Virgin: Undone by the Billionaire: The Innocent's Dark Seduction / Count Maxime's Virgin / Untamed Billionaire, Undressed Virgin

“It was your father’s fault,” he said coldly. “Your father was the failure. He was a fool. A man shouldn’t have a wife or children if he can’t even take decent care of them—”

Lia slapped him.

Looking shocked, Roark touched his cheek.

She stared up at him with hatred. “Don’t you dare call my father a failure.” She felt tears rising to her eyes, and she fought them with all her might. She would die before she would let him see her cry! “You seduced me for the sake of skyscrapers that will never, ever love you back. And you call my father a failure? You call him a fool? He loved us. He’s a better man than you will ever be.”

Roark straightened, holding his hands stiffly clenched at his sides. For several seconds their eyes locked. Lia could hear the pant of her own anguished breathing and the sound of the birds overhead, a warm breeze rattling the leafy fullness of the trees.

Then his jaw clenched.

“I’ve already had your body,” he said. “And since it’s too late to buy the land, we have nothing else to discuss. Nothing about you is interesting enough to deserve another second of my time.” His eyes were like black ice as he tossed back callously, “Let me know if there’s a baby, won’t you?”

Picking up his briefcase, he turned and left through the garden gate.

Shocked, she listened to the departing sound of his footsteps. It wasn’t until she was alone in the rose garden that Lia allowed herself to collapse into sobs. Putting her face in her hands, she fell to her knees on the soft grass and cried. For her family. For herself.

She’d just given her virginity to the man who’d destroyed her family.

Four months after that horrible day they’d lost everything, her father had died of a heart attack in the little two-bedroom Burbank apartment they’d rented after their beach house was sold for debt.

Thank God for Giovanni. Her father’s old friend had come from Italy for the funeral. He’d seen eighteen-year-old Lia trying to support her sick younger sister and a mother who was silent and half-mad with grief. The next morning he’d proposed marriage.

“Your father once saved my life in the war, when I was barely older than you. I wish I’d known about your troubles—I wish he’d told me,” he’d said with tears in his eyes. “But I can take care of you all now. Marry me, Amelia. Become my countess.”

“Marry you?” she’d gasped. As kind as Count Villani was, he was three times her age!

“In name only,” he’d clarified, his cheeks turning red. “My wife of fifty years died last year. No one will ever replace Magdalena in my heart. I’ll never ask anything from you but your company, your friendship and the chance to repay my debt to a man who’s dead. He was my friend, and I didn’t even realize his business was in trouble. Your mother is too proud to accept my help, but if she believed this was truly your choice …”

So Lia had married him, and she’d never had reason to regret it. She’d been happy with him. He’d been a good man. But her marriage ultimately hadn’t saved her sister and mother. It had been too late to pursue the experimental treatment in L.A., so they’d moved to New York where Olivia could be a patient at St. Ann’s, the best pediatric brain cancer facility in the country. But in spite of her determination and bravery, Olivia had died at fourteen. A week later their fragile mother had died from an overdose of sleeping pills. Lia still wasn’t sure whether her mother had deliberately taken her life, or just been desperate for one night’s sleep to escape the grief. She almost didn’t want to know.

If Roark hadn’t ruthlessly taken her father’s business and left him a broken-down man with oceans of debt, Alfred might have found new investors. Perhaps he would have saved the company instead of being swallowed by the stress of his failure. Olivia could have continued her experimental treatment and it might have worked.

Or maybe Olivia would have died anyway. Her treatment in California had been experimental with only a slight chance of success.

But now Lia would never know.

She only knew that if not for Roark, her whole family might still be alive. Her father. Her sister. Her mother.

Roark Navarre. His name caused a surge of hatred to tighten her hands, crushing a red rose between her fingers. A thorn drew blood on her thumb.

And as if he hadn’t done enough already, he’d deliberately taken her virginity for the sake of a business deal! Did the man have no conscience at all? Did he have no soul?

The bastard. The ruthless bastard.

With a soft curse, she sucked the blood off her thumb.

Lia went into the castle to take a shower, desperate to wash the scent of him off her skin. She tried not to remember the feeling of his naked body against hers. The hoarse whisper of his voice, “Ah, Lia. What you do to me….”

She leaned her head against the cool tiles. Standing beneath a stream of water so hot it burned her skin, she was overwhelmed with guilt and shame. She’d betrayed Giovanni’s memory in the worst possible way. Taking pleasure in Roark’s arms, she’d betrayed her whole family. She knew it was the worst moment of her whole life.

She was wrong.

Three weeks later she discovered she was pregnant.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Eighteen months later.

MARRIED.

Roark still couldn’t believe it. Nathan was getting married.

They’d met in Alaska, both working their way through college. For fifteen years they’d enjoyed the lifestyle of commitmentphobic, workaholic bachelors, earning huge fortunes and dating an endless succession of beautiful women.

He’d never thought Nathan would settle down. But he’d thought wrong. His friend was getting married today.

Roark waited for him at a table in the bar of the Cavanaugh Hotel, where he’d been slowly nursing his scotch for the past ten minutes.

He wondered if it was too late to talk Nathan out of it. Grab the poor bastard and force him to run before it was too late.

Roark rubbed the back of his head, still jet-lagged from his long flight from Ulaanbaatar. He’d finished the project in Mongolia yesterday and arrived in New York just an hour ago. His first time in the city in a year and a half, and he almost hadn’t come. But he couldn’t let his old friend face the firing squad alone.

One week before Christmas, and the sleek, modern hotel bar was filled with businessmen in dark, expensively cut suits. There were a few women scattered here and there, a few in suits but most wearing slinky dresses and red lipstick as fake and carefully applied as their bright, flirtatious smiles.

It could have been any expensive bar in any five-star hotel in the world, and as Roark took another sip of the exquisite forty-year-old Glenlivet, he felt disconnected from everyone and everything. He glanced down at the half-filled tumbler. The scotch was just a year older than Roark was. In a year he’d be forty. And though he told himself life was only getting better, there were times …

He heard a buxom blonde burst into shrieking laughter at the joke of the short, balding man nearby. He watched them sip pink champagne cocktails and pretend they were in love.

All fake. So fake.

Roark couldn’t believe he was back in New York. He wished he was back on the building site, sleeping on a hard cot in a tent in Mongolia. Or working in Tokyo. Or Dubai. Or even back in Alaska.

Anywhere but New York.

Was she here for Christmas?

The thought sneaked into his mind, unbidden and unwelcome. Scowling, Roark took another sip of scotch. All the places he’d been in the last year and a half jumbled together. He’d been working hard. Constantly. Trying to forget her.

The only woman who’d ever brought him such pleasure.

The only woman who’d ever left him wanting more.

The only woman to hate him with such intensity.

Deservedly?

Her accusations still burned through his soul, no matter how many sixteen-hour days he worked or how many hours he spent riding horses along the Mongolian plains, the cold desert wind whipping his skin.