The Billionaire's Trophy (11 page)

Firstly, her plan to help her sister run her guesthouse had died the very first day when Kat admitted that business was very poor and she was actually on the brink of bankruptcy. Luckily, a very wealthy Russian had come out of the woodwork to save the day for her sister. Mikhail Kusnirovich had invited Kat to stay on his mega yacht and act as hostess to his guests. While Kat was away Emmie stayed on in the farmhouse to keep her youngest sister, Topsy, company during the school holidays. A few weeks later, Kat admitted that she and Mikhail had fallen in love and that she was moving into his Georgian country mansion, Danegold Hall, to live with him as his partner. Within months Mikhail and Kat were married.

Denied her elder sister’s company aside of occasional weekends spent in the lap of luxury at Danegold, Emmie had been thrown very much on her own resources. She had taken a temporary job as a shop assistant in a local supermarket but was currently engaged in looking into the possibility of opening a gift shop/café in a property available for rent in the village. Her new brother-in-law, Mikhail, had blithely offered her unlimited funds with which to start up her own business.

‘I don’t care what it costs me. Kat’s worried sick about you. If she sees that you’re making a new start in life on a decent income, she’ll stop worrying about you being a single parent,’ Mikhail had told Emmie cheerfully, not even trying to hide the reality that his main motivation was to make her sister happy.

As the months passed and her pregnancy advanced, Emmie had suffered less from nausea, and holding down a job and working regular hours had become a good deal easier. Yet when her twin, Saffy, had announced that she was remarrying her first husband, Zahir, Emmie had used her health as an excuse not to attend the wedding and she was still ashamed of that. Her sister was now the wife of the King of Maraban and a future queen. And as Saffy had always enjoyed a good deal of natural dignity and assurance, Emmie believed her sibling would be a stunning success as a royal. Unfortunately, Emmie’s own deep unhappiness had persuaded her that she would be a sad spectre at the feast if she attended her twin’s wedding and that she would only cast an unwelcome pall of gloom over her sister’s big day. When all was said and done, after all, her sisters already pitied her for being pregnant and alone, and Emmie had been equally quick to notice that even Kat was shy of expressing her love and affection for Mikhail in her sister’s inhibiting presence. No, the unmarried pregnant sister had been wiser staying at home when she had the excuse.

To avoid such negative thoughts, Emmie had spent every spare moment researching local craftspeople to supply merchandise for the gift shop while also checking out the strict requirements for running a café. That project had kept Emmie extremely busy. Although she had little time to mope she often lay awake late into the night picturing a lean, darkly handsome face and aching unbearably as though she had lost a limb. In spite of the fact that she had found it impossible to envisage a feasible future with Bastian, walking away from him had still hurt like hell. But it would have been crazy, she reasoned, to hang around on the outskirts of Bastian’s life, sleeping with him in the forlorn hope that he would eventually want to take their relationship to another level or assume a regular paternal role once the twins were born. She needed to get over him and she needed to do it fast, she told herself impatiently. And in her opinion seeing too much of Saffy’s and Kat’s deliriously happy marriages to the men they loved was unlikely to help her to recover from her own unrequited love any more quickly. Indeed her sisters’ success and contentment on that front only made Emmie feel like a total failure in the love stakes.

* * *

For the second time in as many weeks, Bastian drove up to the Lake District. A glossy celebrity magazine lay open on the passenger seat beside him and every time he noticed it he gritted his teeth, a ferocious sense of injustice assailing him. On this occasion, Bastian needed no directions to reach his destination because he knew exactly where he was going as he nosed his Ferrari into the driveway of the farmhouse, parked it, dug the magazine into his pocket and sprang out to stride impatiently to the front door.

Emmie groaned as the doorbell buzzed because she was in the middle of making pastry and her hands were covered with flour. She wiped her hands on the front of her apron, surprised as she always was to feel the firm swell of her pregnant stomach arching out in front of her. She was the size of a small house, which, according to the local doctor, was only to be expected with twins on the way. She trundled to the front door and pulled it open, lashes fluttering up on startled blue eyes as she focused on the tall black-haired male on the doorstep.

Sheathed in a dark suit and a cashmere overcoat, Bastian surveyed her with brooding intensity, narrowed dark eyes glittering like polished jet. ‘Surprise...surprise...’

CHAPTER NINE

E
MMIE
STEPPED
BACK
and Bastian stalked through the front door, slamming it shut in his wake with an imperious hand.

‘I wasn’t planning to invite you in,’ Emmie snapped.

‘Given enough rope you really will hang yourself, won’t you?’ Bastian riposted with derision. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain why I only qualified for one sentence of explanation when you staged your disappearing act. In fact, what exactly was “This isn’t working for me” supposed to convey?’

Emmie stiffened, acknowledging that while she hadn’t wanted to go emotionally overboard in her goodbye note she had perhaps tried a little too hard to play it cool. ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’

Bastian threw back his wide shoulders and stared down at her with blistering force, his handsome mouth a hard ruthless line. ‘We’re going to discuss a lot of things before I leave here,
glyka mou
.’

Emmie stared at him, unwillingly captivated by the sheer gorgeous potency of Bastian in the flesh. Radiating masculine energy and buckets of authority, Bastian towered over her, scanning her appearance in a red roll-neck sweater, apron and jeans. ‘You’ve put on weight...’

‘Duh! You noticed?’ Emmie shot back at him witheringly, turning on her heel to march back towards the kitchen.

As she stood briefly sideways Bastian focused on the swell of her pregnant belly pushing out the apron and stared, taken aback by the size of her. ‘I meant...you haven’t lost any
more
weight, so I assume the sickness wore off—’

‘Weeks ago,’ Emmie confirmed, turning back to face him again with open reluctance, blonde hair tumbling round her flushed cheeks.

‘And yet you didn’t think to get in touch with me and tell me that?’ Bastian fired back at her furiously. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that I’d be worried about you? When I last saw you, you were far from well!’

‘I thought with you it would be a case of out of sight, out of mind,’ Emmie admitted truthfully, straightening her slender shoulders and standing her ground in the kitchen doorway lest he get the idea that she was intimidated by him.

‘Those babies are half mine!’ Bastian launched back at her wrathfully. ‘When did I ever give you the impression that I was so irresponsible?’

Emmie pretended to think deeply. ‘Oh, maybe it was when you warned me not to get worked up about having sex with you...I
didn’t
, by the way.’

A feverish veil of colour highlighted his spectacular cheekbones and his dark golden eyes blazed like the heart of a hot fire. ‘Maybe I was playing safe.’

‘Playing safe?’ Emmie queried, all at sea.

His beautiful wilful mouth hardened.
‘Ne
...yes, you blow hot, you blow cold, and you run away. That’s twice you’ve done that to me now.’

Emmie took an angry step forward. ‘I do not blow hot and cold and I do
not
run away!’

‘You do,’ Bastian contradicted with maddening assurance. ‘I offended you the night before Nessa’s wedding and you went from hotter than hot to cold as charity and ran away from the attraction between us. You may be an adult but you suffer from the same emotional overreactions as a teenager!’

‘How dare you?’ Emmie snapped, fit to be tied at that slur being cast on her maturity.

‘I dare because I’m honest and I have
always
been honest with you,’ Bastian declared with impressive emphasis. ‘We had a disastrous misunderstanding the very first night we were together—I apologised—you refused to accept my apology. But at least I was willing to admit that I had made a mistake but was still attracted to you. We would never have been apart had you had the courage to be equally honest with me...’

‘It’s not about honesty, it’s about sensitivity, and you are the guy who told me that what we had was just sex!’ Emmie slammed back at him emotively.

‘At the end of the day, sex is only sex and I stand by that statement!’ Bastian growled back at her unapologetically. ‘But in every way that mattered I demonstrated that I cared about what happened to you and I cared about the welfare of those babies you carry.’

Emmie struggled to be fair while her deep sense of having been insulted still rankled. ‘Yes, you did,’ she allowed, tight-mouthed at having to concede that point.

‘I didn’t deserve that you walked out on me and didn’t tell me where you were going.’

‘I would have got in touch with you
after
the birth,’ Emmie protested.

‘I want to be a lot
more
involved than that,’ Bastian informed her with unconcealed hostility.

Emmie lifted her chin, refusing to back down. ‘Well, I’m sorry if you don’t like it but perhaps I didn’t feel that you being more involved in my pregnancy was appropriate in the circumstances.’

‘If that’s how you felt you should have discussed it with me,’ Bastian argued fiercely. ‘Walking out and vanishing the minute I was safely out of the country was childish and cowardly!’

‘I wanted to avoid a big confrontation like this!’ Emmie pointed out.

‘How are you doing with that ambition?’ Bastian derided, making her teeth grind together in frustration.

‘I am not childish and I am not cowardly,’ Emmie returned resentfully to his determination to blame her for walking away from a difficult relationship.

‘No? Well, at the very least you have some strange hang-ups,’ Bastian condemned, interrupting her without hesitation as he dug a magazine out of his pocket and slapped it down aggressively on the hall table. ‘She’s your sister, your twin, and presumably the reason you go around dressed in a frumpy disguise most of the time! But did you think to mention her existence to me even once?’

Emmie froze in consternation as she found herself gazing down at a magazine photo of Saffy and Zahir’s wedding day. Laughing and smiling with happiness, Saffy looked fantastic and Emmie’s heart constricted at the sight, regret belatedly stabbing her that she had avoided playing a role at her sister’s nuptials. ‘How did you find out?’

‘Nessa saw it and put it in front of me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,’ Bastian admitted with angry dark eyes. ‘At first I thought it was you marrying royalty and then I saw her name...she’s Sapphire, you’re Emerald, so it was obviously no coincidental likeness. I did some research and that’s when I realised how much you had been hiding from me.’

‘There was no need for you to know.’

‘I couldn’t believe
she
was your sister.’

Emmie lost colour at that admission. ‘I understand that. We may be identical twins but she still looks very different from me.’

‘Yes, even though it was only photos I was merely fooled into thinking it was you for about five seconds,’ Bastian spelt out.

Unsurprised by the assertion but dreading the comparison he had to be making between her and her gorgeous sister, Emmie lowered her head, her face shadowing. ‘Yes—’

‘You have a beauty spot on one cheekbone and your eyes are a lighter blue,’ Bastian contended, sharply disconcerting her for few people were that observant. ‘I also suspect that you’re smaller—’

‘By at least an inch. Even after the surgery on my leg I never quite caught up with Saffy in height,’ Emmie conceded. ‘I don’t wear a disguise though—you don’t understand...I just don’t like being mistaken for Saffy and, believe me, it happens a lot if I dress up and go out and about in London. She’s a celebrity, after all. I’ve also found it’s just easier not to mention that she’s my sister to the people I meet.’

‘I can imagine that but you’re not the same—you’re not carbon copies of each other.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I don’t quite understand it but when I look at her, she does as much for my libido as a blank canvas on the wall, but when I look at you I have an instant reaction,’ Bastian confessed in a husky undertone.

Emmie wasn’t quite sure she could believe that, for she was much more accustomed to thinking of her sister as a vastly superior, more sophisticated and sexier version of herself—in every way a supermodel-perfect creature. But then Saffy had always been the prettier, livelier, more talented twin, Emmie the sickly, shy one, who was boringly academic, not that she had had much choice on that score when her disability had meant she couldn’t go out and about like her twin. She glanced up at Bastian, her lovely face pink with self-consciousness, wondering if it could possibly be true that he found her more sexually appealing than her sister. After all, all her life she had been second-best to Saffy.

‘It happens
every
time I look at you,’ Bastian imparted thickly, his dark deep drawl vibrating down her spine, his stunning dark golden eyes hotly pinned to her in a smouldering look that created an atmosphere of shocking intimacy. ‘Because while I know it’s just sex, it’s still the most freakin’ fantastic sex I’ve ever had with a woman!’

A surge of responsive heat flooded Emmie’s pelvis, swelled her breasts, tightened her nipples and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t suppress that wave of physical awareness. Bastian was attempting to turn an insult into a compliment and failing abysmally, she told herself firmly. She wasn’t going to pick him up on it; she wasn’t going to go there at all. Talking about sex with Bastian was a bad idea because talking about it made her think about it and she was determined to keep the door closed on that kind of misleading intimacy.

Breathing in deep, she turned her head away to duck his direct gaze and said tautly, ‘So how did you find out where I was living?’

‘Once I had linked you to your celebrity sister I had enquiries made and discovered this place,’ Bastian told her, his handsome mouth compressing with annoyance. ‘I drove up here straight away but you weren’t here and the house was locked up.’

‘Oh...’ Emmie was surprised he had come to the farmhouse on a previous occasion and couldn’t hide it. ‘Did you come here at the weekend? I must have been staying with Kat.’

Bastian was frowning down at her. ‘Your eldest sister? The one married to the rich Russian, who owns this house?’

Emmie studied him in surprise at the level of his knowledge. ‘You have been doing your homework about my family.’

‘Enough to know that you shouldn’t be living here, forced to rely on the generosity of another man.’

‘That other man happens to be my brother-in-law—’

‘It doesn’t matter. You’re in this situation because of me and I’m the one who should be taking care of you.’

Emmie threw her head high, her lovely face taut with strain as she shifted her weight onto her one leg while rubbing at the thigh of the other. ‘I don’t need anyone taking care of me when I can do that for myself.’

‘But I
want
to do it,’ Bastian grated in a raw undertone, watching her massage her leg. ‘Your leg’s hurting you right now. Why don’t you sit down? I want to look after the mother of my children. Is that so wrong?’

Emmie was disconcerted by that blunt declaration and that he had actually noticed that her leg was beginning to bother her. ‘No, not wrong, but maybe a little surprising after some of the things you’ve said.’

‘Why don’t you forget what I’ve said in the past and look to the future instead? I think right now that would be a lot more useful,’ Bastian countered with ringing confidence, striding into the cosy living room where a log fire had burned low in the grate.

Emmie followed him at a slower pace. ‘What future?’

‘Yours and the twins’,’ Bastian specified, gazing back at her with challenging intensity. ‘I want you to come back to Greece with me and meet my family.’

Her eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Er...I’ve already met your family,’ she protested.

‘Not as the future mother of my kids. You can’t keep us in the closet with two babies on the way,’ Bastian informed her with dark eyes glittering with amusement. ‘You’re part of my life now and that’s not going to change.’

‘I still don’t think that there’s any need for you to take me back to Greece with you and make some sort of formal announcement,’ Emmie contended.

‘I think it’s important.’ Bastian’s stubborn jawline clenched his face taut as he stared back at her. ‘Family connections mean a great deal to me. It’ll be easier for you to make that connection now
before
the twins are born.’

‘I’m not interested in visiting Greece right now,’ Emmie declared, throwing her shoulders back.

‘I want the time to see if we can work this relationship out,’ Bastian admitted in a driven undertone. ‘I shouldn’t have to spell that out to you.’

Her troubled eyes widened a little and remained glued to his stunning dark eyes as if she was seeking answers there. ‘Oh, I think you do...speaking as the guy who told me that all we had going for us was sex.’

‘Are you ever going to let me forget I said that?’ Bastian slammed back at her furiously.

‘Probably not,’ Emmie admitted waspishly. ‘It’s still screaming in my memory banks. Now all of a sudden you’ve changed your tune and you’re talking about us working out this relationship when before you wouldn’t even admit we
had
a relationship!’

In thunderous silence Bastian ground his teeth together. Like salt on an open wound she picked up every mistake he made and flung it at him with an aggression he was unaccustomed to meeting with in a woman. ‘So I’m not perfect,’ he bit out grudgingly.

‘And you have hang-ups too,’ Emmie added sweetly. ‘Particularly when it comes to commitment.’

‘I was engaged,’ Bastian reminded her darkly.

‘But funnily enough you never made it to the altar,’ Emmie remarked.

‘Lilah took offence at the pre-nuptial contract she was presented with and I wouldn’t marry her without it.’

‘I don’t
want
your money,’ Emmie told him baldly.

Bastian flattened his passionate mouth into a hard line and lowered his attention to her stomach. ‘But your children will be entitled to a good deal of my money. That’s a fact of life.’

Emmie coloured uncomfortably, not knowing what to say to that that wouldn’t sound facetious, for in all likelihood when the babies she carried grew up they
would
want and expect access to their father’s privileged lifestyle.