The Billionaire's Marriage Bargain (10 page)

‘But—’

‘In the same way that we met for dinner last week when you wanted to discuss your sister’s wedding with me, remember?’ he reminded, in a mocking tone.

‘Oh. Yes.’ She looked uncomfortable now.

‘Although I would like the two of us to actually eat something this time!’ he added derisively.

‘Don’t take me to Rimini’s, then,’ Kenzie told him firmly. ‘It would remind me too much of when we used to go there together when we were married,’ she added dismissively as he gave her a questioning look.

When they were married?

They were still married, damn it!

But if it meant Kenzie would relax a little, he was quite happy to fall in with her suggestion that they go somewhere else. Somewhere new, perhaps, where the restaurant didn’t remind either of them of someone else.

His mouth thinned as he thought of Kenzie’s ‘someone else’.

‘Or when you went there with Jerome, perhaps?’ he asked impatiently.

Kenzie gave an irritated shake of her head. ‘You know, Dominick—’ she sighed in despair ‘—one day you’re going to actually listen to me when I tell you I wasn’t involved with Jerome Carlton four months ago, and that I’m not involved with him now, either!’

‘Oh, I listen, Kenzie,’ Dominick assured her. ‘I just happen to know that you aren’t telling the truth!’

She could accept that the fact she had spent so much time in Jerome Carlton’s company just before she’d left Dominick, and that when she had left it had been to fly to America with the other man, could have all looked more than a little suspicious to Dominick’s accusing eyes.

But what she hadn’t accepted then, and still didn’t accept, was that Dominick hadn’t even attempted to believe her denials. He had seemed convinced from the outset that she was involved in an affair with Jerome, and nothing she said or did would convince him otherwise.

She certainly wasn’t convincing him now, she thought, seeing the cold scepticism in the hardness of his eyes.

‘Let me know about dinner, hmm?’ she prompted abruptly, really wanting—needing!—him to leave now, the strain she had been under this weekend definitely starting to catch up with her.

‘Oh, I’ll let you know, Kenzie,’ he assured her, seeing that strain in her eyes, and the paleness of her cheeks, his mouth twisting derisively as he knew just his presence was causing her this distress.

He’d barely begun!

‘OKAY, Dominick, that’s it! I refuse to let you play this game with me any longer!’

Dominick swivelled his chair slowly from his quiet contemplation of the river flowing smoothly beneath his office window, his eyes fixed in cool enquiry as he looked across the width of his huge oak desk at Kenzie’s flushed and angry face.

His gaze moved slightly sideways as he took in his secretary’s questioning presence in the open doorway. ‘Thanks, Stella,’ he said, nodding dismissively.

‘Play nice, you two,’ she murmured ruefully before backing out of the room and closing the door behind her.

Dominick’s gaze returned to Kenzie’s annoyed pink face. ‘You were saying…?’

Kenzie glared at him, wanting nothing more at that moment than to wipe that smile of self-satisfaction from his handsomely smug face. ‘I said I’ve had enough—’

‘I think I understood that bit,’ Dominick interrupted, relaxing back in his leather chair. He was dressed formally in a dark business suit, snowy white shirt and silver-coloured tie. ‘I’m simply at a loss to know what it is you’ve had enough of…?’

‘I’ve had enough of you playing with me,’ Kenzie bit out fiercely, thinking how arrogant her husband was.

‘I think I got that bit too—’

‘How dare you have Stella call me up and tell me to meet you at some restaurant called Tonio’s at eight o’clock this evening?’ she cut in impatiently, knowing that Dominick was enjoying her anger. Damn him!

‘Ah.’ Dominick nodded in consideration. ‘Is eight o’clock too early for you? Or too late, perhaps?’

Kenzie’s gaze narrowed dangerously. ‘It’s this evening that’s the problem,’ she snapped. ‘I haven’t just been sitting around all week waiting for you to snap your fingers so I can come running when you do!’

‘No?’ he questioned mildly. ‘Then what have you been doing?’

‘I work too, you know,’ Kenzie told him impatiently. ‘And for your information, I’m busy this evening!’ she added with satisfaction.

Even if she hadn’t been busy she would have told him she was after his high-handed behaviour.

Dominick eyed her silently for several long seconds, liking this outraged Kenzie much better than the controlled one of the weekend.

Not that her obvious anger made the slightest bit of difference to the outcome of this encounter; annoyed and incensed Kenzie only added to the challenge.

‘Why didn’t you just tell Stella that when she called?’ he prompted mildly. ‘Tomorrow evening will do just as well for what I have in mind.’

Although their present location wasn’t at all suitable for what he wanted, Dominick acknowledged self-derisively. Kenzie looked so fiercely beautiful, with her hair loose about her shoulders, her eyes blazing green, and that becoming flush to her cheeks. The fitted blouse and pencil-slim black trousers she wore clearly outlined the perfection of her body, and he wanted nothing more than to lay her naked on his desk and make love to her here and now until she cried out for mercy!

But that would not be according to his plan at all, he acknowledged ruefully.

Some of the anger seemed to drain out of Kenzie as her shoulders relaxed slightly. ‘And what do you have in mind?’ she asked, still eyeing him suspiciously.

He smiled as he gave a mocking shake of his head. ‘Dinner and a chat, actually,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘Unless you can think of anything else we can do to fill the evening?’

The anger snapped back into her deep emerald eyes. ‘I told you I refuse to be played with any longer, Dominick,’ she said impatiently. ‘And now that I’m here, obviously available for that chat, I can’t see any reason why we need to have dinner together at all!’

A valid point, he acknowledged—except that it meant Kenzie was taking control of this situation, and that was something he didn’t intend letting her do!

Having once allowed circumstances with Kenzie to get out of control enough to find himself marrying her, he had no intention of losing the power a second time.

‘My plans still aren’t finalized yet, Kenzie,’ he told her abruptly. ‘But I’m hoping they will be by this evening.’

Kenzie had been doing nothing all week but trying to think what his ‘plans’ could possibly be—except to know by his comments that those plans seemed to imply he intended taking her to bed at some time in the near future!

Just thinking about that the last three days had been enough to fray her already jangling nerves, until Stella’s telephone call earlier today had jettisoned her into doing something about it.

Coming to Dominick’s office and confronting him with the situation had seemed to be the answer.

Except it was getting her precisely nowhere. As it was designed not to do, she was sure.

‘Have you kept the weekend free as I asked you to do?’ he asked.

‘Ordered me to do,’ she corrected firmly. ‘But I don’t intend going anywhere with you until I know where and why.’

Dominick put his elbows on his desk, and rested his chin on his laced fingers as he contemplated her through narrowed lids. It was a gaze she easily withstood, her chin raised defiantly. ‘You don’t seem quite so willing to keep your side of the bargain now that your sister’s wedding is over,’ he finally murmured dryly.

Kenzie gave a shrug, her head tilted challengingly. ‘Maybe I’m not.’

His mouth hardened. ‘And maybe I’ll just go down and visit your parents tomorrow and explain to them what a sham the two of us being together last weekend actually was!’

Kenzie searched his face, seeing only cold implacability in his hard gaze, his mouth a thin, uncompromising line.

‘You would do that too, wouldn’t you?’ she accepted heavily as she dropped down onto the chair that faced his desk, the anger draining out of her.

She had thought about all of this long and hard since he’d left her apartment three days ago, and had decided that there was no way Dominick could force her into anything, least of all going to bed with him. Even if he had already made it clear that force wasn’t what he had in mind at all where that was concerned!

Somewhere in all her thinking she had forgotten how ruthlessly determined Dominick could be when he felt the situation warranted it. Like now…

‘You know that I would,’ Dominick confirmed as he saw that knowledge in the pallor of her cheeks. ‘Why are you really here, Kenzie?’ he prompted with interest, becoming more and more convinced that there was more to her anger than pique over Stella’s telephone call.

Kenzie gave him a startled look, like a fawn caught in the headlights of a car. ‘I already told you—’

‘I heard you,’ Dominick cut in dismissively, getting up to come round the desk to stand next to her chair, reaching out to place his hand beneath her chin and lift her face up to his. ‘Why, Kenzie?’ he repeated harshly, sure that he already knew the answer to that question, but determined to hear her say it nonetheless.

Kenzie tried to move away from the hand beneath her chin, but failed as Dominick’s fingers tightened in determination. ‘I told you, I don’t like being played with—’

‘You also told me that you’re busy this evening,’ he rasped. ‘Could I take a guess as to who you’re going to be busy with?’ he added.

She frowned at him, wondering how he had known, how he could have guessed—

‘How could you possibly know Jerome is coming to England?’ she said slowly.

Because she was sure that he did know; she could see it in his coldly glittering eyes…

It had been far from ideal timing when Jerome had telephoned her yesterday to inform her he would be arriving in England later today. He wanted to see her this evening to discuss when she would be returning to the States to fulfil her contract for Carlton Cosmetics.

Not having heard from Dominick at the time, and knowing that as he was her current employer she would obviously have to see Jerome some time while he was in England, she had reluctantly agreed. At the same time she had known that it was not a good idea for her to see Jerome at all when Dominick was back in her life, however briefly.

Knowing what Dominick believed her relationship with Jerome to be, the last thing she needed was for the two men to accidentally meet at her apartment of all places!

Stella’s phone call earlier this morning, when Kenzie had already agreed to meet Jerome this evening, couldn’t have come at a worse time!

Dominick’s lips pinched together. ‘Just a lucky guess,’ he growled, releasing her chin to move back behind his desk. ‘Do you still deny that the two of you are involved?’

‘Yes, of course I deny it!’ Kenzie snapped impatiently. ‘Jerome is coming to England on business, and dinner with me this evening is just incidental.’

Dominick looked at her from behind his hooded eyelids, wondering how anyone so beautiful, so innocently beautiful, could at the same time be so deceitful.

‘Really?’ he questioned scathingly.

‘Yes—really!’ she echoed irritably. ‘Not that I expect you to believe me.’ She shook her head. ‘You seem to take some sort of delight in not believing me!’

‘I don’t take delight in it at all, Kenzie,’ he said bitterly. ‘I had believed there was honesty between us if nothing else. Obviously I was proved wrong,’ he added harshly, very aware of just how wrong he had been.

Kenzie had lied to him, had deceived him with another man—with Jerome Carlton, a man who had taken great delight in not lying to Dominick when he had confronted the other man over the affair. Both of them had made a fool of him. And that was something Dominick simply couldn’t allow to go unchallenged.

He was so hard, so implacable, Kenzie realized achingly as she looked at Dominick’s unyielding expression. Had he always been this way? Possibly. Except in the past that hard implacability hadn’t been directed at her. But now it most assuredly was.

She sighed. ‘I don’t think discussing the past solves anything, Dominick—’

‘I agree,’ he said brusquely, straightening. ‘We should forget dinner this evening and discuss the arrangements for this weekend now.’ His tone was completely businesslike. ‘I’ll call at your apartment for you at three o’clock on Saturday afternoon. You can expect to be away until Sunday.’

Kenzie gave a pained frown. ‘But—I haven’t—exactly where are we going, Dominick?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t think you really need to know that—’

‘Oh, yes, I do,’ she assured him forcefully.

He raised his dark brows. ‘Frightened that I might hide the body where no one can find it?’ he taunted.

Kenzie stood up impatiently. ‘You’re being ridiculous now—’

‘Am I?’ He looked across at her carefully. ‘Haven’t you realized yet, Kenzie, that no one crosses me and just walks away?’

She felt a shiver of apprehension down her spine. ‘It’s been four months, Dominick—’