House Of The Billionaire (The Billionaire's Contract Series) (2 page)

Tyler Blake stood on the balcony of his hotel in Milan and watched the afternoon sun play across the rooftops of the city. His deal had gone bad. There was no other way to describe it. He had come out here to purchase an automotive parts company that had factories in Italy and Spain and supplied parts to the major European car manufacturers. The company was struggling because of poor relationships with its customers, which had resulted in loss of sales and overwhelming debts. Tyler had planned to purchase the company, fix the relationships with its existing customers and use his connections to secure contracts with high-end car manufacturers such as Ferrari and Lamborghini, providing security for the parts company and its workers.

But his heart hadn’t been in it. He had been distracted during the negotiations and Keith Harmon, Tyler’s lawyer and personal assistant, had suggested Tyler go back to the hotel and let Keith proceed with the deal. Tyler had returned to his room, feeling that his presence at the meeting wouldn’t have made a difference anyway, and waited for Keith’s phone call to say the deal was done. When Keith had called, it had been bad news. The deal was off, or at least suspended. Keith’s negotiating skills were no match for Tyler’s and he hadn’t managed to procure the Italian company.

That had been an hour ago. When Keith suggested he come to Tyler’s room to discuss strategy and attempt to seal the deal at tomorrow morning’s meeting with the company, Tyler had said no. He wanted time alone.

He needed to take a break. It was difficult to admit that fact but he knew he had been working himself into the ground for too long. He had become so focused on his work that he didn’t know what really mattered anymore. Kirsty had mentioned it yesterday but he had been so wrapped up in this Milan deal that he hadn’t listened.

Kirsty. She was his distraction. During the meeting today, her words had played over and over in his mind. Used and abandoned. He had pictured her sitting in bed in her white lace negligee as she had said those words. That image had taken a higher priority in his mind than acquiring the Italian auto parts company.

He watched the sun sink lower over the rooftops. He listened to the sounds of busy traffic on the street below his balcony. Horns blaring. Drivers shouting curses at each other in Italian. Everyone was in a hurry. What for?

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialled Keith Harmon. Keith’s room was situated two floors below Tyler’s.

‘Hey, Tyler,’ Keith answered. He sounded tired and Tyler wondered if the lawyer had been taking an afternoon nap.

‘Keith, we need to talk.’

‘I’ll be there in five.’

Tyler put the phone away and took a deep breath of Milan air. Kirsty would have liked it here. He could have shown her the Duomo and the Galleria Vittorio. They could have had coffee in a little cafe on the Corso and he could have taken her shopping in the Fashion District. Although he knew that Kirsty would have balked at the shopping. She believed her curvy, magnificent body was overweight and she preferred clothes that hid rather than accentuated her figure. All women believed they were overweight to some degree but Kirsty held tightly to that belief no matter how many times he told her she was stunning. And that was the irony...she was beautiful. Tyler knew that his taste for women who had natural curves rather than stick-thin models put him in the minority of men. But he didn’t care to follow the majority in most things in life, so why should he follow them in his taste in women just because it was the accepted thing? He knew what he liked and he didn’t really care if the media thought he could do better than a plump Romance author from Nottingham. He didn’t want to do better; he had the best.

And he had let her down.

Used and abandoned.

There was a knock at the door and Tyler answered it. Keith Harmon looked a little dishevelled with his collar open and tie loosened and his jacket crumpled. His blonde hair looked tousled and his eyes were red behind his glasses, which he didn’t usually wear.

‘You OK, Keith?’ Tyler asked, gesturing for the lawyer to come in.

‘Yeah, it’s been a long day,’ Keith replied. ‘And when I got back to the hotel room, I fell asleep with my contact lenses in. ‘I was glad of your wake-up call. I managed to pry my contacts out and now I can see clearly again. Like the scales have fallen away from my eyes,’ he joked.

‘Come and take a seat on the balcony. It’s a warm evening.’

They stepped out through the large glass doors and Keith sat down at the little table out there, lifting his glasses and rubbing his eyes. ‘What are we going to do about today’s debacle?’ he asked. ‘Are you feeling OK? You were pretty spaced out in the meeting.’

‘I’m fine,’ Tyler said, standing with his hands on the cool metal safety rail. He looked out over the busy city.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get the deal,’ Keith said. ‘Without you there, I seemed to be floundering. But we still have tomorrow. We can get a strategy together...’

‘There isn’t going to be a meeting tomorrow, Keith. I’m going to cancel it.’

‘You sure you aren’t sick or something?’

‘I’m not sick. I’m going to take a break.’

‘A break? Do you have time in your schedule?’

‘No, I don’t have time in the schedule. That’s the point. My business has taken over my life. Yesterday, Kirsty said she didn’t know me. I’m not sure I even know myself anymore.’

‘Ah, so this is about Kirsty.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘Tyler, we all work long hours and spend time away from home. It’s the nature of our business. Hell, my wife has threatened to kick me out a couple of times and I’ve missed more of my daughter’s birthday parties than I care to admit. But it’s just the way it is. If Kirsty’s been pressuring you to spend more time with her...’

‘She hasn’t,’ Tyler said, cutting him off. ‘I want to spend more time with her. I want to get to know her.’ He turned to face Keith and said, ‘I think I’m in love with her.’

‘Whoa.’ Keith pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and peered at Tyler as if he were examining a new species of life through a microscope. ‘You sure about this? You’re one of the most eligible men in the world. You could have any woman you wanted.’

‘I want Kirsty.’

‘Maybe you should take a break, Tyler. Rearrange your schedule. You’ve hired some good people to run your companies, let them keep things ticking over for a while. Maybe a couple of days. Make a weekend of it and catch a show in the West End or something.’

‘I’m taking a month off.’

‘A month? Tyler...’

‘As you say, I employ good people. They have the skills to keep everything running while I’m away.’

Keith laughed but there was no mirth in it. ‘What are you going to do for a month? You’ll go crazy.’

‘I’m going to go to Darkmere House.’

‘What? Where’s that?’

Tyler watched the sun disappear beyond the horizon. An impenetrable gloom fell over Milan. ‘It’s a place I’ve been running from for years,’ he said softly. ‘It’s time to stop running.’

‘What?’ Keith asked, confused.

‘I need you to rearrange my schedule. Call a meeting in London and let the Board know I’m taking a leave of absence for a month. Delegate my duties to our best people. Postpone the Nakatomi deal until I get back; I need to handle that personally.’

‘OK,’ Keith said, getting up. ‘I’ll get started.’

Tyler saw him to the door but when they go there, Keith stopped and said, ‘Are you sure that Romance novelist is worth all this? Putting your life on hold for a month?’

‘I’m not putting my life on hold, Keith. I’m putting it back together.’

After his assistant had left and Tyler had closed the door, he leaned back against it and whispered to himself, ‘Yes, she is worth it.’

Chapter Three

Kirsty sat staring at a blank page on her Mac. The rain from yesterday had continued through the night, keeping her awake as it lashed against the window and thunder rumbled in the distance. Now she felt tired and the story she wanted to write wouldn’t come forward from the murky recesses of her mind. She wondered if she should just scrap the idea...or relegate it to a notebook, anyway...and start something else, something fresh. Maybe a story where the hero and heroine broke up. No, that wasn’t what the Red Rose Bound readers wanted. They wanted to read about new relationships with optimism for the future, as well as a dose of light BDSM. Kirsty shut the laptop. She wasn’t in the mood for that right now.

Tyler should be back from Milan now but he hadn’t called her. Maybe he wouldn’t call. Maybe that was it, they were over. He probably had time to think about what he wanted while he was in Milan and decided he didn’t want to commit to an overweight Romance novelist. She supposed she couldn’t blame him. He was the type of man who was usually seen with movie stars or models hanging from his arm. Why would he be interested in an overly-curvy writer whose only claim to fame was that she had written a few Romance novels? It didn’t make sense. She had been a fool to think anything serious would blossom between herself and a successful billionaire businessman.

She considered calling Jane and going for lunch at a pub where she could drown her sorrows. Her phone rang and she wondered if Jane had somehow picked up her thoughts by psychic means and was calling to arrange the lunch date. But the caller ID said, “Tyler”. Kirsty’s heart did a swan dive. Was he calling her to say he was back in the country and he wanted to see her or was he calling to dump her?

‘Hello?’ She tried to sound calm.

‘Kirsty, it’s Tyler.’

‘Yes...I know.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. How was Milan?’

‘Terrible.’

‘Oh...I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. A few things became clear in my head while I was there.’

‘I see.’ This was it. The break up call.

‘I thought about what you said.’

‘Right.’ The phone shook in her hand. She knew at that moment that she was falling in love with Tyler Blake. And now it was all about to end. Would she be making a fool of herself if she begged him to reconsider?

‘You were right. I’ve let work take priority over everything else. I’ve rearranged everything to give myself a month’s vacation.’

‘Really? Wow! A whole month. Will you manage to survive that long without work?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I won’t manage to survive that long without you.’

Her heart did a second dive, this time with an added back flip. ‘What?’

‘I want you to come away with me. You said you wanted to know more about who I am. I’m going to take you to my childhood home in the Lake District.’

Kirsty realised she had been holding her breath. She let it out and said, ‘Yes, of course, that would be lovely!’

He laughed. The sounds was deep and masculine. ‘Well since I’m in London and you’re in Nottingham, it’ll be best if I meet you there. You’re much closer to the Lake District than I am. I’ll have to set off early and hit the motorway. I’ll bring the food and drink, you just bring yourself.’

‘Are you driving yourself?’ She had never known him to travel in any other way than his chauffeur-driven Bentley.

He laughed again. ‘Yes. I haven’t forgotten how to drive. I’ll email you the address so you can put it in your sat nav.’

‘OK,’ Kirsty said, still trying to take in the fact that they were going to be spending time together. Real time.

‘See you tomorrow,’ he said and hung up.

Kirsty couldn’t stop smiling. She decided to call Jane and go out for lunch and then go shopping. She wanted to get some new clothes and some lingerie. A girl needed to look her best if she was going to be spending nights with a man like Tyler Blake!

Chapter Four

The drive to the Lake District took three hours. Kirsty had a suitcase packed with new clothes, lingerie and makeup sitting on the backseat and she sang along to the radio as she drove her Corsa along the busy motorway. The rain from yesterday had disappeared and the morning was warm and sunny so she cracked the windows to get some fresh air into the car once she left the M6 and got onto the winding country lanes that led to Darkmere House.

Darkmere House. The name intrigued Kirsty. She knew that the word ‘mere’ meant lake, so it was logical that the house would be next to a lake named Darkmere, or Dark Lake. It sounded kind of spooky and made her overactive imagination travel down shadowy paths that led to crumbling gothic mansions and windswept moors. She knew she was being silly but it might make for a scene or two in her next Red Rose Bound book.

When she arrived at a pair of looming iron gates set into an ivy-covered wall by the roadside with a sign that read ‘Darkmere House’ half-hidden by the ivy, she wondered if her imaginings had been so fanciful after all. She turned the sat nav off, glad to be rid of the annoying woman’s voice that sounded too mechanical as it read out directions, and got out of the car. The gates unlatched easily and she pushed the huge gates aside before returning to her car and driving it off the road and through the gates. She got out and closed them behind her.

Ahead, the narrow dirt road led through the trees. There was no sign of  house or a lake. Kirsty got back into the car and turned the radio off, setting off down the road at a slow pace. So this was Tyler’s childhood home. Very isolated place for a boy to grow up in.