looking at her.

  ‘When you said Raul Carro had been the cause of you going to Africa…you meant to get away from him?’

  Alicia nodded. ‘It was so horrific. His poor wife…I still feel awful about it. I always will.’

  ‘But you didn’t know.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter; it feels even worse, he was such an operator. In a way, I’m actually glad Serena called his wife. She had to know, and he had to be found out.’

  ‘But he was in Africa?’

  ‘Yes, but not till the end. He came just days before I left.’ Disgust made her voice tight. ‘He barely recognized me and I could see already that he was making the move on various nurses…’

  ‘Do you still love him?’ Dante didn’t know why he’d asked the question or why his hands tightened on the steering wheel as he waited for Alicia’s answer. He glanced at her but she was looking straight ahead; she seemed to be locked in another place. He wanted to reach out and turn her face to him so that he could see her eyes—and read what? he asked himself angrily.

  After a long moment she said, ‘No. And I don’t think I ever did, to be honest.’ Not now that I know what real love feels like…and it’s a million times more scary… Alicia felt as though she stood on moving tectonic plates—one false move and she’d disappear down into a crack for ever.

  Dante’s hands tensed on the wheel again as another wave of relief flowed through him. When he’d found her gone and the note in the room, his insides had seized with panic. At the thought that she could just disappear like that, out of his life, gone. It had made him feel out of control…And that was before Derek had found him and told him what he’d found out. Which had made him feel even more out of control.

  He flicked the woman beside him a glance. She was still here. And, he told himself, that was all that mattered because he needed her to maintain this precious respectability, which was now restored. When you’ve never let it bother you before? He shut out the voice and concentrated on the traffic.

  That night they sat out on the balcony of their suite and shared an after dinner liqueur. Alicia felt very much as if they’d turned a corner, but to go where? Dante had apologized for judging her wrongly but she couldn’t really blame him in the first place as she hadn’t defended herself, not seeing the point. And, now that she had stayed, she felt as if her heart were visibly beating on her sleeve, plain for all to see.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’

  Alicia blushed and choked slightly on her drink. She could just imagine the look on his face if she told him. Instead she shrugged. ‘Nothing in particular.’ She felt him turn more fully towards her and found herself tensing slightly.

  ‘Did you go to Africa to punish yourself?’

  She jerked her head to look at him, eyes widening. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  His face was dark, unreadable and she felt naked, extremely vulnerable.

  ‘I was just wondering if part of your motivation for going there was in some way a reaction to what had happened.’

  Alicia looked away from him again, out to the inky, starry darkness. Her mind whirled. She’d never thought of it like that, but had she chosen to go there as some sort of pen
ance? At times, it certainly had felt like a punishment of sorts. She could feel him looking at her intently and desperately wanted his penetrating mind and gaze off her.

  She shrugged slightly. ‘It certainly played a part in my reasons for going…but I hadn’t thought about it too much, to be honest.’ And for him to be the one to assess the psychology behind her reasons? Again, her head swirled and she felt unbelievably vulnerable. She took more than a sip from her drink and then turned to him, seizing on the first thing that came to mind to take his attention from her.

  ‘Will you tell me something about yourself…? It just feels a little funny…not really knowing anything about you.’ She’d been about to add on, After all, you’re going to be my niece or nephew’s uncle, but stopped herself in time, not wanting to open that can of worms.

  He looked at her darkly. ‘What do you want to know?’

  She shrugged, relieved that they’d moved off the subject of her. ‘I don’t know…How did you get to where you are now if you came from the streets…and what about your parents…?’

  She held her breath. He looked away from her and she could see his jaw clench. When he spoke it was flat and emotionless, it made something go cold inside Alicia, because she recognized that it hid huge pain.

  ‘When my brother was one and I was six, my mother left us. My father had taken off long before that to God knows where, and Paolo’s father was another wastrel. We were taken into an orphanage but it closed down a few years later due to lack of funds. So we lived on the streets and carved a niche for ourselves there.’

  ‘You and your brother?’

  He nodded.

  ‘How old were you then?’

  ‘Thirteen, fourteen.’

  He was silent for so long then that Alicia thought he’d had enough and she opened her mouth to speak but then he said, ‘One day a man saw me doing some labour, helping to build a house. He called me over and offered me a job there and then.’ He glanced at her briefly. ‘I said I could only take it if I could bring my brother with me.’