The Billionaire's Unwanted Virgin (20 page)

"At the very least you could do
me the common courtesy to not flaunt your bit on the side in front of me.

"You
what?"
He'd
shouted that question at her and looked about ready to murder her. A small part
of her had rejoiced at his outrage, for surely that meant he cared. It meant he
hadn't done any of the things that devil sitting on her shoulder, whispering in
her ear, said he had done. But the other part of her had been terrified as he'd
advanced on her with white knuckled fists, and she'd flinched when he'd raised
his hand. Why on earth she had done that she'd had no idea, other than it had
been too reminiscent of the many arguments she'd witnessed Mary having with her
so called boyfriend. Arguments that had ended up with her getting in front of
her sister, taking the blows intended for her—blows that had to be covered by
make up to not raise her parents’ suspicions—blows that had meant she'd kept
quiet when she should have told of Mary and inevitably would have spared her
sister so much. Of course that would also have meant they wouldn't have had
Beth and she never would have met Lakota. Swings and fucking roundabouts. Alice
gave a short laugh in the light of day, but it hadn't been funny last night.

Lakota had shut down utterly and
completely at her reaction, and her heart had bled bitter tears at the tight
set of his shoulders, and the awfully controlled way he'd been speaking to her.

"You really think that little of
me, Alice? What, just because I'm half Sioux and grew up in a slum, I'm now a
wife beating shit of crap as well as an adulterer, am I?"

"I didn't mean…"

"Spare me, Alice. Your face says
it all. For the record, I didn't touch Selina. I wouldn't go near the likes of
her with a fucking barge pole if you paid me for it. She is a means to an end.
Just like you, as it turns out, my dear wife. Thank you for reminding me of
that fact. I'll sleep on the couch tonight, so you can stop looking at me as
though I'm going to jump you."

He'd slammed the bedroom door shut,
and Alice had burst into tears. She'd cried herself to sleep, in fact,
wondering when it had all gone so terribly wrong.

From the amount of swearing that was
going on out on that terrace, things were about to go from bad to worse. Lakota
was now on the phone to Percy it seemed, muttering about injunctions and breach
of contract and lord only knew what else. The crying induced headache she'd
woken up with turned into a full force brass band with clanging cymbals in her
head, and Alice sought the oblivion of a hot shower. That would surely give her
some temporary peace.

****

"We can sort this, but, Sir, be
careful." Percy's nasal twang down the phone was the voice of calm reason
in his ear, and some of the red mist floating in front of Lakota's eyes cleared.
"I can force the papers to print a retraction, but that may cause more
waves than if we simply went with it. I've already been in touch with your
father. In fact he phoned
me
to offer his help. He's as outraged as you
are at all of his private affairs being tossed all out into the open like that,
but he did say in a way he's glad they have been. Lord Langton said and I
quote, 'It's about time I acknowledged my son, and propriety be damned.'"

Lakota almost dropped the phone.

"He said what?"

"Yes, I was surprised, too. He
also said something else, and I agree with him completely here. Whoever took
this story to the papers wanted to create a rift between you and Alice, and
stop this merger from happening. Now, I have my own ideas as to whom that
person may be, but I do not believe for one minute that your wife is involved
in any of this, regardless of what the papers are insinuating their source is.
It doesn't make any sense for her to do so, for one, and if I may so, would
seem completely out of character for her."

Lakota closed his eyes and forced
himself to keep on breathing. Fuck it, this hurt.

"Until last night I would have
agreed with you there, Percy. Now, I am not so sure."

"Did something happen I need to
be aware of, Sir?" Percy sounded worried for the first time, and Lakota
grimaced.

"No, I have just been reminded
that women are not be trusted, that's all. Now that Beth is on the road to
recovery and her trial participation is secured, it seems my
wife
doesn't
need me anymore and is showing her true colors.
 
Just tell me that this is grounds for an immediate divorce and the bitch
cannot get her greedy mitts into any of my assets."

The strangled cough behind him
alerted him to the fact that the object of their discussion had entered the
terrace. But he'd known that anyhow. His cock had responded to her approaching
scent with alarming speed. It seemed his body wasn't listening to his brain one
iota and still wanted her with an urgency that took his breath away. Percy's
answer did little to reassure him.

"Yes, Sir, it is, and of course
she cannot, but, Sir, are you sure you want this?"

"Just get it done, Percy,
whatever it takes."

He hung up and turned round slowly.
Alice was back in her usual jeans, her still wet hair tumbling round her
shoulders, not a scrap of make up on her face, and she looked so young, and
vulnerable, and above all shocked, that he was almost fooled again—almost.

He hardened his heart against the
pain in her eyes, and threw one of the newspapers in her direction.

It fell open in front of her feet,
the headline screaming her guilt.

Inside the scam marriage of the
decade -Read the truth behind this unlikely Cinderella story -Lord Langton's
bastard son to take over- Scandal rocks the Aristocracy – Kinky goings on in
one of England's oldest families

She glanced at them, and what little
color she'd had in her cheeks fled.

"I don't understand. What
happened?"

"You tell me, dear wife."
He shoved his fists into the pockets of his jeans to stop himself from reaching
out to her when she swayed. He would not be pulled into her histrionics; he
would not.
           

"You think I did this?" Her
eyes grew wide, and she put her hand over her mouth as if to stop herself from
screaming, when he just continued to stare at her. "Oh my God, you do,
don't you? You actually think I could do that to you—to us?"

He shrugged his shoulders, even
though the first tiny seeds of doubt started to creep into his consciousness.
Why did she not get angry and protest her innocence? Or confessed her guilt and
begged for his forgiveness? Why did she just stand there and look at him as
though he'd just strangled ten kittens with his bare hands?

Something was off here, and it made
him furious and threw him off kilter.

"Didn't you?"

She closed her eyes and drew her
shoulders back, and when she opened them again her usually so passionate
emerald gaze had turned to icy flint. She twisted her wedding and engagement
rings off her finger and stepped up to the table. Instead of flinging them at
him, she placed them on the table right inside the steaming breakfast dishes
that neither one of them would eat today.

"If you really think me capable
of that, then I have nothing more to say to you. Let Percy do what he will.
I'll expect he'll have us divorced in record time. I'll have whatever is left
of the money I've earned transferred back to you. I don't want it."

There was a slight hitch in her voice
when she finally looked up at him.

"I don't want anything of yours,
and I don't ever want to see you again, Lance."

With all the dignity ingrained in his
little Alice, she turned around and walked out of his life. Only she wasn't his
little Alice anymore, never had been, had she? So why then did it feel as
though part of him walked out with her?

****

Walking away from Lakota that morning
had been one of the hardest things Alice had ever done. How she'd made it out
of there she would never know. She had bumped into a worried looking Forrester
loitering with intent outside their suite, and he'd taken one look at her and
had ushered her out of The Dorchester via the staff exits.

"There is a horde of reporters
waiting outside that I am sure you do not wish to deal with," he'd said.

She'd shaken her head, and Forrester
had had her seated in a nondescript black cab in no time at all. "Take
good care of yourself, Mrs. Kemnay, and I hope to see you back home here soon,
where you belong."

Alice had cried then and angrily
swiped the hateful tears away.

"I never belonged here,
Forrester. No offence to you, or the hotel, it's been amazing, but this is not
my home. It never has been. Hotels are stop offs, not a place to live. That's
the whole point."

He'd smiled at her, shut the door,
and her rotund and jovial cab driver had whisked her home to her mum's place.
Here, too, she'd had to run the gauntlet of the reporters, and had collapsed
into her mother's worried arms the minute she had slammed the front door shut
on the reporters clambering for her story.

Six weeks later she was staring at
her Decree Nisi. It had arrived by courier this morning, and even though she'd
known it was coming, had insisted on in fact, despite Percy's pleas to think
about her options and to slow the process down, it was still a shock. To know
she would once again just be Miss Wanderlund in just six short weeks was a
sobering thought indeed. It would be as though the last few months had never
existed.

A screech from the garden made her
look up, and she smiled through her tears. Sara had come by for a visit and
moral support, and she was pushing Beth high on the swing. There was color in
her cheeks, and to all intents and purposes Beth looked like any other six year
old little girl. The treatment was still on-going, and Beth had responded to it
beautifully. Mr. Jamison had only reassured them all last week that Beth was
all set to be one of the major success stories of the trial. A huge weight had
been lifted off Alice's shoulders, and she had pledged the last of Lakota's
money to Great Ormond Street Hospital later that day.

She'd meant what she'd said to
Lakota, she didn’t want his money, but she wasn't going to cut her nose off to
spite her face, so she had hung onto the money needed for Beth's trial only to
find out that it had all been taken care of. In fact there was enough money in
trust for Beth to go through several more rounds of treatment.

When she'd queried this with Percy,
he'd assured her that the money was hers as per the prenuptial agreement. It
sure explained why every time she had tried to transfer the funds in her
personal account back to Lakota, the transaction had failed, and the money had
been returned to her. It had driven her round the proverbial twist.

"I don't want his fucking money,
Percy. Even though I have
earned
it I guess. I'd rather give away than
keep a penny of his."

Percy had sighed, and in her mind's
eye she could see him adjusting his glasses and rolling his eyes. "That is
of course your prerogative, Alice."

It was beyond ironic that the first
huge donation she had made, had garnered her an invitation to the charity ball.
She hadn't gone, of course, because she would have run into Lakota. As one of
the major benefactors of the charity he attended with his ever present arm
candy, Selina.

Alice's mum had tried to hide the
pictures from her, but it had been useless. Lakota and Selina were the paper's
current obsession. It meant the reporters had stopped lying in wait for Alice
at every turn, at least. The discarded wife was old news, not when Lord Langton
had officially acknowledged Lakota as his son and heir, and the former bad boy
was now admitted into the finest drawing rooms in London. And Lady Selina
Horsley was the perfect foil to his ….

"Are you all right, Alice?"
Her mum's hand closed over hers, and she gently tucked the offending piece of
paper out of Alice's clenched fist. She hadn't even been aware that she had crunched
it into a ball in her distress.

"So he's really going through
with it?"

"Of course he is, Mum. No doubt
the minute the ink is dry on the decree absolute, Selina will be dragging him
down the aisle. He will be the perfect gentleman then, won't he? Son of a Lord
of the realm and married to a Lady. Halleflippingjula." Her voice broke,
and she couldn't continue. It hurt too fucking much. He'd ripped her heart
clean out with his actions, so how could something that wasn't there anymore
hurt so damn much?

Alice leaned into the comforting hand
placed on her shoulder.

"It's not too late, you know, if
you decide to fight for him."

"Why on earth would I want to do
that? He's made his choice, and it isn't me. Let him lie in his bed with his
cold hearted bitch and see if I care."

However, the problem was that she did
care—far too damn much. When all was said and done she missed him. His warmth,
his scent, and the way he always used to pull her back to him when she rolled
away in the middle of the night. She missed his laughter, his teasing, and his
hands on her body, the deliciously wicked things they had experienced together.
They said time was a great healer, but Alice couldn’t see herself ever caring
for another man in the way she did for Lakota. She had fallen utterly and
irrevocably in love with her own Sioux warrior, and if she never laid eyes on
him again, he would be forever imprinted into the very fabric of her soul.