A Delicious Deception Read Free

you get your affairs straightened out, which makes you an employee of sorts—albeit a rather unconventional one—and my father doesn’t engage anyone these days without consulting me.’
    And that just showed who was ruling the Clayborne empire now, she thought, resenting the authority he exuded as well as that brooding magnetism and forcefulness of character that lent his features a strength and quality that went way beyond mere handsomeness. ‘You must excuse me if you think I’m being overly cautious.’ She watched him drink through the steam rising from his cup and then set the fine china down on the table with cool economical movements. ‘But, as I’m sure you’re aware, my father is a very wealthy man.’
    So are you, she supplied silently, remembering how amazed she had been to read that article that reported him as being higher up Britain’s Rich List last year even than Mitchell Clayborne. That it was at her father’s expense that the Claybornes were in that enviable position was somethingshe refused to dwell on. She was aware, though, of the numerous enterprises King was involved in outside their technological empire, and reluctantly accepted that a man of his drive and determination would succeed at anything he turned his hand to. She looked at him askance and with a confrontational note in her voice queried, ‘Meaning?’
    He made a careless gesture with his hands. ‘A beautiful young woman. An obviously rich but vulnerable older man whose ego needs a bit of boosting. An unlikely prank-turned-robbery in the midst of a crowded café. You must admit it couldn’t be a more finely tuned scheme to play on the older man’s sympathies and to get you into this house if you’d engineered it yourself.’
    The colour already touching her cheeks intensified on a surge of guilt because, of course, she had been waiting at that table specifically for his father’s appearance, but not for the reasons his sceptical guard dog of a son was suggesting!
    Still trying to deny the heat coursing through her veins from his remark about her being beautiful, she retorted, ‘That’s preposterous!’
    ‘Is it?’ He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, bringing her attention unwillingly to the hard lean line of his pelvis until, shocked at where she was looking, she dropped her gaze down over his intimidating stance and long, long legs. ‘It isn’t unheard of.’
    ‘Except for one thing, King.’ They both glanced in the direction of the shaky, gravelly voice, accompanied now by the unmistakable squeak of the wheelchair approaching. ‘She didn’t want to come.’
    It was true. She hadn’t at first. When those thieves had left her with nothing but a car with a virtually empty fuel tank, no money or credit and no place to stay, she had been uncomfortable enough with Mitchell Clayborne’s gratitude for returning his property without his offer of assistance when he realised the loss and inconvenience that helping him hadcaused her. After all, she’d been lying in wait for him solely for one reason: to confront him with who she was and to threaten him if necessary with exposure in the papers if he didn’t come clean and admit the wrong that both he and King had done to her father. To try and prick his conscience—if he had one!—where Grant Hardwicke had failed, because Mitch Clayborne and his son had taken something more precious from her family than a simple wheel! But he’d seemed so shaken up by those morons running off with it that it hadn’t been the time or the place. Besides, she’d only been waiting at that café because she knew she would never have got past this villa’s impregnable security if she had tried to see him here, so, after her initial hesitation, she’d decided to grab the opportunity she was being offered with both hands.
    After all, the Claybornes owed her family big time, she’d decided, and all she had to do was bide her time until she had got her credit cards sorted out, enjoy a