The Miami Millionaire (9 page)

Alice answered on the first ring.

“Hi.  I’ve been waiting for your call.  Are you alright?”

Victoria could hear the concern in Alice’s voice and now it all made sense; the multiple calls and cryptic message.  Alice knew! 

“Alice, you knew didn’t you?  How could you know something like that and not tell me.”  She said as pain struck through her heart.

“I only found out last night.  I tried to get hold of you to tell you straight away but we kept missing each other and it’s not the sort of things you leave as a message on the voicemail is it?  I was hardly going to say, oh sorry I missed you but by the way Mark’s having it away with his secretary and I just wanted you to know!”

“His secretary?  Chantelle?”  Victoria cut in.  What did she mean his secretary?

“I thought Mark told you.”

“He told me he has been unfaithful with another woman but he didn’t tell me it was his secretary.  I asked him who it was but he wouldn’t tell me, he said I didn’t need to know the details.”

“Victoria I am so sorry.  I thought he told you everything.  I called him at lunchtime yesterday to ask who the woman was and he said he was going to tell you everything.  Of course he tried to lie to me at first, he tried to get out of it but I had already done my homework.  I got my friend to contact her friend who saw the photograph, and the woman turned out to be Chantelle.  She told my friend everything.”

“So you know what’s been going on?  It sounds like you know more than me, tell me everything.”

“Are you sure you really want to know?”  Alice wasn’t sure she wanted to tell her best friend all the gory details about her lying cheating fiancé, but if that was what she wanted then she would.  After all, if it was her then she would want to know every tiny little last detail.

“Yes, I want to know.  I want to know when and where.  I want to know the whole lot.”

It had been a long conversation and by the end of it Victoria had cried so many tears she didn’t think she had any left, or if she would ever be able to cry again.  So, her so called loving fiancé was really a lying two timing rat.  It seemed he had been screwing his secretary in lunch breaks and after work pretending he was working late for the last few months.  And, if that wasn’t bad enough, his secretary had very kindly told her friend how she was not the first woman Mark had cheated on Victoria with.  Apparently Mark was well known in the office for having a string of one night stands, ducking out of work dinners or drinks early to run off and meet one woman or another, or even just one he had picked up in the bar that evening.  So much for pre-wedding nerves, not as long as his nerves had kicked in as soon as he had asked Victoria to marry him because if what Alice had said was true, and she knew Alice would never tell her anything she wasn’t sure of, then this had been going on for a good year or more.  Victoria wondered why Mark would want to marry her if he was screwing around with other women behind her back, but then as Alice had said, “He probably wants to have his cake and eat it.  He has steak at home but can’t resist going out for a cheap take-away burger.  Or quite simply he is greedy.  Greedy and a cheat!”

Victoria woke up in the morning surprised she had actually slept so well.  When she went to bed she thought she would toss and turn all night with thoughts of Mark and other women in her head, but as soon as her head hit the pillow she had fallen into a deep exhausted sleep.  Now she was up early and dressed in her killer heels and best business suit.  Victoria was ready to go, and what a day it was going to be, she was going to make sure of that.

Jake heard the loud buzzer ring on the suite door and he turned over to look at the clock – it was eight thirty in the morning.  Normally he would have been up hours ago but last night had been a late one having slipped out of the stunning blonde woman’s bed somewhere around three o’clock this morning.  He had sent his personal assistant a text message last night telling her to come in late this morning, but it looked like she hadn’t got the message.  He turned over in his bed and tried to cover his ears when the buzzer carried on making its awful racket.  Finally he got out of bed, he was not happy!

“Look, didn’t you get my message.”  Jake said as he flung the suite’s front door open wide and stopped when he realised it wasn’t his personal assistant at all.  “Victoria?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t think I would be waking you up, but I need to talk to you.”  She said taking in Jake’s ruffled hair and hastily thrown on t-shirt and pyjama bottoms. Her mind was running at a hundred miles an hour and she didn’t care whether he was dressed or not, she was a woman on a mission. “Can I come in?”

Jake stepped back letting Victoria walk past him into his suite - he certainly hadn’t expected to see her this morning, and wow didn’t she look amazing.  Today she was about as tall as him since he was barefooted and she was in high-heels which only seemed to make her slender legs even longer. And what was it with that suit jacket of hers?  It was done up so tightly that it looked like her ample breasts were crying to spring free from it, and screaming out to him to help them in their fight!

“I need to know why you want me to come to Miami with you.”  She faced Jake square on, she wanted to get straight to the point.

“I want you to show me what you are capable of.  I want you to have the chance of showing yourself and that pompous boss of yours what you are capable of.”

Victoria would have smiled at that if she been in a better mood, but she wasn’t.

“I know your reputation Jake.  I just want to make sure this is not some sort of little game you are playing.  Because this is my life, and I am not someone to be played with.”

“Hold on a minute, what exactly does that mean, you know my reputation?”  Jake looked at Victoria feeling confused and slightly annoyed.

“I have seen plenty of media coverage on you to know what you are like Jake, but this is important to me.  If I come to Miami I need to know that it is purely business and nothing else.”

“Well, since you seem to think you know me, let me tell you a little something you don’t know.”  He walked across to the coffee maker by his personal assistant’s desk and flicked the switch on, he always had it sitting waiting just ready for him to flip the switch first thing in the morning.  “If you think what you see in the papers is me then you don’t know a dammed thing about me.  People think they know me, but they don’t.  You and the rest of the world know what I want you to know about me.  But me, the real Jake Cumberland is the guy you had dinner with two nights ago.  So tell me, do you think that guy would be jerking you around right now?” 

Victoria hesitated, she had to admit the Jake she had dinner with didn’t seem like the person portrayed in all the press reports.  Yes he was younger than your average chairman, he liked to party and loved to think outside the box, but he had a lot more depth than the papers seemed to be making him out to be.  The press was all about his playboy lifestyle and risky, albeit successful, investments, but the man she had dinner with two nights ago was a lot more than that.    “No, I don’t think so.”

“Good, then you have your answer.  So are you coming or what?”  He made it sound so casual, but deep down he really didn’t want to hear the “or what”.

“Yes I’m coming.  But I’m serious Jake.  No funny business okay?”

“Yes Ma’am.”  Jake said as he watched Victoria walk back out the door and close it noisily behind her.  He had absolutely no idea what all that was about, but wow she was really something when she was all fired up.  She was one hell of a feisty woman, and he loved it!  Jake chuckled and reached for the now hot coffee.

It was nine o’clock as Victoria walked into Ben Churchill’s office.  He waved her straight in when he saw her walk through the office front door, and she took a seat in front of his desk.

“Good to see you this morning.  I’m guessing you’ve wised up a bit and you’ll be going to Miami on Monday.”  He said smiling, literally seeing the money and notoriety from what would hopefully be his new client rolling in.

“Yes and no.”  Victoria said sitting up straight in the seat.

“What does that mean?”  Ben Churchill said wondering if she had lost the plot.

“Yes I’m going to Miami, but I want to fly out the day after tomorrow.”

“You don’t need to be over there until Monday.”  He pointed out flatly, thinking she had obviously got ideas she could call the shots here when she couldn’t.  As far as he was concerned his soon to be client may have asked for Victoria but she was just a little pawn in all of this and she needed to come down a peg or two, and quickly.  “Don’t push it Victoria.”

Despite feeling anything but happy and polite, Victoria put on a smile to soften her words.  She felt empowered this morning and she wanted to push as many boundaries as she could, she was almost enjoying this.  Almost.  “Mr Churchill, you and I both know that if we get Jake Cumberland’s business it will be because I got him here and because I am going to Miami.  So let’s set a few ground rules and say it the way it is.  I am going to go to Miami on Friday so I can go shopping and buy some more appropriate clothes for Jake’s partying type of publicity stunts, and when I put these clothes on my company expense account you are not going to freak-out at me and complain.  I also assume the company is going to be putting me up in decent accommodation and not in some squalid back-road hotel, and in return I am going to work my butt off for you and bring back Jake Cumberland’s business.”  Victoria sat quietly and waited for his response.  Quite honestly she wasn’t sure if he was going to explode and tell her she was fired or burst out laughing at her audacity. 

Finally Ben Churchill spoke, “Well Miss Pembrose you had better know what you are doing because believe me after this little meeting, if you don’t bring Jake Cumberland’s business to this company, I am going to fire you for sure.  Do I make myself clear?”

Victoria breathed a sigh of relief.    She had no doubt her boss meant every single word but for now she was getting exactly what she wanted, for once.

“Oh and one more thing.  I’m going to need this morning off, but I will be back in the office this afternoon.”

“Is there anything else?”  He said not quite believing he was hearing Victoria correctly - this woman hadn’t said “boo” to a goose until two days ago.  In fact he hardly knew she was in his agency until he recognised her from the press photos last weekend, and now she seemed to think she could swan in and out when she wanted and call the shots.

“No, nothing else thank you.”  She smiled sweetly knowing she had thoroughly pissed him off.

“Fine.  Be back by two.  We’ll meet again then.”

Nodding Victoria walked out the door - she had something important she had to do.

Mark was sitting behind his desk when his office door burst open making him jump.  Victoria stood at the door looking amazing, just like she always did and he wondered why he seemed to have forgotten that.  But today she had an expression on her face he didn’t recognise and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what was coming.

“Victoria, let’s not do this here, let’s talk at home tonight.”

“No thank you Mark.  You see you won’t be coming home tonight, and in fact you won’t be coming home until Saturday.  By then I will have taken all my stuff out of the house and you can deal with the rest, along with the estate agent.  Oh yes, I made an appointment for an estate agent to come on Saturday morning to put the house on the market.”

“Victoria, honey.  Don’t do anything you will regret.”

“Oh I can assure you I won’t.  The only thing I regret is not seeing you for the low-life, two-timing, cheating scumbag you really are.”  Victoria said as she purposely and slowly walked further into his office not bothering to close the door behind her.  She was happy for all his colleagues to hear this, after all they probably knew about the rest of his antics, so why shouldn’t they know how the Victoria part of it ended.

Victoria saw Mark’s eyes flash over her shoulder briefly and then back to her. 

“Don’t worry Mark, Chantelle scarpered the minute she heard I was on my way up.    And do remember to thank her for being so generous and open with her information, but then again why shouldn’t she be?  After all she’s just a cheap tart who slept with her boss when she knew he was engaged.  Whereas you, however, are the actual cheating scumbag here!”

“Okay Victoria I get it.  I screwed up, I know that, but we can work this out.”  Mark said hoping not too many people were listening, but by the looks of things there were far too many people conveniently needing to be at their secretary’s desks near his office door and he knew full well they were there for the show.

“The only thing we can work out Mark is how much money we each walk away with from the sale of our house.  I have to go away for business for a few weeks, but when I come back I will rent somewhere else, and you will have put our house on the market and hopefully have secured a sale.”

“Look Victoria let’s take a moment to think about this.  I’ll find somewhere to stay for a few days and we can talk about it when you have had time to cool down a bit.”

“Cool down!  Oh Mark darling I have cooled down.  In fact I am possibly freezing cold in my heart for you. I don’t want anything from you.  I don’t want anything to do with you.  The wedding is off, and the floozies you seemed to have enjoyed so much are very welcome to you.”  And standing there in front of Mark, Victoria really meant it – she felt stone cold and she knew her voice was portraying every single icicle.