Cathy Williams - Bound by the Billionaire's Baby

He might be suspicious and downright offensive, but he was up front. And so, so exciting.

‘Have you any idea how hard it is, finding a date in London? When you don’t do the clubbing scene and don’t have a fancy, high-powered job where there are loads of unattached eligible males?’

‘No.’

‘ Hard . I mean, I know a lot of guys, but my friends tend to be...well...’ She frowned. ‘They’re creative types. A couple of graphic designers who freelance... One makes amazing designs for wallpapers...three work in publishing...’

‘And eligible men?’ Sergio asked, moving the conversation along, curious in spite of himself.

‘Lots of men—but none of them are what you might call “eligible”. To be honest, quite a few of the guys I know are gay...so when one of my friends suggested I see what was out there on the internet, I didn’t think it was such a bad idea. Besides...’

She talked a lot, but strangely he didn’t seem to mind. He wondered whether it was the lingering effect of the red dress. Or the novelty of someone who didn’t see it as her duty to show him how bright she was and how many degrees she had obtained to get where she had. Or the way her blonde hair spilled over her shoulders in unruly curls.

‘Besides...?’ he inserted encouragingly.

‘I have a wedding coming up.’

Sergio could smell a convoluted story in the making. For the moment, however, his initial suspicions about her were on the back burner. He hadn’t discarded them completely, but he wasn’t going to allow them to dictate the outcome of this very, very unusual encounter.

‘I’m boring you, aren’t I?’

‘On the contrary. You’re taking me down all sorts of roads I’ve never travelled before.’

‘Am I?’ Susie wasn’t sure whether she should be flattered by that or offended. She hesitated, distracted by what he had said. ‘What sort of roads do you normally go down with...er...women...?’

Sergio spread his hands wide and shot her a rueful, amused smile that did all those wonderful tingly things to her body. ‘The women I date are almost exclusively career women...’

‘Oh. Right. I see.’ Disappointment bit into her because it made sense. He was rich and he was smart. Of course he would be attracted to smart and probably rich women. Like always attracted like, didn’t it? ‘Career women...’

‘Big jobs...daily decision-making that in some cases can affect the lives of the people around them...packed agendas and hectic schedules...’

Saying it aloud made him wonder what he saw in those types, but that was just a fleeting thought because he knew exactly what he saw in them—just as he knew exactly the sort of women he had programmed himself to avoid like the plague.

Dominique Duval.

It was a name that didn’t often spring to mind. He had ruthlessly and successfully eliminated it from conscious thought. But vocalising the sort of women he dated had thrown up the comparison and his lips thinned with instant distaste. The past might be buried deep but it was never truly forgotten, was it?

‘What’s the matter?’ Susie leaned forward, startled by his darkening expression and immediately jumping to the conclusion that she was somehow responsible for it. And then almost as quickly she got annoyed, because she hadn’t said anything that could remotely be construed as offensive.

When it came to being offensive he was the one winning the race!

‘Just thinking back to a very significant person in my life.’ Sergio’s voice was cold and hard. ‘A delightful woman who has ensured that when it comes to any sort of involvement with the opposite sex I always make sure to steer clear of types like her . Learning curves...’ He was smiling again, the tightness around his mouth gone although his eyes were still cool. ‘I like to pay attention to them...’

‘Me too.’

Susie didn’t know what had just happened there. What she did know was that she wasn’t going to go down Confidence Lane and start telling him all about her family and her learning curves.

She was already reaching the conclusion that the only reason he had even glanced in her direction was because of her novelty value. If he only dated clever career women, someone plonking herself at his table with a long-winded tale of online dating mishaps would have been a shock to the system.

So who was this woman who had shaped his responses to the opposite sex and determined the sort of women he chose to date? She assumed some past love affair. Maybe he had fallen in love with the wrong girl? The fact that he had taken it so badly—badly enough to change the way he looked at his relationships—was telling. He had fallen in love and got burned.

Her thoughts rambled on until she surfaced to hear him asking her about the wedding she had mentioned.

‘Wedding?’ She gave an airy laugh and flapped her hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘What wedding?’

‘The one you have coming up... You were about to launch into a tale of young love and confetti...’

‘Wow. You live here? Isn’t this the most expensive place to live on the planet?’ She craned forward, squinting into the darkness and staring up and up and up at the spire of glass rising into the clouds.

As a diversion from a conversation she no longer wanted to have, it worked.

The apartment her parents owned was nice. No, it was better than nice . It was in a great location, and had been refurbished to a high standard, but this was the stuff of dreams—a place ordinary mortals never got to see.

She had genuinely forgotten the ‘wedding on the horizon’ conversation.

‘Impressed?’ Sergio was exiting the car and swinging round to open the passenger door for her, but she had already hopped out and was staring.

‘ Very impressed,’ she confessed.

That came as no big surprise to Sergio. He imagined her place as somewhere small and damp and in poor condition, languishing in a fairly unsavoury location. Possibly directly under a flight path.

It had begun to rain—a fine, dreary drizzle. It was after ten on a dark, wintry night but there was the alluring promise of excitement within the walls of his massive apartment and he felt like a randy teenager at the conclusion of a first date with the hottest girl in school.

They were whooshed up to his apartment in a glass elevator and finally, as he pushed open the door to his apartment, she managed to find her voice, which had got lost somewhere between the vast foyer and the fifteenth floor.

‘This is... incredible —but I guess you know that already...’ She laughed nervously and stared around her at a marvel of modernism. Cool abstract paintings, most of which she recognised, were hung strategically on the walls and there was an awful lot of pale marble everywhere.

She was in his apartment...

There was nothing to be nervous about. She repeated that mantra to herself as he dutifully made noises about the layout of the apartment.

So many rooms... And whilst he was obviously accustomed to the artwork, to the vast scale of everything, the avant-garde kitchen where the marble gave way to wood, the sitting area which was dominated by creams and whites... Well, she was more and more impressed with every passing step.

She peppered him with questions. Asked him how long he had lived there, if he knew his neighbours—which for some reason he found very funny—wondered aloud what would happen if he spilled red wine over the white leather sofa...

She chattered ceaselessly—because whether or not she should be nervous, she was.

With all her online dates—three of them, because number four had bitten the dust before they could actually meet—she had ultimately been in control. Public places, superficial conversation, awkward goodbyes...