In Bed With the Boss: The Brazilian Boss’s Innocent MistressThe Billionaire Boss’s Innocent BrideThe Surgeon Boss’s Bride

by Sarah Morgan

  She straightened her shoulders. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything.’ His tone silky smooth, he leaned forward. ‘I want to know everything, Grace. And don’t leave anything out.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve already told you most of it. I had this idea for the coffee shop, and—’

  ‘I’m not interested in your business. At this point in time I probably know more about your business than you do. I want to know about you. Go back further.’ His eyes didn’t shift from her face but his fingers drummed an impatient rhythm on the table. ‘Back to your childhood. When did you realise that you were dyslexic?’

  The breath hitched in her throat and she was suddenly swamped by feelings that she’d kept carefully hidden for years. ‘It really isn’t relevant, and—’

  ‘Not relevant?’ His fingers stilled and his voice was dangerously soft. ‘Grace, someone is ripping off your business.’

  She drew in a shaky breath. ‘I know that.’

  ‘And the reason they’re able to rip off your business is clearly because they think you won’t be any the wiser. You don’t check the figures, do you?’

  Mortified, she felt her face burn. It was like being back in a maths lesson, she thought miserably, when every other child was able to understand except her. ‘No,’ she said huskily, ‘I don’t check the figures. Not on the computer and not on paper.’

  ‘So how do you know how the business is doing? How do you keep on top of what’s happening with your business financially, if you can’t make sense of the numbers?’

  ‘Verbally. I just work with people that I trust and I rely on them to tell me what I need to know …’ her voice tailed off and she shook her head as she realised the appalling naïvety of that statement ‘… or what they want me to know. It isn’t the same thing, is it?’

  His mouth tightened. ‘It didn’t occur to you that they might be taking advantage?’

  She blinked several times to clear her vision. ‘Why would it?’

  He stared at her with naked exasperation. ‘Because that’s what people do, Grace. This is the real world and it’s a harsh, unfriendly place. In the real world people lie and cheat and take advantage of each other.’

  ‘Not all people,’ she said quietly, forcing the words past the lump in her throat. ‘There are plenty of people with good in them.’

  ‘Stop being so generous.’ He thumped his fist on the table and rose to his feet, visibly aggravated by her statement. ‘That attitude is the reason that people were able to take advantage of you. You need to stop seeing good in everyone and toughen up. Otherwise you’ll never succeed.’

  The words were difficult to say but somehow she managed it. ‘I haven’t succeeded. I’ve lost money.’

  ‘No. Someone else has done that for you.’ He frowned. ‘Your instincts told you that you should have been in profit, isn’t that right?’

  ‘I knew that the cafés were busy and that we were taking lots of money. I thought we should have been in profit, but our costs seemed high.’

  ‘And you didn’t question those figures?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I have,’ he growled, raking his fingers through his hair and pacing across the room towards the huge glass window. ‘I’ve spent all morning questioning those figures. Do you want to know the answers?’

  Did she want to know? Her legs suddenly shook and the sickness rose in her stomach because she knew instinctively that what he was going to say wasn’t going to be easy to hear. But since when had life been easy? When had she ever shied away from the hard and difficult? ‘Of course I want to know the answers.’ If wrong had been done then she wanted to put it right.

  He turned to face her, his eyes dark, his hair gleaming blue-black in the strong light. ‘Your father has been splitting the money with the dealer. Together they’ve driven up the price for the coffee while paying the bare minimum to Carlos and Filomena at the fazenda.’

  Her father.

  The sick feeling inside her intensified and she shook her head in an instinctive denial. ‘There must be some mistake.’ But even as she said the words she knew that there wasn’t. And that knowledge tasted like poison in her mouth.

  ‘It was your father.’ His voice was brutally harsh, as if he was afraid that showing sympathy might somehow dilute the impact of his announcement. ‘And that’s not all.’

  There was more?

  What more could there possibly be?

  How much deeper could the pain go?

  Battling against a sense of bitter failure, she looked at him expectantly. ‘Please go on,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t hold back.’

  His mouth tightened. ‘You mentioned that the refurbishment of the cafés cost more than you’d anticipated and I found out the reason for that, too. Your father agreed a cost with the builder that was far more than the going rate. Again, they split the difference. Are you following me?’

  Oh, yes, she was following him.

  She licked her lips. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Director’s payments.’ His voice was clipped and he thrust his hands in his pockets and paced again, this time back to his desk. ‘Did they ever discuss those with you, Grace? Consultancy fees? Did you know about that figure?’

  She nodded. ‘My father told me that there were going to be some one-off payments to the consultant who did the design work for the new cafés. Did he overcharge?’

  ‘To the tune of a quarter of a million pounds. Take all those figures together, and you have your profit. Except that someone took it out of the company and left you with a business that was just breaking even. They were clever enough not to let you go under because then they would have lost their source of income.’ Rafael let out a long breath and picked up a set of papers from his desk. They were covered in circles and lines of red ink. ‘Your father has stitched you up, Grace. He’s the reason your business isn’t in profit.’

  Feeling faint and shaky, she nodded. ‘Yes.’ ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Oh,’ she managed a smile, even though the effort was almost painful, ‘I expect he was driven to it by having a daughter like me. I wasn’t exactly a rewarding child to have around. I was never top in anything, you know, and I had two left feet when it came to sport. For a guy like my father, I must have been a bitter disappointment.’ And it hurt. It still hurt.

  ‘But he went into business with you.’

  ‘Yes. At school I spent my whole time dreaming. I was full of ideas and I just knew I could do something good and useful with my life, even if I didn’t take a conventional route. My father said he’d help me.’ She turned away from him and walked to the window, staring into the rainforest without seeing anything. ‘I suppose he saw a way of finally turning me from a disappointment to an advantage. I was never going to be able to check, was I?’

  ‘So now what do you want to do?’

  Scream? Cry? Thump someone? Slink into a deep hole and never emerge? ‘I don’t know. Let them know that I know.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘I’ve basically been very stupid.’

  ‘No.’ His voice was fierce. ‘You haven’t been stupid. I see now that you have amazing vision and a huge capacity for hard work. The salary that you pay yourself is nothing.’

  She frowned, not understanding the relevance of that statement. ‘I wasn’t ever interested in money, I’ve told you that.’

  He inhaled sharply and dropped the papers on his desk. ‘What were you interested in, Grace? Tell me.’

  ‘Proving myself.’ She wrapped her arms round her waist. ‘I grew up with everyone telling me that I’d never make anything of myself. That I was never going to be anything or anyone.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Everyone. My teachers. My father. Have you any idea how it feels to be told that you’re nothing? To be told that you’ll never achieve anything?’ She looked at him, her eyes lingering on the hard lines of his handsome face. Then she thought of the autocratic way he ran his business and realised that this man
wouldn’t have a clue what she was talking about. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Why did they let you think you were nothing? Because of your dyslexia?’ He frowned, his expression uncomprehending. ‘Why was it such an issue? Why didn’t they just help you? Schools are geared up to handle things like that these days.’

  ‘Not mine.’ She gave a laugh and turned away so that she didn’t have to look at the question in his eyes. ‘To start with they thought I was just naughty, unruly and stupid.’ Stupid. Stupid. She tilted her head back and blinked back the tears. It always came back to that word. ‘I hate talking about this.’

  ‘Tough.’ He stood up and paced towards her, his hands turning her to face him. ‘This time you’re going to keep talking until I’ve heard everything I need to hear.’

  ‘Why do you need to hear any more?’ Didn’t he know enough?’

  His fingers tightened on her arms and he gave her a little shake. ‘Talk.’

  Why not? How much worse could she feel? ‘At school I was slower than everyone else. The class idiot.’ She hated saying it and had to force herself to remember that he’d already formed his opinion of her. ‘The teachers used to be really impatient with me. My father—’ She broke off and his mouth tightened.

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘It was difficult for him,’ she said quietly, moving away from him and wrapping her arms around her waist in an unconscious gesture of comfort. ‘He always wanted a son to follow him into business and what he got was a girl who couldn’t even add up basic numbers.’

  Rafael watched her. ‘It didn’t occur to him that you had a problem?’

  ‘Oh, he knew I had a problem. He thought I was slow, lazy—’ she chewed her lip ‘—stupid. Once or twice he tried to help me but I just couldn’t understand him so he gave up.’

  ‘So how were you diagnosed? What happened?’ There was anger in his tone and Grace glanced at him miserably, knowing that he had reason to be angry.

  She hadn’t told him the truth about herself, had she?

  She’d taken the loan without being entirely honest about her skills—or lack of them.

  ‘A new teacher started at the school. She was much more progressive and had some experience with dyslexic students. She had her suspicions immediately and arranged for me to be tested. The results really shocked her. I was severely affected and she couldn’t quite believe that no one had helped me before.’ Grace shrugged. ‘She saved my life. She spent hours with me, hours of her own time, helping me. And she taught me ways of coping. She showed me all the things that I could do really well and she taught me that I wasn’t stupid. But most of all she taught me never to give up.’

  Rafael ran a hand over the back of his neck and closed his eyes briefly. ‘And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning to me before?’

  ‘You only gave me ten minutes.’ Her pathetic attempt at a joke fell flat under his stare and she sighed. ‘No, because I’ve never made excuses for myself. And I just wanted to live my life by the same rules as everyone else.’

  ‘You didn’t mention it when you were given the loan?’

  ‘If I’d told you then you wouldn’t have given me the loan.’

  He frowned. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Yes, it is true. You would have said that I wasn’t the sort of person to be running a business—’ she swallowed painfully ‘—and you would have been right. I see that now. I thought I could run a business providing I had people to help me, but if you can’t trust your own family, who can you trust?’

  ‘That is a question that I’m not qualified to answer because in my experience no one is to be trusted, least of all family.’

  ‘Oh.’ She gave a painful smile. ‘Does your family lie and cheat and try and rip you off? It’s enough to shatter all your illusions, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t have a family, Grace,’ a muscle worked in his lean, aggressive jaw and the sudden flicker in his eyes discouraged any further questioning on that subject, ‘and nor do I have any illusions about people.’

  ‘Well, that makes you the sensible one, doesn’t it?’ She let out a long breath and studied the floor, wondering where to go from here. ‘Look, I’m very grateful to you for trying to sort out the mess and find out what is going on. It’s more than I managed to do. And you must be very angry with me.’

  ‘You’re right that I’m angry.’ He prowled across the room towards her, his tempestuous mood sizzling the air around them. ‘I’m livid.’

  ‘Yes.’ She forced herself to face his anger even though her knees shook and her palms were damp. ‘You have every right to be angry. I lost Filomena and Carlos a significant amount of money.’

  His dark brows met in a frown. ‘That isn’t why I’m angry. Obviously I intend to give them all the money they need, although I’ll have to be subtle because they’re very proud. No, I’m angry because you didn’t give me all the information. I’m angry because you didn’t tell me any of this sooner.’

  ‘But I did tell you that I hadn’t stolen money,’ she muttered in a feeble attempt at self-defence but the words subsided in her throat as he delivered her a furious glare that told her everything she needed to know about the current state of his extremely volatile temperament.

  ‘Given that you withheld the one vital piece of information that would have actually allowed me to believe you, you’ll agree that the evidence wasn’t exactly stacked in your favour?’

  She chewed her lip. ‘I suppose I just expected you to trust me.’

  ‘And why would I do a thing like that?’ His voice was soft and he moved close to her, something dangerous lighting his dark eyes. ‘I’m not like you, Grace. I don’t trust people I don’t know. I don’t trust the people I do know. The truth is that I don’t trust anyone at all, and especially not when all the evidence points to guilt. I don’t give people the benefit of the doubt. Haven’t you heard that about me?’ The atmosphere throbbed with suppressed emotion. His anger, her misery and something far, far more powerful than either.

  Sexual chemistry. It simmered between them, providing an undercurrent that heated the atmosphere.

  ‘I heard that about you,’ she said hoarsely, struggling to ignore the sudden rush of heat that engulfed her body. ‘It’s hard not to. The papers are full of what a bad boy you are.’

  A humourless smile touched his firm mouth. ‘And yet, even knowing that about me, you chose to fly all the way out here to try and persuade me to extend your loan.’ He was standing close to her now. Incredibly close. ‘You must have known I’d ask you difficult questions involving numbers.’

  She gave a wan smile. ‘I just hoped they’d be questions that I’d memorised the answers to.’

  He shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Senior businessmen with decades of experience think twice before discussing numbers with me and yet you walked into the lion’s den like a baby deer offering itself up as a sacrifice.’

  Her heart bumping against her chest, she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said breathlessly, ‘I didn’t do that. I knew from the first moment I saw you that there was good in you. I knew that the papers were lying.’

  He stepped back from her and she sensed his immediate withdrawal. She sensed the depth of his cynicism and something close to distaste.

  ‘Don’t do that, Grace.’ His voice was rough, almost aggressive, as if he were determined to keep her at a distance, and perhaps he was because he turned away, leaving her only a glimpse of the hard lines of his profile. ‘Don’t give me virtues that don’t exist. Don’t trust in people that don’t deserve your trust. You made that mistake with your father and his little band of accomplices. And you made it with me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’ His tone was savage and when he turned to face her again his eyes blazed dark. ‘You made that mistake with me, last night.’

  It was the first reference to the night of stormy passion and she felt her whole body heat at the memory. ‘I don’t consider last night to be a mistake.’
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br />   ‘No?’ He looked at her then, his dark eyes hard and his mouth set as he forced her to confront the truth. ‘And yet you didn’t hear the words you wanted to hear, did you? You didn’t hear love or gentleness. You didn’t hear promises or talk of a future together. Last night was all about sex, Grace. Hot, primitive sex. Are you willing to admit that?’

  Her heart was hammering against her chest. ‘Yes.’ What other answer could she give? She wasn’t going to admit it was about love, was she? Even she didn’t understand these feelings that had rushed up and engulfed her. How could she expect him to—this man who didn’t even think that such things as love existed? This man who was so damaged that he expected the worst from every woman he met.

  He stepped closer to her and this time his arms gripped hers as if he wanted to be completely sure that she was paying attention. ‘I thought you were guilty, Grace. I thought you were guilty as hell, but I didn’t even care because all I was interested in was your body under mine and your unquestioning surrender.’

  And that was what she’d given him, of course. Her unquestioning surrender. She’d given him everything he’d demanded from her.

  She didn’t flinch under his gaze. ‘Are you trying to shock me?’

  ‘No.’ His fingers bit into the soft flesh of her arms. ‘I’m trying to remind you who I am so that there’s no mistake.’

  ‘There’s no mistake, Rafael.’ Grace said the words softly. ‘It’s true that I’ve made mistakes but last night wasn’t one of them.’

  ‘You’re deluding yourself.’

  ‘No.’ And she wasn’t. Even if he sent her home within the hour, she’d have no regrets about what they’d shared. How could she, when the night they’d spent together was the closest to perfect that her life had ever become? And suddenly the heat pulsing between them and the wicked pull of temptation drew her onto her toes and she dragged her lips over the roughness of his jaw.

  ‘No.’ He tried to step back from her but she slid her arms round his neck and pressed her body against the hardness of his.

  ‘I want you, Rafael.’ She whispered the words against the warmth of his neck, feeling the strength and power of his shoulders under her seeking hands. ‘If last night was a mistake, then it was a mistake that I intend to repeat.’