The Miami Millionaire (23 page)

“It’s just that Ben Churchill was trying to make me tell him what your products are and I had to tell him that I couldn’t because you made me sign a confidentiality agreement which even included my own boss.”

Jake nodded seeing what a bad situation Victoria was in, which he had put her in.  But his products were so innovative, and in some cases one or two of them were still not one hundred percent signed, sealed and delivered, so he couldn’t let anyone else in on it.  It was strictly a need-to-know basis and as far as he was concerned Victoria needed to know, but Ben Churchill did not.

“Sorry Victoria, I know we put you in a bad position with your boss.  We probably should have done this in the first place anyway.”  Jake pushed a button on his office phone, “Andrea can you arrange for legal to have a confidentiality agreement drawn up for Victoria and have them backdate it to her first day here please.”

“Sure, right away.”  Andrea said.

“Thank you.” 

Victoria stood up and walked to the door. 

“I want to take you out somewhere different for dinner tonight.  Are you free?”

“You know my schedule Jake, and you know I am free.”  She said smiling knowing full well Jake knew exactly what promotional events were going on, and if she wasn’t at work then there were not many other things for her to be doing in the evening on her own.

“Well I don’t want to assume that just because you are not working you will be free for me to take you out.”

“Well I am, so where are you taking me?”  She asked excitedly.

“To a very exclusive and different restaurant.  Be hungry because we will be eating six courses.”

“Six courses?  Where are you taking me, a banquet?”

Jake walked out his office door with Victoria and nodded to Andrea who was on the phone.

“No, I’m taking you to Romeo’s Café.  It’s a great place, no menu, you just tell the chef what you like and he creates your own personal six course dinner from that.  Lobster, salmon, steak, you name it they have it all.  It’s great, you will love it.  I’ll call ahead and book a table for eight o’clock.  Is that okay?”

“Lovely.”  She said as she walked off towards the lift.

“Victoria wait!”  Andrea called after her, still holding the phone in her hand.

Victoria stopped short of the lift and turned around.  Jake looked at Andrea, he heard something in her voice and he wasn’t sure what it was.

“Victoria there is someone downstairs in reception to see you.  They tried to call you in your office but when you weren’t there they decided to try up here.”

“Okay, so they found me.”  She wasn’t expecting any visitors.  “Who is it?”  She asked looking between Jake and Andrea.

“He says he is your fiancé.”

“Excuse me?”  Victoria stood rooted to the spot, she wasn’t sure she heard Andrea right but then again how could she not?

“He said his name is Mark Cavendish.”

Victoria’s mouth dropped open as she looked at Jake.  He looked at her questioningly, but his eyes were as dark as thunder.

CHAPTER NINE

“Victoria?”  Jake asked as he stood by Andrea’s desk looking directly at her confused.  As far as he was aware Victoria didn’t have a fiancé, and ex-fiancé or not, what was this man doing here in Miami, in his offices – it was a very long way from London?

“Sorry, what did you say?”  Victoria asked walking back towards Jake and Andrea.

“She said that your fiancé is waiting downstairs in reception to see you.”  Jake said flatly.

“Oh, that is what I thought she said but …..”  Victoria walked across to Andrea who still had the telephone in her hand.  “Do you mind?”  She asked as she held out her hand for the telephone.

Andrea handed across the telephone to Victoria and pushed a button connecting her to reception.

“Hi this is Victoria, did you tell Andrea I have a visitor down there with you?”

“Yes, your fiancé is here to see you.”  Jackie on reception said bluntly.   Victoria was too surprised to realised by the sound of the receptionists tone that she too had heard the rumour about Jake and Victoria, and now a man from England was standing in front of her saying he was Victoria’s fiancé - this was not looking good for her right now.

“If his name is Mark Cavendish then he is my ex- fiancé.  Ex!”  Victoria expressed firmly.

“Well ex or not, what do you want me to say to him?”

“Tell him I will be down in a minute.”  Victoria said as she handed the phone back to Andrea.

“I am so sorry Jake.  I don’t know what he is doing here.  I will just be a few minutes, do you mind?”  She said as she turned her back on Jake and walked to the lift.  As she pushed the lift button her mind was going around in circles - why was Mark here in Miami and at CT Holdings?  He hadn’t called her to say he was coming, and she was sure something wasn’t wrong otherwise Alice would have called her, so why would Mark be here at all?  The lift doors opened and she stepped in, pressed the button for the ground floor and watched Jake as the lift doors closed obscuring her view of him watching her, still standing in exactly the same place where she left him.

Victoria stepped out of the lift and walked passed the reception desk right to where Mark was sitting.  She could hear the whispers of a few of the female employees as she passed by, they were cooing over the gorgeous Englishman and part of her couldn’t blame them as Mark sat there in his pale blue cotton shirt and cream chinos looking like the stereotypical good-looking English gentleman.  She had no doubt he had put on his warmest smile and most charming voice to get the receptionist on his side.

“Mark, what are you doing here?”  She asked as she neared him.

“Hey Victoria is that any way to say hello after I have come so far to see you?”

“I guess I am surprised to see you.  So what are you doing here?”

“Can we talk somewhere in private?” he said leaning across to kiss her but she took a step back and folded her arms in front of her chest.  

Mark stopped and looked Victoria up and down, her little smart shirt and skirt combo smoothed their way across her body and her suntanned legs were even more toned than he remembered them to be.  “Miami certainly suits you.  I don’t remember you dressing like this for work back in London.”  He said as he once again eyed her up and down and thought he actually liked her hair down, just like she was wearing it now with the front clipped back off her face and the rest falling like a red waterfall across her shoulders.  He hadn’t before, but now he thought it looked incredibly beautiful.

Victoria wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or flattered by Mark’s comment.  She had always looked incredibly smart and professional for work.  Okay so her clothes were now a little tighter than she wore in London, but if she walked into a meeting room with a tight fitting top in London she would never have been taken seriously, it just wasn’t the done thing, but here in Miami it was considered perfectly normal.  She chose to ignore his comment and asked him again, “What do you want Mark?”

“I want a very cold drink, preferably an iced-tea, and to talk to you.”

“We have nothing to talk about Mark.”

“Well that’s not true, I am going to buy you out of your share of the house and I have the papers for you to sign.  If that is what you still want.”  He interrupted her.

Victoria stopped for a moment, she hadn’t expected to hear that and paused for thought – if the money was right and she signed the papers now then there would be nothing to tie her to Mark anymore.  She liked the thought of never seeing Mark again and decided not to act too hastily.

“Have you got the papers here with you?”

“In my bag.”  He nodded to the small travel-size suitcase.

“Good, you obviously weren’t planning on staying long.”  Victoria muttered more to herself than him.

“Only as long as you want me to sweet-heart.  Whatever you want.”  Mark said.

‘
Sweet-heart
!’  Victoria wondered where the hell that had come from, she couldn’t remember Mark ever calling her ‘sweet-heart’ and she gave him a strange look.

“Then you shouldn’t have come here at all because I don’t want you here.  We could have signed the papers back in England.  But since you are here then come on up to my office and we can sign the paperwork now and get this sorry business finished with.”

Mark sat back on the chair in Victoria’s office.  He made himself comfortable and rested one ankle across the top of his knee and sipped at his iced-tea as Victoria read through the paperwork he had handed her.  It all looked good and the amount of money he was offering her for her share of their house was fair, more than fair in fact.    She toyed between signing the paperwork now or getting a solicitor to look it over first.  Victoria wanted to sign it now and get everything over and done with, but she knew better than to sign anything without reading the small print first and there was a lot of legal jargon she wasn’t familiar with. 

“I agree in principle to this Mark but I need to e-mail this across to my solicitor in London to get him to check it out.”

Mark shrugged, “No problem, I can wait.”

“It won’t take long, if I scan it in and e-mail it to my solicitor now, then I will have an answer for you tomorrow afternoon.  If it is all okay I will sign the papers and you can take them away with you, so you may as well book yourself on a flight out of here tomorrow night.”

“Oh don’t worry about me, I am happy to stay as long as you need me to.”

She laughed disdainfully as she got up from her chair and walked around her desk, “Mark I don’t need you at all.  If you want to stay to get the signed copies you can, but otherwise I will e-mail them back to you in London and I will bring the originals back with me next week.  Please don’t feel the need to stay on my account, really.”

Mark stood up and walked across to stand within reach of Victoria.

“You know I am really sorry for what I did.  I know I screwed up and I know I hurt you, but I promise you I can change.  I will change for you.”  He said as he stepped closer.

“This is not the time or the place Mark, I think it’s time for you to leave.  I will call you tomorrow lunchtime.”

“For lunch?  How about we talk about this over dinner tonight instead?”

Victoria burst out laughing, she really couldn’t believe that Mark wasn’t giving up or listening to her.  He just didn’t seem to be getting the message.

“It’s true what they say Victoria.  You never know what you have until you lose it.”  Mark said as he reached out to stroke her hair.

Before Victoria had a chance to react her office door swung open and Jake stepped inside, his face was like thunder and his eyes shot daggers at Victoria and Mark standing opposite each other.

Jake couldn’t hear what was being said through the heavy wooden office door, he could just about hear the muffled voices of Victoria and her ex-fiancé.  He had waited for a few minutes for Victoria to return to his office, but after ten minutes he phoned down to reception to be told that she had taken Mark up to her office.  Jake felt uncomfortable - he had been caught off guard by Mark turning up at his office asking for Victoria, and telling them he was her fiancé.  He knew Mark couldn’t be telling the truth, he must have told Jackie on reception a load of rubbish, but it bothered him that Victoria had invited him upstairs into her office.  Why did she need to do that if there was nothing between her and this Mark anymore?  Why hadn’t she told him to go away and never come back?  That nagging thought took him downstairs to Victoria’s office where Jake stood outside her door for a minute or two.  He didn’t want to go inside, he wanted to trust Victoria.  But he was torn between wanting to know what was going on and wanting to check she was alright.  But then he heard the beautiful sound of Victoria’s laughter and he frowned.  Jake turned the door handle and opened the door.

Jake stepped through the doorway and didn’t want to believe his eyes – the tall good looking man dressed like something off the English movies was standing barely a foot away from Victoria as he stroked her hair and looked lovingly into her eyes.  And Victoria was letting him! Jake’s stomach turned and anger shot through his veins.

As soon as Jake walked in Victoria froze seeing the look on his face.  She looked back to Mark and to where his hand was, and gasped with surprise realising how it must look.  Quickly Victoria pushed Mark’s hand away and stepped back.

“Jake.  This is Mark Cavendish, my ex-fiancé.”

“Are you so sure about that?”  Jake said. 

Before Victoria had a chance to say anything Jake turned around and stormed out of her office and back down the corridor.

Victoria pushed Mark aside as she swore under her breath and ran out of the office after Jake.  She knew how it must have looked and she couldn’t blame him for being angry, but she had to make Jake understand that this wasn’t what it looked like.

“Jake, wait!”  She ran up the corridor ignoring the looks from a few people as she passed them and caught up with him as he reached the elevator.  “Jake wait please.  It is not what it looked like, I promise you.”

Jake laughed sadly and tried to step past Victoria as she stood in between him and the opening lift door.  “Couldn’t you come up with something a little more original than that Vicky?  That’s such an old line and I have heard it before.” 

Jake’s blue eyes were as hard as steel and Victoria felt the wall of ice shut down hard between them.  The memory of Jake telling her how his ex-wife had cheated on him with his business partner flashed through her mind and she groaned aloud.  Wasn’t that just what his ex-wife had said to him – “It’s not what it looks like Jake!”  But this was different! 

One of the men from the development team stood in the lift and looked at Jake and Victoria as the door opened.  As Jake stepped in closely followed by Victoria he quickly made his way around them and stepped out of the lift - he had no idea what this was about, but he could feel an explosion coming and he didn’t want to be in the lift with them when it did!

Jake hit a button on the lift control panel and the doors closed leaving the two of them alone in the small metal box.  As soon as the doors closed Victoria started again.

“No Jake I promise you it is not like that.  There is nothing going on between Mark and me.  I don’t love him anymore.  I really don’t.”

“Wow you sure fall in and out of love quickly then don’t you.  It was only a few weeks ago that you were planning to spend the rest of your life with him.  Now you say you don’t love him.  I had hoped you were getting over him, but if you tell me that you don’t love him at all then you are either lying or something is not right!”  He said as he moved her aside when the lift stopped and he stepped out into the corridor outside his office.

Victoria knew she should go back to Mark who was probably still waiting in her office, she didn’t like the idea of leaving him alone in there but right now she had to make Jake see she hadn’t lied and wasn’t cheating on him.  After all he only had her word to take for it and she needed him to trust her.  Victoria followed Jake into the corridor.

“Please Jake listen to me.  You can come back and ask him for yourself if you want”. Then she thought twice about that and wondered if Mark would really tell Jake the truth if he suspected there was something going on between her and Jake? 

“Seriously Victoria?”  He couldn’t believe she actually wanted him to go back and talk to that man.  “No thanks, I think I will just trust my own eyes if you don’t mind?”

“Well I do mind.  I understand that what you just saw looked bad, but I promise you it wasn’t like that.  Just before you walked in I told Mark to go back to London.  He asked me out to dinner and I turned him down.  He is only here to bring me some papers to sign so he could buy me out of our house.”

“He could do that when you got back to England.  He didn’t need to come here.”

“I know, I told him that too but for some reason he did come.  Nevertheless, I made it very clear to him that I don’t love him anymore.  Please believe me Jake, because if you don’t then I don’t have another way to prove to you that I would never hurt you.  I ……”  Victoria stopped short before she went any further.  She desperately wanted Jake to believe her and to understand how much he meant to her.  Her heart was beating so painfully fast she thought it was going to burst through her chest.  She couldn’t let Jake think she would do this to him, but she managed to stop just before she blurted out that she was in love with him.