The Billionaire's Unwanted Virgin (4 page)

"Dearest little Alice, will you
do me the honor of becoming my wife?" He winked at her in a completely
unexpected display of mischievousness so at odds with the surreal situation
they were in, that she could only stare at him in her best impression of a
goldfish.

Before she could say anything at all,
Percy's discreet throat clearing broke the silence, and Lakota straightened up
with the grace and power of a sleek panther.

"Ah just in time, Percy. Little
Alice here has just agreed to be my wife."

"I did no such thing. This is
insane!" Her protests fell on deaf ears, and she was talking to Lakota's
retreating back. He turned ‘round just before he disappeared into the house,
and gave her such a calculating look that the blood froze in her veins.

"Oh, but you will, my sweet. You
simply have no choice at all. Explain it to her, Percy, will you."

****

Alice pushed the perfectly prepared veal
parmigiana around her plate, all too aware of Lakota's brooding presence at the
other end of the long table. She fidgeted under his dark stare, and giving up
on her dinner, picked up the wine glass again. The excellent Merlot stuck to
her dry throat, and she passed on that, too.

"Could you get some water
please?" The silent young man who'd served them their dinner sprang into
action, but before he could reach for the heavy crystal goblet on the side
board, Lakota's terse command stopped him.

"Leave it, Brian. You may go now.
I'll call when we're ready for dessert. Tell cook thank you for an excellent
meal so far."

Brian smiled at Alice and made a hasty
retreat. The long room seemed to shrink all of a sudden, as though all the air
had been sucked out of it. This was ridiculous. She was marrying the man
studying her from under hooded lids, just as soon as it could be arranged. She
really had to stop hyperventilating every time he focused on her.

"Is there something wrong with
the veal or the wine, little Alice?" He got up as he spoke, picked up the
water carafe as he went, and filled an empty glass for her.

"Thank you, and there's nothing
wrong. I'm just not hungry, I guess." She avoided his gaze and picked up
the glass. His close proximity made her so nervous her hand shook, and the
water sloshed over the sides. He sighed and took the glass off her. A jolt of
static tingled up her arm at the contact of his calloused fingers, and she held
her breath when he leaned down and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.
His fingers lingered on the rapidly beating pulse for a few heart-stopping
minutes before he straightened and sat down in the chair next to her.

"What happened to the young woman
I left in the courtyard all ready to tear me down a strip, Alice? Does the
thought of being married to me scare you that much?"

She shook her head.

"It's not that. I … I'm just
worried about my mum, I guess. She's not in the best of health, and I don't
know how to tell her about …
this."

"I see. Where does she think you
are right now?"

"Oh she knows I'm here. I had to
tell her."
 
She shot him a quick
glance, and she could tell she'd surprised him. His eyes narrowed, and he sat
back in his chair, interlinking his fingers and propping one of his long
muscular legs over his knee. The fabric of his jeans grew taut against his
legs, and Alice forced herself to look away from temptation.

"So, what is the problem? Surely
from her point of view the fact that her daughter is marrying has got to be
better than just throwing her
virtue
away on what would effectively have
been a one night stand? "

The inflection he put on
virtue
made it sound as though it was an insult, and she flinched. His short laugh in
response to her reaction had her stiffen her spine.

"This is not funny." She
glared at him.

"I'm not saying it is. I just
fail to see the problem here. I am told I'm quite the catch." He winked at
her again, and all the fight went out of her. He looked like a little boy up to
mischief when he did that, his harsh features softening, and Alice found
herself wishing that he would do it more often. It made him seem human, not
this overpowering presence that held her and little Beth's future in his large
hands.

"My, you think a lot of yourself.
I'm surprised you fit through the door with an ego the size of yours."

This time his smile in response didn't
reach his eyes, and Alice suppressed a shiver of unease.

"Not particularly, but I make no
excuses for who I am or where I came from. Unlike some people I wasn't born
with a silver spoon in my mouth. My mother, may she rest in peace, worked her
fingers to the bone to keep my brother and me fed and clothed. When she died I
swore to myself that I would get the people responsible, and nothing and no one
is going to stop me. I'm good at what I do. It bought all this, and still, it's
not enough for
them.
"

The barely hidden pain and silent fury
behind those words came through loud and clear, and without thinking, Alice
leaned forward and put a hand on his forearm. The muscles tensed under her
tentative touch, but he didn't pull away. Instead he covered her hand with his
and squeezed.

"I didn't mean any disrespect to
you or your heritage, Lakota." A muscle ticked in his tightly clenched
jaw. He released her hand and stood up so abruptly that she blinked in
surprise.

He poured himself a glass of Merlot
and took a long swallow. Alice followed the movement of his Adam's apple as he
swallowed, and she bit her lip. This was crazy. Everything about him turned her
on. She should be furious. He was forcing her to marry him, to stay with him.
She was not allowed to leave the house, and Percy was in the process of
producing contracts and a prenuptial agreement a mile long, effectively tying
her to this man in a way no marriage vow alone ever could.

With those contracts came a settlement
figure so high her head still spun, and it would mean neither she, nor Mum and
Beth would ever need for anything ever again. The debts accumulated through
Beth's illness would be swept away as though they were nothing, her medical
treatments taken care of for however long she needed them. If the little girl
lived that long.

No, she would not allow herself to
entertain any other possibility than Beth's full recovery. Alice blinked the
rising tears away, uncomfortably aware that Lakota was once again watching her
every move. She forced a smile on her lips, and his tense stance relaxed a bit.
He sat back down and sighed.

She couldn't shake the feeling that he
was as unhappy about this arrangement as she was. She could only guess at the
demons that drove him. All that Percy would reveal was Lakota's need to get
married to cinch an important business deal. It seemed even in these modern
times and with a man as successful as Lakota, old values were held dear in the
corporate boardroom of Lord Langton enterprises. Lakota was the major
shareholder, yet the board would not appoint him as CEO unless he was married.

That's where she came in. A wife in
name only, giving Lakota the respectability the board craved.

In return for her several million
dollar settlement she had to be his dutiful wife in public and keep her mouth
shut. No hint of scandal could attach to Lakota's name. His brother's car
accident had attracted enough unwanted attention. And she'd signed up to twelve
months of torture. Twelve months of pretending to be his loving wife, of giving
the public appearance of wedded bliss, before she would be allowed a quiet
separation and eventual divorce.

It was so far removed from what she
had always hoped for in a marriage that her stomach churned with bile, and made
it impossible for her to relax enough to eat anything. And this unreasonable
awareness she had of Lakota as a man was so not helping.

"I still don't understand why you
have to marry," she said. "This isn't the Dark Ages, and surely a man
with your connections does not need the approval of the board. You control the
company as it is. Why go through all this just to be the public face? I just
can't get my head round it, and I have no idea how to explain this all to my
mum."

"Surely the money will soften the
blow." He ignored her probing, not that she'd really expected him to open
up to her. As far as he was concerned she was just the means to an end. A
problem caused by his brother that had to be taken care of. Had she not proved
useful to him, she had no doubt she would ever have been allowed anywhere near
him.

"You don't know my mother. To get
married for anything but love is a sacrilege as far as she is concerned. Daddy
and she were childhood sweethearts, and blissfully happy until his heart attack
last year. She hasn't been the same since he died."

Her voice broke like it always did
when she thought of Daddy, and this time she couldn't stop a tear escaping. She
angrily swiped it away. Lakota had made it very clear that he didn't appreciate
tearful breakdowns. By the time she had her emotions under control enough to
look at him, his face was an unreadable mask. Only his dark eyes showed a swirl
of emotion before he blinked, and they, too, turned to stone, making her wonder
whether she had imagined that brief flash of compassion.

Lance Lakota Kemnay and compassion in
the same thought process was an oxymoron to the extreme. P
ercy
had let her research Lakota when he'd explained the terms of the contracts he
was going to have drawn up. Whilst she'd appreciated the older man's kindness,
what she'd learned about her soon-to-be husband had given her the chills.

A mega name in the corporate world,
he'd worked himself up the ladder from the ground up. Ruthless, efficient,
ambitious to the point of obsession, and intensely private, he was a force to
be reckoned with. She hadn't been able to glean much about his private life.
His brother’s escapades dominated the gossip pages, his unfortunate accident
under mysterious circumstances only last week still the top of the news hags.

The pictures of Lakota at Zeb's
funeral had broken her heart. Taken on the very day Zeb had won her in that
auction, the pictures showed him standing to one side as he'd watched the
proceedings with such an aloof expression the papers had branded him heartless.
But Alice recognized the look of a man with such an intense grip on his
emotion, that to show any would open the floodgates. She recognized it because
she'd worn the same look over and over again over the course of the last year.
She'd had to, because if she'd fallen apart, everything would have unraveled so
much sooner. Beth and Mum needed her to be the strong one.

It was those pictures in the end that had
convinced her to take him up on his offer. If he was curt with her, it was
because he was hurting inside. She could deal with curt. If only she could say
the same for her body's unreasonable reaction to his presence.

"Love doesn't exist."

His harsh words held censure and such
disdain it settled like a vise on her chest and squeezed.

"Of course it does. How can you
say that? You loved your brother, didn't you? And your mother?"

His whole body tightened in answer,
and his lips curled into a cynical sneer. He poured himself some more wine and
stood at the French windows to look out at the vast expanse of garden.

"There are those that would call
me incapable of love. I'm the heartless monster, haven't you heard?" He
raised his wineglass in her direction in a mocking salute. "The freak who couldn't
bring himself to care enough about his own brother or the grieving
fiancée."

He drained the glass in one go and put
it down on the table so carefully, that action, too, gave Alice the chills. It
was far too controlled, too contained for this big man, to be anything but an
act.

"I'm assuming she wasn't really
engaged to your brother? I mean, he wouldn't have made that … that … bid for me
if he had been, would he?" She was aware her voice had risen to an
unnaturally high level as she pondered that possibility, and she hastily
cleared her throat. "Not that it matters much now, I suppose."

"Ah, little Alice, that would
interfere with your views on love completely, wouldn't it?" His black eyed
gaze held her captive, and she couldn't have looked away now if her life had
depended on it.

"I refuse to believe that anyone
could be so cruel, and if he did that, then he obviously didn't love her. So,
no, actually it doesn't change my views on love. It just would reiterate my generally
dim view on men though."

"Ouch. And there was me thinking
the reason you're still a virgin is that you were simply waiting for the right
man, not that you had a dim
view
of them. More like you realized you
could cash yourself a lot of money, by selling it to the highest bidder."

"How dare you?" She glared
at him, and he shrugged his shoulders, looking so impossibly gorgeous and male,
her fingers itched to throw her water glass at him. Anything to remove that
haughty, superior air and to get an honest reaction out of him.

"I dare, because it's the truth.
You did barter it to the highest bidder, did you not? Or did someone hold a gun
to your head at the time? No, I thought not. Where were your haughty ideas of
love then? Did it not occur to you that the man who purchased you, could well
be in a relationship? Married with kids? Or perhaps worse still, use you to
satisfy some sexual fetish?"