Restless Billionaire (8 page)

 
          
‘I
got your size right….’

 
          
Aneesa
whirled around to see Sebastian leaning against the door, watching her. Heat
crept over her skin to think just how intimately they’d been entwined only
hours before. How intimately he knew her.

 
          
‘Yes,
thank you … I’m afraid I’ve no money to pay you for the clothes at the moment,
but I could arrange for some—’

 
          
He
cut off her words with a slashing movement of his hand, ‘Don’t worry about it.’
He flicked a glance at the watch on his wrist. ‘I’m afraid I have to leave. I’ve
got a meeting in twenty minutes across town.’

 
          
She
tried to ignore the wrenching sensation in the pit of her belly and stammered, ‘Of
course, you’re busy. My parents will be worried about me. I should go to them
and explain.’

 
          
He quirked a brow.
‘Jamal?’

 
          
Aneesa
hitched up her chin. ‘Jamal will be fine—he’s made surviving in Bollywood into
an art form and I’m sure he’s already making sure he’s being portrayed as the
poor victim.’

 
          
Sebastian
stood away from the door. ‘I know a good PR person here, if you need someone to
take care of you.’

 
          
Aneesa
shook her head and fought the desire to say yes, as if to hold onto some
tenuous link that he was holding out, but he was only being polite. ‘Thanks but
my agent will have someone lined up I’m sure….’

 
          
He
started to walk away. ‘I’ll take you down to a back entrance. I’ve arranged for
a car to be waiting for you outside, so hopefully that’ll ensure you get away
without being noticed.’

 
          
Aneesa
nodded and put on the baseball cap. She’d transferred all of her wedding
paraphernalia into the glossy bag. As much as she never wanted to see it again,
she couldn’t leave it behind.

 
          
So
briskly that she felt a little dizzy, Sebastian led her out, and back into the
service elevator which had brought her into the suite last night. All the way
down to the ground floor she wondered what one said to the man with whom you’d
spent all night in complete wanton abandonment.

 
          
She
felt a desperate urgency rising within her and, inexplicably, tears pricked the
backs of her eyes. She pulled the baseball cap down lower, as if she could hide
from Sebastian.

 
          
They
reached the ground floor where a discreet member of staff waited, and he led
them to a back door where there was indeed a luxury saloon waiting outside. The
member of staff melted away. It was just the two of them in a plain staff
corridor and Aneesa took off her cap for a moment to look up at Sebastian.

 
          
She
opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. His face looked stark and
expressionless.
His eyes flinty blue.
She had to go
now or she’d crumple, and while extending her hand, she garbled out, ‘Look …
thank you for … everything. I don’t know what I would have done if—’

 
          
‘Aneesa.’
He took
her hand and pulled her to him, his eyes burning in his face now. ‘You don’t
have to thank me. Last night was an honour for me, even if it came on the back
of your ruined wedding. I’m sorry you had to go through that, but I’m not sorry
about what we shared … but you know it can’t go any further than this, don’t
you?’

 
          
Aneesa
nodded and felt like she was breaking apart inside. She’d thought she’d loved
Jamal but not once had he made her feel like
this
. As if on the one hand she was dying and on the other hand
being reborn again every time she looked into his eyes. And God help her but
she couldn’t look away.

 
          
With
a look of something almost savagely intent on his face, Sebastian pulled her
into his body and dipped his head. She had no defence for the kiss that
followed, and heard a faint moan coming from her mouth. The kiss was harsh and
brutal and yet more gentle than anything she’d experienced with him in the
previous cataclysmic twelve hours.

 
          
That
sense of inner desperation mounted—
she
was never going to see him again
—and now she kissed him back as if her life
depended on it, arms wrapped tight around his neck, their bodies straining
together. When they finally drew apart they were both breathing heavily and
Aneesa’s heart was pounding. She realised that she was clinging onto Sebastian
like an octopus and took her arms down before he had to extricate himself.

 
          
With
two hands on her waist he put her back and her legs felt wobbly. She bent and
picked up the fallen baseball hat and put it on with trembling hands.

 
          
‘Goodbye,
Aneesa.’

 
          
She
couldn’t even look at him. ‘Goodbye,

 
          
Sebastian.’
And before she did something stupid, like throw
herself
at him and beg him not to let her go, she walked swiftly to the car, where the
driver jumped out to open the door for her. The windows were tinted and she
didn’t look back at Sebastian once.

 
          
The
following morning Sebastian was getting ready to leave the hotel to return to
Europe, half listening to the news on the TV, when he heard Aneesa’s name and
turned to see her beautiful face filling the screen.

 
          
He
turned the sound up, and then had to sit down when his legs felt suspiciously
weak. It looked like a press conference and Aneesa was dressed in a
conservative trouser suit, shirt buttoned up, hair tied back and sleek. Her
face was pale and her eyes were huge and red-rimmed.

 
          
His
hand clenched into a fist on his thigh in an unconscious reaction to the
thought that she’d been upset. There was a barrage of questions but an
officious-looking man to her right put up a hand. ‘Miss Adani is only here to
read out a statement. Please, no questions.’

 
          
Sebastian
could see Aneesa’s throat work and her hands shake slightly as she held a piece
of paper. He saw the sleeve of her jacket pulled down as far as possible over
the henna tattoo and his chest felt tight.

 
          
Her
voice was hesitant at first but grew stronger; he only caught snippets of what
she said, he was so distracted by seeing her.

 
          
‘…
like
to extend
my profound apologies to Jamal Kapoor Khan and his family for any distress I
may have caused by my actions, and also to my own family…. My reasons for not
going through with the wedding are personal to me. I wish all the best for
Jamal and that he will find a partner who will appreciate him far more than I
ever could have. There was no third party involved in my actions
—
my decision was mine alone and I must live
with the consequences. I would just ask for some privacy for my family at this
time. Thank you …’

 
          
At
that moment she looked up and straight at the camera and Sebastian felt winded
all over again, as if she was looking directly at him. He had to laugh grimly
at his fanciful reaction, no wonder she was a major star. She lit up the
screen, even when she was at half wattage. And he felt inordinately proud of
her; she’d said exactly the right things, almost implying that she’d felt she
wasn’t good enough for

 
          
Jamal
so that she’d set him free to find someone more worthy.

 
          
A
discreet knock came on the door and Sebastian flinched slightly, engrossed with
watching how the media were braying for Aneesa’s blood as she got up and walked
away with a stiff back and heavy minders crowding around her. She’d slipped
huge black glasses on and the flashing lights of hundreds of cameras lit up the
screen.

 
          
Quelling
an almost overwhelming urge to go and find her and pluck her out of that
bloodthirsty horde, Sebastian flicked off the TV and reminded himself that she
wasn’t meant to be on his mind anymore. It had been one night, an interlude.
And it was over. His jaw was hard as he lifted up his bag and strode to the
door of the suite, not even glancing back once.

 
          
Five Weeks Later

 
          
Aneesa
was exhausted as she sank into the car that was to take her home from the film
studios. She had just finished shooting a cameo role in a big budget movie.
A cameo role that had been handed to her on a platter following the
media furore after that press conference.

 
          
To
her utter shock and abject relief, the Indian people and film lovers hadn’t
turned on her as she’d expected and feared. Her agent’s strategy had worked;
they’d made it sound as if she felt she couldn’t be with Jamal as she wasn’t
good enough for him and the public had lapped this up, putting her in the role
of a romantic martyr who was setting Jamal free to find someone else. It
appealed to every level of the Bollywood-crazy film fans
who
thrived on similar melodramatic stories in the movies.

 
          
As
the public fervour rose and they’d embraced the romantic lovelorn Aneesa, Jamal
hadn’t had a leg to stand on. In order to save face
himself
he’d had to come out and humbly thank Aneesa for running out on their wedding.
She was the only one who’d read the daggers in his expression. She was the only
one who knew the truth behind her desire for him ‘to find someone who would
appreciate him for who he really was.’

 
          
It
was ironic, but at this busiest point in her career, she was turning down work
and her agent couldn’t understand why she wasn’t signing the umpteen lucrative
contracts being pushed under her nose every day now. He thought she’d lost the
plot altogether.

 
          
Before
, she would have signed every
contract, terrified that she’d miss out on something.

 
          
Aneesa
sighed deeply. But now, something fundamental had shifted inside her and she
wasn’t the same person anymore. She wasn’t even sure if this was the life she
wanted. She didn’t like the person she’d become in the industry and didn’t want
to be seduced by that shallow world again. She’d even started to try and reach
out to old friends.

 
          
Thankfully
the driver didn’t make conversation as she watched Mumbai pass by outside in
all its teeming and hectic, colourful glory. One thing remained constant though—the
fact that she couldn’t forget about Sebastian. At night she woke aching for his
body and touch, her dreams all of him, and by day she couldn’t get his
hard-boned face and intense blue eyes out of her mind. The way he’d quirked a
lazy smile when he’d introduced
himself
.
The way he’d given her the experience of a lost wedding night.

 
          
She’d
believed that he either had to be married, and had indulged in a fling, or else
he was a serial seducer with women all over the world. And then only today she’d
nearly had a seizure when she’d seen a picture of him in the Mumbai
Times
, where he’d been named as
Sebastian Wolfe, the owner of the Mumbai Grand Wolfe Hotel. It had all slid
into place.
That
was why he’d been
observing the wedding, and that was why he’d had the best suite in the hotel.
It was also why he’d been phoned by the staff the evening she’d sought refuge
and how he’d managed to get her clothes with little more than a click of his
fingers, not to mention a chauffeur-driven car….

 
          
On
the heels of finding out his identity and surreptitiously looking for more
information about him on the Internet, she now knew for a fact that he was not
married, but
was
a serial dater of
beautiful women. Not to mention the fact that he owned a string of luxury
hotels in practically every major city, a private island in South America and
that he came from a huge sprawling family with links to a scandalous past in
Britain.

 
          
The
large family of seven brothers and one sister had dispersed from the family
home in Buckinghamshire, each one carving out their own destiny with their
chunks of the huge inherited Wolfe fortune. There was a mention of Sebastian’s
younger full brother Nathaniel who was a famous Hollywood actor but very little
else, almost as if some kind of embargo had been placed on the information.