The Wrong Billionaire, page 4
It was a dirty trick to steal her friend’s car and not even wait for Quinn to catch up and come with her, but her friend would understand.
Eden burst from the path, already scanning for Quinn’s blue hatchback—
Tires screeched and the nose of a black sports car huffed a breath against her voluminous skirts. The engine growled dangerously.
Eden hadn’t even looked for cars before running straight out in front of this one. She was the proverbial deer in the headlights—paralyzed, unable to make sense of her own distorted reflection in the windshield.
The tinted window lowered on the driver’s side. Remy’s carved mahogany expression glared at her. Her heart was pounding so loudly, she barely heard his growled command.
“Get in.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THROUGH THE OPEN window of his car, Remy heard voices in the distance, near the entrance to the tasting room. They grew more animated the longer Eden stood before him.
Eden glanced in that direction and horror solidified on her expression as she realized she was about to be spotted and photographed. She scrambled to open his passenger door and dropped into the low seat with an “Oof.”
Then she gathered—and gathered—her billowing skirts into her lap, like piling snow for a snow fort.
“Is that it?” he asked testily when she finally dragged the door shut. His veins were still on fire at nearly striking her with his car.
“Would you get me out of here?” She reached for her seat belt.
No. That’s what he ought to be saying. How the words get in had passed his lips was a mystery he wasn’t ready to unravel. Fate and karma were not concepts he subscribed to, but his mother had always been very philosophical about life unfolding the way it was meant to. Given the way Eden kept landing in front of him, he was beginning to understand his own helplessness against such greater forces.
He finished making his way out of the smaller parking lot to the main one, crawling now instead of lighting up his tires because mad women were darting out of hedges.
At the exit to the main road, a Mercedes-Benz SUV turned out ahead of a handful of midsize vehicles. Remy assumed that was Hunter, leaving with Amelia, chased by paparazzi.
Remy had made a handful of executive decisions in the moments following Amelia’s appearance. While the guests had been gasping at the accusations leveled by Amelia’s father, Remy had been calculating the age of the infant she held. Hunter didn’t kiss and tell—or make a habit of one-night stands—but Remy distinctly remembered the smoldering heat coming off the pair as he and Hunter had shared drinks with Amelia and her friend last summer. Remy had taken Amelia’s friend home, allowing nature to take its course between the other two.
Apparently, nature had gone all the way. Amelia’s baby was almost certainly Hunter’s.
And, because Remy knew Hunter would never abandon his child, Remy had instantly known the wedding was off.
Firmly ignoring any personal feelings on the matter, Remy had done his duty as Hunter’s best man. He had instructed the wedding planner to open the bar while they waited for the official announcement. He had ensured that the food would be served on time and the band would play their sets as scheduled. He quietly suggested to Hunter’s grandfather that he take Amelia’s father for a drink, since they were likely to be in-laws very soon.
Then, when he glimpsed Hunter wearing a grim expression as he headed purposefully toward the guesthouse, Remy had searched out Vienna, who gave him a grave little nod of confirmation. She looks just like him.
Remy informed Vi that everything was under control and urged her to call him if he could help in any way, but explained he had commitments elsewhere.
He didn’t. Only the ones he had fabricated so he could leave the wedding as soon as politely possible, but he sensed Micah Gould wanted to pin blame for today’s farce on him.
Remy had some hard truths he would love to hurl at Micah, but Remy had promised his father he would keep his lips sealed on all of it. He decided to get the hell out of Dodge before he had a run-in with Micah, or did something equally stupid and spoke to Eden.
Even though he had a thousand questions for her. He had bones to pick, and accusations and defensive explanations he shouldn’t feel an urge to make because his family was the one that had been wronged.
Or so he had told himself many times, especially in the last few months.
He turned in the opposite direction from the SUV and glanced at her, biting back a compulsion to ask if she was okay. She absolutely was not. She was pallid beneath her golden-brown complexion, eyes wide with shock.
But she was still so beautiful, she punched the breath out of him.
Eden Bellamy had entranced him from the first time he’d glimpsed her, flashing a dimple as she made a cheeky remark to her friend.
Remy had been killing a few minutes until meeting his cousin, who worked in one of the other departments of the Louvre. It had always been his game with himself to see how close he could get to the Mona Lisa without having to jostle through the crowd. He had never once arrived at the rope, but on that day, five years ago, he hadn’t even glanced toward the painting. He’d been too enamored with the mysterious smile on the face that turned to regard him.
Eden was classically beautiful—he couldn’t overlook that—but a gentle warmth radiated from her that he found even more compelling. On that day, she had worn a filmy summer dress that gave her figure the grace of a goddess in a glen.
Two nights later, she had delivered a heart punch when she turned up at a nightclub in a sparkling silver dress. Her hair had been a wild mass of glossy black ringlets falling around her elegant cheekbones. She’d been all legs and sensuous movements, eyes smoky and her entire being held together with an air of self-possession.
As fantasy-provoking as she’d been, Remy was very careful in how he treated women. They were not objects. He didn’t make assumptions about their interest beyond a dance and a laugh. When she had leaned into him in a shadowed corner, however, and offered her mouth, he had greedily devoured her lips.
He’d been lost in a way he had never experienced, not before or since. He still avoided reliving that memory, however. It was too raw, switching so abruptly from all-encompassing passion to near violence. From acute pleasure to toxic aggression.
Things had come so close to violence, the music had been stopped. Bouncers had immobilized him and Micah. The fact that Remy’s friend owned the nightclub was the only reason the police hadn’t been called. They had both been asked to leave.
Remy was still stinging with affront and injustice at the way Micah’s lip had curled in derision as he’d told Eden, “He’s using you to get at me.”
“How?” The accusation hadn’t made sense. “Are you with him?” Remy was immediately appalled that they had locked lips. In those confused seconds, he felt he’d been set up and betrayed. Self-loathing had had him spitting out the taste of her lingering on his tongue.
“He’s my brother.” Eden recoiled from the suggestion that she and Micah were romantically involved.
Micah’s sister? Even worse. Remy’s heart lurched with agonized disappointment, a reaction that made even less sense. He searched Eden’s features, not seeing much resemblance. Micah was distinctly white European, while Eden looked mixed-race.
In looking for the resemblance between them, Remy had become morbidly fascinated by the shape of Micah’s nose and mouth and jawline. It churned up a different recognition, one that was knotted up with helpless anger and defensiveness. Apprehension that the secret he kept so diligently could be discovered if he spent any time with them.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know she’s my sister,” Micah accused contemptuously.
Culpability at what he did know must have flashed onto Remy’s face.
Micah misinterpreted it, and warned viciously, “Stay away from her.”
He collected Eden and her wide-eyed friend. They disappeared from the club and his life.
Remy had breathed a sigh of relief on one score, but he had never fully shaken his memory of Eden. His desire for her. He’d been compelled to look her up and learned that she was a Bellamy, only related to Micah because her mother had briefly been married to Micah’s father, Kelvin Gould. Lucille had remarried when she moved back to Canada.
If Remy had known Eden was associated with the Gould family, he never would have spoken to her. He had sworn to himself he never would again.
At least, that’s what he’d told himself. Yet here he was, inviting her into his car today.
A muted buzzing sounded within the folds of her skirt. She fished through yards of netting and silk to reveal her purse, and opened it. As she glanced at the screen on her phone, she made a helpless noise then swiped to accept a video call.
“Where are you?” It sounded like her friend Quinn. Her voice was high and anxious.
“I had to get out of there. Tell everyone I’m okay—” She shot Remy a look as though it had just occurred to her that she might not be able to trust him.
As if his family was the dangerous one.
“Whose car is that?” Quinn asked with surprise.
“Um.” Eden swallowed, then asked tentatively, “Is anyone else there with you?”
“Do not tell me she’s with him.” Micah’s outrage was tangible enough to reach through the phone and ignite Remy’s temper.
Quinn’s exasperated “Micah!” sounded beneath his reply: “Tell him to bring you back.”
“I’m not going to sit in that room taking visitors like I’m hosting a wake.” Eden’s voice was as vehement as it was fractured.
“What kind of car is it? Which direction are you headed?” Micah demanded.
“I’m not kidnapping her,” Remy boomed. “If she wants me to leave her by the side of the road, I will, but she got into this car all by herself.”
“Remy can drop me at a hotel. I have my wallet. I’m an adult. Don’t worry about me,” Eden insisted.
“Which hotel?” Quinn asked. “I’ll meet you with your things.”
“Thank y—Oh.” Eden released a small curse as she delved into her purse. “I have your keys.” She held them up. “I was going to take your car.”
“You pack her bag. I’ll meet her,” Micah commanded.
“I really think this is a job for a maid of honor,” Quinn argued.
“You two work it out. I’ll text when I know where I’m staying,” Eden muttered and ended the call. She dropped her phone into her purse and set it on the floor, where the incoming calls and texts were muffled by the weight of her skirt. “I swear those two need to have sex and get it over with.”
“Is that what you’d like? For me to leave you at a hotel? Because my helicopter is waiting at the heliport near the falls.”
“Oh.” She frowned with confusion. “Isn’t this your car? I thought Hunter said last night that you were driving in from Toronto.”
“It is.” It was a long story about wanting to get to the wedding as slowly as possible and away from it as quickly as possible. That’s why his pilot had brought his two-rotor Sikorsky, capable of speeds near three hundred miles an hour.
Perhaps it wasn’t that long a story. Perhaps it was perfectly obvious what his motives had been.
“I have commitments at home.”
“In Martinique?”
“Montreal.” Such was the perk of owning homes in many places. He could prevaricate with something close to the truth.
“I need to go home, too,” she murmured, sounding as though she was speaking to herself. She turned her face to the window. There was a pang in her voice as she said, “I need to know, though. Was it part of your feud with Micah to set me up for this? To ruin my wedding and my company?”
“Wow.” Remy tightened his hands on the wheel, reluctant to excavate his thoughts and feelings on the wedding and its train wreck of an outcome, but he damn well wouldn’t be accused of sabotaging Bellamy Home and Garden. “Much as I’d like to claim that much superpower, no. I was as shocked as everyone else.”
“That’s not true.” Her head snapped around. “You recognized her.”
A hard pulse shot through him. Not guilt. Not quite. But she was right.
“We had drinks with Amelia and her friend last summer. I didn’t know it went beyond that between Hunter and her.”
“You must have presumed, though. You brought him here to pick up women, didn’t you? That’s what Vienna implied.”
“Is that what Vienna implied? That I arrange hookups for other men? There’s a name for that and I’m shocked Vienna used it to describe me. I’ve always considered us friends.”
Eden tsked and looked away. “I’m just saying you’re the one who brought him here.”
“And what’s the minimum sentence for that, Your Honor? You and Hunter hadn’t been introduced yet. What he and I did last summer had nothing to do with you.” Hunter had mentioned Vienna was trying to set him up and Remy had commiserated because his own sister was forever matchmaking, but that was all they’d said on the subject. “You know what Hunter’s legal troubles were. I brought him here to golf and drink craft beer. To decompress.”
“Is that what the kids call it these days,” Eden said with a sniff of disdain.
“Hey, if you want to blame me for your wedding being called off, go ahead. My conscience is clear.”
“Is it? You’re confident you didn’t plant a baby of your own that will pop out of the woodwork any second?”
“That’s not where babies come from.”
She rolled her eyes and turned her face back to the window.
“And, yes. I’m sure.” Remy loved sex and women had been throwing themselves at him from the time he topped five feet. He was now six-two, healthy, rich and rubbed elbows with celebrities. He also knew when a server was flirting because she’d seen his name on his Centurion credit card and was vying for a free trip to the Caribbean. Sex was never a currency for him. He had seen Amelia’s friend home, thanked her for a nice evening and hadn’t thought about her since.
“Why would you care if I did?” he asked, zeroing in on the most salient point.
“I don’t,” she assured him, stubbornly keeping her face turned away.
He heard her swallow, though. He smiled with grim satisfaction without letting himself wonder why.
They wound along the Niagara River in silence, rows of grapes flickering on the hillsides above her.
“You never told him,” he noted.
“Who? Oh. I told him you and I had met. Once.” She began to fiddle with the veil attached to her hair.
“But not about what happened at the club.”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“You don’t think it would be relevant to your fiancé that you nearly got his best friend arrested?”
“You and Micah nearly got yourselves arrested. And Micah has told me repeatedly that your interest in me was not personal or sincere, so my conscience is clear.”
Her veil came free and she pushed it into the back seat, shaking it off her fingers as though it was as sticky as spider silk. She began removing the fernlike pearl-and-sequin doodad from above her ear.
“You really didn’t know who I was when you came on to me in Paris?” he asked with skepticism.
“You think I came on to you?” Her voice rose with outrage. “You were using me to get to Micah!”
“I want less than zero contact with anyone in your family,” Remy said, because it was supposed to be true. It had to be.
He geared down with enough aggression to make the Audi’s engine growl.
“Then why are you helping me?” she asked with a crack of wildness in her voice.
Why, indeed.
“Because Hunter is my friend,” he said with a casual shrug. “He would have quietly called things off if he had known he had a child. A baby is more vulnerable than you are, so his priority shifted to where it needed to go. I’m confident he feels like a sack of dirt, jilting you so publicly. He would want me to help you if I could. He would do the same for me.”
“Said another way, your loyalty toward Hunter outweighs your hatred of me and Micah?”
Did he hate her? Remy veered from prodding at that exposed nerve. “Hunter saved my life once. I owe him a favor, no matter how unsavory.”
She made a noise that was halfway between being insulted and astonished. “How? Did he suck snake venom from your ankle? Catch a bullet with his teeth?”
“He kept me from freezing to death, if you must know.” He rarely mentioned it, still feeling like a callow idiot.
“Really? Where? How?” Her tone had shifted to concerned curiosity.
“U of T. I skipped a year in elementary school so I was younger than the other freshmen. That didn’t stop me from trying to keep up at the frat parties.” He had lost his parents the year before and his grandfather’s health had already been failing. “Hunter found me passed out in the snow. He got me back to my room and stayed while I lost my guts. Then he shared his notes for the two days of classes that I missed.”
“But you didn’t feel a need to tell him you had met me,” she pointed out. “You waited until he brought it up.”
He felt her gaze on the side of his face like a bonfire throwing heat and light.
“I thought about it.” His shock on seeing her again, and his libido’s quick surge of hunger that had only grown more insatiable in the intervening years, had prompted him to throw up a defensive wall. He had acted as if there had never been anything between them because there never could be. “Hunter hates drama. I didn’t want to ruin his court win by publicly dragging his new girlfriend.”
