My Roommate, the Billionaire (The Billionaire Kings Book 3)

by Serenity Woods

  “That’s okay. Like I said, I suppose I should have rung first.”

  “I do not mind.”

  He’s sitting on the edge of one of the chairs, and I perch opposite him, on the sofa. We study each other for a moment.

  I can’t believe it. This is my father.

  “You look very like your mother,” he says. “Same eyes. You’re very beautiful.”

  My face grows hot. “Thank you.”

  “You’re twenty-six?” he asks. When I nod, he says, “Yes, that fits.”

  “With when you went to France?”

  “Yes, it was twenty-seven years ago,” he confirms. “I did the Kiwi Overseas Experience—went all around Europe by train mostly. I was with a couple of friends, one of whom had a brother in Paris. We met him, and he brought some friends too, and I started talking to Estelle.”

  I hadn’t told Erin my mother’s name, and this confirms to me he is my father.

  “You didn’t grow up in Paris, though,” he says, a statement, not a question. How does he know? Maybe Albie told Erin where I’m from, and Erin told his brother.

  “No,” I reply. “When my mother fell pregnant, she went to her sister’s in a tiny town called Uzel, in Brittany. I grew up there. But I went to university in Paris, and I have lived there since I was eighteen.”

  Albie comes back into the room carrying the mugs of coffee and hands them out. “I’ll go and do some work,” he says to me.

  “No, please stay,” I tell him. This is all so strange, and I feel such a mixture of emotions. I want Albie here. He makes me feel better.

  “Okay.” He doesn’t argue, and he sits beside me on the sofa, taking my hand again, as if aware I need support. He glances at me, but I can’t take my eyes off my father’s face.

  “So you and my mother spent the night together?” I ask, a little hesitantly, as it’s an odd thing to ask a stranger.

  Jamie sips from his mug, then looks down into it. “Eventually. We talked for a few hours, and then she asked me back to her place.” He swirls his coffee around in his mug. “I saw her every night for the next week, while we were in Paris.”

  I stare at him. Mom has always told me I came from a one-night stand.

  Albie glances at me again, because I’ve told him this, but I don’t look back at him.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I fell in love with her,” he says simply. “When it was time for me to go, I asked her if we could keep in touch. She asked me if there was any chance of me staying in France. I had to say no—I’d promised my father that when I returned, I’d help him run the dairy farm. And my heart was in New Zealand. Paris was exciting, but I didn’t want to live in a city. I told her I couldn’t stay, but I asked her to come with me.” His gaze rises to meet mine. “She said no. She got very upset and asked me to leave. I begged her to stay in touch, but she told me to forget her.”

  I cover my mouth with my hand, overwhelmed with emotion again. Jamie watches me, but he doesn’t stop talking. “I wrote several times over the years,” he says. “Eventually someone took pity on me and wrote back to say she’d moved on. I never discovered where.”

  Inside, I feel a deep, icy cold at the thought that my mother has tried to poison me against my father all these years.

  “I am sorry,” I whisper. “Mom said you had a one-night stand and just walked away the next day. She said she had no idea how to find you.”

  “I swear I’m telling the truth,” he tells me earnestly. “I gave her my address and begged her to continue writing to me. If I’d known about you, I’d have tried to see you, or written to you at least.”

  “I believe you,” I say. “I am just sorry it took me so long to find you. Mom did not want me to come to New Zealand. She did not want me to find out the truth.”

  A silence falls between us, but it’s not an awkward one. I’m sure he’s thinking the same as I—that we’ve wasted all this time when we could have been getting to know one another.

  “Better late than never though, right?” Albie says.

  “Yeah.” Jamie gives a short laugh, which lights up his face, and now I know why he looked familiar when I first saw him. He looks like me.

  “Are you angry with her for not letting you know you have a daughter?” I ask.

  “A little,” he says honestly. “Erin tracked down my older brother, Robert, this morning, and he gave her my number. It’s the last thing I expected to hear today!”

  “Are you married?” Albie asks, a question I hadn’t considered.

  “Yes, to Hana—she’s Maori. We have two boys—Tamati, who’s twenty-one soon, and Rawiri, who’s nineteen.”

  My face grows hot—holy shit, I have two brothers!

  “Have you told Hana about me?” I ask.

  “Yes… that was an odd conversation.” He gives a wry smile.

  “I am so sorry,” I tell him. “I hope I did not make things awkward between you.”

  He shrugs. “She’s been married before and she has a daughter by her first husband. She was surprised, obviously—we both were. But she’s cool about it. She wants to meet you. In fact that’s partly why I’m here—to meet you, obviously, but also to invite you over next weekend. It’s Tamati’s birthday and we’re having a party, and I thought you could come and meet everyone.”

  The thought terrifies me, but Albie squeezes my hand, and I know he’s telling me that he’ll be by my side, supporting me. “Thank you,” I say, “I would love to come.”

  “So you run a dairy farm?” Albie asks him.

  “Yes. It’s a family business, run by my father and grandfather before him, just three hundred cows, a small staff; we do it all ourselves. Tamati and Rawiri work there, too.”

  “I do not know anything about dairy farming,” I admit. “I do like milk, though.”

  He smiles. “Tell me a bit about yourself.”

  “I have a business degree,” I admit.

  His eyes widen. “Jeez! That’s amazing.”

  “I haven’t done much with it yet,” I say shyly.

  “You worked in another field in France?”

  I’m conscious of Albie sitting next to me, and hope he won’t be offended if I talk about my past. “Not long after I graduated, I met my ex, Pierre. His father was the CEO of Gauthier Telecommunications, and he traveled around Europe a lot on business. I went with him most of the time. I got to see a lot of places, which was nice, but eventually we broke up. I decided I wanted to travel to New Zealand—I hoped I might find you, but I didn’t really expect to. I just wanted to get a feel for the place; to know where you came from.”

  “And what do you think?” he asks. “Do you like the country?”

  “I love it,” I say without hesitation. “The countryside is beautiful. The people are friendly and kind. And I like their mentality. That if something needs doing, they just get on with it. For example, I have been working at Noah’s Ark—the animal sanctuary up on the ridge.”

  Jamie nods. “I know it.”

  “I work in the grooming center there. Last night, all the staff were there, helping out with the animals and making sure they were safe. A tree came down and crushed part of the building, and this morning everyone came back to start clearing up, even the owners of the place.” I look at Albie and smile.

  Jamie sees the look. “You own the Ark?” he asks Albie.

  “I’m one of the directors,” Albie says.

  “Have the two of you been dating long?” Jamie asks.

  Albie smiles, and I chuckle. “No. It’s very new.”

  “Erin told my brother that your visa only lasts for a couple more weeks,” Jamie says. “Is that right?”

  I look at the floor and nod.

  “What will you do when it expires?”

  “We’re taking each day at a time,” Albie says. “Carpe diem, you know?”

  “Yes,” Jamie says. “I know.”

  We talk for a little longer, until he finishes his coffee, then he stands and says he sho
uld get back to the farm. He programs my mobile number into his phone.

  “I’ll text you my address, for next weekend,” he says.

  “Okay.” I hesitate, suddenly shy. Should I shake hands with him? Kiss him on the cheek?

  He studies my face, and then he opens his arms. Without saying anything, I walk into them, and he wraps them around me.

  I stand there for a long moment, being held by my father. He smells different from Albie—of fresh air and newly mown grass. I can’t believe this is really him.

  He tightens his arms for a moment, and then he kisses the top of my head and releases me. “I look forward to seeing you next weekend,” he says.

  I nod, too emotional to say anything.

  He shakes hands with Albie. “Good to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Albie says. “I’ll show you out.” He walks Jamie out of the living room and down the corridor, and I hear them saying goodbye at the door.

  I sink onto the sofa. A thousand different emotions are swirling around inside me. I feel overjoyed at having met him. I found him! After a whole year of searching.

  But I can’t deny that I also feel a deep fury toward my mother for not telling me the truth. All my life I’ve believed my father slept with my mother and then walked away from her without glancing back, and that has fueled my search for him. I wanted to confront him, to demand how he could have treated her that way. I should have known better. There are always two sides to every story.

  But it’s her fault I’ve missed out on years of happiness I could have had with him. Why didn’t she come to New Zealand with him? My life would have been very different. I wouldn’t have met Pierre—which might not have been a bad thing. I might also never have met Albie.

  No, things happen for a reason, and I’m glad everything has worked out the way it has. It doesn’t mean I’m not angry with her, though. That’s a conversation I’m going to have to have with her when I get back.

  And… now what? I’m in New Zealand, a country I’ve grown very fond of, with a man I adore, working in a place I love, and I’ve found my father. And in two weeks’ time, I’m supposed to get on a plane back to Paris.

  What do I do now?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Albie

  I close the front door and walk back into the living room. Remy has gone over to the windows, and she’s looking out over the garden, although I suspect she’s not really seeing the view. Her arms are folded, and her spine is stiff and straight.

  I walk up beside her and look down at her. “Are you okay?”

  She raises her brown eyes to mine. “I cannot believe it.”

  “I know, it was a bolt out of the blue. But it was probably better that it happened this way. You didn’t have a chance to get nervous.”

  She shakes her head slowly, with wonder. “In my head I had made him into this callous person who slept with my mother and thought nothing of her. I thought he would not want to know me because he had walked away from Mom all those years ago. I thought that if I found him, he was going to be angry with me.” She shakes her head again. “I cannot believe she lied to me. No wonder she did not want me to find him.”

  She’s shaking a little. I think she’s a mixture of angry and upset, and I can see why. “Come and sit down,” I tell her gently, “and I’ll pour us a brandy.”

  I lead her back to the sofa, then leave her briefly to get us both a drink. It’s getting dark. When I come back, I flick the lights off, so we’re lit only by the gas fire, then sit beside her and press the glass into her hand, and she has a big mouthful, shuddering as she drinks it down.

  “I’m not defending your mom,” I tell her, “because I think you have every right to be angry about this. But I wonder whether it’s worth giving some thought as to why she made the decisions she did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she was, what? Early twenties when she met Jamie?”

  “Yes, twenty-one.”

  “It’s very young. She obviously liked him a lot to have had a relationship with him for a week. And she asked him to stay in France. New Zealand is the other side of the world. Back then, it must have seemed like going to Venus. It was probably inconceivable to her to go there. And he refused to stay. She would have been devastated and hurt. When he left, she moved to Brittany maybe because she needed the comfort of being close to her family. What would be the point of contacting him again? She would have told herself he wasn’t interested enough in her to stay, and he wouldn’t be interested in a baby, either. I’m not saying that’s right,” I add hastily as Remy’s eyes flash, “I’m just trying to put myself in her shoes. People don’t always react the way they should. Maybe at first she was angry, and after that it was just too late to tell him. She might have been worried he’d be angry that she hadn’t told him earlier. She probably decided it was best to put it all behind her and move on.”

  “She should still have told me,” Remy whispers. “When I said I was coming to New Zealand, she could have given me his address. Even if he had moved, someone might have known where he was. I have been here a whole year, and I have only just found him, and now I have to go in two weeks. It is so unfair.”

  Her chest heaves as she struggles to hold in her emotion. I put my arm around her and, when she doesn’t resist, pull her against me, leaning back against the cushions. She lays her head on my shoulder, and I kiss her hair.

  “It is unfair,” I tell her. “But whatever happens, you’ve made that connection now. I was joking about the moving to Venus thing. We’re only twenty-four hours from France. What’s to stop you flying here regularly to visit him? And maybe he and his wife would like to come to Paris to visit you. And there’s Skype or FaceTime, and email. It’s not the same as it was twenty years ago. There’s no reason not to keep in touch now.”

  “You are right,” she says with a little hiccup. “You are so sensible, Albie. You always know the right thing to say.”

  “It’s easier to be objective when you’re not in the middle of a situation. I’m not emotionally involved—not in the way you are, anyway, and it makes things clearer.”

  She lifts her head to look at me. Christ, she’s beautiful. She takes my breath away. “What do you mean, not in the way you are?”

  “I am emotionally involved, Remy—with you, I mean. Of course I am. Did you really think I wouldn’t be?”

  Even as I say the words, though, I know that’s what she would be thinking. Her experience of men hasn’t been great—she thought her father wanted nothing to do with her mother, and Pierre appears to have given little attention to her emotional well-being.

  I finish off my brandy, and motion to Remy to do the same. When she’s done, I take our glasses and place them on the table. I lean back and pull her close against me. Sliding a hand to her jaw, I lift her face to mine. And then I kiss her. She tastes sweet, her lips slightly sticky, which is so erotic it gives me a hard-on in seconds.

  I feel inexplicably happy. We’re heading toward the midwinter solstice, and even though it’s only five-thirty, it’s dark outside. It rarely drops to freezing up here in the Northland, but the nights are cool, and although we have heat pumps throughout the house, I’ve lit the gas fire because it fills the room with a warm glow.

  Remy’s wearing jeans and a sweater, but earlier when I slid my hand beneath the wool, I discovered satin clinging tightly to her skin, so I know she’s wearing something sexy underneath. I do the same again, lifting up the sweater and slipping my hand up her ribs this time. She’s not wearing a bra, but the silky fabric turns into lace that cups her breasts. They feel soft and womanly, and I brush my thumb across her nipple, feeling it tighten beneath my touch as she sighs.

  “Aaahhh…” she murmurs, opening her mouth to me, and I slide my tongue inside, entwining it with hers in a kiss that superheats my blood and sends it shooting around my body. I could lie here forever, in the semi-darkness, in front of the fire, kissing Remy until the stars come out.

&
nbsp; At that point, she moves back, lifts off me, and stands before me as she strips off her sweater, then undoes her jeans, slides them down her legs, and kicks them off.

  She holds out a hand, and I take it and rise, doing the same, until I’m naked. Then I sit, and she climbs on top of me, straddling me. She’s wearing an incredibly sexy one-piece, and I slide my hands up her back and around her ribs, enjoying the feel of her so silky beneath my fingers.

  She cups my face and looks into my eyes for a moment. “Albie…”

  “Mm?” I’m thinking about the way she went down on me earlier; how warm her mouth was around the erection that now juts between us.

  She strokes my cheeks with her thumbs. “Why are you so different?” she whispers.

  “What do you mean?”

  She shakes her head and kisses me, her soft mouth moving across mine. I’m not sure what she meant by those words, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing judging by the way she delves her tongue into my mouth and wriggles down my legs so she can press against my erection. Her passion fires me up, makes my heart bang against my ribs. I want—I need—to be inside her. It’s an overwhelming base urge, the same I’m sure cavemen had millions of years ago, the desire to claim their woman, to plant their seed in her. I am no different from my prehistoric ancestors, I know that. The hunger I feel inside is a drive that has nothing to do with being civilized.

  And from the way Remy’s kissing me, she feels it too. She clenches her hands in my hair, so tightly it almost hurts, but I don’t care, it turns me on, and I wrap her long hair around my fist and pull it so she tips her head back with a moan. I kiss down her neck—big, wet, sloppy kisses that leave her skin glistening. I want to taste her, to devour her. With my other hand I lift her breast and fasten my mouth over the lace, and she groans and pushes her pelvis against my erection, arousing herself there. I suck her soft nipple through the lace, feeling it harden on my tongue, and swap to the other one, until the lace is wet and Remy’s sighing, arching her back to encourage me to suck harder. So I do, and she gasps out loud and yanks my head back.