Jackie Ashenden: King's Price

The business world wasn’t my world anyway. I preferred science, the quiet atmosphere of the lab I worked in and the comparatively small power plays that were university politics. Not that I involved myself with those either. I kept to myself and I liked it that way.

‘I see,’ I said carefully. ‘It seems an extreme move to marry Clara in order to get a few investors. You can’t refuse?’

‘No.’ The word was flat. ‘I need that bastard’s money.’ He paused. ‘It’s either that or bankruptcy.’

I stared, shocked. ‘Bankruptcy? Seriously? Dad, what did you—?’

‘That’s not important,’ he interrupted. ‘The important thing is that he’s not going to get his dirty hands on Clara.’

The implication bolted like a small pulse of electricity down my spine, reactivating old hurts, making them echo.

Of course he’d never give up his precious Clara. He’s going to sacrifice you instead, the less important one...

I ignored the thoughts. I was over that now. My older sister led a life of parties and social gatherings and shopping, all funded by Dad, but it wasn’t a life I wanted. I’d found my place in the lab and I was perfectly happy there. I didn’t need him or anyone else to validate me.

‘Yet you’re okay with him getting his dirty hands all over me,’ I commented dryly.

Dad’s gaze flickered. ‘You’re stronger than she is, Vita. You always have been. You’ll be able to handle him. She won’t.’

Ten years ago I would have lapped up his praise. Nowadays, I knew better. He wasn’t praising me—he was manipulating me.

‘You’re assuming I’m going to say yes.’

His expression hardened. ‘You are. These debts must be paid. Including yours.’

It stung, no point in pretending otherwise. He’d always blamed me for what had happened all those years ago, even though, at seventeen, I’d had no idea what I was doing. I’d thought Simon had loved me. I hadn’t known he would film himself taking my virginity and put it up on the Internet, with commentary, for his friends to laugh at.

I hadn’t known that it would go viral and that soon everyone in the entire world would see it too—including my parents. There had been a media storm and some of the charities Dad did fundraising for and who sponsored Dad’s various business activities had withdrawn their sponsorship. Our family had been shamed and embarrassed socially, and it had taken at least six months before people had moved on to the next scandal.

The damage had been done, though. Dad’s business empire had teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and it had taken years for him to drag it back.

All because I’d been a seventeen-year-old girl who’d stupidly thought she was in love.

My fault. And Dad never let me forget it.

I looked down at my hands, clasped tightly in my lap. I had no answer to that and he knew it.

‘He won’t touch you,’ Dad said when I stayed quiet. ‘All you have to do is go through with the ceremony and live in his Darling Point mansion afterwards. He won’t even be there. He’ll be leaving the country. And in six months he’ll give you a divorce.’

And once you’ve done it your debt to the family will be paid.

That at least was true. If I did this for my father he couldn’t ask anything more of me, surely? I could go back to the private life I’d built for myself. Where I was good at what I did and I was confident in myself. Where I was the one in control.

‘You’ll get to keep the house, by the way,’ Dad added.

I kept my gaze on my hands. The dark blue polish I’d painted on them was chipping at the ends where I’d bitten them, a nervous habit I was trying to break.

I didn’t need a house. I lived in a terrace apartment near the university that Dad had bought for me and I insisted on paying the mortgage. My assistant wages were meagre and I was barely able to pay that and cover my living expenses at the same time, but I didn’t want any more debts than I had already.

A house in Darling Point, though. You could sell it. Pay Dad back with the proceeds...

No. I would pay my debts myself. My way. With my own money. I wasn’t going to depend on anyone else’s, no matter how much it was.

Money was never the answer anyway, even though lots of people thought it was. People like Dad.

‘I don’t want a house,’ I said flatly. ‘And I don’t want money. What I want is my debt to be cleared and never spoken of again.’

Dad sat back in his big black leather office chair and I thought I saw a flicker of surprise in his gaze, as if he’d been expecting me to say something different. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If you do this, consider it cleared.’

‘You’ll stop holding it over my head for good?’

He gave a sharp nod. ‘We’ll never speak of it again.’

That was something.

You’re seriously considering this?

With an effort I managed to stop myself from shifting nervously in my chair, even though fear was winding tight inside me.

No. No fear. No emotion. Marrying a stranger was nothing. Merely a business proposition or an experiment. Or even trying out a new recipe. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn’t, but it was nothing to get emotional about.

Nothing I needed to care about.

‘Does he know he’ll be getting me instead?’ I curled my fingers in tight to my palm to stop from lifting them to my mouth and nibbling on the ends.

Slowly, Dad shook his head.

We both knew why that was. No self-respecting playboy would choose me when he could have Clara.

‘He’ll be angry,’ I said.

‘He’ll have to deal with it.’

Dad’s expression had hardened, making the fear inside me tighten, no matter how much I tried to ignore it.

Leon King would be angry. He thought he’d be getting curvaceous and beautiful Clara and he’d end up with...me.

Vita Hamilton. Tall and bony. No curves to speak of. Two aspirins on an ironing board. And those were the kinder things Simon had said about me in his commentary on the video. Other people had rushed in with worse comments about my thick gingery hair. My freckles. And...other things.

I shoved the memories away. My physical appearance wasn’t important and I’d been stupid to let all those comments get to me. It was my mind, my intellect that made me stand out and that, at least, I was proud of.

‘He might refuse to go ahead with it,’ I said.

‘He wants those investors, Vita.’ Dad’s expression was nothing but sure. ‘He’ll go through with it. Don’t worry about that.’

That...wasn’t exactly what I was worried about, though I wasn’t sure what I was worried about or why I was afraid.

I didn’t know Leon King so his opinion of me—if he had one at all—didn’t count. All I had to do was say the words, get the ring, live in his stupid house and then it would be done.

No big deal.

Except Leon King was newsworthy, and no doubt the media would be very interested if he suddenly turned up with a fiancée. Especially a fiancée like me.

There goes your nice quiet life.

My heart was suddenly beating fast and my palms were damp and sweaty. I gritted my teeth, reining in my flailing emotions and shoving them aside.

I needed to be cool about this. Logical. Practical. I was a scientist now, not a shamed and humiliated teenager that the entire world had seen naked.

I was stronger than that—much stronger.

There is a way out of this.

An idea opened up inside me like an elegant solution to a difficult research question, or the missing ingredient in a recipe I hadn’t managed to perfect.

Leon King wasn’t a man who’d appreciate being played the way my father was intending to play him. And he certainly wouldn’t be pleased to find out he’d be getting me, not Clara.