Second Chance with the Millionaire

This time he didn’t wrap her in his arms. Instead, leaning up on one elbow to study her face, frowning slightly, his voice terse, he asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

After his earlier words this was not the reaction she had expected. Avoiding his eyes she shrugged and said quietly, ‘It didn’t seem important.’

‘Important enough,’ he responded drily. ‘There can’t be many twenty-five-year-old virgins around.’

His words hurt and to cover her hurt she said flippantly, ‘And now there’s one less.’

‘Why did you let me make love to you, Lucy?’ he asked coldly, without responding. ‘Did you think it would convince me that you weren’t lying about Neville? Will you tell him about this?’ he added before she could speak.

Her body went cold, chilled both by what he was saying and the distant, unemotional tone of his voice. It seemed impossible that they were having this conversation. Less than three hours ago he had been telling her he loved her and now he was acting almost as though he hated her. It was because of her virginity, she thought bitterly… Because he didn’t love her at all but had simply wanted her, and had been shocked to discover that he was her first lover. No doubt he was scared that she would expect some form of commitment from him, so he was trying to freeze her off in this despicable way.

‘Why should I want to discuss what happened between us with Neville?’ she asked him coldly. ‘He’s my business partner—nothing more.’

The moment she voiced the lie she wanted to retract it, but Saul was looking down at her with burning, bitter eyes, his mouth curling into biting contempt as he said thickly,

‘So you were lying. You were in league with him all the time. And this was just a way of softening me up wasn’t it, Lucy? Wasn’t it?’

He was shaking her now, his fingers biting painfully into her upper arms.

‘You always were easily fooled, Saul,’ she told him icily. ‘I had to tell you what Neville had planned when you said you’d overheard us, but of course, I’d never any intention of changing sides. How on earth could you raise the money to fund such a project?’

‘And money of course means everything to you. I should have known that from the start… all that soft soap about regretting what your father had done. No doubt you were right there with him, planning every step. Well I’ve got news for you, my dear cousin. I could buy and sell this place a hundred times over.’ He saw her expression and laughed savagely. ‘Oh yes, that shocks you, doesn’t it and you don’t want to believe me, but it’s true, I assure you. My stepfather is a multi-millionaire; and what I didn’t tell you before was that, when he and my mother married, my father agreed that he could adopt me legally as his son. Now that he’s retired I run his business empire for him, and I’m a wealthy man in my own right, from what I’ve learned from him, Lucy. So you see, my dear, you’d have been much better off casting in your lot with me. What a pity you were so impetuous and so greedy.’

‘But then you knew that all along, didn’t you,’ she said wildly. ‘Right from the start you…’

‘I wondered what you’d be like,’ he agreed curtly, ‘but you’re wrong about one thing. I’m obviously a lot more gullible than I knew because for a while there you had me convinced. I came very close to falling in love with you, Lucy. Too bad I had to overhear that conversation today, otherwise you could have had my millions to play with instead of Neville’s thousands. Now get out,’ he told her brutally, turning his back on her. ‘I’m going to go and have a shower—I want to wash the scent and feel of you off my skin before it pollutes me. When I come back I don’t want to find you here. Oh, and you can tell your cousin that he’s got absolutely no chance of buying this place… no chance at all. I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes when you do, Lucy. He looks like a man who has a cruel streak to me.’

He got off the bed and walked towards the door, pausing to turn round and demand thickly, ‘For God’s sake, what is it about him that you can’t resist? He doesn’t even want you—any fool can see that… He hasn’t even made love to you… But then having done so myself, I can see why. At least cerebrally it was satisfying—knowing that I was cheating you just as much as you were cheating me.’

He was gone; the door had slammed behind him, but instead of getting dressed she was still sitting up in his bed shivering violently, no longer trying to control the wild tide of tears flooding her eyes.