In the Australian Billionaire's Arms

“Of course it’s my real name,” she said, one hand pushing a thick lock of hair back off her shoulder.

The drawing room was all too feminine for his taste, too opulent, silks and brocades, but Sonya Erickson could have been made for it. Even in tight sexy jeans and designer vest-top she fitted in. It occurred to him with her hair worn long and loose and very little make-up she looked hardly more than a girl of nineteen or twenty.

He released a tense breath. “But what about the Erickson? Would you believe I actually knew a woman who changed her name four times? She’s in jail now for fraud. She managed to extract the life savings from God knows how many fools of men.”

“Please, don’t make me weep!” she exclaimed. “Men are fools. But it’s hardly fraudulent to change one’s name by deed poll.”

“Are you saying you have?’

She ignored his question. “Why don’t you sit down?” she invited, with an elegant gesture of her hand.

“You might be in your own house,” he answered, tightly. Lucy’s house.

“Marcus has made me very welcome here.” Her answer was equally pointed. “So you can’t find out much about me. How disappointing for you. Is this what it’s all about?”

“I came to see Marcus,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you. Why don’t you take the sofa?” he suggested. “I’ll take the armchair. I know you’re highly intelligent so we can cut to the chase. It’s obvious my uncle has come to care deeply for you. And in a very short space of time. That presents problems, don’t you agree?”

“Problems for you? I don’t see the problem for me. Marcus is a lovely man. Was I supposed to submit my credentials to you? I might tell you Marcus has never asked anything of me. He trusts me.”

His brilliant dark eyes flashed. “That’s what I’m worried about. Who and what are you really, Sonya? What is it you want?”

“Who said I wanted anything?” she responded with an imperious lift of her brows. She took not the gold sofa, but a gilded armchair opposite him.

Sunlight was falling through the tall windows, filtered by the sheer central curtain. It illuminated her figure, making her hair and her beautiful skin radiant. “You were wearing Aunt Lucy’s diamond and emerald jewellery at the gala function,” he said, the words freighted with meaning.

A flush like pink roses on snow warmed her cheeks. “Is there anything shameful about that? You’re far too quick to place blame. Marcus wanted me to wear them. I could say insisted. He’d asked me the colour of my dress. When I said emerald green, he suggested a set of jewellery that needed an airing. I assure you the set is safely back in his safe.”

It was too hard to resist. “Do you happen to know the combination?”

“Do you?” she shot back.

“I could open it blindfolded. I really don’t want to offend you, Sonya.”

“Then you couldn’t be doing a better job,” she said coldly, sitting very straight, long legs crossed neatly at the ankles.

Excellent deportment lessons there. “Your dress was exquisite, by the way. Did Marcus buy it for you?”

“Ah, the direct approach!” she said, looking down her finely cut nose at him. “I wore it because I had nothing better. Nor could I buy better. The dress is many years old.”

He sat studying her. She appeared to be telling the truth.

“Vintage haute couture.” She waved a hand.

“It looked it,” he said, wanting to pierce her defences.

She shrugged a shoulder. “But you are not here to discuss my evening dress, which I might tell you belongs to me.” She remembered her beautiful mother wearing it. But that was another time, another place, another world. A time when she had been happy.

“Actually I’m here to catch up with my uncle,” he said, breaking into her sad thoughts. “My love and loyalty is with him. You must understand that?”

She gave a light sceptical laugh. “Come now, you have no real right to interfere in his life, David. Marcus is a man in his fifties, a highly intelligent man.”

“Who in all his adult years has never looked at another woman outside Lucy. Until now,” he retorted sharply. “My big concern, Sonya, is that he doesn’t get hurt. Extraordinarily enough Marcus is an innocent in his way. His health isn’t all that good either. For years the whole family has been concerned he might simply die of a broken heart. That’s how devoted he was to Lucy, his wife.”

She flicked a platinum tendril off her heated cheek. “I understand the great pain of his loss. Marcus has told me many things about his beloved Lucy.” She could tell him something of her own losses but her rigid sense of caution stopped her.

“Has he?” Another highly significant thing, he thought.

“Haven’t you met anyone in your life you immediately identified with?” she asked, hostility in her beautiful green eyes.

He stared back at her, knowing he could never say he had identified with her. On sight.

“You won’t be able to take Lucy’s place, Sonya,” he assured her. “No one will let you. You simply don’t know what you’re getting into. The Wainwright family is very powerful. You can’t imagine how powerful. You wouldn’t want to get them offside. You wouldn’t want to embarrass them. Family is very important. So too is the Wainwright fortune. None of us would like to see a huge chunk of it going out of the family. We’re all interconnected in business. You’re far too young for Marcus. You know it. I know it. That said, many people would only see you in one way—as a woman on the make—and hate you for it.”

“So what you’re saying is, I couldn’t possibly come up to your exalted standards?” she asked with surprisingly cool contempt. “Or is the fact Marcus is thirty years older the main objection?’

He showed his own anger. “If you were even twenty years older I doubt if I’d be saying any of this. You don’t love Marcus, Sonya. Don’t tell me you do.”

“I wasn’t about to tell you anything,” she said icily. “The Wainwrights, who are they when it’s all said and done? Billionaires? So what? That’s not class, breeding, tradition. This nation is barely over two hundred years old. You’re parvenus. Your English ancestor, Wainwright, only arrived in this country in the early eighteen hundreds, the flicker of an eyelid. Your family does not impress me.”

“Evidently.” He was somewhat taken aback by her remarks, yet amused. “So tell me about your illustrious family?” he challenged. “European aristocracy, were they? Counts and countesses a dime a dozen? Or haven’t I given you sufficient time to get a really good story together? Maybe you’re a fantasist? Where do you come from exactly? Is Erickson even your real name?”

“Maybe I change it,” she said, sounding all of a sudden very foreign.

“Quite possible. My great-aunt Rowena thinks you have a slight Hungarian accent. She was married to a top British diplomat for many years. She knows Europe. She knows accents.”

Her eyes blazed emerald. “Well, well, well! I can’t find any other words.”

“Surely it’s not difficult for you to tell us something of your background? I’m ready to listen.”

She stood up. “So sorry, David, but I’m not ready to talk. Especially to you. You’re very arrogant for so young a man.”

He too rose to his feet, making her look small by comparison. “Beside you I’m an amateur,” he said cuttingly.

Colour stained her high cheekbones. “You do not know the correct way to treat me.”

“Or address you either. Should it be Contessa?” There was hard challenge in his strikingly handsome face.

“Who knows what might have been?” she said, then broke off abruptly, as if she had already volunteered too much. Her head tilted into a listening attitude. “That’s Marcus now,” she said thankfully, beginning to walk away from him. “I would not like him to find us arguing. Marcus is a very lonely man. He may think he’s in love with me because I have green eyes. His Lucy had green eyes. I’ve no need to tell you that. Marcus loves you like his own son.”

“So that gives me rights and obligations, doesn’t it?” he answered tautly, tiring of her play-acting. “Lucy did have beautiful green eyes, but Lucy looked nothing like you. She didn’t act like you either. She was a sweet, gentle woman, which by and large you aren’t. What is it you’re after?”

She turned to look at him with icy reserve. “I’m sorry, David. It seems to me that’s none of your business. Now I must go and greet Marcus. You may not believe it, but I too want him to be happy.”

He waited, resisting the urge to go to the window to witness the quality of the greeting. Moments later Marcus came into the living room, a spring in his step. He was looking better than he had looked for ages. There was colour in his skin, a brightness in his eyes. Marcus is a good man, he thought with a lunge of the heart. He deserves another chance at happiness. Only he wasn’t going to stand by and allow a young woman who rebuffed any attempt to invade her privacy to damage their close loving relationship. What did she have to hide anyway? Ultimately her background would have to come out.

“David, I’m so glad you called in.” Marcus bounded forward to seize his nephew’s hand.

“I’ve missed seeing you,” David responded. “Sonya has been looking after me.”