Deal With The Devil: Secrets of a Ruthless Tycoon / The Most Expensive Lie of All / The Magnate's Manifesto

‘I’m amazed you rushed into action like that when she could have just gone to the local hospital.’ She reached out tentatively to touch his arm and he vaulted upright and prowled through the shiny, expensive waiting room of which they were the only occupants.

‘Brianna...’ He paused to stare down at her and all of a sudden there was no justification whatsoever for any of the lies he had told. It didn’t matter whether they had been told in good faith, whether the consequences had been unforeseen. Nor did the rights and wrongs of sleeping with the girl, now staring up at him, come into play.

‘It’s late. You need to get some rest. But more importantly we have to talk...’

‘Yes.’ Why was she so reluctant to hear what he had to say? Where was that gut reaction coming from?

‘I’m going to take you back to my place.’

‘I beg your pardon? You still have a place in London? What place? I thought you might have sold that—you know?—to do your travelling.’

Leo shook his head and raked his fingers through his dishevelled hair. ‘I think when we get there,’ he said on a heavy sigh, ‘some of the questions you’re asking yourself might begin to fall into place.

CHAPTER SEVEN

BRIANNA’S FIRST SHOCK was when they emerged from the hospital and Leo immediately made a call on his mobile which resulted, five minutes later, in the appearance of a top-of-the range black Range Rover. It paused and he opened the back door for her and stood aside to allow her to slide into the luxurious leather seat.

Suddenly she was seeing him in a whole new light. He was still wearing the jeans in which he had travelled, a long-sleeved jumper and one of the old coats which he had found in a cupboard at the back of the pub and which he had adopted because it was well lined. But even with this casual clothing he now seemed a different person. He was no longer the outdoor guy with that slow, sexy smile that dragged on her senses. There was a harshness to his face that she was picking up for the first time and it sent a shiver of apprehension racing up and down her spine.

The silence stretched on and on as the car slowly pulled away from the kerb and began heading into central London.

When she looked over to him, it was to quail inwardly at the sight of the forbidding cast of his features, so she pretended to be absorbed in the monotonous, crowded London landscape of pavements and buildings.

It was very late but, whereas in Ireland the night sky would be dense and black at this hour and the countryside barely visible, here the streetlights illuminated everything. And there were people around: little groups shivering on the pavements, the odd business man in a suit and, the further towards the centre of London the car went, the busier the streets were.

Where one earth were they going? So he had a house in London. Why had he never mentioned that? Her mind scrabbled frantically to come up with some logical reason why he might have kept it a secret. Perhaps he was in the process of selling it. Everyone knew that it could take for ever to sell a property and, if he was selling it, then maybe he thought that there was no point mentioning it at all. But when she glanced surreptitiously at his forbidding profile, all the excuses she tried to formulate in her head withered and died.

‘Where are we going? I know you said your house, but where exactly is that?’

Leo shifted and angled his body so that he was facing her. Hell, this was a total mess; he could only lay one-hundred per cent of the blame for that at his own door. He had behaved like a stupid fool and now he was about to be stuck handling the fallout.

Brianna was a simple country girl. He had known that the second he had seen her. She might have had the grit and courage to single-handedly run a pub, but emotionally she was a baby, despite her heartbreak. She was just the sort of woman he should have steered clear from, yet had he? No. He had found that curious blend of street-wise savvy and trusting naivety irresistible. He had wanted her and so he had taken her. Of course, she had jumped in to the relationship eyes wide open, yet he couldn’t help but feel that the blame still lay entirely on his shoulders. He had been arrogant and selfish and those qualities, neither of which had caused him a moment’s concern in the past, now disgusted him.

He harked back to his conversation with Bridget. Before it had turned to the illuminating matter of her past, she had wanted to talk to him about Brianna, had opened the subject by letting on that Brianna hadn’t been involved with anyone since her loser boyfriend from university had dumped her. Leo now followed the path of that conversation which had never got off the starting blocks as it turned out.

Had she been on the brink of confiding just how deeply Brianna was involved with him?

Of course she had been! Why kid himself? He might have laid down his ground rules and told her that he was not in the market for involvement, but then he had proceeded to demonstrate quite the opposite in a hundred and one ways. He couldn’t quite figure out how this had happened, but it had, and the time had come to set the matter straight.

‘Knightsbridge,’ he told her, already disliking himself for the explanation he would be forced to give. Less than twenty-four hours ago they had been making love, fast, furious love, her legs wrapped around him, as primitive and driven as two wild animals in heat. The memory of it threatened to sideswipe him and, totally inexplicably, he felt himself harden, felt his erection push painfully against his zip so that he had to shift a little to alleviate the ache.

‘Knightsbridge. Knightsbridge as in Harrods, Knightsbridge?’ The last time Brianna had been to London had been three years ago, and before that when she had been going out with Daniel. She would have had to be living on another planet not to know that Knightsbridge was one of the most expensive parts of London, if not the most expensive.

‘That’s right.’ On cue, the gleaming glass building in which his duplex apartment was located rose upwards, arrogantly demanding notice, not that anyone could fail to pay attention and salute its magnificence.

He nodded towards it, a slight inclination of his head, and Brianna, following his eyes, gasped in shock.

‘My apartment’s there,’ he told her and he watched as the colour drained away from her face and her eyes widened to huge, green saucers.

Before she could think of anything to say, the chauffeur-driven Range Rover was pulling smoothly up in front of the building and she was being ushered out of the car, as limp as a rag doll.

She barely noticed the whoosh of the lift as it carried them upwards. Nor did she take in any of her surroundings until she was finally standing in his apartment, a massive, sprawling testimony to the very best money could buy.

With her back pressed to the door, she watched as he switched on lights with a remote control and dropped blinds with another remote before turning to her with his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans.

They stared at each other in silence and he finally said, the first to turn away, ‘So this is where I live. There are five bedrooms. It’s late; you can hit the sack now in one of them, or we can talk’

‘You actually own this place?’ Her gaze roamed from the slate flooring in the expansive hall to the white walls, the dark wood that replaced the slate and the edge of a massive canvas she could glimpse in what she assumed would be another grand space—maybe his living room.

‘I own it.’ He strolled through into the living area, which had been signposted by that glimpse of wall art. Following behind him, Brianna saw that it was a massive piece of abstract art and that there were several others on the walls. They provided the only glimpse of colour against a palette that was uniformly white: white walls, white rug against the dark wooden floor, white leather furniture.

‘I thought you were broke.’ Brianna dubiously eyed the chair to which she was being directed. She yawned and he instantly told her that she should get some rest.

‘I’d prefer to find out what’s going on.’

‘In which case, you might need a drink.’ He strolled towards a cabinet and she looked around her, only to refocus as he thrust a glass with some amber liquid into her hand.

He sat down next to her and leaned forward, cradling his drink while he took in her flushed face. He noticed that she couldn’t meet his eyes and he had to steel himself against a wave of sickening emotion.

‘We should never have slept together,’ he delivered abruptly and Brianna’s eyes shot to his.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean...’ He swirled his drink round and then swallowed a long mouthful. Never had he needed a swig of alcohol more. ‘When I arrived in Ballybay, it was not my intention to get involved with anyone. It was something that just seemed to happen, but it could have and should have been prevented. I blame myself entirely for that, Brianna.’

Hurt lanced through Brianna. Was this the same guy about whom she had been nurturing silly, girlish daydreams involving an improbable future? One where he stuck his hat on the door and decided to stay put, so that they could explore what they had? She felt her colour rise as mortification kicked in with a vengeance.

‘And why is that?’

‘Because I knew you for what you were, despite what you said. You told me that you were tough, that you weren’t looking for anything committed, that you wanted nothing more from me than sex, pure and simple. I chose to believe you because I was attracted to you. I chose to ignore the voice of reason telling me that you weren’t half as tough as you claimed to be.’ Even now—and he could see her stiffening as she absorbed what he was saying—there was still a softness to her mouth that belied anything hard.

He found that he just couldn’t remain sitting next to her. He couldn’t feel the warmth she was radiating without all his thoughts going into a tailspin.

‘I’m pretty tough, Leo. I’ve been on my own for a long time and I’ve managed fine.’

Leo prowled through the room, barely taking in the exquisite, breathtakingly expensive minimalist décor, and not paying a scrap of attention to the Serpentine glittering hundreds of metres in the distance, a black, broad stripe beyond the bank of trees.

‘You’ve taken over your father’s pub,’ he said heavily, finishing the rest of his drink in one long gulp and dumping the glass on the low, squat table between the sofa and the chairs. It was of beaten metal and had cost the earth. ‘You know how to handle hard work, but that’s not what I’m talking about and we both know that. I told you from the start that I was just passing through and that hasn’t changed. Not for me. I’m...I’m sorry.’

‘I understood the rules, Leo.’ Her cheeks were stinging and her hands didn’t want to keep still. She had to grip the glass tightly to stop them from shaking. ‘I just don’t get...’ she waved her hand to encompass the room in which they were sitting, with its floor-to-ceiling glass windows, its expensive abstract art and weirdly soulless, uncomfortable furniture ‘...all of this. What sort of job did you have before?’

Leo sighed and rubbed his eyes. It was late to begin this conversation. It didn’t feel like the right time, but then what would be the right time? In the morning? The following afternoon? A not-so-distant point in the future? There was no right time.

‘No past tense, Brianna.’

‘Sorry?’

‘There’s no past tense. I never gave my job up.’ He laughed mirthlessly at the notion of any such thing ever happening. He was defined by his work, always had been. Apart from the past few weeks, when he had played truant for the first time in his life.

‘You never gave your job up...but...?’

‘I run a very large and very complex network of companies, Brianna. I’m the boss. I own them. My employees report to me. That’s why I can afford all of this, as well as a house in the Caribbean, an apartment in New York and another in Hong Kong. Have another sip of that drink. It’ll steady your nerves. It’s a lot to take in, and I’m sorry about that, but like I said I never anticipated getting in so deep...I never thought that I would have to sit here and have this conversation with you, or anyone else, for that matter.’

Brianna took a swig of the brandy he had poured for her and felt it burn her throat. She had a thousand angry questions running through her head but they were all silenced by the one, very big realisation—he had lied to her. She didn’t know why, and she wasn’t even sure that it mattered, because nothing could change the simple truth that he had lied. She felt numb just thinking about it.

‘So you’re not a writer.’

‘Brianna, I’m sorry. No. The last time I did any kind of creative writing was when I was in school, and even then it had never been one of my stronger subjects.’ She wasn’t crying and somehow that made it all the harder. He had fired a lot of people in his time, had told aspiring employees that their aspirations were misplaced, but nothing had prepared him for what he was feeling now.

‘Right.’

Unable to keep still, he sprang to his feet and began pacing the room. His thoughts veered irrationally, comparing the cold, elegant beauty of his sitting room and the warm, untidy cosiness of the tiny lounge at the back of her pub, and he was instantly angry with himself for allowing that small loss of self-control.

He had had numerous girlfriends in the past. He had always told them that commitment wasn’t an option and, although quite a few had made the mistake of getting it into their heads that he might have been lying, he had never felt a moment’s regret in telling the deluded ones goodbye.

‘So what were you doing in Ballybay?’ she asked. ‘Did you just decide on the spur of the moment that you needed a break from...from the big apartment with the fancy paintings and all those companies you own? Did you think that you needed to get up close and personal with how the other half lives?’

She laughed bitterly. ‘Poor Leo. What a blow to have ended up stuck in my pub with no mod cons, having to clear snow and help with the washing up. How you must have missed your flash car and designer clothes! I bet you didn’t bank on having to stick around for as long as you did.’

‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.’

But he had flushed darkly and was finding it difficult to meet her fierce, accusatory green-eyed stare. ‘I’m sorry,’ Brianna apologised with saccharine insincerity. ‘I find it really hard to be sweet and smiling when I’ve just discovered that the guy I’ve been sleeping with is a liar.’

‘Which never made our passion any less incendiary.’

Her eyes tangled with his and she felt the hot, slow burn of an unwitting arousal that made her ball her hands into angry fists. Unbelievable: her body responding to some primitive vibe that was still running between them like a live current that couldn’t be switched off.

‘Why did you bother to make up some stupid story about being a writer?’ she flung at him. ‘Why didn’t you say that you were just another rich businessman who wanted to spend a few days slumming it and winding down? Why the fairy story? Was that all part of the let’s adopt a different persona?’ She kept her eyes firmly focused on his face but she was still taking in the perfection of the whole, the amazing body, the strong arms, the length of his legs. Knowing exactly what he looked like underneath the clothes didn’t help. ‘Well?’ she persisted in the face of his silence.

‘The story is a little more complex than a bid to take time out from my life here...’

‘What do you mean?’ She was overwhelmed by a wave of giddiness. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his face and she found that she was sitting ramrod erect, as rigid as a plank of wood, her hands positioned squarely on her knees.

‘There was a reason I came to Ballybay.’ Always in control of all situations, Leo scowled at the unpleasant and uncustomary sensation of finding himself on the back foot. Suddenly the clinical, expensive sophistication of his surroundings irritated the hell out of him. It was an unsuitable environment in which to be having this sort of highly personal conversation. But would ‘warm and cosy’ have made any difference? He had to do what he had to do. That was just the way life was. She would be hurt, but she was young and she would get over it. It wasn’t as though he had made her promises he had had no intention of keeping!

He unrealistically told himself that she might even benefit from the experience. She had not had a lover for years. He had crashed through that icy barrier and reintroduced her to normal, physical interaction between two people; had opened the door for her to move forward and get back out there in the real world, find herself a guy to settle down with...

That thought seemed spectacularly unappealing and he jettisoned it immediately. No point losing track of the moment and getting wrapped up in useless speculation and hypotheses.

‘A reason?’

‘I was looking for someone.’ He sat heavily on the chair facing hers and, as her posture was tense and upright, so his was the exact opposite as he leaned towards her, legs wide apart, his strong forearms resting on his thighs. He could feel her hurt withdrawal from him and it did weird things to his state of mind.

‘Who?’

‘It might help if I told you a little bit about myself, Brianna.’

‘You mean aside from the lies you’ve already told me?’

‘The lies were necessary, or at least it seemed so at the time.’

‘Lies are never necessary.’

‘And that’s a point we can possibly debate at a later date. For now, let me start by telling you that I was adopted at birth. It’s nothing that is a state secret, but the reason I came to Ballybay is because I traced my birth mother a few years ago and I concluded that finding her was something I had to do. Not while my adoptive parents were still alive. I loved them very much; I would never have wanted to hurt them in any way.’

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