The Billionaire's Cinderella Contract Read online

  ‘We’re supposed to be falling in love, remember?’ She could hardly believe she was having to remind him of this. Normally, it was the other way round. She softened her voice and whispered, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He grimaced, stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders.

  ‘Then wipe the scowl from your face. You’re supposed to be wining and dining your new lover, not looking like you’re trying to decide who you want to stick your fork into.’

  His eyes zipped to hers. To her relief, a smile tugged at his lips.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said with a grin. Then, because it felt too nice, she moved her hand from his on the pretext of needing a drink of her water.

  Once their order had been taken he dived straight into conversation. ‘When we have finished eating we will collect your stuff and go straight to my apartment.’

  ‘What do you plan to do with me?’

  The gleam that flashed in his eyes at this made her regret her phrasing.

  ‘I meant what plans have you made for us?’ she hurried to reiterate, mortified to feel a flush rise up her neck and suffuse her face.

  His wide mouth twitched. ‘I have a meeting in Frankfurt tomorrow but then my diary is clear. I need to give you the rundown of how the weekend will unfold and plan how you and I are going to handle things. I have the blueprints and virtual tour videos of the villa for you to study. I want you to arrive at the villa knowing exactly what your job is and how I expect things to be played out. I’ll have to take you shopping too.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Clothes and accessories for you to wear over the weekend—you will need to look the part, mi vida.’

  ‘Does that come under expenses?’

  ‘It does.’

  She grinned without any effort whatsoever. ‘Excellent.’

  * * *

  It was late evening when Damián returned from Frankfurt. After a day spent alone in his apartment studying the blueprints and videos of the villa he’d provided her with, Mia instantly became alert to the front door opening. At the first tread of a footstep her heart exploded and sent the blood whooshing through her veins.

  And then he appeared in the living room.

  She’d been asleep when he’d left that morning. Only now that he’d returned did she realise she’d been on tenterhooks all day waiting for him.

  Frightened at how badly she longed to jump up and throw her arms around him, she hurriedly pretended to tidy some of the papers strewn over the glass dining table where she’d been studying.

  ‘Have you had a good day?’ she asked politely as he placed his briefcase on the only available space left on the table.

  ‘I’ve spent most of it in a board meeting.’

  ‘Exciting!’

  Amusement flared in his eyes. ‘And you? Have you familiarised yourself with the villa?’

  ‘I think it needs to be renamed as a palace,’ she quipped. She had no idea why seeing his amusement made her heart sing but, like with everything else concerning her feelings for Damián, it terrified her. ‘Give me a few more days and then you can test me on it.’

  His lips twitched. ‘I look forward to it. Have you eaten?’

  ‘I’ve spent the day studying and stuffing my face.’ Mia had happily obeyed Damián’s edict that she use his concierge service. The only interruption to her studying and constant munching had been a call with her mum where she’d been forced to fend off questions about her new ‘relationship’. Her mum’s excitement at Mia finally having a man in her life made her feel rotten at her deception. She’d felt compelled to make it clear, while maintaining the upbeat voice she always adopted when speaking to her mum and sister, that it was early days for her and Damián, that they were poles apart socially and financially and that it was very unlikely to work out between them. Even if Damián hadn’t been paying her to pretend, it was the truth. It didn’t matter what crazy feelings he’d unleashed in her, nothing could ever come of it. Their lives were just too different.

  Another gleam of amusement flared. He tugged at his tie to loosen it. The muscles on his biceps bunched. The muscles in her abdomen clenched in appreciation. ‘Good. Drink?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘The usual?’

  Something warm and fluttery filled her chest at the question and she answered with a nod. The usual... Two words without a nip of intimacy in them but with the power to make her feel as if something intimate had passed between them.

  Trying to shake off the heady feelings rushing through her, Mia turned her attention back to the papers she’d been studying, but her raging heart had barely found a settled rhythm when Damián reappeared with their drinks and took the seat opposite her, and she found herself trapped in the beauty of his obsidian eyes.

  The warm fluttering started all over again, filling her every crevice. She had to fight for breath, fight to open her constricted throat. Fight to stop her fingers, tingling with zings of electricity, from reaching across the table to him.

  And in that charged moment while she gazed into his mesmerising stare she had the strongest feeling that he wanted to reach across and touch her too.

  She cleared her throat again and broke the lock of their eyes, tugging at her hair and reminding herself in great big capital letters of the reason why she was here with him, and that was to do a job.

  ‘Look, I know you don’t want to tell me what the documents contain and I respect that...’ After all, he respected her refusal to talk about her drug conviction. ‘But I’m wondering how you can be so certain Emiliano’s hidden them in the villa.’ It was something she’d pondered a lot. Like Damián, Emiliano had homes across the world.

  Her question was met with silence.

  When she dared look at him again she found his gaze still on her, an unfathomable look in his eyes. He had a long drink of his beer then placed the glass down and bowed his head to knead his skull. ‘They were in the villa before my father died.’

  ‘The documents?’

  ‘Si.’ His fingers moved to rub his temples. ‘My father updated his will days before he died. He split his personal wealth between Emiliano and Celeste. His business interests he left to me. The will’s gone missing, along with the document he signed transferring control of the entire Delgado Group to me.’ He raised his stare to hers. She’d never seen such starkness contained in the dark depths before. ‘If those two documents aren’t found in the next two weeks the entire business will fall under Emiliano’s control.’

  Mia’s brain pounded as she tried to digest this but nothing computed. ‘How can that happen? I didn’t think he had any involvement with it.’

  According to the internet, Emiliano Delgado preferred horses to finance.

  ‘My father took Monte Cleure citizenship and is bound by its probate laws. By law, six months have to pass there before probate can be granted and the deceased’s wishes carried out. If the will isn’t found then the laws of intestacy kick in, and in Monte Cleure they are archaic. If there’s no legal will then the oldest son inherits everything.’

  ‘And you think Emiliano’s hidden the documents to make this happen? Why would he do that when he has no interest in the business?’

  ‘Revenge,’ he answered bleakly. ‘Ten years ago, our father put him in charge of a major investment fund. Emiliano screwed up and lost our clients half a billion dollars.’

  Realising her mouth had dropped open, Mia quickly closed it. The figures Damián had uttered were almost too mind-boggling to comprehend.

  ‘Emiliano refused to accept responsibility for the losses,’ he continued. ‘He insisted it was a conspiracy against him.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘He had nothing to back his conspiracy claims up. We had no choice but to cut him loose from the business.’

  ‘You sacked him?’

  He kneaded his
skull vigorously. ‘We had to.’

  ‘You were part of the decision?’

  ‘The decision was our father’s but I supported it. If his screw-up had got out, the Delgado reputation would have been in tatters. In our business, trust is everything. Emiliano thought we should trust that it wasn’t his fault but how could we do that when the facts showed otherwise?’

  Hearing the defensiveness in his tone, she said softly, ‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me.’

  ‘We didn’t cut him off without anything. We funded the loss out of our private money and then Father set up a trust fund for him. Emiliano gets ten million dollars a month for life from it but, for all that and for all the success he’s made of his life since then, he’s never forgiven me or our father for what he sees as us pushing him out of the business.’ A pulse throbbed on his temple. ‘Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to snatch the Delgado Group from under my nose and publicly sack me. Once he’s rid of me, I am certain he will destroy the business. When I said I stand to lose everything, I meant it.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THINKING HARD, HER heart aching for him, Mia cleared her throat. ‘You seem very certain that the documents are still intact. How do you know Emiliano hasn’t destroyed them? Have you asked him?’

  ‘Not directly—we haven’t spoken since he was fired from the business—but he denied it to Celeste.’

  ‘Hold on—you and Emiliano haven’t spoken in ten years?’

  He shrugged. ‘We see each other twice a year but he refuses to even look at me. All communication is done through Celeste.’

  She expelled a long breath at this matter-of-fact account of brothers at war. ‘So he could have destroyed them?’

  ‘No. Our parents trained us too well for him to do that. They taught us to think like champion chess players: strategically at all times. Anticipate and mitigate any future move your opponent might make. Emiliano would never destroy anything that could prove useful in the future. No, he’s hidden them. I know he has.’

  ‘Does Celeste think he’s hidden them too?’

  ‘She won’t entertain the idea.’ Bitterness flashed in the obsidian before he bit out, ‘Emiliano is her golden child.’

  Although Mia had already gathered the Delgados were a family far removed from the loving family she’d been raised in, to know his own mother had taken his brother’s side without a care made her heart wrench for him. No wonder he had such a cold façade.

  But that was all it was, she was coming to understand. A façade. Beneath the icy exterior beat a heart capable of great feeling.

  Before she could ask anything further about his mother’s favouring of his brother, steely black eyes glinted. ‘The facts are straightforward. I visited my father at his request three days before he died. He wanted me to read the documents before he had them witnessed. He knew he wouldn’t live much longer and wanted me to be prepared. We planned an official announcement about my takeover of the Delgado Group but he didn’t live long enough for it to happen.’ A sliver of pain cut through the façade. ‘Neither of us knew just how short a time he had left.’

  She couldn’t stop herself from leaning over to cover his hand. She didn’t say anything. As she knew all too well, in times like this platitudes were meaningless but human comfort could soothe.

  His chest rose sharply as he rolled his neck and moved his hand from hers. Steepling his fingers, he said, ‘He told me he was going to keep the documents in his safe. I looked on the day of the funeral and it was empty. At the time, I assumed he’d changed his mind about keeping them there and given them to his lawyer to look after but the family lawyer denies knowing anything about it. I’ve made contact with every lawyer in Monte Cleure and they deny all knowledge too.’

  Rubbing a hand over her face, Mia tried to think. ‘Assuming you’re right and Emiliano hasn’t destroyed them, how do you know they’re still in Monte Cleure?’

  ‘He stayed at the villa for a few days after the funeral.’ He waited a beat before adding, ‘I do have one friend on the inside. He was able to obtain the external surveillance footage of Emiliano from those days but it was too risky for him to get the internal surveillance too. Unless Emiliano got someone to remove the documents for him, they’re still there. He didn’t leave the estate with anything but his car keys and hasn’t been back since. The first thing I’ll do when we get there is hack into the villa’s security system and try to retrieve the internal footage of the period from my father’s death to the weekend following his funeral. The footage, if it can be retrieved, is unlikely to show him hiding them, so I’m going to need to physically search. Which is where I’ll need your help. I can’t search alone without raising suspicions or risking being caught.’

  ‘Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do,’ she vowed.

  He looked at her for a long, meaningful moment. ‘That’s what I’m paying you for, mi vida.’

  ‘I know.’ She swallowed something that felt horribly like disappointment at the cold silkiness of his tone and the pointed reminder of her place in his world. ‘I just meant...’ Her voice trailed away.

  What had she meant? That right then she would have sworn to help him even if he wasn’t paying her?

  ‘Meant what?’ he asked in the same cold, silky voice.

  ‘Nothing.’ Her compassion, she realised with a pang as she looked into his expressionless eyes, was not wanted.

  Suddenly desperate to be alone, Mia pushed her chair back. ‘I hope you don’t mind but my brain’s fried after all that studying. I need to get some sleep.’ And she really needed to get a handle on all these crazy feelings which were growing and mutating by the second but were clearly not reciprocated before she said or did something she’d regret.

  The expressionless eyes didn’t flicker. ‘Buenos noches.’

  She stared at him a moment longer, wondering how he could confide such secrets one minute then revert to the cold man she’d first met the next.

  ‘Well...goodnight.’

  Only when Mia disappeared from sight did Damián relax his jaw, close his eyes and slump forward to cradle his head.

  What had possessed him to confide such things? He never spoke about his family on such a familiar level. Whatever went on behind the scenes, a united front was always maintained. Any antipathy was kept within the family. Outsiders might suspect but those suspicions were never confirmed. Discretion was at the heart of all Delgado life, both business and personal.

  Admitting vocally for the first time that Celeste had always favoured his brother had been the hardest words he’d ever said...but they’d somehow been the easiest too. He’d stared into Mia’s eyes and the words had been sucked from his tongue, just as everything else he’d confided had been.

  He downed the rest of his beer and gripped his hair.

  What was it with Mia? Was it her proximity while they shared his apartment that was causing him to feel he’d been caught in a spell?

  If it was just his apartment she occupied he wouldn’t have a problem but she was in his head too when they were apart, constantly shimmering in his vision.

  He was paying her to perform a role in a game that would determine his entire future. And even if he wasn’t, if they’d met in a more natural way, he still wouldn’t want to get involved with her. She was everything he didn’t want in a lover. Damián was still holding out hope that one day he would find a lover he could marry, and there was no way he could marry Mia. She was rooted in the UK and he was...

  He swore under his breath.

  Marriage? Where the hell had that notion come from?

  Clenching his fists and jaw and closing his eyes, he dragged ten large breaths in to expel all the racing thoughts and feelings.

  It made no difference.

  A large drink. That was what he needed. Something to numb him a little so when he did go to bed he wouldn’t lie for hours
staring at the ceiling, thinking of the woman occupying the room mere feet from his.

  * * *

  ‘Where are we starting?’ Mia asked brightly when Damián followed her out of the car onto a bustling Bond Street.

  ‘Have you shopped here before?’

  ‘On my wages? You’re having a laugh.’ When he’d given her the cash to buy herself an outfit for their first date she’d stopped at a boutique that was nowhere near as exclusive as the shops on this street.

  ‘Then take your pick.’

  ‘That’s impossible. I want to go in all of them.’

  He gave a gruntlike laugh. ‘I knew I should have got a personal shopper to select clothes for you and send them to the apartment.’

  Keeping the smile on her face and the brightness in her tone, she said, ‘Where’s the fun in that?’

  ‘You enjoy shopping?’

  ‘Not normally but I’ve never had an unlimited budget before and I really fancy taking advantage of it. Let’s face it, this is an opportunity I’ll never have again. Besides,’ she added, the darkening of his eyes telling her she’d said the wrong thing, ‘you want to be seen with me, remember?’

  He gave another grunt in answer and led her to the nearest shop, a designer outlet she’d walked past many times, longing for the day she could afford to do more than ogle the display.

  Yearning to see a genuine smile rather than the robotic curving fixture on his face that had hardly met her eyes all morning, she said, ‘Do you hate shopping so much that you normally get personal shoppers to buy clothes for your lovers and have them delivered to your home?’

  Hand on the shop door, he cast her with a meaningful stare. ‘My lovers have their own money.’

  The way he said it pulled her up short. ‘All of them?’

  ‘All of them. I like my lovers to be financially independent. It means there is no danger of them taking advantage—’ he stressed the word ‘—of my bank account, or of me wondering if it’s my bank balance they are sharing a bed with.’