by Miranda Lee
Of course, she still blamed her husband.
‘He was always away on business,’ she’d wailed at the time. ‘I was lonely.’
As if that excused adultery!
She’d only confessed to her son because her husband had made a deal with her.
‘Clear things with Byron and I’ll accept Lara as my daughter.’
Lara didn’t know she wasn’t Lloyd Maddox’s biological daughter and Byron was once again close to the man he’d always admired. They were still close, despite the massive falling-out they’d had five years ago about some financial advice Byron had given his father that hadn’t been taken. Lloyd had listened instead to some sycophantic idiot whom Byron couldn’t stand. As a consequence, Byron had severed all professional ties with his father and come home to start his own business, concentrating on quality investments rather than quantity.
But he wasn’t a man who held grudges and had made up with his father ages ago. His father was his best friend and his confidant. Lloyd knew his son wanted to marry and have a family, and had advised him just last week not to settle for anything less than the right kind of wife.
‘Nothing like your mother for starters,’ he’d warned him. ‘We Maddox men need independent partners with careers of their own, otherwise we’ll end up treating them badly. I treated your mother badly because she didn’t stand up to me. She just said yes, dear, no, dear, and three bags full, dear. That kind of subservient attitude doesn’t engender respect. I have to admit I never admired her more than when she actually cheated on me. I deserved it. Truly.’
Byron had been taken aback at this confession. Lloyd was not one to take the blame for anything. In truth, he was an arrogant man, always expecting things to go his way.
A bit like you, Byron, came another voice that occasionally troubled him. His conscience, he supposed. He did have one. Though he didn’t always listen to it.
This last train of thought brought him back to a certain lady whom he knew he really shouldn’t pursue. As he’d told himself earlier today, he should be out there looking for a wife, not thinking about having an affair with Cleo Shelton. Which was all it would be. An affair. He didn’t need the emotional baggage a young widow would carry with her. Those damned male hormones of his were leading him astray again.
Even if Cleo was wife material, she herself wasn’t on the lookout for another husband. He knew how such women acted when that was their agenda and it wasn’t even remotely on Cleo’s radar. Cleo’s sadness when talking about her dead husband suggested that she mourned him still, and that wasn’t something Byron wanted to become involved in.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t ever have sex again, Byron decided, swiftly putting aside his misgivings about having an affair with Cleo, embracing the idea with his usual decisiveness and positivity. Finding a wife could wait. It was, after all, only six weeks since he’d split with Simone. He really needed more time to recover from the disappointment of having been wrong once again. He hesitated to use the word devastated. Byron was no hypocrite. But it had hurt. It really had.
Meanwhile, he would seek comfort for his bruised ego with an intriguing brunette who he suspected was hiding a secretly sensual nature. She’d flirted with him on the phone just now. Oh, yes, she definitely had.
With his conscience firmly routed and his testosterone firing, Byron stood up and walked out to tell Grace to make a booking for them at a hotel in Townsville.
‘So you and Cleo are having a sleepover,’ she said with a rather knowing look.
‘Very funny, Grace. Just make the booking, will you?’
‘Motel or hotel?’
‘Either. Just make sure it has a good restaurant. We’ll be too tired to go out.’
‘What did Cleo say about this?’ Grace asked as she tapped away on her computer.
‘She didn’t sound too thrilled,’ came his honest reply. ‘But what could she say but yes? If she wants me to invest in McAllister Mines, then she has to play ball.’
Grace gave him a closed look. ‘Something tells me that Cleo is not the kind of girl who will play that sort of game.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Grace.’
‘You know very well what I mean, Byron. She’s not what you’re used to.’
‘And what am I used to?’
‘May I be honest here without risking my job?’
‘Of course.’ He’d always encouraged Grace to give him honest opinions. His father might like sycophantic assistants, but Byron did not.
‘In that case let me say that you’ve grown used to women who do whatever you want them to do. Unfortunately, most of them have a gold wedding band in their eyes when they suck up to you and tell you how wonderful you are. Your two ex-fiancées might have been stunning to look at but underneath their surface beauty lay the most shallow, selfish, cold-blooded creatures I have ever met.’
‘I do know that, Grace,’ Byron countered, shocked by Grace’s cripplingly accurate observations. ‘And your point is?’
‘Cleo Shelton is none of those things. She’s a nice girl.’
‘And how, pray tell, do you know that? You’ve known her all of five minutes.’
‘I just do. Call it feminine intuition,’ she added with a touch of asperity. ‘I would hate to see you toy with her emotions. You’re an exceedingly attractive man, Byron. Even without your money you would turn any woman’s head.’
‘I know of one woman in my life whose head isn’t turned,’ he said crossly as he glared at her.
‘Yes, well, I’m happily married. And I’ve been around enough rich men in my life to know they are not for me, no matter how handsome and charming they are.’
Byron winced under words that were not compliments. Grace made handsome and charming sound like serious flaws.
‘I noticed the wedding ring on Cleo’s left hand,’ she went on before Byron could speak, or leave. ‘I hope you did, too.’
Byron was glad to have the final word. ‘I certainly did,’ he replied, trying not to sound smug. ‘But you don’t have to worry that your dastardly boss is about to toy with a married woman’s emotions. Cleo is a widow.’ And without further explanation, he marched back into his office, closing the door firmly behind him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘YOU WON’T BE needing that,’ were Byron’s first words when Cleo answered her door at seven the following morning. He nodded down at the overnight bag that was sitting by the front door. ‘I realised late last night that I have to be back here in Sydney for an important business meeting on Friday morning. Sorry. I would have rung you only I thought you might not be up.’
Cleo wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. One part of her was slightly annoyed at all the time she’d taken deciding what to bring to wear to dinner tonight. Her options had been minimal. She did own a couple of dresses but both were dated, and on the dreary side. In the end, she’d packed her newest navy pant suit and borrowed a pale pink blouse from Doreen’s wardrobe. Not ideal, but better than the dresses.
Doreen had asked her a few questions about Byron, with Cleo dismissing him as typical of bachelor billionaires.
‘You know the type,’ she’d said off-handedly. ‘They think they’re irresistible to women.’
The trouble was...they were. Or Byron was. He’d been handsome enough yesterday in his sleek grey suit. But in faded blue jeans, a white polo shirt and a black leather bomber jacket he was drop-dead gorgeous. And sinfully sexy. Cleo was glad Doreen was still asleep in bed and not peering out of her bedroom window at him.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Just have to get my handbag.’
She picked up her smartphone, which contained the all-important report from Harvey that had arrived last night but which Cleo had only skimmed through so far. There were no real surprises that she could see, but she planned on having a more thorough perusal during the plane trip up to Townsville, especially the long list of the investments the BM Group had made these past five years. They were many and varied, she’
d noted, but none were in the mining industry.
Cleo suspected she was wasting her time today. Byron would not bail Scott out. Especially after he’d spoken to the manager of the refinery. Still, she had to try, didn’t she? And if she were strictly honest with herself, she wanted to spend the day in Byron’s stimulating company; wanted to accompany him on his private jet and luxuriate in a world over which she could only fantasise.
‘Ready to go now?’ Byron said rather abruptly when she returned to the front door with her handbag. Only then did she notice that he looked tired, with some dark shadows under his eyes. A late night, she speculated, as she followed him out into the street.
The thought of his being up until the wee hours of the night with some nameless but undoubtedly beautiful creature did not sit well with Cleo. Which was ridiculous. The man was free to do exactly as he pleased, since he was between fiancées at the moment.
As reasonable as this logic was, it still caused the appearance of a dark and decidedly unpleasant sensation that Cleo had never experienced before. She felt fairly certain that it was jealousy. Or was it envy? Yes, that was what it was. Envy.
‘Come along, then,’ he said. ‘Lock the door and let’s get going.’
Cleo smothered a sigh, and got going.
* * *
‘I wasn’t able to find a parking space,’ Byron told her as he led Cleo out to his double-parked Lexus.
‘There’s an alleyway around the back which usually has plenty of spots,’ she informed him. ‘But no matter. You don’t seem to have held anybody up.’
‘True.’ Not a soul was stirring in the street, except for one old chap walking his dog.
Byron opened the passenger door for Cleo, shaking his head as he watched her climb in, puzzled over why he found this woman so damned attractive. Her looks weren’t anything to write home about, and she made absolutely no effort at all with her appearance. Take what she was wearing today. Dark blue jeans, which were neither well fitted nor slimming, teamed with another white shirt and what looked like the same hideous black jacket she’d worn yesterday. Still no make-up or perfume, or anything that smacked of femininity. As for her hair... His fingers literally itched to pull apart that awful bun thing, which seemed permanently anchored at the nape of her neck.
It was actually very nice hair, he conceded. Dark and thick and shiny. And with a natural wave in it. He could see a few kinks, despite its severely scraped-back style. It would look much better down around her face and spread out over her shoulders.
Or over a pillow, came the gut-crunching thought.
Gritting his teeth, Byron slammed the door and marched around to the other side, angry with himself for not being able to control his thoughts—and his carnal desires—around this woman. Yet he was determined to.
After leaving work yesterday and riding the lift up to his penthouse, he hadn’t been able to get Grace’s disparaging comment about his toying with Cleo’s emotions out of his mind. Byron knew he wasn’t a bad man. Spoiled, possibly. And used to getting his own way. But not at the expense of others, he hoped.
To seduce Cleo—and, let’s face it, Byron, that’s what it would end up being—would not be very gallant of him. And he clearly wouldn’t be doing it for her benefit, as he’d previously managed to convince himself. It would be all about satisfying his own desire.
Thank God he’d remembered his golf game with Blake on Friday. It gave him a legitimate excuse to cancel the stopover and fly straight back after the visit to the refinery. When he couldn’t sleep last night, Byron had done some further research on McAllister Mines, focusing on the nickel refinery. He wasn’t surprised to find that it was a dead loss. Nickel prices had crashed and didn’t look like recovering for years. McAllister should have closed it down ages ago. The man was either a fool or too generous for his own good. He almost rang Cleo and cancelled the visit altogether, but he just couldn’t do it.
Byron told himself it was because he could see how much it meant to her to try to convince him to invest in McAllister Mines. He told himself that it would be cruel not to give her one last chance to sell him on the idea of being McAllister’s business partner.
He’d lied to himself. The truth was, he’d just wanted to see her again, despite his firm resolve not to pursue her. Talk about masochism!
‘So what was the important business meeting you’d forgotten?’ she asked him once he’d executed a three-point turn and headed for the airport.
Byron sighed. ‘I have to play golf.’
‘Golf,’ she echoed, disbelief in her voice.
‘I know what you’re thinking. A game of golf hardly sounds like a proper business meeting. But trust me when I say it is. I actually loathe the game. It drives me nuts!’ Only because he wasn’t good at it.
‘Then why play it?’
‘Because Blake Randall likes to do business over a game of golf.’
‘And who’s Blake Randall?’
‘He’s the head of Fantasy Productions. They make movies. Have you see The Boy from the Bush?’
‘Oh, yes, I have. I loved it.’
‘That’s one of his. Blake directed that one. But he’s moved on from directing these days. He’s more into production, and Hollywood is calling. Big time.’
‘Am I right in presuming you want to invest in his company?’
‘You are.’
‘I would imagine that movies are even riskier than mining,’ Cleo pointed out.
‘Depends on who’s at the helm. Blake has a record second to none. He’s a bloody genius.’
‘Takes one to know one, I guess,’ she said just as he stopped at a set of lights.
Her compliment startled Byron. His head turned to look at her. ‘Flattery, Cleo? Something tells me that’s not like you.’
She blushed. She actually blushed. The pink brought a glow to her face, and a touching vulnerability to her usually cool eyes. He ached to bend over and kiss her, to see if she would come alive even further under his mouth.
But before he could give in to temptation, the lights turned green.
‘It’s not. Usually,’ she said in rather droll tones. ‘But I’m a desperate woman. I would hate for Scott to think I didn’t throw everything at you to get you on side. He really needs a new partner, Byron, and, as you can imagine, investors are not exactly lining up to get on board.’
Interesting, he thought. He liked that she was desperate. Liked that she would do just about anything to get him on board.
Don’t do this, Byron, his conscience insisted. Don’t take advantage of the situation.
‘In that case,’ he said, ignoring the voice in his head, ‘how about reconsidering my invitation to accompany me to my mother’s birthday party on Saturday night? Not only will you help me out enormously,’ he went on before she could protest, ‘but by then, I’ll have the report from my accountant and I’ll be able to give you a definite decision on whether I will invest in McAllister Mines or not.’
Her groan carried frustration. ‘Look, I’d honestly like to go with you. But I can’t.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t be so obtuse,’ she snapped. ‘Your mother would take one look at me and think you’d gone mad. No one would believe for a second that I was your date for real.’
‘Why not?’
Her sigh was heavy. ‘You know why not. If the fashion police could arrest people, I’d be in jail right now.’
Byron refused to be swayed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re a very attractive woman. With the right dress, hairstyle and make-up, you would be a stunner.’
‘That’s the problem. I don’t have the right dress. And I haven’t a clue about hairstyles or make-up.’
Byron finally got past his own selfish wishes to consider what she was saying. ‘But why is that, Cleo?’ he asked. ‘I mean, most girls these days are clued up on such things from the earliest ages. Take my kid sister, Lara. She’s been experimenting with make-up since she was ten, much to m
y mother’s disgust. Same with hairstyles, and hair colour. Her latest is blue, would you believe? As for clothes, Lara’s favourite occupation is shopping for the latest gear.’
‘How old is your sister?’ Cleo asked.
‘Nineteen.’
‘Well, I’m twenty-nine, Byron.’
And you dress like you’re fifty-nine, he thought.
‘That makes you six years younger than me, madam. You’re a young woman, Cleo, so stop with the excuses and explain why you haven’t a clue about all things female. Come on. Give.’
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you’re bossy?’
He shrugged. ‘Not that I recall.’
She laughed. ‘Possibly because they wouldn’t dare. Okay, if you must know, I was an only child, and shy. My parents were killed in a car accident when I was thirteen, and I was raised by my elderly and very old-fashioned grandparents. My grandmother was dead against make-up and immodest clothes as well as going against Mother Nature. And my husband liked the way I looked, so I never saw any reason to change.’
‘Do you like the way you look, Cleo?’ he asked, thinking to himself that he didn’t much like the sound of her husband.
Her chin lifted but her eyes carried uncertainty. ‘I know I could look better. But like I said earlier,’ she added with a frustrated sigh, ‘I just don’t know what to do.’
‘Then get someone to help you,’ he advised, a little impatiently. ‘There are professional stylists who will sort out your wardrobe. And any decent beauty salon will know how to do your hair and make-up. You just have to decide to do it, Cleo.’
‘But what would be the point?’ she said, sounding annoyingly defeatist.