Accidentally Married To The Billionaire - Part 3 (The Billionaire's Touch)

by Sierra Rose

“I suggest a bottle of champagne. Our friend Tariq made a rather crucial mistake, and I intend to use it to clear up our zoning issues.”

  “Impossible. I was here the entire time eating this wretched food and waiting for him to be the least bit receptive to reason. What did he do?”

  “He slipped me a hotel room key card. Where I come from that’s an invitation to infidelity, and I’m not at all sure he realizes that I know his wife. He is, however, about to find that out. Because she and I attended the same fundraising luncheon today to increase awareness of childhood diabetes. Tariq is about to receive a photo of the two of us together at the lunch. I messaged him that I look forward to resolving our zoning difficulties so I can leave the country and go back home. I also suggested he tell Radma that I said hello and if I’m still in town at the weekend, I’d love to have lunch, just the three of us.” She smiled mischievously.

  “Well, I should say you have him under control then. Well done, Gemma. I’ll drink to that.”

  “Your plans in Dubai are so ambitious, and it’s the least I could do to help them along in some small way.”

  “Some small way? You head up my international legal team in the Middle East, Gemma. Your contribution is very significant.”

  “I’m honored that you feel that way. Thank you.”

  “I should think my regard for your work is rather obvious. If not I will have to consider writing personal thank you notes.”

  “You could always slip me a hotel key,” she said archly.

  “Ah, I’ve seen what you do with those. Some very clever extortionate tactics. I hope I’m not careless enough to put myself in that position,” he said rather uncomfortably, trying to make it seem a joke. Gemma ran her stockinged foot up the hem of his trousers and stroked his leg.

  “I’d never tell a soul if it were you, Brandon. And any woman stupid enough to stay behind in Manhattan and leave a man like you to sleep alone in Dubai deserves what she gets,” she said, her voice a mercenary purr. He withdrew his leg further under his chair to get away from her roaming foot.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. I’m quite flattered, of course. You’re an amazing girl—woman. Lawyer,” he said, flustered and ready to bolt for the door.

  “Come here,” she said, coaxing, and leaned over to whisper in his ear, “aren’t you curious? I’m not just dominant in the courtroom if you know what I mean. I have the most delicious little riding crop in my handbag,” she trailed her fingertips along his neck, and he got to his feet abruptly, out of her reach.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Gemma. I’m not feeling well. Do stay and enjoy dessert. I hope you have a lovely evening.”

  Brandon Cates bolted from the very swank restaurant and fled down to the lobby so fast that he had to wait for his driver to get there. Once he was back in his suite, he allowed himself to worry that Gemma might quit her very lucrative position at Power Regions because he’d turned her down, or that she might sell some exaggerated story about him to the press. He counted on her self-preservation, her desire to have money, power and a sound reputation in the world of international law.

  Hopefully, she was clever enough or embarrassed enough to keep this evening’s happenings private. It would only take one rejected woman like herself, bitter and hurt, to spin a tale about him making advances toward her or harassing her in some way—to discredit him to the stockholders, to Marj, to Power Regions as a whole. He couldn’t bear to think of it.

  As it was, he wished he’d never gone to that dinner. It had been largely unproductive; the food was not at all what he liked, and then one of his lawyers sexually harassed him. All in all, a failure of an evening. While the zoning issue might shortly be solved, it could reasonably be at the expense of his working relationship with Gemma. He couldn’t imagine what made her think that he, her boss and a newly married man, would be receptive to a proposition. It was insulting to say the least.

  Back at his hotel, he debated calling Marj. She wasn’t in the best mood where he was concerned, so he decided against it. But not before he ordered up a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He wasn’t going to drink the coffee, just smell it and be reminded of his wife who was an ocean away. It was rather pathetic, probably, but she’d never know about it. Brandon was a few hours into returning emails and double checking paperwork when his phone buzzed. The publicist. He’d grown to hate the sight of the publicist’s number on his phone screen.

  “Mr. Cates, I didn’t realize how late it is in Dubai, and I apologize for bothering you at this hour, but damage control is an absolute necessity.”

  “What have they said about her now?” he sighed.

  “Not your wife, sir. Yourself. A photo has surfaced online from, evidently, this very evening, of you with a very attractive blonde woman leaning into whisper to you. The two of you look very cozy, and it doesn’t instill a great deal of confidence in your rather conveniently timed marriage to have pictures floating around of you tete a tete with another woman. Particularly one as gorgeous and obviously enthralled as this one.”

  “That’s just Gemma, one of the lawyers in Dubai working on the zoning problem. She tried to get a little personal with me, and I managed to brush her off, hopefully with enough tact that she won’t go selling some salacious story to go with that picture. How on earth are there photographers inside exclusive restaurants in Dubai? Who is sending these people to follow an American businessman who is only recognizable from the society pages in Manhattan?”

  “I suppose your stepmother. If not, then the tabloid reading public is suddenly enraptured by your whirlwind romance, and they’re more than ready to click on any article that seems to show its demise.”

  “This is not the demise of my marriage. It’s a badly timed photo. Send me a copy and I’ll see exactly how damning it looks. There’s nothing to tell. You don’t need to spin it. I just need to talk to Marj before she sees it.”

  He hung up and stared at the image filling his screen. The lovely Gemma, her long bare legs crossed high at the knee, her snug dress revealing cleavage as she leaned in toward him, her arm draped across his chair, her hand on his arm, her mouth close, too close, to his ear. It looked like they were confidantes. No, it looked uncomfortably like they were lovers.

  Brandon called Marj, but it went to voice mail. He emailed her, texted her, asking her to call him right away, that he was fine but there was an urgent matter they needed to discuss. “I did not have sex with that woman,” is what he wanted to say. But he thought that would be a rather disturbing voice mail message, particularly if Marj hadn’t seen the picture yet.

  It was earlier in New York, so there was no reason Marj wouldn’t be awake to answer her phone. She had to be avoiding him. She might possibly have seen the photo and be determined to leave him, believing him to be a cheater. It didn’t bear thinking about. He was catastrophizing, and he was not a man to panic. He was always so level-headed when it came to business. Except, once again, this was personal and he was much less comfortable in the personal arena.

  Brandon called his pilot and told him to ready the plane. He needed to get back to Manhattan. If there was about to be a firestorm, they needed to face it together, present a united front for the stockholders. That much was true. But the real reason he was flying home early was that he needed to talk to his wife in person, needed her to see his face and know he told the truth. He set an early alarm for his early takeoff and kept his phone by the bed. It never rang. Despite the fact he left her three more messages.

  Chapter 13

  Marj spent most of the night reading books on volunteerism and philanthropy. Her e-reader app was full of information on nonprofit administration and grassroots programs to improve literacy and graduation rates. She had found herself interested, after her work in the afterschool program, in helping teenagers in particular. She had spreadsheets of ideas to help them. They needed job skills and life skills—how to be punctual, dress neatly, address one’s boss and coworkers appropriately, how to cook basic meal
s and balance a checkbook and how to write a resume.

  She had an appointment with the principal at the school where she’d volunteered before. She wanted to help start a program to communicate and model these skills for the juniors and seniors. They talked about poverty culture and about the coded language of the middle class and how most of the kids in the school didn’t know the script for getting a decent job, the phrases and buzzwords they’d have to understand, the gestures and demeanor necessary. Together they worked out a once a week class that Marj would start, bringing in guest speakers from the community and doing role plays for interviews and practicing how to fill out job applications and things like that.

  By the time she was finished, Marj was excited to begin with the kids in the fall. She was also anxious about that picture, the one of Brandon with the blond. She’d seen it, of course, she had. She wouldn’t let herself stare at it, analyze it, try to guess at his motives. It already hurt badly enough, knowing what she knew now—that she was a temporary arrangement anyway. If he’d only planned on keeping her around for six months despite his declarations to the contrary, why couldn’t he have kept it in his pants until the half a year had elapsed? Surely he wasn’t crappy enough to cheat on her…was he? It was too harsh to consider it. He knew how badly she’d been hurt when that bastard Luke cheated on her with the secretary. She and Brandon had even weathered his own run-in with a secretary, and they’d been honest with one another and came out on the other side of the ordeal stronger than ever before. Or at least, she thought they had.

  What if all that was fake? What if he had been boning the secretary all along and now he was screwing the blond in Dubai as well? She might be his cupcake on another continent, so he didn’t get lonely while administering to the needs of his father’s so-precious company. It nauseated her to think her husband had a girl in every port, or in every international office as it were. She’d watched him so often, so closely, for any sign that he wasn’t serious about her, any indication that he was only humoring her until something better came along, something real. But it felt real, dammit, it felt far too real!

  She couldn’t talk to him yet. Couldn’t face him and listen to his side of the story, a side that left him both blameless and noble, she had no doubt. He was charming, persuasive. She knew she’d end up believing him. She just wasn’t ready to hear it. He shouldn’t have been alone at dinner with a woman who looked like that, getting that close, that intimate. There was touching, whispering. It wrenched her, sickened her. She had listened to his voice mails. She knew he was on his way home. Marj would have to deal with him, and soon. But she would delay it as long as possible. She knew this was going to hurt, and knew that nothing but more drama and more pain would come of it. A man like him was probably turning down women left and right all day long, but it didn’t make it easier to tolerate.

  On one hand, she consoled herself that he wouldn’t need to lie to her because she was only his temporary spouse, but then she remembered that he’d been lying to her for a while now, making her think that permanence was an option. So he might lie about this just to keep her compliant or to keep her from flipping out on him. He wasn’t a man who liked displays of emotion, and she was for sure having some serious emotions about their situation.

  She occupied herself by stopping off at a couple of department stores and asking to speak to the managers about donating or providing a major discount on interview style clothes for underprivileged teens. White shirt and tie, trousers, dress socks, and shoes for the boys. Blouse and skirt or pants and shoes for the girls. Marj knew these kids had to look the part if they wanted to be taken seriously for part time jobs or for scholarship consideration. So rather than simply donating clothes herself when the time came, she thought to give local department stores the opportunity to help the youth in the community.

  She left with the business cards of two managers and one verbal promise to at least provide basics at reduced cost. By that time, it was coming on evening and Marj was starving. Rather than go home, as she usually did, she chose not to face Brandon yet. She was feeling good about what she’d accomplished today and didn’t want the misery of confrontation to spoil it.

  So she stopped for a salad and decided to treat herself to a margarita afterward. She stopped in at a bar she used to frequent back in her single days. She wasn’t looking for a man this time, just the perfect salt rim and twist of lime. In fact, she wanted to avoid the man she loved. So she sat down and drained that tall glass and licked the salt off her lips with satisfaction. She felt steadier, less like she was coming apart from missing him and fearing the worst about their relationship and his intentions and this debacle with the blond in Dubai. When the waitress brought her another round, she smiled but couldn’t muster a thank you.

  Marj sat and sipped this one thoughtfully. She turned the situation over and over in her mind, wondering what she could possibly say to Brandon when she had to face him. There were several possibilities. None of them grand.

  So it’s pretty obvious that this asshole prefers curvy, drop-dead gorgeous blondes. Feel free to wire the settlement to my bank account ASAP.

  Stop bullshitting me. I know you don’t want me, and you just said nice things to keep me in the marriage for six months. I pretty much hate you now so just stay away from me until the time’s up.

  I’m working on a job skills program for youth in poverty at a local high school. See, I have something to do besides obsess about whether my husband likes me or not.

  She figured she might as well leave a note in his locker or pull his hair on the playground if she was going to say any of that crap. She scrolled through the notifications on her phone, looked at the incriminating picture a few more times. She looked at it long enough that she could close her eyes and still see it. The perfect cut of that same Hugo Boss jacket he’d worn for their magazine shoot. The line of his jaw, the tilt of his head, the half smile that she knew so intimately, the one that shows a crack in his armor, a warmth and attention that she coveted.

  She burned with jealousy that this blond had sat so near him, had basked in that particular smile while Marj sat home in New York feeling sorry for herself. She wished she’d gone to Dubai, and then she hated herself for wishing it because she couldn’t police him, couldn’t stop him from ever being attracted to another woman. Yet, she wanted to. She wanted to put up that yellow Police Line Do Not Cross tape all around him and blow an air horn at any woman who stared at him too long.

  She imaged the air horn with some satisfaction when he touched her shoulder. She knew before she opened her eyes that it was Brandon. His touch, the barest brush of his hand on her shoulder was enough for recognition, damn him. She looked at him sadly, ruefully.

  “I can explain,” he said, taking the chair opposite hers. She shrugged as if even the weight of her own shoulders was too great to bear.

  “I don’t want you to explain. There’s nothing you can say that I’ll like. So let’s just leave it alone,” she said.

  “You don’t care? You actually don’t care what I was doing in the Emirates with the lawyer?”

  “Is she a lawyer? Not that it matters. It doesn’t, really,” Marj said listlessly, tracing the rim of her glass, causing salt to flake off onto the table.

  “It matters to me. I didn’t do anything with her. I mean, I ate some really terrible food with her and the zoning commissioner, but he left to go to a recital, and then I left a little while later, alone. I’m not involved with her.”

  “Like I said, doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters if my wife believes me or not!”

  “How did you find me here?”

  “Lucky guess,” he faltered.

  “How did you find me? I never mentioned this place to you.”

  “I reported your phone missing and used the GPS tracker to find you here,” he said.

  “Stalker,” she said, the teasing lilt creeping into her voice in spite of her intentions to remain cold toward him.

  �
��I’ll own that. I stalked you here. But you’re my wife.”

  “And you love me so much?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Yeah, I thought so. Listen, I know where I stand. And it’s okay because I chose this kind of marriage for me. So it’s not right to get mad at you. I’ve been thinking about it long and hard, and that’s the conclusion I finally came too.”

  “I want to make things work with us, and I haven’t been upfront with you. There’s all this shit online about you, slanderous stuff I’ve been trying to block and get removed, but it’s taking up a lot of time and legal effort and I have all these notifications on my phone whenever someone types ‘slut’ in the same article or comment with your name and—”

  “You have a slut alert out on me? I’m not the one rubbing up against random blondes in Dubai, dude,” she said with a mirthless laugh.

  “I know. I’m not saying you are one. In fact, I don’t like it being said about you, and I’m suing some people, potentially a lot of people because of it.”

  “Why would you waste time suing people for calling me names?”

  “Because it’s libelous and unsubstantiated, and they can’t call my wife names!” He said, thumping the table for emphasis. “And that hurt more than anything.”

  “Hurt your reputation?”

  “No. Not my reputation. Me. It hurt me…because I care so much.”

  “That’s very well-rehearsed, Cates.”

  “I’m going to make them pay. Nobody talks like that about the person that means the most to me.”

  She laughed aloud. “Are you going to go beat them up by the basketball court after gym class? It’s the Internet. People say all kinds of shit, Brandon. You can’t let it bother you.”

  “Yes, I can. It’s unacceptable.”

  “Then for sure don’t read the comments on our magazine photos. Whew. Those people do not like me at all. I’m nasty and can give you a choice of STI’s, I think was the final verdict.”