The Billionaire's Defiant Acquisition

CHAPTER THREE

CONALL DEVLIN’S OFFICE was nothing like Amber would have imagined, either. She had expected something brash, or slightly tacky—something which would fit well with his brutish exterior. But she was momentarily lost for words as he took her into a beautifully decorated first-floor room which overlooked the street at the front and a beautiful garden at the back.

The walls were grey—the subtle colour of an oyster shell—and it provided the perfect backdrop for many paintings which hung there. Amber blinked as she looked around. It was like being in an art gallery. He was obviously into modern art and he had a superb eye, she conceded reluctantly. His curved desk looked like a work of art itself and in one corner of the room was a modern sculpture of a naked woman made out of some sort of resin. Amber glanced over at it before quickly looking away, because there was something uncomfortably sensual about the woman’s stance and the way she was cupping her breast with lazy fingers.

She looked up to find Conall watching her, his midnight eyes shuttered as he indicated the chair in front of his desk, but Amber was much too wired to be able to sit still while facing him. Something told her that being subjected to that mocking stare would be unendurable.

So start clawing some power back, she told herself fiercely. Be sweet. Make him want to help you.

He was rich enough to give her a temporary stay of execution until her father got back from his ashram and everything could be cleared up. She walked over to one of the windows and stared down onto the street as two teenage girls strolled past, chewing gum and giggling—and she felt a momentary pang of wistfulness for the apparent ease of their lives and a sense of being carefree which had always eluded her.

‘I haven’t got all day,’ he warned. ‘So let’s cut to the chase. And before you start fluttering those long eyelashes at me, or trying to work the convent-schoolgirl look—which, let me tell you, isn’t doing it for me—let me spell out a few things. I’m not giving you money without something in return and I’m not letting you have an apartment which is way too big for you. So if the sole purpose of this unscheduled visit is to throw yourself on my mercy asking for funds—then you’re wasting your time.’

For a moment Amber was struck dumb because she couldn’t ever remember anyone speaking to her like that. Up until the age of four she’d been a princess living in a palace, and then she’d been catapulted straight into a nightmare when her parents had split up. The next ten years had been several degrees of horrible and she hadn’t known which way to turn. And when she’d been brought back to live in her father’s house after her mother’s accident—seriously cramping his style with wife number whatever it had been—everyone had tiptoed round her.

Nobody had known how to deal with a grieving and angry teenager and neither had she. Her confidence had been completely punctured and so had her self-esteem. Her moods had been wild and unpredictable and she’d quickly realised that she could get people to do what she wanted them to do. Amber had learnt that if her lips wobbled in a certain way, then people fell over themselves to help her. She’d also realised that rubbing your toe rather obsessively over the carpet and staring at it as if it contained the secret of the universe was pretty effective, too, because it made people want to draw you out of yourself.

But there was something about Conall Devlin which made her realise he would see right through any play-acting or attempts at manipulation. His eyes were much too keen and bright and intelligent. They were fixed on her now in question so that, for one bizarre moment, she felt as if he might actually be able to read her thoughts, and that he certainly wouldn’t like them if he could.

‘Then how am I expected to survive?’ she questioned. Defiantly she held up her wrist so that her diamond watch glittered, like bright sunlight on water. ‘Do you want me to start pawning the few valuable items I have?’

His eyes gleamed as he plucked an imaginary violin from the empty air and proceeded to play it, but then he put his big hands down on the surface of his desk and stared at her, his face sombre.

‘Why don’t you spare me the sob story, Amber?’ he said. ‘And start explaining some of these.’

Suddenly he upended a large manila envelope and spread the contents out over his desk and Amber stared at the collection of photos and magazine clippings with a feeling of trepidation.

‘Where did you get these?’

He made an expression of distaste, as if they were harbouring some form of contamination. ‘Your father gave them to me.’

Amber knew she’d made it into various gossip columns and some of those ‘celebrity’ magazines which adorned the shelves of supermarket checkouts. Some of the articles she’d seen and some she hadn’t—but she’d never seen them all together like this, like a pictorial history of her life. Fanned across his desk like a giant pack of cards, there were countless pictures of her. Pictures of her leaving nightclubs and pictures of her attending gallery and restaurant openings. In every single shot her dress looked too short and her expression seemed wild. But then the flash of the camera was something that she loved and loathed in equal measure. Wasn’t she stupidly grateful that someone cared enough to want to take her photo—as if to reassure her that she wasn’t invisible? Yet the downside was that it always made her feel like a butterfly who had fluttered into the collector’s room by mistake—who’d had her fragile wings pierced by the sharp pins which then fettered her to a piece of card...

She looked up from the photos and straight into his eyes and nobody could have failed to see the condemnation in their midnight depths. Don’t let him see the chink in your armour, she told herself fiercely. Don’t give him that power.

‘Quite good, aren’t they?’ she said carelessly as she pulled out the chair and sat down at last.

At that point, Conall could have slammed his fist onto the desk in sheer frustration, because she was shameless. Completely shameless. Worse even than he’d imagined. Did she think he was stupid—or was the effect of her dressing up today like some off-duty nun supposed to have him eating out of her hand?

But the crazy thing was that—no matter how contrived it was—on some subliminal level, the look actually worked. No matter what he’d said and no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her. With her thick black hair scraped back from her face like that, you could see the perfect oval of her face and get the full impact of those long-lashed emerald eyes. Was she aware that she had the kind of looks which would make men want to fight wars for her? Conall’s mouth twisted. Of course she was. And she had been manipulating that beauty, probably since she first hit puberty.

He remembered his reaction when Ambrose had asked him for his help and then shown him all the photos. There had been a moment of stunned silence as Conall had looked at them and felt a powerful hit of lust which had been almost visceral. It had been like a punch to the guts. Or the groin. There had been one in particular of her wearing some wispy little white dress, managing to look both intensely pure and intensely provocative at the same time. Guilt had rushed through him as he’d stared at her father and shaken his head.

‘Get someone else to do the job,’ he’d said gruffly.

‘I can’t think of anyone else who would be capable of handling her,’ had been Ambrose’s candid reply. ‘Nor anyone I would trust as much as I do you.’

And wasn’t that the worst thing of all? That Ambrose trusted him to do right by his daughter? So that, not only had Conall agreed, but he was now bound by a deep sense of honour to do the decent thing by the man who had saved him from a life of crime.

It would have been easier if he could just have signed her a cheque and told her to go away and sort herself out, but Ambrose had been adamant that she needed grounding, and he knew the old man’s determination of old.

‘She needs to discover how to live a decent life and to stop sponging off other people,’ he said. ‘And you are going to help her, Conall.’

And how the hell was he supposed to do that when all he could think about was what it would be like to unpin her hair and kiss her until she was gasping for breath? About what it would be like to cradle those hips within the palms of his hands as he drove into her until they were both crying out their pleasure?

He stared into the glitter of her eyes, unable to blot out the unmistakable acknowledgement that her defiance was turning him on even more, because women rarely defied him. So what was he going to do about it—give up or carry on? The question was academic really, because giving up had never been an option for him. Maybe he could turn this into an exercise in self-restraint. Unless his standards had really sunk so low that he could imagine being intimate with someone who stood for everything he most despised.

He thought back to the question she’d just asked and his gaze slid over the pile of photos—alighting on one where she was sitting astride a man’s shoulders, a champagne bottle held aloft while a silky green dress clung to her shapely thighs.

‘They’re good if you want to portray yourself as a vacuous airhead,’ he said slowly. ‘But then again, that’s not something which is going to look good on your CV.’

‘Your own CV being whiter than white, I suppose?’ she questioned acidly.

For a moment, Conall fixed her with an enquiring look. Had Ambrose told her about the dark blots on his own particular copybook? In which case she would realise that he knew what he was talking about. He’d had his own share of demons; his own wake-up call to deal with. But she said nothing—just continued to regard him with a look of foxy challenge which was making his blood boil.

‘This is supposed to be about you,’ he said. ‘Not me.’

‘So go on, then,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’m all ears.’

‘That’s probably the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.’ He leaned back in his chair and studied her. ‘This is what I propose you do, Amber. Obviously, you need a job in order to pay the rent but, as you have yourself recognised, your CV makes you unemployable. So you had better come and work for me. Simple.’

Amber went very still because when he put it like that it actually sounded simple. She blinked at him as she felt the first faint stirring of hope. Cautiously, she looked around the beautifully proportioned room, with its windows which looked out onto the iconic London street. Outside the trees were frothing with pink blossom, as if someone had daubed them with candyfloss. There was a bunch of flowers on his desk—the tiny, highly scented blooms they called paper-whites, which sent a beguiling drift of perfume through the air. She wondered if the blonde in the minidress had put them there. Just as she wondered who had sent him that postcard of the Taj Mahal, or that little glass dish in the shape of a pair of lips, which was currently home to a gleaming pile of paperclips.

And suddenly she was hit by that feeling which always used to come over her at school, when she was invited to a friend’s house for the weekend and the friend’s parents were still together. The feeling that she was on the outside looking in at a perfectly ordered world where everything worked the way it was supposed to. She swallowed. Because Conall Devlin was offering her a—temporary—place in that sort of world, wasn’t he? Didn’t that count for something?

‘I’m not exactly sure what your line of business is,’ she said, asking the competent kind of question he would no doubt expect.

He regarded her from between those shuttered lashes. ‘I deal in property—that’s my bread-and-butter stuff. I sell houses and apartments all over London and I have subsidiary offices in Paris and New York. But my enduring love is for art, as you might have gathered.’

‘Yes,’ she said politely, unable to keep the slight note of amazement from her voice but he picked up on it immediately because his midnight eyes glinted.

‘You sound surprised, Amber.’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose I am.’

‘Because I don’t fit the stereotype?’ He raised a pair of mocking eyebrows. ‘Because my suit isn’t pinstriped and I don’t have a title?’

‘Careful, Mr Devlin—that chip on your shoulder seems like it’s getting awfully heavy.’

He laughed at this and Amber was angry with herself for the burst of pleasure which rushed through her. Why the hell feel thrilled just because she’d managed to make the overbearing Irishman laugh?

‘I deal solely in twentieth-century pieces and buy mainly for my own pleasure,’ he said. ‘But occasionally I procure pieces for clients or friends or for business acquaintances. I act as a middle man.’

‘Why do they need you as a middle man?’

He stared briefly at the postcard of the Taj Mahal. ‘Because buying art is not just about negotiation—it’s about being able to close the deal. And that’s something I’m good at. Some of the people I buy for are very wealthy, with vast amounts of money at their disposal. Sometimes they prefer to buy anonymously—in order to avoid being ripped off by unscrupulous sellers who want to charge them an astronomical amount.’ He smiled. ‘Or sometimes people want to sell anonymously and they come to me to help them get the highest possible price.’

Amber’s eyes narrowed as she tried not to react to the undeniable impact of that smile. Somehow he had managed to make himself sound incredibly fascinating. As if powerful people were keen to do business with him. Had that been his intention, to show her there was more to him than met the eye?

She folded her hands together on her lap. How hard could it be to work for him? The only disadvantage would be having to deal with him, but the property side would be a piece of cake. Presumably you just took a prospective buyer along to a house and told them a famous actress had just moved in along the road and prices had rocketed as a result, and they’d be signing on the dotted line quicker than you could say bingo.

‘I can do that,’ she said confidently.

His eyes narrowed. ‘Do what?’

‘Sell houses. Or apartments. Whatever you want.’

He sat up very straight. ‘Just like that?’ he said silkily.

‘Sure. How hard can it be?’

‘You think I’m going to let someone like you loose in a business I’ve spent the last fifteen years building up?’ he questioned, raking his fingers back through his thick black hair with an unmistakable gesture of irritation. ‘You think that selling the most expensive commodity a person will ever buy should be entrusted to someone who hasn’t ever held down a proper job, and has spent most of her adult life falling out of nightclubs?’

Amber bristled at his damning assessment and a flare of fury fizzed through her as she listened to his disparaging words. She wanted to do a number of things in retaliation, starting with taking that jug of water from his desk and upending the contents all over his now ruffled dark hair. And then she would have liked to have marched out of his office and slammed the door very firmly behind her and never set eyes on his handsome face ever again. But that wouldn’t exactly help foster the brand-new image she was trying to convey, would it? She wanted him to believe she could be calm and unruffled. She would give him a glimpse of the new and efficient Amber who wasn’t going to rise to the insults of a man who meant nothing to her, other than as a means to an end.

‘I can always learn,’ she said. ‘But if you think I’d be better suited to shifting a few paintings, I’ll happily give that a go. I...I like art.’

He made a small sound at the back of his throat, which sounded almost like a growl, and seemed to be having difficulty holding on to his temper—she could tell that by the way he had suddenly started drumming his fingertips against the desk, as if he were sending out an urgent message in Morse code.

But when he looked up at her again, she thought she saw the glint of something in his dark blue eyes which made her feel slightly nervous. Was it anticipation she could read there, or simply sheer devilment?

‘I think you’ll find that selling art involves slightly more of a skill set than one described as shifting a few paintings,’ he said drily. ‘And besides, my plans for you are very different.’ He glanced down at the sheet of paper which lay on the desk before him. ‘I understand that you speak several languages.’

‘Now it’s your turn to sound surprised, Mr Devlin.’

He shrugged his broad shoulders and sat back in his seat. ‘I guess I am. I didn’t have you down as a linguist, with all the hours of study that must have involved.’

Amber’s lips flattened. ‘There is more than one way to learn a language,’ she said. ‘My skill comes not from hours sitting at a desk—but from the fact that my mother had a penchant for Mediterranean men. And as a child I often found myself living in whichever new country was the home of her latest love interest.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘And, believe me, there were plenty of those. Consequently, I learnt to speak the local language. It was a question of survival.’

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her thoughtfully. ‘That must have been...hard.’

Amber shook her head, more out of habit than anything else. Because sympathy or compassion—or whatever you wanted to call it—made her feel uncomfortable. It started making her remember people like Marco or Stavros or Pierre—all those men who had broken her mother’s heart so conclusively and left Amber to deal with the mess they’d left behind. It made her wish for the impossible—that she’d been like other people and lived a normal, quiet life without a mother who seemed to think that the answer to all their problems was being in love. And remembering all that stuff ran the risk of making you feel vulnerable. It left you open to pain—and she’d had more than her fair share of pain.

‘It was okay,’ she said, in a bored tone which came easily after so many years of practice. ‘I certainly know how to say “my darling” in Italian, Greek and French. And I can do plenty of variations on the line “You complete and utter bastard”.’

Had her flippant tone shocked him? Was that why a faintly disapproving note had entered his voice?

‘Well, you certainly won’t be needed to relay any of those sentiments, be very clear about that.’ He glanced down at the sheet of paper again. ‘But before I lay down the terms of any job I might be prepared to offer—I need some assurances from you.’

‘What kind of assurances?’

‘Just that I don’t have any room in my organisation for loose cannons, or petulant princesses who say the first thing which comes into their head. I deal with people who need careful handling and I need to know that you can demonstrate judgement and tact before I put my proposition to you.’ His midnight eyes grew shadowed. ‘Because frankly, right now, I’m finding it hard to imagine you being anything other than...difficult.’

His words hurt. More than they should have done. More than she’d expected them to—or perhaps that had something to do with the way he was looking at her. As if he couldn’t quite believe the person she was. As if someone like her had no right to exist. And yet all this was complicated by the fact that he looked so spectacular, with his black sweater hugging his magnificent body and his sensual lips making all kinds of complicated thoughts that began to nudge themselves into her mind. Because her body was reacting to him in a way she wasn’t used to. A way she couldn’t seem to control. She could feel herself growing restless beneath that searing sapphire stare—and yet she didn’t even like him.

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