Page 48 of The Tycoon's Shock Heir

It had been years since he’d been here—years since the annual holidays he’d spent there in his early childhood. He glanced at the little pool where children splashed noisily, and at the few people lying on loungers around the edges. That had been his parents once, with Claudio and his ‘girlfriends’. Drinking martinis and smoking cigarettes, laughing and having fun together—the glamorous couple and their glamorous friends, the toast of the Riviera in their day, intact in their little bubble of happiness, years before the whole thing fell apart.

A waiter walked across the scene with a silver tray. He stopped to serve wine to an older couple on the terrace, sedately dressed, enjoying their lunch. Below them, on the loungers, a movement caught his eye—two women, sleek in their Saint Tropez tans. They’d been discreetly staring over at him, and were now doing it indiscreetly. They sat up provocatively, flirting, topless.

He turned his face deliberately away and looked at Ruby, who was watching with undisguised disdain.

‘Friends of yours...?’ she said, her dark eyebrows shooting up.

She scowled, turned her back and began to ease the red chiffon wrap from her shoulders, revealing a modest bikini beneath. Her waist was slightly swollen with their growing baby and her slim limbs glowed beautifully pale, obviously unfamiliar with hot sunshine. His heart surged with pride as he watched her.

‘...they certainly look as if they’d like to be.’

He smiled at her snippy comment, watching as she squirted a dollop of sun cream on her hand and began to smooth it down her arms. As she attempted to rub her back the twin blades of her shoulders flexed accusingly.

‘Allow me,’ he said, reaching round and lifting the cream from her hands. ‘And there’s no need to sound jealous. I don’t know those women and I don’t want to either.’

‘I’m hardly jealous,’ she snapped back, ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I’m merely stating the obvious. They find you attractive and they’re letting you know it.’

‘You know what’s attractive?’ he said, as he pooled the cream in his hands and rubbed it over her shoulders. ‘You being jealous and not admitting it.’

She lifted her ponytail and said nothing, compliantly allowing him to rub cream down over the twin blades of her shoulders and along the rim of her bikini. The fine bones and the ripple of muscle under her skin was a soft-strong combination he found completely seductive.

‘Your skin is flawless,’ he whispered in her ear.

‘Hmm...’ she mumbled.

He bent lower and smoothed all the way down her bumpy spine, fanning his hands out to cover her back.

‘I’ll be getting a lot more of it these next few months.’

‘More beautiful, then,’ he said, and he popped a little kiss on her warm cheek, lingering for a moment to savour the sensation of her hair and her ear as they brushed against him gently.

Oh, how he would have liked to linger there, he thought. But this was the exclusive Hotel St-Agnes, and she had already drawn her boundaries. Breaking them down was going to be a very enjoyable task.

He stood back and pulled off his T-shirt.

Twenty laps ought to cool things down for now.

He powered through the water, aware of the muffled voices of the children and the occasional snippet of conversation as he came up for air. Spending this time was a luxury he hadn’t factored into this week. The aftermath of the Cordon d’Or was supposed to be spent tying up other bits of hospitality and calling in more favours.

He had some solid clients he needed to line up before he met with Arturo. Their influence would be crucial as he went forward with his negotiations. But all that was on hold because right now another plan was forming in his head.

Ruby was obviously pregnant. If he was lucky the media interest in him would soon have faded and no one would be any the wiser until after the event. But if he was unlucky, the ex-boyfriend of Lady Faye would still gather some mainstream press column space, and the last thing he needed was the media or the very devout Arturos casting aspersions on his character because of his pregnant girlfriend.

His mind was whirring with ideas and scenarios. His stress level was pumping higher and higher. He could feel it, buzzing around his body. All the while he was caught up with Ruby, who knew what Claudio was plotting down in Saint Tropez? It was enough to drive him slowly out of his mind.

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