Sin and the Millionaire (3 page)

“I have Victoria's e-mail password. I was about to go online and verify that she hadn't changed it when you rang the bell.”

“Considering she was unfaithful, wouldn't she have something that she didn't want you to see?”

“Maybe. But she'd been getting away with her affairs right under my nose. She had no reason to think I ever or would ever read her e-mail.”

He brought up her account and typed in the password. He grinned at the long list of e-mails. “Jackpot.”

Lizzy squinted at the screen, then at him, and back at the screen. “There are a hundred and five thousand e-mails here.
A hundred and five
.”

She was right. He clicked the arrow button and went directly to the first e-mail, reading the date. “They start just after we got married.”

Their marriage had drawn a lot of attention and been dubbed
beauty and the geek.
He hadn't cared. They could call him what they wanted. He had Victoria. Or maybe he'd refused to examine it closer, afraid he'd start to question why she'd chosen him. Reality was he'd been stupid and willing to put his head on the chopping block for her to hack at.

“It doesn't look like she had a separate account for her fan mail. Would you like something to drink?” They were going to be here a while. However, he could think of worse things than spending an evening with Lizzy close by, looking over his shoulder as he opened all these e-mails. It was stupid and childish and he didn't give a shit.

Chapter Three

“A drink?” They were going to be at this for hours, hours of reading other people's adoration of a woman, she, quite frankly, never liked. Victoria had been Duncan's wife, Lizzy's
best
client's wife, and as such had treated her accordingly, cordially and respectfully. Then the affair—affairs—made headlines and the gloves, so to speak, came off. She never told Duncan what a dumb fuck he'd been for marrying the blond bimbo because it wasn't her place, but nor did Lizzy have to pretend Victoria didn't make her gag. As she would, looking at all this fan mail.

“We might be here a while,” he explained with such sincerity Lizzy knew it for bullshit. He didn't seem as annoyed as one should be when learning his wife was an e-mail hoarder and they'd be at this longer than they'd thought. Why?

“Thanks, but I don't need anything. So, where do you want to start? First or last?”

“Last,” he said without pause. “I think if we're going to find something it will be in her final e-mails. Don't you?”

“Right,” she said. “Last it is. Start clicking.” Who knew, maybe they'd get lucky.

An hour into the search they realized it wasn't going to happen. And Lizzy's gag reflex had started to revolt. “This is all fan mail,” she said, impressed she hadn't choked on
fan.

“You're right.” He pushed the laptop aside and banged his forehead on the polished mahogany. “If these people only knew the real Victoria.” He turned his face toward her, his head still on the desk, admittedly looking really cute. “She never showed her true colors until after I caught her cheating.” He sat up. “That woman would have kicked a puppy if it had been in the way of getting what she wanted. You know she went through three lawyers to try and reverse the prenup?”

“Persistent.” And used to getting what she wanted.

“Spoiled was more like it. She didn't understand the word
no
.”

“Or
not yours
. The wife of that producer Victoria had the affair with, what was her name? Kathryn?”

“Cassandra,” he corrected.

“I can't believe she forgave him.”

“My understanding is she hasn't. She's the money behind his movie deals… and their affair isn't the only thing she and I have in common. We have the same lawyer.”

“Ah, so she's got his wandering balls.”

Duncan laughed. “So to speak. I think once the movie has had its release, so will he. Her silence is building hype around the film. Plus, she's a classy woman. Airing her dirty laundry doesn't look to be her thing.”

“It's a shame your wife wasn't of the same opinion.”

“No, she used the publicity to try and further her career.”

Duncan really deserved a good cuff in the head for getting involved with her in the first place. “Why on earth did you marry her?” She slapped a hand over her mouth. Had she really asked that out loud?

“It's okay. I asked myself that.”

“Ever answer yourself?”

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked like he was debating something. Maybe admitting he was a dumbass and allowed all that plastic beauty to cloud his supposed big brain? Then again, he was a guy. But why marry her?

“This is hard for me,” he finally said.

“What? That you couldn't see past her boobs? You'd have to carry binoculars for that.” Now she was just being petty again…and mean… and yes, a little jealous. But his wife had suckered punched him. Lizzy had seen the aftershocks, so she needed to be nicer. She pushed her chair back and stood.

“Again, sorry. I'm sure she had qualities I never saw and you did.” She went over to one of the sofas in the office and sat, wanting space between them before she admitted the next thing she was going to say. “She hurt you. And I didn't like seeing you upset.” From the very first she'd liked Duncan. He was brilliant and impressed the hell out of her. To be humiliated that way must have been embarrassing. “I feel a little protective, where you're concerned.” Their friendship hadn't really kicked off until after Victoria's duplicity was revealed, but Duncan was a good guy, and good guys didn't deserve crappy wives.

“Why? Because she kicked the puppy?” he said defensively.

It took a few seconds for her to understand. “No,” she told him. He saw himself as a wimp? “You're the Einstein of business. Being tricked by her must have been… ego crushing.”

“What's worse? Being seen as a pansy or being too stupid to see past her manipulations?”

“She
was
a beautiful woman.” She motioned to his laptop. “And really good with getting people to love her.”

“Yes. But that's not why I married her,” he said, as if bracing himself for her reaction to his true confession.

Was she a superstar in bed? She did not want to hear that. The idea of them doing it made her sick to her stomach.

“I'm hungry. I haven't eaten anything since last night. How about we go into the kitchen and I'll make us something? Come on.” He motioned for her to follow as he left his office.

It was obvious he was avoiding her question, which made her all the more curious. “Do you want me to cook?” she asked, allowing him to lead the way. The kitchen was a chef's dream, especially since he'd given her carte blanche in redesigning it. He'd spent a fortune.

“Nah, it's the least I can do after dragging you into this.” In the kitchen, he pulled out two small flat skillets and a frying pan and set them on the stove.

“Do you know what you're doing?” She'd never had anyone cook for her and it was a little… odd.

“I'm not you, but I've been on my own since I was eighteen. I can cook the basics,” he assured her.

From the refrigerator he pulled out a carton of eggs, a butcher-wrapped package marked as bacon and the cheddar cheese. Aside from a piece of fruit, she never ate breakfast, so this was a treat. She watched as he grated the cheese, scrambled the eggs, added salt, pepper, and with an impish grin, a splash of hot sauce.

“Aren't you daring?” He looked so cute that she couldn't help but smile.

“It's really great on mac and cheese,” he said with a knowing grin.

“The box kind or from scratch?” Just how good could he cook?

“Please, I'm rich. I don't eat box anything,” he said, opening the bacon and filling the now-hot pan.

“Please yourself. When it comes to cooking, you are the laziest guy I know. You order from me at least three or four times a week and I bet you eat out the rest of the time.” When his wife lived in the house, they would entertain so often, Lizzy often joked about being their private chef. After he'd kicked Victoria's sorry ass out of the mansion, Lizzy was there even more. She had begun to think that boy genius didn't know how to turn on a stove. Not that she was complaining. She liked cooking for him. She liked watching him eat her food even more.

Duncan didn't say anything, and she worried that she'd somehow inadvertently insulted him. Before she could apologize, he spoke.

“I was lonely. And you didn't ask questions about Victoria and you seemed to genuinely care how my day went. I assumed that it was your way of asking how I was doing.”

She shrugged. “The last thing you needed was another person meddling into your personal life.” You couldn't turn your head without seeing his and Victoria's faces somewhere. She'd felt bad for him. And had he really admitted to hiring her as an excuse for company? Was that flattering… or sad?

“Well, thank you for that. You made coming home easier.” He smiled and poured the egg batter onto the two skillets.

“So you never answered me. Why did you marry her?” They were so opposite. He couldn't have been dumb enough to be taken in by her beauty. At least, she hoped not.

“I, uh, I didn't date much before Victoria.”

She waited for him to elaborate. When he didn't, she cocked her head trying to get him to finish the sentence.

“I didn't have much experience,” he said by way of explaining.

She started to laugh. “Are you going to tell me she took your virginity?” When he didn't say anything, her mouth fell open. “Oh.”
Seriously?
“Umm.” At a loss for words, she glanced away, afraid she might embarrass him even more than his wife had.

Guys were different. Things like this weren't exactly locker room. And while Duncan never came off as a beat-your-chest kind of guy, admitting he'd married his first couldn't have been easy. Lizzy and Duncan might be different on so many levels but it seemed like on one, at least, they were unfortunately the same. They'd both been taken in by their firsts. Both had left them humiliated. His, however, had ended in a messy divorce, while hers left her owing a loan shark, with few choices on how to pay him off that didn't involve her dying or prostitution. Remembering soured her mood.

“I'm sorry it didn't work out better for you.”

“What doesn't kill you… I actually owe her a thank-you. The pending divorce changed me, and not for the worse.”

Lizzy had seen that with her own eyes. He'd gone from a soft-spoken and reserved, almost-too-shy geek, to a take-charge, no-nonsense, soon-to-be-bachelor that every woman talked about. Would she be the woman she was today if Kyle hadn't left her holding the bag? She didn't think so. She may not have enjoyed her time as a stripper, but it had brought Maggie into her life and Maggie had given her a career as a caterer. Lizzy had worked her butt off to get what she had now, because she wanted to show Maggie she'd been worth the effort her boss had gone through to give Lizzy a better life. She'd owed it to Maggie, and stuff like that Lizzy didn't mind owing. Just like she was going to prove to Duncan he hadn't been wrong in asking her to invest with him, in their company.

She still couldn't get over Duncan's confession. It was none of her business but she couldn't help herself. “You can tell to shove my nose somewhere else, but… Well, I'm trying to understand. How old were you when you married her?”

“I wasn't the forty-year-old virgin, if that's what you're asking,” he said, flipping over the sizzling bacon. “I actually met her years before we starting dating. I was twenty-two. Still a little old to be… inexperienced, but my focus was on building my career, my empire. Girls, women saw me as a brother, not a boyfriend. Then one day I was attending a function held by Google and I met Victoria. She was a top model at the time and I was one of the top entrepreneurs under twenty-five. I couldn't believe she was even talking to me. I could barely hold a coherent thought in my head. She would never admit to me what possessed her that night, but before I knew it, I was in her bed. We didn't see each again until five years later. She had started her acting career and my new social media app had put me on the Forbes top ten list.”

“Let me guess, love at first billion?”

He gave a self-depreciating laugh. “I think a part of me always knew she married me for my money. Why else would a woman like her marry me?”

“Stop that.” Victoria was too dumb to know what she had.

“Oh, I know. I'm a nice guy. I give to charity. I work hard. I
don't
kick puppies. But let's be honest. I'm more Big Bang than Bruce Wayne.”

“Hey, Leonard would be super cute if he was a foot taller, and in a fight, Batman is no match for Superman.”

This time his laugh was genuine. She liked his laugh.

“I'm no superhero.”

“No, you're not,” she agreed. “You're real.”

“And you're very sweet,” he said.

“Look at us. The stripper from across the border and the funny duck who showed the world just what they could do.”

“So, you agree that my telling you Victoria taking my virginity was very personal?”

“Yes. And I thank you for trusting me,” she said, waiting to hear the thunk from the other shoe.

“Explicitly. But I think you owe me one.”

“Fair enough. I was seventeen.”

“Seventeen?”

“When I lost my virginity.”

“Oh. Thanks, but that's not what I wanted to know. And in all seriousness, you can shut me down if you want...I'm curious about when you started stripping. And why?”

Lizzy fell silent. Maggie's business partner was the only person Lizzy had ever told the full story to. Alice had this way of being totally honest with you. If you didn't want to know if your butt looked fat in your jeans, you didn't ask Alice. When she'd first gotten into he catering, it was Alice who'd given her financial advice. Lizzy had thought it only fair that she tell Alice what Kyle had done to her. Did she trust Duncan enough to tell him? Yes, she realized, she did.

“It happened before I came here, back in Sudbury. I was young and in love with a jackass, as it turns out. My mother was useless—too many drugs and too many men—so I'd left home. I was doing all right, making enough to pay my board and feed myself. I even managed to put some away. Then I got lucky, really lucky. I won the lottery. Fifty thousand dollars. I knew I had to invest it, but first I had to get it. I was underage but my boyfriend wasn't. He claimed the ticket.”

“Wow, you trusted him?” he said, popping four pieces of bread in the toaster.

“I was young and stupid.”
So very stupid
. “But he brought me the money. It was my
bright
idea to buy the chip wagon.”

“Chip wagon?”

“Sorry. It's a food truck for French fries. We sold hot dogs, burgers, drinks and fries.
Lots
of fries. For the first six months, things were good. Then winter hit and we had to park the truck. To make a long story short, my boyfriend gambled what money we'd made and then some. And I mean
and then some
. He borrowed money from the kind of people who break your legs if you don't pay them back.”