Ruthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress

‘You two seem to share quite a close relationship…considering it’s purely professional…’

‘I never said that it was purely professional…’

‘But you told me that you were working on a project with him.’

‘I am. Was. Am.’

‘Past tense? Present tense? Which is it to be? And you never said precisely what this so-called project is.’

‘I told you, that’s something I know Freddy would want to tell you about himself.’ She belatedly remembered that she was supposed to support him whenever and wherever possible. ‘And it’s very exciting.’

‘Well, I can’t wait to find out what it’s all about. I’m literally on the edge of my seat. If my little brother is involved, then it’s sure to be a non-starter. His business sense has always been fairly non-existent.’ He finished his coffee and pulled out a stool so that he could prop both feet up—something, she noted, he seemed quite at ease doing considering he was in someone else’s house. ‘So he told you that I’m his workaholic brother, did he? In between discussing his mystery project?’

‘You make it sound as though it’s a crime to be friends with Freddy.’

Cesar decided not to inform her that it would only be a crime should she want to adjust her position from friend to spouse.

‘I’m just curious. Project to friend? Friend to project? What was the order of events? How did you meet?’

Jude looked at him warily. That earnest expression on his face didn’t fool her a bit. He was taking small steps around her, looking for clues.

‘I’m a designer,’ she mumbled, trying to sort out how she could avoid divulging details about their meeting, which had happened courtesy of Imogen. ‘And he needed some stuff doing…’

‘Oh, yes. The stuff he wants to talk to me about. And, at that point, did you know how much Fernando was worth?’

‘I knew that’s where all your questions were leading!’

‘I’m that obvious?’ Cesar asked indifferently.

‘Yes, you’re that obvious, not that you care! I have to go and get changed.’ She stood up and gave him a withering look, which had zero effect. He still carried on calmly looking at her, as though he had all the time in the world to wait until she decided to deliver the answer he wanted to hear.

‘Please don’t bother on my account,’ Cesar drawled, taking in the shapely legs which had been disguised the night before in their jeans. For someone with dark hair and dark eyes, she was delicately pale and her skin was like satin. He had become used to a diet of women who slapped on make-up. Jude, he absent-mindedly noticed, was wearing none and her face was fresh and smooth. She had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and he imagined that she might have been a tomboy, climbing trees and doing everything the boys did.

Jade ignored him. ‘I haven’t been eyeing up your brother as marriage material so that I can get my hands on his fortune,’ she said tightly. ‘And it’s totally out of order for you to repay my hospitality by insulting me!’

‘Come again?’

‘I could have…left you to find your way round Canterbury in the snow so that you could source a hotel!’ Theoretically. He wasn’t to know that the pleading look Freddy had given her had warned her that he needed help just in case Cesar found himself programming his sat nav for his brother’s apartment—a very strong possibility considering his lack of familiarity with the city and the deteriorating weather. Okay, so maybe hospitality implied more than had actually been delivered, because hospitality implied a smiling welcome, but she was sticking to her guns. ‘You could have ended up lost and trapped in that silly car of yours.’

‘Silly car?’

Jude made an inarticulate, defiant sound under her breath and glared at him. ‘I’m not a gold-digger. I’m not even materialistic! I don’t believe that money can buy happiness. The opposite, in fact! I’ve worked with loads of really rich people who have been miserable as anything. In fact,’ she tacked on meaningfully, ‘are you happy because you work all the hours God made so that you can accumulate more money than anyone could possibly spend in a lifetime? Freddy says that you bury yourself in your work because you’ve never really recovered from…’ She went bright red and covered her treacherous mouth with her hand.

‘From what…?’ Cesar asked softly.

‘Nothing.’

‘What did my brother say?’

‘I really need to go and change now!’ She fled. She didn’t understand how she could have been so thoughtless, just lashing out at him because he had accused her of being a gold-digger. What he’d said meant nothing to her. She should have been able to hear him out and shrug it all off because whatever he thought was never going to be her problem. Instead…

She locked the bathroom door and leaned against it for a few seconds with her eyes closed, before turning on the shower and taking her time under the cascading water.

She felt better once she had showered and even better when she had jettisoned her silly nightie in favour of her favorite fitted jeans and a tight long-sleeved T-shirt. For some indefinable reason she defiantly wanted to show Cesar that she at least had a figure of sorts!

The smell of bacon sizzling greeted her halfway down the stairs and her stomach churned in immediate response. If this was Cesar at the stove, then he was clearly more domesticated than she’d thought he’d be, imagining this brooding billionaire to be the type who had never knowingly sought out any culinary device. She walked into the kitchen and watched for a few silent seconds as Cesar popped some bread in the toaster and then began to beat eggs in a bowl.

‘You ran away before you could tell me what other little gems Fernando has shared with you,’ Cesar said without turning around.

‘I’m sorry.’ Jude took a deep breath and went to sit at the table. She stared at the bandage, then looked at Cesar’s aristocratic profile. His face was a lesson in beauty, his features sharply, powerfully defined. A portrait artist would have given their right arm to paint him. He had rolled his shirtsleeves to the elbows. His hands were sinewy and strong and she looked away quickly. ‘I told you that you were out of order to insult me in my own home and I was out of order to bring up something which is none of my business. Can we call it quits? Maybe start arguing about something else?’

‘I take it he told you about Marisol,’ Cesar said flatly. He had never found himself in the position of talking about his private life before, even though his late wife was not exactly a subject that was out of bounds. Hell, check his profile on the Internet and up the information would come.

‘I’m very sorry.’

‘For what? For not, as he insinuated, recovering from her death?’ He leaned against the counter and met her gaze coolly, steadily.

‘Like I said, it’s none of my business.’

‘You’re right. It’s not, but if you want to make it your business, then feel free to look it up when your Internet connection’s been restored.’ Had he never recovered? Was that the general consensus whispered behind his back? No one had ever dared say anything like that to his face, not even his uncle in Madrid, to whom he was close. The thought of other people having opinions on his state of mind made his mouth tighten in anger but there was no point in venting any of that anger on the woman sitting opposite him. He never allowed other people’s opinions to have an effect on him and he wasn’t going to start now.

Briefly, though, he thought about his late wife, Marisol. She had been dainty and, peculiarly for a Spanish girl, fair. Cesar, just eighteen at the time, had taken one look at her and had known, in that instant, that he had to have her. It had been a union blessed by both sets of parents and Marisol, for that brief window when she had been alive, had lived up to every expectation. She had been the sweetest woman he’d ever met. She had cooked amazing meals, had not once complained at the hours he kept. She had been a woman born to be protected, looked after, sheltered and he had been more than happy to oblige. What man wouldn’t, for a soothing domestic life?

And since Marisol, although he had never contemplated a replacement, he had always been attracted to the same kind of woman. Unbearably pretty and willing to be at his beck and call. As luck would have it, things usually deteriorated with them when his boredom levels were breached, but that never bothered him. He wasn’t in it for the long haul. Did that mean that he had never recovered? That he couldn’t live life fully after a tragedy that had happened more than ten years ago?

He frowned at the wide brown eyes staring back at him and thought, irritably, that he would have been hard pressed to find a less soothing woman than her. Didn’t she know that men weren’t attracted to women who approached life like a bull in a china shop? He was fast coming to the conclusion that if his brother was involved in any way with the woman, aside from platonically, he was a candidate for the loony-bin.

‘And you can stop oozing sympathy,’ he grated.

‘I’m not oozing sympathy. I was just wondering how come you never settled down with someone else.’

‘Why haven’t you?’ He returned to his task of making them something to eat. It was unusual to find him behind a stove and his repertoire of dishes was limited, but he had never taken advantage of the family fortune in the same way that his brother had and consequently was more than capable of fending for himself.

‘I believe in kissing a few frogs so that I can recognise the prince when he comes along.’

‘And how many frogs have you kissed?’

‘I lose count.’

Several kissed frogs but only one who had become close enough for her to be seduced into thinking that he might be the one. It had been three years ago and it had ended amicably enough when he had sat her down and gently broken it to her that she wasn’t the woman for him, that he hoped they could remain friends. Remaining friends, she had later concluded, was just the coward’s way of exiting a relationship with the minimum amount of fuss. If a guy didn’t want some woman crying all over him then he did that gentle smiley thing and carried on about remaining friends, but a let-down was still a let-down and in retrospect Jude could have kicked herself for not at least asking him why. Instead, she had stuck out her chin and saved her tears for after he’d gone.

She had no intention of telling any of that to Cesar, however, and she was thankful that he wasn’t looking at her because, when he did, he always gave her the impression that he had some kind of weird insight into what was going on in her head.

‘That many…’

‘Yes, that many.’

‘And why did none of these frogs turn out to be the prince in disguise?’ He put a plate in front of her, brimming with bacon and eggs, far more than she could have eaten in a month of Sundays.