The Debt

by Jackie Ashenden

  People stared at me as I made my way to the bar and I let them look, enjoying the attention. Me, with my knife-fight scars, in my jeans and T-shirt amongst all the jewels and tuxes.

  I didn’t need to imagine what they were thinking. I knew, since it was written all over their faces. They were thinking I didn’t belong. That I was scum from the streets, their reminder that, though they might be insulated from the hard cold realities of life by their wealth, hard cold reality was now also here amongst them.

  It amused me. I also didn’t give a shit. They could think what they liked. I’d earned my place here and too bad if they didn’t like it.

  Strolling up to the bar, enjoying the way the crowd rippled to give me space, I took another scan around before ordering a drink.

  A pretty blonde in a red dress with diamonds sparkling around her neck sidled up to me smiling, her intent very clear.

  She was just my type: rich, sophisticated and beautiful. Definitely the kind of woman who’d never let a guy like me, rough and blunt and scarred all to hell, touch her if I didn’t have a billion dollars in my bank account.

  Definitely a potential cure for the burn of thwarted attraction and annoyance my little chauffeur had ignited inside me.

  I bought her a drink and she put her hand on my chest, leaning in to whisper something filthy in my ear. And that was when I finally spotted him.

  He was standing right down the other end, one elbow propped casually on the bar, his head bent to talk to a brunette in a tiny black dress.

  A deep satisfaction pulsed through me.

  Sebastian Fucking Dumont.

  My half-brother and once my closest friend. We’d ruled the exclusive school my mother had forced my father to shell out for—the only money he’d ever given her for me—and we’d had plans. So many fucking plans.

  Until he’d stolen those plans for himself.

  They say you’re supposed to forgive and forget, but I wasn’t a forgiving kind of man. I never forgot a betrayal, either—and I hadn’t forgotten his.

  His blue eyes—so like mine—widened as they saw me and I gave him a savage smile.

  Yeah, you rich fuck. Here I am, despite what you did to me. Here, in your territory.

  Shock gave way to anger, and he frowned. As I expected. He’d be wondering what I was doing here and why the club had let riff-raff like me into its elite halls. And then, no doubt, he’d be calling someone to have me thrown out for daring to gatecrash.

  The bastard was in for a couple of big surprises. Especially when he eventually found out the islands he’d been angling for were already sold. To me.

  I smiled wider and gave him a jaunty one-finger salute. I’m a member of your precious club, motherfucker, and what are you going to do about it?

  He stiffened, turning away to say something to the brunette before pushing his way through the crowd towards me.

  But I was done.

  I’d showed my face. I’d proved my point.

  Time to find Delaney and buy those fucking islands.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ellie

  I CHECKED THE rear-view mirror again to make sure the entrance to the fancy hotel Mr Evans had disappeared into was still clear and, again, it was.

  I didn’t expect him to come back out so soon—not that I’d been given details of the event I’d dropped him off at—but I wanted to be ready when he did. Anything to make up for my little mistake earlier, when I’d attempted to defuse his mood by cheering him up.

  I’d thought he looked apprehensive when he’d stared at the crowd outside the doors, so I’d given him a pat and a rousing ‘don’t let the bastards grind you down’ talk the way I did with Jason, my oldest brother, when he was racing and feeling nervous.

  Not a great plan in hindsight, because Mr Evans was not my brother, nor had he been feeling nervous, apparently, given his grumpy response.

  Which meant that now I needed to be on my best behaviour, especially if I was going to be broaching the topic of Australis with him.

  I’d hoped I would have made a good enough impression by this point that I could ask him about it tonight, but maybe that was too soon, especially given his temper.

  Now that I’d been given a taste of his fearsome reputation, it seemed as if he’d come by it honestly, and the curious part of me wanted to know why. Was he genuinely a grumpy bastard all the time or did he just not like people? Did it have something to do with his scars? Or was there something else going on?

  My research hadn’t given me any clues since he never talked about his private life. There were all kinds of rumours about how he’d made his initial start-up money, but the general consensus was that he’d earned it in illegal street fights, which naturally the media ate up with a big spoon.

  They had quite a fascination with him and now I’d met him, I could see why.

  He was quite...magnetic.

  I frowned out of the front windscreen, reflecting again on when and how I needed to approach the question of his Australis investment.

  It was important I get this right, since there wouldn’t be another opportunity to get close to him and if I didn’t succeed, the company was more than likely going to tank.

  If only Mark hadn’t been drunk at the Christmas party and thought I was fair game. And if only I hadn’t got angry when he’d grabbed me and kneed him in the balls.

  But I had. I’d committed the cardinal sin of turning something minor into a big deal, and Mark had complained to Dad about ‘assault’ and talked about lawsuits. Dad had had no choice but to pay him off, thus losing the best designer we’d ever had, not to mention a large portion of the investment capital we’d been given by Evans Investment.

  I’d then compounded my error by showing Dad a potential answer to our financial worries—the design for an electric supercar that I’d been working on for the past five years or so.

  But he wasn’t interested. He’d already been disapproving of how I’d handled Mark and he liked my electric car suggestion even less. He was an internal combustion engine man all the way and ‘fancy, newfangled’ ideas had no place at Australis.

  There’d been no point making a fuss so I’d quietly shelved the supercar project, turning to other ideas to fix our money problems instead.

  Some days I wondered if he would have liked me more if I hadn’t been born the spitting image of my pretty, womanly, passionate mother. If I’d been born a boy instead.

  Mum had died of cancer when I was seven and Dad had been destroyed by her loss. He hadn’t even been able to look at me in the days following her funeral, so I’d put away my pretty dresses and swallowed my grief, and tried to act like my brothers instead.

  But I couldn’t change the basic shape of my face. And of course, I had her eyes...

  Dad had never treated me the same way since.

  An old grief caught in my throat, but I forced the emotion down, distracting myself by glancing at the hotel entrance again.

  This time I saw the doorman move to pull open the door and finally Mr Evans came striding out, his arm wrapped around a pretty blonde woman in a skintight red dress.

  I only just suppressed a groan.

  Bloody hell. There went any opportunity for a quiet word about Australis. If he was going to be entertaining women, I’d probably have to wait until tomorrow.

  Annoyed and trying to ignore it, I got out of the car and hurried around the side to open the door, pasting on my usual smile.

  The woman was tall and lovely, her dress beautiful, her make-up perfect. Just the kind of woman men liked. At least, she was definitely a woman my brothers would have liked.

  She didn’t look at me as she got in and I was expecting Mr Evans to ignore me the way she had, but he didn’t. As I stood there holding the door, he glanced at me and those electric-blue eyes pinned me to the spot.

  An intense
, hot satisfaction glowed there and it was so at odds with the cold lightning that had been in them before that I could only stare, my breath catching.

  But it was only a moment. The next second, he’d got into the car leaving me standing there staring into space, my heart beating unreasonably fast.

  God, what was wrong with me? He was just a man. A rich man, yes, and powerful, but a man all the same. And I knew all about men. They were either stoic like my dad and my middle brother, Dev. Or they were cheeky and fun like my two older brothers, Jase and Justin. Or quiet like George, my youngest brother.

  Or pretending to be nice and ending up a sleaze like Mark.

  But Mr Evans didn’t fit into any of those categories. There was something burning inside him that none of the men I knew had, something that sparked and crackled like an arc welder melting metal.

  I had no idea why that fascinated me or why I’d ended up standing there staring into space because he’d glanced at me...

  It’s not static, remember?

  But the thought was an uncomfortable one, so I pushed it away before it could settle, shutting the door and going around to the driver’s side, getting back behind the wheel.

  I reached up to adjust the rear-view mirror, catching a glimpse of the pair of them as I did so.

  Mr Evans’s dark head was bent and he was whispering in the woman’s ear. She was sitting very close, half turned towards him, her hand spread on the broad expanse of his chest, and she gave a soft giggle.

  Ugh. Were they going to carry on like that the whole way? Not that it was any of my business what they did and not that I was at all bothered by it. I’d seen worse over the years I’d been driving.

  Ignoring my strangely hot cheeks, I jerked my gaze away from the mirror and stared out of the front windscreen instead.

  ‘Back to your hotel, Mr Evans?’ I tried to sound cheerful and professional and completely relaxed about what was happening behind me.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Evans said.

  His voice had gone even deeper and grittier, a thread of heat curling through it, and, despite myself, I glanced into the mirror again, drawn inexplicably by the sound.

  He was watching me, a hot blue flame glowing in the depths of his eyes.

  My mouth dried and my heart kicked in my chest, which was totally ridiculous, because him looking at me shouldn’t affect me like that. Not after Mark and the way he used to stare at me from behind his computer in the workshop. Making me feel as if I’d had a bath in a tub full of grease.

  So there shouldn’t have been any reason why I felt restless and hot. Why the expression in Mr Evans’s eyes connected to something hungry inside me. Something he saw that I hadn’t realised was there.

  Something I didn’t understand.

  I looked away before I could stop myself and then felt instantly annoyed. As if I’d retreated somehow, which was a mistake when dealing with a guy like him.

  Get it together, Little. You shouldn’t be playing games anyway.

  I definitely shouldn’t, not that I was a game player anyway. But there was a reason I’d managed to manoeuvre my way into driving for him and it wasn’t because he’d turned out to be hot shit on a stick.

  I had a mission and I had to keep that in mind.

  Determined not to look again, I started the limo and pulled away from the kerb, concentrating squarely on driving and not on the man behind me.

  Except I found the low rumble of his voice distracting. There was a velvety texture to it, a kind of huskiness that made me feel shivery.

  The engines of the Pythons sounded like that. A deep purr, like a giant cat. I loved the sound of those engines, loved those cars, sleek and dangerous and powerful.

  Taking one of them for a spin around the track was a huge rush, an adrenaline hit I’d craved right from the first moment I’d sat behind the wheel and the engine had turned over, throbbing like a giant heartbeat.

  The rush of speed had been the perfect way to deal with all the messy teenage emotions I hadn’t known how to handle, the emotions that Dad hadn’t known how to handle either, and so I’d taken to the track to drive whenever I was feeling upset or needing an emotional release.

  Speed was better than crying and there was nothing like hitting the gas hard and throwing a powerful car around a few corners.

  Ever since then, the revving purr of a V8 engine had made me feel good. Made me feel reckless and powerful. And listening to Mr Evans talk, his voice thrumming through me like one of those engines, a deep vibrating rumble that I could feel in my chest and lower, in my sex, made me feel that same way.

  What would it be like to drive him?

  What a stupid thought. He wasn’t a car. He was a man and probably wouldn’t appreciate being driven anywhere.

  Yet try as I might to concentrate on the road ahead of me, the thought wouldn’t go away.

  He was muscular and powerful, just like one of the Pythons. Would he take me on a wild ride if I put my hand on him? He probably wouldn’t be as easy to drive, but he’d certainly be as hot. And he’d be hard, too, and the rumble of his engine...

  There was a throb between my legs, a hot, raw feeling that I wasn’t sure how to handle. I’d never felt this before, not for anyone, not even for my one lone high-school boyfriend.

  Still think it’s static?

  Okay, no. It wasn’t static. It was attraction. But that didn’t make things any easier, because I still didn’t know what to do about it.

  Sex is what people usually do about it.

  I glared out of the front windscreen as I manoeuvred the giant car through the narrow Parisian streets.

  Sex was not happening. I’d had it a couple of times with that one single boyfriend and it had been nice but forgettable. Certainly not worth trying it with Mr Evans, even if he had been interested, which I was sure he wasn’t. Not given the woman he was with now.

  Anyway, he was clearly a man who was used to being in charge and, after Mark and his handsy ways, I wasn’t keen on letting any guy take charge of me.

  Apart from anything else, I was supposed to be asking him for more time on the Australis investment, not...anything else.

  The lights were red at the intersection ahead of me so I stopped, irritatingly conscious of Mr Evans’s voice rumbling again, followed by more feminine laughter and then a soft gasp.

  Don’t look. Don’t look.

  I wasn’t going to look. I wasn’t curious. I didn’t need to see what was happening behind me.

  Of course I looked.

  And the way the rear-view mirror was positioned gave me the perfect view of one of his large hands cupping her breast over the fabric of her dress, his thumb moving lazily back and forth over her nipple.

  I blinked, a weird flashback hitting me. Of how Mark had grabbed me from behind, squeezing me and pinching me, and how it had hurt. He’d been rough and I’d been taken by surprise, unable to jerk away until it was too late.

  Yet the woman didn’t seem to find what Mr Evans was doing to her unpleasant. She was arching into his hand as if wanting more. And...it seemed as if he was holding her carefully, his thumb moving gently, lightly...

  Unexpectedly, my own nipples hardened, pressing against the cotton of my bra, and I had to jerk my gaze away, my face flaming.

  Bloody hell, what was I thinking? Staring at my clients wasn’t at all professional. And as for getting turned on by it...

  No. Just no.

  The light changed colour and I put my foot on the accelerator, determined to ignore what I’d just seen.

  But Mr Evans made another of those deep, purring sounds and it shivered through me, making my mouth go dry and the throb in my sex even more intense.

  Was it the blonde making him sound like that? And why? What was she doing?

  Madness. I shouldn’t even want to look again, let alone be battling the s
udden and intense desire to do just that.

  Another set of lights was up ahead, turning red as soon as I approached.

  I wasn’t going to look. I wasn’t.

  But I couldn’t help myself. I did.

  His hand had moved to her butt, curving around it possessively, while hers had shifted from his chest and down between his powerful thighs, her fingers spread as she cupped him through his jeans, her red nails standing out against the blue denim.

  I swallowed, trying vainly to get some moisture into my bone-dry mouth.

  Her fingers were lazily stroking up and down, tracing the outline of something very long and very thick, and his thighs were spread wide, giving her room, as if he was enjoying very much what she was doing to him.

  A hungry feeling pulsed inside me, my palms sweaty as I gripped the steering wheel.

  This time I couldn’t drag my gaze away. I was glued to the view in the mirror, mesmerised and not even sure why.

  There was something hypnotic about the way her fingers moved on him, about the shape of his cock beneath the denim, that caught my attention, twisting my curiosity tight and refusing to let go.

  What did he feel like? Was he hot? Was he as hard as he looked? Would he make that soft bass rumble for me if I touched him?

  Need throbbed between my thighs, my hands itching to touch.

  I loved driving, and chauffeuring satisfied that need in me, but I also loved design. There was nothing that gave me as much pleasure as the clean lines and curves of a beautifully designed car, form and function perfectly melded.

  I wanted to see Mr Evans’s form. I wanted to see the lines and curves of him, and whether he’d be as beautifully designed for power and strength as he seemed to be. I already knew his torso was a work of art, but what about the rest of him?

  My heartbeat accelerated like one of the Pythons, revving hard.