Bound To A Billionaire: Protecting His Defiant Innocent (Bound to a Billionaire) / Claiming His One-Night Baby / Buying His Bride of Convenience

He shrugged. ‘Wherever I happen to be. I have a bedroom on my plane. Hotels are easy to come by. Everything I own is easily transported and as easily stored.’

She rocked forward slowly, a crease in her forehead. ‘Where do your letters go? Bills? Bank statements? You have to have an address to have a bank account.’

‘Not all banks require it if you know where to ask. My business isn’t a typical one. My work is my life. It has been since I joined the army.’

She pulled a face. ‘Yes, I get that. You’re a macho man who runs around the world protecting the weak and helpless.’

A laugh crept up his throat. ‘The majority of the people I protect are far from weak. It’s generally business people, government officials and aid agencies. People who go to war zones and countries with high crime rates where they know they’re going to be a target. My job is to let them do their jobs in safety.’

‘Why does that stop you having a home of your own? Everyone needs a home.’

He shook his head. This was why he would have preferred to stay in the suite. There, he would have been able to work on his laptop, catch up on reports from his staff around the world, issue orders and directives, and ignore Francesca while ensuring her absolute safety. Here, there was nothing to do but talk while they waited for their food to be cooked and as he’d learned the other night in the hotel’s main restaurant and their late-night conversation the night before, he enjoyed talking to Francesca far more than was good for him.

When they talked she became more than the alluring woman who made his blood thicken to look at her. She became flesh and blood.

The sooner this meal was finished the better.

‘What about family?’ she asked, oblivious to his wish—his need—for her silence. ‘Do you see much of them?’

‘No.’

‘But you do have family?’

Felipe sighed. She didn’t know when to give up. If Francesca made it to the bar she would be an excellent cross-examiner. ‘I have a mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Yes. Family.’

‘Do you see much of them?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m too busy.’

‘Too busy to see your own mother?’

‘I visit her whenever I can. The rest I was never close to so it’s no loss.’

‘No siblings?’

‘I’m an only child.’

‘Spoilt?’

He laughed harshly. Chance would have been a fine thing. ‘No.’

‘A father?’

‘He died five years ago.’

The inquisitiveness on her features softened. ‘I’m sorry. I lost my father last year. It’s hard, I know.’

‘It wasn’t much of a loss. I hardly knew him.’

Seeing her open her mouth to ask another question, he leaned forward. ‘My mother raised me as a single parent. They were married but my father was rarely there and rarely gave her money. She worked so many different jobs to put a roof over my head and food on the table that she was hardly there either, but she wasn’t absent by choice as my father was. She didn’t have the time or money to take me to Madrid to visit her family. We lived in Alicante, hundreds of miles from them. If my father hadn’t been such a selfish chancer our lives would have been very different so, no, I didn’t find his death hard. I went to his funeral out of respect but I am not going to pretend I grieved for him. I barely knew the man.’

His father had been unsuited to family life, a man always on the road searching for the next big thing, which had never turned into anything, but that next big thing had always been more important to him than his wife and child.

So unimportant was his father to his life that he rarely thought about him, never mind talked about him, but with Francesca seemingly keen to interrogate him about his life, it was simpler to give her the full impartial facts and be done with it.

‘That must have been hard for you. And your mamma,’ she said, her eyes full of sympathy.

Thankfully their food was brought over to them by the cheerful waitress, T-bone steak for him and seared tuna pasta salad for Francesca.

She dived into hers and for a while he thought he’d escaped further interrogation.

Wrong.

‘How often do you see your mother?’

‘I try and visit over Christmas and for her birthday.’

‘Is that it? Two visits a year?’

He took a large bite of his steak and ignored the implied rebuke. He didn’t need to justify himself to her.

‘If I only saw my mother twice a year she’d kill me,’ Francesca mused. ‘She thinks I live too far from her as it is and I’m only a twenty-minute walk away.’

‘You’re her daughter. It’s a different relationship.’

‘Tell that to my brothers,’ she said with a roll of her eyes that immediately dimmed, the vibrancy in them muting.

With a pang, he knew she was thinking of Pieta.

‘Pieta was a good son to her,’ she said quietly. ‘He travelled all around the world but always remembered to call her every night. Daniele’s the opposite—I’m always annoying him by sending reminders for him to call. She worries about us. Pieta’s death has devastated her.’

‘You’re a close family,’ he observed.

She nodded. ‘I’ve been very lucky.’

Lucky until the brother she’d adored had been so tragically killed.

‘Your life and background are very different from mine.’

‘My life and background are different from most peoples. But, then, everyone’s is. None of us are the same. We all have our worries.’

‘You grew up rich and with a loving family. What worries did you have?’

‘Me, personally? None that were serious. I was lucky and privileged but I know I’m one of the fortunate ones and it’s why I want to go into human rights law.’