The Billionaire's Cinderella Contract

by Michelle Smart

  Mia had to strain every muscle on her face not to let it crumple. His comment had been too loaded not to have been meant as a warning to her.

  ‘What a horrible, cynical world you live in. No wonder you’ve had to pay me to be your girlfriend—with that attitude, any rational woman would run a mile from you.’

  To her horror, hot tears swelled and stabbed the back of her eyes. The coldness she’d detected in him before she’d gone to bed had carried over to the morning. Although outwardly polite, his tone was clipped, his body language tight, and she had no idea what she’d done to cause it. Not wanting him to see the shimmering tears, she pushed past him and entered the shop. Inside, she took a moment to compose herself, then had to use every acting skill she possessed to turn her face back into the mask of the dewy-eyed, infatuated lover of a billionaire.

  A tall, beautiful woman approached them. Naturally, she only had eyes for Damián, who’d silently entered the store a beat after Mia. After establishing she was the manager, the woman whisked Mia off to find the outfits that would transform her from an impoverished actress to a member of the jet-set elite.

  The excitement that had bubbled inside her at the thought of spending hours ogling beautiful clothes and having the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try them on and select some for herself had turned to acid.

  The clothes that had dazzled her from the outside left her feeling flat and they left the store without her trying anything on. The same thing happened in the next shop. None of the exquisite clothing tempted her. For the first time, she found she couldn’t inhabit the role she was playing. All she wanted was to go home.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Damián asked in an undertone when they left the third shop empty-handed.

  ‘Nothing.’ To save herself from further questions, she hurried up the wide steps of a large, world-famous department store. This time, Damián took control of matters.

  Approaching a shop assistant, he said, ‘My partner would like a selection of outfits.’ He explained his requirements and within minutes Mia was being led like a sheep to a changing room so luxurious it wouldn’t look out of place in a palace.

  She sat on a velvet padded chair to wait for the selections to be brought to her, then jumped back to her feet when the cubicle door opened and Damián appeared.

  ‘Tell me what the matter is,’ he demanded through gritted teeth, dark eyes filled with anger.

  ‘Nothing,’ she spat back in the same low tone he’d adopted.

  ‘Do not lie to me, Mia. It isn’t like you to behave like a spoilt brat.’

  ‘No, that’s your forte.’

  ‘Do not push me,’ he warned.

  ‘Or what?’ she hissed. ‘You’ll dump me?’

  His features twisted in anger.

  ‘You hurt me,’ she blurted out.

  Damián, hating to see the sheen that had appeared in her rapidly blinking eyes, gave an internal curse.

  ‘How?’ he asked roughly.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. Making out like I’m a gold-digger when you know I only took the job because I thought you were blackmailing me.’

  ‘I did not...’ Feeling his temper rise even higher, he cut himself off and dragged his fingers through his hair.

  ‘You did. I didn’t ask for any of this but I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me—I’ve even lied to my family—and now you’re acting as if I’m some greedy cow who needs putting in her place. You might be a noble member of the elite but that does not give you the right to treat me as if I’m less of a person than you.’

  He breathed heavily. He didn’t know what was causing his chest to constrict so much that getting air into his lungs was an endurance, whether it was her face contorting to stop tears from spilling or the pain lacing her vehemently delivered words.

  ‘I don’t think you’re less of a person than me,’ he eventually bit out.

  ‘You still felt the need to put me in my place though, didn’t you? Don’t you think your coldness towards me and the fact you flinch every time we touch has spelt out loud and clear that you don’t see me as worthy of you? Did you really have to confirm it verbally too?’

  ‘For...’ He bit off the curse he wanted to shout and fought to keep his voice to the same venomous whisper they’d conducted the entire conversation in. ‘How dare you make me out to be a snob?’

  ‘If the cap fits, wear it. You think you’re too good for me. Well, let me tell you something, rich boy. I might be poor but at least I don’t judge members of the opposite sex on their net worth before deciding whether they’re worth sleeping with, and nor have I ever felt the need to spell out to them why they’re unworthy to share my bed.’

  This time Damián let the expletives fly free. Damn Mia Caldwell and her beautiful blue eyes and the dignified hurt ringing from them. Damn her for making his tongue reveal things best kept hidden. Damn her for making him feel things he shouldn’t.

  ‘I was just being honest,’ he said roughly. ‘If it came across that I was calling you unworthy then I apologise. That was never my intention...’ He swore again and clenched his hands into fists. ‘Yes, it damn well was my intention but I wasn’t warning you off me—I was warning myself off you.’

  The damnable beautiful eyes widened.

  His body moved before his brain could stop it, taking the one step needed to close the space between them and cup her cheeks in his hands.

  ‘You and I...’ Bright colour stained her face. ‘Damn it, Mia, every time I touch you or you touch me, my concentration is shot. Don’t you see what a dangerous point in my life this is? The Delgado Group has been in my family for three generations and it faces destruction. I stand to lose everything. How the hell can I keep my focus when all I can think about is you?’

  He waited for her to smack his hands away. He waited for her to scream. He waited for her to spit in his face, to do anything that said his touch was unwanted.

  But her eyes continued to hold his.

  The tips of their noses touched.

  ‘Mia...’ Her name fell like a groan from him. ‘We are wrong for each other. It could never work. I cannot offer you a future.’

  Her lips parted. The tiniest breath escaped from them. It danced over his mouth and slipped into his airwaves.

  Back away right now. Let her go. Leave the room.

  But he was helpless to heed the warnings in his head. In that moment, all his thoughts and all the heightened feelings rampaging through him were centred round this woman. There was a growing feeling inside him that his entire world could be centred around her...

  His mouth dipped to brush against hers. Her eyes closed.

  And then the door swung open and they jumped apart to find one of the sales assistants holding a pile of clothing in her arms, a look of utter embarrassment on her face. ‘My apologies... I forgot to knock.’

  Sucking in a breath at the ache that had formed in his loins, Damián chanced one quick look at Mia. She was holding her cheeks in the exact place he’d just held them. The colour heightening them was the most vivid he’d ever seen.

  He took one more deep breath then left the cubicle.

  * * *

  The rest of the day passed in a blur. Mia couldn’t remember a single item of clothing she’d chosen. Even the jewellery Damián had bought to complement them was nothing but shadows in her mind.

  She had a feeling he’d been in just as big a daze too.

  He’d been about to kiss her. And she’d been about to kiss him.

  Oh, it was all so confusing. Her feelings were confusing. Making sense of his feelings was confusing. The things he’d said, the way his eyes had turned molten...

  The atmosphere in the back of his car on the return journey to his apartment was strained. Heavy traffic meant they were stuck together for almost an hour. Neither of them spoke. Both kept to their own s
ides, faces turned to the crawling cars outside.

  She felt like a tinderbox primed for a match to be struck.

  The silence continued in the elevator to the top floor. The chauffeur and concierge came with them, carrying her boxes and bags of purchases: another reminder that Damián was right in saying they were wrong for each other. She’d known it all along but having staff carry her shopping was proof positive that their lives were just too polarised for them to have a future together. Socially, economically and globally, they were on opposite sides of an invisible line. When it came to the most important thing, family, they might as well be of different species.

  Why was she even thinking along these lines? She hadn’t even considered them having a future until he’d mentioned it.

  She didn’t want a future with him. Forget all the other reasons why it would never work between them; who wanted a relationship with a man who would always be distrustful of your motivations?

  But there was no denying the heated feelings coming close to overwhelming her.

  She’d longed for these feelings for so long. James had been her first crush. After him had come Daniel. She hadn’t needed to act like a witch to gain Daniel’s interest. He’d been her first boyfriend but then her dad had died and their relationship—if you could call holding hands around school and kissing whenever they had a moment of privacy a relationship—had fizzled out. By that point she’d been too caught up in Amy’s problems to even think about the opposite sex. By the time she was finally settled in drama school and ready for a relationship she’d become choosy. Dates led to nothing. She’d hated the expectation that a meal together automatically meant ending up in a stranger’s bed. What was wrong with waiting to get to know someone first? The longer time had gone and the more disastrous dates she’d endured, the more stubborn she’d become about waiting. What she’d been waiting for she hadn’t exactly known but she’d known she was worth more than a quick fling with a stranger.

  This feeling of the blood continually whooshing around her body in a torrent and the heavy weight compressing her chest and stomach were what she’d been waiting for, she now realised miserably. A mingling of dread and excitement. A quickening of a pulse. A connection.

  To finally have these feelings for the one person in the world she could not have made her want to weep because she did want a future. She wanted someone to share her life with.

  As Damián had made himself scarce, she sat on her bed and tried to muster the enthusiasm to look through the goodies he’d bought for her. During their shopping trip he’d had some suitcases delivered for her to transport all her new stuff to Monte Cleure in, the cases neatly placed against a wall in her bedroom. She didn’t need to examine them to know they were a world-famous designer brand. A fortnight ago she would have squealed with delight to be able to call such fabulous suitcases her own but, as with her new designer wardrobe, she could muster no excitement for them. The horrid feeling of being thought a gold-digger was too raw. The turbulence raging inside her was too strong.

  There was a short rap on the semi-open door but she had no time to compose herself before Damián entered the room.

  Keeping close to the door, he shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. His chest rose and then fell sharply as his eyes locked onto hers. ‘I want to apologise for my behaviour earlier.’

  Her heart racing to a canter at the mere sight of him, she swallowed.

  ‘I made a promise not to touch you in private and I broke it. I make no excuses for my deplorable behaviour.’

  ‘A department store’s changing room is hardly private,’ she muttered, lowering her eyes to the floor so he couldn’t see what was in her eyes.

  ‘It will not happen again,’ he assured her tautly. ‘I give you my word. I apologise too, for implying you are a gold-digger.’

  ‘Good.’ She kept her gaze on the floor. ‘Because I’m not.’

  Damián’s throat had closed so tightly it was an effort to say, ‘I know.’

  And he did know. He’d known even as he’d said it, but he’d wanted to hurt her. To repel her. To reinforce the distance he needed to keep between them.

  And then, for those few short minutes in the department store’s changing room, he’d lost his head. Never had his control been dismantled like it had been then and he rammed his hands deeper into his pockets to stop them reaching for her again. Would she welcome it? He’d felt the heat radiating off her and seen the look in her eyes...

  Dios, his fingers ached to feel her skin beneath them again. His lips tingled to experience the kiss that had never happened.

  A lock of her thick blonde hair fell over her bowed face. The urge to sweep it away was almost irresistible.

  He breathed in deeply and took a step back. Damián took pride in his word being his bond. To have broken that word once to cradle her face as he’d done had been heinous enough. To break it again would be unforgiveable.

  He needed to get out of this room and away from the living temptation that was Mia Caldwell.

  He took another step back to the safety of the doorway. She didn’t move. The lock of fallen hair still lay over her bowed face. Her dejection tugged at him in a place far different to the place her desirability stirred.

  ‘Mia... I am sorry. You were right to say you’ve done everything I’ve asked of you. I let my attraction for you get the better of me. I swear I will not let it get the better of me again.’

  Her head lifted and her gaze flew to him. What he saw radiating from the bright blue eyes thumped straight through him.

  Her voice hardly rose above a whisper. ‘What if I want you to let it get the better of you?’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MIA ATE AS much of her Mexican bean stew as she could fit in her tight stomach then pushed her plate to one side. Everything inside her felt tight. Everything except her heart. That was pumping freely, jolting every time she met Damián’s stare.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ he asked in the same conversational tone they’d both adopted since their talk in her bedroom.

  ‘It’s lovely. I’m just not very hungry.’ Scared he would know why she wasn’t hungry, she had a small sip of the Paloma cocktail he’d made for her to complement the food they’d had delivered.

  She didn’t dare drink too much. Every time she remembered what she’d said in her bedroom she cringed inside. Every time she remembered how he’d stared at her for those long, long moments before turning and walking away, her entire body flushed with humiliation.

  She didn’t need alcohol to make her tongue run away from her brain. It had proved able to do it all by itself.

  Damián had barely touched his drink either.

  ‘Are you going to test me on my villa knowledge tomorrow?’ she asked, desperate to fill the developing silence. She couldn’t cope with any silence between them. It made her too aware of all the things happening inside her.

  ‘Let’s start now. Where is Emiliano’s bedroom?’

  ‘East wing. First floor. Last door on the right.’

  He bowed his head. ‘Very good. What about Celeste’s private quarters?’

  ‘Her quarters cover the whole second floor east wing. There’s a secret entrance to it through a door in the cellar with stairs that lead up to it.’

  ‘And where’s the panic room?’

  She had to think hard for this one. ‘On the lower ground floor, past the security hub, three doors to the right of the elevator.’

  ‘Two doors to the right,’ he corrected, although she detected admiration in his stare. ‘I am confident that by tomorrow evening you will be as familiar with the layout as I am. How well prepared do you feel about everything else?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m a little nervous about meeting your mum.’

  ‘Celeste is a bitch but hospitality is important to her. She will welcome you.’

  She hesitated before s
aying, ‘And Emiliano?’

  ‘His issue is with me, not you. He will treat you with respect.’ And if he didn’t, Emiliano would answer to him. If anyone treated Mia with anything less than respect they would answer to him. If heads needed to be ripped from necks then...

  The strength of the sudden protectiveness he felt towards her at these imaginary scenarios shook him. Clenching his hands into fists, he pushed his chair back. He needed distance from her. Rationally, he knew it was the forced intimacy of their situation causing all these heated feelings and wayward thoughts. Being cooped up together with any woman was likely to induce some sense of feeling but when it was a woman as sexy and as beautiful as Mia those feelings would naturally be heightened. It didn’t mean anything. It was a pure physical reaction.

  But how he wished he could forget her whispered comment. He’d told himself he’d misheard but his ears had not deceived him.

  Had her words been an invitation to touch her again? Or had they been hypothetical?

  If hypothetical, why say it?

  He’d tried hard not to let his gaze focus too much on her that evening but his attention was too tuned in to her that it didn’t matter where he rested his eyes. She was always there. He’d gone through his plans again for the weekend, ensuring the tone of his voice was even and professional, but every time she swallowed a bite of her food or a sip of her drink he was aware of it. The awareness was becoming more painful with every passing second.

  The times their eyes had locked together...

  Those were the moments when the pull between them tugged so hard the truth slapped him hard. All the feelings raging through him were shared. Mia wanted him.

  Damn it, he needed to be focused. They were going to Monte Cleure in two days. The coming weekend would determine the rest of his life.

  But never in his life had he known an ache as powerful as this. His veins burned. His loins burned. His skin felt fevered. His chest kept tightening then blooming wide open in one large pulse.