The Billionaire's Marriage Bargain

The Billionaire's Marriage Bargain
Carole Mortimer

Kenzie is determined to walk away from Dominick Masters.He never loved her, or wanted a child. But now she needs a favor from her estranged husband. In return for his help she must spend a weekend at his country mansion – at his bidding! Kenzie has no choice but to agree, but finds being alone with Dominick a delicious temptation – though stolen passion has its price. How will Dominick react when he hears Kenzie's important news?

Carole Mortimer

THE BILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

DOMINICK scowled HIS displeasure as the intercom on his desk buzzed, totally interrupting his train of thought. He should have told his secretary he didn’t want to be disturbed for a couple of hours. After four months of careful planning, he was now on the brink of achieving his goal, and had been sitting behind his desk in his penthouse office overlooking the Thames, relishing that thought in peace and solitude.

Four months. It had seemed longer. Much longer. But to have rushed in four months ago, without giving the problem his usual careful attention, wouldn’t have made the revenge he was now planning half as sweet.

Revenge, he had once been told, was a dish best eaten cold. He was cold now, icily so, and intended savouring every minute of the downfall of the man who had wounded his pride four months ago, when he had taken Kenzie from him.

Dominick turned his chair from the magnificent view outside to press the intercom, the irritation audible in his transatlantic drawl. ‘Yes?’

‘Mrs Masters on line one, Dominick,’ Stella, his stalwart secretary informed him, totally unconcerned by his obvious impatience with her interruption.

His mother was phoning him?

Although why the hell she still called herself Masters, when she had been married—and divorced—twice more after divorcing his father thirty years ago, Dominick had no idea!

‘Tell her I’m busy,’ he rasped.

‘I did,’ Stella came back unruffled. ‘But she says it’s urgent.’

He sighed his annoyance. ‘Remind me to forget your Christmas bonus this year,’ he muttered, cutting off Stella’s knowing chuckle as he accepted the call. ‘Mum,’ he greeted tersely. ‘Whatever it is, can you make it quick? I have—’

‘Dominick.’

Everything stopped. Movement. Breathing.

Just his name, uttered in that sexily husky tone, was still enough to bring his well-ordered world briefly to a halt.

He hadn’t seen or spoken to Kenzie in four months, and he had no idea why she should be telephoning him now. Although the coincidence of it, when he was so close to exacting his revenge, didn’t escape him…

‘Dominick?’

Not his mother, after all.

But the woman whom until recently, he had called his wife. Who was still his wife. Even if she had left him to be with another man. The man Dominick was so relishing bringing to his knees.

He drew in a sharp breath, and his dark gaze narrowed. ‘Kenzie,’ he acknowledged abruptly.

Kenzie easily recognized that coldly forbidding tone. The ice man was what she had called him during the argument that had preceded the end of their brief marriage.

Argument?

No, there hadn’t been an argument, she acknowledged heavily, only Dominick’s coldness and her own disbelief at his accusations.

Her hand tightened defensively about her mobile. She hadn’t wanted to make this call. She would rather have done anything than make the first move after these months of silence, aware that Dominick had hated her when she’d left, and knowing him well enough to realize that his hatred would only have increased during that time.

‘Well?’ he snapped his impatience with her silence.