The Billionaire's Secrets (7 page)

“This is not camping on the weekend
s. This is all year around. And
I do not allow visitors at Widow's Cliff.
None."

“But surely you allow
Sophia
's friends to come and visit?" Chloe said, looking taken aback.

"No, I do not. This is my
house
,
and I like it to be quiet.
"

"But she doesn't go to school. What does she do for friends?"

"Once a week she goes to an enrichment class in Puffin’s Cove. That is sufficient." He had no idea whether it was or not, but he could not tolerate the thought of noisy children running around the house.

"She's just a littl
e girl. She should have friends…
"

"Look, we're not talking about
Sophia
, we're talking about you.
Sophia
is quite used to the quiet here. You are not. This is no place for a young girl from the city. As I said, no visitors are allowed here, so there wil
l be no inviting your boyfriend…
"

"I don't have a boyfriend," she interrupted.

"Isn't that a surprise,
" he said sarcastically, taking this as another indication of her intentions in coming to this lonely place.

"What’
s that supposed to mean?" she said defensively. "Am I that repulsive?"

Gaelan
looked her up and down slowly, his gaze lingering on the rise of her breasts before moving on to her tiny waist and the curve of her hips. "Not at all," he said. He bet Marcus knew this girl didn't have a boyfriend. Who was he trying to kid? Marcus hadn't been interviewing a teacher for
Sophia
; he had been interviewing a potential wife. He had told Marcus he was finished with women, but Marcus stubbornly refused to stop trying to set him up. But one thing about Marcus, he sure knew what
Gaelan
found attractive in a woman. He
glanced
unconsciously at her breasts, feeling an unmistakable hardness forming.

"Oh, I see," she said. "You're afraid I'm going to throw myself at you. That's why you wanted an older woman. You think just bec
ause you're rich and attractive…
" She stopped short on the word
attractive
, and
Gaelan
felt something akin to pleasure that she found him good-looking. But wasn't this exactly what he wanted to avoid? He was getting confused.

"You think,"
she
repeated, "that just because you're rich, I
'm going to throw myself at you…
I neve
r…
"
Gaelan
watched her stamp her foot with indignation. He had never heard of anyone doing that outside of a story book.
Rumpelstiltskin
, wasn't it? Only
Rumpelstiltskin
wasn't as cute as Chloe. He found it rather amusing. "It wouldn't be the first time," he said sardonic
ally
.
"And you did call me attractive.
"

"It's a figure of speech and nothing more," she said angrily.

"A figure of speech," he said slowly.
Gaelan
may have been out of practice with women lately, but he was pretty sure he had read the signs correctly. The attraction was there, and although he had no intention of getting involved with this
beautiful
woman, it certainly couldn't hurt to just have a little taste.
A
fter all, that's what she'd come for, wasn't it? Certainly it would prove his theory right or wrong much more quickly than all this talking, he decided, justifying himself and what he was about to do. "I think
we'd better test your figure-of-
speech theory," he said in a low voice.

He closed the space between them and took her roughly in his arms. The feel of her was astonishing, the skin of her arms warm and soft. He slid his hand around her back, up to the bare skin on her neck, under her thick soft hair.  He bent his head down to hers, seeing his desire reflected in
her own
green
eyes. He was right, but he didn’t care anymore. Her lips parted
as he took her mouth with his.
Electricity shot through every nerve ending in his body, filling him with a heart-stopping white heat.  It was exhilarating - he couldn't ever remember feeling this before - that the touch of a woman's lips could feel so glorious. He pulled her closer, crushing her breasts against his chest, his tongue greedily seeking hers.

God
, he thought,
don't let this stop, I don't care if this woma
n was sent by the devil himself.
I want her!
All those years of celibacy and denial - this
was
what he'd been missing! One hand still tangled in her hair, he let his other hand slide down her back to the delicious curve of her buttocks.

Did all this happen in a moment? He didn't know. He didn't care. And so when she shoved her hands against his chest and ripped herself out of his grasp, he didn't know if he'd been kissing her for a minute or an hour. Nor did he know why she had pushed him away; he had felt her mouth hot on his, her lips full and moist. And when her hand flew up and struck him across the cheek, he was more than just a little surprised.

"What the hell was that for?" he said angrily, his cheek stinging where she had hit him. She had quite the arm on her.

"You have to ask?" She fairly hurled the words at him. Her hair looked wild from where he had tangled his fingers in it, her face was flushed, and her eyes burned. "O
f all the arrogant, mean tricks…
" She hesitated as if she couldn't find words bad enough to describe him.

"Calm down," he said, his voice thick with frustrated desire. "It's not like you weren't enjoying it."

"You bastard!"
She almost spat the words at him. "I hope you're happy now, because I quit!"

Gaelan
stepped out of her reach as she stomped past him toward the door - he wouldn’t put it past her to take another swing at him. She opened the door
,
and
Gaelan
was sure she was about to leave when she whirled around and faced him again.
If looks can kill
, he thought,
I think I'm a dead man
.

"One more thing,
Gaelan
Byrne," she said in a low voice that shook with emotion. "That's a lovely little girl you have, and you are a disgraceful father!"

And as there was nothing he could say in his own defence, he turned away as she left without closing the door behind her.

* * *

Chloe ran through the hall and practically stumbled up the stairway. At the top she hesitated, wondering in her distress if her room was down the hall to her left or right. She forced herself to stop and think before taking the hall to the left.
She got to her room and closed
the door gratefully behind her.

The lamp beside her bed cast a soft glow over the room. A few embers still survived from the fire that Windy
had laid. Chloe went over to it and with a shaking hand
stirred them into life with the poker. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her hair was dishevelled and her lipstick smudged. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the bedside table and impatiently rubbed the rest of the lipstick from her lips. She ran her fingers through her hair to smooth it down, the memory of his fingers entangled in it fresh and hot in her mind. But there was nothing she could do to take the wild look out of her eyes,
remove
the flush from her cheeks, or stop her heart from pounding.

She took a couple of logs from the basket in the corner and placed them on the fire before throwing herself onto the love seat. What had just happened? One moment she had been defending her job and the next she had been in his arms.

Why had he done that to her? He seemed so sure she was there to wheedle her way into his bed and fortune.
You wouldn't be the first to try
, he'd said to her. Had he hired someone before who had
attempted
? That would explain his reluctance to hire someone else young. Had he kissed her to test her? If he did, she had failed the test. She had hit him alright, but not before she had returned his kisses with a passion that had matched his own.

Really, if it hadn't been for a voice screaming in her head that she was being made a fool of, she would have let it go on forever. Even then it was all she could do to pull
herself
away and salvage her pride with a slap across the face. And she'd hit him pretty hard, she thought, a slight smile forming at the corner of her lips.

What would have happened if she hadn't slapped him? Would he have eventually pulled away and said
I told you so
? Or would he have taken her to bed to have his fun an
d tossed her out in the morning?
Somehow she guessed it was the latter. Surely he hadn't been faking that lust. She remembered his body as he crushed her against himself.
No
, she
blushed,
he most definitely had not been faking
.