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‘No.’ The word was flat. ‘I need that bastard’s money.’ He paused. ‘It’s either that or bankruptcy.’
I stared, shocked. ‘Bankruptcy? Seriously? Dad, what did you—?’
‘That’s not important,’ he interrupted. ‘The important thing is that he’s not going to get his dirty hands on Clara.’
The implication bolted like a small pulse of electricity down my spine, reactivating old hurts, making them echo.
Of course he’d never give up his precious Clara. He’s going to sacrifice you instead, the less important one...
I ignored the thoughts. I was over that now. My older sister led a life of parties and social gatherings and shopping, all funded by Dad, but it wasn’t a life I wanted. I’d found my place in the lab and I was perfectly happy there. I didn’t need him or anyone else to validate me.
‘Yet you’re okay with him getting his dirty hands all over me,’ I commented dryly.
Dad’s gaze flickered. ‘You’re stronger than she is, Vita. You always have been. You’ll be able to handle him. She won’t.’
Ten years ago I would have lapped up his praise. Nowadays, I knew better. He wasn’t praising me—he was manipulating me.
‘You’re assuming I’m going to say yes.’
His expression hardened. ‘You are. These debts must be paid. Including yours.’
It stung, no point in pretending otherwise. He’d always blamed me for what had happened all those years ago, even though, at seventeen, I’d had no idea what I was doing. I’d thought Simon had loved me. I hadn’t known he would film himself taking my virginity and put it up on the Internet, with commentary, for his friends to laugh at.
I hadn’t known that it would go viral and that soon everyone in the entire world would see it too—including my parents. There had been a media storm and some of the charities Dad did fundraising for and who sponsored Dad’s various business activities had withdrawn their sponsorship. Our family had been shamed and embarrassed socially, and it had taken at least six months before people had moved on to the next scandal.
The damage had been done, though. Dad’s business empire had teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and it had taken years for him to drag it back.
All because I’d been a seventeen-year-old girl who’d stupidly thought she was in love.
My fault. And Dad never let me forget it.
I looked down at my hands, clasped tightly in my lap. I had no answer to that and he knew it.
‘He won’t touch you,’ Dad said when I stayed quiet. ‘All you have to do is go through with the ceremony and live in his Darling Point mansion afterwards. He won’t even be there. He’ll be leaving the country. And in six months he’ll give you a divorce.’
And once you’ve done it your debt to the family will be paid.
That at least was true. If I did this for my father he couldn’t ask anything more of me, surely? I could go back to the private life I’d built for myself. Where I was good at what I did and I was confident in myself. Where I was the one in control.
‘You’ll get to keep the house, by the way,’ Dad added.
I kept my gaze on my hands. The dark blue polish I’d painted on them was chipping at the ends where I’d bitten them, a nervous habit I was trying to break.
I didn’t need a house. I lived in a terrace apartment near the university that Dad had bought for me and I insisted on paying the mortgage. My assistant wages were meagre and I was barely able to pay that and cover my living expenses at the same time, but I didn’t want any more debts than I had already.
A house in Darling Point, though. You could sell it. Pay Dad back with the proceeds...
No. I would pay my debts myself. My way. With my own money. I wasn’t going to depend on anyone else’s, no matter how much it was.
Money was never the answer anyway, even though lots of people thought it was. People like Dad.
‘I don’t want a house,’ I said flatly. ‘And I don’t want money. What I want is my debt to be cleared and never spoken of again.’
Dad sat back in his big black leather office chair and I thought I saw a flicker of surprise in his gaze, as if he’d been expecting me to say something different. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If you do this, consider it cleared.’
‘You’ll stop holding it over my head for good?’
He gave a sharp nod. ‘We’ll never speak of it again.’
That was something.
You’re seriously considering this?
With an effort I managed to stop myself from shifting nervously in my chair, even though fear was winding tight inside me.
No. No fear. No emotion. Marrying a stranger was nothing. Merely a business proposition or an experiment. Or even trying out a new recipe. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn’t, but it was nothing to get emotional about.
Nothing I needed to care about.
‘Does he know he’ll be getting me instead?’ I curled my fingers in tight to my palm to stop from lifting them to my mouth and nibbling on the ends.
Slowly, Dad shook his head.
We both knew why that was. No self-respecting playboy would choose me when he could have Clara.
‘He’ll be angry,’ I said.
‘He’ll have to deal with it.’
Dad’s expression had hardened, making the fear inside me tighten, no matter how much I tried to ignore it.
Leon King would be angry. He thought he’d be getting curvaceous and beautiful Clara and he’d end up with...me.
Vita Hamilton. Tall and bony. No curves to speak of. Two aspirins on an ironing board. And those were the kinder things Simon had said about me in his commentary on the video. Other people had rushed in with worse comments about my thick gingery hair. My freckles. And...other things.
I shoved the memories away. My physical appearance wasn’t important and I’d been stupid to let all those comments get to me. It was my mind, my intellect that made me stand out and that, at least, I was proud of.
‘He might refuse to go ahead with it,’ I said.
‘He wants those investors, Vita.’ Dad’s expression was nothing but sure. ‘He’ll go through with it. Don’t worry about that.’
That...wasn’t exactly what I was worried about, though I wasn’t sure what I was worried about or why I was afraid.
I didn’t know Leon King so his opinion of me—if he had one at all—didn’t count. All I had to do was say the words, get the ring, live in his stupid house and then it would be done.
No big deal.
Except Leon King was newsworthy, and no doubt the media would be very interested if he suddenly turned up with a fiancée. Especially a fiancée like me.
There goes your nice quiet life.
My heart was suddenly beating fast and my palms were damp and sweaty. I gritted my teeth, reining in my flailing emotions and shoving them aside.
I needed to be cool about this. Logical. Practical. I was a scientist now, not a shamed and humiliated teenager that the entire world had seen naked.
I was stronger than that—much stronger.
There is a way out of this.
An idea opened up inside me like an elegant solution to a difficult research question, or the missing ingredient in a recipe I hadn’t managed to perfect.
Leon King wasn’t a man who’d appreciate being played the way my father was intending to play him. And he certainly wouldn’t be pleased to find out he’d be getting me, not Clara.
But what if I approached him myself and told him what my father was planning? What if I gave him a heads-up? He’d probably take one look at me, realise I was no Clara and decide he didn’t want to get married after all. There was the issue of Dad’s debts, but maybe he’d simply be happy to have Dad talk him up in return for paying those off. He didn’t need to marry me.
It might not work. Leon King was, after all, a notoriously ruthless businessman and I was simply a research assistant. But I was sure I could make him see reason. Once I explained it all logically, he’d understand.
‘Well?’ Dad said sharply. ‘Think of your sister. Are you going to do this for us or not?’
I lifted my gaze from my hands and met Dad’s. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So, what do I need to do?’
He looked away. ‘Nothing at the moment. Just keep your head down until the big day.’
Of course I would.
After I’d let Leon King know exactly what was going on.
CHAPTER THREE (#uacf83e4f-f369-5562-9e57-ac5943add40f)
Leon
‘SHE’S NOT HERE,’ Xander said, his clear, cold voice cutting through the hard beat of the nightclub’s music.
I ignored him, looking out over the heaving crowd and trying to figure out which of the blondes on the dance floor was Clara Hamilton. It was difficult to tell since there were a lot of blondes and the dim lighting made their faces hard to recognise.
We were sitting in the VIP area of Red Door, the city’s current nightclub du jour, and pretty little Clara was supposed to be here—at least that was what Hamilton had assured me. But, as my younger brother had so eloquently pointed out, she wasn’t.
Annoying.
I’d sent Hamilton an email detailing the number of dates Clara and I were to go on, the locations and what would be expected of her in order to make this look real. And he’d sent me a response letting me know that Clara had agreed to my terms and that she’d be there for the first date, tonight, at Red Door.
But I’d been here a good hour already and there was no sign of her.
I was beginning to wonder if good old Tommy Hamilton had lied and hidden his daughter from me. If so, there would be words to be had. A great many fucking words and none of them to his liking.
Xander sat opposite me, stone-faced as usual, his dark eyes glittering as the club’s lights flashed. It wasn’t his scene—he spent most nights holed up in his office since he was a total workaholic—so I was surprised he’d decided to come with me tonight.
‘Do you have a reason for being here?’ I asked. ‘Or is it to sit around pointing out stuff I’m already aware of?’
‘I wanted to meet her.’ He didn’t look at me, too busy studying the dance floor. ‘Make sure she’s no threat to us.’
‘She’s a pretty socialite, Xan. How much threat could she possibly be?’
His gaze met mine. ‘Some women are dangerous.’
He would say that since he was currently having issues with our stepsister, Poppy. As in he hated her and she hated him.
I grinned. ‘Relax, brother. She’s my beautiful bride. Of course she’s not dangerous.’
I’d given him the run-down of my plan, along with Ajax, and both of them were on board with it, though Ajax more than Xander. Ajax liked the idea of rubbing our status in the noses of those who’d once been our enemies, while Xander didn’t much care. He was all about the money and protecting our investments.
Xander snorted and looked away, studying the dance floor again.
‘Have a drink,’ I said. ‘In fact, have two. Maybe they’ll dissolve that stick currently jammed up your ass.’
Ajax would have told me to fuck off. Xander merely ignored me, then, without a word, pushed himself up off the couch and disappeared through the crowd, heading towards the bar.
Good. I could use some time to myself to figure out what to do about Clara’s non-appearance.
I sat back on the couch, reaching for the glass of very expensive single malt I preferred and, as I did so, I caught the gaze of a woman sitting at a table near the stairs to the VIP area.
She was staring very hard at me.
Stares weren’t unusual—I got them a lot, especially from women—but I never looked back unless the woman was worth a second glance. And this one wasn’t.
Yet I found myself looking back now, unable to put my finger on why. She definitely wasn’t my type. At all. She wore a close-fitting black dress, more suited to a funeral dinner than a nightclub, that highlighted a body that was all angles and no curves. Her dark hair had been drawn back unflatteringly tight against her skull, making her plain, sharp face seem even more disapproving than it already was.
She looked like an offended nun.
Why the hell was I staring at her?
Christ, I had no idea. Maybe it was the way she was staring at me: intense, direct. No blushing and looking away like some women did, or lowering her lashes and shooting me flirtatious glances from underneath them. No come-and-get-me smiles or looking past me, pretending she hadn’t been staring.
No, she simply stared. Then she slid off her stool and headed towards the stairs to the VIP area.
Shit. She was coming up here?
Intrigued despite myself, I watched her make her way to the top of the stairs and talk to the bouncer who was guarding the area. She pointed at me as she did so, an earnest expression on her face and, sure enough, the bouncer glanced at me then headed in my direction.
Interesting. What could this woman possibly want? Other than the usual. But then there hadn’t been anything flirtatious or sexual in her gaze. No, it wasn’t sex she wanted, I was sure.
‘Mr King?’ The bouncer came to a stop in front of my table. ‘There’s a woman here who wants to talk to you. She says it’s about Clara Hamilton.’
I stilled. Looked like my evening was about to get even more interesting.
‘Send her over.’ I glanced past him to where she stood, looking in my direction. There was a crease between her brows that disappeared as the bouncer signalled to her, then she started forward without hesitation.
Keen little thing, wasn’t she?
