Christmas Angel for the Billionaire

by Liz Fielding

  As she took her lips on a slow trail of moist kisses over his chin, down his throat, he held her in the very lightest of touches, his hands doing no more than rest against her ribcage, giving her control, all the time, all the freedom she wanted to explore his body, knowing that his time would come.

  Little feathers of silky hair brushed against his skin, a subtle counterpoint to her tongue probing the hollows beneath his shoulders, to the satiny feel of her skin as his hands slid lower over her back, exploring the curve of her waist, learning the shape of her body.

  Annie was drowning in pure sensation. The gentle touch of George’s hands as he caressed her back, her waist, slipping beneath the loose waist of her jeans to cup her bottom in his hands, holding her close so that she could feel the power of his need as she kissed and licked and nibbled at his chest, the hollow of his stomach. Came against the barrier of clothes.

  Her lips were hot, swollen against his skin and every cell in her body was thrumming with power. For the first time in her life she felt totally alive, warm, vital. This ache in her womb, this need was the essence of life, of being a woman and she wanted him. Wanted all of him.

  ‘Touch me,’ she whispered as she pulled at the next stud.

  Begging or commanding?

  It didn’t matter. He’d told her she could do anything that felt good. And this felt…

  He released the button at the waist of her jeans, pushed jeans, underwear over her hips.

  There were no words to describe what this felt like. All she could manage was his name.

  ‘George…’

  And then her body shattered.

  George caught her, held her as she collapsed against him, kissing her shoulder, nuzzling his chin against her hair as she recovered, trying not to think about the look in her eyes, an appeal for something unknown, in that moment before she’d dissolved into his arms.

  Because he knew where he’d see it before.

  He murmured her name and when she looked up, her eyes filled with tears, he knew it was true. She was the ‘people’s virgin’.

  ‘Will I get sent to the Tower for that?’ he asked.

  ‘Not by me,’ she assured him, laughing shakily.

  Damn it, she was crying with gratitude.

  She sniffed. Brushed the tears from her cheeks with the palm of her hand, lifted damp lashes and finally realised that he wasn’t laughing with her.

  ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What did I do?’

  He didn’t answer and he saw the exact moment when she realised that she answered not to the lie she’d told him when she’d sworn that Annie was her real name, but to Lady Rose.

  ‘Roseanne,’ she said. ‘My name is Roseanne. I was named for my grandmother but my mother thought I was entitled to a name of my own so she called me Annie.’

  Did she think that was all that mattered? That she hadn’t actually lied about that.

  Then, when he didn’t answer, ‘Does it matter?’

  He picked up the clothes she’d discarded and thrust them at her.

  ‘George?’

  For a long moment she didn’t take them but continued to look at him, those dangerous eyes pleading with him.

  All his senses were vibrating with the feel of her, her touch, the musky scent of her most intimate being. They were urging him to say that it didn’t matter a damn before reaching out to take what she was offering him. Pretend that nothing mattered but this moment.

  The shattering sound of the timer announcing that the cake was done saved them both.

  ‘Clearly it does,’ she said, snatching her clothes from his hand, standing up, turning her back on him as she pulled them on.

  ‘You used me,’ he said to her back. ‘You’re on a quest to lose your virginity before you settle for the guy with the castle.’

  ‘If that’s what you think then there’s nothing more to say. Pass me the oven gloves,’ she said, sticking out a hand as she opened the oven door.

  He got up, passed her the thickly padded gloves, then pulled the overalls back on, fastening the studs with shaking fingers while, still with her back to him, she tested the cake.

  ‘Is it done?’

  ‘As if you care,’ she replied, still not looking at him but turning the cake out over the rack his mother had left out. When the cake didn’t fall out she gave it a shake, catching her breath as the hot tin touched the pale skin of her inner arm.

  ‘You have to leave it to cool for a few minutes,’ he said, taking her hand, turning it to look at the red mark.

  ‘I get cookery lessons too?’

  ‘Simple physics,’ he said, not bothering to ask her if it hurt, just grabbing her hand and taking her to the sink, where he turned on the cold tap, holding the burn beneath the running water.

  It was icy-cold and he knew that would hurt as much as the burn but she clamped her jaws together. Schooled from the age of six not to show pain, she’d saved her tears for him.

  It had taken the new, shocking pleasure of a man’s intimate touch to break down that reserve, reduce her to weeping for herself.

  ‘Who is she?’ he asked, not wanting to think about how that made him feel. Feeling would destroy him. ‘The girl in the photograph.’

  ‘Lydia,’ she said.

  ‘The friend who lent you her car? But she-’

  ‘Looks just like me? Type “Lady Rose” and “lookalike” into your search engine and you can book her next time you want “Lady Rose Napier” to grace your party.’

  ‘Why would I want a copy…?’

  He managed to stop himself but she finished for him. ‘Why would you want a copy when you rejected the real thing?’

  She was shaking, he realised. Or maybe it was him.

  ‘She’s a professional lookalike?’

  ‘Since she was fifteen years old. Her mother made her a copy of the outfit I was wearing on my sixteenth birthday and someone took a picture and sent it to the local newspaper. It’s not a full-time job for her, of course, but the manager of the supermarket where she works is very good about juggling her shifts.’

  ‘You paid a girl who works in a supermarket to take your place?’

  ‘No. She wouldn’t take any money. We met by chance one day and there was a connection.’

  ‘I’ll bet there was. Do you really trust her not to sell her story to the tabloids the minute she gets home?’

  She looked up at him. ‘Do you know something, George? I don’t really care. I wanted to escape and she was willing to take my place so that I could disappear without raising a hue and cry. Once I go back I don’t care who knows.’

  ‘But how on earth will she carry it off? It’s one thing turning up at a party where everyone knows you’re not the real thing, but something like this…’ Words failed him.

  ‘There’s no one at Bab el Sama who knows me. I insisted on going there on my own.’

  ‘But if you wanted a break, surely-’

  ‘I wanted a break from being me, George. From my grandfather’s unspoken expectations. I wanted to be ordinary. Just be…myself.’

  ‘How is that?’ he asked, gently dabbing her arm dry.

  ‘I can’t feel a thing.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve got a car to fix,’ he said, tossing the towel aside, wishing he could say the same.

  He walked from the room while he still could.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A NNIE, weak to her bones, leaned against the sink. What had she done, said, to give herself away?

  A tear trickled onto her cheek and as she palmed it away she knew. He’d responded to her not as a national institution but as a woman and she’d wept with the joy of it. Ironic, really, when she’d spent her entire life keeping her emotions under wraps.

  Tears were private things.

  Before the cameras you kept your dignity, looked the world in the eye.

  But with a lover you could be yourself. Utterly, completely…

  A long shivering sigh escaped her but the years of training stood her in good stead. She
took a deep breath, straightened, told herself that George had every right to be angry.

  What man, on discovering that what he’d imagined was a quick tumble in the metaphorical hay had the potential to make him front-page news, wouldn’t be absolutely livid?

  She might be inexperienced, but she wasn’t naïve.

  Sex exposed two people in a way that nothing else could. It wasn’t the nakedness, but the stripping away of pretence that took it beyond the purely physical. Without total honesty it was a sham, a lie.

  She knew how she’d feel if he’d lied to her about his identity. But he’d laid it all out while she hadn’t even been honest about the way her parents had died.

  She had abused his trust in the most fundamental way and now she would have to leave. First, though, she carefully turned out the cake and left it to cool. Washed the cake tin. Put away the soup bowls.

  Straightened the rag rug.

  When all trace of her presence had been erased, she went upstairs and threw everything into her bag. Then, because she couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Xandra, she walked along the hall, opening doors, searching for her room, and found herself standing in the doorway of the room in which George Saxon had grown up.

  The cashmere sweater he’d been wearing the day before was draped over the wooden chair. She touched it, then picked it up, hugging it to her as she looked around at what had been his boyhood room.

  It was sparse by modern standards, with none of the high-tech appliances that were the essential requirements of the average teen’s life. Just a narrow bed with an old-fashioned quilt, a small scarred table he’d used as a desk and a bookcase. She knelt to run her fingers over the spines of the books he’d held, read. Physics, maths, computer languages.

  The car maintenance manuals seemed out of place, but keeping ahead of his father must have required more than manual dexterity, although personally she’d have given him a starred A for that.

  She stood up, holding the sweater to her face for a moment, yearning to pull it over her head and walk away with it. Instead, she refolded it and laid it back on the chair before leaving the room, closing the door behind her.

  Xandra’s room was next door. Large, comfortable, a total contrast to her father’s childhood room, it was obvious that she spent a lot of time with her grandparents.

  She had a small colour television, an expensive laptop, although the girlish embroidered bed cover was somewhat at odds with the posters of racing drivers rather than pop stars that decorated the walls.

  There was paper and a pen on the writing desk and a note to Mrs Warburton ready for the post.

  She picked up the pen, then put it down again. What could she say? She couldn’t tell her the truth and she couldn’t bear to write a lie. Better to leave George to make whatever excuses he thought best.

  Downstairs, she’d looked up the number of a taxi firm and made the call. She’d catch a bus or a train; it didn’t matter where to, so long as it was leaving Maybridge.

  ‘It’s a busy time of the day,’ the dispatcher warned her. ‘It’ll be half an hour before we can pick you up.’

  ‘That will be fine,’ she said. It wasn’t, but if it was a busy time she’d get the same response from anyone else. As she replaced the receiver, the cat found her legs and she bent to pick it up, ruffling it behind the ear as she carried it into the study to wait in the chair where George had fallen asleep the night before. Self-indulgently resting her head in the place where his had been.

  The cat settled on her lap, purring contentedly and she closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself rerun images of George’s body, his face as he’d looked at her, the taste of his skin, his lips, the way he’d touched her. Fixing it like a film in her memory so that she would be able to take it out and run it like a video when she needed to remind herself what it was like to just let go.

  ‘Annie!’

  She woke with a start as the cat dug its claws into her legs before fleeing.

  It took her a moment for her head to clear, to focus on George standing in the doorway. ‘Sorry, I must have fallen asleep. Is my taxi here?’

  ‘Were you going to leave without a word?’ he demanded.

  ‘What word did you expect? I can’t stay here, George. Not now you know who I am.’

  He didn’t bother to deny it. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘You think?’ He moved so swiftly that she didn’t have time to do more than think about moving before his hands were on either side of her, pinning her in the chair. ‘Do you really believe I’m going to let the nation’s sweetheart wander off into the wild blue yonder by herself with a fistful of money stuffed down her bra?’

  He was close enough that she could see the vein throbbing at his temple, the tiny sparks of hot anger that were firing the lead grey of his eyes, turning it molten.

  ‘I don’t think you have a choice.’

  ‘Think again, Your Ladyship. I’ve got a whole heap of options open to me, while you’ve got just two. One, you stay here where I know you’re safe. Two, I take you home to your grandfather, His Grace the Duke of Oldfield. Take your pick.’

  ‘You’ve been checking up on me?’

  ‘You’re not the only one with a fancy Internet cellphone.’

  Obviously he had. Searched for her on the Net instead of asking. Maybe he thought that was the only way to get straight answers. Her fault.

  ‘And if I don’t fancy either of those options?’ she asked, refusing to be browbeaten into capitulation. ‘You said you had a whole heap?’

  ‘I could ring around the tabloids and tell them what you’ve been doing for the last twenty-four hours.’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that.’ He’d hesitated for a fraction of a second before he’d spoken and instinctively she lifted her hand to his face. His cold cheek warmed to her touch. His eyes darkened. ‘You wouldn’t betray me, George.’

  ‘Try me,’ he said, abruptly straightening, taking a step back, putting himself out of reach. Pulling the shutters down, just as he had with Xandra. Anything could happen to you out there. Use a little of your famous empathy to consider how I’d feel if anything did.’

  ‘I’m not your responsibility.’

  ‘You can’t absolve me of that. I know who you are. That changes everything.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Prove it.’

  ‘By going home or staying here until the seventeenth?’

  ‘The seventeenth?’ He looked hunted, as if the prospect of a whole week of her company appalled him, but he said, ‘If that’s your time frame, then yes. Take your pick.’

  ‘It’s a long time to put up with a stranger.’ And a long time to spend with a man who despised you. ‘If you let me go I’ll be careful,’ she promised.

  ‘Would that be reversing-into-a-farm-gate-in-the-dark careful?’

  ‘I’ll use public transport.’

  ‘That’s supposed to reassure me? You stay here or you go home,’ he said. ‘It’s not open for discussion.’

  ‘What would you say to your mother if I stayed?’

  ‘She’s got more important things to worry about. This is just between us,’ he warned. ‘As far as Xandra and my mother are concerned, you’re Annie Rowland. Is that understood?’

  ‘You guessed who I was,’ she pointed out.

  ‘I don’t think they’re ever going to see you quite the way I did.’

  ‘No?’ She felt a tremor deep within her at the memory of just how he’d seen her. Remembered how powerful she’d felt as he’d looked at her, touched her. As she’d touched him. She wanted that again. Wanted him…‘If I stay, George,’ she asked softly, ‘will you finish what you started?’

  He opened his mouth, then shut it again sharply. Shook his head.

  No. Faced with her image, he was just like everyone else. Being the nation’s virgin was, apparently, the world’s biggest turn-off.

  ‘It’s just sex, George,’ she s
aid, hoping that she could provoke him, disgust him sufficiently so that he would let her go.

  ‘If it’s just sex, Annie, I’m sure Rupert Devenish would be happy to do you the favour. Put it on the top of your Christmas wish list. Or does he have to wait until he puts a ring on your finger? Were you simply looking for something a little more earthy than His Lordship before you settle for the coronet?’

  If he’d actually hit her the shock couldn’t have been more brutal. It wasn’t the suggestion that she was on the loose looking for a bit of rough. It was the fact that he thought she’d marry for position, the castle, the estates, that drove through her heart like a dagger. And maybe the fear that, in desperation, six months, a year from now she might settle for the chance to be a mother.

  Picking up the phone, admitting what she’d done and waiting for a car to take her home would, she knew without doubt, be the first step.

  It took her a moment to gather herself, find her voice. ‘I’d better go and pay the taxi.’

  ‘It’s done.’

  ‘What?’ Then, realising what he meant, ‘You sent it away without waiting for my answer?’

  ‘He’s busy. You owe me twenty pounds, by the way.’

  ‘A little more than that, surely? There’s the call-out charge, towing me back to the garage, the time you spent on the car.’ She looked up enquiringly when he didn’t answer. ‘Or shall I ask Xandra to prepare the invoice for that?’

  ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘The garage is closed. And forget the taxi fare too.’

  ‘What about board and lodging? Or do you expect me to work for my keep?’

  ‘You are my daughter’s guest,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘And right now we have to go and pick her up.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘You don’t imagine I’m going to leave you here on your own?’

  She thought about arguing with him for all of a second before she said, ‘I’ll get my coat.’