Page 21 of The Reluctant Billionaire (Love in London #5)

Lotta

I jump straight into it with my brother as he pours me a glass of Krug.

We have Elgin Residents and Friends tonight, a soirée that one of our celebrity neighbours is generously hosting on his roof terrace, and we both require some social lubrication first. He because he’s a miserable bastard who, to be fair, is having a shitty divorce, and I because I have barely emerged from my who exactly is Aide?

rabbit hole of the past twenty-four hours.

‘Thanks. So. You know Aidan Duffy, right?’ I say with false bravado as I accept the flute from him. Even saying Aide’s full name feels weird. Forbidden, somehow.

He stares at me blankly. ‘You know I do. How do you think your community project got kicked off?’

Um. The answer to that is I have not once wondered that .

I shrug. ‘I dunno. Randomly?’

‘He and I came up with the idea over drinks one night.’

Excellent. They’re not only acquaintances but drinking buddies . This is information I really could have done with having a week ago.

‘Did he not mention he knew me?’ Gabe asks.

‘Nope.’ Among other small details he didn’t mention. Like, that he was thirty-second on the Sunday Times Rich List last year.

‘Why do you ask, anyway?’ He takes a slug of Krug.

I hesitate. ‘I’ll tell you, but I need you not to be a judgemental arsehole for like, five minutes. Okay? Can you promise me that and just be nice?’

He raises his eyebrows. It’s a common reaction to my outbursts. But, to his credit, he follows it with a nod. ‘If that’s what you need.’

‘It is.’ I take a deep breath and a long sip. God, that’s delicious. Right. ‘So I didn’t realise it was him. As far as I was concerned, he was just this guy Aide on our project.’

Gabe stares. ‘But you’ve been working with him all week, haven’t you? How the hell did it not come up?’

Exactly, mate. Because someone’s a devious little fucker. I shrug. ‘I have literally no idea.’

‘So?’ he asks. ‘He giving you grief?’

‘Not exactly.’ Just a whole wedge of dick, actually. ‘But we’ve been… flirting all week.’

He narrows his eyes. The man is right to be suspicious. ‘Right.’

‘And I fucked him. Last night.’ I flick my sleek curtain of hair over my shoulder. It’s blowdried dead straight tonight.

Gabe grins. ‘You dirty little wench.’

‘Helpful. Thanks.’

‘Good for you. He’s a catch, or so I’m told. So what’s the issue? He bang you and leave you?’

‘No, dickhead, he did not. I kicked him out, I’ll have you know, and he looked pretty gutted. The issue is I didn’t put two and two together until we were in the pub last night with the whole crew, and I went ahead and brought him back here anyway, but he doesn’t know I know who he is.’

Gabe edges away from me and refills the flute he’s already drained. ‘Fucking hell. Sounds like an Oscar Wilde play.’

‘It’s definitely farcical,’ I concede.

‘So what’s the bottom line?’

Such a Gabe question. He’s bored already.

‘The bottom line is that I’m really, really pissed off with him.

I feel like he played me. But I also had a great time with him.

And now I don’t know what’s real. Like, is the fact that he’s actually this billionaire and didn’t tell me the real part, or is it that I had the most amazing shower sex of my life with him?—’

Gabe holds a hand out in front of his face as if I’m about to throw acid in it. ‘Fuck’s sake, Lotts. I don’t want to know.’

‘Sorry.’ I wait. ‘But I’m not sure what to do.’

‘It depends solely on what you want from him,’ he says with the characteristic clarity that explains why they pay him the big bucks. ‘Do you want a replay? If it was just one night, then it doesn’t really matter who’s played who. I mean, you won’t see him again after next week.’

That’s a chilling thought.

No more Aide.

It hits me right in the gut, and I’m not happy about it.

‘But if you’re interested in pursuing this, then you and he should try behaving like grownups and having an actual conversation,’ he continues.

I deflate, because I know he’s right.

‘You are aware we built his house, correct?’ he asks.

‘What?’ I stare at him in horror as my brain immediately flips through every standalone project we’ve done in living memory.

Our focus is mainly on building blocks of super-exclusive flats with all manner of amenities.

That’s where we excel. But we do the occasional house build for our highest net-worth clients.

‘Osterley,’ he says. ‘Two, three years ago? Mid century vibe. We had all that planning shit with his pool house.’

‘Holy crap. That’s his house?’ I remember it well. It’s a stunning showcase for what can be achieved without compromising on the ethics of materials or building techniques. A bright green poster child, if you like.

We built his fucking house.

Shit shit shit.

I’m feeling stupider by the second.

The drinks party is delightful, actually, and exactly what I need to get out of my own head.

The twelve flats across the two purpose-built Elgin blocks are all occupied now, and the list of residents is pretty epic.

It’s heavy on billionaires and celebrities, with a decent overlap between the two.

The journey to get here was utter mayhem, and at times it nearly broke me.

But the flats are sold, the investors are thrilled, and the media buzz I helped create around the entire project has been so successful that we’ve already sold half the residences in our next project in Knightsbridge off plan.

Our host for this evening falls smack bang in the middle of my mental celebrity-slash-billionaire Venn diagram.

Santiago Vale is the eldest son of the Vale musical dynasty, headed up by his father, the great tenor Dominic Vale.

Not only did Santi inherit his father’s singing talent, but he showed remarkable business acumen by forming a record company and buying back all of his father’s rights from Sony before signing a whole host of other classical artists.

The Vale family, however, is a walking soap opera.

Daddy Dom is on wife number two, who can’t be that much older than Santi, and Santi himself has recently and very publicly extricated himself from his own marriage to the famous soprano, Vanessa Vale.

I can only imagine the mess that’s caused, given how intrinsically their careers and fortunes are linked.

I’d put a lot of money on Vale Entertainment having held onto all Vanessa’s music rights, though.

Maybe Santi and Gabe can cry on each other’s shoulders this evening and exchange single parenting tips.

Even if something tells me neither of them will stay single for long.

Tonight’s setting is picture-perfect. Santi’s roof terrace has a beautiful view of Notting Hill’s ice-cream-coloured streets, of verdant trees, shady gardens, and private parks aplenty.

His guests are all equally beautiful. In one corner a DJ is providing chill-out vibes, and there’s a chic all-white bar in another.

All that’s missing is his adorable Staff, Luke, who’s usually his faithful shadow but whom I assume is NFI this evening given his penchant for canapés.

I give Santi my most dazzling smile as he leans down to greet me with a kiss on both cheeks.

A year ago, I would have been all over this gorgeous, eligible divorcé.

He’s sheer perfection in a black shirt that skims his trim torso perfectly.

His looks are as intoxicatingly dark and his bone structure as dangerously sharp as Tom Ellis, he has a voice that brings women to their knees, and he’s a majorly successful businessman who wields serious clout in the music industry.

What’s not to love?

For some unfathomable reason and by some cruel twist of fate, however, I’m pining over some lying Romeo who wears the hell out of a filthy vest and knows how to get his hands dirty by day and fuck me like a caveman by night.

Worse, rather than celebrating the fact that he’s secretly rich as sin, I’m actually bemoaning it.

What the utter fucking hell is wrong with me?

‘Hello, darling,’ Santi drawls in that entitled posh-boy accent that usually gets my juices flowing. Jesus, he smells amazing. He casts an approving eye over my short, frothy canary-yellow dress. ‘Looking ravishing, as always. Is that new season Giambattista?’

‘You’re good,’ I tell him with a saucy wink. Honestly, this man is perfection. A straight, hot male who can identify what label and season you’re wearing at first glance and is on first-name terms with the designer?

The guy’s officially a unicorn, and I am officially swooning.

Just, unfortunately, not in a sexy way. More’s the pity.

He grimaces. ‘I’ve spent more time than I’d care to in his Paris showroom recently. Four hours of my life I’ll never get back.’

‘Is he kitting you out with some nice gowns for your next gig?’ I ask.

‘I stick to Chanel for the gowns,’ he deadpans. ‘Nope, but he’s kitting Ness out with many, many gowns for our next gig.’

I accept a flute of champagne from a passing waiter. ‘Cosy.’

He sighs. ‘Tell me about it, darling. Unfortunately, I still get eargasms every time that woman opens her mouth to sing. There’s no one better in the world to duet with. If only she stuck to singing and not whining.’

‘You’ll find someone,’ I tell him unsympathetically. ‘I can’t believe for a second women aren’t crawling all over you.’

‘They are.’ He lowers his voice. ‘They’re just… predictable as fuck. You know. Sometimes these social circles of ours feel endlessly samey.’

I lay a hand on his arm, feeling slightly more sympathetic to his plight. ‘I know exactly what you mean, believe me.’

‘Too many rich playboys?’ he asks, faking fatigue.

I narrow my eyes at him. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe, or maybe the opposite—it’s kind of complicated. I haven’t worked him out yet.’

‘Sounds intriguing,’ he tells me. ‘Go forth and report back with your salacious gossip from your little enigma.’

I’m not ashamed to admit I spend the rest of the weekend spiralling.

I go into our records and examine every photo Aide’s interior designer sent us of his house.

You know, the one we built, that I had no memory of.

While it’s a little minimalist for my taste—I was raised by an Italian woman who favours Versace rugs, after all—it’s undeniably stunning.

Even better, it has such structural and environmental integrity that I want to swoon.

It’s come back to me now, how much he dug his heels in over making the environmental footprint of his home as light as possible.

How hard he pushed us to find innovative solutions to ensure it worked in harmony with, rather than against, nature.

How impressed we were, and what a learning curve it was for the Venus team even while it became a pain in all our arses.

Next, I scroll through every single image Aidan Duffy Official (ugh) has ever posted on Instagram, which tells me that I am a pathetic stalker with a love-sick (and still marginally sore) vagina and that he is, unfortunately, a decent guy.

You can get such a good idea of a person by what they post. Aide’s Instagram is horrifyingly uncurated. On the one hand, there’s lots of random candid shit, like a fish he caught or a sunset he dug or his trashed, abandoned trainers after the London marathon.

No selfies.

No pics of him on his own, accepting awards or giving speeches or anything like that.

Nada.

The other main purposes for his IG account appear to be lending his weight to worthy causes and showcasing them to his three million followers. He shares a lot of stuff from The Prince’s Trust and from his own youth charity, Fresh Start, as well as from other causes he deems worthy.

He also doesn’t mince his words. On one post, about the teachers’ strikes in the UK, he’s simply written When the government stops stealing from the education budget, our teachers will stop striking. Understand?

Probably the biggest rabbit hole I fall down, though, is his company, Totum .

From what I can see, its core business is data management software for the healthcare industry and its mission is to allow regional and specialist healthcare providers in the public sector—namely our very own NHS—to fully and confidentially share patient data, allowing doctors and other healthcare professionals to make more educated calls with a far fuller picture of all background and history pertaining to their patients.

Not only does it sound impressive, but its list of investors reads like the great and good of the British and US private equity industry. Its latest funding round, the one on which Aide’s current net worth is based, valued the company at north of fifty billion pounds.

I watch several videos of Aide talking articulately and intelligently about stuff I don’t have the faintest idea about.

With every word that comes out of his mouth, my stomach sinks further at the extent to which I’ve underestimated this man, and my core clenches, because he’s impressive and genius-level clever, and it’s outrageously arousing to have this side of him suddenly made available to me.

I’m Alice, going down the hottest, most jarring, rabbit hole ever .

How is it fair that listening to him spout tech jargon is just as much of a turn-on as having him grunt one-syllable caveman words as he fucks me?

It’s not fair at all.

There’s also a recording of him being interviewed on Bloomberg, where he asserts for what is apparently the millionth time that he won’t be seeking to take Totum public at any stage, because he’s not prepared to prioritise shareholders at the expense of their clients and the members of the public whose data they safeguard.

All of this stuff sounds like the Aide I know. All of it sounds like he’s using his wealth and his platform as forces for good.

Still, all of it makes me really fucking angry.

Angry with him for shying away from embracing who he is.

And angry with myself for taking him at face value.

I am going to tear strips off this guy on Monday.