When She Fell for the Billionaire

by Suzette de Borja

  Was that a softening in his features she detected?

  She forged on, “Mr. Konstantinos died shortly after. I didn’t get to meet my father, but I was hoping I would be able to meet my brothers.” She played with a button on his coat. “It was luck that I came across an article about the relaunch of The Medeia and how it would take place after the royal wedding. And that the whole Konstaninos family would be in Seirenada. I had this vision of a joyful family reunion,” she chuckled bitterly.

  It was an edited retelling. She couldn’t tell him about how she had never been invited to her mother’s home and never got to meet her brother and sister. Or how often she had waited for her mother’s erratic visits, only to be disappointed time and again when she failed to show up.

  “I e-mailed Markos, because he was the eldest, telling him about the letter my mother left me. I tried calling his office too but he never called back. A big, foolish part of me wished he just hadn’t received any of my communication, that he hadn’t rejected my claim without ever meeting me. But I was disabused of that notion that day we had lunch and we made the bargain. ” She laughed, one tinged with irony. “If he had been open to the idea, then he would never have asked you to,” she paused, searching for an apt word, “distract me.” Sabrina felt him grow taut beside her. “And we would never have met,” she finished softly.

  He had his elbows propped on his thighs, his long, elegant fingers clasped. His bow tie was nowhere in sight.

  He turned to her. “One way or another, we would have met, strega.”

  “You sound so sure.”

  His shoulders rose and dipped in an eloquent, fluid movement, conveying his belief in the inevitability of it. “When you know, you know.”

  The wall was still there. But maybe it had been knocked down a layer or two.

  “Dio. I could use an espresso.” He ran a hand through his darkening jaw.

  It was close to midnight, and they had been in the emergency room for an hour waiting for word from the doctors.

  “I don’t know how I can ever face the princess and Mr. Fernandez again,” she said woefully, thinking about how she had ruined the reception. “Not that I would ever have the chance to meet them again…”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” His lip hitched up at the corner in mild amusement. “Lexie and Nic had their share of scandal early on in their relationship.”

  She never had a chance to reply again because at that moment, a grim-looking Markos Konstantinos materialized in front of them. The soft tissue around his left eye had turned redder and puffier, the lid almost completely shut.

  She and Luca stood up in unison. Sabrina felt the tension coming off Luca as he held his body ramrod straight.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s stable. The doctor says it was an anxiety attack, not a heart attack as I feared.”

  Sabrina released her breath slowly in relief. She regretted involving Mrs. Konstantinos in the debacle.

  “She’s asking for you,” Markos said impassively.

  Sabrina frowned. “Are you sure it’s okay for her to see me?”

  Markos’ tone brooked for no argument. “She’s very insistent. She’s refusing her other medications until she sees you.”

  She felt Luca’s hand squeezing her upper arm gently. “I’ll go with you."

  Mrs. Konstantinos had been transferred to a private suite. The ride up in the elevator was fraught with tension. Sabrina was flanked by two men who were resolutely ignoring each other.

  The huge hospital suite had a sitting room, which was currently occupied by two people. They whipped their dark heads around and tracked her progress to their mother’s bedside warily with their mismatched eyes.

  One of the twins spoke up in Greek. It was too fast, so Sabrina didn’t catch it. Markos issued a curt retort in the same language. Their mother spoke and the two men looked chastened.

  Mrs. Konstantinos looked frail beneath the sheets. Her hair, which had been in a chignon at the reception, lay loose around her head. It was a deep black with streaks of silver at the temples. She was a handsome woman, and she had given her sons their looks.

  All except the color of their eyes.

  That had been from her husband.

  “She wants to see the letter you told me about.”

  She was right. Markos had indeed read her e-mail and had chosen to ignore her.

  As if reading her thoughts, he said, “There are others who have claimed to be the children of my father. It has made me very cautious.”

  “I understand.”

  Luca’s quiet presence behind her gave her the strength to see this through. She pulled out the letter her mother had given to her from her handbag and handed it to Markos.

  Markos started reading it in an unemotional tone, translating it into Greek. Sabrina knew the words by heart.

  “Dearest Bree,

  I hope you forgive me for keeping it a secret. I just only wanted to protect you. Your father is Giorgios Konstantinos.

  When you know the truth, I hope you’ll understand and forgive me.

  Love,

  Mom

  The truth. Suddenly Sabrina was not so sure she wanted to know what it was.

  As if sensing she might bolt any time, Luca drew closer and held her hand.

  Mrs. Konstantinos spoke in a thready voice. Her dark eyes were fixed on Sabrina. Markos interpreted for her.

  “Your mother worked for my husband as an interpreter in his dealings with the international market for several months. She was very young and beautiful. She looked just like you.” Mrs. Konstantinos tugged on her blanket, pulling it higher around her waist. “I should have sent her on her way immediately, but at that time translators were rare.”

  Sabrina’s heart started to pound. Her skin felt clammy. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what she was going to hear.

  “One day she came to me, crying.” Markos appeared determined to continue his interpretation without a glimmer of emotion, but at his mother’s next sentence, he paused and whitened around the mouth.

  “Go on,” Luca urged his friend. He squeezed Sabrina’s hand tighter.

  “She said my husband forced himself on her. I refused to believe her story. I sent her away and told her never to come back to Greece or I’ll have charges made up and send her to jail. I asked the company to erase all records she ever worked for us.” She gripped the blanket tighter, her knuckles pale and bony. “When Markos told me about your letter, claiming that your mother had worked for our company, I denied ever hearing her name.”

  Markos looked at his mother, wrestling with some deep-seated emotion Sabrina couldn’t define. Anger, shock, horror…

  “Forgive me, child. I knew what my husband was capable of, but in my desire to preserve the family, I did your mother wrong. And I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

  Her mother had been raped.

  By her father.

  Oh God. Sabrina felt like throwing up. She was the product of an act of violence committed against her mother. All of a sudden, everything slotted into place.

  Her grandmother’s warning against men who would take advantage. She had mistakenly thought, much later on, after finding out the identity of her father, that it was because he had been married and had chosen to have an affair with her mother. But her grandmother had been warning her against something much worse.

  “She has his eyes.” She had heard her mother say once when she was talking to her grandmother, not realizing that she was eavesdropping. And Sabrina knew without knowing why that it was the reason her mother sometimes could not bear to look at her. She had naively thought when she was little it was because she missed her father so much and she was a reminder of what she had lost. Now it sickened her to think that whenever her mother gazed at her, she was a reminder of that terrible time in her past.

  Markos looked like it, too. The arrogance had been wiped off his handsome face. He strode out of the hospital suite without a backward glance.


  Sabrina looked at Mrs. Konstantinos’ face, registering the deep grooves bracketing her mouth, her sunken eyes, the tight pull of her lips. It was all there. The signs of her unhappiness.

  This was what she had come to Seirenada for. Answers, closure, new beginnings. And now she had them.

  So she said the only thing she could say. “I know my mother would’ve forgiven you, were she alive.”

  Luca’s voice rumbled in his translation. Mrs. Konstantinos started weeping.

  Sabrina shook off Luca’s hand and ran out of the room. Like a wounded animal, she’d find a corner to curl up and cry.

  * * *

  Luca found her in the empty chapel. He was afraid she had left without him.

  “We’ve never exchanged phone numbers.” He slid beside her on the pew, keeping his distance. She just kept staring at the altar. “I’ll leave you alone to your thoughts if you promise to meet me at the lobby once you’re ready to leave.”

  She didn’t give any sign of having heard him. He motioned to rise.

  “Stay.”

  He did as told. How could he not? He longed to take her in his arms and offer her a shoulder to cry on but was unsure where he stood with her.

  She turned mismatched, bleak eyes to him. “Talk,” she said hoarsely.

  He cleared the lump that had formed in his throat at the desolation on her face. “What do I talk about?”

  “You.”

  He nodded, sensing she needed a distraction. “My name is Luca Ligueria Argenti.” He swung his gaze to the crucifix on the altar. “I was born in Milan. My parents doted on me and my brothers and sister. We were allowed to be children as long as we wanted. Circumstances had not forced us to grow up too soon. I grew up believing there was good in the world. I believed that prayers were answered. That evil never goes unpunished. That truth is sacred. I believed that superheroes would always save the day.” He was amazed at how naïve he had been. “Until the day my real life hero walked out of the door and took up with a woman half his age.” He laughed grimly. “A woman I had dated once.”

  He felt her body tense. “A gold digger,” she said without any emotion.

  “I introduced her to my father when we bumped into him in a restaurant when we went on our one and only date. We had zero chemistry. I told her I didn’t think it was going to work out between us after our date.” His lips pulled in a derisive smile. “She went after my father.” He had never told anyone in the family.

  “It’s not your fault, Luca.”

  He glanced at her, amazed at how she had sensed his guilt. He still felt somewhat responsible. He had known at the start that the woman was vain and shallow and was not his type at all, but his pride had puffed at her interest in him and so he had asked her out. He had kept silent about the whole story to spare his family more pain but felt sick to think about the hand, even by chance, he had played in destroying his parents’ marriage.

  “It’s funny because he left my mother just a year ago. I’m not a six-year-old boy that he left behind. A lot of my friends’ parents divorced when they were very young. It shouldn’t be a tragedy. It should be easier to understand. He had a mid-life crisis, si?” he said. “I’m supposed to be able to deal with it. I’m an adult.”

  “Did it shatter your faith in everything?”

  “Not completely. No. It just made me question some things I took for granted.” He felt a small amount of triumph in being able to draw her out. And on the heels of that, relief that he had been able to voice out his resentment and pain about his parents’ divorce. Raphael had been upset at the start, but he had accepted it easier than him. Chiara’s reaction had been to swear off marriage forever.

  And Luca, he had become a late bloomer cynic.

  “Now I know why she didn’t want to visit me,” she said off-tangent.

  “Who?”

  “My mother. I was a reminder of what happened to her,” she said quietly. “I thought it was just my eyes. Because they were strange. My mother could never gaze at me for long.” She fiddled with a button on his coat. “They called me ‘Miss Matched’ in school.”

  “They bullied you.” Luca knew it with certainty.

  “It got better in high school. Someone taught me the art of blending in. I got my contacts.” Her shoulders rose with her deep sigh. “I’m okay, Luca. Really. I just got my answers tonight.”

  “And they weren’t what you were expecting at all,” he concluded for her.

  “No,” she said slowly. “But they were more than I hoped for.”

  Luca frowned. How could she say that, knowing her mother had been raped by her biological father?

  “It explained a lot. Growing up, I hadn’t been sure. My mother wasn’t always around. And when she was, she was distant.” Her voice trembled. She swallowed then spoke again, “But she did give birth to me, and she made sure I grew up with someone who’d really care for me. And now, knowing what she went through, I’m just happy because now I know my mother really loved me after all.”

  If only I could erase all those times you were in doubt, lonely, or in pain, strega, you’d never have lived a day knowing you weren’t loved.

  This girl who expected little deserved more.

  Much, much more.

  Luca pulled her into his arms and she went into them without hesitation. Then she cried, great racking sobs that he fervently hoped cleansed and healed her.

  * * *

  There was a comfortable silence between them now. An intimacy. The kind forged after baring one’s soul.

  He was holding her hand once more. She hoped she hadn’t gotten snot on his shirt. She had a glimpse of her swollen eyes and red nose before the elevator door slid open and they stepped inside.

  A woman in a scrub suit carrying a patient’s chart glanced up and did a double take when she saw Luca. Rumpled, he was still a gorgeous devil. And he had been her gorgeous devil for a few days, she thought with a pang.

  Tomorrow she would be leaving him. She would be crying again if she didn’t get a hold of herself.

  She paused at the corridor leading to the lobby. She wanted to get it off her chest now. “Luca, I’m sorry for not telling you about Markos. I was scared once you knew the real reason I wanted to see him that you weren’t going to take me to the reception.”

  “You have no reason to be sorry. We were the ones who had forced you to lie.” He hesitated. “Actually, I have a confession to make, too.”

  She frowned.

  “I had no intention of bringing you to the wedding at all, even if you had stuck with our bargain.”

  “What are you saying?"

  Sabrina saw him take a deep breath. “I didn’t want Markos to see you at all. I was afraid you would get together again.”

  “But you brought me to the reception,” she said, confused.

  He didn’t meet her gaze. “It obviously meant a lot to you, seeing Markos again.” He didn’t speak for a few seconds, then spoke in a rush. “Strega, I need to tell you something. I don’t want you to-”

  But a woman’s throaty cries cut him off. “Oh, yes! Give it to me! Oh, yes!”

  “What the hell is that?”

  Sabrina fumbled for her mobile inside her handbag. Of all the rotten timing! “Hello?” she answered impatiently, but the line had been cut off. “You were saying?” she prompted Luca.

  A hospital orderly pushing a stretcher looked at them curiously. Luca took her by the elbow and ushered her to the lobby. “We can talk in the car,” he said.

  The woman started porn-moaning again. Sabrina’s cheeks grew warm. She swore, answering the call quickly before the woman reached her orgasm. She heard Chase’s voice and tried to make out what he was saying through the bad connection. “You’re here?”

  She had sent her friend an SMS message awhile back, informing her that she was at the emergency room due to a minor bump on the head and that she was fine. She didn’t know what time she would be discharged, she’ll keep him updated, and that Chase wa
s not to worry if she didn’t meet him at the airport later in the afternoon.

  “What do you mean you’re here?” she repeated loudly, the way someone tended to speak because of a bad connection.

  Luca was scanning the driveway for their ride.

  A black BMW pulled up in front of them. The driver stepped out and opened the passenger door smartly. And out came a man with dark hair, summer blue eyes, and a blinding smile. Someone who looked like-

  There was a chorus of shrieks. Sabrina’s head whipped around. Why was there a crowd across the driveway fronting the lobby?

  “Bree, honey. I’m here!”

  Sabrina’s head swung in the direction of the sound, and her jaw dropped.

  Suddenly, Chase Latimer was engulfing her in a tight embrace.

  Sabrina realized it was not Chase’s smile that had blinded her, but the papparizzi flash bulbs.

  All hell broke loose.

  Chapter 21

  The press pack descended on them. Someone jostled her, squishing her face onto Chase’s firm chest and wrenching her away from Luca.

  People were shouting questions. Calling out Chase’s name.

  “Luca!” She lifted her head from Chase’s pectorals as she recognized his voice shouting her name above the din. She twisted her head, trying to locate him, but the swarm of people blocked her view. Someone attempted to shove her inside the car. She resisted by clinging to the door frame.

  “Jesus, Bree! Get in!” Chase pushed her inside the car.

  The door slammed shut and before she could even wrap her head around what had happened, the vehicle was already speeding away.