Page 32 of How To Tempt The Off-Limits Billionaire

He shook his head and Ro touched his masculine jaw, rubbing her fingers over his short beard. “You know my secrets, Muzi, and you can trust me with yours.”

“I haven’t told anybody about Susan, not even Mimi.”

She could understand that. He was a proud guy. And he loved his adoptive grandmother and didn’t want to cause her any pain. “Tell me everything,” she insisted.

Muzi dropped his head back against the headboard and stared up at the ceiling. “The teenage years weren’t so bad as I spent a lot of time at boarding school and many weekends and school holidays with friends, either at La Fontaine or at their houses. I became adept at avoiding and ignoring Susan. I went to university, and when I graduated Mimi offered me a position at Clos du Cadieux. Susan actively tried to sabotage me at work. Luckily, I learned very quickly to cover my ass and none of her machinations succeeded. Then Mimi appointed me as CEO and informed the family I would inherit her shares in Clos du Cadieux. Susan lost it.”

“Publicly?”

“Hell, no. She caught me working late one night and told me, straight-out, that there was no way she’d ever allow me to succeed at this job. And for the past few years, she’s openly and actively tried to undermine and ostracize me.”

Ro scratched her forehead, puzzled. “And Mimi knows this?”

“Eh...sort of. Mimi has completely retired and is no longer involved at Clos du Cadieux, She’s asked me whether we’ve had a falling-out, but I brush it off when she brings it up.”

He caught her “Why didn’t you tell her?” expression and threw up his hands. “She’s eighty-four years old, enjoying her retirement. What would it help to tell her that her daughter has tormented me all my life? I understand Susan, she’s insecure and narcissistic and controlling but I can handle her. Rafe and I are good—he’s in the States and I don’t see much of him, he’s doing his own thing. But losing Keane’s friendship has nearly killed me. Thanks to his mother, he thinks I’m demanding and controlling and that I’ve been stealing from Clos du Cadieux, and Mimi, to line my own pockets.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because I have a lifestyle that exceeds the income I make from the company.”

She’d been wondering about that herself. “I know I’m being nosy but howdoyou afford the very high-end art and the sculptures, the super expensive car and your fancy threads? I’m sure you earn a kick-butt salary, but you own art worth tens of millions—art that only billionaires can afford.”

The corners of Muzi’s mouth lifted. “I saved every penny growing up and Mimi gave me a whack of cash when I turned twenty-one. After Jack’s death, your brothers vowed to have nothing more to do with their parents and, as a result, had no access to the Tempest-Vane cash.

“Radd knew this computer genius who had an idea for a new internet payment system. They used the little money they had to develop the system but soon ran out of seed money. I took my birthday money and invested in their company. When they sold, I, like them, made a fortune.”

Right. Nowthatmade sense.

“Mimi knows but nobody else does. I didn’t think it was any of their business, specifically Susan’s. But now, in Susan’s and Keane’s minds, the most logical explanation is that I am siphoning money from Clos du Cadieux.”

Ro remembered Keane’s attitude toward his mother earlier that day and shook her head. He didn’t come across that way to her. Ro suspected that he was a guy caught between his loyalty to his mom and his lifelong friendship with Muzi. Oh, she wasn’t going to defend him, he didn’t deserve that, but she genuinely believed that things weren’t as dire between them as Muzi thought.

“Why do you think Susan came here today?” Ro asked.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Muzi replied, looking thoughtful. “First, you’ve got to remember that Susan is suspicious of everything I do, all the time. She’s looking for something to discredit me, a mistake I’ll make to get me canned. I’m looking for a reason to get her to resign from the board. Neither of us has yet managed to dislodge the other so we’re in a holding pattern. But she’s looking for a gap, a way to hurt me.

“I think a couple of things, occurring at roughly the same time, caught her interest,” Muzi continued. “You working at St. Urban, you living here and me leasing St. Urban land all raised her curiosity.”

“But why would she comehere?” Ro demanded.

Muzi rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t bring girlfriends home and when I go to Pasco’s, I usually go with Digby or Radd, or simply on my own. Us being together was very out of the norm.”

Well, well...

“Susan is clever. You’re an anomaly and she’ll want to find out more about you.”

“She told me that I look familiar,” Ro informed him. “That worries me.”

“It worries me too because she knew your mom, your birth mom. In fact, they were quite good friends.”

“Birds of a feather...” Ro quipped.

Muzi nodded. “If she discovers that you are Zia’s biological daughter, she won’t hesitate to out you. And if she finds out about a supposedly extinct cultivar on your farm, she’ll find those damn vines and pull them out herself.”

Awesome news. “So did I hurt or hinder our chances of keeping all our secrets by telling her that we are having a red-hot affair?”

Muzi, for the first time that evening, smiled. “Oh, that helped. But—”

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