Page 20 of The Billionaire's Bargain
Aiden. He meant Aiden and being a stepfather. She silently repeated the words to herself. But they didn’t prevent the warm fluttering in her belly or the hitch in her breath.
“How old are you?” she blurted out, desperate to distract herself from the completely inappropriate and stupid heat that pooled south of her belly button. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t seem old enough to run a company.”
“Thirty,” he replied. She could feel his weighty gaze on her face like a physical touch as she finished preparing his meal. “My grandfather started the business as one corporation, and my father grew it into several corporations, eventually folding them all under one parent company. When he died, my father left King Industries Unlimited to me, and I started working there when I was seventeen, in the mail room. I went from there to retail sales associate to account manager and through the ranks, learning the business. By the time I stepped in as CEO and president at twenty-five, and with the guidance of Baron, I had been an employee for seven years.”
“Wow,” she breathed. “Many men would’ve just assumed that position as their due and wouldn’t bother with starting from the bottom.” She hesitated, but then whispered, “I can only imagine your father would’ve been proud of your work ethic.”
With his amber eyes gleaming, Darius nodded. “I hope so. It’s how he did it, and I followed in his footsteps.”
Their gazes connected, and the breath stuttered in her lungs. Her pulse jammed out an erratic beat at her neck and in her head.
Clearing her throat, she dropped her attention to her sandwich, and with more effort than it required, sliced it in half and did the same to his. “Tell me more about your work?” she requested, cursing the slight waver in her voice. Her biggest mistake would be letting Darius know he affected her in any manner.Get it together, woman, she scolded herself. “Was it hard suddenly running such a huge company?”
Over ham-and-cheese sandwiches, they spoke about his job and all it required. Eventually the conversation curved into more personal topics. He shared that his home had been his parents’, one they’d purchased only months before they’d died. And the pocket watch collection had been his father’s, and like the family company, Darius had taken it over and continued to add to it. She told him about her family, leaving out the part about her brother’s lucrative but illegal side business. Even her mother pretended it didn’t exist and refused to accept any money earned from it. Isobel also added amusing stories about Aiden from the last two years.
“He took one look at Santa and let out the loudest, most terrified scream. I think the old guy damn near had a heart attack.” She chuckled, remembering her baby’s reaction to the mall Santa. “He started squirming and kicking his legs. His foot caught good ol’ Saint Nick right in the boys, and they had to shut down Winter Wonderland for a half hour while, I’m sure, Santa iced himself in his workshop.”
Darius laughed, the loud bark echoing in the room. He shook his head, shoulders shaking. His eyes, bright with humor, crinkled at the corners, and his smile lit up his normally serious expression.
An unsmiling Darius was devastatingly handsome.
A smiling Darius? Beyond description.
Slowly, as they continued to meet each other’s gazes, the lightness in the room dimmed, converting into something weightier, darker. A thickness—congested with memories, things better left unspoken and desire—gathered between them. Even though her mind screamed caution, she didn’t—couldn’t—glance away. And if she were brutally honest? She didn’t want to.
“You’re different from how I remember you,” he said, his gaze roaming over her face. Her lips prickled when that intense regard fell on her mouth and hovered for several heated moments. “Even though it was only a couple of times, you were quieter then, maybe even a little timid and withdrawn. At least around me. Gage said you were different around your family.”
“I trusted them.” She knew they wouldn’t mock her just because she didn’t use the proper fork or couldn’t discuss politics. They accepted her, loved her. She’d never feared them.
Darius frowned, leaning forward on the crossed arms he’d propped on the marble island. “You didn’t trust your husband?”
She paused, indecision about how much to share temporarily muting her. But, in the end, she refused to lie. “No,” she admitted, the ghostly remnants of hurt from that time in her life rasping her voice. “I didn’t.”
How could she? Gage had been a liar, and he’d betrayed their short marriage. He’d promised her Harry and Meghan and had given her Henry VIII and wives one, two and five.
To gain his family’s sympathy after marrying Isobel, he’d thrown her under the proverbial bus, accusing her of tricking him into marrying her by claiming she’d been pregnant. She hadn’t been, though it’d happened shortly after their marriage. At first, they’d been happy—or at least she’d believed they’d been. True, they’d lived in a tiny apartment, living off her small paycheck from the grocery store while he looked for work since his family had cut him off, but they’d loved one another. After she’d refused to take a paternity test at the demand of his parents, things had changed. Subtly, at first, he’d isolated her from family and friends. He’d claimed that since his family had disowned him, it was just the two of them—soon to be the three of them—against the world. But that world had become smaller, darker, lonelier...scarier.
Gage had been a master gaslighter. Unknown to her, he’d thrown himself on his parents’ mercies, spewing lies—that she’d demanded he abandon his family, that she was cheating on him. All to remain in the family fold as their golden child and maintain their compassion and empathy by making Isobel out to be a treacherous bitch he couldn’t divorce and turn back out on the street. In truth, he’d been a spoiled, out-of-control child who hadn’t wanted her but didn’t want anyone else to have her either.
“He was your husband,” Darius said, his tone as low as the shadows already accumulating in his eyes.
“He was my jailor,” she snapped.
“Just like this is a prison?” he growled, sweeping a hand to encompass the kitchen, the beautiful home. “He gave you everything, while giving up his own family, his friends—hell, his world—for you. What more could he have possibly done to make you happy?”
Pain and anger clashed inside her, eating away any trace of the calm and enjoyment she’d found with Darius during the past hour. “Kindness. Compassion. Loyalty. Fidelity.”
“It’s convenient that he isn’t here to defend himself, isn’t it? Still, it’s hard to play the victim now when we all know how you betrayed him, made a fool of him. In spite of all that, he wouldn’t walk away from you.” Fire flared in his eyes. The same fierce emotion incinerating her, hardened his full lips into a grim line. “I saw him just before he died. I begged him to walk away, to leave you. But he wouldn’t. Even as it broke him that he couldn’t even claim his son because of the men you’d fucked behind his back.”
Trembling, Isobel stood, the scratch of the stool’s legs across the tiled floor a discordant screech. Flattening her palms on the counter, she glared at him, in this moment, hating him.
“I broke him? He broke me! And destroyed whatever love I still had for him when he looked at our baby and called him a bastard. So don’t you dare talk to me about being ungrateful. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Refusing to remain and accept any more accusations, she whipped around the island and stalked toward the kitchen entrance. Screw him. He didn’t know her, had no clue—
“Damn it, Isobel,” he snapped, seconds before his fingers wrapped around her upper arm.
“Don’t touch—” She whirled back around and, misjudging how close he stood behind her, slammed into the solid wall of his chest. Her hands shot up in an instinctive attempt to prevent the tumble backward, but the hard band of his arms wrapped around her saved her from falling onto her ass.
