Filthy Rich Revenge: A Filthy Rich Billionaires Book Page 8

  Rebecca sat at the broad table under the arbor, the last rays of sunlight kissing her hair with molten gold. She had her computer open, a pen in her mouth, and a cell phone to her ear. She did not hear him approach, so he took time to study her profile. Her dark hair was unadorned, falling to her waist in soft waves that she’d gathered with a hair clip. She tucked a loose strand behind her ear, and a small diamond winked in her lobe. Her legs were crossed at the ankles as she leaned forward, concentrating on her screen and the person on the other end of the phone. She wore a short tropical print skirt. He let his gaze caress the length of those long legs before traveling up her body, over the white tank top molding her breasts, before coming to rest on her face.

  He was going to enjoy taking her to his bed. His gut tightened in anticipation, his body remembering how it’d been with her all those years ago.

  Dios, in spite of everything she fired his blood, made him burn to possess her.

  “Do you have those projections?” she said to the person on the other end, and a jolt of awareness shot through him. He’d once had a liaison with an accountant, but his usual companions were actresses or models or idle heiresses. Rebecca, for all her pampering, knew her way around the business world. He liked that about her.

  Oh yes, he’d made the right decision. He was going to thoroughly enjoy her before his revenge was complete.

  She glanced sideways, her eyes widening when she saw him.

  “Yes, thanks, John. Get me those numbers as soon as you can. I’ll talk to you later.” She set the phone down and offered him a wary smile. “How was your trip?”

  “Tiring,” he said. He held the tie up. “Can you fix this?”

  He thought vaguely that he ought to hate asking her, that he was merely confirming her opinion he was more suited to a bullring than a boardroom, but he was too irritated at the prospect of the party to care. If he expected a superior look from the spoiled woman sitting in his courtyard, he didn’t get it.

  “I can try,” she said, standing, biting her lip between her teeth as she took the tie and slipped it around his neck. Her fingers were cool where they brushed his skin, and yet a spark of awareness lingered where she’d touched. Her sweet scent stole into his nostrils. He couldn’t understand why, of all the women in the world, he currently wanted this one. But he intended to have her. Now that he’d decided bedding her fit into his plans, there was no need to wait. Tonight, one way or the other, she would be his.

  Awareness of her crept through him, made him hard. What would she think if she realized he was on the edge of burying himself inside her?

  Her gaze never wavered from his throat as she worked, almost as if she feared what she might see if she looked up at him. Sí, be afraid of me, amor. I intend to possess you, to ruin you. For Anya. For me. You are finished and don’t even know it.

  “Did you miss me?” he teased, his sensual tone at odds with his dark thoughts.

  Her brows shot up, her expression a strange mixture of disbelief and… was it guilt? Interesting. He filed it away for future contemplation.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Her voice broke at the last. She refocused on his tie, twisting and tugging.

  Alejandro pressed his advantage. “Perhaps I am not. Did you not enjoy our time together in the pool, bella?”

  She yanked the tie too tight, nearly choking him, then jerked it loose and swore before trying again. “I’ve forgotten all about it. It didn’t mean a thing.”

  Her red face and clumsy fingers told him differently.

  “I wanted to taste you,” he said, just to see what she would do. “To lay you back and dip my tongue into your sweetness. Are you still sweet, Rebecca?”

  Her chest heaved, once. She bent her head lower, her lip undergoing punishment from her teeth as she concentrated. He wanted to suck that lip between his own, make love to it until she was pliant, begging him to move on to another delicious part of her.

  How could he want this woman he hated? He didn’t know, but maldito sea, since he’d freed himself to do so, he could think of almost nothing else.

  She tugged the tie and stepped back with a triumphant expression. “There. All done.”

  He touched the knot, tested it for tightness. “Gracias.” Then he closed the distance between them, giving her no quarter. It was not in his nature to prevaricate once he’d decided he wanted something. “Would you like that, querida? Would you like me to taste you?”

  She made a choked sound, slipped past him and fiddled with the briefcase she’d left open on the table. “Stop. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Are you certain? Imagine it. Imagine the ecstasy.”

  Her eyes closed. “No.”

  “Do you remember the first time?”

  He thought she wouldn’t respond, but she nodded—just a quick dip of her chin.

  “It could be like that again.” Dios, he wanted it. Right now, this second, he wanted it to be that way just once more. To forget why he had to hate her, why he had to destroy her. To just feel the good things again.

  She snapped her laptop closed and stuffed it into her briefcase before glaring at him with fiery blue eyes. “That’s impossible, Alejandro. The first time we were together, I didn’t know you had a fiancée. Stupidly, I thought I was the only woman in your life. You let me find out in the most humiliating way possible that I wasn’t the only—or even the primary—one.”

  He recognized that she needed to cloak herself in her mantle of righteous anger so she wouldn’t feel the pull of desire between them. But he did not intend to allow her that comfort. “Anyone can hire a wedding planner, Rebecca. That particular one was hired by my father with the express purpose of chasing you away and pushing me into a marriage I had not agreed to.”

  She looked a bit shocked—and very doubtful. “Why should I believe you? And why, if that’s the case, didn’t you tell me five years ago?”

  His laugh was bitter. He snapped it off mid-stream and pinned her with a hard stare. “Because you were a coward. You ran away like a petulant child. What was I to do, chase you back to New York and force you to listen to me?”

  12

  Rebecca’s heart skipped a beat. This was not what she’d expected tonight. She’d been working with her chief financial officer on some projections for the Kai Lani chain of resorts and fielding calls from her human resources director about Ramirez Enterprise’s plans and how it would affect jobs. Except she didn’t yet know what Alejandro had in mind, so she’d had to put the woman off with vague platitudes about the future. Which angered and frustrated her. It also reminded her how precarious her position was.

  She hadn’t expected Alejandro to return in the midst of it all, and she certainly hadn’t expected this. A discussion of their painful past was the last thing she’d have thought possible tonight. Yet here he was, telling her it was his father who’d sent the wedding planner and that it was deliberate.

  She could hardly wrap her mind around it. Worse, she feared he was right in at least one respect. She’d run away because she couldn’t take it, because she’d already shown poor judgment once before. She hadn’t trusted herself to make a sound decision. She’d needed distance, time, and space to think.

  She’d gotten her time, and plenty of it. “You should have made me understand,” she forced from her dry throat. Could it possibly be true that his family had wanted to manipulate him into a wedding? That his father would do such a thing?

  Why not?

  Her own father had gone to extraordinary lengths hiring Parker to insinuate himself into her life. All to prove a point to her. A painful point about her own vulnerability and neediness. Rebecca shivered as she stared at Alejandro. He was fully capable of lying to her in order to make her feel worse than she already did about what had happened between them.

  He stood before her, devilishly dark and deliciously handsome in his custom fit tuxedo. His skin had darkened beneath the hot Arabian sun over the last few days, setting off the lightning-silver of his eyes.
Eyes that speared her with scorn.

  “Perhaps you should have trusted me,” he bit out. A second later, he raked a hand through his dark hair and swore in Spanish. “As if it would have mattered. No, your plan was always to ruin me, to take what you could and destroy Ramirez Enterprises in the process. You nearly succeeded.”

  Her throat ached with denials. But what was the point? Though her mother couldn’t say definitively whether or not she’d told Rebecca’s father about the aborted affair, it was still Jackson Layton’s threat to take his business elsewhere that cost Alejandro the deal he’d worked hard to procure. Like it or not, the Laytons were responsible.

  But she could defend her motives without hesitation. “You haven’t proven anything to me, Alejandro. My only plan when I came to the Villa de Música was to see the restoration. I didn’t plan to meet you, and I certainly didn’t plan to fall in love with you. It would have been so much easier if I’d never met you.”

  Five long years and she’d never really succeeded in forgetting him. Before he’d summoned her to Madrid, she could still blissfully deceive herself that the years had done their work. But she hadn’t forgotten after all, and every day she spent with him only made the memories more painful.

  “Yes, it is hard to look a man in the eye before you cut him down,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I have no time for this now, but be assured I have no need to lie. It matters not whether you believe me.”

  “Then why did you say it?” she asked, her throat tight. What if he was telling her the truth? What if she’d been as mistaken about his engagement as he was about her motives?

  He shrugged. “Because I am tired of your self-righteousness.”

  Rebecca blinked. “Self-righteous?” Who was he kidding? He was the most self-righteous man on the planet. She snatched up the folder she’d been working on. She couldn’t deal with this right now. She needed time alone, time to think. “I’m going inside now. Have a nice time.”

  Alejandro caught her arm as she turned away. “You’re coming with me.”

  “What? Where?” she stammered. He was wearing a tuxedo, not a casual pair of trousers and a shirt. Wherever he was going, she couldn’t show up in a tank top and wispy skirt. “I have work to do. I can’t go with you.”

  “This is not a request, Rebecca. You will come. Now.”

  “I don’t have anything suitable to wear,” she said, thrusting her chin up and stating the obvious. Or the not so obvious if the way he looked at her was any indication.

  “There is a boutique in the hotel. You will buy a dress. Now come, we are out of time.”

  “But Alejandro, really—”

  “Need I remind you I am the one in control here?” he ground out, slamming the door on her protest. “You have no choice, Rebecca.”

  She gripped her briefcase, her knuckles whitening. She had an urge to close her eyes and count to a hundred before speaking, the way her mother used to make her do when she was upset and crying over something. It worked to calm her down when she was ten, though it also made her feel unimportant and unloved.

  Ah, but you are unloved. This man does not love you. He never did. Never could and never will.

  She concentrated on his cold, handsome features. Not that she wanted him to love her now. No, that desire was in the past. This man was nothing like the Alejandro she’d once loved.

  But he’s still there. Inside.

  She closed the door firmly on such thoughts. “Very well,” she said as coolly as she could manage given the erratic beating of her heart. “If you will allow me to drop these things in my room?”

  His nod was brief. Arrogant and sure. She itched to smack him. Instead, she put her things away and returned to join him beside the limousine waiting out front. He held the door open for her, then followed her inside. A moment later, they were whisked through the darkening streets of Madrid.

  “We’re going where?” Rebecca’s heart climbed into her throat, thrumming in panic. His parents’ anniversary party? But why? She closed her eyes and swallowed. Oh God. She’d never met his parents, had in fact no idea what his relationship with them was like. He’d spoken of a brother and sister, she remembered that much. His brother had died tragically only a few months before she’d met Alejandro. He’d never talked of it, and she hadn’t asked because their relationship had been so new.

  But would his parents know who she was? That she was the woman he’d been sleeping with while he was engaged to someone else? How could she possibly show up at their special party tonight and hold her head up?

  Alejandro glanced up from his phone, his expression showing he hadn’t missed the note of alarm threading through her voice. “The party is a grand affair, Rebecca. No one will notice another guest. Besides, I am the one paying for it.”

  It was true she’d envisioned some sort of small, lavish dinner party instead of a grand affair, but the idea of several hundred people at this event did nothing to quell her uneasiness. His parents would still be there and if she were with Alejandro, she’d have to meet them. Perhaps that was his plan. “Mom, Dad, meet Rebecca Layton, the bitch who stole my deal and tried to ruin me five years ago.”

  But that wasn’t the source of her deepest anxiety. No, if she were brutally honest with herself, most of her unease was brought on by the proximity of the man sitting across from her. His legs sprawled casually to either side of hers. Long lashes shadowed his eyes as he concentrated on the screen in his hands. His tanned fingers moved quickly as he typed, and she remembered how they’d moved over her body. Slowly, deliberately, with soft strokes that had driven her mad.

  He’d talked of tasting her earlier. She’d thought of almost nothing else since. She’d also thought of the day she’d left him. Had it been a mistake to leave without confronting him?

  Memories of long ago crashed into her mind with alarming regularity. Of Alejandro’s skin against hers, of his hot tongue slicking a path down her body, finding her wet and hot and ready for him. And then when he licked into the heart of her, how quickly she’d exploded for him—

  Rebecca pressed two fingers to her temples, willing the erotic images out of her head. She had to focus, had to prepare herself for whatever she would find at this party. Maybe no one would notice her, or maybe it really was another facet of Alejandro’s plan to humiliate her in front of as many people as possible. Why else had he ordered her to come with him?

  He couldn’t know how tormented she was simply looking at him, how part of her wanted to reach out and find the man he used to be beneath the hard exterior. How she ached to touch his smooth skin, to trace her fingers along the seam of his lips, to breathe in the manly scent of him the way she’d once done. To see him actually smile at her with warmth.

  Stop. Just stop. He stole Layton International. He hates you.

  When the limousine pulled into the circular drive of the Villa de Música, Rebecca wanted to melt into the plush leather seat. A horde of photographers clustered together near the entrance, snapping away as people emerged from the cars that crawled in a steady stream through the driveway.

  She wiped clammy palms down her skirt, tried to straighten it out as best as possible. How would she look in the papers dressed like a beach bum beside Alejandro?

  Alejandro slipped his phone into his pocket and frowned at her. “There is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a party.”

  She tilted her chin up, reached down deep for her inner socialite. Her mother would expect nothing less than total poise, regardless of the situation. “I’m not afraid. I’m just not prepared. You gave me no warning.”

  “Sometimes the best things in life are spontaneous, yes?”

  She wasn’t sure if he was joking or needling her. The car ahead of them disgorged its passengers. A woman stopped and posed, tossing long dark hair over her shoulders and tilting her hips from side to side. Flashes burst into life, lighting the entry as if it’d been pitch black before.

  Alejandro swore. He stabbed the intercom button and sna
pped out an order in Spanish. The limo didn’t stop when their turn came but continued through the drive and out to the street.

  “I forgot about the paparazzi. We’ll use the back entrance.”

  “Won’t a few of them be stationed back there for just that purpose?”

  He shrugged. “Sí, but my security is very thorough.”

  Rebecca let out her breath. “Thank you.”

  “It is not for you,” he said curtly. “I have no wish to answer questions tonight.”

  She crossed her arms and willed away the stab of hurt. Of course he didn’t order the car to go around to the back in order to spare her any embarrassment. Was she an idiot? No, the more pain he could cause her, the better. Worse, she actually understood it. If her father hadn’t pressured Roger into backing out of the deal, what else might Alejandro have accomplished?

  Rebecca studied the hotel as they snaked around behind it. The Villa de Música was one of the grander buildings in Madrid. It had once belonged to a famous opera singer. It’d been sold over the years, falling into a state of shabby decline before being rescued by Alejandro and restored to its glory days. She hadn’t been inside since she’d left his suite five years ago.

  How would she feel walking inside and remembering? She would soon find out.

  The limo slipped behind a security barrier. Moments later, someone popped open the door and they rushed into a small service entrance at the rear of the hotel.

  The hall was small, narrow, and she had no choice but to follow Alejandro as he worked his way through the labyrinth. He ushered her into an elevator. A minute later, the doors slid open and they were hurrying down another hall. Alejandro stopped and keyed in a code on a pad beside a door.

  Rebecca stumbled to a halt behind him as the door swung open. It was the suite he’d lived in five years ago because he’d sunk everything he had into the hotel. It wasn’t the first place they made love, but it was the location where she’d felt like she shared a home with him. She’d been staying in the luxurious private suite on the top floor that had its own pool and rooftop terrace, but this suite was smaller, more private, and they’d retreated here often. Eventually, she checked out of her room and moved into his. Only because he talked her into staying longer than she’d planned.