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Lia’s voice was tight. ‘So you had your meeting and what...? Discussed strategies?’
Ben felt grim. ‘Something like that.’
She said nothing for a moment, but Ben could almost hear her brain whirring. She was a smart woman. It wouldn’t take her long. And it didn’t. Her eyes grew wider and her face was leached of the little colour that had come into it.
‘You set up that date with me a week after your meeting. What’s the betting that if I was to call Elizabeth Young now she’d tell me that you all signed up with her?’
Ben had to admit it. ‘She would tell you that, yes. We did all sign up with her. And we signed up with her because we decided that our best course of action would be to clean up our reputations by...settling down.’
Lia gaped at him. Her eyes were huge. Faintly she said, ‘I can’t believe it... You made some sort of sick pact to find women and get married to prove that you’re all moving on from your playboy images?’
Feeling tight all over, Ben said, ‘People get married for less every day of the week.’
Lia’s eyes blazed at him now. He wasn’t even sure if she’d heard what he’d said.
‘No wonder he called your million-dollar bid a gamble. Were you hoping I’d become completely infatuated with you? Or were you just going to pop the question after testing out our physical compatibility?’
Something on Ben’s face must have given him away, because Lia stepped back, shaking her head. There was a light in her eyes that skewered Ben to the spot, all at once accusatory and something more ambiguous.
‘To think that I suspected you had an agenda right from the start... But even I could never have guessed you’d go so far.’
* * *
The only thing anchoring Lia to the ground was the intense anger she felt. She told herself it wasn’t hurt and betrayal. She told herself the feelings she’d believed were real just a short while before had been just a flight of fancy and brought on by sex hormones. How could she have fallen for this man?
She cursed herself for not having trusted her gut at the start. For letting Ben fool her into thinking... Her heart stuttered—thinking what? That he cared for her? What a travesty! Clearly all he cared about was his precious business and his reputation.
Where had her healthy sense of cynicism gone? Melted, she thought disgustedly, along with her will power as soon as he’d touched her... But worse than anything else at that moment was the hurt she felt that he’d lied to her when he’d told her in Brazil that he’d wanted her after just looking at her photo, before he’d even known who she was. And she hated herself for being so weak.
Ben just looked at her, assessing her reaction. He seemed remote, a million miles from the seductive lover who had sent her to heaven and back more times than she cared to admit.
‘You were prepared to marry once before for convenience,’ Ben pointed out.
Lia felt even sicker now, when she thought of all she’d revealed to him. When all along he’d been playing her like a virtuoso. She lifted her chin and tried to ignore the sensation of something cracking apart in her chest. It was anger, she told herself desperately.
‘Yes, I was. But I was misguided and doing it for all the wrong reasons.’
‘We have more going for us than you ever did with your ex-fiancé. We have insane chemistry. We have ambitions and goals in common. We could build a good life together.’
To hear him so baldly laying out exactly what he’d had in mind all along was like a body-blow. And Lia realised for the first time that she’d changed. She might have agreed to a marriage of convenience before, for her father’s sake and on a subconscious level to protect herself from the pain of intimacy, but she’d never do it again. She knew she was worth more than that now. And the fact that it was this man who’d given her that sense of self was galling.
Ben continued, ‘I can take care of you and your father. You’ve admitted his health is failing, Lia. It’s only a matter of time before he has to step down. You can’t go on protecting him for ever. You can’t go on sacrificing your own ambitions for his.’
Lia hated him even more for being able to strike at the very heart of her. She’d given him that power. This was what happened when you let people in. They knew where your weak points were and she’d all but given Ben a map and directions. She had no one but herself to blame. She shouldn’t have stopped listening to her suspicions.
She bristled at the implication that she needed taking care of. ‘Wow, you must have really thought you had it all sorted when you spotted me in the Leviathan portfolio. Not only could you get your convenient wife, you could also be assured of further expansion into Europe.’
Colour scored along Ben’s cheeks, but Lia didn’t feel triumphant to have scored a hit—she felt worse...disappointed. Betrayed. She couldn’t keep denying it.
He said, ‘I’d make sure that your father’s business thrives, that his name survives. You’d want for nothing.’
Lia tightened her arms around herself as if that might hold her together. ‘What you’re describing is a business merger—and were you not listening when I told you that wealth and all its trappings mean nothing to me?’
Ben’s jaw clenched. ‘That’s easy to say when you haven’t had it all ripped away and seen the effect on your family.’
Lia was momentarily rendered speechless. He was right, in one way. Even if she knew that she could survive, she knew something like what had happened to his parents would kill her father. And she hated it that even now her heart ached a little for what had happened to Ben... She hated that she wanted to ask him if he’d felt anything at all beyond this absurd plan. But she wouldn’t. She wasn’t a complete masochist. And he’d just revealed a level of ruthlessness that took her breath away.
‘I’m not interested in a marriage of convenience with you, Benjamin Carter.’
