A Night, A Consequence, A Vow

by Angela Bissell

  Xav’s frown deepened. ‘Do they not know who you are?’ His voice rang with a note of hauteur. ‘Surely the de la Vega name is sufficient to grant you an audience with Royce?’

  Ramon nearly barked out another derisory laugh.

  The importance of the family name had always carried more weight in Xav’s eyes than his. Their mother and her siblings were distant cousins of the King of Spain and directly descended from a centuries-old line of dukes. Marry that blue-blood lineage to the vast wealth and success of their father’s industrialist family and the de la Vega name, since the early eighties when their parents had wedded, had been inextricably linked with affluence and status.

  ‘Are you forgetting the clientele The Royce serves?’ He watched Xav silently bristle over the fact that their family’s power and influence, while not insignificant, did not merit any special recognition in this instance. Not from an establishment that catered to some of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world.

  ‘And yet if there is truth to the rumours you’ve heard, Maxwell Royce is not selective about the company he keeps. Surely a meeting with you is not beneath him?’

  Ramon sensed a subtle insult in that statement. He gritted his teeth for a second before speaking. ‘It’s not rumour. The information I received comes from a trusted source. It’s reliable.’

  As reliable as it had been surprising, for the discreet disclosure had come from his friend Christophe completely out of the blue. ‘Royce has a gambling problem and mounting debts,’ he said. ‘It came from the mouth of his own accountant.’ Who apparently, after indulging in one too many Manhattans in a London cocktail bar with a pretty long-legged accountant—who happened to be Christophe’s sister—had spilled the dirt on his employer. Christophe’s sister had relayed the tale to her brother and Christophe, never one to sit idly on useful information, had called Ramon.

  ‘Where trouble resides, so does opportunity,’ he said, voicing a belief that had served him well over the years when scouting out potential acquisitions. People resistant to selling could quickly change their tune when faced with a financial crisis. A buyout offer or business proposal that had previously been rejected could suddenly seem an attractive option.

  The Royce had been owned by the same family for over a hundred years, but it wasn’t uncommon for third or fourth generation owners to opt to sell the family business. For legacies to be sacrificed expediently in favour of hard cash. And if Maxwell Royce needed cash... It was an opportunity too tempting not to pursue, long shot or not. Ramon’s clubs were exclusive, sophisticated and world-class but The Royce was in a whole different league—one that only a dozen or so clubs on the planet could lay claim to. An establishment so revered would elevate his portfolio to a whole new level.

  Xav sat forward again. ‘I don’t need to tell you how much an acquisition of this nature would impress the board.’

  Ramon understood. It would be the win his brother was so desperately seeking. A way to cut Hector’s critical narrative off at the knees, wrestle back control of the board and regain the directors’ confidence.

  ‘Deal with Royce’s gatekeeper, whoever he is, and get that meeting,’ Xav urged. ‘Soon.’

  Ramon didn’t care for his brother’s imperious tone, but he bit his tongue. Xav was under pressure. He’d asked for Ramon’s support. How often did that happen?

  Not often.

  Besides, Ramon had as much desire as Xav to see Hector at the company’s helm.

  He thought of the obstacle in his path.

  Not a he, as Xav had assumed, but a she.

  A slender, blonde, not unattractive she who had, in recent weeks, proved something of a conundrum for Ramon.

  He’d readily admit it was a rare occasion he came across a woman he couldn’t charm into giving him what he wanted.

  This woman would not be charmed.

  Three times in two weeks she’d rejected him by phone, informing him in her very chilly, very proper, British accent that Mr Royce was too busy to receive unsolicited visitors.

  Ramon had been undeterred. Confident he could net a far more desirable result in person, he’d flown to London and turned up at the club’s understated front door on a quiet, dignified street in the heart of fashionable Mayfair.

  As expected, security had been discreet but efficient. As soon as he’d been identified as a visitor and not a member, a dark-suited man had ushered him around the outside of the stately brick building to a side entrance. Like the simple, black front door with its decorative brass knocker, the black and white marble vestibule in which he’d been left to wait was further evidence of The Royce’s quiet, restrained brand of elegance.

  Ramon had got quite familiar with that vestibule. He’d found himself with enough time on his hands to count the marble squares on the floor fifty times over, plus make a detailed study of the individual mouldings on the ornate Georgian ceiling.

  Because she had made him wait. Not for ten minutes. Not for twenty, or even forty. But for an hour.

  Only through sheer determination and the freedom to stand up, stretch his legs and pace back and forth across the polished floor now and again had he waited her out.

  After a while it felt like a grim little game between them, a challenge to see who’d relent first—him or her.

  Ramon won, but his victory was limited to the brief surge of satisfaction that came when she finally appeared.

  ‘You do not have an appointment, Mr de la Vega.’ Grey eyes, so pale they possessed an extraordinary luminescence, flashed at him from out of a heart-shaped face, while the rest of her expression appeared carefully schooled.

  Pretty, he thought upon first impression, but not his type. Too reserved. Too buttoned-up and prim. He preferred his women relaxed. Uninhibited. ‘Because you would not give me one,’ he responded easily.

  ‘And you think I will now, just because you’re here in person?’

  ‘I think Mr Royce would benefit from the opportunity to meet with me,’ he said smoothly. ‘An opportunity you seem intent on denying him.’

  The smile she bestowed on him then was unlike the smiles he was accustomed to receiving from women. Those smiles ranged from shy to seductive, and everything in between, but always they telegraphed some level of awareness and heat and, in many cases, a brazen invitation. But the tilt of her lips was neither warm nor inviting. It suggested sufferance, along with a hint of condescension.

  ‘Let me tell you what I think, Mr de la Vega,’ she said, her voice somehow sweet and icy at the same time—like a frozen dessert that gave you a painful case of brain freeze when you bit into it. ‘I think I know Mr Royce better than you do and am therefore infinitely more qualified to determine what he will—and won’t—find of benefit. I also think you underestimate my intelligence. I know who you are and I know there’s only one reason you could want to meet with Mr Royce. So let me make something clear to you right now and save you some time. The Royce is not for sale.’

  Colour had bloomed on her pale cheekbones, the streaks of pink an arresting contrast to her glittering grey eyes.

  Interesting, he thought. Perhaps there was a bit of fire beneath that cool facade. He held out his business card and took a step towards her but she reared back, alarm flaring in her eyes as if he had crossed some invisible, inviolable boundary. Huh. Even more interesting. ‘Ten minutes of Mr Royce’s time,’ he said. ‘That is all I am asking for.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time. Mr Royce is not here.’

  ‘Then perhaps you would call me when he is. I’ll be in London for another forty-eight hours.’

  He continued to hold out his card and finally she took it, exercising great care to ensure her fingers didn’t brush against his. Then she gave him that smile again and this time it had the strangest effect, igniting a spark of irritation, followed by a rush of heat in the pit of his stomach. He imagined kissing that haughty little smile right off her pretty face. Backing her up against one of the hard marble pillars, taking her head in his hands
and devouring her mouth under his until her lips softened, opened and she granted him entry.

  Carefully he neutralised his expression, shocked by the direction of his thoughts. He’d never taken a woman with force. He had no aversion to boisterous sex, and he’d indulged more than one bed partner who demanded it rough and fast, but on the whole Ramon liked his lovers soft. Compliant. Willing.

  She took another step back from him, the flush of pink in her cheeks growing more hectic, her eyes widening slightly. As if somehow she’d read his thoughts. ‘Mr Royce will not be available this week,’ she said, her smile replaced now by a thin, narrow-eyed stare. ‘So unless you have extraordinary lung capacity, Mr de la Vega, I suggest you don’t hold your breath.’

  And she turned and walked away from him, high heels clicking on the shiny chequered marble as she made for the door across the small foyer from which she’d emerged.

  She had a spectacular backside. Somehow Ramon’s brain had registered that fact, his gaze transfixed by the movement of firm, shapely muscle under her navy blue pencil skirt even as a wave of anger and frustration had crashed through him.

  The sound of Xav’s desk phone ringing jolted him back to the present. He shifted in his chair.

  Xav placed his hand on the receiver and looked at him. ‘Speak with Lucia on your way out,’ he said. ‘I told her to make a dinner reservation for us this evening. Get the details off her and I’ll see you at the restaurant. We’ll talk more then.’

  Ah. Lucia. Yes, that was the name of his brother’s secretary. Not Lola or Lorda. Ironic that he couldn’t recall the name of the attractive brunette he’d just met, and had already considered sleeping with, yet he had no trouble summoning the name of the English woman he’d rather throttle than bed.

  Her name, it seemed, was indelibly inked on his brain, along with the enticing image of her tight, rounded posterior.

  Emily.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EMILY ROYCE SAT behind her desk and took a deep breath that somehow failed to fill her lungs. For a moment she thought she might be sick and the feeling sent a rising tide of disbelief through her.

  This was not how she reacted to bad news. Emily had learnt how to handle disappointment a long time ago. She did not buckle under its weight. When bad news came, she received it with equanimity. Practicality. Calm.

  And yet there was no denying the sudden stab of nausea in her belly. Or the cold, prickling sensation sweeping over her skin.

  She dug her fingers into the arms of her chair, some dark corner of her mind imagining her father’s neck beneath her clenched hands.

  She was going to kill him.

  At the very least she was going to hunt him down, drag him out of whichever opulent hotel suite or illicit den of pleasure he was currently holed up in and yell at him until she was hoarse.

  Except she wouldn’t.

  Emily knew she wouldn’t.

  Because no matter how many times in her life she’d imagined venting her anger, letting loose even a bit of the hurt and disappointment she’d stored up and kept tightly lidded over the years, she never had.

  And this time would be no different. She would do what she always did. What she had to do. She would shove her emotions aside and pour all her energy into limiting the damage. Into doing whatever was necessary to sweep Maxwell Royce’s latest indiscretion under the rug and in so doing keep his reputation—and, by association, the reputation of The Royce—intact.

  Only this time, if what she had just been told was true, Maxwell had outdone himself. He’d created a situation so dire she struggled to accept that even he could have done such a stupid, irresponsible, selfish thing.

  And this would not be a mere matter of slipping a wad of cash to some unscrupulous opportunist to prevent embarrassing, compromising photos of her father from finding their way to the tabloids. Or of dipping into her personal savings and hastily rebalancing the club’s books, with the help of their accountant, to cover up Maxwell’s misappropriation of funds from one of their business accounts.

  Not that any of her father’s prior indiscretions could be labelled trivial, but this...this...

  Her grandfather would turn in his grave. As would his father, and his father before him.

  Edward Royce, Emily’s great-great-grandfather and a wealthy, respected pillar of British high society at the turn of the twentieth century, had founded the club on which he’d bestowed his name in 1904. Since then ownership of the prestigious establishment had been proudly passed down through three generations of Royces, all male heirs—until Emily. More than a hundred years later, The Royce remained a traditional gentlemen’s club and one of western Europe’s last great bastions of male exclusivity and chauvinism. A society of powerful, influential men who between them controlled a good portion of the world’s major industries, not forgetting those who presided over governments and ruled their own countries and principalities.

  On occasion Emily amused herself with thoughts of how the majority of their members would react to learning that fifty per cent of their precious club was now owned by a woman.

  She imagined there’d be deep rumblings of discontent and much sputtering of cigar smoke and Scotch beneath the lighted chandeliers in the Great Salon. But she also knew her grandfather had acted with calculated intent when he’d bequeathed half of the club’s ownership to his only grandchild. Gordon Royce had known his errant son could not be trusted with sole proprietorship. Rewriting his will to leave fifty per cent of the shares to Emily—the granddaughter he’d wished had been born a boy—had surely been an undesirable but necessary course of action in Gordon’s mind.

  Not that her grandfather had been able to overcome his misogynistic tendencies altogether. He’d gone to significant lengths to ensure the Royce name would live on through a male heir.

  It was terribly ironic—that her grandfather should manipulate her life from beyond the grave when he’d shown scarcely a flicker of interest in her while he’d been alive.

  Emily closed her eyes a moment. Her mind was wandering. She needed to harness her thoughts, to wrestle her brain around the problem and come up with a solution. She needed time to think. Alone. Without the sinister presence of the man who sat in the upholstered chair on the other side of her desk.

  She stood slowly, her features composed, her legs steady only through sheer force of will.

  ‘I think you should leave now, Mr Skinner.’

  She spoke with all the authority she could muster but her cool directive failed to have any visible impact on her visitor.

  His head tilted to the side, his thin lips stretching into a humourless smile that sent an icy ripple down Emily’s spine. ‘That’s a pity,’ he said. ‘I was just starting to enjoy our conversation.’

  Emily didn’t like the way he looked at her. Carl Skinner—one of London’s most notorious loan sharks—looked old enough to be her father, yet there was nothing paternal in the way his gaze crawled over her body. She fisted her hands by her sides. Her pinstriped skirt and white silk blouse were smart and conservative and not the least bit revealing. There was nothing for him to feast his filthy eyes on, she assured herself—except maybe for the angry colour rising in her cheeks.

  ‘Our conversation is over.’ She gestured towards the single sheet of paper he’d produced with a smug flourish when she’d questioned the veracity of his claim. It lay upon her desk now, the signature scrawled at the foot of the agreement unmistakably her father’s. ‘I’ll be seeking a legal opinion on this.’

  ‘You can have a hundred lawyers look over it, sweetheart.’

  Emily tried not to flinch at the endearment.

  ‘It was legally binding when Royce signed it seven days ago,’ he continued. ‘And it’ll be legally binding in another seven days when I collect on the debt.’ He leaned back, his gaze roving around the interior of her small but beautifully appointed office, with its view overlooking one of Mayfair’s most elegant streets, before landing back on her. ‘You know, I’ve always fanc
ied myself as a member of one of these clubs.’

  Emily almost snorted. The idea of this man rubbing shoulders with princes and presidents was ludicrous, but she endeavoured to keep the thought from showing on her face. Skinner’s business suit and neatly cropped hair might afford him a civilised veneer but she sensed the danger emanating from him. Insulting this man would be far from wise.

  ‘Mr Royce’s debt will be settled in full by the end of the week.’ She injected her voice with a confidence she prayed wasn’t misplaced. If her father’s gambling debt wasn’t settled within the week, the alternative—Carl Skinner getting his hands on a fifty per cent shareholding of The Royce—was an outcome far too horrendous to contemplate. She would not let it happen.

  ‘You sound very certain about that, little lady.’

  ‘I am.’

  Skinner’s lips pursed. ‘You understand that assurance would carry more weight if I heard it straight from your boss?’

  ‘My boss is not here,’ she reminded him, instinct urging her now—as it had twenty minutes earlier when he’d turned up without an appointment demanding to see her father—not to reveal her surname. She’d introduced herself simply as Emily, Administration Manager and Mr Royce’s assistant, and agreed to meet with Skinner in Maxwell’s absence only because instinct urged her to hear what he had to say.

  She coerced her cheek muscles to move, pulling the corners of her mouth into a rigid smile. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for my assurance, Mr Skinner,’ she said, walking around her desk as she continued to speak. ‘Thank you for your visit. I believe we have nothing more to discuss at this point. I do have another appointment,’ she lied, ‘so if you don’t mind...’

  Skinner rose and stepped in front of her and Emily’s voice died, her vocal cords paralysed by the violent lunge of her heart into her throat. Her legs froze. He was standing in her space, two feet at most between them, and she wasn’t used to such close physical proximity with another person. Especially someone she didn’t know and had zero desire to. ‘Mr Skinner—’