The Debt Read online

  ‘Bill doesn’t talk at all.’

  Well, this was off to a great start. Go me.

  I gripped the wheel tightly, trying to hang on to my determination to keep this low-key and not a big deal. ‘I’m not Bill.’

  ‘No,’ he said flatly, his attention still on the screen. ‘You’re not.’

  Okay, well, I was just going to have to go for it. I didn’t want to let Dad down, not again.

  ‘I need a favour,’ I said, throwing caution to the winds. ‘I need to talk to you about an investment.’

  That caught his attention.

  His head lifted, electric gaze coming straight to mine. ‘What?’

  Time for my spiel.

  ‘So, my family makes supercars, all built by hand in our workshop in Sydney, and we were lucky enough to get a cash injection from your venture capital firm a few years ago. But, business hasn’t been great and we’re not able to make the returns that were expected.’ Shit, I was talking too fast; I needed to slow down. ‘So, we tried contacting Evans Investment to give us some more time before the investment was withdrawn, but they weren’t very receptive. I thought that if I spoke to you directly—’

  ‘That I would automatically be fine with potentially losing my investment?’ he interrupted, his voice sharp, hard, the look in his eyes cutting me to shreds. ‘Is that why you had sex with me?’

  A cold shock pulsed down my spine.

  Did he really think that?

  But there was no mistaking the icy blue light glittering in his eyes. Not just annoyance or irritation, but genuine anger.

  Yes, he really did think that.

  We’d come to a red light so I was able to give him my full attention. ‘No,’ I said fiercely, forgetting all about the need to keep things light and no drama. ‘I had sex with you because I wanted to. Not for any other reason.’

  But there were storms in his eyes, electric tension gathering in the air inside the car. ‘Are you sure? It’s been done before.’

  Anger gnawed at me. How dare he think that? I would never use sex to get what I wanted and certainly not after Mark. ‘No,’ I repeated, with more force this time. ‘That’s...oh, my God, that’s the last thing I would ever do.’

  He ignored that. ‘Do you know how many people have tried to use me to get what they want over the years?’ His voice was cold and gritty as sleet, his accent even more cut-glass than normal. ‘Many, many people, Miss Little. Believe me, you’re not the first.’

  Heat surged through my cheeks. ‘I wasn’t intending to have sex with you. I just wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘But you didn’t, did you? You liked the idea of my cock instead.’

  I struggled to get a handle on my anger. ‘So? It’s just sex, mate. Like you said, no big deal. So, could we talk about the investment that Dad—?’

  ‘No,’ he cut me off, the word cold as an arctic frost. ‘We will not talk about the investment. We will not talk about anything at all. This conversation, Miss Little, is done.’

  Behind me someone honked their horn and I realised the light had turned green, leaving me no choice but to begin driving again.

  I slammed my foot on the gas, trying to get a grip on my boiling emotions, very conscious that if I let rip the way I wanted to, I was in danger of screwing this up completely.

  I couldn’t do what I’d done with Mark and let my anger get the better of me. Certainly kneeing Mr Evans in the balls wouldn’t help, which meant I needed to try something else, think of another angle that might interest him.

  There is something else.

  No, I couldn’t tell him about my personal project, not after Dad had poured scorn on it. It wouldn’t work and was going to end up being a huge waste of money, that was what Dad had said.

  Still, I didn’t have that many options. And besides, I had to fix this. Especially since it was my fault that this was a problem in the first place.

  ‘I have my own project,’ I said into the silence, ignoring the nervous tension in my gut. ‘I’m designing an electric supercar. I think it could be a game changer, but Dad won’t fund it because he doesn’t approve. Not that he has the money, anyway, but if I could just get some backing for a prototype, it could turn Australis around, I’m sure of it.’

  Silence from the back seat.

  I didn’t want to look in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t want to meet his fascinating blue eyes, not again. ‘I know you’ve got every right to withdraw your money,’ I went on doggedly, ‘but I’m asking you personally at least to put it on hold. If I get funding for my project, it has the potential to do really well and then I could pay you back with a ton of interest.’

  Again, silence.

  Dammit. I’d bloody well screwed this up, hadn’t I? Sex had ruined it and then mentioning my stupid project probably hadn’t helped.

  There was pressure at the back of my throat, a heaviness in my chest. Shit, that was pathetic. Dad would be appalled. He’d tell me to pull myself together, that it was my mess and crying about it wasn’t going to help anyone. I just had to suck it up and deal with it. That was the Little way.

  The airport was coming up and soon I’d have to stop and let Mr Evans out. He’d walk away from me and that would be my opportunity gone.

  ‘I can show you pictures,’ I said uselessly. ‘My design is pretty unique, so if you want to see an example of—’

  ‘No.’ The word was flat, unequivocal.

  ‘Mr Evans—’

  ‘I said no.’ The was no mistaking the note of absolute authority in his cold, gritty voice.

  The discussion was over.

  Hot, angry words filled my mouth, but I kept it closed, my jaw aching with the strain.

  Don’t make a fuss.

  ‘Hey, no worries.’ I forced my mouth into a smile. ‘Can’t blame a girl for trying though, eh?’

  He said nothing, the silence in the car becoming thick and suffocating. Full of his anger and something else I didn’t understand.

  I pulled the limo up in the drop-off area outside the airport and only then, gathering my courage, did I glance into the mirror.

  But he was putting his laptop away and not looking at me.

  I stared at him, unable to help myself. His face was guarded, the white seams of his scars stark against his olive skin. A muscle flickered in his hard, strong jaw. And I couldn’t help noticing that he had the longest, darkest lashes I’d ever seen on a man.

  My fingers itched to touch him, a throb between my thighs reminding me of what he’d felt like inside me, surging into me, taking me hard and fast, the wild thrill of having a man like that under my hands...

  Abruptly he looked and the vivid colour of his eyes caught me, held me.

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Little,’ he said expressionlessly.

  And then he was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ash

  I STARED OUT from the empty floor of the tower building my company was in the process of constructing in Southwark, the Thames looking black and sluggish in the early afternoon light. Wind blew through the big empty space where the windows were going to go, while the site manager went through a list of excuses as to why the project had been delayed by several months.

  I was only half listening. Despite the delays, the construction was going according to plan and I didn’t care about the man’s excuses. What I was concerned about was the upcoming trip to Dubai that I’d promised Delaney, and how I still hadn’t sorted out the issue of the ‘serious girlfriend.’

  The solution, of course, was to bring someone with me and have her act the part. I had no shortage of women who’d be only too happy to pretend to be my ‘serious girlfriend’, but my real problem was that I couldn’t act to save my life.

  I’d never pretended to be anything but what I was, a former street fighter turned property developer, and I seriously doubted
my abilities to pretend to be ‘serious’ about a woman, no matter how lovely she was.

  And I didn’t see why I had to bother with this nonsense just to get those islands. But Delaney wasn’t budging, which meant that if I wanted them, I had no other option. My only consolation was that he’d no doubt be doing the same thing to Dumont.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Evans?’

  A female voice floated through the empty floor and I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the lightning bolt that hit me every time a woman said ‘Mr Evans.’

  Christ, after a week, you’d think I’d have forgotten about one encounter in the back of a limo with a sexy Australian chauffeur.

  Apparently not.

  I turned from the site manager to see my chief assistant, Petra, exit the construction elevator and make her way towards me, adroitly skirting the piles of wood and steel offcuts, metal shavings and concrete dust that littered the floor, despite the skyscraper heels she wore.

  ‘What is it?’ I snapped, deciding my irritation had nothing to do with being reminded of my one-time chauffeur and everything to do with being interrupted.

  Petra ignored my temper the way she always did, peering at me from underneath her hard hat. ‘You wanted to know the moment I had that dossier ready. Shall I email it to you?’

  Instantly the single lightning bolt down my spine became a storm, igniting me for no fucking reason that I could see.

  It was just a dossier on a supercar company called Australis. Nothing major. And only for my interest’s sake. It certainly didn’t require me being interrupted in the middle of an important meeting with a site manager.

  Yet that didn’t stop me from saying, ‘Yes, of course, email it to me. Immediately.’

  Petra tapped her phone’s screen and smiled sweetly at me. ‘Done. Shall I finish up with Doug?’

  But I’d already turned away, getting out my phone and opening my mail app, leaving her to finish up the meeting with Doug, the site manager. It didn’t need me to be there, but I liked to visit a site at least a couple of times to get a feel for the building and the site itself, because you couldn’t get that sitting behind a desk.

  My boots crunched on bits of concrete as I came to a stop, staring down at the screen as the files Petra had sent me loaded.

  Australis Supercars, an Australian company that designed and hand-built luxury sports vehicles. It was owned by a guy called Oliver Little, who managed it along with his four sons and one daughter.

  I flicked through the pictures of the cars themselves. The Python model was the one garnering the big interest, apparently giving Ferrari and Bugatti, and some of the other big names, a run for their money.

  I didn’t keep track of every company I invested money in—I left that to my managers at Evans Investment—but according to the files we had invested quite a bit of money in this particular company.

  Money that was not going to see the returns we’d anticipated.

  So? Lots of companies don’t make it. Why does this one matter?

  It didn’t matter, so why I was interested in it, I had no idea.

  Yet I couldn’t seem to stop flicking through more images, pausing at one particular photo. It was of the Python and had the family clustered proudly around it. And right at the back, almost hidden, was a smaller figure, her hand possessively on the roof of the vehicle.

  Ellie.

  The lighting storm inside me sizzled against my nerve endings, igniting them, making me curse under my breath.

  I generally never regretted anything in my life—I couldn’t, not if I didn’t want to spend it being paralysed by all the shitty things I’d done—and had always believed the only way was forward. So there was no reason for me to be looking back at what had happened with a woman over a week ago.

  A woman I’d only known a couple of days.

  A woman whose relatively simple request you refused because you were being petty.

  I glared at the picture of Ellie on the screen, remembering the dogged way she’d continued despite the reception she’d got from me, talking about some electric car project she was working on.

  And I’d ignored her, too caught up in the rush of anger that had overtaken me the moment she’d mentioned that she wanted a favour from me.

  An anger that even now I didn’t understand.

  Yes, the timing of her confession, right after we’d had a one-night stand, left a lot to be desired, but, still, that didn’t explain my furious reaction to her request.

  You thought it was you she wanted.

  The way she’d looked at me... Seeing the fighter inside me and not being afraid. Not being intimidated. Ready to take me on. And the sex had been incendiary...

  But then she’d asked for money, just like all the others.

  Not that all of them wanted money. Some of them wanted the cachet of having slept with the notorious bastard billionaire. It wasn’t actually me they wanted. But I’d thought Ellie was different.

  Christ, why was I still obsessing about this? I wasn’t some sixteen-year-old kid hurt because some girl rejected him. I was thirty-two. I’d grown up on a grotty council estate with meth dealers in the stairwells and gangs roaming the hallways. My mother had spent her days constantly worried for me and my safety, grovelling to my father for money to at least send me to a private school—and he had.

  But after that night when I’d realised how little he actually cared, I’d decided I was done apologising for myself. Done cowering with my mother, terrified she would get hurt.

  I’d decided to make myself the biggest, baddest motherfucker out there. I’d have the drug dealers and gangs scared of me.

  So that was what I’d done.

  And then later, I’d had Seb. He hadn’t yet shown me his true colours and I’d thought he had my back to hell and beyond.

  Sadly, hell had come sooner than I’d thought.

  You think that excuses you being shitty to her?

  My jaw ached. Behind me I could hear Petra and Doug talking, Petra flirting a little in the way that she did when she wanted to get someone on her side.

  Fuck, I was shitty to everyone. Why should Ellie be exempt?

  Yet all I could see was her face as she’d talked about her family’s company, genuine worry glittering in her eyes. Then she’d mentioned that special project, the one that pulling my investment dollars would put at risk.

  It was important to her, wasn’t it?

  I was supposed to help people when they needed it, not deny them the way I’d been denied. That was why I’d set up my charitable foundation in the first place. And yet, what had I done?

  I’d refused her.

  If my company had been small and in its infancy, it might have been a different story, but it wasn’t. Evans Investment was just one of a number of companies in my portfolio and giving someone some time before requiring promised returns would have absolutely no impact on my bottom line.

  I shouldn’t have denied her.

  On the other hand, business was business and if she wanted a favour...

  Something clicked into place in my head like pieces of a perfectly constructed building.

  I could give her what she wanted, while at the same time solving my own problem. Not that I couldn’t give her what she wanted without making it dependent on me, but I hadn’t got where I was today by being soft. Everything was a deal. Everything was give and take.

  I’d give her something and she could give something to me.

  Such as her presence as my serious girlfriend in Dubai, for example.

  I wouldn’t have to act as if I was into her the way I would have struggled to with someone else. Our chemistry would take care of that. Certainly it should be convincing enough for Delaney.

  Hell, I could even sweeten the deal by giving her access to The Billionaires Club and their contacts. There’d be plenty of peop
le there who’d be interested in her electric car project.

  In fact, the more I thought about it, the better an idea I found it.

  All I needed to do was put the proposal to her.

  I didn’t waste any time, putting through a few calls there and then. Bill was more than happy to take an evening off and the chauffeur company was more than happy to accept my exorbitant offer for one night of Ellie Little’s services. It was very late notice, but they could certainly accommodate me.

  That sorted, I shoved my phone back into my pocket and turned to rejoin the meeting, trying to ignore the way the lightning in my veins had become hot, electric.

  Nothing to do with the prospect of seeing Ellie again, definitely not. I was simply pleased to have solved the problem of how to get Delaney on my side.

  Liar. You still want her.

  No, I didn’t. Been there, done that, and I didn’t go back.

  This was business. Nothing more.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ellie

  I WASN’T HAPPY when the job came through and I almost refused. I didn’t even want to see Ash Evans again, let alone drive for him.

  But I couldn’t say no, not if I wanted to stay on the chauffeur company’s books, and I did want to, because my options for money were few and far between.

  I’d spent the week since getting back from Paris trying to figure out what my next move should be. I couldn’t bear the thought of calling Dad to tell him I’d failed—not that I had failed. I just needed to...regroup.

  Failure wasn’t an option anyway, not when I was the whole reason the company was having difficulty in the first place.

  So I accepted the job and tried to ignore my own personal doubts about seeing him again. Tried not to think about why he’d asked for me, especially given how angry he’d been back in Paris.

  Perhaps it was for another encounter in the back seat, though if that was the reason then he was shit out of luck. No way I wanted to have sex with him again, not given how emotional I’d been after the first time. And then there had been him getting so furious with me...

  No, definitely not going back for that. I wasn’t a masochist.