Page 14 of Fake Engagement Arrangement (Wilde Billionaire Brothers #1)

Mollie woke early to find herself alone in the bed.

The space beside her was crumpled, as was the pillow, so she assumed Jago had spent some of the night with her, although not reaching for her as he had done so often in the past. She sat upright and pushed the tangle of her hair out of her eyes then found Jago seated in one of the velvet chairs in the suite, his forearms resting on his knees and his midnight blue gaze trained on her.

She noted the dark shadows beneath his eyes and his tousled hair, which if anything made him look even more broodingly attractive, like a Gothic hero from the classics. ‘You look like you didn’t sleep too well.’

Jago leaned back and dragged a hand down his face, the rasp of his morning stubble against his skin sounding overly loud in the silence.

‘Turns out you’re right.’ He pushed himself out of the chair and came over to stand beside her side of the bed, still with his gaze locked on hers.

‘Pleasant dreams?’ His tone had a sour note to it that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up like miniature soldiers.

Mollie frowned at him, not sure how to handle him in this mood. ‘Stop towering over me and looking at me like that. It’s not my fault you didn’t sleep well.’

‘I beg to differ.’

‘You were the one who insisted on us sharing a room,’ she pointed out.

There was a pulsing beat of silence.

‘Who is Eliot?’

Mollie stiffened, her gaze wary as it held his penetrating one. She took a steadying breath and fashioned her features into a cool mask. ‘None of your damn business, that’s who.’

His expression tightened, and his mouth went into a flat line. ‘Have there been many lovers since you called off our wedding? Or was this Eliot guy in the picture before we got together?’

Mollie tossed the bed covers aside and got out of bed, furious with him for thinking she might have had a lover on the side while engaged to him. But how else could she explain without telling him about her brother? ‘How many lovers have you had?’ she shot back with a scalding look.

‘Five.’

‘Only five?’ She coughed up a laugh that had not an ounce of humour in it. ‘You surprise me. I thought it would be closer to fifty.’

Something glittered in his eyes that reminded her of unreachable stars in the night sky. ‘I seem to recall I told you when we first met, you shouldn’t take as gospel everything that is reported about me or my brothers in the press.’

Mollie was still trying to contain her shock at his number of lovers.

Only five? Even if the press got it wrong occasionally, she knew enough about his strong sex drive to find such a low number of lovers surprising.

Jago Wilde was a man in the prime of his life, full-blooded and virile and rich and handsome beyond belief.

Why hadn’t he gone back to his profligate playboy ways?

He would have had numerous opportunities to do so over the last two years; women swarmed around him like bees to exotic pollen.

‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ Jago said. ‘Who is Eliot?’

Mollie compressed her lips, torn between wanting to keep her private life private but feeling a strange need to share her burden with someone.

Someone who would understand and not judge her for her hardscrabble origins and the damage that had been caused to her and her brother as a result.

Was Jago that person? But how could someone from such a wealthy and privileged background ever understand what she and her brother had gone through?

But then, she wondered if by sharing a little of her background, Jago might lower his guard and talk about the loss of his parents.

She decided to take a chance. ‘Eliot is my brother, my half-brother really. We don’t share the same father. ’

Jago’s frown deepened. ‘I thought you said you were an only child?’

Mollie folded her arms across her body. ‘I’m not. I may well have other half-siblings for all I know. I’ve never met my biological father. Eliot and I share a mother.’

‘You told me you were an orphan. So that was a lie too?’ Jago was standing with his hands on his hips, looking down at her with a glimmer of hurt in his gaze that made her heart contract.

‘I don’t know if my biological father is alive or not, but I know for sure my mother is dead.’ Mollie decided against telling him the rest of that ghastly story. Revisiting that time in her life was too traumatising.

Jago turned away from her and paced the floor like he was trying to maintain control of himself. He finally turned to face her once more, his expression still cast in lines of confusion, hurt and anger all mixed together. ‘Why did you lie to me?’

Mollie gave a dismissive shrug of her shoulders. ‘I try to distance myself from my upbringing. The only way I could find to do it successfully was to pretend it hadn’t happened. I made up a backstory for myself that was easier to live with.’

Jago’s frown was so severe his brows met over his eyes. ‘But I was your fiancé, Mollie. Surely, I deserved to know the truth about the woman I intended to marry.’

Mollie reached for a hotel bathrobe and wrapped herself in it like she was putting on a coat of armour. She turned to face Jago again, her expression cool. ‘Why were you intending to marry me? You never told me you loved me. Surely that is Marriage Proposal Protocol 101?’

Jago deftly avoided answering her question by throwing one back at her. ‘Was that a lie when you told me you loved me?’

Mollie absently twirled the engagement ring on her left hand. ‘I did love you, Jago.’

‘You said that in the past tense.’ Jago said without any trace of emotion in his voice as if he was simply making an observation, one that meant little or nothing to him.

But then, why would it mean anything to him?

He hadn’t loved her. He hadn’t said the words she’d most wanted to hear.

He had proposed marriage without saying he loved her.

She should never have accepted, except she had foolishly believed he would change, that he would open his heart to her.

How many women made the same mistake? Too many.

But she had felt wanted for the first time in her life, and it had made it impossible to say no to him.

He had made her feel safe, secure and wanted, and it had been enough for her back then.

‘That was two years ago,’ Mollie said, folding her arms to stop herself playing with the ring. ‘A lot of things have happened since then.’

His handsome features were now cast in guarded lines. ‘So tell me about your half-brother.’

Mollie sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped in her lap.

‘Eliot has…issues.’ She began to scratch at the inside of her wrist but then stopped and glanced up at Jago who was watching her intently.

‘I’ve been responsible for his welfare for a long time.

He’s three years younger than me.’ She looked down at her hands again, the fake engagement ring glinting at her like an accusing eye.

You failed him. You allowed Eliot’s life to be destroyed. You don’t deserve to be happy.

Her inner critic was relentless in its disparagement of her failings where Eliot was concerned.

‘Why did you take it upon yourself to be responsible for him?’ Jago asked, still frowning darkly.

Mollie stood from the bed in one jerky movement. ‘Because none of the adults in our life were up to the task.’

Concern was written large on Jago’s face. ‘Who took care of you?’ There was a hollow-sounding quality to his voice she had never heard in it before, as if he was picturing her as a young child trying her best to survive.

‘I took care of both of us,’ Mollie said.

Her earliest memories were not of being cuddled or nurtured by her mother but of abuse and neglect, the gnawing pain of hunger and the cold-footed fear that tiptoed up and down her small spine on a daily basis.

‘My mother and her partner were drug addicts who had no idea how to look after little kids. We were in and out of foster care, but every time we were sent back to my mother, who had supposedly cleaned up her act, it would all begin again. The drinking, the drugs, the parties, the creepy boyfriend who had brutal methods for controlling little kids who were crying with hunger.’

Jago swallowed deeply, the sound audible in the silence. ‘Mollie…’ There was an anguished quality to his voice and his eyes looked pained. ‘Did he…hurt you?’ His hands were clenched into tight fists as if he wanted to track down her mother’s criminal boyfriend and deal with him then and there.

‘I taught myself to go somewhere else in my head when he hit me. But Eliot was so little, and he didn’t stop crying, so my mother’s boyfriend used to slip him a pill to make him sleep.

I think that’s why Eliot has such addiction problems now, that and the abuse he suffered in foster care, which I blame myself for. ’

The shock and horror on Jago’s face was painful to witness. ‘Why do you blame yourself?’

‘Because I should have done a better job of protecting him. He was only three.’

‘But you were a child, only six years old yourself. The foster carers were supposed to be protecting you both.’