Page 6 of Fergus

Fergus stilled. “Yegorov is forcing you to marry him?”

She shrugged. “He hasn’t gone that far yet, but I’m sure he’ll get around to it eventually. He isn’t known for accepting the word no, any more than his father was.” She gave a shudder. “The first time Lev asked me to marry him was at my mother’s funeral four months ago. I refused.”

“Before or after you offered to give him the fifty million pounds back?”

“Both! Knowing where it came from, I’m never going to touch a penny of it anyway, so he might as well have it.”

Fergus inwardly acknowledged that attitude was the total opposite of Thea’s money-grasping mother.

Jessica had been determined to marry a man she knew had money. The fact that she had eventually married Andrei Yegorov showed she had no scruples about how and where he had acquired that wealth.

Fergus knew that Jessica’s first husband, Thea’s father, had worked on an oil rig in the North Sea. But he had been killed in a freak accident six years before Fergus and Jessica met. He knew that she had survived after her husband died by living on the generous insurance payment she had received from the company he had worked for. But by the time Fergus met her, that money must have been dwindling, and she was on the hunt for a rich husband.

Unfortunately for her, Fergus hadn’t been looking for a wife, let alone a fourteen-year-old stepdaughter.

Thea frowned. “Lev has asked me to marry him several more times since then, and he’s always calling round to my apartment uninvited. He seems utterly convinced that I’ll eventually accept his marriage proposal,” she recalled with a disgusted wrinkling of her nose.

Fergus shrugged. “Maybe you’ll change your?—”

“Don’t even say it,” she warned vehemently. “I wouldn’t marry Lev if we were the last two people on the planet.”

Fergus snorted. “I can’t see too many women turning down his wealth. Despite his liking for vodka and donuts.”

“Well, this one did and will continue to do so.” Frustrated tears glistened in her eyes. “I am not my mother, Fergus.”

He was slowly beginning to accept that. Slowly. Because Jessica Morgan really had done a number on him all those years ago. “Lev Yegorov can’t force you to marry him. Nor am I clear on what you think I can do to help you with this situation.”

She drew in a deep breath. “I’m not here because of Lev. At least, I don’t think I am.” Her frown was pained.

“Explain.”

“Someone has been following me for the past couple of weeks. Stalking me,” she revealed.

“Perhaps Lev just employed a bodyguard to protect his future wife?”

“How many times do I have to tell you I have no intention of marrying him?” she snapped in annoyance.

“Well, he obviously hasn’t accepted your refusal as final if he keeps asking. A bodyguard he hired would have to follow you to be able to protect you. Besides, you’ve been following me the last two days,” he reminded. “And you’ve already said you don’t consider yourself to be a stalker.”

She sighed. “I’ve explained why I did that.”

“Because you weren’t sure I would even agree to see you, let alone hear you out.” She was probably right to have made that assumption, Fergus inwardly conceded. The name Morgan did not conjure up good memories for him. Far from it.

“My stalker isn’t a bodyguard hired by Lev,” she insisted.

“Tell me why you think that?”

“If it had only been that feeling of being followed, I probably wouldn’t think it at all, but when I came home from work one day last week?—”

“You inherited fifty million pounds four months ago and you still work?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re a billionaire and you still work.”

“Touché.” Fergus didn’t bother asking how she knew how much money he had.

He already knew, from this conversation alone, that Thea Morgan wasn’t just beautiful, she was intelligent and resourceful too. Far more so than her mother had been. Although, he was intrigued by the fact that Thea was still working, despite having recently inherited a fortune. Surely most people her age would have gone traveling for a while, if nothing else?

“Anyway,” Thea continued. “The moment I entered my apartment that day, and despite the fact the door was still locked, I knew that someone had been inside. A glance into my bedroom confirmed that suspicion when it was obvious someone had been lying on my bed and not only hadn’t bothered to straighten it again but had taken my favorite pillow with them when they left.”

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