Chapter 40 Alex
I PACED AROUND THE OFFICE, watching the numbers on the display progress up from zero, and drew a deep breath, readying for what was sure to be a long and difficult conversation—one I’d utterly manipulated Nancy into.
The lift dinged, and the car doors opened.
After a week of prising my eyes from the want of gazing at her, here she was.
My bella donna in biker leathers, just like the first time I’d laid eyes on her.
She looked beautiful and pissed off all at once as she strode towards me. “Well, here I am. Back on the top floor of your ridiculous phallic tower, just as you predicted. Now, where the hell do you get off flinging your money around?”
I smiled. “It got you here talking to me, didn’t it?”
“You manipulative ass! How dare you? You stroll into mine and Mum’s life like a wealthy tourist, move us out the flat, do it up, and then have the nerve to buy it off the bloody council.”
“I may have put the money up, but I don’t own it. I wanted to give a permanent home to two incredible women who should have had an easier time of it from day one.”
“Wow! Thanks for the charity,” she scoffed. “You know, I’ve spent my life being poor, but very few people in this world have made me feel worthless like you have.”
Her slur hit its mark. “How the hell have I made you feel worthless? Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for us. For our relationship!”
She stormed around the table, maintaining her ferocity against my rising anger.
“We don’t need your handouts. What we need is a fair chance.
Don’t you think I know Mum’ll never be able to save enough to buy the flat?
No matter how many years she’s dreamt of it, she’ll always be renting.
She’s been in debt so long that no one would give her a mortgage anyway.
But the presumption that we need your help. ”
She rounded on me. “Let me tell you something. Mum will own that flat, but I’ll be the one who buys it for her when I’m an executive at Goldfields because I know I’m that good. I’ll take on this world and win, and I’ll do it on my own merits, not with your money, you hear me?”
I stepped closer, longing to reach out and touch the incredible energy radiating from her.
“Of course you will. You’re brilliant. I wasn’t trying to insult you or Tracy.
Perhaps it was crass, but I didn’t know how else to get you in this room talking.
You blanked me. Cut me off. This has been one of the most painful weeks of my life. I was desperate, Nancy.”
She paused, considering me, and for a moment, I thought she would soften, but instead, a thin smile lined her face.
“You know, I get it now. I’m like one of those abused children you posh people give money to by behaving like a bunch of entitled pricks.
It makes you feel good, right? All warm and fuzzy inside.
You throw your pennies down for the rest of us to scramble for.
” She turned away in disgust. “Here’s some free accounting advice: you can write the flat off your next tax bill.
Call it a charitable donation. But I’m sure your team of accountants have already thought of that. ”
My temper boiled over. “Why the hell are you making me out to be the enemy? Where did this low opinion of me come from? Because, from what I remember, we were happy before the gala. We’d just made love for the first time, and then the next day, bam, you’re gone without a word. What the hell happened?”
Nancy hesitated, but the fury in her eyes never cooled. She strode over, sat on the boardroom table, and crossed her arms. “What was your deal with Mimi?”
It wrong-footed me. “What do you mean?”
The smirk she gave contained no mirth. “I think the question is straightforward. What was the deal you made with Mimi over dinner last Friday?”
“I paid her off to stop harassing us.”
“That’s not the whole story, is it? Let me use your exact words as I’ve had a week to mull them over. You approached her with the proposal.”
“Yes, I approached her…” She watched me as my cogs turned. “You weren’t assaulted in that bathroom, were you?”
“Verbally assaulted, maybe.”
“Who was in the bathroom?” When she refused to speak, I prowled closer, having had quite enough of this game. “For heaven’s sake, Nancy, tell me!”
“Your soon-to-be wife, of course.”
“My…soon-to-be wife?” I repeated slowly. She nodded. “I take it you mean Mimi.” Quiet anger rumbled off me as I reached her.
Nancy kept her back defiantly straight. “She told me everything: all about your title, what your parents expect of you, the arrangement they made for you two to marry. Your wife must be a woman bred to be a duchess. One from your own stock. Why the upper classes make relationships sound like a trip to a stud farm, I’ll never understand, but that’s the point, isn’t it?
I’m not meant to understand. A poor girl from a housing estate could never be the right wife for a duke.
That’s why you planned to keep me as your mistress. ”
My mouth couldn’t have dropped any lower. “My…mistress?”
“That’s what the apartment’s for, right? Your dad gave it to you to keep your piece on the side in, just as he does. Apparently, it’s a family tradition. What thoroughly upstanding noblemen of the realm you are.” Her sarcasm seared the air.
I took a moment to suppress the sick rising in my stomach. “Let me get this straight. Miriam accosted you at the gala and told you that I’d made a deal to take her as my spouse, and future duchess, and that I planned to keep you as my mistress…for sexual favours, companionship, what exactly?”
“I have no idea what your plans for me were.” Nancy leaned in.
“And I don’t want to know because nothing in this world could coax me into that role.
Not gifts, not property, not cold hard cash.
I know what I’m worth and what I deserve, and it’s a loyal partner.
One who respects me. Someone who loves me for me! ”
“Nancy—”
“You manipulated me perfectly. Used Mum to get me in that apartment the day after our first date and then convinced me to stay there. You must’ve thought I was getting cosy with the situation when you clapped Versace and diamonds on me.
What a novelty I must have looked like to your friends and family.
‘Look at Alex slumming it with his dressed-up sex doll—’”
“Shut up!” I grasped her shoulders. “I would never make that deal. I would never do that to you. And I sure as hell would never think of you so grotesquely. You’re a goddess!”
“You’ll say anything.” She shook her head. “I’m not playing this gam—”
“No! You’ve heard the rest, now you’ll listen to me!
As badly chosen as my words to you may have been that night, I have never proposed marriage to Mimi.
The deal I made over dinner was a five per cent stock share in Toverton PLC and a place on the board.
It gives her voting rights, just like her mother.
I was loath to hand her family more power over my family’s interests, but I know it’s what her father’s gunning for, and she’ll do whatever Papa asks.
” I pulled away, running my hands through my hair, nearly crazed.
I’d been played like a damned fiddle! “Marry Miriam? She’s Cruella de Vil! It’s insanity. This is insanity!”
“You gave away a five per cent share of the second-largest tech firm in London?” She gazed at me wide-eyed. “The firm you’ve spent the last seven years building back up after your dad stripped it to cover his gambling debts. If you’re looking for insanity, that’s it!”
You can never hide your finances from an auditor. “Yes, and I’d do a hell of a lot more for you without a second thought,” I said, willing her to trust me.
“Alex, Mimi showed me the engagement ring.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “What engagement ring?”
Her expression turned murderous. “You’re really asking me to describe the ring you gave her—”
“An emerald, square cut,” I interjected.
“A gold band with a row of five diamonds studded on each side.” Her brow formed a V.
I walked to my desk and put my eye to a scanner.
A drawer unlocked, and I removed the small antique heart box covered in worn brown leather.
I took it over to Nancy and undid the clasp to reveal the ring I’d described. “This is my family’s proposal ring.”
She stared at it, mystified. “You keep it at work?”
“This office is basically Fort Knox.” I shrugged.
“Nancy, I would never treat you like my father has my mother. It broke her heart. She’s a shell now because the man she loved belittled her, stripped away her self-esteem day by day, and then went off with another woman while she lived alone as his wife. I could never do that.”
She rocked her head. “None of this makes any sense. Why would Mimi tell me all that?”
“Revenge. Trying to manipulate the situation in her favour. Sheer lunacy. Maybe all those reasons.”
“But she told me it’s your duty to sire an heir.”
“It is,” I whispered, my hands stroking down her arms, trying to remove the broken expression on her face. “But I don’t accept the terms.”
What a thing to admit less than a month into a relationship that could hardly be described as bright and sunny at present.
‘Say, bella, how about we knock out a few kids together, no pressure?’ Christ!
If it were me, I’d run! Yet her focus didn’t linger on the daunting prospect of marriage and children, and instead went somewhere I hadn’t expected.
“But you kept her in the apartment before me, and other women too.”
My grip on her tightened. “It was a mistake, a terrible error in judgement. My intention in offering you number eight wasn’t to treat you like my mistress.
It was so you’d have your own place where we could be together.
But you were miserable there, like every woman before, because of me.
” It was the first time I’d admitted that to anyone, including myself.