Michelle Conder - Billionaires - The Daredevil - Claimed for Makarov's Baby / Defying the Billionaire's Command / Redeeming the Billionaire SEAL

Of course she had.

But he had taken ages to answer the door and, when he had, he had been bad-tempered, sleepy and half naked, his icy eyes narrowed and bloodshot, and his hard jaw shadowed with growth.

‘What is it, Erin?’ he questioned impatiently, zipping up his jeans with a slight wince. ‘Can’t it wait?’

She had walked into his apartment, noting the general scene of disarray which greeted her. There was an empty champagne bottle lying on the floor and another which was half drunk—standing on the same table where he had taken her virginity. Now was probably not the right moment to tell him that he was going to be a daddy, but what choice did she have? Tell him on Monday—trying desperately to squeeze in the unwelcome news between wall-to-wall meetings?

It took her a moment or two to notice the various items of female underwear strewn around the room because she was too busy ogling the lurid cover of what looked like a porn film. She remembered colour flooding to her cheeks as she recalled the picture of a woman wearing very little other than a leather thong and wielding some sort of whip, with a scary look in her eyes. Erin had little experience of men and what they got up to in their leisure time, but even she could work out what had been going on.

And it was then that a woman had appeared from the bedroom, making Erin feel like the biggest fool in the world, because the the woman was completely naked. Her long blonde hair was mussed, her eyes all smudged with mascara and her large breasts jiggled provocatively as she walked into the reception room—completely ignoring Erin—and pouted at Dimitri.

‘Aren’t you coming back to bed, lyubimiy ?’

The fact that she was obviously Russian had only made it worse—if it was possible for such a situation to get any more dire than it already was. Erin saw the expression on Dimitri’s face—a mixture of irritation at being interrupted and an unmistakable look of lust, which had automatically darkened his eyes.

‘Go back to bed and I’ll be there in a minute,’ he said, before fixing Erin with an enquiring look. ‘So what is it, Erin? What do you want?’

‘I...’ Erin had been at a loss; her words tailing off until the blonde had wiggled her way back towards the bedroom and she had been momentarily transfixed by the retreating sight of her pale, globe-like buttocks.

‘Look.’ He paused, as if searching for the right words to say, but of course there were no right words. ‘I think we both know what happened that night was a mistake and if you were hoping for some kind of repeat—’

‘No! No, of course I wasn’t,’ she said, forcing some stupid, meaningless smile onto her lips as she realised there was only one direction she could contemplate taking. ‘I came here to hand in my notice.’

Was that relief she saw on his face? Was it?

‘You’re sure about that?’

Erin nodded. And the fact that he didn’t try to talk her out of it spoke volumes. She had fooled herself into thinking she was his indispensable ally—the woman he couldn’t do without. And yet she was so wrong. She had become an embarrassment , she recognised. The frumpy secretary he’d stupidly bedded in a mad moment when he hadn’t been thinking straight. Had he been afraid that she was going to start mooning around after him at the office and becoming a sexual nuisance? Was that why he had uncharacteristically absented himself from England for so long?

‘I’d like to leave immediately, if that’s okay with you,’ she said, as briskly as possible. ‘I can easily find someone to step in for me.’

His eyebrows had winged upwards. ‘You mean you’ve had a better offer?’

‘Much better,’ she lied.

He smiled slightly, as if he understood that. But she guessed he did. Dimitri understood ambition and power and climbing the ladder towards the ever-higher pinnacle of success—it was feelings he was bad at.

But he had made a stab at expressing regret—even if he had done it badly.

‘I want you to know that I’ve...’ He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. ‘Well, I’ve enjoyed working with you these past years.’

The easiest thing to have done would have been to have withdrawn gracefully before he probed any further and worked out for himself that there was no other job. Murmured something polite before she walked away for good, so that she could leave on amicable terms. But Erin cared about Dimitri, no matter how much she told herself he didn’t deserve it. She had looked into his haunted and sleep-deprived eyes and, although she found herself wishing she could take his unknown pain away, deep down she knew she couldn’t save him. He was the only person who could do that. But didn’t she owe him her honesty—if not about her future, then surely about his own? To give him a few home truths, in a way which few other people would ever have dared. To tell him that he might not have a future if he didn’t start changing.

‘And I’ve enjoyed working for you, for the most part,’ she said quietly. ‘Actually, I used to admire and respect you very much.’

His eyes narrowed, as if he had misheard her. He knitted together the dark eyebrows which contrasted so vividly with the deep gold of his hair. ‘ Used to?’

‘Sorry to use the past tense,’ she said, not sounding sorry at all. ‘But it’s hard to admire someone who is behaving like an idiot.’

‘An idiot ?’ he echoed incredulously.

It hadn’t been easy to continue, but she had forced herself to finish what she’d started. ‘What else would you call someone who lives the way you do?’ she demanded. ‘Who goes from day to day on a knife edge, taking all kinds of unnecessary risks? How long do you think your body will survive on too much booze and not enough sleep? How long before your lifestyle impacts on your ability to make razor-sharp business decisions? You’re not indestructible, Dimitri—even if you think you are.’

She curled her lips in disgust as she shot the messy room one last withering look—though if he’d been a little more perceptive he might have noticed the distress in her eyes, which had made her start sobbing her heart out the moment she got home to her lovely apartment.

She remembered raising her head from one of the tear-soaked cushions and looking around the luxury home which Dimitri’s generous salary had enabled her to rent, knowing that this kind of lifestyle would soon be a thing of the past. Because she wasn’t rich and she shouldn’t pretend otherwise. She had simply worked for a rich man and now she carried his child beneath her heart while he looked at her with impatient eyes—eager to get back to one of the sexiest women she had ever seen.

‘You came round to my apartment and gave me a piece of your mind,’ said Dimitri slowly, his voice breaking into her thoughts and bringing Erin right back to the present. To the luxury car heading towards the city and the man whose icy eyes were boring into her. She looked deep into their pale glitter.

‘And found you with another woman,’ she said.

Dimitri nodded. Yes, she had found him with another woman. Someone whose face he couldn’t even remember, let alone her name. There had been a lot of women like that. One beautiful blonde merging into another, like a blurred and naked merry-go-round whirling through his life and his bedroom.

But he did remember the look of disgust on Erin’s face and his instinctive fury that she should dare to judge him. What right did she have to judge him? She had made out that she was some paragon of virtue—but she hadn’t been so damned virtuous when her nails had been raking his naked back and urging him into her sticky warmth, had she? She had certainly blown her goody-two-shoes image right out of the sky that night.