Curves for the Billionaire (3 page)

“Oh,” Helen’s relief had seemed odd to Samantha—she’d acted as if she was jealous.  “I thought you meant to take her home and then return for Zoë.”

“Helen, what’s taking you so long?” a dark-haired young woman demanded as she’d burst into the kitchen, looking unsteady in four-inch heels.  She shared Zachary’s features, but was incredibly even more gorgeous.  It was only then that Samantha remembered Helen mentioning earlier in the day that she hoped her friend Zoë brought her dishy twin brother Zachary to the party.

“Get your stuff, Zoë.  We’re leaving.”  Zachary hopped lightly off the worktop and walked over to his sister.

“You’re such a spoilsport, Zac,” she’d accused with a pout, but had leaned against him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“And you’ve had more than enough to drink,” he’d responded, tenderly brushing her hair off her forehead.

The image of them, so clearly fond of each other, stayed in Samantha’s memory.

“Why did you tell Helen you would drop me home?” she’d asked when both his twin and her cousin had left the room.

“It’s not safe for you to stay here.”

“What do you mean?”  She’d stayed overnight with Helen’s parents dozens of times before.

“There are no adults in the house and there’s still a lot of alcohol left.  Things could get out of control later.  Trust me, you wouldn’t want to be around then.”

It was only years later when she’d attended similar parties while at university that she’d understood the danger she’d been in that night.  At the time she’d been more concerned with
ensuring that he hadn’t drunk any alcohol himself.

“You haven’t been drinking too, have you?” she’d double checked.

All he’d drunk when they were chatting was some Coca Cola, but her mother had been killed by a driver who had been over the drink-drive limit and she’d vowed never to get into a car with anyone who had been drinking.

“All I’ve had is two glasses of Coke.” he’d reassured her. “I don’t drink and drive.”

The cool air as they had stepped outside minutes later seemed to suddenly increase Zoë’s inebriety.  She’d crawled into the back of the car and promptly fallen asleep.

“Poor thing.  She doesn’t have a head for liquor,” Zachary had explained as he’d tried to prop his sister up and fit the seatbelt around her.  “But she only has a couple of glasses of wine when I’m around to look after her.”

He and Samantha had continued to chat on the way to her home.  When they got there, he’d walked her to the front door and on a whim she’d said hopefully, “I’ll be sixteen on the 24
^th
of next month.”

“You’re too young for me, sweetheart,” he’d said with seeming regret, but had taken the sting out of the words by bending to kiss her lightly on the lips.

The kiss may have been innocent by his standards but Samantha had felt the thrill of it all the way to her toes.  She’d watched, dazed, as he’d run back to the car, waved goodbye and roared off into the night.

On her sixteenth birthday he’d sent her sixteen white roses and a ‘Sweet Sixteen’ birthday card.

On her eighteenth he’d given her an orange topaz necklace and taken her to dinner.  Later they’d shared their first and only adult kiss.

***

Chapter Two

As soon as Zachary’s car came to a stop on the driveway of her father’s six-bedroom home, Celia Herbert, his housekeeper and the closest to a mother figure Samantha had known since she’d lost hers, flew out of the front door and enveloped Samantha in a cinnamon-scented embrace.

“It’s so good to have you home, Samantha!”

“It’s good to be home.”  Samantha swallowed the sudden obstruction in her throat and asked, “How’s he?”

Zachary’s hand closed over hers reassuringly.

“Not good,” the woman’s eyes rapidly filled.  It confirmed two things to Samantha: that her father’s condition was as bad as she’d feared and that the housekeeper had been secretly in love with her father for years.  “I begged him to call you months ago but the stubborn fool refused.”

Her father’s empty rocking chair made Samantha’s heart summersault as she stepped into the living room.

Surely…?

“Where’s he?” she demanded, clutching the housekeeper’s arm in fear.

“He’s in his room sleeping.”  The older woman patted Samantha’s hand gently, ignoring the tightness of her grip.  “The nurse is with him.”

“Nurse?”

“I hired someone to be with him during the day.  I sit with him at night.  He should be in hospital, but he insisted on dy…”  The housekeeper gave a strangled gasp and hastily corrected her words, “He insisted on being in his own bed.”

Distraught, Samantha released the woman’s arm and pulled her hand away from Zachary’s to cover her face as she fought to catch her breath.  Then whirling quickly, she ran to the central staircase, kicked off her high-heeled pumps and took the steps inelegantly, two at a time, in stockinged feet.  Her heart felt as if it would explode out of her chest as she raced along the corridor to her father’s room.

The middle-aged woman sitting on the chair at his bedside placed a finger to her lips to indicate her patient was fast asleep.

His breathing was laboured and he seemed to have suddenly shrunk Samantha noted as she approached the bed, took his right hand and held it gently between hers.  As a child she had often done that, fascinated by the fact that though she looked like her mother, her hands were replicas of his.  They had been so much larger than hers then—now they’d shrunk to nothing more than skin stretched tautly over bone.

The coolness of his hand forcibly brought home the reality that he was close to dying.

She had hoped against hope that her fears were unfounded, that he’d have months not days to live.

Hope had not been enough.

Zachary came up behind her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders as they started to quiver.  She turned and buried her face against his solid chest as despair overwhelmed her.  Gently he placed her father’s hand back on the top of the sheet and led her out of the room.

“He looks so helpless, Zac,” she sobbed into his crisp white shirt.  At 6’5” her father had always been a giant of a man, seeming strong and indestructible even when she’d matured and grown to her full height of 5’9”.  She had prepared herself for the fact that he would have lost some weight, but the sheer scale of weight loss in the relatively short space of time since she’d last seen him was staggering—he was barely recognizable to her.

“Miss McMillan?”  The nurse’s Irish brogue was so similar to her late paternal grandmother’s Samantha knew that the housekeeper must have deliberately chosen the woman because of it.  Her father had been his mother’s “delightful surprise” at the age of forty-four and they’d loved each other dearly.  Samantha’s heart felt a little lighter at the thought of the woman’s voice evoking pleasant memories of his mother and undoubtedly bringing her father comfort when he most needed it.  “Your father’s awake.”

The nurse had inclined the head of the bed before coming to summon Samantha and her father’s blue eyes lit up when they caught sight of her at the doorway.  She flew across the room, remembering at the last minute not to throw herself into his embrace as she’d always done.

“So sorry…my darling girl.”  Samantha had blamed the less-than-state-of-the-art Rwandan telecommunication system for the change she’d heard in her father’s voice the day before. 
It
hadn’t been responsible—every syllable of every word seemed to cause him effort.  It was painful to hear and see.

“Don’t try to talk, Dad.”  Leaning forward, she placed her face gently against his and wrapped her arms around him.  “I’m here now.”

It had been almost impossible to get her arms fully around him when he’d been at his prime.  Now she could do so with room to spare.

She held back her tears until she felt his trickling down her skin.

Dimly she heard Zachary tell the nurse to have a coffee break. Then she felt his hand on her back, rubbing in soothing circles.

Her father died two days later.  He opened his eyes one last time and smiled at her, then he whispered her mother’s name and quietly passed away, holding her hand and looking at peace.

***

A light tap on her bedroom door was followed by Celia Herbert’s head around it.  “Zachary’s here.  Do you feel up to company?”

Samantha nodded and the housekeeper withdrew.

It was exactly one week after her father’s funeral and she felt no desire to do anything but sleep.  She knew that she had to snap out of her lethargy soon—it was the slippery slope to depression.  But not yet.  She’d been dealt another blow too soon after her father’s death. She needed time to recover.

Hearing Zachary’s firm thread on the stairs, she hastily pulled the covers up to her chest, although the cotton nightgown she was wearing could hardly be called indecent.

He tapped on the open door and then walked slowly into the room, his eyes meeting hers sympathetically.  “Feeling any better?”

“The shock’s worn off, but I still feel numb.”

“I brought something to cheer you up.”

He had kept both hands behind him.  Now he brought his right hand forward to reveal a gift bag with the logo of a top chocolatier who sold the most decadent dark-chocolate covered Brazil nuts.

“Thank you.”  She took the bag and placed it on her bedside table.  Ordinarily her mouth would have watered at the sight of the logo alone and she would have immediately sampled one at least.  Right now she had no appetite for them.

“What about these?”  He brought his left hand around and brandished two new romance novels.  “I didn’t know if you still read them, but I took the chance that you did.”

“I haven’t in years.”  She had been too busy with real life to spent time fantasizing.  “But they’re just what I need at the moment—something to make me forget my troubles.”

“The bookstore owner assured me that they’re new…only arrived yesterday.  They’re both about Russian billionaires and British virgins.”

“Russian billionaires are hot at the moment,” Samantha told him.

Well, billionaires full stop.

“I’ll have to change my nationality, then.”  He smiled roguishly.  “Although I don’t know what I would do with a virgin.”

“The same thing you do with supermodels,” she retorted.

She had known there was no hope of their friendship deepening when she’d met his first girlfriend Melanie, a fellow Oxford student, with her slender body and cool, blonde beauty.  That conviction had been reinforced when she’d watched the entertainment news years later and seen him with the actress who had won the coveted supporting role in that summer’s British blockbuster.  Later that week he had taken Samantha and the actress to Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck.  In person the actress had been even slimmer than she’d appeared on the screen.  Samantha had secretly dubbed her a size ‘minus-two’.  The restaurant was renowned for its unusual dishes, yet the actress had slowly and daintily picked her way through half a green salad with no dressing and watched in horror as Samantha sampled each of the delights placed in front of her.

After the actress Zachary seemed to develop a taste for blonde supermodels.

“I haven’t slept with half as many models as the tabloids claim.”

“Are you saying that some of the pictures were Photoshoped?” she challenged.

“I’m saying that I don’t sleep with every woman I date.”