Page 52 of Bound Enemies
Heir with My Enemy
Jackie Ashenden
To the inimitable Caitlin Crews and to sitting around tables, plotting books. :-)
Prologue
Santiago
I’m standing atthe bar at another fundraiser, this time in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern. The place is packed with captains of industry, politicians, and other varieties of rich and famous, and I’m rapidly losing patience with the endless list of social events on my calendar.
This gala is to raise money for more computers in schools—a worthy cause—and it’s aimed at the tech industry. So, as the CEO of VZ Industries, a very successful research and development company, I should find this a prime hunting ground for more investors.
Yet I’m bored, and restless, and I’m tired of being here already. I don’t do small talk, and so I’ve run out of my meagre store of conversation already, and it’s only been half an hour. There are people waiting to talk to me—I can see them considering approaching out of the corner of my eye—but I’m done for the evening, and, having already made a large donation to the cause, I can see no benefit from staying any longer.
And then I see her.
She’s standing down the other end of the bar, a wealth of glorious blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, wearing a strapless gown of rose-coloured silk. Her face is picture-perfect beautiful, with arched golden brows, a determined little chin, and a rosebud of a mouth. She’s waiting for her drink, and she looks nervous, fingers moving restlessly on the clutch bag that matches her gown. The barman pushes a flute of champagne in her direction and she grabs at it, lifting it to that perfect mouth and taking a little sip.
She must have felt me staring, because that’s when her thick, silky lashes lift and eyes of deep midnight-blue meet mine, and a current of electricity abruptly charges the space between us. It’s instant and hot, and I know from the way her eyes widen that I’m not alone in feeling it, that she feels it too.
There’s a moment when we stare at each other, and everyone else at this pointless gala disappears. It’s only her and me at the bar, caught in this intense pull of attraction that neither of us can break.
Colour sweeps across her lovely face, and before I can think better of it I’m moving towards her. It feels as if she is the most beautiful and fascinating thing I’ve ever seen, though logically I’ve seen—and had—plenty of other beautiful and fascinating women before. Except she is different and I’m not sure why. This attraction is a force of nature, elemental almost, and I’ve certainly never felt it this intensely before.
Her colour deepens as I approach, her gaze locked with mine, and her mouth begins to curl as I get closer. It’s welcome I see in those lovely blue eyes, as well as an acknowledgement of the need that gets more intense as I stop right beside her. Her cheeks are almost the same shade of rose as her gown, and it makes the blue of her eyes even deeper. She doesn’t look away. We’re two stars held in each other’s magnetic field, orbiting each other, unable to pull free.
I open my mouth to introduce myself.
Then a man steps into view next to her, his arm sliding around her waist and drawing her close. Her smile falters, the glow in her eyes dims, and her lashes veil her gaze.
He’s familiar, this man. I have his dark eyes and his broad shoulders, though my hair is still black. His is salted with white.
He gives me a vicious smile, because he knows he’s won this round in our endless battle. He saw my reaction to this woman and he knew what it meant. He knew what I wanted, and now he’s smug in victory, since what I wanted he now has.
That beautiful woman is clearly his, and he makes that quite clear by pulling her even closer. All I’m left with is her last, burning glance before she allows my father to lead her away from the bar and back into the crowd.
Chapter One
Beatrix
The little Castilianchurch is packed to overflowing with members of Europe’s most important aristocratic families, as well as the rich and the famous, all crowding in to say their goodbyes to Antonio Veracruz, tenth Duke of Riego, and also my husband.
I’m standing in the tiny little church alcove I discovered a few moments ago, needing a minute or two to catch my breath and adjust my black widow’s veil over my face. The veil is partly for show and partly to hide my dry eyes, though I’m wondering why I’m bothering with it, since no one believes I’m truly mourning Antonio.
I know what they all think of me, all the ancient noble families of Spain and the rest of Europe. The rumours about me fill the gossip columns, internet forums, and social media posts. They say I’m a gold digger, a sugar baby, an escort, a courtesan. That I wrapped a poor old man’s heart around my little finger and took all his money. I’ve even seen ‘black widow’ headlines and reports that I poisoned him to get my hands on the Veracruz estate…
Unfortunately for me, they’re right. Not that I poisoned him—no, he died from a sudden and catastrophic heart attack—but they’re right about the other thing. I am, in fact, a gold digger. Antonio knew that, though, and he was far from being a ‘poor old man’.
We met through a company that provides rich people with ‘companionship’. It’s not an escort service or anything salacious, and the ‘companionship’ it promises is real. There’s considerable vetting done if you want to register to be a ‘companion’ and many NDAs you have to sign.
I’d only just had my membership approved when I got a message from Antonio saying that he’d looked at my profile and wanted to meet me, with a view to my being his date at a charity fundraiser in London.
Not going to lie, I saw the words ‘Spanish duke’ and automatically said yes. I mean, when you have nothing except your looks, you can’t afford to be picky. You have to do what you can to survive.
So I put on the one nice dress I had, and went along to the fancy London hotel he was staying in. We met in the bar and he bought me a drink. We chatted—I had made sure to read up on winemaking, since that was his passion—and we got on well enough that I went as his date to the fundraiser, before joining him on holiday in Greece.
We married soon after that, but our marriage wasn’t about love. Antonio wanted someone he trusted to take over his estate after his death, plus he was lonely and didn’t see why he couldn’t have companionship in his later years. I was more than happy to provide that companionship if it meant my future would be taken care of. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement, and one I would have been totally happy about if it wasn’t for one thing: Antonio’s son.
