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She’d left and he didn’t just lose his heart. But everything he’d achieved.
Business contacts, work, his world. She’d no idea how much it had cost him. No idea what he’d brought himself up from only to be dumped in an even worse place. He’d had to start all over again—from below the line he’d started. Because he then had the reputation, the ostracism, to overcome. He’d betrayed someone who should have been like a brother to him. But Liam had never had a brother. Never had anything anyone could call a family. And that was the way it would stay—no long-term lover, certainly no marriage. Career came first and always would. It was the one constant in his life and what gave him greatest satisfaction.
Which wasn’t to say he didn’t like sex. Usually he pursued plenty of it—and won. Now he had the money and status that came with success, he won even more. Which gave him more reason to doubt a woman’s motivation. Because back in the day when all he’d had to offer was himself, it hadn’t been what she’d wanted. It hadn’t been him at all. Victoria Rutherford had used him all those years ago and he’d suffered through hell because of it.
He took another sip of his drink and told his imagination to settle and his pulse to slow. It wasn’t that she’d broken his heart. It had been a crush. He’d been tempted by the forbidden and by hormone-fuelled fantasy. And he’d recovered what he’d lost. He’d worked round the clock. He’d had to leave the UK and try Europe—doing anything and everything. Clawing his way back up the ladder. In truth, he’d probably done better than he would have had he stayed, because he’d had to reach round for other business opportunities. It had cost him hours and hours of sheer graft, struggle and sweat but he’d done it. Single-handed. And single he would remain. Always. He’d never risk his security again.
So, for now he’d sort out this photo shoot deal with the designer. It was a win-win proposition and the old bird already knew it. He could handle a few meetings with Victoria. He’d pull a satisfactory outcome from this lame burst of curiosity. But right now that curiosity bit harder. Liam looked across the room to where she stood in the corner, yapping into her mobile phone. He pegged it as defensive—a way of disengaging from the scene in the room and the threat of a scene with him.
Too bad. He started walking. Because it was time for the kind of scene Victoria had once loathed.
* * *
A frisson of awareness skittered down Vivi’s spine. She turned and watched Liam walk nearer. He watched her in a way that set her teeth on edge. Compelling, confident he’d get her attention. Of course he bloody would. He got everyone’s attention. She’d done some quick research as soon as she’d got Gia ensconced centre stage in the room with her favourite drink on tap. Liam hadn’t hidden the way she had. So now she knew—he headed a luxury boat-building firm based on the Italian coast. He’d turned the ancient, once-family-owned company around. In only a few short years he’d pulled them out of the red and into the utterly desirable. He’d fended off an aggressive take-over threat from a far bigger rival and come out on top. He had people queuing for orders and celebs calling in favours to get in first—almost as many as Gia. Vivi knew to have achieved that much in such a short time meant he’d worked every hour there was. He simply had to have a team with him now.
‘Are you sure you want to organise this shoot yourself?’ she said the second he got within earshot, a bright smile pinned to her lips. ‘You wouldn’t prefer to have an assistant work out the fine details with me?’
‘The thought of dealing directly with me really does bother you.’ He stopped walking an inch over a socially acceptable distance from her.
‘Of course it doesn’t.’ She maintained her smile through gritted teeth and resisted the urge to take a step back. ‘I’m just surprised you have the time to waste on something small like this.’ She less than subtly emphasised the ‘time to waste’. That was what he’d said to her in the heat of one of their many arguments in the last few days they were together.
I don’t have the time to waste on this.
On you.
‘It’s a very precious boat and has yet to be revealed to anyone,’ he said lazily, not taking his eyes from her face. ‘It’s under tight security until the Genoa show in a couple of weeks. This is my absolute priority.’
‘You don’t think you’re leaving it a little late to get promo shots?’
He laughed. ‘I already have promo shots. But when you get the chance to have the world’s most popular designer and her model work with you, you take it.’
‘Yes,’ Vivi mused, her bitch-claws flashing out. ‘You were always good at taking every chance you got.’
‘It is a skill of mine. And I’ll continue to take full advantage of every chance I get until I have all that I want.’
‘And what do you want?’ She stared right back at him, refusing to think that there’d been any subtle suggestion in his tone. ‘Global domination?’
‘Why not?’
‘Why indeed?’ she answered lightly. ‘All the money, the travel—’
‘Don’t forget the women.’ His smile was lazy but his eyes were sharp.
‘Oh, how could I forget the women? So you have everything you desire—fame, fortune, fawning minions?’
‘Minions?’ He chuckled. ‘Is that what you are?’
Anger flashed—white-hot, rapid—but she controlled it, using everything she had to preserve an almost unruffled exterior. ‘I’m no minion.’ Certainly not his. ‘I’m the puppeteer. I organised this party—this whole decadent circus was on my instruction.’
‘Really?’
Something about that answer set her on edge—as if he was indulging her. She was proud of who she’d become, what she’d done. ‘Absolutely. You know—’ she stood taller ‘—I really ought to thank you. This job, my life—’ she waved a hand at the opulent room ‘—all because I walked out. My leaving home, leaving you—it was the best thing I ever did.’ She lifted her chin, emphasising her bravado. Masking the tendril of fear that was uncurling in her stomach—fear that one chink of her armour had loosened from one little look.
There was a moment of silence.
‘Well.’ He paused again. ‘Congratulations.’
Caution niggled—something in his tone alerting her. His face had shuttered again, his lashes lowered, hiding the warmth in his eyes.
‘I want you to meet with me first thing in the morning,’ he said.
‘That’s not possible.’ She smiled an insincere apology. Thank goodness she was having a few days off. She’d arrange his shoot once she got back. ‘I have—’
‘But Gia promised you’d take care of everything and meet every single one of my demands.’ His shoulders lifted and his eyes widened as if in total innocence.
Vivi mentally counted to five. Because she recognised the single-minded obstinacy beneath his good-humoured façade. She couldn’t let him muck up her rep with Gia and she suspected he would. ‘As long as every single one of your demands is professional, then of course I will.’ She smiled. For Gia.
‘You think my demands might not be professional?’ he leaned in to murmur.
She angled her head back, aware she exposed her neck as she did—ignoring the secret flare of desire within for him to kiss her vulnerable skin. ‘I think the professional and the personal are intertwined for you.’
‘Oh?’
He moved forward and she backed up a pace before thinking better of it and locking her knees tight. ‘Nothing matters to you more than the professional and you’re more than happy to use the personal to get there.’
She ignored the battling urges within her—flee-or-fornicate. Crass it might be, but those had always been her only options when it came to Liam. But she was doing neither tonight. She was in control. She’d never been in control of her feelings around Liam before, but she’d grown up plenty since then.
‘Then it’s just as well you’re still so eager to please, isn’t it?’ He angled his head bringing him to a way more personal than professional distance—a k
iss distance. ‘How ironic that the girl who was so determined to achieve independence has become the ultimate in slave.’
She blinked. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Running around after your boss. Never saying no. Definitely a slave.’
Oh, that was rude. But worse was her melting reaction to the way he lingered over that last insulting word. The dreadful thing was she’d felt enslaved all those years ago—so in love she was all but bound to him. Being that enthralled was what she’d run from. Especially when that depth of emotion had never been reciprocated. She fought harder to hide the electrical current running red-hot between them now. ‘I’ll never be your slave.’
‘No?’ He lifted his hand and brushed the back of his finger along the edge of her tightly clenched jaw before he stepped away. ‘Seven-thirty tomorrow morning. My hotel.’
* * *
Liam walked away before he did something really stupid—like pushing her back to the wall and kissing the sass out of her. Since when did Victoria Rutherford talk back like that? Since when did she deny what was so obvious between them? She’d never been able to before.
And he’d been unable to help stepping closer just then. Drawn like an idiot moth. Again. And she’d admitted that she’d used him—that what had happened had been the best thing for her. Just as he’d suspected. All she’d really wanted was to get out of that small village and the life her parents had mapped for her. He’d been the convenient taxi driver—one that gave her a few thrills along the way. Now she was Ms Independent and so happy about it?
She’d got more than some lip with her sophistication. She’d got bite. And frankly, she made him want to bite back. His teeth were already sharpened, thanks to the driving attraction that had surged back within a second of seeing her again. But here she was acting all uninterested? All cool and calm and unaffected? Little liar. He’d read the signs—he’d heard the husky edge in her voice, seen her flush and the tension in her body. Sexual tension. Well, he wasn’t letting her deny it. She wasn’t rewriting history. That attraction had been insane. It still was. Those hormones still crazy powerful—but not uncontrollable. At least, not for him.
And he’d prove it.
He smiled as he raided a tray of hors d’oeuvres. But it was another appetite he was planning to sate. He hadn’t felt driven to prove a point in a long time. But this was irresistible. He’d play. He’d take such delight in teasing. And in less than a week he’d have Victoria Rutherford begging him to bite her.
* * *
Vivi tried not to watch him from across the room but she was viciously aware of him laughing with Alannah and Gia and everyone else having a jolly good time.
She wasn’t anyone’s slave. She was paid a mint and she deserved to be. Gia was lucky to have her. But for once she didn’t want to stay sober and sensible and on the sidelines. She stepped forward, grabbing a glass of champagne from a tray being carried straight past her. She’d participate, she’d prove how she belonged right in the heart of this society.
She took a sip and heard a laugh from nearby. She turned. Nico, one of Gia’s fave photographers, was watching her. ‘You’re in a strange mood tonight, Vivi.’ He stepped closer.
