Bought To Wear The Billionaire's Ring

Of course, Harold genuinely and truly wanted Adele close to him and safe and, of course, he truly believed, and was probably spot on, that Gail would turn out to be a horrendous influence on her five-year-old granddaughter, but when he had pulled the ill-health-so-what’s-the-point-of-carrying-on? threat from the hat Leo had confessed himself to be beaten.

So here he was, two days later, with the soon-to-be object of his desire standing in front of him in some dull grey outfit and a pair of ridiculous, brightly coloured bedroom slippers.

‘Leo?’ Sammy blinked and wondered whether it was possible for stress to induce very realistic hallucinations. ‘What do you want? How did you find out where I live? What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Lots of questions, and I’ll answer them just as soon as you invite me in.’

Struck by a sudden thought, Sammy paled and stared up at him. ‘Has something happened? Is your dad all right?’ She was finding it very difficult to think but then the wretched man had always had that effect on her. Something about his devastatingly good looks. He was just so...so much larger than life.

Taller, more striking, with the rakish, swarthy sexiness of a pirate. Next to him, the rest of the male population always seemed to pale in comparison and, considering the long, long line of women he had run through over the years, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.

Unlike that long, long line of women, though, she knew better than to let all that drop-dead male sexiness get to her.

She still cringed in shame when she thought back to that awful incident years ago. She’d had gone along to a party at the big house, as everyone in the village called the Morgan-White mansion up on the hill.

The place had been teeming with people. It had been a birthday bash for Leo and half the world seemed to be there. Heaven only knew why she’d been invited but she imagined that it had been something of a pity invite and, whilst she had cringed at the thought of going, she had been encouraged by the fact that several of the locals had also been on the guest list so she wouldn’t be a complete fish out of water. She’d spent ages choosing just the right dress. She’d only spotted him from a distance later, when she had been standing in the garden and, miracle of miracles, he had shown up right next to her and they had chatted for what had seemed like ages. He’d torn himself away from his gilded crowd and Sammy had been on cloud nine until, late in the evening, a very tall, very blonde girl had broken free from the group and confronted her just outside the marquee which had been erected in the garden.

‘You’re making a bloody fool of yourself,’ she’d hissed, words slurring from too much free champagne. ‘Can’t you see that Leo is never, and I mean never, going to give you the time of day? You may have grown up next to him but you’re poor, you’re fat and you’re boring. You’re making a laughing stock of yourself.’

Her infatuation had died fast. Since then, watching off and on from the sidelines, she had come to see just how repulsive his approach to women was. He picked them up and then, when he’d got what he wanted and boredom began setting in, he dumped them without a backward glance and moved on.

Romantic at heart, with a core of firmly held family values, Sammy marvelled that she could ever have looked twice at someone like Leo. But, then again, she’d been young and he’d been crazily good-looking.

‘He’s been better. Are you going to invite me in or are we going to have this conversation here?’

‘I suppose you can come in.’

* * *

Great start, Leo thought wryly. A very auspicious beginning to what’s intended to be the relationship of a lifetime.

He hadn’t thought about how she was going to react to his proposition but he didn’t expect too much protesting. He was, after all, bringing a great deal of money to the table and, as everyone knew, money talked a lot louder than words.

Anne Wilson, Samantha’s mother, was a close friend of his father’s and had been since Leo’s mother had fallen ill and Anne, a nurse at the local hospital, had gone beyond the call of duty to help out. Their bond had strengthened over the years as she had proved to be a solid rock upon whom his father had often leaned, particularly after his acrimonious divorce from Georgia.

It was no surprise then that Anne had confided in Harold about her ill health and the money problems she was having with the bank because she had been forced to quit her job. Though Harold had offered to give her the money, and, when that hadn’t worked, to lend it to her, she had refused.

* * *

‘So...’ Sammy folded her arms and stared at him almost before he had shut the door behind him. ‘What have you come here for?’ He was so good-looking that she could barely look at him without blushing.

Leo’s fabulous looks had to do with far more than just the arrangement of his features. Yes, he was indecently perfect, from the long, dark, thick lashes that shielded equally dark eyes and the straight, arrogant nose to the sensuous curve of his mouth. Yes, he had the toned, lean, six-foot-two-inch frame of an athlete and the lazy grace of some kind of predatory jungle animal, but he also generated an impression of power that was frankly mesmerising.

‘Are you always so welcoming to visitors?’ Leo drawled, ignoring her bristling hostility to shrug off his coat, which he proceeded to dump on the coat hook by the front door.

The house had clearly been made into flats, each with a separate entrance and, from the looks of it, on the cheap. Too much door-slamming and the whole structure would collapse like a house of cards.

‘I happen to be very busy at the moment,’ Sammy said shortly. She led the way into the sitting room and gestured to the mound of exercise books which she had been about to look at.

He sat himself in a chair. He had come to visit for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand and she was furious with herself for the silly heat that was pouring through her.

* * *

She was as awkward as he recalled. He’d never spoken to her without getting the feeling that she would much rather have been somewhere else. He’d never really paid a huge amount of attention to her appearance in the past, simply absorbing the impression that she didn’t dress to impress, but now that she was going to be the love of his life he couldn’t help but notice that she really had mastered the art of not making an effort.

Accustomed to women who bent over backwards to show off flawless bodies, who devoted unreasonable amounts of time to their appearance, he was weirdly disconcerted by someone who didn’t seem to give a hoot. He stared at her narrowly, recognising that, despite the appalling dress sense and the mop of blond hair that had been piled on top of her head and secured with a fluorescent elastic band, there was a certain pretty appeal to her heart-shaped face. Plus she had amazing eyes. Huge, cornflower blue with long lashes.

‘I take it you’re not interested in pleasantries, so shall I skip past the bit where I ask you how you are and what you’ve been up to recently?’

‘Do you care how I am and what I’ve been up to recently?’

‘You should sit down, Sammy. The reason I’m here is because I have something of a complicated favour to ask. If you insist on hearing me out on your feet, then you’re going to have aching calves by the time I’m through.’

‘A favour? What are you talking about? I don’t see how I could possibly help you out with anything.’

‘Sit down. No, better still...why don’t you offer me a glass of wine? Or a cup of coffee?’

* * *

Sammy resisted scowling. By nature, she was a kind-hearted woman who would never have dreamed of being downright rude to anyone she knew, but something about Leo always got her back up. She’d long ago written him off as too rich, too good-looking and too arrogant, and the way he had settled into her flat and was proceeding to order her about was only hardening her attitude.

She would quite have liked to have asked him politely to clear off.

As though reading her mind, Leo raised his eyebrows and subjected her to a long, appraising look that made her go red.

‘Okay,’ he drawled, ‘I’ll cut to the chase, shall I?’ He shifted slightly, reached inside his trouser pocket and withdrew a small box which he dumped on the table in front of him. ‘I’m here to ask you to marry me.’

CHAPTER TWO

SAMMY BLINKED AND then folded her arms, body as rigid as a plank of wood. Anger was bubbling up inside her. After one glance at the navy blue box he had dumped on the table, she hadn’t deigned to give it a second look.

‘Is this some kind of joke?’ she asked coldly.

‘Do I look like the kind of man who would show up on a woman’s doorstep and propose marriage as a joke?’

‘I have no idea, Leo. I don’t know what kind of person you are.’ Aside, she thought furiously, from the obvious.

‘Open the box.’

Sammy eyed it with a guarded expression and did nothing of the sort. But her fingers were twitching and, uttering a soft, impatient curse under her breath, she reached down and flipped open the lid.

An engagement ring nestled on a deep blue velvet cushion. The exquisite solitaire diamond blinked at her and she blinked back at it, utterly dumbfounded. Her hand was shaking as she placed the box, still open, back on the table and moved to sit down on the chair facing him.

‘What the heck is going on here, Leo? You can’t possibly be serious. You show up here with an engagement ring, asking me to marry you. Something’s wrong. What is it? Is that ring even real?’

‘Oh, it’s a hundred per cent real. And guess what? You get to keep it when this is all over.’

Sammy’s head was swimming. Less than an hour ago, she was a stressed out primary school teacher with a stack of exercise books to mark. Now, she was the main character in some weird parallel universe story with a sexy billionaire sitting on one of her chairs and an engagement ring in front of her.

Nothing about this scenario was making any sense.

‘When what’s all over?’ she asked as she tried to make sense of the situation and came up blank.

* * *

Leo sighed. Maybe he should have forewarned her but what would have been the point? She would still have been utterly bewildered. Much better that he was sitting in front of her so that he could explain the situation face-to-face.

If she couldn’t believe that this was happening then they were roughly on the same page.

Beyond the fact that the words will you marry me had never featured in any scenario he had ever envisaged for his future, he certainly would never have chosen Samantha Wilson as the recipient of his proposal.

He had met the woman over the years in countless different situations and he had been left with the impression of someone so background as to be practically invisible. She’d never been rude to him. She had always answered his questions politely, barely meeting his eyes before scuttling away as soon as she could. Aside from one conversation years ago. A conversation lodged at the back of his brain... But, after that, he had met her again—had tried to engage her attention—and nothing. He had no idea whether she had a boyfriend or not, whether she had a social life or not, whether she had hobbies or not.

In his world, where women strutted around like flamboyant peacocks, she was the equivalent of a sparrow. Perfect, of course, for the job at hand but hardly the sort of woman he would ever have looked at twice in that way.

‘I suppose you know about Sean and his wife,’ Leo began.

She nodded slowly. ‘I’m sorry. You have my condolences. It was a horrible end for both of them. What on earth would have persuaded Sean to take flying lessons, of all things? And to have flown solo in bad weather with Louise, without his instructor... It beggars belief. But I’m so sorry.’

‘No need for the sorrow or the condolences—’ he waved aside ‘—I wasn’t close to Sean so I can’t say his absence is going to leave a big hole in my life.’

‘That’s very honest of you.’

She was looking at him with those huge, surprisingly riveting blue, blue eyes and, while her voice was perfectly serious, Leo couldn’t help but suspect a thread of sarcasm underlying her remark. She’d never struck him as the sarcastic type.

‘I suppose you’re also aware that my father has been extremely upset that Sean’s daughter, whom he considers his granddaughter, remains in Australia as a ward of her maternal grandmother.’

‘It’s a shame, but I’m sure she’ll be allowed over to visit your dad in time, once she’s a bit older. Look, Leo, I still don’t see what this has to do with me or—’ her eyes flicked down to the box burning a hole on the table in front of her ‘—or that engagement ring.’

‘When Sean and Louise died, it was presumed that the child would be sent over here to live with me. Louise was an only child from a difficult background, without any extended family who could take Adele under their wing and Louise’s mother also had a somewhat...colourful history.’

‘I know there have been rumours...’

‘My father receives monthly requests from her for handouts and that is in addition to the money he continued to send to Sean over the years, well after his divorce from Sean’s mother was finalised.’

‘Your dad has a soft heart,’ Sammy said warmly.

‘A soft heart is only a small step away from being a soft touch,’ Leo muttered and she frowned disapprovingly at him.

‘I’m sure the money he sent over was really useful...’

‘I’m sure it was,’ Leo responded drily. ‘The question is, useful to whom? But no matter. That’s history. What we’re dealing with is the present, which brings me to the subject of the engagement ring...’ Admittedly, he had sprung this on her and had expected nothing but shock. Horror, however, hadn’t entered the equation because, whether the engagement was fake or not, he couldn’t think of a single woman who wouldn’t have been thrilled to see a diamond like that and to know that it was destined for her finger.

Right now, the woman sitting in front of him was glancing down at the box with a moue of distaste, as though looking at something that could prove infectious in a nasty way.

‘My father has recently received an unpleasant email suggesting that Adele, against all common sense and certainly not in her best interests, may end up remaining in Australia with Sean’s mother-in-law. The woman has clearly decided that it makes sense financially for her to hang on to Adele because, as long as she has the child in her custody, she will continue to receive money from my father, which, incidentally, is actually money from me. You may or may not know that his writing has been off the boil for a long time. The family company is doing well but I would rather not be financially embroiled with this woman forever.’

‘I’m just wondering what all of this has to do with me,’ Sammy confessed.

This had to be the longest conversation in recent years that she had ever had with the man and she was mortified because the cool composure she was at pains to display was at vibrant odds with what she was feeling. She certainly wasn’t cool and composed inside. In fact, she was all over the place.

Her senses were on full alert and she didn’t fully understand why.

Surely she was mature enough not to turn into a dithering wreck simply because she happened to be in the company of a man who was too attractive for his own good? She was a working woman, a teacher, with heaps of responsibility, someone with enough life experience behind her to recognise Leo for the man he really was as opposed to the one-dimensional, gorgeous cardboard cut-out who had once turned her silly teenage head...

Except...

Maybe her life experience was sorely lacking in a certain vital area. Maybe that was why just looking at him was making her skin tingle.

She had plenty of experience in caring for her mother, as she had been doing for the past year and a half. She knew all about communicating with doctors and hospitals and nurses and making her voice heard because her mother, although she had been a nurse herself, had been swallowed up with fear and confusion. She had needed someone strong to lean on and that person had been her, Sammy. And she had plenty of experience under her belt of taking charge, of controlling unruly primary school children until they were as meek as little lambs.

She had argued with bank managers and spent hours trying to balance the books and had exhausted herself with pep talks to her mother, convincing her that the cottage was safe even though the mortgage payments had fallen behind.

And, through it all, she had done her best to hang on to her sense of humour and her sense of perspective.

But there was that whole other area where she had no experience at all.

A vast, blurry, opaque space where she was a stranger because, despite having had two serious boyfriends, she had yet to test the sexual waters.

They had both been attractive and she’d liked them very much. In fact, they’d ticked all the boxes in her head in terms of suitability and yet...she just hadn’t fancied them enough to go the whole way.

She and Pete had broken up over a year and a half ago, and since then she had resigned herself to the fact that there was probably something wrong with her. Some faulty gene in her make-up. Maybe it was because there had been no father figure in her life since she had been a kid, yet, even to her, that argument made no sense.

So she’d long stopped analysing the whys and maybes.

She hadn’t taken into account that her lack of experience in that small, stupid area, insignificant in the big scheme of things, might have left her vulnerable to a man like Leo, with his sexy, spectacular good looks and that lazy, assessing charm that oozed from every pore.

‘Sean had the foresight, strangely, to leave something of a will,’ he was saying now, ‘a scrap of paper signed by a friend. In it, he indicated that, should anything happen to him, I should take guardianship of the child. I’m sure,’ Leo elaborated with scrupulous honesty, ‘that that particular light bulb idea had something to do with my financial worth.’

‘That’s very cynical of you.’ Sammy was still smarting from the realisation that while two perfectly good boyfriends hadn’t been able to get to her, this utterly inappropriate man seemingly could. At least if the crazy somersaulting in her stomach was anything to go by.

‘So I’m cynical.’ He shrugged and stared at her. ‘It’s a trait that’s always stood me in good stead.’

‘If Sean meant for you to have Adele, then what’s the problem?’

‘The problem is the harridan of a grandmother who’s decided to hire a lawyer to argue the case that I’m unfit to be the child’s guardian. A scrap of paper, she maintains, counts for nothing, especially considering my former stepbrother lived with a stash of alcohol and drugs within easy reach.’

Sammy didn’t say anything and Leo frowned because he could read what she was thinking as clearly as if her thoughts had been transcribed in neon lettering across her forehead.

‘The woman isn’t equipped to raise Adele,’ he grated. ‘Even if she had been an angel in human form, it would still be a big ask for her to take over the role of looking after an energetic five-year-old child. Had I felt that she might conceivably be mentally fit for the job then I’d back off, but she isn’t. At any rate, my father is distraught at this turn of events.’

‘He’s always mourned the fact that he never got to see her. He talked about that a lot to me and Mum.’

‘Yes, well...’ Somehow that simple statement of fact, which came as no shock at all to Leo, indicated a familiarity that was a little unsettling. ‘Here’s where we’re nearing the crux of the matter. I’ve been accused of having too many women and spending too much time out of the country.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and gestured in a manner that was redolent with frustration and impatience.

Sammy remained silent because, from all accounts, those were some pretty accurate accusations.

‘Well...’ she finally said. ‘I suppose there might be some truth in that. From everything I’ve heard, I mean, that’s to say...’

‘Please—’ Leo scowled darkly ‘—don’t let good manners stand in the way of saying what’s on your mind. I take it the rumours about me have come from my father?’

‘No!’

‘Do you three just sit around gossiping about my love life?’

‘No! You’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘Have I? From the sounds of it, once my father has finished lamenting the fact that he’s been denied access to his “granddaughter,” he brings out the tea and biscuits and gets down to the gritty business of discussing my personal life!’

‘It’s not like that at all!’ Sammy was mortified at the picture he was painting. ‘Your dad mentioned ages ago that he wished he saw more of you and that you worked too hard. He worries about your health, that’s all.’

‘I’ve never had a day’s illness in my life.’

‘Working too hard can bring on all sorts of problems,’ Sammy said, fidgeting, her colour high. ‘Stress can be a killer. That’s what worries your dad.’

‘That being the case,’ Leo drawled, ‘he must know that I’m in no danger of collapsing from working too hard or being too stressed because I have my safety valves in the form of my very diverting playmates.’

Sammy’s breath caught in her throat, which was suddenly so dry that she could barely get her words out.

It struck Leo that those very diverting playmates were going to have to take a back seat, at least for the time being, and he was a little surprised that he didn’t feel more gutted at the prospect. He was a highly sexual man with a very energetic libido, but recently, beautiful and obliging women who were always willing to go the extra mile for him had left him dissatisfied.

His palate was jaded.

Perhaps now was a very good time to indulge in a fake engagement with a woman he had precisely nothing in common with. A couple of months pretending to be in love with someone who didn’t stand a chance of rousing his interest might be just the ticket. He would resume life with renewed vigour and things would be back to normal. And a bout of celibacy never killed anyone.

‘Which—’ he brought the conversation neatly back to the point at hand ‘—brings us back to the problem. I don’t, according to my father, make a credible guardian with my reputation, and I will be under scrutiny because I will be travelling to Melbourne to sort this situation out. Eyes will be on me. I need credibility—and here is where you come in. I need a fiancée to show my stability to the Melbourne courts and he’s suggested that you would be perfect for the part.’

Sammy stared at him. So that was what all of this was about. The ring. The proposal. It was so preposterous that she was torn between bursting into manic laughter and propelling him out of her flat.

She did neither. Instead, she said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding, right?’

‘As I’ve already told you, I have better things to do than show up here for a laugh. This is no joke, Samantha.’ He leaned forward and looked at her with utter seriousness. ‘My father refuses to accept that he may never see Adele. The fact that Sean was his stepson for a short period of time rather than his own flesh and blood and that any tenuous family connection they might have once had ended when he and Georgia divorced makes not a scrap of difference to him, but then he’s that kind of man, as I expect you already know. He sees this as his last chance to do something about the situation and he can’t understand any hesitancy on my part to leap aboard the plan.’

‘I’m not going to go with you to the other side of the world so that I can pretend to be your fiancée, Leo!’ Agitated, Sammy leapt to her feet and began pacing the room. Her thoughts were all over the place and her body was burning.

‘Why would you want me to be your fake fiancée, anyway?’ She spun round to look at him, hands on hips. ‘Why don’t you just pick one of those women from your little black book? You have enough to choose from! Every time I open a tabloid I seem to see you somewhere in the gossip columns with a glamour model hanging on to you for dear life.’