The Billionaire's Scandalous Marriage. Emma Darcy

an initial impact thing. She shouldn’t let it worry her. Mark was a very caring lover who was always concerned about giving her pleasure.

      The powerful engines of the yacht thrummed with purpose. “Now that everyone’s on board, let’s stroll around to the front deck,” she suggested. “Set ourselves up for the best view of the fireworks.”

      They met and greeted other guests along the way, stopped to chat, had their glasses refilled with champagne, sampled some of the gourmet finger food being circulated by the waiters hired for the night. The party atmosphere lightened Charlotte’s private angst. She enjoyed Mark’s quick wit and easy manner. He was good company, always had been for her, always would be, she thought.

      It shouldn’t matter—didn’t matter—that her father and brother would always prefer the company of men like Damien Wynter. She didn’t want her life to be like her mother’s, filling in her time with charity functions while her husband wheeled and dealed in his own arena. She felt sorry for the woman Peter married, whomever she might be, doomed to always stand in second place to his business life.

      Mark wanted her to be his professional assistant, helping to organise the events he arranged. They would share everything. This coming new year should be marvellous, she thought, the best ever.

      Even the fireworks tonight had been advertised as something extra special. The harbour foreshores were crowded with people, waiting to see them. The Sea Lion was surrounded by all sorts of pleasure crafts, loaded with New Year’s Eve revellers. As nine o’clock approached—the time for the first fireworks display for families—Mark shepherded her through the melee of guests to the railing, intent on ensuring a clear view of the spectacular show.

      “There you are!”

      Her brother’s voice claimed her attention. She turned to find herself confronted by both Peter and the man whose company she definitely didn’t want. His dark eyes instantly engaged hers with a riveting intensity that stirred a determined rebellion. No way would she be sucked in by his alpha animal attraction a second time, not for a minute. He was one of them, so arrogantly confident in his natural domination, undoubtedly expecting a woman to be his possession, not a real partner.

      “Damien, you’ve met my sister, Charlotte, in passing, so to speak. This is her fiancé, Mark Freedman.”

      The introduction was completed by the man himself. “Damien Wynter.” He barely flicked a glance of acknowledgement to Mark, concentrating his sexy charisma on her as he offered his hand again. “I hope we can further our acquaintance tonight, Charlotte,” he rolled out, pouring on the charm, flashing a smile designed to dazzle.

      It raised her hackles to such a bristling height, it took every skerrick of her will-power to keep them sheathed and present a civil demeanour. She forced out her hand to take the one he’d offered, constructed a coolly polite smile, and said, “Well, Sydney is about to put on its best face for you, but I doubt you’ll get much out of me, Damien.”

      “I beg your pardon?” He frowned over the rebuff as though he’d never had the experience of being knocked back by a woman.

      She raised her eyebrows. “Isn’t that your aim in making a connection? How much you can get out of the person? Peter did tell me…”

      Her brother laughed. “Charlotte is referring to how you replied to that stupid toast Tom Benedict made to me at the London club last year, declaring I was amongst friends, when in fact, most of them were strangers to me, and the only common ground we had was wealthy fathers.”

      Damien shook his head over the reminder. “Tom Benedict doesn’t have a brain in his head.”

      “Perhaps he only meant to be kind,” Charlotte suggested. “And being kind does not necessarily rule out a brain.” She paused a moment to punctuate her point. “Quite possibly it’s simply one that works differently to yours.”

      As Mark’s did.

      Which was one of the reasons why she preferred him to Damien Wynter, despite the obvious assets of the man who thought he could just muscle in and capture her interest.

      Damien’s mind instantly registered a hit. His gaze narrowed on the brown eyes that remained flat, denying him any entry into what she was thinking. Why was he suddenly getting this flow of antagonism from Charlotte Ramsey? There’d been no trace of it in their brief meeting this afternoon. But that had been a surprise encounter. She’d had time to think about him since then—possibly as a threat she was intent on dispelling?

      “Did Peter paint me as cruel?” he asked, cutting straight to the point she seemed to be making.

      “Not at all.” She gave a tinkling laugh to remove any offence he might have taken. “He liked your honesty.”

      “But you don’t?” he queried, putting her on the spot.

      She didn’t miss a beat. “On the contrary, it’s always infinitely preferable to know what one is dealing with.”

      “And what do you imagine you’re dealing with, Charlotte?”

      Her eyebrows lifted in mock chiding. “I don’t imagine anything, Damien. As it was quoted to me, in reply to Tom Benedict’s toast, you said Peter was not your friend because you’d never met him before, and you were only interested in meeting him because of who he was, what he had and how much you might be able to get out of him.”

      Damien smiled at the recollection. “In short, I cut through Tom’s hypocritical bullshit.”

      “Winning my trust and my friendship,” Peter tossed in.

      “Which is happily mutual,” Damien good-humouredly affirmed.

      “Like minds finding each other is always good,” Charlotte said with a suspiciously silky thread of approval. “I know how lucky I am to have met Mark.”

      She hooked her arm around her fiancé’s, subtly but emphatically placing herself at his side, having cleverly established that Damien and Peter formed a completely separate unit on a different planet to the one she wanted to inhabit with Mark Freedman.

      Damien obligingly turned his attention to the man Peter had described as a smarmy fortune-hunter who had his sister sand-bagged from seeing any sense at all. But she was no fool. Far from it. She had a mind as sharp as knives. So Damien concentrated on taking his own measure of Charlotte Ramsey’s choice of partner.

      “I’m sorry, Mark.” He smiled apologetically as he offered his hand. “I didn’t mean to ignore you.”

      “No problem,” came the easy assurance. “I was interested in hearing the background to your friendship with Peter.”

      His handshake had a touch of deference, aiming to please, not make it a contest of male egos. His eyes sparkled with appreciative interest, wanting to engage, wanting to be part of the world Charlotte seemed intent on turning her back on, Damien thought.

      “In fact, it made me reflect on whether all our close associations with people are linked to how much we get out of them,” Mark commented whimsically. “We don’t tend to hang around those who give us nothing, do we?”

      It was a disarming little speech, opening up what could have been used as an attack on his integrity where his relationship with an heiress was concerned, then turning the picture around by making the principle a general one.

      “We avoid boring people,” he went on, “and naturally gravitate to those who make our lives more interesting and pleasurable.”

      He smiled at Charlotte, giving her the sense that she was at the centre of these last sentiments, and Damien felt a surprisingly strong urge to kick him. The man was a master of manipulation, a first-rate charmer, and the smile now lighting up the face that had refused him any positive personal response twisted something in Damien’s gut.

      He stared at her—this woman who was stirring feelings in him that demanded action to change the status quo. Was it because she was Peter’s sister and he empathised with his friend’s