Page 4 of How To Tempt The Off-Limits Billionaire

Ro nodded, her tension lifting. Radd had massive trust issues and his reassurance of Muzi’s integrity dampened some of her fears. She looked at the man in question and narrowed her eyes. “If you let my secret slip, I will disembowel you with a blunt teaspoon. Are we clear?”

Amusement touched his eyes and the corners of his lips lifted in an altogether too sexy smirk. “Perfectly.”

“Excellent.” Digby released a relieved sigh. He gestured to a waiter and asked Ro what she wanted to drink. She ordered a gin and tonic, the men ordered beers, and Ro dug in her tote bag for her pair of sunglasses. She shoved her glasses onto her face, noticing a scratch in the cheap glass.

Now that she had access to so much cash, she could buy a dozen—even a hundred—pairs of designer sunglasses, shoes, bags and clothes. Ro looked down at her off-the-rack blue-and-white sundress and shrugged. She wasn’t a shopper, and never had been, so hitting the Platinum Mile of the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, one of the city’s upmarket malls, wasn’t high on her list of priorities.

She wasn’t sure what was.

Maybe it was time she figured that out.

So this was Roisin O’Keefe, the must-be-kept-secret Tempest-Vane sister.

Muzi slid a pair of designer sunglasses over his eyes and, taking a long sip of his beer—his mouth was suddenly as dry as the Namib Desert—eyed her, knowing his dark lenses would hide his scrutiny.

She was—crap—breath-stealingly beautiful.

Her hair was long, a fall of loose curls, and an intense shade of dark brown without a hint of red or gold. It was the perfect complement to her creamy, pale skin and her drop-him-to-the-floor blue eyes.

Blue, it was such an insipid description. They were the color of ancient Chinese vases or old-as-hell Egyptian artifacts. Of ancient tiles in mosques all over the Middle East.

Blue had always been his favorite color.

Pulling his gaze off her face, he allowed himself the immense pleasure of letting it trail down her long and lithe body. Her breasts were perfection, her stomach flat, her legs smooth and slightly tanned. And those pretty pale pink toenails, and the delicate ring on her middle digit, killed him.

Muzi did an internal eye roll at his body’s reactions. He was thirty-four, had slept with many beautiful women, and it had been a long time since he’d had this sort of reaction to a woman, any woman.

But there was no denying it, she was as sexy as hell...

And solidly off-limits.

She was his best friend’s sister. And, since she was now the owner of St. Urban, one the oldest vineyards in the Cape Winelands, Ro was also someone he wanted to do business with. No, heneededto do business with her...

He needed her vineyard to neutralize Susan Matthews-Reed.

As it always did when he thought of Susan, his gut roiled. She’d been, without exaggeration, the bane of his life for...well, most of his life.

He’d met Mimi Matthews when his poor, far too young mother sent him to live with his maternal grandmother, Lu, who’d worked as Mimi’s long-time housekeeper at La Fontaine, Mimi’s Cape Dutch house in the Franschhoek Valley, an hour’s drive from Cape Town.

He’d been a fatherless three-year-old—he never knew who sired him—confused by his change of circumstances and missing his mother. He’d left a dirt-poor, rural village for one of the wealthiest areas in the country. But with his grandmother Lu he found stability and comfort. Lu and Mimi showered him with love and affection, and he’d blossomed under their attention.

A few months after his eighth birthday, Mimi’s only child, Susan, divorced her husband and she and her two sons, Rafe and Keane, moved into La Fontaine. He’d been thoroughly excited to have boys his age in the house and he and Keane immediately bonded. Rafe, older than him, was cool but Susan...well, she was another story.

His grandmother died when he was ten and, along with feeling grief-stricken, he’d also been terrified, not knowing where he was going to live or who was going to look after him. After Lu’s funeral, Mimi sat him down, told him his mother signed away all parental rights to him—as an adult, Muzi suspected money had changed hands—and informed him, and the family, that his place was with her. Mimi went on to adopt him and he became, in all the ways that counted, legal and otherwise, hers.

In the valley, he was regarded to be the luckiest child alive, plucked from poverty and obscurity to become part of a powerful, insanely wealthy and influential family steeped in the history and tradition of Cape wine making.

No one, not one soul, knew that Susan emotionally and verbally abused him whenever and wherever she found him alone.

You’re not good enough...

You don’t belong here...

You’re unlovable...

Leaving for boarding school had been a relief and university, where he studied business and wine making, was the best time of his life. After graduating he joined Clos du Cadieux, Mimi’s famous wine and spirits company, and Mimi made it clear that he was to be her successor. Susan once again went on the offensive to rid the company and the family of his presence. As a kid, he’d never understood her hatred of him but as an adult, he realized that he was a threat to her and her sons—or rather to their inheritance—and she wouldn’t rest until she kicked him out of Clos du Cadieux and out of Mimi’s life.

He was a great winemaker and an excellent CEO, but he didn’t carry Matthews blood and that, to Susan, was all that mattered.

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