Charmed by Richard

by Scarlett Hope

  Although I was his only child, dad and I weren’t on very good speaking terms. And it all centered on my mother, who lived thousands of miles away from both of us. They’d separated early on when I was still a toddler so I didn’t get to know her very well. Yet, for some reason he absolutely refused to tell me, he wouldn’t let me go look for her. He wouldn’t even tell me where she was, even though I’d begged him over and over again.

  And did I mention that he could be extra protective?

  He called so often just to know where I was, just like he was currently doing.

  “I’m fine, dad. When I get back, I’ll come to visit you at the company, okay? Bye now. Talk to you later.” I said into the receiver as I cut the call, noting that Richard looked at me with a strange, fleeting smile on his face.

  “He owns a company?” He asked as we began to walk towards the gate to the park.

  I sighed, “Yeah, he does. But, honestly, I don’t really care much for it. There’s a lot of unnecessary baggage that comes with being known as the daughter of the C.E.O. of Tysone Corp, especially…” I paused, lowering my voice as I spoke the next words, “…the media… Richard?”

  He wasn’t walking beside me anymore. Turning around, I raised my eyebrows as I saw him standing a few paces away with widened eyes, his mouth opening and closing in something uncomfortably akin to shock.

  “Y-your father is…” he paused, swallowing, “…the C.E.O. of Tysone Corp?”

  His voice was strange. Low and somewhat shaky. What made me pause was the look on his face. His forehead was wrinkled, eyes darkened, teeth bared and fists clenched. What was going on?

  “Is there a problem with that?” I asked, apprehension slowly creeping up my heart.

  He didn’t say anything, just stood there looking at me. But at that moment, I felt an irreversible thing shift between us.

  Chapter Five

  Richard

  If I thought I was a scumbag before, well I hadn’t seen anything yet, especially the Richard of the present. Over the years, I had done shitty things, broken women's hearts, gotten my heart broken in return, to the point I vowed to stay off women forever.

  But one thing I never did was sink to the point where I let myself sleep with my close friend’s daughter.

  Granted, the first time I slept with her, I didn’t know who she was. But she’d revealed it to me the next day at the park, hadn’t she? She indirectly told me her father was Tom Ivy, the C.E.O. of Tysone Corp – and a man with whom I’d been enjoying a close friendship for over a year.

  Why hadn’t I seen the connection in the first place?

  Tom was older than me. When I met him a year ago, I’d had a rare moment when I was actually impressed by him. Men who moved in high circles tended to be pompous or arrogant, but Tom was neither. He’d been straightforward, saying what he needed to say and I’d respected that. Impressed by his knowledge, I’d agreed to have one or two drinks with him. One thing led to another and before I knew it, we were so close that he’d asked me to join an exclusive club he found. And I’d readily agreed.

  I didn’t actually know about the terms and conditions, the part about not falling in love, until much later, but I didn’t mind anyway because I wasn’t planning to do it.

  ‘The Merry Men’ met often and consisted of five billionaires – Tom, his childhood friend Frank, that investment guru called Jack who was also the guy who got me to come here in the first place, a science-geek-turned-billionaire called Kevin and I. I just spoke to them barely a week ago.

  So what would Tom say when he knew I was sleeping with his daughter?

  Right now, I was in front of the mirror, a haggard look on my face as I stared at myself, wondering what the hell I was going to do.

  Just call the relationship off.

  That was the rational thing to do, right? Then why did I find it so difficult? There’d been so many times during the past day, even while we were still in the amusement park, when the voice of reason had told me to open my mouth and tell her the truth – that it had been fun, yeah, but we couldn’t keep doing this, whatever it was.

  Yet every time I turn to her, I’d see her eyes, her pretty blue eyes crinkling up as she smiled or laughed at something, her hair – as golden as the sun itself – splaying down her shoulders – and oh my goodness… her lips. Those full, sinful, plump and damn kissable rosy lips that I just couldn’t get out of my head.

  She had bewitched me. Point blank. I was over a decade older than her. She was my close friend’s daughter. This was wrong on so many levels. Yet, I didn’t know what I was going to do about it.

  I just couldn’t let her go. Not yet.

  ***

  Rachel

  “Richard?” I spoke into the phone, smiling as I heard his voice.

  “Hey, wanna come over?” His deep voice sent thrills down my spine and I bit my lip, my eyes sparkling as I remembered the night we spent together. I left his room barely two hours ago, and he already wanted me back. I could just die of happiness right now.

  “Aw, come on,” I giggled, twirling the strings of my bathrobe, “I just got out of the shower.”

  He groaned. “You just want to kill me, don’t you? Now I can’t stop thinking of standing there, dripping all over, your hair falling down your—”

  “My hair’s actually in a towel mister and give me a minute, I’ll be there.”

  He whooped and I laughed. “Just come in the towel, darling.”

  My breath hitched and the hand which I put on the bathroom door seized. Darling. He just called me darling, right? He cut the call, yet I stood there, the phone nearly breaking under the force of my grip, my mouth hanging… just like a fool.

  It didn’t make sense – how could I become so attracted to someone I met just yesterday?

  Richard wasn’t obligated to make this about anything more than sex. So was I being too greedy by wishing that we were… more than now? That this, whatever it was, moved past this weekend and stretched into weeks, possibly months and years?

  Darling.

  The word rang through my head, accompanied by images of Richard and I holding hands as we walked along streets, arguing about nonsense this moment and kissing each other the next. I wanted to be with him, not just in bed but everywhere else, to know his mind just as well as I knew his body – to love him and be loved by him.

  But did he want the same thing? He called me ‘darling’, right? That couldn’t have been a mistake.

  If my heart got this unsettled when he called me something as small as ‘darling’, how could I just let him go? How could I keep pretending that I wasn’t falling in love with Richard?

  No man but him ever made me feel this way.

  All through my life, I’d been the careful kind of girl, the one who loved books more than boys. I never regretted it, but if I let Richard go, I knew I’d regret it till the end of my days.

  As I finally got my foot off the ground and went into the room, I got dressed, put on a little makeup, my heart becoming lighter. This could just work. I just had to go to Richard and talk to him. Surely, he felt the same way I did.

  I had to tell him. Today was Sunday and the alternative was to remain without saying anything until the weekend was over and I probably never saw him again. No, I clenched my hands in determination, I couldn’t do that.

  ***

  Richard

  Oh, Lord. Why? Just why?

  I closed my eyes, softly hitting my forehead against the wall. This couldn’t be happening. Not now, not ever and certainly not with her. It was troublesome. I wasn’t ready for this, would never be ready. But here she was making me wish I could undo the last five minutes and un-hear what she just told me.

  “Uhm, Richard?” She called me, her voice shaky, but it felt like I was hearing her from the end of a very long tunnel. I couldn’t… “Richard? D-did you hear me? I said I-”

&nbs
p; “Please. Leave.” Even to my own ears, my voice sounded harsh. My hands were balled into fists and I had the overwhelming urge to punch something.

  “What? Are you serious right now?”

  She was also getting angry.

  Good.

  I needed to make her understand that this… love… could never define what happened between us. We couldn’t ever be in that kind of relationship. Ever. And if the best way to make her understand that was to come off as a cold, unfeeling bastard, then so be it.

  “Rachel, it was just sex.” I said, raising my head to stare right into her eyes, willing my resolve not to break under the weight of the tears now visible in her eyes. I needed to do this. For her own good. “If I knew you’d let it get into your head like this, heck, I would have found someone else.”

  I heard the quick intake of breath and I knew I’d hit her where it hurt. Turning around, I quickly disguised the look of pain on my face as something indescribable tore through my chest. What the hell was wrong with me?

  “I was just a fine piece of ass to you? Y-you never felt any affection for me?”

  I couldn’t bear to look at her face now. But it was time to put an end to this mess. “No, Rachel. I never loved you. Never. Now leave.”

  Chapter Six

  Richard

  Taking a swig of the beer before me, I wondered how I found myself in this position. No. A better question would be… why did I agree to come to this meeting? And where the hell was everyone?

  After Rachel stormed out of my hotel room last week, I couldn’t bear being there anymore. I’d immediately checked out and booked a flight back. Trying to lose myself in the company business as usual, I told myself again and again that it was over, that I’d forget her and she’d fade into the background like the others.

  But she hadn’t.

  And by the seventh day, I acknowledged the bitter truth. I was in love with Rachel Ivy.

  Now Tom called me twenty minutes ago to another meeting of The Merry Men, where I was supposed to pledge my allegiance to the pact.

  In fact, even if I decided to keep silent throughout, at some point, Tom would certainly expect me to say something about the pact I no longer believed in. I couldn’t do that.

  But how on earth could I tell him I was in love with his daughter?

  The irony of the situation didn’t escape me at all.

  “Richard.” Tom’s gruff voice came from behind, alerting me of his presence. I felt a warm but firm hand clamp over my shoulder. “How have you been?”

  Fine. Just one word. Fine.

  All I needed to do was open my mouth and say it.

  Maybe it was because of the alcohol. Or the fact that my chest ached so much with the memory of Rachel and how hurt she’d looked when I last saw her that it felt like there was a giant hole within me… but that word suddenly felt very heavy. Impossible to produce.

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came forth.

  “Richard?”

  I turned around and looked at him. “Tom,” I said, standing up to look at him in the eye. “I’m in love with your daughter.”

  There, I’d said it. Now, what would he do?

  His face was frozen. He didn’t say anything at first. I couldn’t discern what he was thinking. I knew this look – it was the same face he had when negotiating a million-dollar deal. A ruthless, unfriendly and emotionless face.

  “You should have stopped it.”

  That question was too sudden, too out-of-context that it made me pause and I furrowed my eyebrows.

  Then the truth hit me like a ton of bricks and I narrowed my eyes at him. “You knew?”

  His facial expression didn’t change and I got my answer. Damn, he knew.

  With that new information, the slight apprehension which had been choking me because of the respect I had for him seized, slowly being replaced by anger, and I took a step towards him. “What the hell, you have people following her?”

  “You won’t understand.” He said coldly, “You don’t have a daughter.”

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I narrowed my eyes at him. It didn’t make sense. Tom wouldn’t actually have people follow his daughter. Unless…

  “Is her life in danger? Does she have enemies?”

  “She doesn’t. I do. But that is not the point. You should have stopped it.” His eyes flashed.

  The atmosphere was getting heavier now, charged with suppressed anger from both sides. But at this point, I didn’t care.

  “Tom, I’m going to give it to you straight.”

  I knew that the only approach that would work – that someone like Tom understood best – was the business approach. From the deals we’d handled together in the past, I knew that he was a black and white kind of guy, no grey areas. It was one of the reasons I respected him so much.

  “I love your daughter...” I paused, searching for the right words to say, “In the morning when I wake up, the first thing I think of is her. At the office, her. In the car, her. At night, before I sleep, it’s her. And even if I manage to get some sleep, I dream of her. It’s crazy. I can’t explain it, but I can’t deny it either. I’ve never felt like this for anyone and with every minute that passes without having her in my arms, I inch closer to madness. In fact,” I paused, inhaling through the cloud of emotions in my chest, “After we’re done here, I’m going to get her and claim her as my own. And I honestly don’t care what you do. Kill me if you must, but I will love her.”

  Tom was silent, regarding me in a way that would have been intimidating to others. I respected him, but I wasn’t afraid of him. And I meant every single word I said.

  “I’m sorry for breaking the pact. But I’m not… I repeat… I’m not sorry that I love her.”

  Abruptly, I heard a whimper behind me, a gasp so soft I wouldn’t have heard it if the room was not deathly silent. But I did hear it and it was unmistakably feminine.

  Eyes widening, I whirled around, my mind going a thousand directions in that nanosecond only to become still as my eyes landed on the object of my dreams. My woman. My love. My all.

  Rachel Ivy.

  Taking a step from behind the curtain covering a window, she revealed herself, her lip quivering, eyes watering. She was wearing a small red dress, so beautiful it almost ached to look at her, but I’d rather die than take my eyes off her for one moment.

  Never again will I do that. Never again would I deny what was so glaring that I called myself a fool a thousand times for not realizing it.

  “You jerk.” Her voice was shaky and I didn’t know when I left my position, bounding across the room. In the next moment, I had her in my arms.

  I didn’t know how she came to be here or the background story to this unexpected turn of events. But I didn’t care. She was right here in my arms, right where she belonged.

  That was all that mattered.

  Epilogue

  Tom Ivy

  Taking a sip from the glass of scotch in my hands, I peered at the couple wildly whirling and laughing all over the dance floor and I sighed inwardly. What a mess.

  One was my twenty-two-year-old daughter who never even had a high-school boyfriend. And the other was my friend who once promised never to fall in love. Yet here they both were dancing like they just won the ultimate lottery, right after saying their marital vows in front of the clergyman.

  Richard. That bastard.

  I still hadn’t forgiven him for what he did. Not only had he broken the sacred pact he swore to, he had the audacity to also break my daughter’s heart. I could stomach the first, but not the second. Rachel was all I had, my greatest strength and weakness. My billions had nothing on her, and after seeing her cry for a week, almost turning to a walking ghost, I knew I had to do something.

  Too bad she hadn’t liked the idea of kidnapping Richard to make him pay for what he did.

  The conversation I had
with her hadn’t been easy. But it had been necessary. After getting her to forgive me for having my men watch her, I carefully explained why Richard couldn’t fall in love with her, hoping she’d understand and finally let him go. I should have known my own daughter better.

  She’d called the pact ridiculous and threatened to look for Richard herself if I didn’t tell her where he was. And that was how I had been roped into calling Richard, pretending to have another club meeting so that he’d come.

  He was damn lucky it all ended well at last and he’d had the sense to propose to her within a week. If he’d blown that chance, I swear I would have—

  “Look at them any harder and they just might burst into flames.” A silky feminine voice drawled behind me, interrupting my thoughts.

  Turning around, I saw a slender, curvy woman with her red hair held into a twist on her head, her green eyes staring into mine and her hand on the table, around a glass of…. was that scotch?

  Unabashedly, I gave her a once-over, running my eyes down her body, over her curves flaunted by the golden gown she wore, pausing at her generous bosom and even going down her long, long legs.

  Normally, I wasn’t such a pervert. But this lady interrupted what would have been a very satisfying thought process. And I wanted her to know it.

  But unlike what I expected, she didn’t even flinch under my gaze. Instead, as my eyes went back to hers, I saw in them a new glint of defiance that hadn’t been there before.

  Raising her chin up a notch, she cocked her eyebrows as she folded her arms across her chest and said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “Are you done yet? Or would you prefer a backside view?”

  Want to know what happens next?

  Stay tuned for Book 2 of the Alpha Billionaire Secret Club, coming out on the 30th of April 2020