Bedded at the Billionaire's Convenience(13)

With stunning accuracy, Pierre looked at her narrowly and pointed out that, aside from anything else, what she had plotted in that scatterbrained head of hers amounted to little more than deception.

‘And you know what they say about those webs of lies…’ he rounded off, before slinging on his jacket and leaving the room.

‘I was desperate!’ She found herself tugging at his jacket and yanked her hand back as though it had been burnt. But the ruse worked because he did, at least, turn to look at her.

‘I’ll say this for you, Georgie. You’re persistent. If you could just harness that persistence to, say…something boring like an interest in world affairs, then who knows how far you could go?’ He would never admit it but her remark about his girlfriends had hit home and he fully believed her when she told him that Didi found them difficult companions. Like Georgie, his mother was a ‘live each day as it comes’ fellow bohemian to whom the gravitas of anything serious was to be sidestepped.

‘And anyway,’ he continued, resuming his sprint downstairs, ‘what would you have told her when the whole phony relationship had come to its natural conclusion?’

‘Oh, who knows, Pierre? Maybe I could just have shunted you off to the New World and created a whole alternative lifestyle for you! Perhaps explorer? Missionary? I could have transformed you into something other than a money-making machine and also done you the favour of relieving you of any responsibility to ever visit your mother again!’

That stopped him in his tracks and when he turned to face her his expression was hard. ‘Be careful, Georgina. I allow you leeway in view of our history, but there’s only so far that I’m prepared to go. Shooting your mouth off about matters of which you are ignorant is unacceptable. I enjoy seeing my mother. If I don’t get to see her as often as we would both like, then that’s to do with the lifestyle I lead. Companies don’t magically run themselves. They need someone at the helm and that someone happens to be me. And before you launch into another speech about the pointlessness of being a money-making machine, just cast your mind back to where my family fortune went and the debts my father accumulated leading his carefree, relaxed existence.’

‘He was happy! They both were!’

Pierre sighed. ‘I know that, Georgie. Look, I have to go. You’d better sleep here tonight. It’s too late for you to head back home and I won’t let you out to roam the streets in search of a cheap place to stay. There are towels in one of the closets upstairs and you can take your pick of either guest room. There’s also food in the kitchen. You can work your way around. Television’s in the downstairs sitting room.’#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#

‘Who are you going out with?’

Pierre raised his eyebrows in dry amusement. ‘Is that a leading question?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean that if I tell you that her name is Jennifer Street and that she’s a corporate lawyer specialising in tax, will the information be duly noted and used at a later date in evidence against me?’

Georgie grinned reluctantly. ‘I admit it might be,’ she confessed.

‘So, then, I’d better say that her name’s Candy Floss and she’s a stripper at a nightclub…’

‘Some things are just a little too hard to swallow, Pierre, and that’s one of them!’

‘Because the only thing I really know how to do is make money and the only women I would consider dating are women who make money as well? We don’t just talk about world affairs, Georgie,’ he said softly. ‘We also have fun…’

For a few seconds, Georgie felt as though the oxygen had been sucked out of her. A vision of Pierre and his corporate lawyer having fun and not talking about world affairs jostled for position in her head and as she met his eyes, saw the lingering smile on his mouth, she was struck by his raw sexuality in a way she never had been before.

‘Well, please give my proposition some thought, Pierre…’ She struck out for some neutral territory to banish her wayward thoughts, although her voice sounded nervous and high-pitched. ‘I’m really concerned…’ Drop it by a couple of decibels, she thought. ‘I’m really concerned about your mother and I would do anything to get her out of her state of mind, even if it means carrying through with a pretence. I’m not your type…’ she thought of his elegant, tax-lawyer-style girlfriends having fun before repairing somewhere for a civilised discussion about stock markets ‘…any more than you are mine…but your mother would be happy and that might be all it would need to give her the strength to get her life back on track…’