The Miami Millionaire (16 page)

Victoria shifted her position on the sun lounger so she was sitting cross legged looking directly at Jake giving him her full attention.    “He cheated on me.”  She said matter-of-factly, “Not just once, not that it would have made any difference anyway because cheating is cheating in my book, but he was sleeping with his secretary.”

“Ouch.”  Jake said as he turned around on his sun lounger and put his feet on the cool sand and sat directly looking at Victoria.

“Yeah apparently she wasn’t the first or the only one either.  It seems he had been cheating on me for at least a year.  Who knows it could even have been longer than that!”  She shrugged her shoulders and took another mouthful of frozen yoghurt.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sure.”

Jake took a deep breath and looked out to the sea.  “I know how that feels you know.”

“Really!”  She said thinking he was just trying to appease her, she highly doubted anyone had trampled on Jake Cumberland’s heart.  From what she suspected he did the trampling.

“Yes really.”

“So what happened?”  Victoria put down her yoghurt cup and small spoon.

“It doesn’t matter, it was a long time ago now.”  He focused his attention on his frozen yoghurt cup and stirred what was left inside.

“That’s not fair, I just told you about me, so now you should tell me about you.  Come on, make me feel like I’m not the only one, because I am feeling pretty stupid right now.  I can’t believe I didn’t see it!  When I look back now I can see all the signs, but I really didn’t see it at the time.  It never even occurred to me that he would do that to me.”

Without looking up Jake told Victoria something he hadn’t planned to say, something he had never spoken to another woman about since the day it happened.  “It was about eight years ago now, my ex-wife cheated on me with my then business partner.”

“What?  That’s awful.  What happened?”

“One night I went to his condo to talk to him about some urgent business and I found them there together.  He wasn’t expecting me.  When I walked in I knew he had someone there because I saw a woman’s jacket on the chair in the living room.  I just assumed it was some woman he was seeing, but I had no idea it was Felicity.  She didn’t realise I was there and before Luke had a chance to stop her she walked out of the bedroom wearing nothing more than his shirt!”

Victoria could see the hurt in Jake’s eyes as his usual sparkle left them.  She could imagine how he felt.

“What happened then?”  She found herself asking.  She didn’t know who this Luke was but she couldn’t imagine any woman not wanting to be with Jake, he was gorgeous, sexy, funny, and kind too!

“Obviously they tried to say all the usual things, ‘it’s not what it looks like’, ‘okay yes it is but we couldn’t help ourselves’ etcetera.  So I bought Luke out of our partnership after that, Felicity and I got a quickie divorce and they got married a few years ago.”

“Wow that’s rough.  So that explains all the women huh?”

“What does that mean?” Jake asked looking at Victoria seriously.

“You are never going to trust another woman and let her break your heart the way this Felicity did so you just keep playing the field.  I bet when anyone gets too close you pull away because you don’t want to get hurt again.”

“No, that’s not it at all.  Is that what you think?”  Victoria had it all wrong, he couldn’t believe she still believed everything she read in the papers.

“It’s okay Jake, no one could blame you for being like that.  Your wife cheated on you!  I don’t know if I will ever trust another man again.”

“Well I believe trust is something which has to be earnt, so yes it won’t be easy but one day you will trust the right person if you want to.  As for me, you couldn’t be further from the truth.  I know Felicity was just a first class bitch and not all women are like her.  I won’t let her taint every woman for me.  I know one day I will meet my Miss Right, Felicity just wasn’t it and when I look back there are so many things about her that should have told me that, but I was young and reckless back then.”

“And not so now?”

“No.”

“So you just need to try out a lot of woman before you find the right one then, huh?”  Victoria raised an eyebrow and smiled sarcastically at Jake.

“Hey don’t hit out at me, not all men are the same as your Mark guy or Luke you know.  Yes I date a lot of women but we all know where we stand.  I am not exclusively dating any of them and they know that.  I never tell these women I love them, and I never sleep with them and leave them thinking I will call when I won’t.”

“Really?” She said sarcastically.

“Yes really.”  He said flatly.

“Oh.”  Victoria realised Jake was serious. 

“Not all of us are idiots like that ex of yours.  Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that Vicky.”  He reached across the small gap between them and rubbed his thumb along the back of her hand.

“Well right now being able to feel the way you do seems a long way off to me.  I still haven’t finished cancelling everything I need to.  I need to send a few more e-mails but I had to stop earlier, it was all getting a bit too much.”

“I can imagine.  Tell you what, let’s go back to my office at home and you can send your e-mails in peace from there.” 

“No that’s okay, I can send them from my laptop.  If you don’t mind I will just go back to my hotel and do it from there.”

“No you won’t, I’m not having you sitting alone in a hotel room doing something like that.  I have an office at my condo, you can do it all from there.   Can you access your e-mail account from any computer?”

She nodded.

“Good then it’s settled, let’s go straight there.”

“What about my handbag, it’s still in the office at work.”

“Don’t worry about that, I’ll call Andrea and she will have it sent across.” 

Victoria nodded, that sounded like a nicer plan than the one she originally had in mind.

Jake stood up and held out his hand.  Victoria took it and stood up, she knew it should have seemed strange to be taking Jake’s hand but it didn’t feel strange at all.  She walked hand in hand with Jake swinging her sandals in her spare hand as her flip-flops made a padding sound along the promenade.  Jake threw their rubbish into the bin and led Victoria out onto the main road to hail a yellow taxi again.

Victoria walked into Jake’s living room and apart from the vast size of the apartment she was hit by the amazing view across the ocean from his fourteenth floor windows.

“Wow that’s some view!”  She called to Jake as he walked off into the kitchen.

“It’s good isn’t it?  I really like the view from my office window at night, that side of the building is facing inland and you have got the Miami lights as far as the eye can see.  It’s quite something.”

“I’m sure it is.”  She murmured to herself.

“Here you go.”  Jake walked back in with two glasses of ice cold lemonade and passed one to Victoria.

“Thanks.” 

“So, Andrea will bring your bag across later, she’s going to bring my car back too, much to her joy, she loves driving it when I give her the chance.”

“I bet she does, that’s some car.  Which one have you got with you today.”

“The purple one.”

“My favourite.”

“Really?  I’ll remember that.”  Jake looked at his watch.  “You go ahead and make yourself comfortable in my office, it’s just through there,” he motioned towards an open doorway off the large sitting room, “and I will phone down to order us some food.  Take your time.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry I can work on my laptop in here, I won’t disturb you.”

“Oh I didn’t mean that, I meant that I didn’t want to inconvenience you.”  She almost laughed, she was high-jacking not only Jake’s day but his private office at home too, and he was worried that she might think he was going to disturb her!

“Vicky it’s fine.  Do what you’ve got to do and then come and eat.”

Jake watched as Victoria walked into his office and he wondered what on earth he was doing.  Was he trying to kill himself inside?  Victoria looked so right there in his home, she somehow seemed to fit in so perfectly – watching her walk off into his office with a glass of fresh lemonade in her hand just looked right, like she was meant to be there.  He turned away when she was out of sight and reached for the concierge’s restaurant guide and chose some lunch for them to send on up.

Victoria pressed the send button and pushed her chair back from the computer.  That was it, all done – everything was cancelled and her wedding dress was even advertised for sale on e-bay.  She didn’t want anything to remind her of what could have been.  It had been hard, she had shed a good few more silent tears but sending out the final e-mails hadn’t been like this morning and now, rather than feeling like her heart was shredded to pieces, she felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.  Of course she had sent Mark an e-mail telling him that everything was now cancelled, just to make it all final, but that e-mail had been short and barely courteous.  She pushed the white leather chair away from Jake’s desk and stood looking out across the Miami skyline, Jake was right it was an amazing view from his office and she could imagine how incredible it would look at night with all the buildings’ lights against the evening darkness.

Victoria walked out of Jakes office into the living room and saw Jake lifting the clear plastic lid off the last of the plates on the dining table. 

“Oh that smells delicious.”  She said as her stomach grumbled.

“All done?”

She nodded.

“Are you okay?”  He said looking at her seriously.  Whilst Victoria had been in his office putting her future to bed, Jake had been going through a few e-mails on his laptop.  He tried to concentrate on the matter in hand but his mind kept wondering back to Victoria in the other room, so close, and he felt her pain.  It hurt to know how much she was hurting inside.  He hurt for her.

“Actually I am okay, surprisingly.  I thought it would be much harder but thanks to you, you made it so much easier.”

“Me?  What have I done?”  He said surprised and happy she felt that way.

“Well all this.”  She said pointing to the delicious smelling food waiting for her, “and the time out on the beach before.  It made a difference.  Thank you.” 

Jake smiled and forced himself to turn his focus back to the food on the table.

“I hope this is okay, I ordered rice with black beans and pulled pork with salad.”

“That’s great.  Thanks.”  Victoria said as she joined him at the table. 

As they ate dinner Jake enjoyed every moment of Victoria’s conversation and Victoria almost forgot she was sitting with her potential client and momentarily her boss.  Their conversation continued to flow as they took their coffees to the enormous black leather sofa.

Victoria stood up and walked to a painting on the wall of a woman dancing with her golden hair flowing around her.

“This is a beautiful painting.”  She said as she examined it in detail, it wasn’t something she expected to see here in Jake’s modern apartment.

“Thank you, someone bought it for me as a house-warming present.”

“The woman in it is very beautiful, is she someone you know?”  The pretty face of the dancer was clear and she wondered if it was a painting of an old girlfriend.

“No, no one I know, and she is not as beautiful as you.  In fact my mother was the one who bought it for me, she would love you.”  He said getting up from the sofa walking towards a now bare foot Victoria.

“Jake.”  She laughed blushing.

“Oh come on Victoria, you’re a very beautiful woman and you know I think that – you’re smart, sassy and sexy.”  He said walking slowly towards her as she turned away from the painting to face him. 

She looked at Jake with his cheeky grin and sparkling blue eyes – he sent tingles down her spine.  “Jake, don’t you have a no flirting policy as well as a no relationship policy for your employees?  Because if you do then you are seriously breaking it yourself.  Or do your policies only apply to your employees and not you?”  Victoria put her hands on her hips and playfully reprimanded him, “I’m surprised at you Jake Cumberland, I thought you were a man of the people and not one of the big fat cats, as you put it.”

Jake laughed.  “What on earth do you mean?” 

“Seriously Jake, we both know you’re flirting with me.”

“Really.”  He moved from where he was and walked slowly around Victoria like a tiger prowling his prey.  He stopped just behind her shoulder and bent forward slightly so his lips were right next to her ear and gently spoke.  “Oh Victoria if you think this is flirting you have not seen anything yet!”

The hairs on Victoria’s arms stood on end as she felt an electric shock shoot from the deep seductive voice in her ear right through her brain and down her body.  She turned her head to look at Jake standing not six inches from her and she was lost for words as she looked straight into his eyes.  If she thought Jake’s bright blue eyes were intense before then she hadn’t been prepared for this now, she had never seen eyes like this, looking at her as if she was about to be eaten alive.  Through her breathlessness she found her voice but didn’t take her eyes away from him as he continued to walk slowly around her, to stand in front of her.