Page 2 of Fake Engagement Arrangement (Wilde Billionaire Brothers #1)

‘I’ve always known where you were.’

Mollie tried not to show her stunned reaction, but even so her eyes widened in shock.

He had known for two years that she was living and working in the suburbs of Edinburgh?

She moistened her talcum powder–dry lips and schooled her features back into some semblance of neutrality.

She couldn’t imagine Maxwell Wilde would have told him, but who else knew? No one. ‘Who told you?’

Something passed across Jago’s face like a faint ripple across a calm body of water. But his jaw tightened as if he was biting down on his molars. His diamond-hard look drilled into her gaze. ‘It wasn’t my grandfather. The only thing he told me was what a lucky escape I had when you jilted me.’

Mollie disguised a swallow and let go of the counter, opening and closing her stiff fingers. She kept her expression impassive, but her stomach was churning enough to make butter for every supplier of shortbread in the country. Possibly even the world. ‘And no doubt you agree with him?’

‘There are some things my grandfather and I do not see eye to eye on,’ Jago said with an unreadable look. ‘What time do you finish work?’

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea if we—’

‘Meet me at my hotel at six this evening. I’ll be waiting in the bar.’

He slipped his hand inside his jacket pocket and took out a business card and, taking a pen from the counter, scrawled the address of his hotel on the back and then handed it to her.

She looked at it like it was a hand grenade that could blow up in her face.

But then again, it could. A meeting with her ex-fiancé, in public, was flirting with danger.

Terrifying, but tempting danger.

Jago sat slowly sipping a single malt whisky and kept his eyes trained on the entrance to the stylish bar of his Edinburgh hotel.

He was taking a gamble Mollie would show up, but he was determined to talk to her in private.

A hotel bar was hardly private, but if he could get her to agree to take their discussion to his suite, then even better.

Seeing her again had triggered things in him he didn’t want triggered: anger, bitterness, humiliation at what she had done.

And yes, those other feelings he didn’t want to think too deeply about.

The feelings Mollie had stirred in him from the moment he met her.

The connection with her had been instant and intense, reminding him of how his father must have felt about his mother and vice versa.

Was it love? He had never acknowledged it, but he had a worrying sense it could well have been something close to it.

But Mollie’s jilting of him had blown it out like a flickering match stick in a stiff breeze.

The flame was gone, but the match head was still warm.

He had to make sure it wasn’t in any danger of being reignited.

He would have kept his distance, like he had doggedly done for the last two years, mostly out of stubborn pride.

But since his grandmother’s recent fall, which the doctors were worried she might not fully recover from, he needed Mollie’s help, and he was prepared to pay for it.

Besides, she had accepted money before, so he was confident she would accept it again, especially the eye-watering amount he was offering.

Jago leaned forward and put his whisky glass down on the table in front of him, his eyes catching sight of a brunette head outside the hotel.

His pulse leapt, his blood throbbed, and his anger and bitterness boiled.

Mollie was no longer dressed in her white beauty-clinic uniform with its grey trim but in a simple long-sleeved black dress that clung to her slim body in all the right places.

Places he had caressed with his lips and tongue and hands.

A shiver went down his spine like a streak of lightning, and he drew in a harsh breath to remind himself to keep on task.

This was not the time to think of the red-hot lust that brought them together from day one in a cataclysmic storm.

It was not the time to recall how his body had possessed the tight, wet, silky warmth of hers until he lost all conscious thought.

She had been his most exciting lover, and no one had ever come close to measuring up to her.

Which only made him all the more furious and intent on drawing a final line under their relationship once his grandmother’s health situation was sorted one way or the other.

Jago stood as she approached and waved his hand to a deep velvet chair close to his. ‘Take a seat. What would you like to drink?’

‘Water is fine, thank you.’ Mollie sat and elegantly crossed her slim legs, her hands clasping her evening purse with tense fingers.

But as if she sensed his glance at her hands, she loosened her hold on the purse and then released a long, steadying breath like someone about to start a yoga session after a stressful day.

Even though her expression was as blank as an unpainted canvas, there was a flicker of tension in her eyes.

A barely perceptible movement like a stagehand covertly shifting the set pieces around out of sight of the audience.

Jago waited until the waiter had served Mollie a tall glass of ice-water and moved away again before he spoke. ‘Busy day at the clinic?’ He raised his own glass to his lips and kept his eyes on hers as he took a sip.

‘Busy enough.’ Her mouth tightened and her gaze shifted, focusing on the open neck of his business shirt.

He saw her throat move up and down, a telltale sign of nervousness she was clearly at great pains to hide.

She glanced around the bar then turned back to face him, another flicker of worry passing through her gaze.

‘Relax, Mollie,’ Jago said, leaning back in his seat and putting his glass down beside him. ‘There are no paps around to document this auspicious moment.’

A frown tugged at her brow, and she shifted in her seat as if there were marbles beneath her.

Then she tossed the mane of her light brown hair over her shoulders, her expression masked.

‘What did you want to speak to me about? You mentioned a proposal. I’m guessing it’s not a marriage one like the last time.

’ Her tone was cool with a hint of mockery that ignited his anger all over again.

And that was what he wanted ignited—anger, not those other feelings.

‘My grandmother is unwell.’ He kept his gaze locked on her so he could gauge her reaction.

Mollie blinked and swept her tongue over her lips, her eyes showing compassion rather than the cool indifference he was expecting. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Is she in hospital?’

‘She has been but is now at Wildewood Manor. She had a fall and has broken her arm and suffered a concussion.’

‘I’m sorry. It must be so difficult for her.’

‘That’s not the worst of it.’ Jago kept his gaze trained on hers. ‘Gran has some memory issues as a result of the fall.’ He waited a beat and continued. ‘She thinks we are still engaged to be married.’

Mollie’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she adopted a bland expression once more. ‘That must be quite inconvenient for you having to explain that we are no longer—’

‘I have chosen not to explain that to her.’

Mollie stiffened like a ventriloquist’s puppet suddenly jerked upright. ‘What?’ Her shocked voice rang with a note of panic.

Jago eyeballed her, a grimly determined set to his mouth. ‘I want you to come with me to her eighty-fifth birthday party this weekend. As my fiancée.’

Mollie looked as if he had asked her to fly to the moon and back and pick up a souvenir satellite on the way.

Her mouth opened and closed, her hands tightened around her glass, and then she placed it down on the table beside her, the surface of the water shivering slightly.

‘There’s no way I can do that, Jago. It’s unfair of you to ask me to. ’

‘I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.’

Her grey-blue eyes challenged his, and his blood pulsed and leapt in excitement.

He had always found her strong-willed spirit a turn-on.

It was one of the things he had missed about her since she’d walked out on him—the fiery spats that always ended up in bed.

The sun never went down on their anger; he made sure of it.

The combustion of their lust for each other had been cataclysmic, and even though he did everything in his power to erase those sensational sensual sessions from his mind, nothing worked.

Mollie was branded on his body, his brain, in his blood.

He could feel it now: the heat, the throb, the tightening of his flesh.

The hunger. The raw raging need nothing would satisfy but her.

‘What does your grandfather think of this…plan of yours?’ she asked with a cautious look cast in his direction without fully meeting his gaze.

‘I haven’t told him yet. I thought I’d surprise him.’

The colour leached from her face like a cartoon character, and her gaze snapped back to his. ‘I seem to recall your grandfather isn’t one for surprises.’

‘People can change.’

She gave a snort and reached for her water with a not-quite-steady hand.

‘I haven’t yet seen a leopard prowling around without its spots.

’ The bitterness in her tone didn’t surprise Jago.

His grandfather wasn’t known for his charm, but he was legendary at cutting insults and masterful manipulation.

Jago and his brothers had been on the receiving end of Maxwell Wilde’s vicious tongue too many times to count.

But since his grandfather’s stroke a year ago, the old man was not as powerful as he liked to think he was.

And Jago was going to use it to his advantage.

The press so far had not been privy to how much less powerful Maxwell currently was, and Jago was making the most of it.

Jago leaned back in his chair, one ankle crossing over his knee in a casual fashion, his finger idly flicking the toggle on the zipper of his Italian leather ankle boot. ‘Of course it goes without saying I’ll pay you for your time.’

Twin spots of colour came flooding back into her cheeks, and her mouth flattened. ‘How much?’

‘Double what my grandfather paid you.’

Mollie gaped at him, her eyes as wide as a cornered animal. ‘He told you about that?’ Her voice came out as a shocked thread of sound that was barely audible.

Jago slanted his lips in a cynical smile. ‘Don’t act so surprised, my love. I made it my business to find out what price had induced you to make a fool of me.’

Mollie looked down at her hands in her lap, her fingers gripping her purse like it was a lifeline. ‘Please don’t say that. We both know you didn’t love me.’ Her voice was strained and her colour high.

‘There are much worse things I could say, so you should be thankful I chose that.’

Jago was still confused about his feelings for her, back then and now.

So many emotions had thundered through him when she’d jilted him.

Shock, humiliation, anger, rage, despair, a deep, burning sense of betrayal—the list was endless.

How could he have been so easily hoodwinked by her?

She was a consummate actor, able to play the role of devoted fiancée for four months while all the time waiting for her chance to grab the money and run.

As sums of money went, especially given his family’s wealth, it hadn’t been that huge an amount.

But clearly it had been enough for her to make a new life for herself, without him.

It infuriated Jago he had genuinely believed she had fallen in love with him.

He wasn’t the sort of guy to be easily deceived, and yet she had done it and done it convincingly.

He knew Hollywood actors who couldn’t have done a better job of fooling him.

He knew he should direct most of his anger at his grandfather for paying her such a sum, but he couldn’t find it in himself to forgive Mollie for taking it.

Why had she done it? If she had needed money, he would have gladly given it to her.

He still had trouble accepting she was a gold-digger, but all the evidence pointed to it.

What other interpretation could he have?

She chose to humiliate him by pretending to be madly in love with him for months on end, sharing his bed, wearing his specially designed engagement ring, looking up at him adoringly.

How had he not seen through it? Jago used to pride himself on being able to spot a gold-digger from afar, but in Mollie’s case he had got it so wrong.

She had made a fool out of him in front of the world, and that he would never forgive.

But now, all Jago felt was a need to protect his grandmother, and if he had to bribe Mollie to play a little game of make-believe with him, then so be it.