Page 7 of Fake Engagement Arrangement (Wilde Billionaire Brothers #1)

Jago was reluctant to let Mollie out of his sight, but short of kidnapping her, there was nothing he could do but escort her home and hope she didn’t do a runner before Friday.

Being with her again stirred up so many emotions, none of which he wanted to acknowledge.

He had never considered himself a jealous man, but since meeting Mollie, he had seen the way other men looked at her.

With her long light brown hair and grey-blue eyes, she could easily have graced the cover of a high fashion magazine.

She moved with a ballerina’s grace, floating, gliding, ethereal.

Her face was a neat oval, her nose a ski slope, her mouth…

Oh God, why did he have to keep looking at her mouth?

His own lips tingled with the memory of the softness of her lips against his.

His lower body turned to steel as he recalled those lips sucking on him.

Even their first kiss had detonated something inside him, sending him wild with need.

A need that had reawakened by being in her presence.

Since their break-up, he had not rushed into a new relationship but left it for close to a year before he ventured back to his playboy lifestyle.

Strangely, it hadn’t satisfied him the way it had before, which he was reluctant to admit to anyone, including himself.

The press made a big deal about his enviable lifestyle—wealthy, privileged, with his choice of women to entertain him as he pleased.

But since Mollie had left him, no one pleased him.

Jago had accumulated even more wealth in the two years since the cancelled wedding, but he didn’t take any pride or satisfaction in the extra millions in his bank account and property and investment portfolio.

He didn’t feel any sense of pride in what he had achieved.

Instead, he felt a sense of niggling failure that the one person he wanted had got away.

Had got away because she had valued money over him.

That was something he could not forgive.

Jago looked across at Mollie sitting with a cool and untouchable expression on her face.

She could be so animated when they discussed something she was passionate about, and yet at other times, she could shut down her features in a blink of her eyes, effectively locking him out like a window shutter.

Like any couple, they had had their differences of opinion at times, but their electric physical chemistry had always ironed out those differences with a distracting lovemaking session.

And they had been spectacularly distracting.

So distracting, he still could not erase them from his mind.

If he allowed himself, he would think about her skin against his every day.

He had never been the type of man to obsess over a lover.

He had flings, so many flings he had trouble recalling faces, let alone names.

When a fling was over, it was over. Never had he ruminated on a break-up like his with Mollie.

But then, he hadn’t broken up with her—she had done it to him and in the most humiliating way of all.

But in spite of all that, Mollie had somehow burrowed her way into his brain and body to the point he was nearly always thinking about her, and that had to change. He had to move on, and his grandmother’s recent memory loss had given him the perfect way to do it.

It occurred to him he didn’t know how to reach Mollie other than physically.

That had been their language, their communication.

A look, a kiss, a stroke of a finger, a hand down the other’s face or arm had spoken volumes.

His body pounding into her welcoming silky wetness had told him all he needed to know… back then.

Now, with her sitting coldly and closed off from him with a coffee table as a barrier between them, Jago realised he knew nothing of her life over the last two years.

What had she done with the money his grandfather had paid her to go away?

It was a significant sum and yet she was working in a rundown suburb in a beauty clinic that looked like it needed more of a makeover than its clients.

He had only found out about the money in the last few months as he had taken over more and more of his grandfather’s business affairs.

His grandfather’s stroke a year ago had not just affected his physical mobility, but Maxwell no longer had the sharpness of intellect one needed to run a multi-arm corporation.

Jago had his own property development business to run, but at least he had the skills and mental acuity to juggle both businesses, although it was tough right now with his younger brother, Jonas, out of the country for an unspecified time.

While Jonas occasionally went off-grid to work as a naval architect on top-secret missions, his sudden departure seven months ago had been a little unusual.

Not that Jago was close with either of his brothers—their grandfather had seen to that—but Jonas was the closest to their grandmother.

Jago hadn’t even been able to get a message through to him about their gran’s health crisis.

Jonas had simply disappeared, leaving instructions that no one was to contact him, including the young woman he had been dating.

But that was his younger brother’s personal business. Jago had his own to sort out.

‘So what have you been doing with yourself the last two years?’ Jago asked to break the silence because it was becoming obvious to him Mollie was not going to.

Mollie’s eyes dipped to the glass she was holding, the ice cubes rattling against the sides. ‘Working.’

‘Because you want to or you need to?’

Mollie gave him an unreadable glance. ‘Both.’

He had trouble controlling the urge to curl his lip. ‘It didn’t take you long to get rid of the money my grandfather paid you. What did you do with it?’

Her small chin came up, and her eyes flashed like a struck match. ‘I am not going to discuss my financial affairs with you.’ Her tone could have clipped a yew hedge.

Jago held her gaze with iron determination.

‘Ah yes, the non-disclosure agreement.’ It was a guess on his part, but Jago knew enough about his grandfather to realise Maxwell would never leave himself open for exploitation.

No way would he pay someone off without making sure they never told anyone about it.

For as long as Jago could remember, the press had feasted on stories of the Wilde brothers.

Jago’s grandfather was, in his halcyon days, a savvy businessman who had used every means in the book to build his wealth, not necessarily for his family but for the sake of his ego and overblown pride.

But since his stroke, his grandfather had had to rely on Jago to take over more and more responsibility, a situation Maxwell did not accept with grace or gratitude but with criticism and grumpiness.

Mollie’s eyes flared for the briefest moment at the mention of the non-disclosure agreement, but she didn’t respond.

She swirled the contents of her glass, then lifted it to her lips and took a measured sip.

He got the sense she was trying to find her way through a verbal minefield, careful in what she said and how she said it.

She put the glass back on the table between them with almost exaggerated precision, then sat back and met his gaze with a cool stare that made him all the more determined to get under her fortresslike guard.

‘I know what my grandfather is capable of,’ Jago said into the throbbing silence. ‘He’s ruthless and manipulative and will stop at nothing to get what he wants.’

Mollie’s neat eyebrows rose ever so slightly, and her mouth slanted at a cynical angle. ‘You could easily be describing yourself, coming all this way with offers of money to get me to do what you want.’

Jago had to stop himself from clenching his jaw out of frustration.

Of course he was prepared to be ruthless.

He had to be to get her to come to his grandmother’s birthday, and he would do whatever it took to achieve it.

He didn’t trust her not to do another runner on him, so he had to find a way to keep her close, as dangerous as that was.

Dangerous because of the sexual chemistry that still thrummed in the air between them.

He could feel it in his body—the stirring of his blood, the swelling and tightening of his flesh as he recalled the way she’d welcomed him into her body in the past. Had she really wanted him back then, or had it all been an act?

She had been so damned convincing he had fallen for it.

Fallen hard. Not in love, but in lust. Red-hot and flaming.

Lust so powerfully addictive he had never wanted it to end, thus the marriage proposal.

It was the one thing he prided himself on—that he hadn’t told her he loved her.

She had said those three little words, albeit in a whisper one night after making love, but he hadn’t said them back.

He had pretended to be asleep, for saying those words were difficult for him because the last time he told someone he loved them—his parents—they didn’t come back.

Not that he truly believed he had been in love with her anyway, or at least he didn’t want to think he had been that foolish to fall in love with someone who threw him over for money.

It was physical attraction that had bound him to her back then.

Their connection had reminded him of his parents’ strong physical bond: they had been so happy with each other until fate stepped in and ruined everything.

‘Money seems to be the only thing that appeals to you,’ Jago said, nailing her with his gaze.

‘Money has universal appeal, does it not?’ Her voice was straight out of the gold-digger’s playbook but something about her eyes reminded him of a wrong note played in a performance.