Page 108 of The Billionaire's Demand

Whatever glow Libby had been bathing in evaporated and she was suddenly ice-cold. As a child, she’d felt the sands shifting beneath her feet often. She knew nothing was permanent, no one was reliable. Everything could change at a moment’s notice. Still, to go from making love as though their lives depended upon it to...this...felt like a kick in the guts.

‘You did? You are?’

‘I have a meeting.’

‘Oh.’ She felt like crying. She hated herself for feeling that way, but her responses were innate. This wasn’t just Raul, it was every disappointment she’d known in her life, it was a reminder of all the times she’d come home to a ‘new daddy’, which meant the end of feeling, in some small way, that she mattered to her mother. Change and unpredictability were hardwired to invoke this response in Libby; it was why she’d stayed single rather than dating men who might hurt her, why she’d been waiting for her knight in shining armour to sweep in and love her—love her in a way that would never, ever change.

She glanced down at the sheet, shielding her face from Raul, desperately hoping he wouldn’t see a hint of the emotions she was fighting. ‘Thanks...for letting me know.’ Her voice sounded hollow.

She was aware of him standing just inside the door to her room, his clothes bunched in one hand. She felt his eyes on her but didn’t look up. She hardly breathed.

‘If you need anything while I’m gone—’

‘I won’t,’ she hastened to say.

‘With the baby—’ he clarified, and it was the worst thing he could have said to Libby in that moment, because it served to remind her of the truth of their situation. She was simply an incubator to him. This wasn’t about her. Not as a person, a woman. Just as a womb. She was stupid to have fallen back into bed with him, to have so willingly given into—no, to have pushed him to surrender to—the undercurrent of desire they both felt.

For all she knew, it was like this for Raul with every woman he slept with. Maybe the only reason they kept ending up in bed together was because she was simply there. Available, willing, in his apartment, under his nose. Mortifying thought.

She sucked in a deep breath. ‘The baby is fine. I’m fine. Just...go to Rome.’

And then, just like that, he left.

Raul quickened his pace as he passed the Colosseum, barely noticing the beauty of the sun glancing across the ancient structure, the way the stones seemed to glow with gold in the early morning light. He kept his head down, moved faster, weaving around the few people who were on the streets, a Vespa parked across the kerb, a trash collector taking a cigarette break, then onto a busier section of footpath, with cafés set up for early morning patrons. He kept running until his lungs burned, but it didn’t matter how fast he went, he couldn’t wipe Libby from his mind. More specifically, the look in her eyes when he’d announced he was going to Rome.

It had been worse than he’d anticipated.

Her hurt and surprise were unmistakable.

He was so angry with himself. Not for leaving her to go on a business trip, but for allowing any of the lines between them to become blurred. Raul didn’t do blurred lines, but there was something about Libby that had made him—temporarily—forget who he was, and how he lived. Except, perhaps it wasn’t Libby. Maybe it was the baby instead, the fact that she had his child developing inside of her, that made him uncertain how to treat Libby.

What an idiot he’d been.

In trying to forge a connection with the woman, he’d inadvertently lied to her. He’d led her on. He’d let desire for her cloud his judgement, and now he was in the precarious situation of having to manage the emotions of a person who might very well have come to care for him.

Did she have any idea how stupid that was? What an unsafe person he was to let into her life? Not in a physical sense but emotionally, Raul was the last person in the world who could give Libby what she wanted.

And he had to make sure she understood that.

No more messing around, no more letting things get out of hand. Raul Ortega was married, but he needed his wife to understand that any kind of real relationship was—and always would be—out of the question.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LIBBY WAS ON the second highest step of the ladder when she heard the door opening and she almost fell sideways, came disastrously close to knocking a half-full pot of paint onto the drop sheet below.

Her insides jolted alarmingly.

Five nights. Raul had been away the whole week and had not contacted her once.

But why would he have? she thought with self-directed anger. He didn’t owe Libby anything, and he’d made it abundantly clear he couldn’t wait to get away from her after that night.

Anger fired in her veins, a white-hot rage that might have been irrational, that might have been unfair, and yet it fairly exploded through her body. She ground her teeth together, dipped the brush into the tin and returned to the job at hand, carefully painting around the stencils she’d laboriously stuck in place. If he thought she was going to go out and acknowledge his return, he had another think coming.

Her fingers shook a little though as she continued with her work, one ear trained on the apartment, waiting for any indication that Raul was coming towards her. Minutes later, she heard it: the clicking open of the door to this room, a sharp invective in his native language immediately following as he burst towards her like a hurricane.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

Libby spun so fast she almost fell—again—but she steadied herself quickly, shooting Raul an angry glare, as though her clumsiness was his fault.

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