A Night, A Consequence, A Vow

Because she had made him wait. Not for ten minutes. Not for twenty, or even forty. But for an hour.

Only through sheer determination and the freedom to stand up, stretch his legs and pace back and forth across the polished floor now and again had he waited her out.

After a while it felt like a grim little game between them, a challenge to see who’d relent first—him or her.

Ramon won, but his victory was limited to the brief surge of satisfaction that came when she finally appeared.

‘You do not have an appointment, Mr de la Vega.’ Grey eyes, so pale they possessed an extraordinary luminescence, flashed at him from out of a heart-shaped face, while the rest of her expression appeared carefully schooled.

Pretty, he thought upon first impression, but not his type. Too reserved. Too buttoned-up and prim. He preferred his women relaxed. Uninhibited. ‘Because you would not give me one,’ he responded easily.

‘And you think I will now, just because you’re here in person?’

‘I think Mr Royce would benefit from the opportunity to meet with me,’ he said smoothly. ‘An opportunity you seem intent on denying him.’

The smile she bestowed on him then was unlike the smiles he was accustomed to receiving from women. Those smiles ranged from shy to seductive, and everything in between, but always they telegraphed some level of awareness and heat and, in many cases, a brazen invitation. But the tilt of her lips was neither warm nor inviting. It suggested sufferance, along with a hint of condescension.

‘Let me tell you what I think, Mr de la Vega,’ she said, her voice somehow sweet and icy at the same time—like a frozen dessert that gave you a painful case of brain freeze when you bit into it. ‘I think I know Mr Royce better than you do and am therefore infinitely more qualified to determine what he will—and won’t—find of benefit. I also think you underestimate my intelligence. I know who you are and I know there’s only one reason you could want to meet with Mr Royce. So let me make something clear to you right now and save you some time. The Royce is not for sale.’

Colour had bloomed on her pale cheekbones, the streaks of pink an arresting contrast to her glittering grey eyes.

Interesting, he thought. Perhaps there was a bit of fire beneath that cool facade. He held out his business card and took a step towards her but she reared back, alarm flaring in her eyes as if he had crossed some invisible, inviolable boundary. Huh. Even more interesting. ‘Ten minutes of Mr Royce’s time,’ he said. ‘That is all I am asking for.’

‘You’re wasting your time. Mr Royce is not here.’

‘Then perhaps you would call me when he is. I’ll be in London for another forty-eight hours.’

He continued to hold out his card and finally she took it, exercising great care to ensure her fingers didn’t brush against his. Then she gave him that smile again and this time it had the strangest effect, igniting a spark of irritation, followed by a rush of heat in the pit of his stomach. He imagined kissing that haughty little smile right off her pretty face. Backing her up against one of the hard marble pillars, taking her head in his hands and devouring her mouth under his until her lips softened, opened and she granted him entry.

Carefully he neutralised his expression, shocked by the direction of his thoughts. He’d never taken a woman with force. He had no aversion to boisterous sex, and he’d indulged more than one bed partner who demanded it rough and fast, but on the whole Ramon liked his lovers soft. Compliant. Willing.

She took another step back from him, the flush of pink in her cheeks growing more hectic, her eyes widening slightly. As if somehow she’d read his thoughts. ‘Mr Royce will not be available this week,’ she said, her smile replaced now by a thin, narrow-eyed stare. ‘So unless you have extraordinary lung capacity, Mr de la Vega, I suggest you don’t hold your breath.’

And she turned and walked away from him, high heels clicking on the shiny chequered marble as she made for the door across the small foyer from which she’d emerged.

She had a spectacular backside. Somehow Ramon’s brain had registered that fact, his gaze transfixed by the movement of firm, shapely muscle under her navy blue pencil skirt even as a wave of anger and frustration had crashed through him.

The sound of Xav’s desk phone ringing jolted him back to the present. He shifted in his chair.

Xav placed his hand on the receiver and looked at him. ‘Speak with Lucia on your way out,’ he said. ‘I told her to make a dinner reservation for us this evening. Get the details off her and I’ll see you at the restaurant. We’ll talk more then.’

Ah. Lucia. Yes, that was the name of his brother’s secretary. Not Lola or Lorda. Ironic that he couldn’t recall the name of the attractive brunette he’d just met, and had already considered sleeping with, yet he had no trouble summoning the name of the English woman he’d rather throttle than bed.

Her name, it seemed, was indelibly inked on his brain, along with the enticing image of her tight, rounded posterior.

Emily.

CHAPTER TWO

EMILY ROYCE SAT behind her desk and took a deep breath that somehow failed to fill her lungs. For a moment she thought she might be sick and the feeling sent a rising tide of disbelief through her.

This was not how she reacted to bad news. Emily had learnt how to handle disappointment a long time ago. She did not buckle under its weight. When bad news came, she received it with equanimity. Practicality. Calm.

And yet there was no denying the sudden stab of nausea in her belly. Or the cold, prickling sensation sweeping over her skin.

She dug her fingers into the arms of her chair, some dark corner of her mind imagining her father’s neck beneath her clenched hands.

She was going to kill him.

At the very least she was going to hunt him down, drag him out of whichever opulent hotel suite or illicit den of pleasure he was currently holed up in and yell at him until she was hoarse.

Except she wouldn’t.

Emily knew she wouldn’t.

Because no matter how many times in her life she’d imagined venting her anger, letting loose even a bit of the hurt and disappointment she’d stored up and kept tightly lidded over the years, she never had.

And this time would be no different. She would do what she always did. What she had to do. She would shove her emotions aside and pour all her energy into limiting the damage. Into doing whatever was necessary to sweep Maxwell Royce’s latest indiscretion under the rug and in so doing keep his reputation—and, by association, the reputation of The Royce—intact.

Only this time, if what she had just been told was true, Maxwell had outdone himself. He’d created a situation so dire she struggled to accept that even he could have done such a stupid, irresponsible, selfish thing.

And this would not be a mere matter of slipping a wad of cash to some unscrupulous opportunist to prevent embarrassing, compromising photos of her father from finding their way to the tabloids. Or of dipping into her personal savings and hastily rebalancing the club’s books, with the help of their accountant, to cover up Maxwell’s misappropriation of funds from one of their business accounts.

Not that any of her father’s prior indiscretions could be labelled trivial, but this...this...

Her grandfather would turn in his grave. As would his father, and his father before him.

Edward Royce, Emily’s great-great-grandfather and a wealthy, respected pillar of British high society at the turn of the twentieth century, had founded the club on which he’d bestowed his name in 1904. Since then ownership of the prestigious establishment had been proudly passed down through three generations of Royces, all male heirs—until Emily. More than a hundred years later, The Royce remained a traditional gentlemen’s club and one of western Europe’s last great bastions of male exclusivity and chauvinism. A society of powerful, influential men who between them controlled a good portion of the world’s major industries, not forgetting those who presided over governments and ruled their own countries and principalities.

On occasion Emily amused herself with thoughts of how the majority of their members would react to learning that fifty per cent of their precious club was now owned by a woman.

She imagined there’d be deep rumblings of discontent and much sputtering of cigar smoke and Scotch beneath the lighted chandeliers in the Great Salon. But she also knew her grandfather had acted with calculated intent when he’d bequeathed half of the club’s ownership to his only grandchild. Gordon Royce had known his errant son could not be trusted with sole proprietorship. Rewriting his will to leave fifty per cent of the shares to Emily—the granddaughter he’d wished had been born a boy—had surely been an undesirable but necessary course of action in Gordon’s mind.

Not that her grandfather had been able to overcome his misogynistic tendencies altogether. He’d gone to significant lengths to ensure the Royce name would live on through a male heir.

It was terribly ironic—that her grandfather should manipulate her life from beyond the grave when he’d shown scarcely a flicker of interest in her while he’d been alive.

Emily closed her eyes a moment. Her mind was wandering. She needed to harness her thoughts, to wrestle her brain around the problem and come up with a solution. She needed time to think. Alone. Without the sinister presence of the man who sat in the upholstered chair on the other side of her desk.

She stood slowly, her features composed, her legs steady only through sheer force of will.

‘I think you should leave now, Mr Skinner.’

She spoke with all the authority she could muster but her cool directive failed to have any visible impact on her visitor.

His head tilted to the side, his thin lips stretching into a humourless smile that sent an icy ripple down Emily’s spine. ‘That’s a pity,’ he said. ‘I was just starting to enjoy our conversation.’

Emily didn’t like the way he looked at her. Carl Skinner—one of London’s most notorious loan sharks—looked old enough to be her father, yet there was nothing paternal in the way his gaze crawled over her body. She fisted her hands by her sides. Her pinstriped skirt and white silk blouse were smart and conservative and not the least bit revealing. There was nothing for him to feast his filthy eyes on, she assured herself—except maybe for the angry colour rising in her cheeks.

‘Our conversation is over.’ She gestured towards the single sheet of paper he’d produced with a smug flourish when she’d questioned the veracity of his claim. It lay upon her desk now, the signature scrawled at the foot of the agreement unmistakably her father’s. ‘I’ll be seeking a legal opinion on this.’

‘You can have a hundred lawyers look over it, sweetheart.’

Emily tried not to flinch at the endearment.

‘It was legally binding when Royce signed it seven days ago,’ he continued. ‘And it’ll be legally binding in another seven days when I collect on the debt.’ He leaned back, his gaze roving around the interior of her small but beautifully appointed office, with its view overlooking one of Mayfair’s most elegant streets, before landing back on her. ‘You know, I’ve always fancied myself as a member of one of these clubs.’

Emily almost snorted. The idea of this man rubbing shoulders with princes and presidents was ludicrous, but she endeavoured to keep the thought from showing on her face. Skinner’s business suit and neatly cropped hair might afford him a civilised veneer but she sensed the danger emanating from him. Insulting this man would be far from wise.

‘Mr Royce’s debt will be settled in full by the end of the week.’ She injected her voice with a confidence she prayed wasn’t misplaced. If her father’s gambling debt wasn’t settled within the week, the alternative—Carl Skinner getting his hands on a fifty per cent shareholding of The Royce—was an outcome far too horrendous to contemplate. She would not let it happen.

‘You sound very certain about that, little lady.’

‘I am.’

Skinner’s lips pursed. ‘You understand that assurance would carry more weight if I heard it straight from your boss?’

‘My boss is not here,’ she reminded him, instinct urging her now—as it had twenty minutes earlier when he’d turned up without an appointment demanding to see her father—not to reveal her surname. She’d introduced herself simply as Emily, Administration Manager and Mr Royce’s assistant, and agreed to meet with Skinner in Maxwell’s absence only because instinct urged her to hear what he had to say.

She coerced her cheek muscles to move, pulling the corners of her mouth into a rigid smile. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for my assurance, Mr Skinner,’ she said, walking around her desk as she continued to speak. ‘Thank you for your visit. I believe we have nothing more to discuss at this point. I do have another appointment,’ she lied, ‘so if you don’t mind...’

Skinner rose and stepped in front of her and Emily’s voice died, her vocal cords paralysed by the violent lunge of her heart into her throat. Her legs froze. He was standing in her space, two feet at most between them, and she wasn’t used to such close physical proximity with another person. Especially someone she didn’t know and had zero desire to. ‘Mr Skinner—’

‘Carl,’ he said, and took a step towards her.

She stepped backwards, glancing to the right of his thick-set frame to her closed office door. Her palms grew clammy. Why hadn’t she thought to leave it open?

His smile returned, the narrow slant of his lips ten times more unsettling than before. ‘There’s no need to stand on ceremony, Emily. This time next week I could be your boss...’

Her eyes widened.

‘And I’m not big on formality. I prefer my working relationships to be a little more...relaxed.’

Nausea bloomed anew and she fought the instinct to recoil. She tried to tell herself his sleazy innuendo didn’t intimidate her, but the truth was she felt horribly unnerved. She inhabited a world dominated by men but she wasn’t familiar with this kind of unsolicited attention. For the most part she was used to being invisible. Unseen.

She straightened her shoulders. ‘Let me offer you one more assurance, Mr Skinner,’ she said, her heart hammering even as common sense told her he couldn’t pose any physical threat to her person. Her admin assistant, Marsha, unless she’d gone for her morning tea break, would be sitting at her desk right outside Emily’s door, and Security was no further away than one push of a pre-programmed button on her desk phone. ‘Not only will you never be my boss,’ she said, a sliver of disdain working its way into her voice now, ‘But you will never, so long as I have any say in the matter, set foot on these premises again.’

No sooner had the final word leapt off Emily’s tongue than she knew she had made a grave mistake.

Skinner’s expression had turned thunderous.

Terrifyingly thunderous.

And he moved so fast—looming over her, his big hands clamping onto her waist like concrete mitts as he pinned her against her desk—that she had no time to react.

An onslaught of fragmented impressions assailed her: the sight of Skinner’s lips peeling back from his teeth; the dampness of his breath on her skin as he thrust his face too close to hers; the overpowering reek of his aftershave which made the lining of her nose sting.

Panic flared, driving the beginnings of a scream up her throat, but she gripped the edge of her desk behind her and smothered the sound before it could emerge. ‘Take your hands off me,’ she hissed. ‘Or I will shout for Security and an entire team of men will be here in less than ten seconds.’

For a moment his grip tightened, his fingers biting painfully into her sides. Then, abruptly, he released her and stepped away, his sudden retreat setting off a wave of relief so powerful her legs threatened to buckle. He ran a hand over his hair and adjusted the knot of his tie—as if smoothing his appearance would somehow make him appear less brutish.

‘Seven days, little lady.’ His voice was gruff. Menacing. ‘And then I collect.’ He jutted his chin in the direction of the paper on her desk. ‘That’s a copy, of course. You can assure your lawyer that I have the original tucked away safe and sound.’ He sent her a hard, chilling smile then showed himself out, leaving her office door standing open in the wake of his exit.

Emily sagged against her desk, just as Marsha rushed in.

‘My God!’ the younger woman exclaimed. ‘What on earth happened in here? The look on that man’s face—’ She stopped, her eyes growing rounder as they took in Emily’s slumped posture and the pallor she knew without the aid of a mirror had stripped the colour from her cheeks. ‘Emily...?’

Rousing herself, she pointed a trembling finger over Marsha’s shoulder. ‘Call Security. Tell them to make absolutely certain that man leaves the building.’

Marsha hurried back out and Emily moved on shaky legs to the other side of her desk. She picked up her phone, pulled in a fortifying breath and dialled her father’s mobile number.

The call went straight to voice mail.

Surprise...not.

She slammed the phone back down, frustration, fury and a host of other feelings she didn’t want to acknowledge building with hot, bitter force inside her.

Her eyes prickled and the threat of tears was as unfamiliar and unwelcome as the nausea had been.

What had Maxwell done?

Her lips trembled and she pressed them together, closed her eyes and pushed the heels of her hands against her lids.

She knew what he had done.

He’d borrowed a monstrous sum of money to enter a high-stakes poker game and put up his fifty per cent shareholding of The Royce as collateral.

And then he had lost. Spectacularly.

She wanted to scream.

How could he? How could he?

No wonder he’d been incommunicado this last week. He was hiding, the coward. Leaving Emily to clean up the mess, like he always did.

Bitterness welled up inside her.

Why shouldn’t he? She was his fixer, after all. The person who made things go away. Who kept his image, and by extension the image of The Royce, as pristine and stain-free as possible. Oh, yes. Her father might be a selfish, irresponsible man but he wasn’t stupid.

He’d finally discovered a use for the daughter he’d ignored for most of her life.

Emily dropped into her chair.

It wasn’t unusual for Maxwell to disappear. As a child she’d grown to accept his fleeting, infrequent appearances in her life, sensing from a young age that she made him uncomfortable even though she hadn’t understood why. As an adult she’d hoped maturity and a shared interest in The Royce’s future would give them common ground—a foundation upon which to forge a relationship—but within the first year after her grandfather’s death it’d become clear her hopes were misguided. The loss of his father had not changed Maxwell one bit. If anything he’d become more remote. More unpredictable. More absent.

It was Emily who had run the club during his absences, assuming more and more of the management responsibilities in recent years. Oh, Maxwell would breeze in when the mood took him, but he rarely stayed at his desk for more than a few token minutes. Why stare at spreadsheets and have tedious discussions about staffing issues and running costs when he could be circulating in the restaurant or the Great Salon, pressing the flesh of their members and employing his innate silver-tongued charm?

Emily didn’t care that her job title didn’t reflect the true extent of her responsibilities. Didn’t care that for seven years her part-ownership of the club had remained, by mutual agreement with her father, a well-guarded secret. She knew The Royce’s membership wasn’t ready for such a revelation. The club was steeped in tradition and history, mired in values that were steadfastly old-fashioned. Its members didn’t object to female employees, but the idea of accepting women as equals within their hallowed halls remained anathema to most.

Emily had a vision for the club’s future, one that was far more evolved and liberal, but changes had to be implemented gradually. Anything fundamental, such as opening their doors to women... Well, those kinds of changes would happen only when the time was right.

Or they wouldn’t happen at all.

Not if Carl Skinner got his grubby hands on her father’s share of The Royce. There’d be no controlling Skinner, no keeping the outcome under wraps. It would be an unmitigated scandal, ruinous to the club’s image. There’d be a mass exodus of members to rival establishments. In short, there would be no club. Not one she’d want to be associated with, at any rate. Skinner would turn it into a cheap, distasteful imitation.

Oh, Lord.

This was exactly why her grandfather had bequeathed half of the club to Emily. To keep his son from destroying the family legacy.

And now it was happening.

Under her watch.

She reached for the phone again, imagining Gordon Royce’s coffin rocking violently in the ground now.

Her first call, to the bank, told her what she already knew—they were at the limit of their debt facility. Raising cash via a bank loan wasn’t an option. Her second call, to The Royce’s corporate lawyer, left her feeling even worse.

‘I’m sorry, Emily. The contract with Mr Skinner is valid,’ Ray Carter told her after she’d emailed a scanned copy to him. ‘You could contest it, but unless we can prove that Maxwell was of unsound mind when he executed the agreement there’s no legally justifiable reason to nullify the contract.’

‘Is there nothing we can do?’

‘Pay Mr Skinner what he’s owed,’ he said bluntly.

‘We don’t have the money.’

‘Then find an investor.’

Emily’s heart stopped. ‘Dilute the club’s equity?’

‘Or convince your father to sell his shares and retain your fifty per cent. One or the other. But whatever you do, do it fast.’

Emily hung up the phone and sat for a long moment, too shell-shocked to move. Too speechless to utter more than a weak, distracted word of thanks when Marsha came in, placed a cup of tea in front of her and said she’d be right outside the office if Emily needed to talk.

Alone again, she absentmindedly fingered the smooth surface of the pearl that hung from a silver chain around her neck.

An investor.

Slowly the idea turned over in her mind. There had to be members of The Royce who would be interested in owning a piece of their beloved club. She could put some feelers out, make a few discreet enquiries... But the delicacy required for such approaches and any ensuing negotiations would take time—and time was something she didn’t have.

Whatever you do, do it fast.

Ray’s warning pounded through her head.

Abruptly, she swivelled her chair, dragged open the middle drawer of her desk and rummaged through an assortment of notepads and stationery until her fingers touched on the item she was seeking. She held her breath for a moment, then shoved the drawer closed and slapped the business card on her desk.

She glared at the name emblazoned in big, black letters across the card’s white background, as bold as the man himself.

Ramon de la Vega.

A bloom of inexplicable heat crept beneath the collar of her blouse. She’d intended to throw the card away as soon as she returned to her office after her brief encounter with the man, but at the last second she’d changed her mind and tossed the card into a drawer.

He had unsettled her.

She didn’t like to admit it, but he had.

Oh, she knew his type well enough. He was a charmer, endowed with good looks and a smooth tongue just like her father, except she had to concede that ‘good looks’ was a rather feeble description of Ramon de la Vega’s God-given assets.

The man was gorgeous. Tall and dark. Golden-skinned. And he oozed confidence and vitality, the kind that shimmered around some people like a magnetic force field and pulled others in.