Captivated By The Brooding Billionaire
On Holiday with a Billionaire
But can their love last a lifetime?
Whisked away to his French château by brooding billionaire Raoul Decorvet, Abby Grant is falling in love for the very first time. But dare she give her heart to a man who has never gotten over the loss of his wife? If he wants to keep her, Raoul must show Abby that his heart truly belongs to her!
REBECCA WINTERS lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. With canyons and high alpine meadows full of wildflowers, she never runs out of places to explore. They, plus her favourite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her romance novels—because writing is her passion, along with her family and church. Rebecca loves to hear from readers. If you wish to email her, please visit her website at cleanromances.net.
Also by Rebecca Winters
Her Magnate’s Holiday Proposal
The Billionaire’s Club miniseries
Return of Her Italian Duke
Bound to Her Greek Billionaire
Whisked Away by Her Sicilian Boss
Holiday with a Billionaire miniseries
Captivated by the Brooding Billionaire
And look out for the next book
Available June 2018
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Captivated by the Brooding Billionaire
Rebecca Winters
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-07752-1
CAPTIVATED BY THE BROODING BILLIONAIRE
© 2018 Rebecca Winters
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk
To my beloved, generous, marvellous parents, who let their teenage daughter attend school in Switzerland, where a whole world opened up to her that she’d never dreamed about or imagined. To have been born to such wonderful parents is my greatest blessing.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
EPILOGUE
Extract
PROLOGUE
“NIGEL?”
A tap on the opened office door caused Abby Grant to look up from the desk. During this year’s summer and fall semesters at San José State University in California, she and Nigel, the visiting professor from Cambridge, England, had offices in the same literature department. They’d fallen in love and often worked side by side in one office or the other while they planned a spring wedding.
“Dr. Belmont is teaching his final class before Christmas break,” she said to the thirtyish brunette woman dressed in a suit. Maybe she was a student, but Abby didn’t recognize her. “He should be finished at noon. I’m Ms. Grant, one of the teachers in the department. Would you like to leave a message for him with me? I’ll make sure he gets it.”
“That won’t be necessary,” the woman said in a British accent as strong as Nigel’s. He’d let Abby know right away he spoke an “estuary” dialect. “I’m Lucy Belmont, Nigel’s wife. I need to speak to him in person, so I’ll wait in here until he returns.”
Abby blinked in surprise. “I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. The Nigel Belmont who’s a visiting professor here doesn’t have a wife.”
A tight smile broke out on Lucy Belmont’s face. “Indeed he does and two children. They’re expecting a visit from him over Christmas. Here are some pictures taken last spring.”
The woman handed a packet to Abby, who opened it and saw Nigel in photo after photo with this woman and two children.
Abby took the packet with shaking hands. Was this some kind of a joke? Could this woman be a sister-in-law or even a sister Abby had never heard of? Or was she a woman who had some pathetic attachment to Nigel? None of this made sense. Abby and Nigel were planning their wedding!
Not wanting to get into anything unpleasant with Lucy until she’d talked to Nigel, Abby got up from the desk. “I had no idea. Of course, you’re welcome to stay here. He should be back in about fifteen minutes. If you’ll excuse me.”
With her heart racing, Abby left the room and hurried down the hallway to the stairs. The lecture theaters were one story below. She slipped inside the room of thirty plus students and sat down at the back while she waited for Nigel to finish up his lecture.
He was popular with the students and looked the part of the jaunty professor in his tweed jacket with his dark blond hair brushed back.
She knew he had spotted her, but he continued talking and finally excused his students so they could enjoy the holiday.
When the last one left the room, Nigel gathered up his briefcase and walked toward her, giving her a quick kiss on her lips. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit from my beautiful fiancée?”
Abby stared hard at him, not wanting to believe what she was thinking. “There’s a woman waiting for you in your office who says she’s your wife. She introduced herself as Lucy Belmont and showed me pictures of her with you and two children. Please tell me this is a joke.” Her throbbing voice reverberated in the room.
Nigel didn’t move a muscle, but the light faded from his eyes. The change was enough to tell her the other woman had been speaking the truth. Pain almost incapacitated her. She backed away from him. “So she is your wife!”
He shook his head. “Look, Abby. It’s a long story. We’ve been separated close to a year. The divorce will be final soon. You have to listen to me. I would have eventually told you, but—”
“What kind of a man are you?” she broke in on him, destroyed by his admission. “To think we’ve been together all this time and a whole other part of your life has been a huge secret—”
In a flash, the happy world Abby had inhabited had disintegrated.
You’ve been in love with a cunning, monstrous, devious cheat!
Abby had often heard the expression about blood draining from a person’s face. She knew that was happening to her now and feared she would be sick right in front of him. Besides betraying her and his spouse, how many other women had he deceived? Those poor children.
She took off the engagement ring and flung it at him before dashing out of the room to the hallway. The second she reached the restroom, she retched until nothing more came up.
When she was able to stand without holding on to the sink, she hurried upstairs to her own office for her purse and left the campus. In her pain she needed to talk to the people she trusted and loved. Instead of driving to her apartment near the campus, she headed for her parents’ home in San José.
* * *
Abby stayed with her parents for several days, after which she talked with Dr. Stewart, the head of her department, about her situation. Once she’d told Dr. Stewart the truth, Abby asked if she could have a leave of absence for the next semester.
To her great relief she was granted a leave and also offered an opportunity to do some research abroad in Europe until the summer. After experiencing a world of pain, nothing could have suited her better than to get away. Best of all, she was assured that Dr. Belmont would no longer be on the staff at San José State and would be teaching at a college back east. She would never have to see him again.
After Christmas, Abby flew to LA for a week’s worth of meetings to collaborate with two other women on the project before going overseas. Ginger Lawrence and Zoe Perkins, who both had similar literature backgrounds from Stanford and UCLA respectively, had also been hired. The three of them, close in age, bonded fast. The thought of going to Europe with the girls gave Abby something to look forward to and the courage to make some changes in her life. So, before returning to San José to pack and leave for Europe with them, Abby decided to get a makeover and visited a beauty salon.
The lady in charge told her to be seated. While Abby waited, she poured through some magazines. In a few minutes one of the hairdressers beckoned her over to the chair. Abby took the magazine with her.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’d like you to cut and style my hair like this!” She showed her the picture she liked most. It was a bouncy bob with graduated layers. Each curled layer ending somewhere between the chin and the shoulders. She wanted something in between.
“Are you sure? All this long gold hair cut off?” The hairdresser acted shocked, as if Abby had asked for something sinful. How funny. Why did this woman care what she wanted?
Three weeks ago Abby had cut Nigel Belmont out of her life so fast, he hadn’t seen it coming. After Christmas he’d tried to talk to her once on the phone and she’d told him to go to hell in so many words. She’d meant it and it had felt good!
Cutting her hair was her last act to separate herself from any semblance to the old Abby—she’d since vowed never to be duped by a man again.
The woman shook her head, but she did as Abby asked. An hour later she almost squealed in delight after looking in the mirror. Abby hardly recognized herself. Her apple-green eyes appeared larger and she thought she actually looked her age of twenty-six instead of the tired-looking thirty she’d seemed to be. She’d needed something simple and easy. That was the whole idea!
Abby paid the woman a nice tip. Before leaving the salon, she had to tiptoe over her long locks of silvery-blond hair but did it with no regrets.
CHAPTER ONE
Five months later
WITH HER LAPTOP packed between the sweaters in her suitcase, Abby left the bedsitter in Cologny, Switzerland, where she’d been staying for the last two weeks, and took a taxi to the train station in Geneva, Switzerland.
With her massive research project finished, today marked the first day of her vacation. No longer restricted to suits and dresses, Abby had pulled on her favorite pair of jeans and a crew neck, short sleeve white-on-black print blouse. She had the whole month of June to have fun before returning to San José.
Abby couldn’t wait to be with her friends again. They’d Skyped and phoned each other—sent emails—but it would be great to do things together in person.
Once in graduate school she’d become a teaching assistant in the humanities department and had worked hard. Specializing in the romance writers of the early nineteenth century, she’d received her doctorate, after which she’d been given more classes to teach. That’s when she’d met Nigel. In hindsight, what a disaster that meeting had turned out to be!
But she’d learned she wasn’t the only one who’d been burned in a relationship. One of the girls, Zoe, had just come out of a bitter divorce because her husband had been unfaithful. She’d insisted she would never want anything to do with a man again. Abby didn’t need to get inside Zoe’s skin to understand how she felt.
The pain of putting your trust in the man you loved only to discover he hadn’t loved you or believed in the sanctity of marriage had been too devastating. Abby felt like her heart had been murdered. How could she ever trust anyone again?
As for Ginger, she’d lost her husband recently to cancer and needed to get away from the pain. In a short time the three of them had developed a special camaraderie, and all three of them were ready to play.
Being in an especially good mood, Abby gave the driver a nice tip and walked inside the train station with her suitcase. Since she had fifteen minutes before she needed to board her train, she headed directly for her favorite food kiosk. She’d eaten here every time she’d needed to take the train someplace.
After making her selection of six small quiches, two for herself and two for each her friends, she bought a second-class ticket and boarded the crowded train.
She found a compartment and sat down across from a priest and a couple of teenagers speaking German. They started to listen to rock music, but their earphones didn’t block the sound all that much. Abby didn’t mind. Not so the priest, who finally got up and left the compartment. She decided she would wait to eat until she met the girls at the village of St. Saphorin, an hour and a half or so and a quick change of trains away.
The quiet, efficient train ran alongside Lake Geneva, the famous croissant-shaped lake called lac Léman by the locals. Abby settled back, almost preening like a cat in the sun because she was so happy to be free of responsibilities. The train glided from one picturesque village to another in a gentle rhythm.
The surroundings that included the sapphire-blue lake with the snow-crested French Alps in the distance mesmerized her. Before long she had to change trains and it wasn’t long after that that St. Saphorin appeared, wedged between the water and terraced rows of vineyards that ran up the steep hillsides.
When the train came to a stop, she reached for her suitcase and left the compartment. Several other passengers had already descended. Finally, she was going to see her friends. Abby was eager to be with them and on vacation.
Yesterday Zoe had flown to Venice, Italy, from Athens, Greece, to meet up with Ginger who’d been doing research in Italy. The two of them had boarded the night train to Switzerland. They’d planned to get off in Montreux to pick up the rental car and drive the few kilometers to St. Saphorin.
Relieved to be here, Abby walked around to the front of the station. There was no sign of the girls yet. She sat down and took in the sight of the Jura Mountains in the distance while she waited. After twenty minutes, she phoned Ginger and had to leave a message. Then she called Zoe, who answered.
“Abby? Are you in St. Saphorin?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“The rental car we were promised isn’t ready yet. Too many tourists were booked. Ginger is dealing with them now. It may be a while, so I phoned the château where we’ll be staying. Someone will come for you soon. I gave them a description of you. Just stay put. We can’t wait to see you!”
“Same here,” Abby said before hanging up.
Someone was coming to get her, but it could be a while. She reached for a quiche and savored every bite. In the distance, she took in the vision of gray stone walls and steep inclines covered by the famous Lavaux vineyards of the region. They were riddled with hiking trails, a sport the Swiss adored. So, did Abby. She loved the yellowish colors of the homes spotting the landscape.
How lucky she and the girls were to be the recipients of their boss’s largesse! Magda Collier, one of the most acclaimed female film directors in Hollywood had hired the three of them to do research for a movie being produced by a revered mogul friend of hers.
After the New Year, Magda had brought Abby and the girls together in Los Angeles for a week with some writers who were working on an important script. She wanted to create a historically authentic film that accentuated the positive aspects of the colorful life of Lord Byron, the famous British romantic poet and satirist.
They’d been thrilled about the project and had become friends.
Magda had assigned each of them a different area in Europe to do research, and Abby had been sent to Switzerland. Now, because of their “great work”—Magda’s words after they’d turned in their information—she’d delighted them with a reward. It turned out to be a vacation at a château and vineyard called the Clos de la Floraison on the shores of Lake Geneva. Nothing could have pleased them more.
Magda explained she had a permanent arrangement with the old owner of the vineyard. From time to time she used it for herself and guests to enjoy. They could stay there while they did all the touring they wanted around the region.
Since the three of them had to return to their teaching assignments for the upcoming fall semester, they planned to take advantage of this time together and sightsee to their hearts’ content.
As they had another month before going back to the US, Abby was also hoping to find evidence of a poem that Lord Byron had been rumored to write called Labyrinths, or some such title, while he’d been in Switzerland. But it was a work that had never seen the light of day and many experts dismissed it as sheer fiction. But Abby hadn’t given up on the possibility of finding out the truth, if it existed.
Recently a fragment of a memoir by Claire Clairmont, who’d traveled in Switzerland with Byron, had been found in a branch of New York public library. It had shed new light on Lord Byron and Shelley. What Abby would give to unearth a find equally sensational, but no amount of digging had been successful so far.
While Abby sat there beneath a sunny sky, wondering where else she and the girls might look while they were here for the month, she noticed a vintage black Renault drive up and park.
Out stepped a tall man, maybe early thirties, who stood fit and lean. With his overly long black wavy hair, he epitomized her idea of the quintessential drop-dead sensational male. She didn’t know such a person existed.
Only a Frenchman had that appeal, the kind she’d conjured in her mind and fantasized about from time to time growing up. He had an expression much like the one she’d seen on the French actor Charles Boyer who had played the lead in a famous old film classic The Garden of Allah.
Abby had been a teenager when she’d first watched it and had fallen in love with the actor. He played the part of a monk who ran away from a monastery in North Africa and fell in love with an Englishwoman. They went out in the desert together, but he carried a terrible secret.
At times his sadness combined with his male beauty was almost painful to watch. Abby had watched it over and over again. His performance had seemed so real that she always been haunted by him and had decided there was no Frenchman alive more captivating.
Until now.
Abby couldn’t take her eyes off the stranger, something that had never happened to her before, not with Nigel or the boyfriend she’d loved earlier in her life. There was a brooding aura about him that caught at her emotions though she fought not to be attracted.
Who was he? Where had such a man come from?
Abby felt as if he was burdened by a great weight. It was there in the way he carried himself. The lines radiating from his eyes and around his mouth spelled pain. His work clothes, a white shirt with the sleeves shoved up to the elbows and dark trousers, told her he’d stopped whatever he’d been doing to get in his car and drive here.
This was the magnificent someone who’d come for her?
His bronzed complexion, close to a teak color, overlay chiseled features. The man worked in the sun. Beneath black brows his midnight-black eyes met hers and roved over her with an intensity that sent a ripple of sensation through her. She trembled for no good reason, something she couldn’t prevent.
There was an unrehearsed sensuality about the way his hard mouth smiled almost derisively, as if he knew she’d shivered slightly and found it amusing. Even though he’d caught her staring, she refused to avert her eyes. Her pulse raced as he approached her.
“Mademoiselle Grant?”
Those two words, spoken in a deep seductive voice, curled their way through to her insides. She heard no trace of the singsong French spoken in this part of Switzerland. He was a Frenchman down to every atom of his hard-muscled body.
“Yes. You must be from La Floraison.”
He nodded. “I was told to look for a woman with golden hair.” His excellent, heavily accented English came as a shock.
“You have the advantage. They didn’t tell me your name.”
“Raoul Decorvet.”
“I thought Magda’s friend was a great deal older.”
“He was. Sadly, Auguste died a month ago at the age of eighty.”
“Oh, no—” she cried. “We didn’t know. Magda didn’t tell us.”
“You weren’t supposed to know.”
Abby shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m here negotiating the sale of this property business for the former owner. Auguste had a bad heart so he never knew how long he had to live. The vineyard managers, Louis and Gabrielle, have said that you and your friends are welcome to stay here for the month. I was on hand when Gabrielle received a distress call from your friends. She was busy so I offered my help.”
“Thank you, but this isn’t right. We don’t want to put anyone out.”
Again, she felt his penetrating gaze wander over her, missing nothing before it rested on her hair. “It’s no imposition. If you’ll get in the car, I’ll explain while I drive you to the château.”
His potent male charisma made her so aware of him, it was hard to act natural. She felt nervous. After her experience with Nigel, Abby was almost frightened by her visceral response to this total stranger who blew away every man she’d ever known. He reached for her suitcase and helped her into the front passenger seat before putting it in the back.
After he’d started the car, she said, “I’m sorry you had to come for me. I could have waited until my friends showed up. Providing taxi service is hardly the work of a busy Realtor.”
“Pas de problème.”
Abby was sure that wasn’t true, but Raoul Decorvet had a certain air of authority. She didn’t want to argue with him since he’d put himself out on her behalf, so she kept quiet while he started the car. They headed toward the road and wound around the village toward the hillside. En route she detected a flowery scent.