The Billionaire Affair

Once, he’d told her she was necessary to his happiness; now, her expertise was the only thing he wanted from her. She swallowed convulsively, wishing her mind didn’t stray into the past, comparing it to the uncomfortable present. Another impulse came to cut and run. But Edward would not be pleased, and that was putting it mildly. Dexter was paying handsomely for her presence here. Walk out and the gallery would lose a potentially valuable client, acquire a black mark against its venerable name.

Grimly, she speared a slice of beef, added a tomato and wondered if she’d be able to force any of it down. He hadn’t countered the claim that he’d been a moral danger to the village girls simply because he couldn’t.

Did he know he’d left at least one fatherless child behind him when he’d disappeared from the village, richer by the several hundred pounds her father had paid him to leave, an amount that must have seemed like a fortune to him back then? Of course he did. Maggie Pope had told him her baby daughter was his. He hadn’t wanted to know.

‘As I’m here to sort out the dross from the remaining good pieces, perhaps you would tell me where you’d like me to start. Or do I have a free hand?’

She did her best to sound brisk and business-like, to put the regrettable disturbance of the personal behind her. But recalling the part of her life that had left her disillusioned, hurt and betrayed had sapped her energy, had made her feel drained.

She was hardly in a fit condition to endure the long appraisal he gave her expensively tailored, slim jacket, the fine fabric and sophisticated style discreetly announcing a coveted designer label before he stated, ‘Start at the top and work down. I don’t think the contents of the attics have been looked at in years. And, I’ll warn you, you’ll find a fair amount of builders’ rubble—part of the roof had to be retiled—among the dust and grime of decades. It can be properly cleaned out once you’ve decided if there’s anything up there worth keeping.’

He finished the wine in his glass and said with a flicker of impatience, ‘If you’ve finished mangling your food perhaps you would make a start.’

He was vile! Caroline thought as she stood in the open attic doorway. He had looked at the way she was dressed and had deliberately sent her up here.

It was even worse than she’d remembered, lumps of fallen, crumbling plaster littered the cobweb-shrouded disintegrating boxes, weighed down the laughably named ragged and torn dust-sheets that only partly covered old, unwanted bits of furniture.

She had removed her stockings and replaced the high heels with Gucci loafers but they, and her suit, would be ruined.

Had he guessed that the things she’d brought with her were all beautiful and expensive, that she’d been determined that if he should show up he would see a cool, elegantly sophisticated career woman—in direct contrast to the wild, uninhibited young thing she had been when he’d held her in his arms, had made love to her, whispering of his adoration.

How he had changed! But, there again, maybe he hadn’t. That streak of cruelty had been inherent in his nature. He couldn’t have used and betrayed her, lied to her, if it hadn’t. Or abandoned the woman who had given birth to his child.

She turned abruptly on her heels and backtracked down the twisty attic staircase. Linda was at the kitchen table, making notes in a ledger.

Taking in the new quarry-tiled floor, the huge state-of-the-art cooking range, immense dishwasher and commercial-sized fridge, Caroline wondered briefly if Dexter intended to settle down to marriage, raise an enormous family, then dismissed that from her mind as something of no consequence and asked, ‘Do you have an overall I could borrow? I’ve been asked to clear out the attics.’

‘Oh lord, they’re filthy, aren’t they?’ Linda laid down her pen and gave her a sympathetic smile as she got to her feet. ‘I said the whole lot should be put on a bonfire, but the boss said there might be something of sentimental value. Apparently, this house was owned by some monumental old snob—been in the family for generations. He’s dead now, but there was a daughter. The boss said to leave it as it was. She might come back some time and be gutted if she found family stuff had been destroyed.’

Had Dexter really been that thoughtful? Something twisted sharply inside her. Had he really believed she might return at some time in the future? Had he taken his opportunity to force her to return to the family home when they’d eventually met up again because he wanted her to have anything of sentimental value?

And where did that leave her theory that his prime motivation was to turn the tables on her?

But she was too shaken by what she’d heard to try to work out his motives. She said heavily, ‘Then, he can’t have sent me to work in the attics solely because he wanted to see me get my hands dirty. I am the daughter of that monumental old snob.’

A heartbeat of silence. Linda gave her a startled look. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea—’

‘Don’t worry about it. He was an incurable snob. He believed he had a position to uphold, but the problem was he didn’t have the wherewithal to sustain it.’

That had been common knowledge, he hadn’t known that the people from the village had laughed at him behind his back. She didn’t add that he’d been authoritarian, cold and unloving. He had been her father, after all. She owed his memory some loyalty.

‘I—well—’ Linda was clearly embarrassed by her faux pas. ‘I don’t go in for overalls, but I think the previous housekeeper left some behind. Hang on a tick, I’ll see what I can find in the box of stuff put out for the next jumble sale.’

Moments later she was back carrying a small pile of laundered, folded garments. Flimsy nylon, flower-patterned overalls. Very feminine, very Mrs Skeet.

‘Do you know where Mrs Skeet is now?’ Curiosity and a slight, lingering affection for the woman who had looked after her—in a fashion—prompted Caroline to ask as she tucked the overalls under her arm.

‘Rents the cottage next to the village stores,’ Linda supplied. ‘When the renovation work started here she came up two or three times to clear out your father’s clothes. Nice woman, a bit prone to flap. You could tell she was gutted by your old man’s death.’

The question, Why hadn’t his daughter undertaken that sombre task? lurked at the back of the other woman’s eyes but Caroline wasn’t answering it. ‘I’ll make time, one evening while I’m here, to visit her.’ Her accompanying smile was small and social as she turned and walked away. She knew why her father had forbidden her the house, had said he never wanted to see her again. But she would never know why he had been unable to feel any affection for her at all. Maybe Dorothy Skeet could supply the answer.

Caroline hung up her suit and buttoned one of the overalls over her black satin bra and briefs. The skimpy fabric was virtually transparent and the splashy blue and pink roses were a nightmare. Plus, the thing itself was oceans too large.

Not to worry that she looked completely ridiculous; no one would see her and her suit would be saved from certain ruination.

Back in the airless space beneath the roof she began to work methodically, clearing an area at one end where she could stack rubbish, hauling boxes of chipped china and battered saucepans, a collapsed Victorian whatnot, over the uneven, dusty boards, wondering why people hoarded useless objects, then remembering how in her childhood she had found magic up here, the perfect antidote to many a wet and lonely day.

There had been a dressing-up box, at least that was how she’d thought of it: A tin trunk full of old clothes, probably once belonging to her great-grandmother and her mother, most of the things beautiful and all of them fragile. Period dresses could fetch big money, especially if they were in good condition and, remembering back, most of them had been.

After some searching she found the trunk, lifted the lid and found it empty, apart from a bundle of letters tied up with faded ribbon. Her father must have sold the things when money got tight. At Dorothy Skeet’s prompting? She could remember the housekeeper’s voice as if it was yesterday, ‘I thought I’d find you up here. It’s time for bed. And mind what you’re doing with those things—they can be really valuable. Still, if dressing up keeps you quiet and out of the way—’

Caroline sank down on her heels. Her shiny black hair had come adrift from its moorings. She pushed it back off her face with a dusty hand, leaving a dark smudge on the side of her milky-pale face.

If only her father could have swallowed his pride and sold Langley Hayes instead of re-mortgaging it, moved to a much smaller place, then he could have spent his final years free from financial worry. But his sense of self-importance wouldn’t have let him do that.

Sighing, she reached for the letters. They were from her father, written to her mother before their marriage. She selected the one at the top of the bundle and began to read. A few lines were enough to tell her that they’d been deeply in love with each other, a few more told her that the young Reginald Harvey had adored and worshipped his beautiful bride-to-be.

She slipped the letter back in its envelope and bound it back with the others, her fingers shaking. This was personal and private and showed her a side of her father she had never known existed. He had been capable of a love so strong and enduring it practically sang from the faded pages.

Clutching the letters, she got to her feet, her eyes blurred with sudden tears. And saw him. She couldn’t breathe.

She hadn’t given Ben Dexter a single thought for the last couple of hours but now he was standing in the open attic doorway, watching her. And he filled her head, the whole drowsy, dusty space. The atmosphere was charged with his presence.

If she’d explained to her father—the thought came fleetingly—just how deeply she’d been in love with Ben Dexter instead of stubbornly remaining mute, her eyes defiant, then perhaps he would have understood. He had known the type of love that could enthral, that could bind one person to another with a special kind of magic.

Just as swiftly that thought was replaced by something much more cynical: it wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. Even if her father could have been persuaded to approve of her relationship with the village wild boy instead of threatening fire and brimstone there wouldn’t have been a happy ending. The black-eyed, half tamed, young Dexter had never loved her. Had just lied about it because he’d wanted sex with her, happy enough to go find it elsewhere when he’d had a fistful of her father’s money as a pay-off.

Now the downward sweep of his eyes, the curl of his long, hard mouth told her that he’d noted her weird appearance and had fastened on what was obvious: the clear outline of her svelte body showing through the ghastly overall, modesty secured, but only just, by the tiny black bra and briefs.

Quelling the impulse to run right out of here, she lifted her chin a fraction higher and coolly asked, ‘You wanted something?’

‘You.’

Eyes like molten jet swept up and locked with hers and for a moment she thought he meant it. Meant just that. Her bones trembled, heat fizzing through her veins, her breath lodging in her throat. Until a deep cleft slashed between his dark brows, the lazy, taunting smile wiped away as he moved closer.

Of course he hadn’t meant he wanted her the way he once had. Wildly, passionately, possessively. He just wanted to check the hired help was actually working, not sitting somewhere with her feet up, painting her nails.

Which was just as well because she didn’t want him, most certainly she didn’t. Until he touched her, the merest brush of the backs of his fingers as he stroked the heavy fall of midnight hair away from her face and everything inside her melted in the shattering conflagration of present desire and remembered ecstasy.

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