Taken By The Billionaire (10 page)

“Rafe said she’s jealous of me.”

My father paused as he stirred the Bolognese sauce, turning to look at me with a quizzical raised eyebrow.

I went on. “Rafe said that Jenny told him once, when she’d had a couple of drinks, that Jenny told him that after I was born you didn’t have much time for her.”

“Bullshit!” my father exploded. He dropped the spoon into the pan of bubbling, delicious smelling sauce. “That’s just crap. She’s just a spoilt brat, plain and simple.” His jaw worked and I saw his fingers clenching and unclenching. “Goddam but she’s pissed me off!”

Anxious to deflect my father’s anger, and sorry I’d mentioned it and upset him – yet again – I said softly, “Daddy, the sauce. It’ll burn.”

“Shit,” my father blurted as he fished the spoon from the volcanic, bubbling mix. He sighed, his stirring recommenced. “Anyway,” he began, “you stay here again tonight, sweetheart. Forget your sister for now, and forget those guys who aren’t good enough for you anyway. You sleep in your old room again and forget about those two assholes.”

A laugh bubbled from me when I saw my father’s scowl. I don’t know why, he just looked so serious it was comical; all indignant and waving the spoon around.

“I feel better already, dad,” I said as I rose from the chair to give my old dad a hug.

7

At first I lay there with my eyes closed. I didn’t want to open them because I knew it would hurt even more when I did. Everything had that surreal, dreamlike sensation about it; like I wasn’t really present in my own life, as though stuff would go on around me and I wouldn’t really be there. I was thirsty as hell and I could feel that deep ache behind my eyes. I examined my teeth with my tongue – what the fuck had I eaten? My mouth tasted like I’d eaten a skunk, complete with its fur. The hangover, as I knew from experience, would only get worse as the day wore on.

Snatches of the previous day came back to me. The morning was fairly clear. I recalled the story in the paper about Kylie and the pain of betrayal, my heartache, hit me again. I remembered driving home as my mind reeled at what she’d done. Getting to my house and the satisfying snap of twisting the top off the Johnny Walker black –
Hello my old friend, we’ve shared some times
–
is still clear.

I remember Alexandra’s arrival …

Shit. Alexandra!

I opened my eyes a crack, a peep just to ascertain where in the hell I was. I found myself on my side in my own bed. The clock told me it was seven twenty – but whether morning or evening, I wasn’t sure. I groaned when I moved too quickly, the dull throb cranking up to head-splitting levels, an ice-pick of pain.

Moving slowly I turned in the bed. Someone was next to me buried under the cover.

I dared to hope. “Kylie?”

The covers moved and a tousled head appeared. “What time is it?”

“Just after seven,” I replied as the lead sinker of disappointment plummeted into the pit of my stomach.

“How do you feel?” Alexandra asked, drowsily.

Ignoring her question I replied with one of my own. “How much did I drink?” I groaned.

I felt her turn in the bed as I lay a forearm over my eyes. “A lot,” she said. “A hell of a lot. It stinks in here.”

Without taking my arm from my eyes, I didn’t want to look at a face that wasn’t Kylie’s next to me, I said, “What are you doing here?”

The bed moved and I sensed Alexandra get up and move away.

“I didn’t want to leave you alone. You were pretty bad.” She shut the bathroom door and after a pause I heard the toilet flush and then the sound of Alexandra washing her hands. “So I stayed over,” she added as she returned. The bed dipped again when she climbed back in. Her arm went around me and I realized we were both naked.

“Don’t do that, Alexandra,” I snapped. I flung her arm off me and, with a groan, rolled out of bed and stood a little unsteady on my feet. “Thanks and all that but you shouldn’t be in my bed.”

“That wasn’t what you said yesterday, Damien,” she purred back at me with a slow smile spreading across her face. “Nice butt!” she called as, full of self-loathing like acid bile churning in my stomach, I walked to the bathroom.

Who was that bloke guy I saw in the mirror? He looked like shit. Still, he’d earned it. It was Kylie’s fault – smiling sweetly and lying to my face. How could she do that? How could she lie to me, saying she’d be at her father’s only to go gallivanting around the flesh-pots of Hollywood?

But somewhere in the back of my head, where there was no hangover ache, in a lucid part of my consciousness I sensed something wasn’t right about the whole thing. I had a suspicion of something being out of kilter, but being in the early stages of a killer hangover I couldn’t work anything out.

Had I really invited Alexandra into bed? Maybe I would have in the past, a long time ago, but surely I’d moved beyond that kind of behavior now?

I peed a nuclear stream of dehydration into the bowl, grimacing as I imagined the crap I’d put my own liver and kidneys through. As I’d done innumerable times before I swore off the drink and decided a shower would do me good. I stepped under the spray; first as hot as I could stand before I forced myself to endure two minutes of a cold water cascade.

Feeling marginally better after brushing my teeth I padded barefoot but covered by my bathrobe into the bedroom.

Alexandra threw back the cover and, naked, got out of bed.

“Feeling better?” she asked, deliberately taunting me with her body as if to say:
Look at what you’
re missing.

“Put a robe on, Alexandra,” I growled. “I’m sorry but I don’t need to see you naked. I’ve got a hangover from hell, the film schedule is shot to shit, there’s no fucking lead. On top of that, I’ve lost Kylie …

“The last thing I need right now is to complicate things by fucking you.” It dawned on me then as the possibility that I’d already shagged Alexandra percolated through my whisky-soaked brain. “Shit,” I spat. I looked at her face. “Did we …?”

I’ve known Alexandra long enough to know she can be a calculating bitch. She’s helped me out lots of times during contract negotiations, and I knew she was capable of lying to the Pope’s face if the situation warranted it. I saw something in her expression, a brief shadow that flickered, just for a second, behind her eyes.

She was considering whether or not to lie to me. I sensed it intuitively.

Alexandra sighed and walked towards the bathroom door. “No,” she admitted wearily as she took a robe dangling from a hook behind the door. Alexandra shrugged. “We didn’t do it. You were too far gone to be capable. You passed out about 3pm, woke up at 6, yelled for more whisky and staggered up here an hour later. I undressed you and got in next to you.”

She wasn’t lying! Relief flooded through me.
Thank God
, I knew I wasn’t that
bloke anymore.

It isn’t that Alexandra isn’t hot, because she is. I’d never even seen her in a bikini before, so seeing her naked just confirmed what I already thought, smoking hot body to go with her sharp intellect. Yeah, the old me, the selfish, uncaring Damien Taylor, he would have tumbled her into bed in a heartbeat.

But I didn’t love her; we were colleagues and friends, that’s all, and besides I wouldn’t want to lead her on. It just wouldn’t be right.

And she wasn’t Kylie.

Kylie – what was it about Kylie’s visit that disturbed me so much? It wasn’t the shouting and the screaming, although that had been bad enough. The pain, the anguish at seeing her at my door had been hideous, but there was something else, something that seemed off center when she’d finally run, sobbing, down the drive.

I looked at Alexandra. It was something to do with her.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” I said as the cloudy recollection, that sense of something odd that just wouldn’t coalesce into a solid memory, faded away just out of reach. “But thank God for that. It would have been a huge mistake.”

The woman grinned at me. “Maybe later,” she suggested, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow arching.

“I need a drink,” I said, ignoring Alexandra’s remark. “Of water,” I added. “And some breakfast.”

In the kitchen I poured fresh orange juice and set the coffee maker. Then I set about making the best hangover cure I knew – what we Brits call a fry-up. Bacon, sausage, grilled tomatoes – I even had some Heinz Baked Beans and the iconic HP Sauce with its distinctive label depicting the Houses of Parliament alongside the Thames in London. I added mushrooms and a side of toast and I tucked in with gusto.

Alexandra’s lip curled with disgust when she saw the heart attack on a plate in front of me. “That looks gross,” she sneered, lighting up her staple breakfast of a morning cigarette.

“Reminds me of home,” I mumbled through a mouth full of carbs. I pointed my fork at her. “And I’d rather die of this than smoking myself to death. Much tastier.”

“Reformed smokers,” Alexandra said with a roll of her eyes. Ain’t they the worst?”

With my stomach fully loaded I sipped coffee and tried to make sense of the day before. I felt better already; physically that is, emotionally I was still shot to shit.

I wanted answers.

“What the hell happened yesterday?” I asked as we sat at the kitchen table.

Alexandra lit up her second cigarette of the day. “You found out what Kylie’s really like,” she replied. “A good thing, too.” Alexandra looked at me with a fond expression. “Before you got in too deep with her. Better to find out now than later on.”

“How did you know we’d been seeing each other?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. Alexandra seemed a little too well informed, the newspaper article hadn’t surprised her at all; neither had my reaction to it.

Alexandra dragged on her cigarette. “Oh, come on, Damien,” she said. “Everybody on the crew knows about you two fucking. You know what it’s like. Someone always notices and tells someone else.”

It was true enough; I did know how it was impossible to keep something like that a secret. Alexandra was right and I felt like a wanker for my suspicions.

Then it came to me, the image that I couldn’t quite get into focus. When Kylie had been here, just after she’d left, when I’d turned around and seen Alexandra in the hallway behind me she’d been standing there in her underwear, her blouse flapping and the upper slopes of her breasts swelling over the cups of her bra.

Why? We hadn’t been in the middle of anything. I’d been upstairs changing into a pair of sweatpants when Kylie had started banging on my door, Alexandra hadn’t been anywhere near me.

As I thought about it I only half listened to Alexandra speaking.

“… She’s not the right girl for you, Damien. She’s at least nine years younger than you. What you need is someone more like you. Besides, Jenny says—”