My hottest Billionaire a Boss

Thirteen

A lift of Edward’s broad shoulders shrugged off her defiant statement.

‘Be my guest. It was your father’s wine in the first place.’

Which, as another pointed reminder of just how things had changed since

yesterday—was it really only twenty-four hours?—couldn’t have been

more calculated to stick the knife in yet again. It was certainly more than

enough to close Liza’s throat against the reviving swig of wine she

needed and let only a small sip trickle through.

‘I could pay you for it, if you like.’

‘Oh, now you’re being ridiculous! As I told you this morning, you can stay

here as long as you need—until you get settled. Which I suppose will be

when you become Mrs Nelson. Liza managed an inarticulate sound that he could interpret as

agreement with what he’d said if he wanted. But another thought drove

the discomfort from her mind.

‘How did you know his name?’

‘I made it my business to know. Besides, do you think that Jack—or Mrs

hasn’t filled me in on all the details of your soon-to-be

husband? I am given to understand that he’s considered a very good

catch.’

Which was a remark guaranteed to drive Liza to snatch another

unwary gulp of wine.

The whole of the field estate and the villages beyond had been

looking forward to the wedding, and Jety had invited as many people as

he could to the event, even though she was now forced to consider just

how he had planned to pay for it. Perhaps he had thought that the money

Edward had provided would be enough. Or perhaps he had expected that

there would be more where that had come from.

Jety, it seemed, had gambled on more than just the horses.

‘That isn’t why I…’

She couldn’t complete the sentence—why I’m marrying him. To do so

would be to lie outright. And neither could she admit that her wedding

was now never going to go ahead. That all her plans had been built on a lie.

And so she clamped her lips tight around her glass, pretending to drink

some more wine. ‘That isn’t why you’re marrying him,’ Edward finished for her. ‘No, you’re

marrying him because he’s the opposite of me.’

Hearing it thrown back at her like that, laced with black cynicism, made

Liza shiver inwardly. Suddenly those words, declared in anger, simply

to shut him up, seemed to come back at her with a new and sharper ring

to them. Recalling everything she had liked so much about Roy, she

couldn’t help but compare him with Edward and wonder…

No—it was impossible—it was ridiculous. It was just not true.

She wasn’t going to give it another moment’s thought.

‘Well, you wouldn’t want me to say I fell for him because he was solike

you, now, would you?’

‘I might find it easier to believe.’

The outrageous arrogance of the calm statement took her breath away.

‘Oh, you egotistical pig! Do you really think that every woman you meet

must think the sun shines out of you? Can’t you believe that there might

be one woman somewhere who doesn’t think you’re s*x on legs?’

‘You? ‘Yes, me! Can’t you understand that I…? What?’ she demanded when he

shook his head in adamant rejection of what she was saying, his face

hidden in the growing shadows.

‘I’ll never believe you when you claim there’s nothing between us. Not

after the way you threw yourself at me…’

‘I was young! And pretty damn stupid…’

‘And then there was what happened earlier.’

‘What happened earlier…’

Liza’s fingers clenched tight around the stem of her wineglass as she

struggled with the impulse to throw its contents right into Edward’s

darkly triumphant face.

‘Was a mistake—a great big mistake. It meant nothing…’

‘Nothing?’ Edward queried, the derisive gleam in his dark eyes mocking

her desperate assertion. ‘Forgive me if I do not believe you—but nothing

is not what it felt like to me.’

‘There was nothing—nothing. How could there be anything when I detest

you, when you make my skin crawl when you touch me?’

‘What is this, Liza? All this anger, all this rage, just because you

didn’t get the house—or field. All this because you didn’t get what you thought was coming to you.’

‘It isn’t like that at all.’

He made her sound so horrible—so greedy and mercenary, as if the

money, the house was all that mattered to her.

‘I’m sure you won’t understand this, but I thought that in Jety I’d found

a family, somewhere I belonged, someone I belonged with.’

‘Oh, I understand that far more than you’ll ever know.’

‘Then you should understand that it isn’t just because you have the house

—it’s because you have everything—everything. And I’m left with nothing!

Less than nothing.’

‘You have your fiancé—the life you plan to live with him—the life you

claim you want—that’s still there. You still have that. I can’t imagine that

Mr Opposite-of-me Nelson would be too happy to hear himself

described as less than nothing.’

‘He won’t give a damn!’

Beside herself with anger and hurt, needing desperately to lash out,

Liza didn’t care what she was saying. She didn’t even really know what

the words were until they left her lips and she heard them out loud,

seeming to crackle and spark in the darkness between them. ‘He won’t give a damn! He won’t even be here from tomorrow! Instead,

he’ll be…He’ll be…’

Suddenly hearing what she was revealing, seeing how much she was giving

away to this man, the Angel, who had already taken so much—too

much—from her she choked to a halt and froze, unable to go on.

‘He’ll what, Liza?’ Edward asked when the silence stretched out

around them, growing deeper with each second. ‘He’ll be what?’

But Liza couldn’t answer him. Her vocal cords seemed to have seized

up; she couldn’t open her mouth or swallow or manage a single sound. All

she could do was stand there in silence and shake her head desperately,

unable to go any further.

Liza…’

Edward’s voice had a low warning note in it and then, when she still stood

there tongue-tied, suddenly he moved, crossing to a switch and flicking

on the light, revealing her standing still and pale in the middle of the

room, blinking painfully in the suddenly harsh brilliance.

‘Tell me.’

‘No.’

Once again Liza shook her head, keeping her eyes stubbornly averted,

fixed on the pattern on the carpet in front of her. ‘Tell me…’

It was a command, totally autocratic, totally sure that he would be

obeyed. Well, he could command her all he liked. Everyone else might

jump to obey his orders, provide whatever he wanted, but she wasn’t one

of them. And not with this. Never, ever with this. He had too much

already. She was not going to let him know that he had taken this away

from her too.

Liza…’

To her horror, his voice came from close by. Too close by.

He had moved so quietly that she hadn’t heard him come and now he was

standing right beside her, big and dark and, oh, so powerful. Out of the

corner of her eye she could see the fine black silk of his jacket, the

immaculate white cotton of his shirt, the leather belt cinched around his

narrow waist.

After she had left Lee she had walked for miles, not caring where she

was going, not even following any path. She had tramped for hours across

the hills, through the woods, only coming back when she was just too

tired, too worn in body and heart to continue any more. And her clothes

showed unmistakable signs of every hour she had been away. Her shoes

were muddied, her shirt crumpled, her trousers flecked with spots of

damp and stains. Beside his crisp, clean elegance she felt scruffy and

worn, distinctly grubby and she tried to withdraw into herself, like a

small, miserable rabbit retreating into the darkness of its burrow. But it

didn’t work. She couldn’t hide away from the reality that oppressed her. ‘Your fiancé will be what tomorrow—or where?’

Edward’s voice was almost shockingly soft in a way that she had never

heard before. He sounded like a completely different person, someone

she didn’t know.

‘What has happened? What has upset you?’

And, as he spoke, he reached out and touched her. He curled one hand

around the top of her arm, just above her elbow, and held her. Very

lightly, very gentle; his touch was so soft that she could barely feel it

and if it hadn’t been for the warmth of his palm reaching her through the

sleeve of her shirt she wouldn’t have known it was there.

‘Tell me—you have to tell someone.’

If he hadn’t touched her she might have been all right. She might have

held it all together and fought back her feelings, keeping her emotions

firmly in check. And then she could have turned and told him that there

was nothing she wanted to say—nothing that was any of his business. She

might even have been able to walk from the room, keeping her head high,

her dignity intact.

But he had touched her. And the gentleness of it, together with the

softness in his voice destroyed her control.

Lee is not my fiancé any more,’ she managed with her voice only

trembling a little as she forced the words out. As she spoke she lifted her head, looked up into his face, into the deep

dark pools of his eyes where she felt she could almost see herself

reflected, ridiculously small and lost in a world that was no longer the one

she knew or recognised.

‘He broke off the engagement.’

She didn’t know what she had expected from his reaction, only that she

had expected some response, not just the strangely controlled inclination

of his head, the almost distant look in his eyes.

‘Not because of—’

‘No. I never told him about that.’

Liza jumped in on him before he could say something more about the

way he had kissed her that morning—and the way she had kissed him

right back. Just to think of it threw her into such a whirlpool of

confusion that she felt as if her mind had blown a fuse and she couldn’t

even begin to think straight.

‘It might have been easier if I had. But it was worse than that.’

Far worse.

The grip on her arm tightened for a moment, then eased off again. It was

as if he sensed that she could cope with so much and no more; one step

over an invisible line and she would go to pieces. So he held back, but that

hand on her arm told her that he was there. ‘How?’

And now, although she was still looking up into his face, into his eyes, it

wasn’t his jet-dark gaze that locked with hers, but Lee’s lighter blue-

grey eyes that she could see before her. The cool stare that she had

once thought of as soft, even gentle, but which today she had seen grow

colder and more distant with every word she had spoken.

In the end they had been the eyes of a stranger.

‘He broke off our engagement…’

She knew she’d said this before and she expected some sort of dry

comment on that fact but Edward simply nodded and waited, his gaze

still holding hers. And somehow it was his silence and stillness that gave

her the courage to draw a deep breath and go on.