Billionaire's Mediterranean Proposal. Julia James

He’d blocked her before—he would just have to do it again. However damn irritating it was to have to do so.

      His eyes rested now on the means he was going to have to use. Tara Mackenzie.

      He knew her name, and it had been easy enough to find out where she lived. He cast a disparaging eye around the dingy apartment. The front door opened on to the lounge, which was cheaply furnished and messy—belongings were scattered on battered settees, and a rack of washing was drying in front of the window.

      His gaze swept round to the woman he’d tracked down.

      And he veiled it immediately.

      Even casually dressed, in jeans and a loose shirt, Tara Mackenzie was a complete knockout. Every bit as stunning as he remembered her. The same insistent, visceral response to her that he’d felt at that fashion show, that he’d been doing his damnedest to expel from his memory, flared in him again. Deplorable, but powerful. Far too powerful.

      He crushed it down.

      She was staring at him now, with those amazing blue-green eyes of hers, and had opened her mouth to speak. He pre-empted her. He wanted this sorted as swiftly as possible.

      * * *

      ‘I need to talk to you. I have a business proposition to put to you.’

      His voice was clipped to the point of curtness. Just as it had been before at the fashion show. Tara’s hackles rose automatically. She was still reeling from seeing him again—still reeling from the overpowering impact he was having on her, that seemed to be jacking up the voltage of her body’s electricity as if she’d suddenly been plugged into the mains.

      This time he was not in a hand-made tux, but in a dark grey killer business suit that screamed Mr Rich and Powerful! Don’t mess me about!

      Just as the look on his face did. That closed expression on his hard-planed, utterly unfairly devastating features and the obvious aura of impatience about him. His automatic expectation that she would meekly listen to whatever it was he was about to say.

      He went on in the same curt, clipped voice, his faint accent almost totally supressed. ‘Extend the role you adopted at the fashion show and you can make five thousand pounds out of it,’ he said, not bothering with any preamble.

      Tara frowned, and then she smiled, enlightenment dawning. It wasn’t a genuine smile, but it helped her control that voltage hammering through her.

      ‘Blondie still pestering you, is she?’ she put to him.

      She saw his expression tighten at her sardonic observation. Obviously he was annoyed, but he was acknowledging, tacitly, what she had said.

      ‘Well?’ It was his only response.

      ‘Tell me more.’ Tara smiled sweetly.

      The electricity kindled by his utterly unexpected arrival had sparked a kind of exhilaration in her. It dawned on her that he was resenting having to approach her. And that, she knew, feeling another spark inside her, was really quite gratifying…

      Just why that should be so she did not pause to examine.

      He took a short breath, his eyes still like lasers on her. ‘A week of your time—ten days at the most. It would be…residential,’ he said, ‘but entirely…’ His eyes suddenly closed over their previous expression. ‘Entirely synthetically so. In other words, on the same basis as before.’ A tight, non-humorous smile tightened his mouth. ‘For appearances only.’

      Was there a warning in the way he’d said ‘only’? Tara didn’t know and didn’t care. It was entirely irrelevant. Of course it was ‘appearances only’. No other possibility. Any woman thinking anything more of him would need her head examined!

      ‘You would,’ he continued, in that businesslike voice, ‘be my house guest.’

      Tara’s eyebrows rose. ‘Along with Blondie, I take it?’

      He gave a brief nod. ‘Precisely so.’

      ‘And I get to run interference?’

      He nodded again, impatience visible in his manner but saying nothing, only letting those laser eyes of his rest on her, as if trying to bend her to his implacable will.

      And then suddenly, out of nowhere, there was something in them that was a like a kick in her system—something that flashed like a warning light in her head…as if she stood upon the brink of a precipice she hadn’t even realised was there.

      Just as suddenly it was gone. Had she imagined it? That sudden change somewhere at the back of those unreadable slate-dark eyes? Something he’d swiftly blanked? She must have, she decided. There was nothing in his expression now but impatience. He wanted an answer. And fast.

      But she did not like being hustled. She took a breath and met his eyes, though she was conscious of the way she’d crossed her arms firmly over her chest, as if keeping him and his imposing, utterly out of place presence at bay.

      ‘OK, do I have this right? You will pay me five thousand pounds to spend up to ten days, max, as your house guest, and behave—strictly in public only—’ she made sure she emphasised that part ‘—as if I am your current squeeze, just as I did on that limo ride the other night, while your other house guest—Blondie—gets the message that, sadly for her, you are not available for whatever adulterous purpose she would like you to be. Is that it?’ She raised her eyebrows again questioningly.

      His expression did not change. He merely inclined his sable-haired head minutely.

      Tara thought about it. ‘Half up front,’ she said.

      He didn’t blink. ‘No. You might not show up,’ he said flatly.

      His eyes flicked around their shabby surroundings and Tara got the message. Someone who had to live in a place like this might indeed walk off with two and a half thousand pounds.

      She made herself look at him. The man was loaded. He had to be, the way he behaved, the lifestyle he had—chauffeur-driven limo, hanging around at couture fashion shows in swanky hotels. No way was she going to be short-changed by him. After all, pro rata, the five hundred pounds for the bare half-hour previously was way more generous than this offer.

      ‘Ten thousand,’ she said bluntly.

      It would be chicken-feed to a man like him, but a huge sum for herself. And exactly what she needed for her cottage. For a moment she wondered if she’d overplayed her hand. But then, maybe she should be glad if she had. Could she really face spending any more time in the company of this man? The reasons not to were not just her resistance to his rock-like personality…

      Caution started to backfill the ridiculously heady sense of sparking exhilaration she had felt. Caution that came too late.

      The voltage in those eyes seared. Then abruptly cut out. ‘OK. Ten thousand,’ he gritted out. As if she’d just pulled a tooth from his steeled jaw.

      That spark of exhilaration surged again inside her, overriding the vanished and defeated caution. Boy, was he mad she’d pushed the price up!

      She felt herself smile—a genuine one this time. And then, abruptly, her triumph crashed. With a gesture that was vivid in her memory, he was coolly extracting his gold-monogrammed leather wallet from his jacket, peeling off a fifty-pound note. Then a second one.

      Reaching forward, with a glint in his eye that gave her utterly insufficient warning, even though it should have, he tucked the two notes into the front pocket of the shirt she was wearing.

      ‘A little something on account,’ he said, and there was a purr in his voice that told her that this was exactly what she knew it was.

      His comeback for her daring to tip him with his own money.

      She opened her mouth to spit something at him but he was turning on his heel. Striding from the room. Informing her, as he rapidly took his leave, that arrangements would be made via