His Ultimate Demand. Victoria Parker
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Give me the name of the website. And where the hell is Macau anyway?’ the blonde asked.
‘Umm...Europe, I think?’
Ruby barely suppressed a snort. Heart thumping, she took her phone from her tiny clutch and keyed in the website address.
An hour and a half later, she sent another Hail Mary and pressed send on the online forms she’d filled out on her return home.
It might come to nothing. She could fail whatever test or interview she had to pass to get this gig. Heck, after discovering that she was applying to hostess for Q Virtus, one of the world’s most exclusive and secretive private clubs, she wondered if she didn’t need her head examined. She could be wasting money and precious time chasing an elusive man. But she had to try. Each day she waited was another day her goal slipped from her fingers.
The alternative—bowing to the pressure from her mother to join the family business—was unthinkable. At best she would once again become the pawn her parents used to antagonise each other. At worst, they would try and drag her down into their celebrity-hungry lifestyle.
They’d made her childhood a living hell. And she only had to pass a billboard in New York City to see they were still making each other’s lives just as miserable but taking pleasure in documenting the whole thing for the world to feast on.
The Ricardo & Paloma Trevelli Show was prime-time viewing. The fly-on-the-wall documentary had been running for as long as Ruby could remember.
When she was growing up, her daily routine had included at least two sets of camera crews documenting her every move along with her parents’.
TV crews had become extended family members. For a very short time when it’d made her the most popular girl at school, she’d told herself she was okay with it.
Until her father’s affairs began. His very public admission of infidelity when she was nine years old had made ratings soar. Her mother publicly admitting her heartbreak had made worldwide news. Almost overnight, the TV show had been syndicated worldwide and brought her parents even more notoriety.
The subsequent reunion and vow renewal had thrilled the world.
After her father’s second admission of infidelity, millions of viewers had been given the opportunity to weigh in on the outcome of Ruby’s life.
Strangers had accosted her on the street, alternatively pitying and shaming her for being a Trevelli.
Escaping to college at the opposite end of the country had been a blessing. But even then she hadn’t been able to avoid her roots.
It’d quickly become apparent that she had no other talent than cooking.
The realisation that the Trevelli gene was truly stamped into her DNA was a deep fear she secretly harboured. It was the reason she’d cut Simon out of her life without a backward glance. It was also the reason she’d vowed never to let her parents influence her life.
Which was why she needed a ten-minute conversation with Narciso Valentino. A tingle of awareness shot through her as she replayed the scene outside Riga.
With a spiky foreboding, she recalled the dark, dangerously sensual waves vibrating off him; those bronzed, sure fingers drifting over the blonde’s bottom, causing unwelcome heat to drag through Ruby’s belly.
God, what was she doing lying in bed thinking of some stranger’s hand on his girlfriend’s ass?
She punched her pillow into shape and flipped off her bedside lamp. She couldn’t control the future but she could control the choice between mooning over elegant hands that looked as if they could bring a woman great pleasure or getting a good night’s sleep.
She was almost asleep when her phone pinged an incoming message.
Exhaling in frustration, she grabbed the phone.
The brightness in the dark room hurt her eyes, but, even half blinded, Ruby could see the words clearly. Her CV had impressed the powers that be.
She’d been granted an interview to become a Petit Q.
Macau, China, One Week Later
THE RED FLOOR-LENGTH gown sat a little too snugly against Ruby’s skin, and the off-the-shoulder design exposed more cleavage and general flesh than she was comfortable with. But after two gruelling interviews, one of which she’d almost blown by turning up late due to another delayed train, the last thing she could complain about was the expensive designer outfit that spelt her out as a Petit Q.
She was careful now to avoid it getting snagged on her heels as she walked across the marble floor of her hotel towards the meeting place, from where they’d be chauffeured to their final destination. In her small case were two carefully folded, equally expensive outfits the management had provided.
An examination had shown that they, too, like the dress she wore, would be tight...everywhere. It was clear that someone, somewhere in the management food chain had got her measurements very wrong.
She’d already attracted the attention of an aging rock star in the lift on the way to the ground floor of her Macau hotel. It didn’t matter that he’d seemed half blind when he’d leered at her; attracting any attention at all made her stomach knot with acid anxiety.
She’d let her guard down with Simon, had believed his interest to be pure and genuine, only to discover he wanted nothing more than a bit on the side. The idea that he’d assumed because she was a Trevelli she would condone his indecent proposal, just as her mother continued to accept her father’s, had shredded the self-esteem she’d fought so hard to attain when she’d removed herself from her parents’ sphere.
She wasn’t a coward, but the fear that she might never be able to judge another man’s true character sent a cold shiver through her.
Pushing the thought away, she straightened her shoulders, but another troubling thought immediately took its place.
What if she’d made a huge mistake in coming here?
What if Narciso didn’t show? What if he showed and she missed him again?
No, she had to find him. Especially in light of the phone call she’d received the morning after she’d signed on to be a Petit Q.
The voice had been calm but menacing. Simon had sold his twenty-five-per-cent share of her business to a third party. ‘We will be in touch shortly about interest and payment terms,’ the accented voice had warned.
‘I won’t be able to discuss any payment terms until the business is up and running,’ she’d replied, her hands growing clammy as anxiety dredged her stomach.
‘Then it is in your interest to make that happen sooner rather than later, Miss Trevelli.’
The line had gone dead before she could say anything more. For a moment, she’d believed she’d dreamt the whole thing, but she’d lived in New York long enough to know loan sharks were a real and credible threat. And Simon had sold his share in her business to one of them.
Panicked and angry with Simon, she’d been halfway across the Indian Ocean before she’d read her Petit Q guidelines and experienced a bolt of shock.
No doubt to protect its ultra-urban-legend status, the Q Virtus Macau caucus was to be a masked event at a secret location in Macau.
Masked, as in incognito. Where the chances of picking out Narciso Valentino would be hugely diminished.
The memory of broad shoulders and elegant fingers flashed across her mind. Yeah, sure, as if she were an expert in male shoulders enough to distinguish one from the other.
Her fingers clenched around her tiny red clutch. She’d come all this way. She refused to admit defeat.
The redhead from Riga turned towards her and Ruby