by Abby Green
Something went tight inside Ben as the bidding started to escalate... Ten thousand, fifteen...twenty... There were gasps now, people were looking around.
And then a booming voice called out, ‘Fifty thousand dollars!’
Ben knew who it was immediately. An old foe of his—someone who had tried to stamp out Ben’s company before it had even got started. He saw the man pushing through the crowd now, small and squat, eyes bulging, perspiration beading on his brow.
He also saw, even from where he was, how Julianna’s eyes widened behind the mask as she took him in.
The auctioneer held up his gavel and asked if anyone wanted to contest this latest bid. No one moved. The thought of that man getting anywhere near Julianna made Ben feel a level of violence he hadn’t experienced in a long time.
The auctioneer brought the gavel down once, twice... And just before he could bring it down again Ben spoke authoritatively into the silence. ‘One million dollars.’
Everyone gasped and turned to look at him. He walked forward, the crowd parting to let him through.
When he was near the dais he stopped and said, ‘But I want more than a kiss. For a million dollars I want a weekend with Julianna Ford.’
* * *
It was him. She hadn’t imagined him. She’d looked for him in the crowd as people had bid for the kiss, squirming with embarrassment but trying not to let it show. All the confidence and bravado she’d felt out on the terrace had faded under the glare of lights and hundreds of people.
But he was here. Still in the mask, like so many others. Who was he?
As if reading her thoughts, he said, ‘If you agree to the bid I’ll reveal myself.’
Her heart palpitated. She’d wanted this, hadn’t she? She’d never felt so exposed in her life, and yet so tempted to throw caution to the wind and act completely out of character. Apart from anything else, the promise of a million dollars as a donation to her favourite charity was mind-boggling.
There was a discreet cough from nearby and the auctioneer said, ‘Miss Ford? Do you accept this bid? It’s a little unorthodox...’
Feeling as if she was taking a giant leap off a cliff and into the unknown, she nodded her head jerkily before she could lose her nerve. She was barely aware of the auctioneer wrapping up the bidding—because who on earth would bid more than a million dollars? It was crazy, outrageous.
Romantic, said a small voice that she quickly shut down. Since when had she been interested in romantic? Certainly not after seeing the devastating effects of her mother leaving her father...
And now the auctioneer was saying, ‘I think we’d all like to know who our mysterious benefactor is—not least Miss Ford, who has to spend a weekend with you.’
Slightly nervous laughter rippled through the crowd as the man reached up to pull his mask off. Just before he did, Lia caught a flash of light blue eyes and a shiver of foreboding skated down her spine.
No. It wouldn’t be. It couldn’t be.
But the mask came off and there seemed to be a collective sigh of female appreciation as Benjamin Carter was revealed in all his dark masculine beauty. All his dark, masculine, smug beauty.
Lia felt as if she’d been punched in the belly. The fact that it had been him all along was something she couldn’t quite assimilate yet. Or didn’t want to. It was too huge. And now she was being ushered off the dais so that they could get to the next item on the auction list.
The charity’s CEO approached Lia with suspiciously bright eyes, pumping her hand, telling her she had no idea what this would mean for them, and all Lia could think was, I’m going to kill him.
However embarrassed she’d been, standing up in front of that crowd, she writhed with mortification inside to think of the ridiculous flight of fancy she’d taken for a moment, that some enigmatic stranger wanted her enough to bid a million dollars for her company.
Just then a large, warm, callused hand curled around her elbow and she went rigid as sensation shot through her—and the galling confirmation that it was his touch alone that seemed to affect her, and not some general awakening of latent desires.
She tried to tug her arm free but his grip tightened and another shiver went through her—not entirely unpleasant. She refused to look at him, though, even as the CEO of the charity was gushing all over him.
He said smoothly, ‘I was inspired by Miss Ford’s dedication—offering herself up for the good of the charity—and as you know this cause is close to my heart.’
Lia just bet it was. Not. She wanted nothing more than to round on Benjamin Carter and tell him exactly what she thought of his outrageous stunt, but she couldn’t. Not after such a public display of largesse.
Finally he was moving away from the CEO and taking Lia with him, walking out of the function room. People looked and whispered. Lia caught more than a few envious glances and felt like saying, You’re welcome to him! But she gritted her jaw and kept moving.
As soon as they were outside the room, Benjamin Carter walked her over to a secluded corner of the lobby, where tall plants shielded them from general view. Lia finally managed to pull free and turned on him, steeling herself not to react to his sheer magnetism.
For a second she couldn’t get a word out, she was so incensed. She plucked at the ribbons of her mask behind her head and pulled it off. She felt very bare without its protection, but ignored it.
Benjamin Carter’s gaze had lowered to where her chest was heaving with indignation and shock. She folded her arms pointedly. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
He raised his gaze and put his hands in his pockets, supremely at ease. He drawled, ‘Apart from displaying immense generosity, I would have thought the rest was fairly obvious.’
‘That,’ Lia spat out, ‘was the most ostentatious, crass demonstration of wealth I’ve ever seen in my life.’
Something tightened in his expression, but Julianna didn’t feel regret.
‘You didn’t look especially enthralled at the thought of kissing Saul Goldstein.’
She fought not to shudder at the image in her head of the other man’s fleshy mouth. She tipped up her chin. ‘I would choose to be kissed by him any day of the week rather than spend a minute in your company.’
He made a mocking sound. ‘Such strong feelings, Lia...’
She cursed her out-of-control emotions, feeling heat climb into her cheeks at the thought that she was behaving far beneath her usual levels of decorum. Even so, she said, ‘Only friends and family call me Lia—and you’re neither.’
He put a hand to his chest. ‘I’m wounded...’
Lia all but snorted. She couldn’t imagine anything wounding this man. He was like a force of nature. Immune to any kind of threat. And certainly immune to her sustained animosity, which she was very afraid stemmed from a place that had nothing to do with the threat to her father’s business and everything to do with a far more personal threat.
‘You didn’t have to accept the bid,’ he pointed out. Annoyingly.
Lia unfolded her arms to put her hands on her hips. ‘You didn’t reveal your identity until after I’d accepted the bid. How could I then turn down a million dollars for the charity?’ She shook her head, desperate not to let him guess for a second what deeper desires had led her to accept the bid. ‘You painted me into a corner, Mr Carter. I had no choice.’
His eyes gleamed bright blue against the olive tones of his skin. ‘We always have a choice, Lia.’
His insistence on goading her seemed to get lost for a second in the way he said her name, making her think of how intimate it had felt to talk to him out on that terrace. She decided that his calling her Lia was a lesser battle and not to be fought right now.
She started to pace, feeling edgy. So much for believing earlier that her antipathy would have somehow magically signalled to her who she was dealing with. She stopped and looked at him accusingly. ‘You completely tricked me from the moment you came up to me, hiding behind your mask. Why didn’t you
tell me who you were?’
‘Why didn’t you?’ he riposted.
Lia made a sound of frustration and her hands became fists at her sides. ‘You had an unfair advantage with your mask. Obviously you don’t experience many women walking out on dates with you, but if this is just because your pride is dented then—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
The steel underlying his deep voice stopped Lia.
‘You really think I’d be so petty that I’d pay an extortionate amount of money just to buy a weekend with a woman who walked out on a date?’
The man in front of her bristled with lots of things...none of which was pettiness. Lia was suddenly aware that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know exactly why Carter had paid all that money for her.
‘There’s not going to be a weekend,’ she said tightly. ‘It’s ridiculous to think that I would go off with a complete stranger. Everyone will appreciate that it was just a stunt.’
He shook his head and came closer to Lia. She fought to stand her ground and not back away. He was so close now that the disparity in their sizes was apparent again. It brought back the memory of standing on the patio and looking up...aching to feel his mouth on hers...reaching up to take his mask off and having his hand close around her wrist... It was as if she’d blocked it out at the time, but she realised now that she had felt the rough skin of his palms on her skin. But she’d ignored it.
The fact that less than an hour ago she’d been reaching up to kiss him made her feel exposed all over again. She couldn’t even contemplate the suspicion that on some level she’d known who he was all along.
Lia was aware that her reactions to this man were completely out of her control, but she couldn’t seem to rein herself in. This close to him, she couldn’t focus. All she could feel was the threat to her equilibrium and the desire to get away from him. Far away.
‘Look,’ she said, purposely making her voice as chilly as possible, ‘I don’t know how things work here in America, but in England we don’t really go in for such crass displays of wealth. I appreciate that you’ve undertaken to donate a lot of money to the charity, but there is simply no way that I am going to go anywhere with you—a million dollars or not.’
She folded her arms again and regarded Benjamin Carter as best she could from several inches less in height.
Benjamin Carter, damn him, just smiled.
‘There’s no need to be patronising, sweetheart.’
Heat washed up over her chest and neck. She’d never usually descend to such rudeness, but this man, under his guise as a stranger, had seen her react in a way that made her want to crawl under a rock and hide.
‘And, yes’ he said now, ‘you are coming with me. Because if you don’t I will tell the charity’s CEO that contrary to your public acceptance of the bet, you’re not actually willing to fulfil your end of the bargain and therefore I will be withdrawing my funds.’
All the heat left Lia’s body as her blood rushed south. ‘You wouldn’t dare. Not when everyone knows how much you donated.’
He took his hands out of his pockets and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Do you really want to test me?’
Right now he looked as immovable as a mountain. And Lia had serious doubts about what he would do if she did test him. Clearly a man like this, who could make such obscenely huge gestures, was beholden to no one and wouldn’t hesitate to prove his point.
Feeling utterly cornered and trapped, Lia said, ‘Why are you doing this...? If it’s not for spite...then what?’
He looked at her for a long moment and she couldn’t read his expression.
Then he said, ‘It’s very simple, Lia. I want you.’
CHAPTER THREE
THE AIR SIZZLED between them and Ben’s very direct words seemed to hang between them like a dare. What was it about this woman that seemed to arouse the beast in him? That made him do crazy things like pretend to be a stranger? And make outrageous public bids?
Her eyes were huge, as if she was still absorbing what he’d said, and then she responded, with a frigid tone to her voice. ‘You want me enough to pay one million dollars for the pleasure? I don’t know who you’re used to consorting with, or who you think I am, but I’m not some kind of high-class—’
‘I know exactly who you are,’ he said curtly, cutting her off, surprised at the rapid surge of anger her insinuation had provoked.
It had been a long time since he’d felt the need to justify himself to anyone—much less to someone who came from the same part of society that had turned its back on him and left him to fend for himself. In that respect England and America were one and the same.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop himself saying stiffly, ‘I’ve never paid for a woman in my life. I don’t need to.’
Intriguingly, she blushed, and suddenly she didn’t look so confident. ‘What do you mean, you know exactly who I am?’
The nerve she’d struck, however inadvertently, made him say, ‘You might not be royalty but you’re a princess. Someone who has probably been denied nothing in her whole life. You don’t like me because I turn you on, and you don’t like being turned on by someone you consider beneath you.’ He continued, ‘Out on that terrace, before my identity was revealed, you had no prejudices holding you back because evidently you had judged that I was someone a little more...refined.’
The play of reactions across her face was mesmerising. Shock. Anger. Insult. And then fire. ‘You played with me like a cat with a mouse. And, in light of your opinion, I fail to see why you’d want to subject yourself to spending a whole weekend with me.’
Lia went to move around him, to get away, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm. Her skin was silky smooth and warm, her arm slender under his hand. He felt crass then, and boorish. Not fit to touch someone as exquisite as her. But he held on and she swung around to face him, eyes flashing.
‘Let me go, damn you. And for the record, you don’t turn me on—not in the slightest.’
A challenge to disprove her rose hot and urgent through his body and Ben put both hands on her arms. But then, through the obvious anger she displayed, he caught a glimpse of something else in those stunning eyes...something almost like hurt. Hurt that he’d been accurate in his assessment of her and she wasn’t used to hearing the bald truth? Or because he’d got it wrong?
He forced a modicum of civility back into his overheated brain. ‘I didn’t mean what I said as a personal attack. You’re a product of your upbringing, that’s all, and I was merely pointing out that I’m well aware that you’re the furthest thing imaginable from a high-class hooker.’
That curious expression faded from her eyes, making Ben feel foolish for suspecting for a second that he’d hurt her because he’d got her wrong, and then she tensed under his hands, as if to leave again, and everything in him rejected it. The urge to disprove her assertion that she didn’t want him was calling to the most primitive part of him.
‘But I’m afraid I can’t accept the lie.’
‘What lie?’ Now she looked wary.
‘This lie.’ And then he hauled her right into his body and covered her mouth with his.
Everything that had just passed between them was forgotten as the world seemed to combust into white heat. All Ben could feel was the press of that soft lush mouth and her body, moulding to his as if made for him alone.
* * *
All Lia could feel at first was steel, and then she realised it was the sheer hard-muscled strength of Benjamin Carter’s body against hers, his hands tight on her arms. Her body was pressed so closely to his that her breasts were flattened against his chest, her nipples tingling from the contact.
And then, as if encouraged by the fact that she wasn’t pulling away, his hold gentled minutely and his mouth became less of a searing brand and started to move on hers. Lia knew that she should be using this as an opportunity to pull free, stand back, demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing—especially after that heated exc
hange... But, treacherously, she didn’t. Or couldn’t.
One of his arms was sliding around her back now, pulling her in closer. And before she could stop herself she was responding to his kiss, her mouth softening and opening, and at the first touch of his tongue to hers she had no hope of remaining sane. Lia realised she was clutching at something to stay standing and that it was his arms, his biceps bulging under the material of his jacket, reminding her of the awesome power of his body.
There was something about this evidence of his sheer unadulterated masculinity that made her feel very feminine. It was seriously addictive. Yet the fact that she found his very masculine differences so attractive was unexpected and disorientating.
Certainly her ex-fiancé had never made her feel this...hot, or this desperate. This was wholly new and all too treacherously exhilarating.
Benjamin Carter’s hand was cradling the back of her head now, and his other hand was on her hip, fingers digging into her flesh. She could feel his erection against her and it didn’t shock her—it made her want to move against him. She wanted to feel him notch it against her, between her legs where she felt slick and swollen. She felt a curious hollowness, a desire to be filled...
His kiss was rough and smooth all at once. And it was only when his mouth left hers and he started to press kisses along her jaw, when her head fell back in weak supplication, that she seemed to come to her senses. A voice screamed at her. What the hell are you doing?
She jerked away from him abruptly and took a shaky step back, staring at him, aghast. Her mouth felt swollen and she realised the top of her dress was dislodged, revealing the swell of her breast. She pulled it back up with a jerk. Her hair was half undone and she noticed the black mask she’d been wearing lying on the ground nearby. She was unravelling. And she’d just betrayed herself, spectacularly.
In a thready voice she said, ‘I don’t know what that was...’
‘I do.’
Carter was grim, and Lia hated it that he looked as if he hadn’t just fallen apart—not like her.
