The Billionaire Affair (10 page)

Vowing she'd make it up to him, she lengthened her stride, hugging the hedgerows for protection from the increasingly steady drizzle.

The only enigma was why Maggie had lied. Out of spite? Because the wild, sexy Ben Dexter had never touched her and she'd wished he would?

Caroline had known of his reputation, who hadn't? Sometimes, home from boarding school for the holidays, she'd visited the general store, had heard a group of village girls drooling over the hunky Ben Dexter, giggling and preening if he'd happened to roar by on the old motorbike he'd used to get around on, some of them boasting that they'd ridden pillion with him, implying a whole lot more.

Had Maggie been jealous because she hadn't been one of the lucky ones? Deciding to get her own back by telling everyone that she had?

Whatever. Speculation was getting her nowhere. She had to have the truth, discover what had lain behind the lie that had done so much damage, and she knew she was going to have to wait a short while longer when the heavens opened as she reached the outskirts of the village.

Scurrying, her head down, she headed for the store where she could shelter until the worst had passed.

A violent tapping on a window-pane had her skidding to a standstill.

Dorothy Skeet beckoned her frantically and Caroline dived thankfully under the porch of the pretty cottage and pushed on the open front door.

‘You've got drenched!' Dorothy clucked as she emerged from a door on the right. ‘I saw you coming down the lane—you can see everything from my front window—and I said to myself, Poor Miss Caroline will get a right soaking! Now, come and dry off by the fire and I'll get you a towel for your hair. And what about a cup of tea? I could fancy one myself.'

Acquiescing gratefully, Caroline entered a cosy, cluttered room and rough-dried her hair in front of the fire that crackled in the tiny hearth while Dorothy went to make the promised tea.

‘You've made it very comfortable,' she remarked when the older woman returned with a tray of tea things. ‘You're happy here?'

Her father's death must have hit Dorothy hard. She'd lost the man who'd been the centre of her narrow life for years, had lost her home and her livelihood. Caroline felt a nagging sense of responsibility. If Dorothy was having difficulty making ends meet—the legacy wouldn't have amounted to much after her father's debts had been paid—then something would have to be done about it.

‘Oh, yes.' Dorothy filled two cups from the squat brown teapot, handing one to Caroline who had put the damp towel aside and was watching the steam rise from her borrowed jeans. ‘I miss your dad, of course I do, and I thought I'd be lonely, but I'm not
really. There's always someone to talk to and, like I said, I can see all the comings and goings from my window.'

And report them, innocuous or not, to the first willing ear she happened to come across, Caroline thought with a wry smile as she refused the sugar bowl. She probed gently, ‘I know you won't be pensionable age, Dorothy. So how are you managing? Don't be afraid to say if you're not. I'll probably be able to help.'

‘Bless you, I'm managing fine.' The other woman sank into a roomy armchair, beaming. ‘When Mr Dexter's company took over the house he explained why he couldn't keep me on, not as full-time housekeeper anyway. He needs someone young and street-wise to keep up with all those energetic young tearaways he's going to take in. But as soon as the first lot arrives I'm to go there for a few hours each day and just help out here and there, get to know them, be a sort of temporary granny, he said. And until they do arrive he pays me a handsome retainer.' She stirred her tea reflectively. ‘He's a good man, that.'

Of course he was, Caroline conceded silently, a lump in her throat. The best. So why had it taken her so long to admit it to herself? She'd been so intent on clinging to the misconceptions of the past that she'd been blinded to the truth.

Her father hadn't been able to love her. So had she, subconsciously, believed that, because he couldn't love her, no one else could, either?

Was that why she'd so easily believed the lies
about Ben, convinced in the dark, hidden parts of her mind that he had never loved her, had merely used her?

She set her empty cup down and rubbed at the frown that had appeared between her eyes. She wasn't into self-analysis. Up until now her thoughts had run in a straight line—no looking back—mapping out her life, building her career, seeing things as black or white, no shades in between acceptable.

Huffing out a breath, she smiled for Dorothy, glancing at the window. She wouldn't be going in search of Maggie now; let her keep her secret. There was no point in hurling recriminations for the damage that had been done in the past. Caroline had to look to the future, the possibility of sharing it with Ben because she knew now that he hadn't lied when he'd stated categorically that he had never touched Maggie Pope.

She said briskly, ‘I think the rain's stopped.'

She went to investigate and Dorothy joined her at the window. ‘Yes, you're right. But you don't have to rush off, do you?'

‘Afraid so.' She grimaced at her crumpled, borrowed clothes. ‘I have to get back and change.' Michael was coming at four, but hopefully she wouldn't be leaving with him. She had to see Ben, retract all the hurtful things she'd said, ask him to forgive her and tell him she loved him.

A watery sun was turning the raindrops on the grass of the village green to sparkling diamonds and from where she was standing she could see the pic
turesque but shabby Poacher's Arms. And partly hidden by the stand of trees in the centre of the green the sleek profile of a Jaguar. Ben's?

As if in answer to her unspoken question the main door opened and Ben strode out, his face grim, followed closely by Maggie, her blonde hair tousled as if she'd been trying to pull it out by the roots, her eyes red and puffy.

And then, dancing around the adults, a tall, coltish child, dark plaits flying around her animated face.

‘Maggie's child.'

Caroline hadn't realised she'd spoken the instinctive words aloud until Dorothy confirmed, ‘That's right. She'll have grown a bit since you were last here! Gone twelve now, she is. Angela, they call her—though she's no angel—up to every mischief she can find! She's the image of her dad, though, don't you think?'

The giant hand that squeezed her heart made Caroline feel nauseous. The dark braids were a shade or two lighter than Ben's raven hair, but the wiry, coltish grace, the half-tamed joy of living that animated the lively face…

Caroline couldn't answer but Dorothy didn't need confirmation of her remark, her voice avid with her love of gossip as she said, ‘Wild horses wouldn't make him admit he's Angie's father but everyone knows it. They've been caught at it, if you take my meaning, more than once. He'd never marry her and make the kid legitimate, of course. Our Maggie's too far beneath him. Well, she's slow on the uptake…'
Dorothy tapped the side of her head meaningfully ‘…a bit rough and ready, so he wouldn't tie himself to the likes of her. You know him well enough to see that, what with his position and everything.'

Caroline bit down hard on her bottom lip. She desperately wanted to make her excuses and leave but she couldn't move.

Rooted to the spot, she saw Ben grin as he said something to the child, dig in the pocket of his jeans and count coins out into the small, outstretched palm. Watched the little girl skip across the green towards the store, watched Ben turn back to Maggie, his face frigidly serious now.

And Dorothy droned on, oblivious to Caroline's turmoil, ‘Mind you, he visits now and then, I'll say that for him. You can see him come and go out of opening hours, usually this time of day. Probably helps out a bit financially, I wouldn't know. But so he should, he's not short of a bob or two, as you know.'

Caroline caught her breath as the hand around her heart squeezed tighter but she managed to uproot her feet from the floor, unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth, rasping, ‘Sorry, I really must go.'

To get away from the words that were drilling holes in her head.

‘Must you?' As always, Dorothy Skeet was enjoying her gossip. She dipped her head towards Ben, his face emphatic as he spoke to Maggie. ‘Mr Dexter can give you a lift back when he's ready.'

‘No!' The negative was torn from her. She turned and fled.

C
LEARING
the sharp bend in the narrow lane which put her safely out of sight of the entire village and Dorothy's no doubt astonished eyes, Caroline stopped to catch her breath and let her thumping heartbeats settle down to a more sedate pace, her silky, fine dark brows pulling together in an exasperated frown.

She was doing it again, wasn't she? Running away just as she'd done twelve years ago. Assuming the worst about the man she loved without stopping to hear his side of the story.

Dorothy's opinions weren't conclusive evidence, were they? Opinions formed by village gossips, who had nothing better to do with their time than speculate, elaborate and embroider on the doings of others, weren't to be taken as gospel truth.

And she, Caroline, wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. She would speak to Ben, tell him what Dorothy had said—implied—and listen to what he had to say with an open, trusting mind.

Briefly debating whether to retrace her steps, head back to the village and find Ben or flag him down if he happened to pass her on his way back to Langley Hayes, she glanced down at her wrist-watch.

In just under an hour Michael would arrive to pick
her up so it would probably be better—less of a halfway-to-hysterical impulse—if she carried on up to the house, got cleaned up and changed so that when Ben turned up she could face him with some dignity and poise.

Looking as she did, her hair hanging in straggly rats' tails, her blouse crumpled and the borrowed, too wide, too short jeans still damp and spattered with mud, she must look like a particularly unappealing tramp.

She would have time for a quick shower, she decided as she walked on up the lane trying to avoid the puddles and the rainwater that dripped off the overhanging trees. She'd probably change into the suit she'd arrived in, blow dry her hair and—

She cut her thoughts off with a muffled groan, aware of what she was doing—filling her mind with unimportant trivia to crowd out the terrible doubts.

That he had lied to her and would go on lying.

That the things Dorothy had said were the truth, that everyone knew he was the father of Maggie's child.

She didn't want to have doubts about him, she really didn't, she didn't want them festering in her mind so she'd been trying to blot them out.

She wanted to recapture that earlier faith, the blossoming of certainty that had filled her heart with such sweet joy.

Her throat tightened and thickened with tears as she turned into the Langley Hayes' driveway and walked on towards the house. After what she'd seen
and had heard, that earlier certainty was impossible to recapture, but she wouldn't let herself dwell on these negative thoughts before she'd heard what he had to say.

The final bend in the drive brought her in sight of the house and of Michael's blue BMW. Caroline bit back a groan of stark annoyance. Her employer's son was leaning against the bonnet, perfectly relaxed, his legs crossed at the ankles, the hem of his pale green shirt coming adrift from the waistband of his crumpled grey chinos.

She would have much preferred him to be late rather than early. She was going to have to tell him that she couldn't leave until she'd talked to Ben, that he could go on without her and she'd make her own way back to base.

Reluctantly, she returned his wave of greeting and he levered his stocky body away from the car and walked to meet her. His hazel eyes crinkled with laughter as he threw an arm around her shoulders.

‘You're early.' Caroline heard the accusatory tone in her voice and tried to moderate it. None of this was his fault. ‘I have to—'

No need to go on, the crunch of tyres on gravel told her that Ben had returned. The big car slowed as it drew level. She saw one comprehensive look from narrowed black eyes as Michael grinned and hugged her just that little bit closer, ‘What have you done to yourself, my darling? You look more like a scarecrow than my beautiful, elegant partner!'

She wasn't his partner in any sense of the word;
she was his colleague. She fumed inwardly, impatiently shrugging his arm from her shoulder and tucking a straggle of hair behind her ear as Ben shot her a fulminating glare then gunned the engine and ended up parking beside the BMW in a shower of gravel.

Caroline surged forward, her jaw at a determined angle, but Michael captured her waist in what felt like a grip of iron. ‘Hang on, what's the rush?'

‘I need to speak to Ben—Mr Dexter—'

‘Fine. I'm in no hurry, and he doesn't seem to be going anywhere.'

He wasn't. He was waiting. Feet apart, his extravagantly handsome features austere. Caroline's stomach clenched as her heart turned over. The force of his anger was almost visible. She had never, ever, seen him look quite so forbidding.

But Michael seemed blithely unaware of it as they approached the waiting man. His hand outstretched, he acknowledged, ‘Dexter—good to meet the guy who gave my find a home!' And at Ben's blank, tight-lipped stare, he elaborated. ‘
First Love
—the find of the decade.'

Eliciting no response he belatedly introduced himself. ‘Michael Weinberg. Caroline told me on the phone that she's finished up here and I offered to drive her back. I'm a tad earlier than I said I'd be, but that's probably a bonus, because I get the impression she's anxious to get under way.'

He turned smiling eyes back to her, and to her ears his voice sounded decidedly intimate. ‘We'll stop off
for an early supper. I got on the mobile and booked a table at a rather good restaurant just outside Banbury—it will go some way towards making up for the dinner date we had to cancel when you came up here.'

Only when his hand gave a proprietorial squeeze did Caroline become aware that he still had an arm around her waist. Michael was giving entirely the wrong impression. About everything. Wanting to slap a hand over his mouth to stop him saying another word she felt herself redden with frustration then go cold all over as Ben turned contemptuous, half-hooded eyes on her for a long, blistering second before turning back to the other man.

‘Yes. I see now.' His voice was flat, the pent-up anger disappearing, making him seem weary. He made a gesture with one hand towards the house. ‘Perhaps you'd like to wait inside, Weinberg? I'm sure it won't take Miss Harvey too long to make herself beautiful for you. And would you like her to make you some tea to drink while you wait?'

All cool urbanity now, and then some. Caroline fumed as she escaped Michael's clutches and stalked ahead of them into the house. Ben was savagely angry with her, that much was obvious. Less obvious was the reason.

Because she'd as good as called him a liar, impugned his integrity?

Because, from the way Michael had put it, he'd made it sound as if she'd contacted him and had begged him to fetch her away?

Or because of Michael's overfamiliarity, the way he'd spoken to and about her, his arm possessively around her waist?

Or an explosive combination of all three?

That seemed more than likely and, looking at it that way, she couldn't blame Ben for being so angry, she decided glumly as she walked through to the kitchen to make that dratted tea. They both had a lot of explaining to do. But was he in any mood to listen to anything she said? she questioned, her nerves beginning to shred.

Wondering whether to ask him for ten minutes of his time before she showered and changed, or afterwards when she'd look less messy and ridiculous and just might feel more in control of emotions that were getting more dangerously unstable by the moment, she filled the electric kettle and plugged it in.

Assembling the tea things on a tray was almost impossible, her hands were shaking so much. One of the cups slithered from her fingers and shattered on the tiled floor, when Ben walked in and shouldered the door shut behind him.

The silence after she'd muttered something distinctly unladylike was intense, prickly, painful. A silent accusation hanging in the air, so many things to be said, retracted, so many questions to be asked.

Feeling gauche and incredibly clumsy, tongue-tied because there were so many things to be said and she didn't for the life of her know where to start, Caroline hunted for the dustpan and brush, found it eventually and swept up the mess.

And all the time he said nothing, watching her with those cold, narrowed eyes. The kettle was boiling furiously as she tipped the shards into the waste bin.

At least the question of when they would talk had been taken out of her hands. It was Ben who broke the silence that was making her feel like a halfwit on the edge of hysteria as he went to deal with the kettle, pour the boiling water onto the leaves she'd already spooned into the pot. ‘If you'd been ready to leave with your gallant rescuer before I got back, would you have left me another Dear John letter, I wonder?'

He arranged the milk jug and sugar bowl on the tray with neat precision, his hands perfectly steady, his voice like an arctic night as he answered his own question before she had a chance to make any reply, ‘No, I suppose you wouldn't. As your partner has already let slip, you can't wait to get way, you wouldn't have wanted to waste the time putting pen to paper. You'd already told me exactly what you thought of me.'

The tea preparations finished, he picked up the tray and Caroline said tautly, ‘I know you're angry, but I'm not feeling too euphoric, either.' She searched his impressive but chilling features for some sign of the closeness they had so recently shared. She found none. So she reminded herself that she was a grown woman of above average intelligence and said emphatically, ‘We really do need to talk.'

The look he turned on her said he found her state
ment completely incomprehensible. His head tilted slightly to one side, he uttered, ‘I can't think why, when there's nothing more to say.' He gave a slight, insouciant-seeming shrug. ‘But if you insist I'll give you five minutes of my time when you're ready to leave.'

He walked to the door then turned to face her, ‘I'll serve tea to your partner while you get your things together. Oh, and just one more thing, I spoke to Maggie Pope this afternoon. She admitted that your father paid her to name me as the father of her child, should you ask.' He gave her a mocking smile that was totally devoid of humour. ‘He certainly put the money I refused to take to good use.' His beautifully shaped mouth hardened, ‘Not that you'll believe me, of course. That would be too much to ask. You've probably already decided that I somehow twisted her arm to persuade her to say that.'

He left as swiftly and silently as he'd appeared, left before she had time to even begin to respond to what he'd said.

 

It was the best she could do, Caroline thought as she nervously scanned her reflection half an hour later.

Deciding against the suit she'd arrived in as being too formal, too much like the hard-nosed career woman she'd done her best to portray when she'd arrived here, she'd dressed in a sleek-fitting, beautifully tailored sage green skirt, topped by a lighter toned fine cashmere sweater. But not even her skilled application of make-up could disguise the haunted
look in her eyes or the lines of strain around her mouth.

Ben's stress on the word ‘partner' told her a lot. He thought her relationship with Michael was much closer than it was. Bleakly she recalled what he'd said earlier when he'd asked her what last night and this morning had been about, implying that she'd been missing regular sex and he'd been handy.

Implying that she was some kind of nymphomaniac!

Michael's words and attitude would have reinforced that rock-bottom opinion.

Casting a final look around the room that had been hers for the first, almost eighteen, years of her life she told herself to think positively.

She loved Ben and, more importantly, she trusted him now, implicitly. What he'd told her about Maggie Pope made perfect sense, made everything else slot into place.

Her father's plan to buy Ben off had failed; so what better way to blacken his character and put an end to what he'd thought was his daughter's infatuation with an unsuitable man than to use the spurned money to pay Maggie to tell those lies?

The girl wasn't too bright and ever since the drink-drive laws her father had barely scraped a living, only the immediate locals using the bar at The Poacher's Arms. Money was tight and Maggie'd had a small baby to care for.

Yes, it did make perfect sense; it was just a pity Ben had been too angry to hang around long enough
to hear her tell him she believed every word of what he'd said.

Still, he'd promised they'd talk before she left. They'd work things out; they had to. Then maybe she could stay—unless Ben needed some time to think things over. She loved him so desperately and, even if he hadn't said he still loved her, he did have deep feelings for her. He'd asked her to marry him, to share his life, and he wouldn't have done that if all they had was fantastic sex.

Ben would be waiting. Caroline picked up her bag and walked through the door. A trillion butterflies were performing acrobatics in her stomach.

 

‘That's more like it—well worth waiting for!' Michael's warm hazel eyes swept over her with male approval as he laid the newspaper he'd been reading aside and got to his feet, levering himself out of the deep armchair. ‘If you're ready, we'll get moving.' He took her bag from her suddenly nerveless fingers. ‘It will be good to have you back at base. I've missed you.'

Caroline ignored that. ‘I can't leave yet,' she stated firmly. ‘I have to speak to Ben.' She scanned the study, as if expecting to see him emerge from behind the shabby furniture, but only the used tea cups testified that he'd ever been here.

‘He's gone,' Michael relayed blithely as he walked to the door. ‘No worries—he said to tell you goodbye and thanks.'

Goodbye?
A final goodbye? And thanks? For what? A few sessions of out-of-this-world sex?