Chapter Eight
A couple of hours later, the auction was coming to a close. Axel noticed Hope shiver a little beside him and leant towards her. ‘Are you OK?’
She looked at him and said, ‘Your parents are in my eyeline and is it very bad to say that every time I look at them I feel cold?’
Axel shook his head, her honesty catching at him yet again. Not many people surprised him but Hope had earlier, by stating she couldn’t accept payment while they were sleeping together. And she had a point. He’d never paid for sex in his life and it would put an awkward slant on their arrangement.
He should have thought of it first. He usually saw all the angles and anticipated issues.
But he hadn’t thought of that. She had. And the fact that she seemed happy enough to turn down the money…
She hadn’t even been all that enthusiastic about accepting gifts until he’d suggested she donate to charity—her whole face had lit up.
And now, anyone else would have been using this opportunity to get to know his parents, seeing it as a route to him, without realising just how big the chasm was between them. So the fact that Hope saw his parents as they really were made him feel a rare moment of connection.
He’d learnt a lesson in just how unfeeling his parents were a long time ago. He’d confronted them when Ares had been kidnapped, and when it had become apparent that they weren’t going to pay the ransom. Axel had been distraught, crying and shouting, ‘How can you do this?’
His father had looked at him and said frigidly, ‘We have you.’
Axel had felt the chill right down to his bone. ‘Not if I leave, you don’t.’ He’d been fully prepared to walk out at that moment and run away. Even at the age of twelve.
Then his father had stepped up to him and backhanded him so hard, he’d landed on the floor.
Axel had looked up at his father with his mother watching on, his face exploding with heat and pain, and his father had said, ‘You do not have a choice. The dynasty of this family rests on you and you will not ever walk away. If you did and your brother returned, he would have to take over. Would you want to wish that on him when he can’t even read a full paragraph of text? ’
And Axel had known then his fate was sealed. Even more so when Ares had been saved, no thanks to their parents. Axel would have died rather than let Ares be put in his place to take on the burden. No, it was on him.
Axel had never told anyone this, but at one stage, very early into his taking over the company, he’d been tempted to break it up, disillusioned by everything—the estrangement with his brother and distance from his sisters.
But then he’d undertaken a tour of all of their hubs across Europe and North America and the full reality of just how many people depended on him had become starkly apparent. And his employees’ pride in their work.
So Axel, instead of being destructive, had been constructive, restructuring, doubling down on ensuring Drakos Solutions staff got better perks and health care and penions and, while financial pundits had predicted disaster, turnover had almost tripled since then.
In spite of his parents, Axel had made Drakos Solutions his in a way that he knew his father had never experienced it and that felt like a triumph in itself.
The day when he could bring all his siblings together under the Drakos Solutions umbrella was a dream he’d also never revealed to anyone.
But it would be the ultimate sign maybe their parents hadn’t stolen everything from them.
The last lot of the auction was announced. A stunning villa with private beach in the Caribbean. Sun-kissed idyllic paradise. Following an impulse, Axel joined the bidding. He felt Hope tensing beside him as the numbers climbed into the seven figures.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.
‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ Axel said as he raised his hand again. It was between him and one other now. He was also aware of his parents looking at him. Wondering what he was up to. That goaded him on even more. He eventually won the lot, at a high price.
People clapped and cheered. Hope turned to him as the emcee wound up the auction and thanked everyone for their contributions.
‘Why did you do that? It’s enough money to keep a small nation afloat.’
Axel felt something very alien in his chest. Buoyant. ‘It’ll go to a good charity.’
Then he said, ‘Do you know something? I’ve never taken a holiday.’
‘What? Never?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Not even for Christmas?’
‘That’s when I get most of my work done.
It’s the only time people aren’t trying to reach me.
’ One Christmas, Axel had been in his penthouse office here in Manhattan and he’d looked up and it had been dark outside, snow falling.
He’d felt a momentary pang of yearning for company but he’d quashed it and gone back to work.
Hope said, ‘Now I’m feeling even more sorry for you. I love Christmas. It’s my favourite holiday.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
Hope made a face at him. ‘Grinch.’
Axel smiled. ‘How would you like to go to the Caribbean? Apparently I have a villa there.’
Hope gaped at him. ‘Seriously? But what about the event with that guy, the one you want to do business with?’
‘We still have time. And it’ll help to make this relationship look even more authentic.’
* * *
Even more authentic. Hope would have thought sleeping together had made it the ultimate in authentic but of course it wasn’t really. Their arrangement had strayed over the boundaries into new territory, that was all.
She hated the sense of deflation. This wouldn’t be a real holiday. She forced a smile. ‘That sounds good.’
Axel took her hand and lifted it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the inside of her palm.
It felt shockingly intimate. And suddenly she was lost in a surge of desire, just as there was a flash from nearby.
Hope flinched and Axel cursed. They looked to see a photographer in a suit nearby checking his camera for the image he’d just snapped of them.
‘Did you see the photographer?’ Hope asked Axel.
He shook his head. ‘No…but I knew there were some here in an official capacity.’
Hope pulled her hand back and said, ‘I need to go to the ladies.’ She needed to gather herself before Axel saw that she was finding it hard to contain her emotions.
She shouldn’t be feeling betrayed just because Axel obviously always had one eye on the opportunity to showcase this relationship.
It wasn’t as if she were under any illusions.
Sex might be muddying the waters but it was just sex.
He stood up to let her out and Hope made her way through the milling crowd to the bathroom.
Inside the luxurious space, she put her bag down and looked at herself in the mirror.
Eyes bright, cheeks pink. She was…glowing.
Helped by the dress, of course. But she knew with a sinking sensation that this whole thing with Axel was blowing up in a way that she wasn’t prepared for.
She cared about him. Even more since meeting his awful parents.
She stood up straight and told herself she was being overdramatic. In spite of her protestations to Axel, maybe she was just confusing sex with emotion. And once this was over and she was deposited back into her own life, she would look back on all of this like some sort of weird fever dream.
If she just focused on the sex and less on seeing all of these cracks into the person he really was, she might survive it.
And then, as if conjured straight out of her head, a tall elegant figure appeared beside her and Hope’s eyes widened at the reflection of Axel’s mother in the mirror.
‘Mrs Drakos.’
The woman didn’t smile, unsurprisingly. All she said was, ‘I don’t know who you think you are but my son will never marry someone like you. Enjoy this moment, because it won’t last long.’
A kind of fury that Hope had never experienced before rose up inside her but she forced herself to sound as calm as she could when she turned and faced the real woman.
She had to look up. She smiled. ‘I know exactly who I am, and who I am is quite the person, considering everything I’ve been through.
My parents may have abandoned me but at least I didn’t grow up knowing for certain they couldn’t have cared less about me.
I can still dream that my mother’s choice wasn’t an easy one and that maybe she loved me.
That she wouldn’t have left me at the mercy of criminals. ’
The woman’s face hardened. ‘He told you about Ares.’
Hope nodded, feeling a pang of sympathy. But she forced it down. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Drakos.’ She left quickly before she could say anything else.
She barrelled out of the door of the bathroom and straight into a wall of steel. She looked up. Axel. She wanted to cleave close to him, revel in his heat. She felt cold after that exchange.
Axel frowned down at her, hands on her arms. ‘What happened?’
She shook her head. ‘Can we go?’
‘Of course.’
* * *
In the car on the way back to the apartment, Hope sat curled into Axel’s side.
His arm was around her. She knew she shouldn’t be so tactile but since the encounter in the bathroom she had a sense of sand running out of a timer, that reality was catching up with them—as if she’d needed the reminder that this relationship was very temporary.
She could feel Axel look down at her. ‘Hope…are you sure you’re OK?’
She nodded against him, and then she lifted her head and looked up and all she could see was his sculpted mouth and the beautiful planes of his face. ‘Kiss me, Axel.’
He tipped up her chin with his finger and lowered his head and covered her mouth with his. Hope gripped the lapels of his jacket with her hand and pulled herself closer so she was almost on his lap.