How to Bag a Billionaire. Nina Milne

only to grab his tux and her clutch bag, he jabbed at the lift button.

      Crowded thoughts tried to surface but he pushed them away. Instead he enclosed Olivia’s hand; somehow it seemed imperative to keep a connection between them. Fumbling in his pocket for his keycard, he tugged her along the plushly carpeted corridor.

      One-handed, he slid the rectangular plastic in and waited for the green light. ‘Come on,’ he muttered, and heard her small breathless laugh beside him.

      Finally, finally the key mechanism clicked and he pushed the door open to reveal the immense vaulted corridor that led straight to his bedroom.

      Next to him Olivia froze, and without further warning she dropped his hand in an abrupt, almost savage movement.

      ‘Olivia?’ His brain tried to compute her reaction, struggling to function when his whole body was on high alert.

      Her gaze flickered rapidly, eyes wide. Crazy though it seemed, it looked as though she were conducting an in-depth survey of her surroundings.

      This was the benchmark suite for all his hotels. The height of luxury—all sleek lines and on modern trend. There were flashes of abstract colour on the cream walls, gleaming wooden floors chosen by one of London’s most iconic designers.

      Her strawberry blonde head turned to study the lounge, the decadent enclave visible through the clear glass sliding door. Long dark eyelashes swept down once, then twice, before she slammed her hand onto her forehead.

      ‘What the hell am I doing?’

      She took another step away from him, her expression dubbing him the equivalent of Genghis Khan.

      ‘I thought we were about to fulfil all our fantasies.’

      Olivia winced, and for an insane moment Adam wondered if he’d imagined the past twenty minutes. Yet the tint of desire still touched her skin and his erection still ridged his pants.

      ‘I need to leave,’ she said.

      ‘Whoa.’ Adam stretched over to lean a hand against the door. ‘Not so fast.’

      An expression flashed across her face so akin to fear that affront seethed in his chest.

      ‘Olivia, I’m not planning on keeping you here against your will, or taking anything you aren’t offering. But after what just happened you can’t just leave. Not without some sort of explanation.’ His libido was desperate for some sort of elucidation, ever hopeful of a reversal in fortune.

      Hell, there was a part of him tempted to pull her back into his arms, confident that her body would overrule whatever misgivings she was so suddenly exhibiting. But he couldn’t do that—not after that flare of trepidation.

      ‘So, spill,’ he continued.

      The tightness of her shoulders slumped fractionally but her body was still braced for fight or flight. Neither of which he would permit.

      ‘I made a mistake,’ she conceded, her voice taut, her hands smoothing the silken folds of her dress. ‘It’s as if I was caught in some sort of fog. A dream.’ She stared at him, her chin jutting out. ‘Now I’ve woken up.’

      Disproportionate disappointment contracted his gut as the marvellous fantasies he had woven dissipated into the perfectly controlled air of the corridor.

      Adam hauled in breath and willed his body to stand down—preferably every bit of it. After all, he’d weathered a lot worse disillusionment than this in his life, and it could be that Olivia was doing him a favour. Had he really wanted to let himself be bagged by any woman, however beautiful?

      Answer: yes, he had. But if it wasn’t going to happen then it wasn’t going to happen. Time to move on.

      He dropped his hand from the door and shrugged. ‘Your call, Olivia. But for what it’s worth I think we’d have been pretty awesome together.’ They’d have been more than that; every instinct told him their bodies would be the perfect fit.

      Her eyes skittered away from him, focused once more on the interior of his hallway. Though what was so damn fascinating about it, who knew?

      ‘Maybe... Maybe not,’ she said, placing a hand on the doorknob. ‘I’ll go down to Reception and get myself a room, but we need to sort out a time that we can talk. About Zeb.’

      Zeb. Damn. He’d lost the plot, the dialogue and his brain. The import of her words slam-dunked and he thumped the palm of his hand right back against the door.

      ‘Excuse me?’ he said.

      ‘Remember?’ she said. ‘The baby.’

      She had to be kidding. ‘The mythical baby? I thought you’d abandoned the whole “my mother is pregnant” bagging route. You can’t just pick it back up now you’ve decided not to spend the night in my bed.’

      * * *

      Olivia stared at him. For a moment sheer shock rendered her speechless and her jaw threatened to hit the floor. Adam still believed she was another of those awful gold-digging women.

      Worse, she almost couldn’t blame him. She’d behaved exactly the way Candice had described her—cheap and easy. After a public display on the dance floor she’d kissed him in the lift, dropped her dress and allowed him a quick grope. If she hadn’t been stunned back to reality by the opulence of his penthouse suite she’d have dropped her knickers, as well.

      ‘I am not here to bag you.’ Her words were so hopelessly inadequate she cringed. ‘If I were I would have slept with you.’

      ‘Nope.’ A shake of his dark head accompanied a blaze of contempt. ‘I think you’ve got your eye on the greater prize, Olivia. You nearly let yourself get carried away, but one look round here and you remembered just in time that there’s more money to be had from a pregnancy scandal scam than a few hours in my bed.’

      Oh, hell. She could see how it all made a certain hideous sense to Adam. How to explain to him that seeing this opulent bachelor pad had brought back to her the fact that Adam was a billionaire, a moneyed man who wanted her because she was beautiful—nothing more.

      Just as all those rich men who’d peopled her childhood had coveted Jodie for her looks. At least her mum had put a price on her acquiescence; Olivia had been willing to give it away.

      Taut silence enveloped them as Olivia gazed down at her sandals. Lime-green, with a tangerine flower carved from wood. Chosen to add pizzazz to the black dress. When it came to clothes, she knew what she was talking about. When it came to what had happened in the past hour...? Not so much.