The Billionaire's Scandalous Marriage. Emma Darcy

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 dislike of her being taken in by a user? Was it because she wouldn’t give him what she was readily giving to her fiancé?

      He had met many more beautiful women, yet her smile for Mark Freedman illumined her own unique attraction, making it immeasurably stronger. The graceful turn of her long bare neck struck his eye. Her throat was bare of jewellery and its nakedness somehow evoked a vulnerability that stirred some very primitive instincts. The aggressive hunter and the protector leapt to battle readiness inside him and Damien knew he wouldn’t step back from involving himself with Charlotte Ramsey.

      His gaze skated down the dress she had chosen for tonight. It was bright orange—a colour not many women could wear successfully, a colour that reinforced his initial impression that she was confident about herself.

      Challengingly confident.

      The style was a simple sheath attached to a beaded yoke. Very elegant. Again not overtly sexy yet all the more alluring because it subtly skimmed her curves instead of flaunting them in his face. Damien decided she was a woman who cared more about being seen as a person rather than a sexual object.

      Had Mark Freedman played that card to win her?

      “Countdown to the fireworks is starting,” Peter said, waving Damien to join him at the deck railing as other guests automatically moved to make space for them.

      Millions of voices around the harbour rose in the chant, “Ten, nine, eight…”

      Charlotte broke apart from her fiancé to swing around and face the famous coat-hanger bridge that would obviously form the centrepiece of the display. Mark Freedman turned, as well, sliding his arm around her waist to hold her close. Damien stepped up between Peter and Charlotte, determined on making her aware of him whether she liked it or not.

      “…three, two, one…”

      The great arch of the bridge was brilliantly outlined as white fireworks sprayed up from the entire span.

      The start of something big, Damien thought, the excitement of this first explosive burst fuelling anticipation for what was to come. It reflected precisely how he was feeling about Charlotte Ramsey. One way or another he would take her from Mark Freedman, free her of a bad mistake.

      Free her for himself.

       CHAPTER THREE

      THE night sky bloomed with magnificent bursts of colour, erupting over the spectacular white sails that roofed the opera house and above the great sandstone pylons of the bridge. The massive cascades of light were beautiful, awesome, yet the joy Charlotte had expected to feel in them was somehow sucked away by the presence of Damien Wynter.

      Which was totally, totally wrong.