‘You will?’ She didn’t look convinced and he couldn’t really blame her with the ideas now taking shape.
‘Yes, consider yourself in the clear.’
She beamed then, leaning in to peck him on the cheek. ‘One day, you’ll grow up and realise a relationship is what you need too, but until you do, I’m having no involvement in finding you a match.’
‘Such a thoughtful sister, aren’t you?’ he teased, mentally rejecting her suggestion of what he needed...and then the doubt set in. Hadn’t he already spent enough time debating their ‘just sex’ status? Was he changing? Was he wanting more?
Unease settled in the pit of his stomach, as images of his childhood, his parents entwined with others, swirled in his mind. The goading from the press, the public and now his mother’s media-hyped and utterly false marriage... His jaw pulsed, his stomach twisted.
Yeah, you want a relationship like a goddamn hole in the head.
He shook it all off, focusing on what he did know, what felt right.
Zara. In my bed.
He wasn’t ready to let her go. Not yet. He would be at some point, of course he would, but right now...
CHAPTER SEVEN
EJ’S DISBELIEVING RANT was still spinning around her head hours later.
‘You must know who he is. His family are the Swedish version of the Kardashians—the chuffing Osbournes, even. And he’s like their black sheep: the hunky, successful, don’t-trust-him-with-your-sister kind of sheep. Come on, Zara, you must know? He’s a billionaire businessman, for Christ’s sake, and since hitting the UK the press have been all over it, all over him.’
And still Zara had stared at her blankly—dumbly, even. How could she have been so clueless?
Now everything made sense. The comments about the press, the public image... In
fact, it made more than just sense, it reaffirmed all the reasons she should have stayed the hell away and not crossed that line.
‘He’s not the kind to get serious with,’ EJ had eventually said, and then she’d given her a tentative smile, ‘but you could still have some fun.’
Like hell.
It was late, the office deserted, and she was taking advantage of the solitude to smack her head with her stupidity, quite literally, the magazine clutched in her hand making a damn fine implement.
She’d lost count of the number of times she’d read the blasted article after EJ had left it with her. And then she’d scoured the Internet for more.
She knew it couldn’t all be true, that the press would have embellished or twisted the truth to work for them, but there was never smoke without fire. And there was enough smoke to know he wasn’t a man to get involved with.
She’d known his parents to be questionable—his honesty regarding their treatment of Julia had told her that. But now they were on another plane. His father a rock star, his mother a beauty queen, their marriage infamously fraught. His father dying notoriously in the bed of another woman and his mother marrying the band manager swiftly after his death.
And then had come the TV show—a reality TV show, for fuck’s sake!
Not that he’d gone in for it. He’d famously stormed off the show a decade ago, turning his back on his mother and having nothing to do with his two brothers.
But it would appear he’d only changed the TV cameras for those of the press. Flaunting his extreme sexual antics and by all accounts following in his father’s playboy footsteps. And she couldn’t get her head round it. Couldn’t pair the man she was getting to know with the man splashed all over the media, his own mother disowning him at every turn with outspoken disgust at his behaviour. As if she had any right to judge after all she had done.
They were a mess, through and through. And here she was, getting far too close for comfort.
Her breath shuddered out of her as she turned to her computer screen and the Forbes article covering the great success that was Lazenby Enterprises. Now appreciation swelled, appreciation for the man that had done it all alone, achieved billionaire status without any of his family’s wealth. And she had to admire him for that, just as she could admire his open affection for his sister, but the rest...
Argh—she was a fool.
She tossed the magazine onto the desk, the pages sweeping open to that page, having been well-fingered by now.
She stared at the photos. A series of different women, hanging off his arm or worse, and then the main image, of him pressing some blonde up against the glass entrance to The Shard, of all places. She cringed—did the man have no decency? And then her entire body mocked her, wanting to be that woman, wanting to be the one he’d pinned up against it. Jealousy, desire, self-loathing, all manner of crap pushing her to the brink, and she rubbed at her face in frustration, shoving herself out of her seat.
Don’t let another man get to you!