Bedded at the Billionaire's Convenience Read online

  Didi jumped into the awkward silence and began fussing over him, asking concerned, rhetorical questions about whether he worked too hard and clucking in sympathy at the horror of having to work over the Christmas period, especially when they had all been having such a wonderful time.

  Georgie didn’t say a word and Pierre angrily read criticism in her wide green eyes. What had she been expecting? he wondered. A marriage proposal?

  By the time Didi finally announced that she was heading upstairs and please don’t forget to switch off the Christmas lights, old Mrs Evans had a terrible accident last Christmas with a burnt carpet, Pierre had latched onto a very healthy dose of anger and self-justification. What was Georgie accusing him of with those huge, reproachful eyes? Had he promised anything?

  ‘I don’t actually have to go anywhere,’ he told her abruptly, shutting the kitchen door.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But it’s not, is it, Georgie?’ He raked his fingers through his hair and Georgie looked back at him, not saying anything. Well, it had been going nowhere and nowhere had just come faster than she had expected. What on earth had she been thinking when she had imagined that she could somehow make herself indispensable? No one was indispensable to Pierre, possibly with the exception of his mother and that was what she now needed to focus on. The good things that had come out of their brief relationship. The good it had done for Didi, the good it had done for her relationship with her son.

  ‘I thought we had a deal,’ he told her accusingly. ‘I thought we both knew the limits of…of this…’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘I do.’ He walked across to the kitchen table and perched against it, staring at her. ‘But this evening…this is real, Georgie, but it’s something that exists purely in a moment in time. The truth is that I saw something on your face…you want more than I’m prepared to give…and, dammit, don’t look at me like that!’

  ‘Like what?’ Pride warred with a desperate need to tell the truth. ‘Okay. I know what you mean.’ She sighed and lowered her eyes, staring at the quarry-tiled kitchen floor, which was a much safer area on which to focus her attention. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t obey the rules of the game, Pierre.’ She laughed a little unsteadily. ‘I don’t know what came over me. One minute I really disapproved of you and everything you stood for and the next minute…’ She shrugged. ‘It happens. Our head says one thing and our heart still does crazy things.’ Every word felt wrenched out of her but she kept her voice as neutral as she could. She could feel her heart doing crazy somersaults in her chest and all she could think was, Why didn’t I stop this when I could?

  ‘So you know why I think we have to call it a day.’

  ‘No.’ She looked at him directly in the eyes. ‘No, I really don’t. I’m not going to ask you to commit to anything, but why do you have to run scared just because I’ve got feelings for you and I’ve laid them on the line?’

  ‘Run scared? Run scared? I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I’ve never run scared of anything in my whole damned life, least of all a woman!’

  ‘Then why don’t you take a chance and go with this? I’m not asking you to give anything you don’t feel capable of giving and I take full responsibility for looking after my own emotional welfare.’ Her arms were tightly folded and she could feel her nails biting into her skin.

  This was the first time anyone had ever suggested a direction in his life and he didn’t like it. ‘I’m not like you, Georgie,’ he told her coolly. ‘Taking a chance with a woman isn’t in my brief. I have my working life and I have my emotional life and that’s just the way it goes. I wasn’t looking for a fairy-tale romance here when we slept together and nothing’s changed. Besides…’ and this to finally sever her from his life because he had been drifting these past few weeks and life was all about control, not aimless meandering down the high roads and byroads ‘—you’re a nice girl but we don’t live on the same planet.’

  ‘I’m s small town girl and you’re an uptown kind of guy, is that it?’

  ‘To put it simply.’ He frowned at her. ‘You said it yourself more than once.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And stop saying okay!’

  ‘There’s nothing more to say, Pierre. What will we say to Didi?’

  ‘Leave it to me. I’ll take care of it. You can surface when the dust has settled.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Don’t waste your tears on me, Georgie. This is for the best. You move on with your life and I’ll return to mine. Hopefully the next time we meet, this will all be history for you and there will be no awkwardness between us. After all, we’ve shared a lot these past couple of weeks.’

  ‘Of course,’ Georgie said politely. How very good to be concerned about her. He could counsel her on putting things behind her because he had no need to counsel himself. There was a hell of a lot to be said for being emotionally detached from the rest of the world. ‘Time heals everything.’ She turned around so that she could stare out of the kitchen window and, without looking over her shoulder, she said remotely, ‘I’ll leave tonight. That way you can explain things to Didi in the morning.’

  Pierre opened his mouth, to say what he had no idea. In the end, he simply nodded at her erect back and quietly walked out of the kitchen.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MEETING his mother had been less than satisfactory. Pierre swivelled his chair and stared out of the glass panels of his office to a city finally surfacing from the stranglehold of winter. The trees were beginning to wake up and there was just the faintest tinge of warmth in the air, enough to encourage people to jettison their thick coats and stick on their macs.

  He wondered what Georgia was wearing. How many of those hippie layers would she have stripped off to deal with the rise in temperature?

  With a shake of his head, he dragged his thoughts back to Didi.

  It had been her first visit to London for a very long time and Pierre had been irrationally thrilled by her obvious approval of his house. She had looked into every room, commenting on the colours and the pictures and declaring her approval as they had sat down for a cup of tea. Everything had been fine up to that point, then, fool that he was, he had angled the conversation round to Georgie.

  There were still those regrets on his mother’s side that things hadn’t worked out between them, but in actual fact she had, three months previously when he had ruefully explained their split, accepted the situation with surprising calm.

  Not wanting to dwell on the whole messy business for fear of opening a Pandora’s box, Pierre had, at least to start with, made a determined effort not to mention Georgie when he spoke to Didi on the phone, which he now did at least twice a week. Gradually, though, his curiosity had got the better of him and he had begun dropping her name in the conversations, wondering how she was, angling for information because, as he told himself, he just wanted to make sure that she was okay, that she wasn’t slipping into depression, and when Didi assured him that she was as right as rain he continued asking after her because, as he told his mother, she would have taken their break-up pretty hard and might well be putting on a front but going through personal agony. He just, he told her, didn’t want Georgie falling over the edge.

  So although he had told himself that Georgie’s life was no longer his concern, he had still found himself asking his mother about her as they strolled through Harrods in search of a rug for his mother’s sitting room, the old one having been finally put to rest.

  And that was when the day had started to unravel because Georgie, his mother had said absent-mindedly as she had stroked one of the Persian rugs and debated whether it was worth the astronomical amount of money, was more than all right. She was seeing someone.

  That was an eventuality Pierre hadn’t expected and it had knocked him for six, but when he had casually suggested to his mother that it was probably a rebound relationship Didi had laughed out loud and informed him gaily that they seemed to be very serious indeed. He was, in her words, an abso
lutely charming man.

  ‘A musician,’ she confided, in between asking him for his opinion on three rugs she liked. Pierre pointed randomly to the nearest and then pressed her, as obliquely as he could, for details.

  ‘What kind of musician?’ He could hear the scorn in his voice and tempered it with polite interest. ‘One of those long-haired types with body piercings, I expect. Maybe a tattoo on his arm somewhere?’

  But no. A concert musician. No piercings, no tattoos, although apparently he did have lovely dark hair, which he raked back in a most attractive manner.

  From that point on things, at least for Pierre, had gone from bad to worse. While his mother had merrily continued to enjoy the sights of London, he had battled with an increasingly foul temper.

  And to even the score in his eyes, he had made the huge tactical error of inviting Sonya, a lawyer with whom he had worked a couple of times and who had slipped him her card with the explicit invitation for him to call any time, for dinner with them at a French restaurant in Chelsea.

  It had not been a success. Sonya had tried too hard to impress by showing just how clever she was and Didi had been polite but distant. Several times Pierre had had to steer the conversation away from work-related issues that seemed numbingly tedious, but whichever direction he had turned Sonya had been determined to prove her worth. She had succeeded, he had thought afterwards, only in showing herself to be egotistical, insensitive and lacking in a sense of humour.

  And now here he was. Didi was on her way back to Devon, probably napping in the back of the Bentley because his driver was taking her back. She had had a wonderful time. She had bought two rugs because choosing had been impossible, several spring outfits and little presents for Georgie, which Pierre had darkly imagined her sharing with her new musician boyfriend.

  He stood up and glared down at the streets below. Three months! Three months and he was still wondering what she was up to! Except now, of course, he knew. She was showing someone else just what a talented little number she was between the sheets. And, more than that, probably planning all sorts of things together in the future. Engagements, weddings, two point two kids and the pet dog.

  He dropped his head against the glass window and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them he had made a decision. He wouldn’t be able to take the Bentley but he wasn’t averse to a spot of public transport. In fact, without having to concentrate on the roads, he would be able to think and he had a hell of a lot to think about, starting with why he had ever let her go and ending with whether he could win her back.

  He left straight from his office. Like most aggressive men who felt uncomfortable with inactivity, Pierre was now filled with an urgency to see her. In fact, he would have taken the company helicopter but he couldn’t be bothered with the arrangements and, besides, he really did need to decide what happened next and, worse, what he would do if she slammed the door in his face. A very real possibility considering how patronising he had been towards her at their last meeting.

  Several hours later and the train deposited him into a steady drizzle for which he was ill prepared in his white shirt, tie and suit trousers minus the jacket, which might have protected him from the sudden bad weather.

  Nerves, which had never been something from which he had suffered, suddenly kicked in and for a few seconds he contemplated turning round and heading back. But only for a few seconds. Then he shrugged off the thought and caught a taxi outside the station straight to her house.

  The trip took under fifteen minutes. The joy of a traffic-free zone and he was deposited, in the gathering early evening twilight, right where he had a bird’s eye view of the musician leaving her house. The musician with his dark hair and not a body piercing in sight. In fact very normal garb of pale trousers and a jumper underneath which he was wearing a collared shirt of some description. She didn’t kiss him at the door but she might just as well have. The surge of jealous rage that ripped through Pierre was as savage as if they had made love in front of him.

  He stuffed a wad of notes into the taxi driver’s hand and stepped out of the taxi, slamming the door behind him, slamming it so loudly that he could see Georgie look across, startled.

  Of course she didn’t shut the door in his face, but he suspected that she might have been tempted to, and to spare them both from that particular temptation he bounded towards her, scowling as she pulled back ever so slightly, though when he was there, standing in front of her, her face was a mask of politeness.

  ‘Hullo, Pierre. This is a surprise. How are you? Have you just dropped Didi off? I could have sworn she told me that she would be coming back with your driver.’ If she had known that Pierre would be in the vicinity, she would have taken evasive action. The past months had been a nightmare and the last thing she needed was this, him standing in front of her for a courtesy visit, one of his ‘we’re adults, aren’t we?’ situations.

  ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ He gave her a twisted smile and placed one hand on the door, a semi-threatening gesture that she didn’t fail to notice.

  ‘I was just about to do some marking, actually, Pierre, so not a very good time…’

  This time he stepped towards her. He was scaring her and that made him even angrier. Did she think that he would do something physical? Maybe she figured that he would try and force himself on her and naturally that thought would scare her, considering she had leapt into bed with another man in the space of seconds.

  He tried to banish that thought but it crept into his head like poison.

  ‘Now, now, that’s not very sociable, is it?’ He literally brushed past her into the hall, an immovable force now, and watched as she closed the door and leant against it. Barring the exit was just fine as far as he was concerned because he wasn’t going anywhere. God he had missed her, missed her quirky ways, her laughter, her teasing, the way her hair looked as though it was waging a permanent war against restraint. She was wearing some faded jeans and a long-sleeved tee shirt and he had to shut his mind to the image of hands touching her under that tee shirt, pulling down those jeans.

  ‘Would you like something to drink?’ Georgie asked grudgingly. ‘I could make you a quick cup of coffee.’

  ‘Coffee would be…good.’

  While she walked past him through to the kitchen, he looked around, searching for evidence of her new lover. He obviously hadn’t as yet set up permanent camp in her house or else he wouldn’t have been leaving, but that wasn’t to say that he hadn’t already begun the process of transferral.

  ‘You’ll have to be quick, Pierre. I haven’t had much time today to work and I really need to get cracking.’ Georgie stood politely by the kitchen door and waited.

  ‘You know something, Georgie, forget the coffee. Just…tell me what you’ve been up to.’ He folded his arms and leaned against the wall. ‘Today.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Today. What have you been up to today? No need to get all bowed down with details of the past three months.’

  ‘Today…well…this and that…you know…the usual…’ she stammered. ‘You know…’ If this was his idea of normal conversation, then why did it feel like a full-frontal attack? And if she was beginning to piece her life back together, then why was her heart doing all sorts of desperate things? ‘I want you to leave,’ she said more forcefully, resenting the fact that he had virtually barged his way into her house and was now sabotaging all the hard work she had done trying to put her life back together.

  ‘Why?’ Pierre gritted. ‘Expecting visitors? Or should I say a visitor?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No?’ he mocked, taking a couple of steps towards her. ‘Don’t give me that innocent expression, Georgie. Didi told me everything.’

  ‘Didi told you everything?’

  ‘That’s right. The musician, apparently now the love of your life, and don’t even try denying it. I saw him as he was leaving.’ From a position of lifelong
invulnerability, Pierre now realised that he would have to take the most terrifying leap of faith in his life. He loved her and he would have to sacrifice his pride and his self-control to tell her how he felt even though he felt, somewhere deep inside him, that it would all be for nothing. This, he was discovering, was what love did: it stripped a man of his defences and laid him bare to someone else’s decisions.

  ‘I…’ He shook his head and glared at her. ‘I…’ He began again. ‘I had to come here because I couldn’t stand the thought of it, of another man in your life…’

  This was a first, Georgie thought. She had seen all sides of this wonderful man with his complex personality, but never before had she seen him lost for words. And what on earth was he on about?

  ‘Are you talking about Michael?’

  ‘Whatever his name is.’

  ‘What are you saying to me, Pierre? That you’re jealous? I didn’t think you did jealousy.’

  ‘It would seem that I do.’ He raked his fingers uncomfortably through his hair and met her eyes squarely.

  ‘Tell me if I’m getting this right. You don’t want me but you don’t want anyone else to have me.’

  ‘Partly true.’ He would have to bare his soul and it felt like jumping off the edge of a precipice.

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘I don’t want anyone else to even come near you, never mind have you. Having you is my right, Georgie, because…because I’m in love with you.’ He watched as her mouth half opened and she went completely still and, before she could begin the horrific process of letting him down gently, he decided to tell her exactly how he felt and, once done, he would leave. It might scare the hell out of him but he wasn’t going to back away having come this far. ‘I thought what we had was just…fun. I didn’t want complications in my life and I’ve always seen relationships as complications. I didn’t want you falling in love with me because I figured my life had always worked just fine the way it had been before.’