Page 4 of Enemies with Benefits

Bloody hell.

Family feuds, Perry Bingham going AWOL and now Agnes Bingham. Three stumbling blocks in my intent to have Wren. But despite the damning words my father had taken pleasure in decimating me with as a child, I wasn’t afraid of a challenge.

All the same, my gut twisted as I made my way back to my aunt, the thought of broaching the subject of my father making my stomach curdle.

‘Everything okay?’ Aunt Flo asked, after smiling an excuse to the guest she’d been chatting to.

I let her fondness wash over me for a moment before I pulled myself together. Wishing her warm concern came from a different female voice had been fruitless when I was a child. It was even more foolish now. The woman who’d given birth to me wasn’t interested in taking up her maternal role. Not for her first or second born, and certainly not for me, her third child. My arrival had spelled the end to her obligation and she couldn’t get away fast enough. Years of hoping, of saving my allowance in a childish hope of enticing her financially had been laughed off. I was no longer ten years old, fighting to stop myself from crying as Damian advised me to give up my foolish hoping.

‘George Bingham. I need to know the full story,’ I said to Aunt Flo, my low voice brisker than she deserved.

‘What’s brought this on? You’ve never wanted to know before,’ she said after eyeing me in frowning silence.

I shrugged, moving her away to the more private edge of the terrace. ‘I’ve never cared enough about the finer details. Now I do because whatever happened all those years ago is endangering an important deal and I’ve just about had it.’

‘Dear boy, money isn’t—’

My bitter laugh stopped her. ‘Do me a favour, please, and don’t finish that sentence, Aunt Flo. We both know money is definitely everything to any red-blooded Mortimer.’

She harrumphed. ‘Well, I don’t agree but, since you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about it, I’ll let it go. To answer your question, it was your father’s last deal before he and your mother stepped away from the company, and the family. He and George Bingham were supposed to go fifty-fifty but George messed up somehow and could only come up with a fraction of the investment by the deadline date. There was a clause in their agreement that it was fifty-fifty or nothing and that loophole gave your father the right to cut him out regardless of how much money he’d pumped into the deal up to then. He didn’t take it well. He wasted money he didn’t have trying to sue your father. But Hugh was a brilliant, if somewhat ruthless, businessman.’

There was nosomewhatabout it. I’d come across some of his deals while my father had actively worked in the family firm. His cut-throat antics were legendary. If you liked blood and gore with your negotiations.

A memory shot through my head. ‘Was closing that Bingham deal part of my father’s walking-away package?’ I asked.

Aunt Flo sighed. ‘Yes, it was. Back then, every deal closed by a member of the board came with a ten-per-cent profit bonus. Cutting out Bingham and making it an exclusive Mortimer deal meant Hugh received a bigger bonus. About two hundred million.’

And he was probably in such a hurry to walk away from his family that he’d been unflinchingly ruthless. ‘I see.’

‘What’s going on, Jasper?’ Aunt Flo asked curiously.

The cocktail of bitterness, anger and arousal swirled faster inside me as I looked over her shoulder to find Wren watching me. ‘It’s just business.’

‘No, it’s not. You’re not cut-throat like your father. But you’re just as dogged. I had my reservations when I heard about your deal with Perry, considering his problems,’ she murmured. ‘But knowing you, you’ll move mountains to make it work.’

‘Forgive me if I don’t welcome the comparison to Hugh,’ I rasped.

Her eyes clouded with momentary sadness. ‘His blood may run through your veins but you’re your own man where it counts, Jasper. Whatever you’re getting involved in, just...protect your heart. I don’t want to see you hurt again.’

Another harsh laugh bubbled up, but I swallowed it down. And just about managed to stop myself from telling her that, while I’d struck a deal with Perry Bingham in a moment of madness, perhaps even a sting of conscience and despite Perry’s rumoured drinking problem, somewhere in the mix was the reasoning that it would put me in a good position to strike a better deal with Wren in the near future. Business-wise and in other ways, too.

‘You have that gleam in your eye, Jasper. Am I wasting my breath by telling you to be a dear and spare my nerves?’ Aunt Flo asked.

I couldn’t promise that. Hell, Iknewthere would be plenty more fireworks between Wren and me in the future. ‘I can promise dinner at The Dorchester as soon as my schedule lets up a little. I know how much you like their new chef. We can check out the competition in the process.’

She smiled. ‘Cecil is a culinary genius. And very easy on the eyes. I’ll hold you to that promise,’ she said, just before another acquaintance snagged her attention.

Briefly alone, I tried to suppress the tangled emotions churning through me.

I don’t want to see you hurt again.

As much as I wanted to put my parents out of my mind for ever, to rub them from my existence as much as they’d rubbed me from theirs, the ten-year-old boy’s anguish from relentless rejection, which I’d never been quite successful in smothering, wouldn’t let me. But it was a good reminder not to count on anyone but myself. Not to let frivolous emotion get in the way of business.

I wanted this deal with Bingham because it was sound and profitable.

I also wanted to fuck Wren Bingham, once she got over the pesky family-feud thing. The two were mutually exclusive enough not to cause me to lose any sleep.

Which was why when Wren hurried away from her mother, her shoulders tight with barely-harnessed emotions, I followed.

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