The Billionaire's Marriage Bargain

by Mortimer, Carole

  ‘Dominick…?’

  He looked down at her now, fully dressed while she still lay naked and wanton on the cushion, her hair a dark tangle, her body still warm and beautiful. ‘Put some clothes on, Kenzie,’ he scorned harshly. ‘Play time is over for now. I would like to go back up to the house and eat.’

  Kenzie stared at him. He wanted food now? After what had just happened?

  But what had really happened?

  Dominick had come down to the pool, discovered her half naked, and decided to complete the process, to take what he had always considered his, as he had been warning her for the last week he would do.

  The fact that it had been such intense pleasure for her, so much more than ever before, urging her on to behave in a way she never had before, didn’t mean that it had been the same for Dominick.

  In fact, if his demand for food was anything to go by then she was sure that it hadn’t been the same for him!

  ‘You see, Kenzie, it wasn’t in my bed at all,’ he said, breaking into her tortuous thoughts. ‘And, as we both know, you were far from unwilling!’ he added with husky mockery.

  She briefly felt the hot tears of humiliation, before anger took over, her overbright eyes burning like twin emeralds of fire in the pallor of her face as she got lithely to her feet, totally uncaring of her nakedness.

  She was intent now only on hurting him as he was deliberately hurting her. ‘I wasn’t the one who begged—Let me go, Dominick!’ she breathed raggedly as he grasped her arms to pull her hard against him, her face only inches away from his now as he looked down at her coldly, his breath warm against her skin.

  He thrust her roughly away from him, hands clenched at his sides, a nerve pulsing in his rigidly clamped jaw. ‘Get some clothes on and then come back up to the house,’ he grated. ‘Our weekend isn’t over yet.’

  It was as far as Kenzie was concerned!

  And there was nothing that Dominick could do or say that was going to make her stay here with him any longer than it took her to dress, collect her bag, and then go!

  Chapter 11

  Kenzie dressed and tidied her appearance as best she could before returning to the house, breathing an inward sigh of relief when she discovered Dominick wasn’t in the kitchen as she had expected he would be.

  Although she wasn’t quite so lucky as she walked through the main house with the intention of going up to her bedroom to get her bag before leaving.

  ‘Drink?’ Dominick growled as she passed the doorway to the sitting room, holding up the glass of brandy he was obviously enjoying.

  Kenzie entered the room slowly. It was a beautiful gold and cream room, and the early evening sunshine shining in through the huge bay windows should have looked warm and welcoming, but failed to succeed when it was being dominated by the presence of the tall, darkly brooding man standing beside the unlit fireplace.

  Kenzie eyed him in challenge. ‘Am I going to need one?’

  His mouth twisted humourlessly. ‘Probably,’ he drawled calmly, moving to the drinks cabinet to pour a second brandy before putting it down on the coffee-table that stood in front of the sofa.

  Either Dominick no longer wanted to touch her again, even accidentally, or this was a move on his part to force her to sit down on the gold-coloured sofa, the fact of her having to look up at him instantly putting her on the defensive.

  She would take a guess on it being the latter!

  Kenzie moved to pick up the glass before strolling over to stand in front of one of the windows, her back to the garden, and the sun streaming in behind her putting her face into shadow.

  She hadn’t rushed to return to the house, and had taken some time to try to think how she was going to get away. She had tried to decide how she would deal with Dominick if she didn’t manage to leave without seeing him again, knowing that her uninhibited response to him in the pool-house had put her at a definite disadvantage.

  It was a disadvantage she intended taking back if she could.

  ‘I believe I did try to warn you that statistically those sort of—experiments, never work out,’ she reminded him before taking a sip of her brandy, her gaze remaining unwaveringly on his.

  Dominick studied her through narrowed lids, filled with the need to hurt and kiss her at the same time!

  To hurt her because he couldn’t stand the thought of her making love to a man like Jerome Carlton in the way she just had with him. To kiss her because that once hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough!

  Instead he looked at her coldly. ‘Obviously not,’ he agreed icily, enjoying the angry flush that suddenly coloured her cheeks.

  She hadn’t liked him saying that. Good. Because he wasn’t enjoying himself, either.

  And he had expected to. During the months since Kenzie had walked out on him, the thought of what was going to happen next had been the driving force behind all of his actions. He had believed that revenge would be sweet, and this added bonus of making love with Kenzie more than he could possibly have hoped for. But the only result of that was that he knew he still wanted her, damn it!

  ‘Better?’ he scorned as Kenzie took another sip of her brandy.

  Kenzie didn’t respond as he had thought she would, her green eyes glittering with anger rather than tears as she met his gaze full on. ‘The brandy is excellent,’ she bit out coolly.

  He had to admire her, Dominick acknowledged grudgingly; after the passion they had shared down in the pool-house, and his harshness afterwards, he knew Kenzie must be feeling more than a little unsure of herself, but not by so much as a blink of the eye did she reveal that emotion.

  Instead she looked tall and self-possessed, and the bitter rage that welled up inside him made him want to wipe that air of confidence off her beautiful face!

  ‘So aren’t you curious to know why your boyfriend had to delay his visit to England for a couple of days?’ he asked tauntingly.

  Kenzie tensed, but only inwardly; after the humiliation Dominick had tried to inflict earlier she had no intention of letting him see how upset she really was.

  She had reacted instinctively to Dominick’s lovemaking; she couldn’t have denied her response to him even if she had wanted to. How Dominick must be loving that.

  In fact, his scathing comments afterwards had already shown her that he did.

  They both knew now exactly how ‘unwilling’ she hadn’t been!

  For a while, a very brief while, Dominick had once again been the man she loved, the experienced but considerate lover who had initiated her into all the pleasures of lovemaking. Even though Dominick refused to believe it, he was the only man she had ever made love with.

  But the Dominick he had been after their lovemaking, the Dominick he was now, wasn’t the man she had fallen in love with.

  Had she really thought that their making love would make any difference to Dominick? To the way he felt about her now?

  She hadn’t been thinking at all, that was the problem. From the first moment Dominick had touched her, she had only been able to feel!

  She drew in a controlling breath. ‘If by the phrase “boyfriend” you are referring to Jerome—’

  ‘How many other boyfriends do you have, Kenzie?’ Dominick mocked, his brown eyes as hard as pebbles, and his mouth a thin, derisive line.

  Her cheeks became flushed in spite of herself. For one thing, at forty-two, Jerome was hardly a boy, and for another, he had never been a boyfriend or anything else in the least intimate to her!

  ‘My marriage to you hasn’t exactly made me eager to return to the dating circuit!’ she told him accusingly. She was sure the same couldn’t be said for Dominick; as she knew only too well, he might not believe in love, but he was an extremely sensual man, and had been involved with lots of women before the two of them had met.

  His mouth tightened. ‘I very much doubt that’s the reason for the oversight, Kenzie. I feel sure that Jerome Carlton is no more eager to share you than I was!’

  Kenzie breathed her impatience. �
��How many times do I have to tell you that I am not, nor have I ever been, involved in an affair with Jerome Carlton?’ Her eyes glittered with anger.

  Dominick gave an uninterested shrug. ‘You’re the one that feels that need, Kenzie, not me.’

  ‘And anyway, what do you know about Jerome’s delay in coming to England?’ she prompted impatiently, sure from his attitude that Dominick did know something.

  The scowl disappeared from Dominick’s brow as he gave a relaxed smile. ‘Quite a lot, as it happens,’ he answered easily.

  Kenzie swallowed hard. ‘And are you going to tell me?’

  ‘I was going to leave it to Carlton to do that—but why not?’ Dominick shrugged.

  ‘About two years ago Carlton Cosmetics hit a few financial difficulties, at which point Carlton decided to float forty-nine per cent of the company shares on the open market, retaining thirty-one per cent for himself, and ten per cent to his two siblings, a younger brother and sister.’

  Kenzie had met both Adrian and Caroline Carlton. Adrian actually worked for the company, and she had found him as charming as Jerome, whereas Caroline Carlton had no interest in her brothers or the family-run company, and was only concerned with the income she received from it.

  Kenzie moistened her lips. ‘And?’

  He grimaced. ‘At a guess I would say that Carlton has spent the last few days running around in ever-decreasing circles trying to work out how he came to lose control of fifty-one per cent of the shares of his own company!’

  He watched with satisfaction as the colour drained from Kenzie’s cheeks, her eyes darkening to fathomless pits of green glass.

  ‘You—’ She swallowed. ‘Tell me you aren’t the one responsible for that, Dominick!’ she gasped in disbelief.

  He gave a humourless smile. ‘Now what possible reason would I have to lie to you about something like that, Kenzie?’

  She stared at him disbelievingly for several long seconds before moving to the sofa and sitting down abruptly, her hands trembling as her fingers curled about the brandy glass.

  ‘I did warn you you might need the brandy,’ Dominick said, with a smug look on his face.

  Kenzie was breathing shallowly, feeling so stunned she couldn’t move or speak.

  It was incredible to think that for the last four months Dominick had been plotting and scheming—

  So these were the ‘plans’ he had still had to finalize on Wednesday!

  But why had he done this? He didn’t love her; he had never loved her, so why should her leaving him have bothered him in the slightest—even if he did persist in believing she had left him for the arms of another man?

  Pride.

  She had damaged that Masters pride, and Dominick had taken retribution for it.

  But in what a way—!

  ‘I can’t believe you did this, Dominick,’ she said quietly, shaking her head in disbelief.

  Dominick’s top lip curled contemptuously. ‘If you have any doubts that I’m the person who now owns fifty-one per cent of Carlton Cosmetics, then don’t,’ he assured her confidently before drinking the remainder of the brandy in his glass, enjoying the smooth burning sensation of the alcohol as it slid down his throat. ‘But I’m afraid Carlton only learnt of the takeover very recently when Caroline told him that she had sold her ten per cent of the company shares. To me,’ he added with satisfaction. He shrugged impassively, his dark eyes narrowing as he watched Kenzie’s reaction.

  Pained disbelief. Followed by slow acceptance which quickly turned into an anger that now burned in the depths of her glittering green eyes and the twin spots of colour in her cheeks. She slammed her brandy glass down on the coffee-table before standing up to glare at him.

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe that even you could do something so despicable—’

  ‘Even me?’ he echoed. ‘Careful now, Kenzie. Unless you haven’t realized it yet, my shares in Carlton Cosmetics mean that your contract with the company now belongs to me…’ he pointed out softly.

  Kenzie stared at him for several long, painful seconds, still stunned that Dominick could have deliberately bought control of Carlton Cosmetics. With the help of Caroline Carlton, Jerome’s own sister!

  Not that the latter altogether surprised her; Caroline never made any secret where her interest in the company lay, and Kenzie didn’t doubt that Dominick had made Caroline a very tempting financial offer for her shares.

  As for her own contract with Carlton Cosmetics—!

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll never work for you, Dominick.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to sue you for breach of contract.’

  ‘My contract is with Jerome.’

  ‘Your contract is with Carlton Cosmetics!’ he corrected harshly.

  ‘Of which I am now the majority shareholder.’

  It had taken four months of finding out exactly who the shareholders of Carlton Cosmetics were, then cajoling and charming those shareholders into selling to him. Confirmation on Wednesday for the purchase of the last ten per cent from Jerome Carlton’s own sister, Caroline, meant Dominick was now in control of the company formerly run by the man who had seduced and bedded his wife. And at the same time he had taken control of the eight months left of Kenzie’s year-long contract with the company.

  Retribution, indeed!

  Kenzie, although still standing tall and proud, was deathly pale now as the full weight of what Dominick was saying hit her with the force of a sledgehammer.

  ‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have to sue me, Dominick,’ she finally breathed raggedly. ‘Because there is no way I will ever work for you! In fact—’ she straightened ‘—after today, after what you’ve done, I never want to set eyes on you again!’

  ‘Really?’ he taunted.

  ‘Yes—really!’ she echoed forcefully.

  ‘That might be a little difficult, Kenzie, when I have every intention of becoming completely involved in all aspects of Carlton Cosmetics,’ Dominick stated.

  How could Dominick have done this? she wondered in a daze.

  Kenzie had known him as many things since she had first met him: as the man she loved; the man she married; the man she couldn’t stay with any more because he was incapable of returning her love, and then the deeply angry man who had challenged her to walk away from him.

  But the Dominick he was now was consumed with a need for revenge, on Jerome Carlton, and on her, to the extent that he had taken that vengeance by trying to ruin both of them.

  She didn’t doubt that he had ruined Jerome.

  And he would succeed in ruining her too if she refused to continue working for Carlton Cosmetics and he sued her for breach of contract. Something, after today, she was sure he was more than capable of doing!

  She gave a disbelieving shake of her head. ‘I think I can understand your need to get back at me, Dominick,’ she said dully. ‘But why you felt it necessary to drag Jerome into your vendetta is totally beyond me—’

  ‘Is it?’ he cut in fiercely. ‘Then you obviously don’t know me very well, Kenzie.’

  She looked at him with blank, unemotional eyes. ‘I’m beginning to think that I never knew you at all,’ she murmured quietly. ‘One thing I do know—I’ll never forgive you for doing this, Dominick. Never,’ she assured him softly before turning away.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he called after her harshly.

  She glanced back at him with dull eyes. ‘Away from here. Away from you,’ she said with emphasis.

  ‘Do you really think it’s going to be that easy, Kenzie?’ he scorned.

  Leaving him the first time had been horrible, but leaving the stranger he had become now wasn’t difficult at all!

  But that wasn’t what Dominick meant, of course, his controlling interest of Carlton Cosmetics meaning that if she couldn’t break her contract—and Dominick seemed pretty certain that she couldn’t!—then for the next eight months, at least, the two of them would be bound together and forced to meet.

  She gave him
a pitying look. ‘Do you know the saddest part of all this, Dominick?’ She frowned. ‘No, of course you don’t,’ she answered her own question derisively. ‘Your behaviour—what you’ve done…’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Oh, I can’t deny that the next eight months are going to be difficult—’

  ‘I’m sure you can’t,’ he rasped.

  ‘But you don’t see what you’ve really done at all, do you, Dominick?’ Kenzie sighed. ‘No matter what you might believe, until now I’ve only ever had a working relationship with Jerome, but now, after what you’ve done to him because of that relationship, you’ve actually succeeded in uniting the two of us.

  Against you, if nothing else.’

  ‘That’s nothing new,’ he dismissed scathingly.

  ‘I feel sorry for you, Dominick,’ she whispered. ‘I really do.’

  ‘Don’t waste your pity,’ he advised harshly.

  ‘No,’ she accepted heavily, giving him one last sorrowful glance before turning on her heel and leaving the room.

  Dominick stood rigidly as he heard her ascent up the stairs, followed seconds later by the lightness of her step as she came back down again, listening as the front door closed behind her with soft finality as she left the house altogether.

  Kenzie was walking out on him for the second time!

  Strangely, he felt none of the satisfaction that he had thought, either at having made love to her in the way he had, or on telling her of his controlling interest in Carlton Cosmetics. He could only remember the disgust in her face when she had realized what he had done, and her disbelief.

  Her hatred…

  Kenzie really did hate him now, he realized as he poured himself another brandy.

  It had been there in her face as she had looked at him that last time, and in the pained disillusionment in her eyes.

  Well, it was what he had wanted, wasn’t it—what the last four months, and this weekend, had all been about?

  Then why did that cold dish of revenge feel so much like a leaden weight, giving him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach rather than the fulfilment he had expected to feel…?