Her Bad Boy Billionaire Lover (Billionaire Lovers)

by Barbara Bretton

  He grabbed her hand and held it fast. "Next time I hit back."

  "Go to hell."

  "Been there," he said. "Want to hear about it?"

  She wanted to slap him again but knew better than to try it.

  He glanced down at the ring finger of her left hand.

  "I'm not married," she said, noticing the direction of his gaze. "Once was more than enough."

  "Neither am I."

  She arched a brow. "I don't recall asking."

  "You wanted to, Megan." He was back on familiar ground again, teasing, questing, hunting. "Admit it. You're as curious about me as I am about you. It's been six years. A lot can happen to a person in six years."

  "You flatter yourself."

  "I don't think so." He stroked the inside of her wrist with his thumb. She didn't try to move away. "There's a lot of history between us."

  "Ancient history," she said. "None of it matters."

  "I think it does."

  "And I think you're wrong."

  "Like I said, six years is a long time."

  "We made a mistake and we rectified it. What's the point in rehashing the past?"

  "We didn't always fight," he reminded her. "Sometimes . . . "

  He drew her into his arms. She held herself stiff as a hundred warning lights went off inside her brain. This was insane...dangerous...exciting. She caught the familiar scent of his skin, and her senses veered out of control. He cupped her chin with his hand then lowered his head toward hers.

  "Don't say anything," he whispered. "Just let yourself go."

  She uttered a soft moan as he ran his tongue slowly along her lips, then eased it into her mouth, exploring the softness within. The bitterness and anger of the past temporarily vanished as a liquid sweetness flooded through her body.

  His hands snaked their way up her spine and plunged into her thick hair. His hips pressed against hers and she felt his rising excitement. Her fingers were spread flat on his chest and she slid them under the smooth cotton fabric of his shirt and ran them, palms down, over his thick mat of chest hair.

  His kiss moved down the side of her throat, along the slender column, to her tanned shoulder. With seductive deliberation, he nudged her lacy shawl and she let it slither down to the floor of the deck.

  His burning mouth branded her shoulder, then moved slowly, inevitably, to her breast.

  She cradled his silky head in her hands. With her forefingers she traced the proud curve of his cheekbones and the stubborn line of his jaw. For a moment it was as if the past six years had never happened. She was nineteen again, on fire from within for the man who had stolen her heart. She grew acutely aware of her breasts, of the way her nipples grew taut as his lips moved closer. She was as warm as the tropical night and the warmth seemed to rise in waves around her, threatening to make her throw reason to the four winds.

  His face was half in shadow and his sad eyes looked down into hers with a look she couldn't fathom. He couldn't hurt her any longer, so why not allow herself this one last pleasure?

  Her breath caught when his fingers encircled her wrist again. His dark brows were drawn together in what looked like a scowl. She tried to pull her hand away but he held it fast.

  "Jake, we can't--"

  Her words turned into a muffled gasp as, with great deliberation, he separated and then kissed each one of her fingertips in turn. His mouth was hot. The scrape of his teeth against the sensitive pad of flesh made her nipples grow taut. The gesture was fiercely erotic and it pierced her heart, catapulting her back into another time when there was only she and Jake and a wonderful future stretching before them.

  Tilting her head back, she looked up at him, trying to read the expression in his eyes. The wind had picked up, whipping her hair about her face, making it as tangled and wild as her emotions. She couldn't control the rush of unwanted desire burning its way through her body.

  He pulled her slightly closer with an insistent hand against the small of her back. "It was always good between us, wasn't it, Megan? Always." The simple touch of his hand against the bare flesh of her spine made her tremble with wanting him.

  "Yes," she whispered, unable to deny the truth. "It was always good."

  Her breasts and hips molded themselves against his body with an urgency that frightened her. She forced herself to grow rigid in his arms. He was not going to draw her close to him the way he used to do. She was older now, and smarter. Oh, he could be charming, flashing that killer smile of his, moving his powerful body with the grace of a jungle predator. Given half a chance, he could charm her right back into his bed.

  "Do you remember the first time?" His voice was molten gold.

  She struggled to dispel the magic settling around them. "I'm not interested in the past, Jake. The future is what's important to me." Jenny's future, most of all. Dear God, she thought, don't let him find out about our daughter. She had no room for him in her life, no matter that her traitorous body said otherwise.

  "It was our wedding night," he said, ignoring her protests. "They had a bucket of pink champagne on ice--"

  "Pink champagne," she said with a soft laugh. "You're being kind. I doubt if a champagne grape had been anywhere near that bottle."

  "So you do remember. I was beginning to wonder."

  Damn him. He'd always been able to bend her to his will. "Is there a point to all this? We were wonderful in the bedroom and terrible in every other room in the house."

  "There was more to our marriage than that."

  "No, there wasn't. I never knew you, Jake, not really. You were as big a mystery to me then as you are now."

  "I'm not the one who walked out on the marriage," he pointed out. "You were."

  "I had good reason." And you let me go without a fight.

  "I'm not arguing that, Meggie. What I'm saying is there's unfinished business between us."

  She looked away, eyes drawn to the silvery wake the Sea Goddess left in its path. How could she argue the point when back home their daughter slept peacefully, hugging her favorite teddy bear to her chest, dreaming dreams that Megan was determined to make come true.

  "Can you deny there's something between us, Meggie?" His voice was low, seductive...dangerous.

  "No." She turned to face him. "I can't. But that doesn't mean we have to act on it."

  "Maybe we should." He released her from his grip and her entire body yearned toward his. "Maybe that's the only way we can get rid of the past once and for all and get on with it." The perennial twinkle in his eyes turned darker, more intense.

  "This isn't a pleasure trip for me," she said, her mind racing through endless winding corridors, looking for a way out. "I'm here to work."

  "Sunday," he said. "Day after tomorrow. You'll be finished by four. After that, your time is yours."

  Her eyebrows lifted. "You know about Sunday?"

  "I know about everything."

  She didn't doubt him. "You piano players get around."

  He gave her one of those smiles that had buckled her knees back when she was young and naive. Unfortunately, that smile still worked now that she was older and wiser. "Sunday night," he said, brushing her cheek with his fingertips. "Ten o'clock." He kissed her quickly, his lips barely touching hers. Just enough to make the longing inside her grow stronger. "Right here."

  "No matter what I decide?"

  "No matter what you decide." The look in his eyes brooked no argument. "You owe me that much, Meggie."

  She remembered the night she'd walked out on him. How she'd gone out of her way to avoid confrontation and questions and the whole unsavory business of breaking up a marriage. She hadn't known how to handle conflict or poverty or any of the thousand things that could go wrong between a husband and wife.

  She simply hadn't understood that divorce only ended a marriage in the eyes of the law; it took much more than a piece of paper to convince the heart that it was over.

  Chapter Three

  "Briscoe's going to be hard to beat," said Ian M
acmillan, one of Jake's partners in Tropicale.

  Jake looked up at him. "I wasn't that impressed."

  The two men were seated in the office adjacent to the bridge. It was very late but given the charade they were playing--posing as members of the crew--this was the only time they had for executive business.

  "Briscoe's the old pro of the group, best credentials this side of the Cordon Bleu." Macmillan laughed tiredly. "But she isn't what you'd call easy on the eyes, is she?"

  Jake, who had been studying a spreadsheet of projections for the next fiscal year, grunted. "This isn't a beauty contest."

  "Maybe it should be. Did you see that babe with the big green eyes?" He glanced down at the brochure Jake had kept on top of the stack of papers on the desk. "Megan McLean will have to go some to come up with something tastier than her own sweet self."

  Jake looked up. "What was that?"

  "McLean," said Ian, oblivious to Jake's tone. "Don't tell me you missed her." He held out his hand at shoulder height. "About this big." His hands described a curvy shape in the air. "Everything where it should be. Woman's got the best pair of--"

  Macmillan never had a chance. Jake was on him before he finished the sentence and was about to deliver the right hook he'd perfected in the outback when a purser entered the office and pulled him off the younger man.

  "What the hell's your problem?" Ian barked, rubbing his throat where Jake had grabbed him.

  Jake glowered at him. "Say another word about her and, so help me, I'll--"

  "I get the message," said Ian, "but the question is, why?" He forced a nervous grin. "Don't tell me you staked your claim already."

  "None of your goddamn business."

  "What's the deal, Lockwood--we got a conflict of interest case building here?"

  "Just stay away from her, that's all. She's not your type."

  Macmillan laughed, then rubbed his jaw again. "I haven't met one yet who isn't."

  "Congratulations," Jake said, putting a sarcastic spin to the word. "Then this one's a first."

  "I don't take orders from you, Lockwood. We're partners, remember?"

  Jake knew he'd gone overboard but the feelings Megan had roused in him refused to be quieted. The thought of another man putting his hands on her made him want to punch first and ask questions later. Primitive, maybe, but effective.

  "I'm wound pretty tight these days," he said by way of apology. "The Sea Goddess is the only woman in my life."

  "You gotta get out more, Lockwood," said Ian with a relieved laugh. "I know a sweet little blonde who--"

  Jake was no longer listening. He'd come close to screwing up royally and the near-miss rocked him.

  The thing was, he wasn't supposed to feel this way. He'd expected to want her. Desire had been a major force in their relationship and there'd been no reason to imagine its power wouldn't make itself known again.

  He knew how to handle those chemical urges, how to enjoy sex but avoid involvement. What he hadn't been prepared for were these other emotions, equally strong, that were tangled up in his desire for Megan.

  Anger, for one, and regret. Both of which were understandable considering the way the marriage had ended. So much left unsaid between them. So many dreams destroyed. What surprised him was the irrational sense of hope that had flared to life in the darkness.

  Another man might call it love. Jake called it ridiculous.

  Only one woman had ever managed to breathe life into all the hidden recesses of his soul and he'd managed to drive her away with his selfish pursuit of his own goals. Love was a thing of the past, an artifact like an arrowhead or an old tombstone.

  What he was dealing with now was lust, pure and simple. Despite everything, he'd never quite gotten her out of his system and, he expected, she felt the same attraction to him.

  And there was only one way to deal with it.

  They needed to come together in a blaze of heat and desire, and burn away the last vestiges of their marriage. He had to find out that she was only a woman and not the elusive goddess time and fantasy had transformed her into.

  Ignoring Ian's curious look, he excused himself then left the office.

  "Damn it to hell," he swore as he made his way toward the dining room. He didn't want a second chance. He only wanted to put finish to whatever mysterious force it was that still tied him to her.

  Why else would he be feeling guilty, pretending to be one of the crew? The idea had been for the partners in Tropicale to blend in with the other passengers, so they could hear first-hand what the passengers thought of the cruise. A clever idea and one that was extremely workable, given the more intimate size of the Sea Goddess when compared to a traditional cruise ship.

  Yeah, it was a great idea--or, at least, it had been until he'd found himself looking into Megan's eyes and everything they'd had and lost came rushing back in on him like the tide....

  #

  He hadn't wanted to marry.

  Only a fool would tie himself down with a wife and family when the future beckoned, all promise and glitter. He liked his freedom. He liked taking what he wanted from life, caution be damned.

  Yet from that first moment on the beach when she'd looked up at him with those lazy green eyes and turned his soul to flame, he had known there were some things you didn't do with a girl like Megan McLean.

  She'd been sweet in his arms and yielding, and he had little doubt he would have been able to part those shapely thighs of hers and bury himself inside her willing body.

  But, damn it, it wouldn't be enough. It always had been with other women on other days, but this time he knew the rules were different. The moment he saw the flash of fire in her eyes, he'd wanted to toss her over his shoulder like one of his caveman ancestors and cart her off to his lair.

  He wanted to own her. To possess her. To brand her with his touch and smell and heat until she belonged to him and him alone. The thought of another man burying himself inside her warmth made him realize he could be capable of murder.

  They'd flown through the night to get to the chapel on the Las Vegas strip. Hidden beneath a blanket in the rear of the plane, he'd touched her in ways that made her shudder and it had taken a supreme act of will to keep from having her right then and there. The need in him had been that great--the dark wet heat of her body that intoxicating. He'd taken his fingers, still moist and hot from her, then rubbed them across her lips, urging her to taste herself, to know how good and sweet she would be when he found her with his mouth and tongue.

  They rode in silence to the chapel, caught up by the enormity of it all. He bought a bouquet of white roses from a sleepy clerk in the lobby. A simple gesture and an obvious one. She was used to diamonds.

  "Oh, Jake," she whispered, burying her face in the blossoms. "They're so beautiful."

  He wasn't a man ruled by convention. He wasn't marrying because he needed society's imprimatur on the way she made him feel; he was marrying because there was no other way to make her his own.

  "I don't care where we live," she'd whispered later on as the door to their hotel room closed behind them. "Wherever you want to go, whatever you want to do--I don't need anything but you."

  #

  "You were wrong, Meggie," he said, staring out at the ocean, silvered by moonlight. She'd needed all the trappings of wealth and position that she'd known as Darrin McLean's only child.

  He should have left her there on the beach where he'd found her, daddy's little girl still as pure as the day she was born.

  She'd made him want things a man shouldn't want: family, security, a house with a picket fence. To get where he wanted to be, you had to be willing to give up the things other men took for granted--and Megan hadn't been the kind of girl who'd wait around for things to get better. She was used to money and the things it could buy. Living hand-to-mouth wasn't her style.

  Which was exactly what her old man had told him the first time they met. "Six months tops," Darrin McLean said, with a look at his Rolex. "My daughter needs
more than someone like you could give her."

  In his mind he saw his sister, dying by inches in that parched cabin on that barren land, her beauty held hostage to responsibility. To poverty. Putting all of her dreams on hold while she tended house for the drunk they had called a father and pretended she had all the time in the world to be happy.

  Jake liked to tell himself that was the only reason he hadn't gone after her when she left, but the truth was more complex--and a hell of a lot more painful. She hadn't believed in his dreams and that fact hurt him more deeply than any left hook that had ever met his jaw.

  #

  Megan double-locked the door to her suite that night. She wasn't sure if she was locking Jake out or herself in. Not that it mattered. Either way she was in trouble.

  She tossed her evening bag down on the bed and draped the shawl over the back of the boudoir chair. It slithered to the floor in a puddle of lace and she kicked it away with the pointed toe of her fancy shoe. Reaching back she tugged at the zip of her dress.

  The zip refused to give. She tugged again, hard, and was rewarded with the sound of tearing fabric. "Damn," she said, suddenly close to tears. "Damn. Damn. Damn."

  She stepped out of the dress and inspected the damage. The zipper had pulled away from the bodice and a long diagonal rip angled toward the waist. It was the last of her good dresses, the elegant designer costumes from the days when names like Dior and Versace had been as familiar as old friends.

  "Okay," she said out loud, taking measure of the damage. "This isn't so bad. A good dressmaker could fix it." Good dressmakers cost good money, that annoying little voice inside intoned. She sank onto the bed and crushed the garment in her hands.

  It was his fault. All of it. She never had trouble with zippers. Seeing Jake again after so long had turned her into a mass of nerves, incapable even of undressing herself without courting disaster. He had no business being there. Five years ago when Megan was alone with a brand new baby and the rubble of her father's business empire falling down around her shoulders--then she would have welcomed him back into her life.