Bound To A Billionaire: Protecting His Defiant Innocent (Bound to a Billionaire) / Claiming His One-Night Baby / Buying His Bride of Convenience
The closest she had come to this feeling before had been two nights ago in Felipe’s arms.
She followed him through the hotel, marvelling at the strength of his frame, noticed again the slight limp, the only imperfection she could find on this magnificent man whose arms she longed to be in once more.
When they reached their suites, she opened her mouth to thank him and to apologise—again—for all the trouble her actions had brought on them.
Before she could speak, though, Felipe said, ‘Come into mine for a minute while I get my stuff together.’
‘Why? Are we changing hotels?’
‘I’m changing rooms.’ His features darkened. ‘I’m moving into your suite. Until we trace those men and know who they’re working for and what their intentions are, you’re not to be alone.’
Far from sharing the thrill that raced through her at the thought of them sharing a suite, he had the face of a man tasked with guarding a hungry Venus flytrap.
She tailed him into his suite, a mirror image of her own, and took a seat on the sofa, watching as he pulled a large khaki kitbag from a cupboard and put it on the bed. He then walked into his dressing room and returned with an armful of clothes.
‘Do you normally do sleepovers?’ she asked, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
She was rewarded with a biting glare. ‘This isn’t a joke.’
‘I know.’
‘Then don’t act as if it is.’
‘What do you want me to do? Cower in a corner? Hide under a bed? It’s obvious that they’re after the money. All they’re going to do is watch us until they know the cash is here... When is the money due?’
‘Saturday. And it’s obvious, is it? I thought you were training to be a lawyer. There’s no clear evidence for a scenario so we’re going to act as if any scenario is a possibility.’
‘If it’s me they want then they would have tried to take me already.’
‘How do you know that?’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘An educated guess.’
‘But still a guess.’
But she wasn’t saying anything Felipe hadn’t already thought. Whoever these men were, they’d had the opportunity to make a grab for her if it was indeed Francesca they wanted. These were cautious people he was dealing with, not hot-headed druggies. Stupid too. Parking just feet away from their Cessna and waiting for three hours without attempting to give themselves a cover story was the height of stupidity, and stupid people were the most dangerous.
His gut agreed with Francesca that they were after the money.
He could stay in his own suite in good conscience, content that she was safe in hers.
But he couldn’t take the risk. Not with her. Just thinking it was enough for him to break out in a cold sweat.
What if his gut instinct born from almost two decades of risk assessments in dangerous situations was wrong?
This was why one didn’t mix business with pleasure, he thought grimly, storming into the bathroom to get his toiletries. It clouded judgement. It made one doubt oneself.
Like it or not, his attraction to Francesca and the weight in his chest from being around her was accelerating. All his senses were attuned as if she were a magnet they were straining towards.
It was a fight to contain it. To protect her effectively he needed his head clear, a task made harder by the way she kept looking at him. If he could tune her out he would be fine. But he already knew tuning Francesca Pellegrini out was near on impossible.
One night alone in a suite with her he could handle. Any longer than that...
‘I’m taking you back to Pisa in the morning,’ he told her as he placed his toiletry bag with the rest of his kit, bracing himself for the furious protest that was bound to follow.
‘No way,’ she snapped, her nonchalance gone in an instant, just as he’d expected.
‘It’s too dangerous for you here. Pisa is safe. If I could take you back now I would but the quickest I can get a jet here is for early tomorrow morning and there’s no commercial flights leaving any sooner. We’ll leave first thing.’
‘I’m not abandoning the project. No way.’
‘You won’t be abandoning it.’ He would not allow her to set foot in that country again. ‘You’ve got the agreement for the sale and met with the government’s health representative. I’ll get the cash to the Governor. Everything else can be handled by Daniele—he’s the one who’ll be getting the hospital built.’
‘I’m going to the Governor’s party,’ she told him obstinately. ‘If I don’t attend he will see it as an insult and withdraw his permission and the hospital will never be built.’
Felipe swore loudly.
Damn it, she was right.
He thought quickly. The party was four days away. Plenty of time to draw up effective plans to protect both Francesca and the money.
‘I’ll fly you back for the party,’ he said with a curt nod. ‘But we leave here first thing in the morning. You’ll be a sitting target if you stay. I’m taking you home where you’ll be safe and I will have no further argument about it. When I bring you back, you will have nothing to do with the handover of the money. You will do exactly as you’re told.’
He zipped his kitbag with more force than necessary and waited for another onslaught.
He knew he sounded like a tyrant but didn’t care. The cold fear he’d experienced when he’d recognised that car had been like nothing he’d ever felt before, not even when he’d realised too late he’d led his men into a trap.
But no explosion came.
When he next looked at her, Francesca’s legs were crossed, her fingers laced together, a thoughtful expression on her beautiful face as she studied him. Then her lips curved into a smile and she said, ‘Does this mean we get to share a nightcap now?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I’M HUNGRY.’
A whole hour they’d been in her suite. A whole hour in which Felipe had ignored her existence, setting himself up with his laptop on the bureau in the corner.
For her part, Francesca had sat herself on the huge bed and watched him as studiously as he’d ignored her.
She could sense his awareness of her. It was in his every move, as strong as her awareness of him. The only difference was his resolve to pretend it didn’t exist. His ridiculous rule of no relations with the client meant he was determined to fight it.
He regarded her as his responsibility and was doing everything in his power to keep her in the box he’d cast her in.
Well, she was determined to do everything in her power to pull herself out of that same box.
‘I’m hungry,’ she repeated.
He didn’t look up from his laptop. ‘You’re always hungry. Order room service.’
‘I had room service last night. It’s only seven o’clock. If I spend another evening stuck in here, I’ll get cabin fever. I’m going to get something to eat—are you coming with me?’
Now his eyes darted to hers and narrowed.
‘I’ve agreed to go home in the morning,’ she said sweetly, ‘and I understand why you feel I need your full protection tonight. But I’m not going to be a prisoner in this suite. If you don’t want to eat with me, call one of your men stationed around the hotel to join me instead.’ She knew he would never go for that. She also knew that trying to draw him into conversation while in her suite would be akin to drawing blood from a stone. Without a laptop to hide behind he would be forced to talk to her.
Fury mounted in his returning glare but Francesca kept her gaze steady.
Then his glare turned into a look that could solidify gel. ‘We eat, we come back. No drinking and no dancing. Is that understood?’
‘Why don’t you write it on a piece of paper so I don’t forget? I’ll sign it for you if you like.’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ he growled.
‘I’m doing my very best there.’ She rose to her feet. ‘I’m going to take a shower and make myself look beautiful before we leave. Is that okay with you, my lord and master?’
Certain he was cursing her in Spanish under his breath, Francesca sauntered to the bathroom.
Felipe waited for the click of the bathroom door’s lock. When it didn’t come he swore again. She’d deliberately left it unlocked.
He rubbed a knuckle to his forehead, trying not to think about what was going on behind the unlocked door.
Making herself look beautiful? It wasn’t possible for Francesca to be more desirable than she already was.
The sound of the shower running came through the walls.
Do not think of her naked.
An email pinged into his inbox and he seized on the distraction; a recce report by a team of his men in North Africa in preparation for a business trip by the head of an American petroleum company.
He’d almost finished writing his reply when the bathroom door opened.
He looked up before he could stop himself.
Dios, Francesca had only a towel around herself.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she said demurely, brushing past him and leaving a cloud of fruity scent in her wake, ‘I’m just going to get changed.’
Gritting his teeth to counteract his thickening blood, he looked again at the email he was replying to.
She might as well have fired a bullet into his brain his concentration was so shot.
He blinked to refocus but, even when she disappeared into her dressing room, all he could see were bare slender arms and long black hair that, when wet, fell all the way to the base of her spine, almost touching the curvaceous bottom the white towel hugged so beautifully.
He knuckled his forehead and swore violently. She was taunting him. Tempting him. It was in her every look, her every movement.
The vows he’d made to himself in recent days were tested to the limit when she emerged some time later.
She’d changed into a Chinese-style red dress that was perfectly modest, not displaying any unnecessary flesh, falling to a decent length just above the knees, but...it clung to her every softly rounded curve...
And then he noticed she’d put make-up on. Not a huge amount but enough to make her light brown eyes even more seductive than they already were and her lips even more kissable. She’d blow-dried her hair and it hung like a silk sheet. On her feet were high black strappy sandals.
‘Did you want to take a shower before we go?’ she asked, appraising him with one of the gleams that fired straight into his groin.
He slammed the lid of his laptop down. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
* * *
Francesca swirled the white wine in her glass and watched Felipe study his menu.
He’d looked at her only once since they’d sat down, a piercing glare when she’d ordered her wine. She’d given an unrepentant shrug in return.
They were in one of the hotel’s outdoor restaurants on a patio area that encircled a large swimming pool aglow with soft lighting.
Her intention had been to get Felipe out of the suite and get him talking. Whenever they’d had a proper conversation together they’d proved things could be harmonious between them. She wanted to find that harmony again.
She knew he desired her but what good was that when he fought it every step of the way? She wanted him to desire her company as well, to see her as herself. Francesca. Not Pieta’s little sister. Not Daniele’s little sister. Not the foolish client who’d agreed to a bribe because she hadn’t been thinking straight and who needed saving from herself as well as the bad guys, whoever they were.
She waited until their order had been taken before asking, ‘Where are you going when this job’s done with?’
‘Back to the Middle East.’
‘You’re not going home for a few days or anything?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m making conversation. Annoying, I know, but one of us has to make the effort.’
Felipe tore his gaze from the distance he’d fixed on to look at her.
She tilted her head, her features softening. ‘Please, Felipe, can’t we just have a normal conversation like normal people?’
He smothered a sigh. It was far easier for him to ignore the tightening of his loins that occurred just by being around her if he didn’t have to listen to the husky voice that stroked his skin like a caress and stare into the beguiling eyes that had the power to hypnotise him.
Her request wasn’t unreasonable.
He was the one being unreasonable.
She couldn’t help it that every look made the yearning to touch her grow and his self-loathing ratchet up another notch.
‘Do you still live in Spain?’ she probed, taking his silence for assent.
‘No.’
‘Where do you live then?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Nowhere?’
‘Nowhere,’ he confirmed. ‘I have no home. I am of no fixed abode.’
‘But...’ She smoothed a long strand of hair behind her ear. A teardrop diamond earring winked at him. ‘Where do you call home?’
He shrugged. ‘Wherever I happen to be. I have a bedroom on my plane. Hotels are easy to come by. Everything I own is easily transported and as easily stored.’
She rocked forward slowly, a crease in her forehead. ‘Where do your letters go? Bills? Bank statements? You have to have an address to have a bank account.’
‘Not all banks require it if you know where to ask. My business isn’t a typical one. My work is my life. It has been since I joined the army.’
She pulled a face. ‘Yes, I get that. You’re a macho man who runs around the world protecting the weak and helpless.’
A laugh crept up his throat. ‘The majority of the people I protect are far from weak. It’s generally business people, government officials and aid agencies. People who go to war zones and countries with high crime rates where they know they’re going to be a target. My job is to let them do their jobs in safety.’
‘Why does that stop you having a home of your own? Everyone needs a home.’
He shook his head. This was why he would have preferred to stay in the suite. There, he would have been able to work on his laptop, catch up on reports from his staff around the world, issue orders and directives, and ignore Francesca while ensuring her absolute safety. Here, there was nothing to do but talk while they waited for their food to be cooked and as he’d learned the other night in the hotel’s main restaurant and their late-night conversation the night before, he enjoyed talking to Francesca far more than was good for him.
When they talked she became more than the alluring woman who made his blood thicken to look at her. She became flesh and blood.
The sooner this meal was finished the better.
‘What about family?’ she asked, oblivious to his wish—his need—for her silence. ‘Do you see much of them?’
‘No.’
‘But you do have family?’
Felipe sighed. She didn’t know when to give up. If Francesca made it to the bar she would be an excellent cross-examiner. ‘I have a mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Yes. Family.’
‘Do you see much of them?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m too busy.’
‘Too busy to see your own mother?’
‘I visit her whenever I can. The rest I was never close to so it’s no loss.’
‘No siblings?’
‘I’m an only child.’
‘Spoilt?’
He laughed harshly. Chance would have been a fine thing. ‘No.’
‘A father?’
‘He died five years ago.’
The inquisitiveness on her features softened. ‘I’m sorry. I lost my father last year. It’s hard, I know.’
‘It wasn’t much of a loss. I hardly knew him.’
Seeing her open her mouth to ask another question, he leaned forward. ‘My mother raised me as a single parent. They were married but my father was rarely there and rarely gave her money. She worked so many different jobs to put a roof over my head and food on the table that she was hardly there either, but she wasn’t absent by choice as my father was. She didn’t have the time or money to take me to Madrid to visit her family. We lived in Alicante, hundreds of miles from them. If my father hadn’t been such a selfish chancer our lives would have been very different so, no, I didn’t find his death hard. I went to his funeral out of respect but I am not going to pretend I grieved for him. I barely knew the man.’
His father had been unsuited to family life, a man always on the road searching for the next big thing, which had never turned into anything, but that next big thing had always been more important to him than his wife and child.
So unimportant was his father to his life that he rarely thought about him, never mind talked about him, but with Francesca seemingly keen to interrogate him about his life, it was simpler to give her the full impartial facts and be done with it.
‘That must have been hard for you. And your mamma,’ she said, her eyes full of sympathy.
Thankfully their food was brought over to them by the cheerful waitress, T-bone steak for him and seared tuna pasta salad for Francesca.
She dived into hers and for a while he thought he’d escaped further interrogation.
Wrong.
‘How often do you see your mother?’
‘I try and visit over Christmas and for her birthday.’
‘Is that it? Two visits a year?’
He took a large bite of his steak and ignored the implied rebuke. He didn’t need to justify himself to her.
‘If I only saw my mother twice a year she’d kill me,’ Francesca mused. ‘She thinks I live too far from her as it is and I’m only a twenty-minute walk away.’
‘You’re her daughter. It’s a different relationship.’
‘Tell that to my brothers,’ she said with a roll of her eyes that immediately dimmed, the vibrancy in them muting.
With a pang, he knew she was thinking of Pieta.
‘Pieta was a good son to her,’ she said quietly. ‘He travelled all around the world but always remembered to call her every night. Daniele’s the opposite—I’m always annoying him by sending reminders for him to call. She worries about us. Pieta’s death has devastated her.’
‘You’re a close family,’ he observed.
She nodded. ‘I’ve been very lucky.’
Lucky until the brother she’d adored had been so tragically killed.
‘Your life and background are very different from mine.’
‘My life and background are different from most peoples. But, then, everyone’s is. None of us are the same. We all have our worries.’
‘You grew up rich and with a loving family. What worries did you have?’
‘Me, personally? None that were serious. I was lucky and privileged but I know I’m one of the fortunate ones and it’s why I want to go into human rights law.’
‘You want to spread some of your good luck?’
‘You may mock me but I’m serious. I could have settled down with a husband and babies by now but I want my life to mean something.’
He could only guess how hard she’d had to work to prove herself. He knew how old money worked—he’d protected enough of the people who lived in that world to know it was still male dominated. It couldn’t have been easy for her to go against her family’s expectations and wishes.
‘You could run Pieta’s foundation.’
Her pretty brow rose. ‘Are you mocking me again?’
‘Not at all. You were the consummate professional today. Pieta would have been proud of you.’
Her face flushed with pleasure. ‘You think?’
‘I’m sure of it, and I’m sure Alberto will be back at work soon. He could help and guide you. And keep you out of trouble,’ he couldn’t resist adding.
She half grinned and half scowled then shrugged ruefully. ‘It isn’t for me. I want to get the hospital on Caballeros built for Pieta’s memory but his philanthropy isn’t the route I want to go. That was his and once things have settled we’ll work as a family to make sure the foundation continues, but it won’t be me running it. Maybe Natasha will.’
She fell silent after that, eating her food quietly, her thoughts obviously thousands of miles away with her family.
He watched her carefully. Underneath the front she put on she was grieving. He’d caught snatches of it during their time together, moments when she’d be talking to someone and, just like that, her eyes would lose their focus and her brow crease as if in confusion. And then, just as quickly, she would pull herself together and snap her focus back to the person before her.
She did it now. ‘When was the last time you spoke to your mother?’
He could laugh at her single-mindedness. ‘A couple of months ago.’ At her exaggerated incredulity, he felt compelled to add, ‘We’ve never been close in the way you are with your mother. Her whole life revolved around me and making sure all my needs were met but to get that she had to work fifteen hour days. I hardly knew her.’ He hardly knew her now.
He took a long breath.
He really needed a beer.
Felipe raised his palm before she could ask anything else and said, ‘It was a long time ago. I haven’t lived with her for almost twenty years. We respect each other but she’s not like your mother. She’s not the clinging sort.’
‘My mother doesn’t cling,’ she said defensively, then covered her mouth to hide a snort of laughter. ‘Yes, she does cling. But I don’t mind. I like it.’
‘And I like the relationship my mother and I have. It suits us both.’
She cast him with a look of pure disbelief then shrugged as if to say it was a point she couldn’t bother arguing. ‘Is her life easier now?’
‘Much easier. I’ve bought her a house and a car, I send her regular money. She doesn’t need to work. She has friends and goes on dates. She has a life now, which she never had before.’
That perked her up. ‘You bought her a house?’
He groaned, sensing a new thread of his life for her to delve into. ‘Can we not talk of something else?’
‘Okay, tell me why you joined the army.’
‘Because I was turning into a juvenile delinquent with no parental authority and no hope of getting a decent job because there was no one there to make sure I attended school.’
‘How long were you in the army for?’
‘Eight years in all.’ And they had been the best years of his life. The camaraderie, the companionship...after a childhood spent alone the army had given him the family he’d always craved. In Sergio he’d found the brother he’d always longed for.
How could the woman sitting opposite him understand any of this? Her family was as close as a family could be. She’d never eaten her childhood meals alone with only the television for company. She’d never been alone. She’d never wanted for anything, not materially or emotionally. It had all been handed to her on a plate.
So why was he fighting his own tongue from spilling the rest of it out to her?
It was those eyes, the way they smouldered and hung on to his every answer.
Every time he stared into those honest eyes a pulse would flow through him. He’d scrubbed his hands over and over but could still feel the softness of her skin and the silkiness of her hair on his fingers as if they’d marked him. When she’d been standing with Eva, the charity worker, he’d distinguished Francesca’s scent without even thinking about it.
He knew her scent.
During their conversation, without him realising how, they’d both cleared their plates.
It was time to bring to a close this ordeal he’d enjoyed far too much.
He got to his feet. ‘We can go back to the suite now.’
She stared up at him with such hurt at his brusqueness that he felt much as he would have if he’d kicked a puppy. Like a heel.
Instead of obeying, she folded her arms, the obstinate look he was becoming accustomed to setting on her jaw. But her eyes were knowing as she said, ‘I think I’ll stay for dessert.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘YOU’RE WELCOME TO share my bed,’ Francesca said brightly as Felipe made a bed on the floor for himself close to the door, using the duvet, spare sheets and pillows from his suite.
He didn’t look at her. He’d returned to ignoring her and speaking in monosyllabic grunts ever since she’d insisted on staying for dessert.
Her insistence on staying had been a deliberate kick-back. Felipe had relaxed over their meal and opened up to her, not by much but enough for her chest to lighten and hope to spring free. A proper conversation between two adults enjoying each other’s company. There were times he’d looked at her as if he wanted to eat her, the desire in his eyes vivid... But then he’d withdrawn as quickly as if he’d pulled the trigger on a gun.