My hottest Billionaire a Boss

Seven

With Rick at her side she’d be able to face the future.

And part of that future was to get herself downstairs smartish. The last

thing she wanted was for Edward to think that she was hiding away in

her room, sulking, or, even worse, afraid to come out and face him.

She’d face him all right. He might have walked back into her life and

shattered it, taking so much that she had thought was in her future and

grabbing it for himself. But it was only money, only property. She had

other things to look forward to in her future. She was getting married in

a month. And then she would be out of here—sooner if possible. Out of

here and leaving the Angel far behind her.

So she was going to get dressed and go down and face him. Head on.

And she was going to look her best. She wasn’t going to let him see how

much he had devastated her.

With her shoulders squared, jaw tight with resolve,Liza headed for the shower.

He was in the study—in Jety’s study. She spotted him through the open

door as she marched down the long curving staircase that led into the

hall. He was sitting at the big oak desk, a pile of papers in front of him

and his head bent over one file. A terrible, sour taste rose into Liza’s

mouth at the sight of this—thisusurper —in the place where she had so

often seen her father. In Jety’s chair, at Jety’s desk.

The thought that perhaps in the last few months of the older man’s life

he might have been sitting at that desk wrestling with the problems that

his debts had forced on him, wondering how to cope—driven to accept

Edward’s help—made the bitter taste even worse so that it was almost

like acid burning on her tongue.

And so, in spite of the fact that Edward lifted his dark head as she

walked past the door and tossed some sort of greeting her way, she

carefully ignored him. Keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead, hands

firmly in the pockets of the beige trousers she wore with a soft green

shirt, she headed for the kitchen and a much wanted cup of coffee.

She would need a strong dose of caffeine in her system before she could

face him. Without it, she knew she would hiss and spit if she had to speak

to him face to face. So she headed straight for the old-fashioned

whistling kettle, filling it and slamming it back down on to the stove as a

way of expressing her feelings without speaking.

‘Coffee,’ she said aloud to herself, reaching for a mug from a hook. ‘I’ll have one of those.’

The voice from behind her made her jump, though deep down she knew

she’d been expecting it. But, although every nerve in her body tightened

and twisted at the knowledge of his presence, she clamped down hard on

the jittery feeling that clutched at her stomach and forced her voice to

stay calm as she responded.

‘You really shouldn’t sneak up on me like that when I’m in the kitchen.’

Damn it, her voice was calm—but it must be obvious that that was only

achieved by the way she had clenched her teeth so tight that already her

jaw was beginning to ache. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t drop this mug.’

‘It wouldn’t have mattered.’

She couldn’t see but she could well imagine the careless shrug with which

he dismissed the piece of china she held in her hand. Her fingers

tightened round the handle as she fought with the need to swing round

and fling it at his arrogant head.

Instead she made herself turn slowly, reluctantly. Her skin was already

shivering with awareness of his presence and the knowledge of the fact

that he was so very close behind her only made that burning sensitivity

so much worse. He had the appalling knack of seeming to fill a room, even

one as big as the old-fashioned House kitchen. It was as if his

presence expanded to fill the space, dominating it, sucking all the oxygen

from the atmosphere and leaving her gasping for breath. Overnight she

had told herself that her imagination had to have been working overtime,

that there was no way he could be so big, so powerful, so dark. His eyes

couldn’t be so deep and brilliant, his hair such a glossy black. But, standing before her now, with the elegant business suit discarded in

favour of a coffee-coloured long-sleeved T-shirt and darker brown

trousers, he was all that and more. She had once thought him

devastating, totally destructive to her peace of mind. She had known so

little then! The man he had become was a hundred—a thousand—times

more dangerous.

‘It’s only a mug.’

‘And you can afford so many other mugs, of course.’

The look Edward turned on her was one of total exasperation.

‘I don’t happen to think that a mug is worth making a fuss about.’

‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? Or were you perhaps thinking

that you’d expect me to pay for a replacement, seeing as you now own

Manorfield and everything that’s in it, lock stock and barrel and I’m just

here under sufferance?’

This time the look that flashed from those black eyes was brilliant with

cold anger and she actually heard his teeth snap together as he too bit

back the first response that had sprung to his mouth.

‘Don’t be damn stupid, Liza. And stop trying to provoke an argument.

It’s too early in the morning.’

‘So do I need to make an appointment to speak to you now? Or to argue with you at least? Well, perhaps you’ll tell me when it is the right time—

because we have a lot to argue about.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It doesn’t have to be this way.’

‘It doesn’t?’ Liza scorned. ‘From where I’m standing, this is exactly

how it has to be. After all, you moved in and stole everything…’

‘Notstole !’ Edward stated with vicious emphasis. ‘I stole nothing. I came

by everything legally.’

‘Oh, yes, perfectly legally. By throwing outrageous sums of money at it—

and at a man who couldn’t say no.’

‘Your father was deeply grateful for my assistance.’

‘Oh, I’ll just bet he was! Considering you had him cornered, with no

possible other way out. You saw a way to get what you’d always wanted, at

a price you could afford to pay, and so you moved in for the kill. You

didn’t give a damn about the people you’d trampled on—the people Jety

really wanted his estate to go to.’

‘You?’

He inserted it, swift and sharp as a stiletto in the ribs, and with it came

just the same sort of burning pain, so that she had to fight against the

wince of distress that would betray her. Somehow she managed to

transform the involuntary hand movement that came up between them in

a nervous, defensive gesture, into one that dismissed his slashing question, brushing it aside in angry impatience.

‘The people who mattered to Jety.’

What had she said now that had made his face change so much, turning

the glittering jet ice of his eyes into a flame of pure savagery, with a

burning hatred that made her take an involuntary step back, away from

the danger zone?

‘You just used the wealth you had to snatch it away at the cheapest

possible—’

‘You don’t know what it cost me,’ he snarled from between gritted teeth.

‘I have some idea of what the estate is worth.’

This time it was Edward’s hand that came up between them in an

expressive, angry gesture, long fingers spread wide, broad palm acting as

a barrier between them.

‘I wasn’t talking about money.’

‘What else is there to talk about where this is concerned? What I’m

wondering is where you got the money from.’

‘Where the hell a penniless stable boy got the cash to buy out your

father, hmm?’ Edward questioned cynically, his beautiful mouth

twisting in bitter scorn. ‘You clearly don’t think it could possibly have been acquired legally.’

‘I never said that!’

She tried to meet his accusing eyes squarely but her gaze skittered away

from his at the memory of just how the ‘penniless stable boy’ she had

believed him to be had ended up out on the streets because of her.

‘You didn’t have tosay anything.’ Edward gave the words a dangerous

softness, one that made all the tiny hairs on her skin lift in a shivering

response to some unseen but instinctively sensed peril. ‘It was there on

your face, in your eyes. But you needn’t worry, my dear Liza. Every

euro I earned—every penny I paid for Manorfield—was worked for and

earned legally. I wasn’t always a penniless stable hand—maybe the truth

is that I was never a penniless one.’

‘What…?’

But at that moment the kettle boiled, the whistle sounding loud and shrill

into the stunned silence that followed her shaken question. She had been

so intent on the argument, on the man in front of her, that it brought her

whirling round, snatching it up to silence the appalling sound before she

quite realised what was happening.

‘You were making coffee,’ Edward said pointedly when she simply stood,

frozen to the spot.

The truth was that she no longer felt she could drink anything. So many

feelings and emotions were knotted up in her throat that she felt sure

she would choke. But even as she stood, her mind clouded with memories, her whirling thoughts refusing to be pushed into any coherent order, he

stepped forward, eased the kettle from her clutching fingers and took it

over to the scrubbed wooden worktop.

‘Very little milk, no sugar,’ he said, the totally matter of fact way of

speaking making her mind spin again.

‘What?’

‘The way you like your coffee.’ He had replaced the kettle on the stove,

but off the heat this time, taken down a cafetière from a shelf and was

opening cupboards, obviously in search of coffee. ‘That is right isn’t it?’

‘You remember?’

‘Of course I remember.’

He had his back to her as he was spooning ground coffee into the glass

pot, so she couldn’t see the expression on his face or have any guess at

what was going through his mind. His tone was no help. It was flat and

emotionless, giving nothing at all away.

‘I remember so much about you. The way you’d call “good morning” to all

the horses when you came into the stables, then steal one of their

carrots for yourself. That cool, slightly breathy voice, the way you toss

your hair back over your shoulder. Your beauty.’

Now Liza knew that she was mishearing him. He couldn’t have said. ‘Beauty!’ She laughed. ‘Oh, come on! You know you don’t mean that.’

‘Why not?’

He turned as he spoke and the direct, burning intensity of his gaze

seared her face, seeming to scour off a top layer of cells so that she felt

raw and desperately exposed underneath.

‘Why would I say it if I didn’t mean it?’

‘But you said…’