The Billionaire's Cinderella Contract

by Michelle Smart

  After ordering drinks for them both from a passing waiter, he said, ‘I’m going to play poker. Do you want to join in?’

  ‘I’m happy to watch.’

  He dug his wallet out of his back pocket and pulled out a wad of fifty-euro notes. ‘In case you change your mind. Let me know if you run out.’

  Despite the amiable words, Mia detected a frostiness in his voice. There was the tell-tale tightness of his jaw. Damián was angry about something. She’d felt it since their meal had finished. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ He tried to press the cash into her hand.

  ‘I don’t want it.’ She didn’t need money. She didn’t want to gamble and drinks in the casino were free.

  He shrugged and put the notes back in his wallet. ‘Suit yourself. I will be at one of the poker tables if you need me.’ And then, first pressing a hard, possessive kiss to her lips, he strode away, snatching his glass of Scotch from the returning waiter as he went.

  Mia watched him melt into the crowd, wondering what the heck she was supposed to have done to anger him. Or was she imagining it?

  Yes, she decided, she was imagining it. Damián was bound to be tense. A night out with his brother giving him the evil eye could not be pleasant.

  Rum and Coke in hand, Mia wandered back to the roulette table. Damián’s aunt was playing, a huge pile of black chips stacked in front of her. Also playing were people she’d never met in her life but who she recognised. Famous faces.

  ‘You don’t fancy a flutter yourself?’ a drawling voice asked.

  Emiliano had come to stand with her.

  She had a large sip of her drink and shook her head. ‘I’m having fun watching everyone else play.’

  He produced a handful of black chips. ‘Red or black?’

  Figuring there must be ten thousand euros in his hand, she laughed at the absurdity of her deciding the colour that would determine whether that money remained his. ‘No way. Choose for yourself.’

  ‘In that case I choose red. To match your dress.’

  ‘Don’t blame me if it lands on black.’

  She held her breath as the ball spun. After bouncing a number of times on the wheel, it eventually landed on black.

  Emiliano gave a rueful shake of his head and quirked an eyebrow. ‘Black to match Celeste’s heart.’

  Not willing to fall into a trap by responding to that, she finished her drink.

  ‘Another?’ he asked as he placed another pile of chips on red.

  ‘Sure.’

  He lost again.

  Their fresh drinks arrived as he tried his luck on red for a third time. This time he won.

  Emiliano raised his glass to her. ‘You must be my lucky charm. Salud.’

  She smothered a laugh. ‘Hardly. You’ve already lost more than you’ve just won.’

  He grinned. ‘Pick a number.’

  ‘You’re doing a great job of blowing your money without my help.’

  His grin widened. ‘I see why my brother is so smitten with you.’

  At the mention of Damián she darted a glance at his table. As if he felt her gaze on him, he raised his stare to her, then, without acknowledging her, dropped his attention back to the cards in his hand.

  Mia made a valiant attempt not to let her hurt show on her face and quickly changed the subject. ‘Who’s looking after your dogs tonight?’

  ‘I employ a full-time dog-sitter. Where the boys go, she goes.’ He placed a pile of chips on red thirty-eight.

  ‘They’re gorgeous. You’ve trained them so well.’

  ‘You like dogs?’

  ‘I love them. We had them when I was growing up.’

  ‘You should get one.’

  ‘I live in a little flat without a garden. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  He drained his drink. ‘Get Damián to buy you a house with a garden. Then you can get yourself a dog or two and when you come to your senses and dump him you’ll have the most loyal and loving creatures to help you pick up the pieces.’

  ‘You’re very cynical, aren’t you?’

  He laughed. ‘It’s a family trait.’

  ‘So I’ve noticed.’

  ‘Red thirty-eight,’ the croupier called.

  Emiliano’s eyes gleamed and then, before she knew what he was doing, he placed a smacker of a kiss to her cheek. ‘See? I said you were my lucky charm. I’ve just won ninety thousand euros.’

  Her laughter at this died when Damián suddenly appeared at her side. Ignoring his brother, he took Mia’s hand. ‘My driver’s on his way.’

  ‘We’re going?’ she asked, surprised both at the suddenness of his decision and the coldness in his voice.

  ‘I’ve had my fill of gambling for one night.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘ARE YOU GOING to tell me what’s wrong?’ Mia asked as soon as they were back in Damián’s suite.

  The drive back had been tense, like it had been between them before they’d become lovers. Every time she’d tried to strike up conversation he’d either answered in monosyllables or ignored her.

  ‘There is nothing wrong,’ he answered tersely.

  She stalked towards him and placed a hand on his chest. He brushed it away with a scowl.

  ‘See! I knew it. You’re angry with me about something. You hardly looked at me all evening...’

  ‘I’m surprised you noticed,’ he snapped, ‘considering how cosy you were with my brother.’

  The moment the words left his mouth, Damián regretted them.

  Damn it, but he could not believe the rancid feelings that had played in his guts throughout the evening. It had been bad enough seeing Mia’s gaze darting towards his brother during the meal, but to then see her laughing and enjoying his company had made the bile rise up his throat. It still lingered on his taste-buds. It was like nothing he’d ever felt or tasted before.

  Mia’s eyes widened, her mouth opening and closing before she shook her head and folded her arms across her breasts. ‘What are you accusing me of here?’

  ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m merely observing that Emiliano seems very taken with you,’ he said sardonically.

  ‘That’s not the vibe I got.’

  ‘Really? And what vibe did you get from him?’

  ‘Curiosity. He was sizing me up, like everyone else has been.’

  ‘Knowing my brother, he was sizing you up to see which of his beds he wanted to take you in.’ And Mia was exactly Emiliano’s type, he thought grimly. Physically, at least. The only thing to differentiate her from his usual women was her intelligence. Brain cells lacking or not, his brother never had a shortage of women throwing themselves at him. While Damián was choosy about the women he bedded, he doubted his brother had spent more than a handful of nights alone since he’d turned eighteen.

  ‘Like I said, that is not the vibe I was getting from him.’ From the tone of her voice she was fast losing patience. ‘And, even if it was, why get angry with me about something your brother was doing?’

  ‘Because I am paying you to act as my lover for the weekend, not flirt with the man who’s doing his damnedest to steal my future.’

  Her jaw dropped. ‘I was not flirting!’

  ‘He kissed you.’

  ‘Yes!’ Outrage vibrated from her pores. ‘He kissed me. He kissed my cheek, and only because he’d just won a shedload of money.’

  He gave her the stare he usually reserved for staff he suspected of covering their tracks when they’d made an accounting error. ‘You couldn’t keep your eyes off him during the meal.’

  She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. ‘He sat opposite me! If I was supposed to sit like a good little Victorian maid and keep my head bowed then you should have told me that before we left.’

  ‘I saw you staring at him during lunch to
o.’

  ‘You really do want to police where I look!’ Now she threw her hands in the air. ‘I tell you why I kept looking at him—it was like watching a horror movie, that’s why. The whole situation. Everyone sat around pretending to have a jolly old time and, in the midst of it all, the lone wolf secretly plotting the demise of one of the other characters. If I kept looking at Emiliano it’s because I was trying to figure out if he really is the lone wolf.’

  ‘We both know the lone wolf you describe is my brother and that it’s my demise he’s plotting.’

  ‘I assumed that too but the more I look and talk to him, the less convinced I am. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the lone wolf was your mother.’

  ‘Celeste?’

  ‘The way Emiliano looks at you reminds me of the way Amy looked at our mum when she was going through her self-destruct phase. She hated everyone but she had special hatred for Mum.’

  ‘Then that completely negates your argument,’ he said coldly. ‘If Celeste was behind it, she would be open about it. She would tell me to my face. To her, it would be a challenge, an invitation for me to try to best her.’

  ‘I don’t pretend to understand the sick dynamics of your family,’ she said as she tugged her hair free of the chignon and mussed it with her fingers. ‘But when I see how Emiliano looks at you I see Amy, and I see the hurt and pain she carried. Amy’s pain was made worse by Mum locking herself away from us. She needed her but she couldn’t reach her. From what I’ve seen of you two, you ignore him as much as he ignores you. How do you know he hasn’t spent the past ten years waiting for you to reach out to him?’

  A throbbing pulse pounded in his head at this observation.

  ‘All communication between you and Emiliano in the past decade has been through Celeste. How do you know she hasn’t been stoking the feud?’

  Rage filtered through him. ‘Why are you taking his side?’

  ‘I’m not.’ She muttered something that sounded remarkably like a curse and stormed to the bathroom. ‘You might be acting like a jealous idiot but I will always be on your side and always have your back, but if you’re so confident you’re right, talk to him. Even if you’re not, be the bigger man and talk to him anyway because this stupid feud has gone on for long enough.’

  Head held high, she stepped into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her, leaving Damián alone with his anger. He didn’t know what infuriated him the most, Mia’s insinuations about his mother or her laughable words about him being jealous.

  He’d never felt an ounce of jealousy in his life, had always been contemptuous of those who tried to control the people they claimed to love while lacking control over their own emotions.

  Ripping his clothes off, he paced the suite, fighting the urge to kick the bathroom door down and carry Mia out over his shoulder and stare into her eyes for so long that he imprinted his image in her so she could never again look at another man without seeing him...

  He came to an abrupt halt.

  What in hell was he thinking?

  Were these not the thoughts of someone irrational and possessive? Someone jealous?

  He slumped onto the edge of the bed and hung his head, kneading his temples vigorously.

  And as he sat there his fury slowly ebbed away and reason came back to him. It was a reasoning that only made him feel sick to the pit of his stomach.

  Mia hadn’t done anything wrong. This was all on him. Again.

  What was it with her? How could one woman evoke so many wild emotions in a man who’d turned self-control into an art form?

  * * *

  After a scalding-hot shower that failed to rinse away the anger, Mia brushed her teeth vigorously and wished she had a punch bag to hand.

  Damián’s behaviour had shocked her. The man who was always in full control of every situation had behaved like a jealous teen...

  She paused brushing.

  Had he been jealous?

  The angry beats of her heart became skittish. The vibrations from them danced into her stomach and pushed against her lungs.

  She was still standing with the toothbrush static in her mouth when he knocked on the door.

  ‘Mia?’ She heard him sigh. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Unexpected hot tears filled her eyes.

  ‘I had no right to accuse you of flirting with him. I...’ Another sigh. ‘Emiliano brings out the worst in me. I think we bring out the worst in each other.’

  Desperately blinking the tears away, hands suddenly trembling, she rinsed the toothpaste out and patted her mouth dry, all the while trying hard to breathe through a body contracting in on itself.

  ‘I’ve behaved abominably. I am under immense pressure and I took it out on you.’

  She opened the door.

  Damián stood at the threshold, shirt and socks removed, trousers unbuttoned, hair mussed. One look at his face showed her the sincerity of his apology.

  She tried to smile but the muscles of her face wouldn’t work, not when they were too busy trying to hold the tears at bay.

  Why did she want to cry?

  He burrowed a hand into her hair. ‘Forgive me?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘I am not your enemy,’ she whispered.

  ‘I know you’re not, mi vida.’ He brought his forehead to rest against hers. ‘You said things I did not want to hear...but I think I needed to hear them.’ He pressed his lips to hers and held them there, eyes closed, breathing her in.

  Tentatively, Mia looped an arm around his neck and returned the pressure of the kiss. When his lips parted, hers moved with them, her tongue sliding into his mouth as his slid into hers, her arms tightening around him as his tightened around her.

  But there was no comfort to be found in his touch, only a rising desperation and a growing ache that she couldn’t take comfort because their time together was coming to an end.

  The desperation in her bones was matched by the desperation she found in Damián’s touch and the rawness of his kisses. Her towel fell to the floor and she pressed herself even closer so her breasts flattened against his hard chest.

  She didn’t want this to be over. She didn’t want to leave this villa in less than two days and never see him again.

  His hands roamed her body, fingers biting as they clenched her buttocks then scraped up her back as if trying to penetrate her skin. And she found herself doing the same, a fraught urgency in her fingers to touch every part of him they could reach, a need to imprint every inch of him onto her memories as something to cherish for the rest of her life because in her heart Mia knew it would be impossible to recreate what they shared with anyone else.

  They fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and entwined tongues, their kisses broken when he wrenched his mouth from hers to bury his face in her neck, sending darts of tingling pleasure over her sensitised skin. When he cupped a breast and centred an erect nipple against the palm of his hand before kneading it, she gasped, her gasps soon turning into moans when he made his way down to her abdomen and then lower still, bringing her quickly to a peak with nothing more than his tongue.

  And then it was her turn to take him in her hand and cover him with her mouth and revel in his appreciative moans, her other hand skimming over his thighs and stomach, the need to touch and remember every part of him burning deeper and deeper in her.

  Her name fell from his lips like a groan and speared right through her. How she loved to hear him say her name and the richness in his voice as it rolled off his tongue.

  He moaned her name again when, sheathed and rock-hard, he thrust inside her and filled her with that most wonderful fulfilling sensation that was like nothing else on this earth.

  Please don’t let this be over, she silently begged through their fevered kisses. I don’t think I can bear to say goodbye. Not yet. I’m not ready.

  But, just as with all the best
things in life, she knew they must end, just as their lovemaking had to end, the swell of her orgasm too strong to deny, her body too needy and responsive to Damián’s touch to do anything but what it was designed for, and, as hard as she tried to make her climax last for ever, as hard as she clung to him, as tightly as she wrapped her limbs around him, her body was soon spent and she was left sated yet bereft.

  In the aftermath, as Damián lay on her and inside her, the mocking words she’d said to him what felt a lifetime ago echoed in her ears.

  Our love will burn like a flame and then it will, sadly, extinguish itself.

  Oh, the cruelty of words said in jest. Her flame for Damián blazed brighter by the day. The danger of it turning into an inferno was something she’d become powerless to stop and, unless there was a miracle, she saw no way of extinguishing it before they said goodbye.

  * * *

  Damián adjusted his black bow tie and tried to relax his features out of the glower tightening his face.

  The day had proven unbelievably frustrating. His plan to search the villa’s secret hiding places for the documents had gone better than he could have hoped but had ultimately proved fruitless, one dead end after another. The few hidden suitcases he’d found had contained millions in cash but no documents.

  He was frustrated with himself too, for wasting that time making love to Mia when they’d first arrived at the villa rather than hacking straight into the security system. Felipe Lorenzi’s team were at the top of their game but they couldn’t perform miracles, and he’d been four hours late getting into the system and linking them to it. He debated calling Felipe for an update but then figured it would be a waste of time. If they’d retrieved the interior villa footage for the period around his father’s death they would have notified him immediately.

  He thought hard about where else Emiliano would be likely to hide the documents. He didn’t want to search his suite but was coming to see he had no other option.

  He didn’t have to wait much longer for Mia to return, wearing her robe and with a strange towel-like thing wrapped around her head. Under his mother’s instructions, Gaynor and the other beauticians had been working on her for the last two hours.