Tempted by the Billionaire(6)
“Right.” Her frown was a flash in her face. Gone as quickly as it had appeared. “Thanks again for lunch.” She dipped her head forward and walked quickly towards the porch steps. She turned at the bottom, to say goodbye, but he’d already disappeared inside, leaving only the slamming door in his wake.
Yeah, she’d been right about him. Devilishly handsome, but just as confusing and dangerous as any guy she’d ever known. She strode towards her own home, her determination to ignore him made even stronger by the weirdly blunt end he’d put to their conversation.
He was no one to her. It didn’t matter to Willow if she never saw Mattias again. At least, that’s what she told herself.
CHAPTER THREE
His mother’s voice seemed to go on and on, but Matt was only half-listening. He reclined on the porch, but his eyes were trained on the house next door. The blinds were down and everything was quiet. But he knew Willow was in there.
He couldn’t say how or why, he just simply knew.
It was as if his body was some kind of divining rod to hers; he felt her presence like an actual element. In the same way some could detect water, his body seemed to be in a state of heightened awareness when she was around.
“Of course I’m listening, mother.”
He’d dreamed of her the night before. Her long dark hair had draped around her face, as she’d leaned over him, her arms long and slender, one on either side of his body, as she pressed her weight against him. He sighed ruefully. His divorce proceedings hadn’t technically begun, and he’d already forgotten his wife’s existence. Okay, he and Meghan had barely had a marriage, but what did it say about him that he was so easily to dismiss her as irrelevant?
He shifted his weight to his other elbow, and kicked an ankle over his knee. With true regret, he forced his brain to focus on the words his mother was barrelling down the phone.
“Yes, mother, I understand. When is the meeting?”
“Two weeks. You can’t put this decision off forever, Mattias. McCain Industries needs a chairperson, and you’re the only candidate.”
He ground his teeth together, trying to ignore the sense of inevitability that crushed against him like a wave. He grunted, and in that one sound, he perfectly conveyed his sentiments to his mother. She might have been a whole continent away, in her beachfront mansion in Maine, but she knew her son well enough to understand him even at that distance.
“It was your father’s dearest wish that you would follow in his footsteps one day,” Eleanor McCain pushed softly.
He shook his head with a wry smile. Leave it to his mother to play the one card he found it almost impossible to resist. “Yes, but he imagined my time as Chairperson would come well in my silver fox years. Not now. There’s so much more I want to do with my life.”
Eleanor sighed heavily. “What you want with your life, darling? None of us wanted this. Do you think I prepared for this? A life without your father?”
Matt closed his eyes, guilt searing through him. “Of course not, mom.”
He could hear her pull herself together, taking a fortifying breath as she composed herself. He knew her pale blue eyes would be shimmering with unshed tears, her long lashes webbed by moisture. “You’ve been allowed more latitude with your life than your father would have indulged,” she pointed out primly. “Marriage to that woman. A military career that put you in harm’s way, every day. You, our only son, and the only heir to the McCain Industries fortune.”
“Serving in the army was something I did for dad. For dad, and myself, and to honor his death.”
“There was no honor in his death,” she whispered stoically. “No honor, and no sense. The honor was in his life, and the best way to uphold it is to follow the footsteps he laid down for you.” She tsked down the phone. “You’ve been given enough extensions, Mattias. I don’t think I’ll be able to hold the board off any longer.”
He shook his head from side to side. The weight on his chest became gradually heavier, until he felt that his lungs might burst. “How can I spend my days in a boardroom?” He asked finally, wearily. It was the antithesis of how he would choose to spend his time.
“You will not always be behind a desk. You will have great scope to dictate your own movements. But McCain needs you at the helm, and it needs you now.”
“Why?” He demanded, sitting up straight as his spine tingled with an unspoken warning. Something in her tone, perhaps, had conveyed to him an urgency that she wasn’t relaying.
“It’s a question of timing, that’s all. The board is hunting for a replacement for you. I fear that if you don’t take up the seat now, you’ll lose the chance forever.”
“Good. Let them find someone. No doubt they’ll choose a candidate eminently more suitable than I am.”
“No one is more suited to this than you. It is your destiny. You have completed two degrees with this position in mind, and you have the company in your blood. Stop moping about that whore leaving you and get back to Manhattan.”
Mattias shook his head, his mother’s vitriolic assessment of his wife unsurprising and not completely unwarranted either. “My marriage breakdown lays squarely at my feet.”
“Bullshit,” Eleanor contradicted, her cultured accent lending the curse a degree of splendour. “While you were off fighting for a better world, she was operating a revolving door on your marital bed. She was a slut when you married her, and you should have known better.” Eleanor compressed her lips. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
That made two of them.
A dark shadow moved behind one of the blinds next door, and Mattias smiled.
Willow. She was in the kitchen, and from the way her shadow remained still, he’d guess she was making a coffee. She did that a lot. Usually, when the blind was up, she’d stare into space, her pretty face vacant as her complex mind whirled and spun through whatever she was contemplating.
“Shall I send the jet?” Eleanor persisted, her tone expectant.
“No.”
Before his mother could launch into yet another war of persuasion, he forestalled her. “I will come to Manhattan, mother. But in my own time.”
“Before the meeting?”
Mattias’s eyes drifted to Willow’s kitchen. He stared at the blinds, and wished they were raised, so that he could see her properly. “Yes.” It felt like he was agreeing to something far more sinister than attending a board meeting.
Maybe because he was.
Taking up the mantle of McCain Industries was his duty, and he’d always known it. Hank McCain had been proud of the business he’d inherited. “We’re not the idle rich, son. I’m not going to be the generation that rests on its laurels and loses the wealth. No, sir. I’m going to take what God and country gave me, and make it bigger and better than my granddaddy could have dreamt. Because that’s what we do, son. We take our opportunities and we line them with fucking gold.”
Mattias had been ten when his father had delivered the lecture, and he’d never forgotten it. Though Mattias had been a natural at football and gifted academically, he’d always been relaxed about his performance in both. What did he need good grades for? His future had been assured. Football scholarship? Leave those to the people most in need.
From that day forward, when Hank had turned the snowglobe of Matt’s life on its head, he’d seen things differently. He’d had ample opportunities handed to him on a platter, but that wasn’t enough. It was up to Matt to line them with gold. So he had. He’d excelled at sport; he’d aced his schooling. He’d been popular, hard working and determined to succeed.
And until his father’s all-powerful body had been turned into ashes and rubble, he’d thought life was pretty bloody spectacular. That he’d had it all.
But duty and responsibility were his mantle to take, and he would bear them in his father’s name. For his father, and because of his father, he would take the gift of McCain Industries and turn it into an even greater force.
He expelled a long, slow breath. He was ready. His time had come.
Well, almost. There was just one last thing he wanted to take care of in Haymarket Bay. And she was standing about ten feet away, behind a wall of glass and a thick curtain.
Willow and he had unfinished business, and he didn’t intend to leave town until he’d dealt with that.
* * *
His arms glistened in the midday sun. A combination of perspiration, sunblock and the haze from the kitchen window. She swallowed. Two days had passed since their abortive lunch, and still her mind hadn’t stopped focussing on him. She made a sound of frustration, but didn’t back away from the kitchen window.
Apparently, he’d progressed from painting the guest room to oiling the deck. And he’d chosen to start with the slats right across from her place. Willow bit down on her lip, trying not to drool as he bent down and wiped his forearm across his face, mopping the heat from his skin. Then, he leaned down, dipped the brush in the pot, and stroked another piece of timber.
He’d been working at it for over an hour, and somehow, Willow’s coffee break had turned into a complete perve session. She thought guiltily of the chapter she’d left languishing in her office. It was action packed and loaded with drama, yet she couldn’t return to it. She simply couldn’t walk away.