The Billionaire's Marriage Bargain

‘I need to see you—to ask you—something,’ she amended carefully. Despite their situation, she ached to see him, but not the coldly distant man, the ice man, of their last meeting, the man she could tell, just from the tone of his voice, that he still was. ‘I need to—ask a favour, Dominick,’ she expanded slightly breathlessly, wincing at the admission.

‘From me?’ Dominick couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

He clearly remembered Kenzie assuring him, on the day she walked out of his life, that their marriage was over, and she would never ask him for anything ever again!

Except for a divorce, of course.

His mouth tightened. ‘You have a damned nerve thinking that you can just waltz back into my life after four months and ask me for anything—’

‘Dominick, please—’

‘No—you please!’ he cut in forcefully. ‘You walked out on me, Kenzie. On our marriage. Straight into the arms of another man! And now you want me to do you a favour?’

‘I did not leave you for another man!’ she came back just as strongly, knowing he didn’t believe her, that he never had, but determined never to stop claiming her innocence.

‘I happen to know differently,’ Dominick rasped.

‘You don’t know the first thing about me, Dominick.’ She sighed. ‘You never did.’

The first shock of hearing from her had passed now, her conversation such that Dominick was pretty sure this call was just a coincidence. After all, Kenzie had no idea that the sword of Damocles—a blow entirely of Dominick’s devising!—was about to drop on her lover’s head.

‘I’m not—the favour I have to ask isn’t for me, Dominick,’ she came back sharply. ‘Well…not really,’ she amended impatiently. ‘Maybe,’ she muttered uncomfortably.

‘Perhaps you had better let me be the judge of that, Kenzie,’ he decided tersely. ‘Tell me what it is you—need, from me—’ he used the word deliberately ‘—and I’ll tell you if I’m willing to give it.’

‘Not over the telephone,’ she insisted determinedly. ‘I need to explain a few things to you first, to help you understand—Dominick, could you meet me for lunch?’

His brows rose at the suggestion. Talking to her on the telephone was one thing, but actually seeing her again, being close to her long-legged beauty, was something else. ‘Today?’

‘Well, of course—’ She broke off her impatient response. ‘Yes, today,’ she resumed more reasonably. ‘If that’s possible,’ she added abruptly.

Dominick looked at the open diary on his desk-top, unnecessarily so, already knowing that he was free for lunch today.

‘I’m afraid it isn’t,’ he told Kenzie smoothly, totally ignoring the blank space in his diary. ‘But I am having dinner at Rimini’s at eight o’clock this evening, if you would care to join me there?’

Kenzie winced her dismay at the thought of having dinner with Dominick, tonight or any other time. It meant none of the informality of a crowded lunchtime restaurant that she had been going to suggest, but instead dinner at one of the exclusive restaurants that they had quite often gone to together as husband and wife…

‘Couldn’t I just meet you for a drink in a bar or something before you go on to dinner?’ she suggested, frowning. ‘What I have to ask will only take a few minutes, and—’

‘Scared, Kenzie?’ Dominick interrupted tauntingly.

She bristled. ‘Of you? Hardly!’ she dismissed scathingly, knowing that wasn’t quite true. Although she wasn’t scared of Dominick himself, she knew that, with his wealth and power, the sort of retribution he was capable of could be immense! ‘I just don’t see the point of completely ruining both our evenings, that’s all.’

‘Just mine, hmm?’ he mused scornfully. ‘You’re the one that asked for this meeting, Kenzie, not me,’ he reminded her. ‘In the circumstances, I believe I’m allowed to set the terms for that meeting. In which case, it’s dinner this evening or nothing,’ he stated.

She’d had a feeling he was going to say that!

‘Then I suppose I will have to agree to that, won’t I?’ she snapped, the hours, instead of minutes, she would now have to spend in Dominick’s company looming before her like a deep, dark chasm.

‘Don’t sound too eager, Kenzie,’ he taunted. ‘I might get the wrong idea.’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you!’ she came back tartly. ‘Nothing has changed. I just need to talk to you, that’s all,’ she added huskily.

‘It must be something really big, Kenzie, if you’re willing to see me again,’ he mused, finding himself smiling at Kenzie’s obvious frustration with the situation.

It was the sort of relaxed smile he hadn’t given for months. Four months, in fact. Since Kenzie had left him…

His smile evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.

Kenzie had left him, had walked out on their marriage, because, she had claimed, he was incapable of feeling the love for her that she had for him, and after only nine months of being married she simply couldn’t live with him any more.

But her claims that it had been his lack of love for her that had ended their marriage had all been a lie, a fabrication, in an effort to hide the affair she was embroiled in with Jerome Carlton.

He sobered completely at the thought of the other man in Kenzie’s life, and in her bed. He knew that, despite all the things she had said about the fidelity of love and marriage, she had been involved with another man for weeks before their marriage had finally come to its bitter end!

But now, it seemed, she wanted something from him, a favour, she said.

The retribution he had planned was for Jerome Carlton alone, but he knew that the shock waves of the other man’s fall from power would ultimately shatter Kenzie’s world too.

But now Kenzie had brought herself willingly back into his life.

It was like the spider and the fly…

CHAPTER TWO

KENZIE had no idea what she was doing sitting in a restaurant waiting to have dinner with Dominick Masters, her almost ex-husband.

He was late.

Deliberately so, she was sure, in an effort to unnerve her.

As if she didn’t feel nervous enough about this meeting already!

A fact Dominick would be well aware of. Just as he had to be aware that any situation serious enough for her to have the need to call him in the first place had to be such that she couldn’t just walk out of here before he deigned to arrived.

Which was why, she was sure, he was purposely keeping her waiting.

Much to the interest of the other diners, not that they expressed it overtly. The face of Kenzie Miller was well known from her catwalk days, and more recently from the advertisements she appeared in on worldwide television as well as billboards and promotions in stores. Kenzie Miller, the face of Carlton Cosmetics.

Kenzie Miller, international model, sitting on her own for the last fifteen minutes at a table set for two, obviously having been stood up by her date for the evening!

No doubt this was Dominick’s idea of a joke, a minor vengeance for her having walked out on him, but, favour or no favour, if he didn’t turn up in the next three minutes she was walking out of here—

He had just walked into the restaurant!

Even if she hadn’t seen him enter Kenzie would have known of his arrival. She could feel the familiar ripple of awareness down her spine at his proximity, and the warmth of her breasts as they began to tingle, while an even hotter fire began in the pit of her stomach.

It hadn’t gone away then, her complete physical awareness of Dominick.