The Billionaire's Ruthless Revenge (7 page)

She clicked the door shut with relief and leaned against it. Her heart was pounding, her legs were shaking.

Just like that she’d got back in bed with the beast.

Getting over Kyle Anderson had been almost impossible. Coping with the loss of her pregnancy without the love of her husband had almost sent her mad.

And now she was back.

It had all been for nothing.

She clamped her lips together and dug her fingers into her palms to stop from crying. She wouldn’t give in to weakness. After all, she wasn’t weak. She’d made a decision to come back to Kyle because she needed to help her brother. That made her strong. Didn’t it?

She groaned and walked towards the sink. The water was ice cold; she splashed it on her face with relief, then dabbed some soap onto her fingers and washed the last vestiges of her make up off. There was some hotel moisturiser in a little container. She opened it and rubbed it over her cheeks then straightened.

Her eyes clashed with her reflection in the mirror and she stared at the image she made. He was right to be shocked by her appearance. The change in her physical self since they’d parted ways was dramatic. Her fingers trembled as she ran her hands over her ribcage. She could feel bones and worse, she could see them easily. Her breasts were smaller than usual, too. Her hands dropped lower, to her abdomen. The place where life had –briefly – been cradled within her. The life she’d lost.

Guilt sent a fever into her blood. Had that been her fault? She should have taken better care of herself. She would have, if she’d known about the baby. But grief had eclipsed every other emotion and certainly any awareness of a life within her.

“Annabelle?”

She blinked to clear the dark thoughts. “What is it?” Her voice was croaked with emotion.

“Food’s up.”

“Oh. Right. Okay.” She wrapped one of the fluffy white robes around herself and took a bracing breath. She could do this.

She’d been married to him for eighteen months and for most of that time she’d felt that she was playing a part.

She simply had to remember how to do that.

“A
re we here again already?” He asked, pinning his gaze to hers in the mirror as he straightened his tie. She had spent an hour in the bathroom after lunch – a lunch she’d picked at under his watchful disapproval. Her hair shimmered; she’d styled it into loose waves that fell about her shoulders, and she’d artfully applied that mask of make up he’d come to associate with her.

It was perfect. Long lashes curled like a cat’s, cheekbones highlighted by a perfect amount of bronzer. Her complexion was flawless and yet she’d put some kind of foundation over her entire face, concealing the smudge of freckles he adored. She was so heart-breakingly beautiful that his breath burned in his chest.

“Where’s that?” She kept her expression neutral with great care.

His sigh was laced with pure exasperation. “With you hedging any event I’ve got on in preference of a damned book.”

Her cheeks flushed at the accusation because it was true. “You have a problem with how much I read?” She had begun to read because of him. Because of her desire to keep up with him. The gulf in their intelligence had kept her permanently mired in a sense of unworthiness.

“I have a problem with you not having time for me.”

Her jaw dropped. “With me not having time for
you
?” She demanded with genuine shock. “My God, Kyle, I spent almost the entirety of our marriage alone and you dare say
I
didn’t make time for
you
?”

“That’s absolute crap. I made a point of being with you whenever I could.” He flicked his cufflink with idle curiosity. “Is that why you left me? You felt neglected?”

She resisted a strong inclination to roll her eyes. “Don’t infantilise my words. You didn’t make me a priority. That’s a point of fact.” She was looking at him with a blankness in her face yet her eyes were devouring him.

“Are you joking? What more could I have done?”

“How long do you have?” She posed the rhetorical question and then shook her head. “Let’s not do this.” Grief at the futility of these conversations passed through her. “It’s in the past.”

“No. It’s right here in the room with us.” He slammed his palm against the vanity and a loud noise ricocheted around the palatial suite. “Damn it, Annabelle. Talk to me. Talk to me now like you should have talked to me then.”

Her mouth worked overtime as she tried to moisten her dry throat. “I tried!” She shouted, her cheeks bright red. “I tried! You never listened!”

He spun around, his face a mask of disbelief. “I can’t believe you’re trying to pin this on me. For months I have wondered where you went and why. I have analysed those last few days and tried to understand what it was that made you think we didn’t have something worth saving.” He planted his hands onto his tapered waist, his face impatient. “So? What was it, Annabelle?”

She opened her mouth but there were too many words to find the right ones. She was a jumble of thoughts and doubts. He spoke first.

“Do you know what I came to realise these last six months?”

She shook her head, her eyes enormous.

He walked towards her like a panther hunting his prey. “Yesterday you accused me of not loving you. And I thought it was ironic because I realised how little
you
must have cared for me.” His smile was an angry twist. “You said you loved me and yet your actions spoke so much louder than those meaningless, hollow words. What is love if it’s so easy to shed when it’s no longer convenient?”

“Easy to shed?” She blinked up at him. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. “Walking out on our marriage was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”

His laugh was a bark of derision. “Which speaks volumes of the kind of sheltered life you’ve lived and nothing more.” He studied her face and she felt a wall of such anger emanating from him that her heart turned over with guilt. Guilt for leaving him!

“I told you we needed to talk. I told you I needed more from you! And you made me feel like some childish inconvenience as always.”

His grunt was a noise of guttural frustration. “You came to my office when I was in the middle of negotiating one of the biggest deals of my career and expected me to pack everything up to go on holiday with you.”

A sob formed in her chest but she clamped her lips together to contain it. “I needed you.”

“You needed a dose of reality,” he rejected angrily. “I didn’t say I couldn’t spend time with you. I said I couldn’t, in that moment, leave what I was doing to go away with you.”

“Even though I begged you ...”

“You turned our whole marriage into some stupid black and white test of my commitment that you knew I could never pass! You know what my company means to me ...”

“More than I did, apparently,” she interjected bitterly.

“Jesus Christ, you are unbelievable.” His eyes narrowed. “I came home that night prepared to discuss ...”

“It was too late.” She shook her head mutinously. “That day in your office,” she closed her eyes and the past was playing before her like a film. “I knew it was already over.” The sadness saturated her voice. “I think there was probably only a tiny, tiny chance that you could have said or done the right thing to fix it anyway.”

“To fix what?” He roared before making a visible effort to calm himself. “We were married. You were my wife. I was faithful to you. I gave you everything: Money. Clothes. Freedom. I let your brother keep his job even though I knew he would likely steal from me again. What more did you want from me?”

“It wasn’t enough.” She placed her hand on the back of a chair for support. It was vital. Her body felt weak.

“So what would have been? What did you need from me?”

“Just you!” She shouted.

“You had me.”

“No, I didn’t. And I never will. Don’t you get it, Kyle? You had all of me. I was yours, utterly.”

“As I was yours.”

“Come on,” she groaned. “That’s so patently untrue.”

A muscle flexed in his cheek as our eyes clashed with forceful anger. And then, as always with Kyle, something shifted and suddenly he was no longer in the argument, but above it. “I’m tired of going over this.” He dug his hands into his pockets, perfectly embodying nonchalance. “Get dressed, Annabelle.”

“I am dressed,” she responded mutinously, her eyes sparking with his.

He dragged his eyes over the black yoga pants and skimpy singlet. “Fine. You’ll freeze to death but I don’t know if I give a rat’s ass. Get your bag or whatever and let’s go.”

She shook her head belligerently. “I’m not coming with you.”

“Yeah you are. And do you want to know why?” At her silence he continued coldly. “Because you are in no position to refuse. It’s the first rule of business. Learn what cards you have to play and play them wisely.” His smile was one of impatient derision. “You, Mrs Anderson, don’t have any cards to play. Not a one.” He brought his head closer to hers, so that she could see the dramatic flecks of colour in his eyes.

His words were made of shrapnel and they were puncturing her heart and soul. “How can you speak to me like that?”

He spun away from her, his chest lifting with the force of his ragged breaths. How could he make her understand how devastated he’d been? How a man who’d grown up as a boy shunned and unloved had been made to feel all of those things again?

“You agreed to this. If you don’t like the state of affairs then you can leave me again,” he said with a shrug, as though he wasn’t walking in a constant fear of her doing just that.

“My God.” She walked to him unsteadily. He didn’t look at her so she stepped around his frame to face him. He dropped his eyes to hers and she barely recognised him, so loaded with hatred was his expression. “Kyle, what’s happened to you?”

His voice was low. “I met you.”

She swallowed; the lump in her throat was painful. “Don’t say that.”

“You reminded me that marriage is just like business. It’s a negotiation. A constant power-struggle. You proved the ultimate power you have is to walk away.” He ran a finger down her cheek, looking at her as though for the first time. “I’m not going to live with that threat hanging over my head.”

She stared at him aghast. It took her a moment to corral her thoughts. “And so you want to keep me here by force?”

“Not by force,” he disputed. “By agreement.” He shrugged. “You can go any time.”

“And if I do?”

His eyes were dark. “And if you do?” He prompted, wondering at the turn of this conversation. There was a part of him that was shouting at him to stop, to shut the hell up and put the spade down, but the greater part of him seemed determined to keep digging the hole, deeper and deeper.

“You’ll what? You’ll actually turn my brother in?”

He shifted his weight almost imperceptibly. “I won’t stand in the way of his idiocy being discovered,” he promised.

She was shaking. She spun away from him, wrapping her arms around her waist and staring out at the glorious snow that glowed in the moonlight. “I’m trapped.”

The words brought a wave of hopelessness crashing down around him.

There could be no forgiveness. Not by either of them.

And yet Kyle could never let her go. His love for her was darkly obsessive. Even he was surprised by it.

“Do you need a coat?” His words had any emotion flattened out of them.

She blinked back tears. “I’ll get changed.” She walked silently to the bedroom and clicked the door shut behind herself. He heard the lock slide into place and felt an answering finality inside of him.

Annie had packed clothes from her Old Life. A collection of fashionable couture hung in the wardrobe. She ran her fingers over the dresses with a growing sense of loss. None of these things were right for who she really was. They were expensive and designer and Annie was a girl who’d been known for her ability to climb trees and run as fast as the leaves tumbling in the autumnal breeze. She lifted a black Vera Wang from the hanger and pulled it on quickly.

The effect was instantaneous. Bit by bit, she was morphing back into Mrs Kyle Anderson. What a lonely life that was!

The thought of him waiting outside for her was far more satisfying than it should have been. She sat down at the dressing table with the appearance of calm and lifted a black chanel nail polish from her make up bag. With painstaking care she painted her nails a glossy black and then sat patiently while they dried completely. Her fingers shook a little, but that was the only sign that she wasn’t as heartless as she looked.

Her makeup had been flawless before but now, with a night ahead of her spending time with heaven only knew which of his friends, she laboured over her appearance slavishly. False lashes, a little more bronzer and a thicker coat of cherry red lips completed the look.

Annie studied herself dispassionately once she was finished. Yes, she looked perfect. She was the proverbial poison apple, she realised, as she pushed her feet into a pair of pumps and wrapped a Burberry trench around her shoulders. She was the epitome of glamorous health and wealth to look at, but her soul had withered to a disastrous extent.

She unlocked the door, sucked in a breath of courage and stepped out into the lounge. He had been staring at the door, as though with the force of his gaze he could force it to open, and so his eyes locked to hers instantly.

Annie’s footing faltered and she paused as his dark gaze slowly travelled the length of her body. His look was so intense that she almost felt like he was touching her. “Take off the coat,” he muttered, and like a deer in the headlights, she did so without speaking.

She saw the way his Adam’s Apple bobbed in his throat as he stared at her in the dress. “You look like ...”

She arched a brow, waiting for him to finish his sentence.

“You look ... immaculate,” he said finally, spinning away from her and grabbing his keys from the bench.

That was it.

Immaculate.

It was a strange word. Neither praise, nor an insult; it was just an observation, but Annie rolled it around in her mind.

The small elevator with its elegant William Morris print wallpaper brought them into close confines and she felt the immediate shortening of breath that spoke of his nearness. Her skin began to tingle and suddenly she was self-conscious, as though he must be able to feel the slick of emotions that were sending her sanity haywire.

Annie stared at the swirling lillies and tiny blue swallows marked on the print of the paper and pretended a sudden fascination with the décor. The doors pinged open with a ringing of a bell and they stepped out as one. A unified force.

Kyle put his hand on the small of her back and the butterflies began to flutter to life, first in her stomach and then through her soul.

The hotel had been built in the twenties by a famous Hollywood director and it was certainly not lacking in old-school glamour. The elevator presented guests to a mezzanine and beyond it there was a wide, curving staircase carpeted in a rich burgundy with gold rails down either side. It opened onto a double height foyer with enormous black and white marble tiles, crystal chandeliers and gold-framed bay windows that presented the view of the snow-covered street beyond.

The first time Annie had seen the foyer she’d been immobilised by its grandeur. It still led to a similar sense of awe, but she refused to give into it now. Her hand curled around the railing and a smile surprised her by tingling on her lips. She wondered how many hands had gripped this railing. Women on their way to farewell husbands to war? Children off for their first encounter with the snow? Politicians? Royalty? Film stars?

Her sigh was a reflection of the magic of time; a soft sound that breathed from deep in her lungs.

Her heels clicked with assumed confidence on the marbled floor (she remembered, in the nick of time, that she was playing a part). At the revolving door, Kyle nodded at the doorman – a man who looked like he could have been from another decade in his fine suit and cap.

“Good evening, Mr Anderson. Mrs Anderson.”

“Hello,” she smiled softly. Unlike Kyle, she’d never grown accustomed to the army of people who reported to him. The degree to which she’d been feted as the wife of this billionaire tycoon was unprecedented and intimidating.