A Wife For The Billionaire

Chapter Two

Becca Thorne hadn't meant to eavesdrop. That hadn't always been her way of doing things. Before she started working at Harbour & Vine, writing for the paper, chasing stories and arranging interviews, she was more direct. Freshly out of the chaos of a home that was Sydney and Redcliffe Manor, she always cut to the chase. But after four years away from home, Becca had learnt to pause.

And if she hadn’t stopped herself at the last moment, she’d have strode into the library without a thought, the way she always did. Bold, reckless, all in. And she wouldn’t have heard a thing.

But she did stop. The morning's burial weighed on her. The brothers gathered around the upturned slant of earth, the air thick with sorrow. She paused and steadied herself to make a decorous entrance into the Redcliffe Manor library. Which is how she came to overhear the two deep, male voices. Two voices as familiar to her as the voices of her own three brothers.

"You heard what Mr Fairchild told us. Both of us are not obligated to act." Alex, the older one of the twins, said in a measured tone. "We both know it's my responsibility."

"News flash." Troy ground out."Just because you are a few minutes older than I am, doesn't make you Lord over me. Besides, if you haven't noticed, things changed around here since you left. I am not your little brother any more.

Some things never changed, and Troy's bluntness was one of them.

He continued, “Flip a coin. Heads, you, and tails—”

"The hell you mean flip a coin." Alex shot back.

At the sound of his voice, her heart skipped a beat, then started quickly, pounding away like drums at a parade. Becca didn't need to see him to know how he would stand in this moment. Shoulders set, jaw locked, every line of his body hard and unyielding,as if carved from the same rock as the manor.

She remembered his voice, his touch against her skin, like yesterday. been the one to hum against her skin.The recollection sliced through her before she could brace herself. Four years. Four long years trying to forget him. And still he lived inside her skin like no time had passed at all.

“I guess you have a right to participate then. He was your father as much as he was mine. We’re in this together,” she heard him say, and his tone was final, uncompromising. “One in, all in.”

“A fine sentiment, big bro,” Troy countered, “but you’re forgetting something. It takes two to make a baby.”

“Yeah? How would you know? The entire country believes you are some sort of billionaire playboy. What have you got to show for it, Troy? Nothing. You

Becca almost dropped the tray of sandwiches she was carrying. Her heart thudded, insistent, but she held the tray close to her stomach, fingers tightening until the plates grew still even though her heartbeat did not.

She should have turned away. That would have been the sensible thing. But she stayed—because of what she had heard, or perhaps in defiance of it.

Her hands were full, so she could not knock. She, instead, nudged the door open with her knee, careful not to spill the contents of her tray. In the room, she cleared her throat. Once, then again, louder. The men did not pause for a second. They snapped at one another like wolves—who would do this? Who would marry, who would produce a child to inherit?

Good heavens.

It was just like when they were all little, scuffling and scurrying around Redcliffe.

Becca cleared her throat loudly. The brothers carried on without noticing her. It was only after she cleared her throat a third time that two pairs of intensely irritated, blue eyes turned her way. The Bannermen brothers. They were so alike, yet they could not have been more different. Troy's suit was long forgotten. He wore only the dress shirt which was folded to his elbows and untucked. His hair was a wild mess of curls, as if a four year old had been playing with it. Alex's dark hair was combed perfectly and slicked back with oil. The buttons of his black funeral suit were undone and, even though the study had a high ceiling, he towered above nearly everything.

An Australian lifestyle magazine that featured the twins some years back referred to them as “The Heirs of Wild Country” only because some hack had once dubbed their father’s extensive holdings in the Australian outback "Alistair's Wild Country.” They called Alistair Bannerman a king, and his boys, the princes of Australia.

Becca had weathered the scrapes and tumbles of their shared childhood. So, while glossy lifestyle magazines might cast them as heirs to some outback throne, she saw straight through the shine.

Royalty? Ha! The thought made her want to laugh.

“What?” the princes barked in a very unprincely manner.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” Beccas said, quite unapologetically, " but you’ve been holed up in here for yonks. I thought you might need some sustenance.” She deposited her tray in the center of the big mahogany desk and her hip on its edge. Then she reached for the bottle of thirty-year-old Macallan on the desk—pilfered from their father’s secret stash—and swirled the rich, amber contents in the light. The bottle was still more than half-full. It was astonishing. “I thought you would have made a bigger dent in this.”

Troy glanced down at the glass in his hand as if he had forgotten he was holding it, then he grinned, lifting it for a top-up. Alex set down his glass and turned away from them, with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black trousers. He gave no sign he had noticed the whisky or her.

Neither one of the brothers even looked at the tray of sandwiches. They weren’t hungry. What they wanted was for her to take the hint and leave so their conversation could go on.

Too bad, Becca thought.

She hitched herself further onto the desk, and plucked a corned beef and pickle sandwich from the tray as if she had all the time in the world. Then, she raised one eyebrow at the room. “So, who’s having a baby?”

Alex stiffened. The brothers traded a glance.

“You may as well admit it,” she said after chewing her first bite. “I heard enough.”

For a second she thought they might shut her out, close ranks the way men did. But she wasn’t the type to be shut out. She’d grown up chasing these two, along with her own brothers, across every inch of Redcliffe. Always outnumbered, she had somehow learned how to keep pace, how not to quit. Her eyes slid to Alex's rigid back. She never quit, not until the fight was good and done.

“Well?” she asked.

Troy gave in first, as she’d known he would. “What do you think, Becs? Would you—”

“This is private,” Alex cut in, his voice a knife.

“So you are telling me you think Becca’s opinion doesn’t matter?” Troy countered. “After all, between the three of us she is the only woman here.”

“It is very nice of you to notice, Troy.” Becca said dryly. Out of the corner of her eye she kept track of Alex. He never noticed. Her chest tugged in two directions at once. Part of her wanted to cross the room and fold him into a hug, the other part wanted to haul off the table and punch him for pretending she wasn’t there.

“Would you carry a baby…for money?”

Her head snapped back toward Troy. “What?” she asked, choking on the word. “A baby for who?”

“For someone else.” Troy leaned back against the table, folded his massive arms against his chest and lifted a brow. “Take my brother here, the recluse, for example.”

Alex shot a warning glare in Troy's direction, but his twin was not finished.

He carried on. “He claims he would pay a surrogate, and since that’s—”

“Troy,” Becca's started to warn him.

She didn’t need to. In a blur, Alex had Troy by the collar of his shirt. Two short, clipped words came out of his mouth. Raw and harsh, there was nothing princely about them.

“f**k you." He said. Becca suspected he meant every word of it.

She tried to step between them, but Alex was already pulling away. He released his grip on Troy, but his voice was ice. “Handle this however you want. I’ll do it my way. I don’t need you to sign off.”

He walked out. No slammed door, no raised voice. That kind of heat would have meant he still cared, but the man Alexander Bannerman had become was colder than stone.

“I suppose what I think doesn’t matter now,” Becca said wistfully.

Troy offered her a rough laugh. “Only if you believe Mr. Sunshine and Rainbows there can find himself a woman.”

Her heart thudded. Of course he could. Alex didn’t need his family name or his family fortune. He had the kind of body that turned heads, the dark look of a man carrying wounds, and that was enough to draw women like moths to a bonfire.

A shiver crept along her arms. She set down the sandwich she’d been holding. “You don’t think he’ll do anything reckless, do you?”

“Not if I can stop him.”

Becca snorted. It went against everything she knew about the twins. In their childhood, Troy was the hothead who always needed someone to stop him from doing something reckless. Alex was the more levelheaded of the twins, and the one who was eternally tasked with terrible responsibility of keeping Troy in check.

Troy filled his glass and swallowed the contents in one go. “Do you honestly think he’s in any shape to be picky? What was Dad thinking? He should’ve left Alex out of this whole thing!”

Becca’s heart tugged her in the direction of Alex and she considered going after him, but she was no longer the girl she once was, chasing after the twins. She struggled with her feelings.

Troy took another precariously long swig of the Macallan and Becca eyed the bottle. “All right,” she said. ‘Confessio

n time, boys. I only caught a slice of what you said earlier. Who wants to fill me in on the rest?”