The Billionaire Affair (6 page)

Ben wouldn't be around to see what she looked like but she needed to look her best for her own sake.

Teaming the elegantly cut linen trousers she'd worn to the restaurant with an oyster silk shirt and a narrow tan belt she spent far longer than usual on her make-up, achieving a discreet and perfect mask. Then she fixed her glossy hair into her nape with a mock-tortoiseshell comb.

 

Linda was at the kitchen table, a sheet of paper in front of her. She got up, smiling, as Caroline entered. ‘Good—I was just about to leave you a note; now I don't have to bother. There's cold stuff in the fridge and loads of tins in the wall cupboards. So help yourself. I guess the boss will do the same—he's already left for Shrewsbury… And don't tell me you're going to tackle the attics in that outfit! Didn't the jeans and top fit?'

‘I'm sure they will.' Caroline followed her nose to the coffee pot. ‘I thought I'd give the attics a miss today and make a start on the first floor.' She lifted the pot. ‘Like some?'

Linda wrinkled her pert nose. ‘Go on, then, twist my arm! I should be on my way, but another ten minutes won't make much difference.' She sat down again, watching as Caroline filled two mugs. ‘Tell me, how do you manage to look so flippin' stylish? It's something you're born with, I guess. Me, I look all wrong whatever I wear!'

‘I'm sure that's not true.' Caroline sat opposite the other woman and handed her the milk jug and sugar
bowl. She felt really mean; Linda obviously wanted to settle into girl talk but she herself had other ideas.

Last night she'd fully intended to satisfy her now burning curiosity and ask Ben what his plans were for Langley Hayes. And now, after what had happened, she would make sure that she had as little to do with him as possible during the remainder of her time here. So that precluded any conversation longer than one syllable.

So before Linda could start talking about clothes and make-up she said, ‘I can't help noticing that the house has a rather institutional look. Comfortable and much brighter than it ever was when I lived here—but functional. What does Mr Dexter intend to do with it?'

‘Don't you know?' Linda widened her eyes then gave a wry smile. ‘No, of course you don't, or you wouldn't be asking!' She took a sip of her coffee then added more sugar. ‘He's set up a trust, put a whole load of his own money in, and the income from the golf club and leisure centre will help with the upkeep, pay the helpers' wages. It's for disadvantaged kids—holidays, weekends. It's a brilliant idea— There'll be indoor activities as well as outdoor, a small farm, organic-produce gardens, riding, boating, fishing— It will let inner-city kids know there's more to life than hanging round street corners and getting into trouble.'

 

Long after Linda had left Caroline stayed in a mild state of shock. What the housekeeper had told her
didn't gel with the picture of Ben Dexter she had built up in her mind: an arrogant, self-serving deceiver—a picture reinforced by his behaviour last night; his announcement that he'd won round one, as if he'd brought her here to engage in a battle. An announcement she'd been too filled with shame and embarrassment to question.

Had she been totally wrong about him? Had she misjudged him?

She pushed herself to her feet, putting the enigma that was Ben Dexter out of her mind. She had a job to do and it was pointless to waste her mental energies on a man who had as good as declared himself to be her enemy.

Bracing herself, she climbed the staircase to the room that had been her father's. The cumbersome Victorian wardrobes were empty as was the solitary chest of drawers, cleared out by the grieving Dorothy Skeet. The only piece of any value, the Italian, carved giltwood tester bed, which the housekeeper had sometimes shared, brought a lump to her throat.

She made a note of its likely value in the pad she carried and made a swift exit. Why had her father never loved her? Why had he actively disliked her?

Making a mental note to see Dorothy before she headed back to London she forced the memories of her troubled childhood to the back of her mind and carried on. The rooms that had been unused when her father had been alive were now cheerful and bright, either furnished with twin beds and colourful, functional chests and hanging cupboards, or made
into bathrooms, ready for the youngsters who would be spending time here.

Ben must have invested a considerable amount of his private fortune in this charitable enterprise. Because he remembered his own deprived childhood?

The state had supported his mother, but only barely. Janet Dexter had tried to supplement her benefit by growing and selling fresh fruit and vegetables but the villagers, suspicious of the hard-eyed, grimfaced woman and her wild son, had refused to buy. Someone, she remembered now, had once threatened to report her pathetic entrepreneurial efforts to social security.

Life must have been tough for both of them, and what had brought mother and son to the village in the first place was unknown. Close as they had been during that long-ago summer, he had never talked about his earlier life. There were always things he'd kept hidden, even then.

Admiration for what he had made of himself, for his altruism where similarly disadvantaged children were concerned, made her bite her lip. She didn't want to think well of him. She couldn't afford to; she could so easily fall right back under his mesmeric spell, she admitted honestly. Last night had shown her that much.

Needing to keep her mental image of him sullied she reminded herself of the child he had fathered and had callously abandoned. Her own father had told her that Maggie Pope was a slut, had warned her not
to have anything to do with her, ever, because if she did she'd be locked in her room until it was time to go back to school. Yet during those last traumatic days he'd said, ‘Ask Maggie Pope who fathered that brat of hers. Dexter. You don't believe me? Well, just go and ask her!'

Caroline shuddered, her body suddenly cold, as if she'd been immersed in icy water. It had been the worst day of her life and she didn't want to relive it, but couldn't stop the pictures that flashed into her mind.

The baby girl, around two months old at that time, had had silky black hair, just like Ben's, and Maggie had said sourly, ‘Sure she's his. Only he don't want to know—that's his sort all over. Drop a girl as soon as the novelty's over, or someone tastier comes along—no sense of responsibility!'

Swallowing hard, Caroline forced her mind back to the job in hand. At the far end of the corridor, where the old Tudor wing joined the main part of the house, there had been a handsome mahogany linen press. But, like most of the other pieces of any value, it had gone. Irritation pricked her. Her professional appraisal was unnecessary. The few pieces of any value would be obvious to anyone. Ben Dexter had got her here under false pretences.

But why?

Automatically, her hand lifted to the latch on the oak-boarded door that led to the old wing. These rooms, over the kitchen regions, had been forbidden to her as a child. ‘Full of spiders and creepy-crawlies,
and the floorboards are rotten,' Dorothy Skeet had warned, and she'd been eight years old before she'd plucked up the courage to poke her nose in.

Now all was changed. Crumbling timbers had been replaced with silvery oak beams and sunlight streamed in through the windows, enriching the colours of the Persian rugs on the polished floor of what was clearly the sitting room of the suite Ben had reserved for his own use, the attractively furnished room dominated by the painting that had thrown them together again.
First Love.

She caught her breath, her heart starting to thud. If Michael hadn't recognised the lost Lassoon masterpiece for what it was, or if Ben hadn't wanted to own it, then her life would have gone on smoothly, the old, painful yearnings would never have resurfaced so strongly because she and Ben would not have met again.

Her bones tightened rigidly as she stared up at what could have been her mirror image. She and Ben had spent a couple of blissfully happy, ecstatic months together and his betrayal had been cruel. But it had been twelve years ago, for pity's sake. It should have been written off to experience, forgotten.

But it hadn't.

‘You approve?' His voice was silky-soft.

Caroline gave an involuntary jerk of her head, startled out of her tormenting thoughts. Then she turned reluctantly to face him, her violet eyes huge in the delicate pallor of her face.

He was looking particularly spectacular in a beau
tifully cut dark blue suit, crisp white shirt and sober tie. At the back of the house she hadn't heard his car draw up outside. If she had she would have taken evasive action. As it was she could only answer his question, ‘It's your painting, it's up to you where you hang it. Though I hope you have some sort of security system.'

‘There speaks the prosaic Caroline Harvey.' He was smiling, just slightly, but his eyes were cold, like splinters of polished jet. ‘But let's take the larger view, shall we? Don't you agree that the portrait should be here, back at home, as it were?' Laughter was lurking in the curl of his voice now. It incensed her.

‘Rubbish!' she said stoutly. He was playing games with her and she wasn't going to let him amuse himself at her expense. ‘You're talking as if that's a portrait of me hanging on that wall—and you know damned well it isn't. Now, if you'll excuse me—'

‘But it could be, couldn't it?' he inserted smoothly. ‘You, as I remember you. After I'd read the article about its discovery, saw the photograph, I knew I had to have that painting and hang it here. As a reminder that things aren't always as they seem. The sitter looks like you, but she isn't. Just as you, when I knew you, weren't what I thought you were.'

‘That's a case of the pot calling the kettle black if ever I heard one!' she said in sharp retaliation. This was a man with a serious grudge. Had he resented so badly that letter saying she never wanted to see
him again? Was his ego still smarting over being dumped for once, after all this time?

This was getting far too deep for her. She was leaving. This very minute.

‘Mr Dexter,' she said, schooling her voice to what she hoped would pass as icy coolness. ‘There is no point in my being here any longer. My professional services weren't required in the first place. As far as I can see you've already disposed of most of the worthless furnishings and kept less than a handful of good pieces. I'll let you have Weinberg's evaluation of their worth in writing.'

‘How kind.' One dark brow was elevated mockingly. He was blocking the doorway and to get out of here she'd have to brush right past him. Close to him. She couldn't face that. Just being in the same room with him made her feel weak all over.

Caroline swallowed convulsively and Ben drawled, ‘You were right about your professional services not being needed. But I have other needs, Caro, and you are going to satisfy every last one of them. Only then will you be free to go.'

He gave her a slow, thoughtful look, ‘I suggest we stop pussy-footing around and start right now.'

‘N
OW
,
why would I agree to do that?' Caroline queried, facing him with a poise she was miles away from feeling. Her heart was thumping wildly, her flesh quivering on her bones.

A long time ago they'd satisfied each other's needs completely—was that what he was suggesting? Had last night been a slow, cruelly teasing prelude to an inexorable seduction? The palms of her hands were slick now and drops of perspiration beaded her forehead, gathered in the cleft between her breasts as she was torn between jangling nervousness and helpless excitement.

‘Because you owe me,' he retorted heavily, his narrowed eyes holding hers then dropping to rest on her mouth. ‘You owe me for twelve, wasted years.'

Her brain told her to walk out of here, pack her bags and phone for a taxi. He couldn't hold her here by force. But her heart was beating in compelling opposition, telling her to stay.

That their long-ago tempestuous love affair had left an indelible mark on him too, given his love-'em-and-leave-'em attitude to women, was shattering. Perhaps it was mischievous fate that had brought them back together because it was finally time to
close the circle and at last shut the past away where it belonged.

She couldn't walk away from this, this final confrontation, if that was what it was. ‘Judging by your impressive achievements, the last twelve years can hardly be called a waste,' she managed to say, desperately striving to bring an air of factual normality into a conversation that was in danger of becoming unreal: Unreal to believe that she could have wounded his psyche as he, she now admitted helplessly, had so deeply wounded hers.

‘That's not what I'm talking about, and I think you know it.' Two paces brought Ben to stand directly in front of her, his wide-shouldered stance overpowering her senses. Holding her huge violet eyes with the shadowed darkness of his he removed his suit jacket, slowly tossing it onto the nearest armchair, then loosened his tie.

Caroline's mouth went dry. She took a quick, ragged intake of breath. She could feel the heat of that intensely virile body just inches from her own, and the heat was melting her.

Instinctively, her tongue peeped out to moisten the aridity of her lips, lips that suddenly felt too full and lush. And his brooding eyes followed the involuntary, betraying movement and he said soberly, ‘Ah, yes, I remember that nervous little gesture from moments before the first kiss we ever shared. And exactly how I helped—like this, remember, Caro?' His dark head dipped as his mouth met hers, no other part of their bodies touching, his tongue laving the
quivering fullness of her lower lip, leaving the sensitised skin slick and supple, finding the parting, making an easy entry to the helplessly willing sweetness within.

Her blood sang, the electric brush of his lips and tongue was just as she remembered, the pleasure almost too much to bear. As much as she wanted to close the tiny distance between them, to wrap her arms around him, press her aching breasts and thighs against the hard maleness of him, she resisted. The slow, seductive melding of their mouths was exquisite torment enough.

And it should not be happening, the last dying vestige of common sense reminded her, acidly recalling his off-hand rejection of the night before.

But the voice died, drowned in the clamour of her raging pulse beats. His love-making had always been a drug, something she couldn't do without. Something her body had been silently crying for during these last barren, lonely years.

When he lifted his head after timeless, delirious moments his breathing was as ragged as her own, his fingers not quite steady as he reached to take the tortoiseshell clip from her hair, setting it free to fall in midnight-dark glossy abandon to her shoulders.

‘It used to be much longer,' he murmured thickly. ‘It used to cloak your breasts with silk, inviting me to kiss the rosy buds that hid behind it. You knew how to tantalise me, Caro. Do you remember?'

Remember? How could she ever forget? Memories of how wonderful and perfect they'd been together
had always been buried deep in her mind, not taken out and examined—she'd learned more control than that—but there all the same, indelibly imprinted, denying her any sexual interest in any other man.

Had it been the same for him? The concept was difficult to take in, especially as her brain seemed to have stopped working.

Slowly, with explicit intent, he began to undo the tiny buttons of her shirt, his eyes focused on what he was doing, the backs of his fingers grazing her burning skin, making her incapable of any coherent response when he said darkly, ‘Twelve years is a long time, Caro. Too damned long to be left in limbo.'

He slid the shirt from her shoulders and bent to briefly suckle her blatantly engorged nipples through the creamy lace of her bra and she whimpered softly with the tormenting pleasure of the short, insistent tugs of his mouth. She laid her hands against his chest, palms down, feeling the heat and vibrant strength of him, the heavy beats of his heart and knew she would soon be unable to stand without support because every last one of her bones had turned to water.

‘Years of wanting what most men want, a wife, a family,' Ben asserted, his voice holding a trace of bitterness. His knuckles pressed against the softly feminine curve of her tummy as, having disposed of her belt and dealt with the zip he began to slide her trousers down over her hips. ‘Of wanting a good, long-term relationship and not being able to deliver, of being unable to commit to any other woman be
cause no other woman came close to what I remembered of you.'

Naked now, apart from insubstantial briefs and bra, she was open to his darkly anguished eyes, vulnerable, captivated by him as she always had been, but pricked to suspicion by the strong note of torment in his voice.

Treachery! her internal warning system whispered and she said, almost incoherently, ‘You bought that painting—'

‘As a reminder that things are not always what they seem, or what you want them to be,' he repeated. And then, as if he saw the beginnings of understanding, of resistance in her eyes, he laid a finger across her mouth, ‘Don't speak. Just give yourself to the moment,' and enfolded her in his arms, his mouth finding the tender hollow just below her ear, his lips moving with slow eroticism as he murmured, ‘You always liked this, and you still do, don't you? Admit it, Caro.'

As if the tiny moan that escaped her was admission enough he lifted her in his arms, holding her close as he carried her into the adjoining bedroom.

A hazy impression of a cool masculine atmosphere, the tiny-paned windows open to the warm spring air admitting the perfume of early-flowering honeysuckle, a carved oak bed. A huge bed.

Her unresisting body sank into the soft duvet as he laid her down and removed the last scraps of creamy lace. ‘As perfect as ever.' His dark gaze ca
ressed her nakedness. ‘The years have been kind to you, Caro.'

The slight catch in his voice touched her heart with pain. Instinctively, she held out her arms to him, needing to hold him close, to banish whatever it was that was hurting him. But he straightened up, his beautiful mouth forming the command, ‘Wait', and began to unbutton his shirt, removing it, and then those elegantly tailored trousers, tossing the expensive garments aside as if they were old dusters.

His lean, whippy young adult's body had matured spectacularly; His shoulders wide and strong, his chest deep and faintly dusted with dark hair. Yet there wasn't an ounce of spare flesh beneath the olive-toned skin that gleamed with health and vitality.

Caroline swallowed awkwardly around the sudden lump in her throat. Fully aroused, he was magnificent and the air throbbed with expectancy, with the inevitability of what was happening between them and, as he lowered himself beside her, laying his hand on the heated mound of her aching desire she searched his face for the lover he had been, longing to find him again, to hear the words of white-hot passion he had bewitched and had captivated her with, longing with an intensity that shook her slight frame and set her veins on fire.

But as his gently questing fingers found the slick core of her and just before his mouth took hers in a drugging kiss, he murmured raggedly, ‘You want me, and I need this. I need, finally, to prove to myself
that what you were to me is only in my mind. That you're no different from any other woman.'

 

She must have fallen asleep. The earth-shattering, multi-climaxes of their love-making, coupled with the near sleepless night had exhausted her. Caroline struggled to come properly awake beneath the light warmth of the duvet. Twilight filled the room and she was alone.

Of course she was alone. Tears stung the back of her eyes and tightened her throat. Ben had calculatedly used her, had got her out of his system. It was as simple and as devastating as that.

When he'd told her exactly how and why he was using her she'd been too far gone in the sexual delirium that only he could make happen to do the right thing: to slap his sinfully beautiful, arrogant face and walk away.

Tears coursed unheeded down her pale cheeks. They were both damned: he for so cold-bloodedly using her, she for allowing it to happen.

But his blood hadn't been cold, had it? Hot, white-hot passion had driven him and she—she had been incandescent.

Angrily, she swiped at her wet cheeks with the back of her hand and scrambled off the bed, snatching up her bra and briefs and scampering through to the sitting room to collect the rest of her discarded clothing. Throwing them on all anyhow, not because she was afraid Ben might walk in on her—he had got what he wanted and probably wouldn't want to
see her any more than she wanted to have to face him—but because she had to get out of this house, the house that had never, in all of her life, held any happiness for her.

It was too late now to make the necessary arrangements to get back to London. Besides, she felt emotionally wrung out, in no fit state.

Tomorrow she would feel better. Later tonight she would pack and first thing in the morning she would phone for a taxi to take her into Shrewsbury, get the inter-city back to London, get her life back on track again.

Ben wouldn't complain to her boss, she decided cynically. She'd satisfied those needs he'd talked about and he'd be more than happy to see her go.

Outside the air was cooler than she'd expected but she wasn't going back in to fetch a jacket, not when it meant risking running into Ben. Hell would freeze over before she could meet his eyes without cringing with shame.

Unthinking, her mind pre-programmed, Caroline skirted the property, crossed the walled kitchen gardens and let herself out onto the green lane beyond the wooden door in the far wall. The grass was soft beneath her feet and soon she was under the dim canopy of the trees that bordered the stream.

The sound of the water as it chattered over its stony bed soothed her a little. The rustle of ferns as she brushed through them and the cry of a distant owl eased some of the tension from her shoulders.

She rubbed some warmth into her arms, the thin
silk of her shirt offering little protection from the cool evening air, and stepped into a grassy clearing. The mist from the water made softly moving grey patterns against the dark background of the trees.

She saw him then and stopped breathing. Too late she realised where she'd come, instinctively making her way, as she had so often done in the past, to the secret place. The secluded, magical place where their love had been consummated, where dreams had been born and nourished. Dreams that had turned into a nightmare of betrayal and deceit.

How could she have been so thoughtless? And, more to the point, why was he here?

Ben had his back to her, standing on the bank of the stream, seemingly intent on the dark waters as they swirled around the partly submerged rocks. Caroline turned swiftly to retrace her steps but he must have heard her.

He called her name.

The sound of his voice sent shock waves through her. Her feet felt as if they were rooted to the ground. She could hear his approach and still couldn't move.

‘Don't go.' He sounded weary, as if something had happened to drain away his life force. ‘I have to talk to you.'

Caroline didn't want to hear what he had to say, whatever it was. He diminished her utterly, made her so ashamed of herself.

Clinging onto what little dignity that remained, she said dully, ‘I'm going back. It's getting very dark and I'm cold.'

‘Then, I'll walk with you,' he said firmly, adding, ‘Wait!' as she took a blind step back into the woodland. The touch of his hand as he laid it on her shoulder was sheer torture, the warmth and strength of it sending sparks through her that were part pleasure, part agonising pain.

He turned her round, his eyes searching her face and even in the fading light she could see the faint, almost reluctant, smile that curved his mouth. ‘Your shirt's buttoned up all wrongly and your hair's gone mad—you look exactly like the wild thing I used to know. Here—' Releasing her briefly, he slipped out of the soft leather jacket he wore over a body-hugging dark T-shirt and draped it over her shoulders.

The masculine warmth of him, stored in the supple leather, almost defeated her, but not nearly as much as the sudden shocking and heart-stopping realisation that, whatever he had been in the past, whatever he was now, she still loved him.

Her stomach churned sickeningly. But he didn't love her. He never had, despite his youthful protestations. The sex had been brilliant, that was all.

Today he'd admitted that his need to form a committed relationship with any other woman had been stifled by the memory of their tempestuous, perfect love-making.

She could understand that, sympathise. Memories could be dangerous, distorting things. So he'd made love to her, had used her to satisfy himself that she
was just an ordinary woman, no different from any other.

She had set him free, free to do what he'd said he wanted—commit himself to one special woman, marry, raise children. Did that explain his gentler mood, the care he was taking on her behalf as he guided her through the growing darkness? Resignedly, she supposed it did.