Page 4 of Fake Engagement Arrangement (Wilde Billionaire Brothers #1)

Mollie put her glass down and then began to absently rub the knuckle of her empty ring finger.

She had loved the ring Jago had chosen for her and was surprised Maxwell hadn’t insisted on her handing it back when he paid her to go away.

She had offered it to him, but he’d shaken his head, his faded blue eyes cold.

It was as if he thought the priceless ring was already tainted by her wearing it.

Mollie had planned to post it back to Jago, but then remembering the terms of the non-disclosure agreement Maxwell had insisted she sign, that option was off the table.

She was not to contact Jago under any circumstances.

She’d held on to the ring for weeks, taking it out and looking at it as a reminder of what her engagement to Jago had represented: a chance to change her life for the better and help Eliot finally slay his demons.

To believe in love conquering all. But one day when she’d opened the drawer where she kept the ring, she found it was gone.

Sold by her brother to pay off a drug debt.

It confirmed to Mollie the hopelessness of her dream.

Happily-ever-afters didn’t happen to people like her.

Dreams didn’t get a chance to fly. Hope could only hold out so long, no matter how driven and determined you were.

There had been an element of compromise about Mollie accepting Jago’s marriage proposal after only four months of dating, but she had loved him and hoped his feelings would grow for her.

He had certainly acted like a man in love.

He was an attentive and considerate lover.

He had patiently listened when she’d vented about a difficult client or when she’d told him of some new skin product she was excited about using.

She had fooled herself—like a lot of women did—that one day he would say those magical three little words.

He hadn’t, and now he never would. Not after what she had done.

He hated her. He loathed her. He thought her a gold-digger.

And if she told him the truth, there was a chance he wouldn’t believe her.

No one had ever told Mollie they loved her, not even her brother.

‘What did you do with my engagement ring?’ Jago asked, glancing at her left hand. ‘Sell it?’

Mollie stilled her hands and wished she could slow down the rapid thump-thump-thump of her heart. ‘I…lost it.’ She regretted hesitating over the choice of word to use, but she didn’t want to implicate her brother. Not that Jago even knew she had a brother.

‘Lost it or sold it?’ Jago looked at her with a penetrating gaze she found a trifle unsettling. Suspicion lurked in his eyes, and it pained her to see it. She had lost his respect, and it stung. Oh, how it stung like acid poured into an open wound, her pride shrivelling, scarring.

Mollie had chosen not to tell Jago about her brother, not because she was ashamed of Eliot but because she had so skilfully whitewashed her background, simplifying it to make it less likely to trip over a lie.

She had told Jago she was an only child, which was partially true—she was the only child of her mother and her scumbag of a father who hadn’t bothered waiting around long enough for Mollie to be born.

Eliot was her half-brother, the son of her mother and her mother’s abusive partner, but to Mollie, there was nothing half about her love and concern for Eliot.

He was her only living relative, and she was the only person he could rely on.

Mollie had told Jago she was an orphan, which had created a connection with him at the time.

The orphan bit wasn’t a lie: her mother and her partner had both had drug and alcohol issues and ended their days in squalor, leaving two wild-eyed terrified children sitting with their decomposing bodies for three days before someone found them.

Mollie was no longer that pitiful six-year-old who hadn’t been able to undo the deadbolt on the front door or open the painted-over latches on the windows. She was no longer without agency or control over her circumstances.

But Eliot…

Her heart tightened like it was in a cruel vice.

Mollie hated thinking about how it had impacted his young brain, the neglect, the starvation, the drugs her mother’s partner had given him to stop him crying…

It seemed to her a betrayal of Eliot’s privacy to tell everyone what had happened to him.

Even he hadn’t told her about the sexual abuse that had occurred in foster care until he was an adult.

When Mollie started dating Jago, she’d realised his high profile would draw unwanted attention to her and then Eliot, if his existence became known.

Who didn’t love reading a salacious rags-to-riches story?

It was clickbait on steroids. The headlines had flashed across her brain then, and they did so again now.

Impoverished Girl from the Wrong Side of the Tracks Engaged to Handsome Playboy Billionaire Jago Wilde

Drug-addicted Half-Brother with a Criminal Record Joins the Wealthy Wilde Family through Marriage

It was gut-churning to think of the damage it could have done—and still could do—to Eliot if he was exposed to unprincipled journalists hunting for a juicy story.

Mollie forced herself to hold Jago’s laser beam gaze. ‘I genuinely lost it. I have no idea where it is. I always intended to send it back to you. I’m sorry. I know it cost you a fortune and—’

‘You’re damn right it cost a fortune.’ The bitterness in his voice was unmistakable, the scepticism in his gaze excoriating.

His vision of her as a gold-digger was understandable, but how could she change it without revealing her dark secrets?

Secrets she wanted to keep hidden for her own benefit as well as Eliot’s.

Once she had reached the age of eighteen, she had changed her name to avoid being linked to that lice-infested, malnourished little girl with red welts on her legs from the savage beatings she had endured.

She had distanced herself from little Margaret Green and become Mollie Cassidy.

Jago continued to look at her with his marble-hard gaze. ‘I’ve already taken the liberty of purchasing a replacement ring. A fake one just in case you have any idea about—’ he held up his fingers in air quotes ‘— losing it.’

Pride brought her chin up, and she held his gaze with gritty determination.

‘I never asked you to buy me such a ridiculously expensive ring. It was a waste of money when there are homeless people on the streets.’ Mollie knew she wasn’t exactly following the gold-digger’s handbook right now, but his distrust of her was so irritating.

Fine for him with his mouthful of silver spoon to call her out on losing his priceless engagement ring.

But then to her horror, he reached inside his jacket pocket and took out a velvet ring box and set it on the table between them. He leaned back in his chair and surveyed her features with an inscrutable expression.

Mollie stared at the blue box, noticing it was almost the same colour as his eyes. She longed to reach for it but instead curled her fingers into her palms until she could feel the curve of her nails leaving crescent moon impressions in her skin.

‘Go on. Take it. See if I got the size right.’

Mollie took a bracing breath and leaned forward to pick up the ring box.

She waited a moment before lifting the lid, only just managing to block the rush of air that threatened to come past her lips in a hurricane gasp.

It looked exactly the same as her lost ring.

Only a jewellery expert would be able to prove it wasn’t.

The sapphire-and-diamond ring glittered at her, and she had trouble keeping her hand steady as she gazed at it with a host of memories flashing through her brain like a flicker tape movie.

Jago’s unexpected but romantic proposal the night he gave it to her.

For someone who for most of her childhood had rarely received anything but charity shop gifts, Jago’s choice of ring more than made up for it…

or so she’d thought at the time. She remembered him sliding it over her knuckle, his fingers warm and gentle as they held her hand.

She remembered his gaze focused on her with an intensity she hadn’t seen in it before.

And she remembered the overwhelming sense of joy, of feeling safe and secure for the first time in her life.

She would have liked him to declare his love for her, but she’d fooled herself his proposal, his commitment, was enough.

But of course, it wasn’t. How could it have been?

‘It won’t bite your finger off if you put it on.’ Jago’s sardonic tone broke through her painful reverie.

Mollie flicked him a churlish glance and then took the ring out of the box, holding it up to the light to watch the diamonds catch the light from the chandelier overhead. ‘It’s a very convincing fake.’

‘That’s the plan—for you and the ring to be convincing fakes.’

Mollie still hadn’t put the ring on but was holding it, wanting to accept his fake ring and fake fiancée offer but worried about the consequences; for there would be consequences, of that she was certain.

Apart from facing Maxwell Wilde when he had banished her from his grandson’s life forever, how could she spend a weekend in Jago’s company without him tempting her all over again?

She could feel the magnetic pull of him even now.

He was the only man who had ever treated her with respect.

His touch had sent tingles along her skin from the first moment they met.

He had worshipped her body, taking it to heights it had never experienced before.

Her skin came alive, her senses went into freefall, her need for him a powerful passionate drive she hadn’t known she possessed until he’d awakened it in her.

‘So you haven’t told your grandfather of this plan of yours?’

‘No.’