what’s left of my luggage back inside your lovely villa and find a nice bedroom to sleep in. With a sea view. And then we’re going to write your mother’s biography to celebrate her life. And when we’re finished, and it’s totally and absolutely awesome and amazing, and you’re standing at the book launch with your family all around you, then you’re going to say that you couldn’t possibly have created this best-seller without the help of Lexi Sloane. And that will be the end of it. No more recriminations and no more blame. Just a simple thank-you. And then we get on with our respective lives. Do you think you can do that, Mr Belmont?’
‘Miss Sloane …’
‘Yes?’ she muttered, wondering what conditions and arguments he was going to wrap around her proposal.
‘My cat has just peed on your shoe.’
She looked down just as Snowy One shook his left leg and then clawed his way back onto the car seat without the slightest whiff of contrition.
‘Can I take that as a yes?’ she huffed.
‘Absolutely.’
MARK woke just as the morning sunlight hit that one perfect angle where it was able to slant around the edge of the blackout blind and shine a laser beam straight onto his pillow.
He groaned and blinked several times, turning to glance at the wristwatch he wore 24/7. It was set to tell the time in each of the main financial markets as well as local time on Paxos. And at that moment they were all screaming the same thing. He had slept for a grand total of four hours since forcing himself into bed at dawn.
By 9:00 a.m. on a normal weekday Mark would already have showered, dressed, had breakfast and coffee and been at his desk for three hours. Insomnia had been his faithful companion for years—he’d hoped that being back on Paxos would help him to catch up on his sleep.
Wrong again.
Pushing himself up on the bed, which was a total wreck, Mark reached across to his bedside table for his glasses and tablet computer and quickly checked through the emails his PA had filtered for him. London was an hour behind Paxos, but the financial markets waited for no man and his team started early and worked late. They earned the huge salaries he paid them to make Belmont Investments one of the most respected London financial houses.
Ten minutes later he’d sent replies to emails that needed his personal attention and forwarded others to the heads of department to action.
Then he turned to the real nightmare. The restructuring plans which would secure the long-term stability and profitability of the company. It was going to be tough convincing his father that these difficult measures needed to be taken, and they had already been delayed for months following his mother’s death and his father’s illness.
But the real problem was his father. He had built up Belmont Investments by taking a low-key, low-risk approach that had worked well years ago. Not any longer. Not in today’s financial market.
Mark flicked over to his own plan—the plan he’d been working on in the early hours of the morning when sleep had been impossible. It was dynamic, modern and exciting, and until now this plan had been a dirty secret that he hadn’t shared with anyone else.
His father would hate it. But he had to do something to save the business. Even if it meant breaking through the unwritten rules his father had laid down—rules which came with all the obligations attached to being the next Baron Belmont.
Mark quickly scanned through one of the key implementation plans, and had just started to work on the projected time schedule, looking for ways to bring it forward, when he heard strange, cooing baby-love sounds below his bedroom window.
And they were definitely human.
Mark closed his eyes, dropping the tablet onto his knees with a low sigh.
Of course. Just for a second he’d forgotten about his uninvited and very unexpected houseguest. Miss Alexis Sloane.
No doubt fresh as a daisy, bursting with energy, and ready to get started on ripping his family history apart so she could collect her fee and head back to civilisation as fast as her cute, shapely and very lovely little legs could carry her.
A whisper of doubt crept into his mind.
What if he had made a mistake when he’d asked her to stay?
What if this was all some elaborate ruse and Lexi truly was intending to leave with all the Belmont family secrets tucked under her arm, neatly packed up to pass on to her paparazzi father?
For all Mark knew he could be handing Mario Collazo all the ammunition he needed to twist Crystal Leighton’s life story into some sordid tabloid hatchet-job.
He slipped out of bed and padded over to the window to peek out onto the patio.
Lexi was bending down and was rubbing her fingers together in front of Emmy and Oscar, the feral cats who called this villa home and whose kittens had invaded her car. The cats clearly couldn’t decide whether this replacement for Mark’s soft-hearted housekeeper was friend or foe, and were taking the ‘feed me and I’ll think about it’ approach. But at least she was making an effort to be friendly.
Mark almost snorted out loud. He’d made the mistake of bringing his one-time fiancée here for a weekend break. She’d been horrified that he allowed ‘vermin’ so close to the house, and actively shooed the cats away at every opportunity in case they contaminated her clothing—which had confused Emmy and Oscar so much that they’d kept coming back to find out what was going on.
She’d lasted three days before stage-managing an emergency at the bank.
Pity he hadn’t picked up on the clue that the beautiful girl had enjoyed the kudos of being the future Baroness Belmont a lot more than she’d liked him and his ordinary life.
He pulled back the blind just an inch and watched Lexi dangle a piece of ribbon up and down, inviting the cats to play with this strange new toy. Her childlike laughter rang out in the sunshine and was so infectious that he couldn’t help but smile in return.
It struck him all at once that his life revolved around people who were very different from the girl he was looking at now. Lexi was pretty, dynamic and confident enough to challenge him and defend herself against what she saw as unfair treatment.
If this was an act, then she was playing her part very well indeed.
The girl he was looking at—okay, ogling—seemed to have no off button. No dial he could turn to slow her down and make her start conforming a little to other people’s expectations.
She had surprised him by telling him who her father was before they’d started work.
A shrewder person might have kept quiet about that little bombshell until the cheque had cleared.
Honesty and integrity. He admired that. Even if she was the daughter of a man he despised. And, unless he had lost his knack of judging people, she was telling the truth about not knowing she’d be working with Mark.
Overall, a fascinating, intriguing and very unsettling
