Virgin: Undone by the Billionaire. Jennie Lucas
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His friend was getting married today.
Roark waited for him at a table in the bar of the Cavanaugh Hotel, where he’d been slowly nursing his scotch for the past ten minutes.
He wondered if it was too late to talk Nathan out of it. Grab the poor bastard and force him to run before it was too late.
Roark rubbed the back of his head, still jet-lagged from his long flight from Ulaanbaatar. He’d finished the project in Mongolia yesterday and arrived in New York just an hour ago. His first time in the city in a year and a half, and he almost hadn’t come. But he couldn’t let his old friend face the firing squad alone.
One week before Christmas, and the sleek, modern hotel bar was filled with businessmen in dark, expensively cut suits. There were a few women scattered here and there, a few in suits but most wearing slinky dresses and red lipstick as fake and carefully applied as their bright, flirtatious smiles.
It could have been any expensive bar in any five-star hotel in the world, and as Roark took another sip of the exquisite forty-year-old Glenlivet, he felt disconnected from everyone and everything. He glanced down at the half-filled tumbler. The scotch was just a year older than Roark was. In a year he’d be forty. And though he told himself life was only getting better, there were times …
He heard a buxom blonde burst into shrieking laughter at the joke of the short, balding man nearby. He watched them sip pink champagne cocktails and pretend they were in love.
All fake. So fake.
Roark couldn’t believe he was back in New York. He wished he was back on the building site, sleeping on a hard cot in a tent in Mongolia. Or working in Tokyo. Or Dubai. Or even back in Alaska.
Anywhere but New York.
Was she here for Christmas?
The thought sneaked into his mind, unbidden and unwelcome. Scowling, Roark took another sip of scotch. All the places he’d been in the last year and a half jumbled together. He’d been working hard. Constantly. Trying to forget her.
The only woman who’d ever brought him such pleasure.
The only woman who’d ever left him wanting more.
The only woman to hate him with such intensity.
Deservedly?
Her accusations still burned through his soul, no matter how many sixteen-hour days he worked or how many hours he spent riding horses along the Mongolian plains, the cold desert wind whipping his skin.
“You seduced me for the sake of skyscrapers that will never, ever love you back. And you call my father a failure? You call him a fool? He loved us. He’s a better man than you will ever be.”
Roark pressed the cool glass against his forehead. He’d made his choice. He wanted no wife. He wanted no children.
He’d had a family once, people who’d loved him. And he hadn’t saved them. Better to have no one to love than to fail them. Easier. Safer for everyone.
Too bad Nathan didn’t realize that.
He loved us. He’s a better man than you will ever be.
“Roark?” he heard Nathan say. “Christ, you look bad.”
Relieved to be interrupted, Roark looked up to see his old friend standing by the bar table. Nathan beamed at him, looking hale and hearty in jeans and a sweater.
“And I’ve never seen you so happy,” Roark admitted. He held out his hand. “You’re even getting fat!”
With a grin, Nathan shook Roark’s hand. Sitting down at the table, he ruefully patted his belly over his sweater. “Emily keeps feeding me. And after today, it’s only going to get worse!”
Roark looked straight at him. “So run.”
“Same old Roark,” his old friend said with a laugh. He shook his head. “I’m just glad you made it. Trust you to fly in from Mongolia with an hour to spare.”
“Last chance to talk you out of it.”
Nathan signaled to the waitress for a drink. “If I’d thought you actually meant to come to the wedding, I would have made you best man.”
“And if I’d been your best man, I’d have convinced you not to get married. Stay free.”
“Believe me, when you find the right woman, freedom is the last thing you want.”
Roark snorted. “Right.”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re crazy. You’ve only known the girl for what, six months?”
“A year and a half, actually. And we’ve just had some news to make this truly the happiest day of our lives.” Nathan leaned over the table with a grin. “Emily’s pregnant.”
Roark stared at him. “Pregnant?”
Nathan laughed at his expression. “Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
Pregnant. His old friend wasn’t just settling down with a wife, he was going to have a child. And it made Roark feel every one of his thirty-nine years. What the hell was wrong with him, anyway? He had the perfect life as a bachelor, the life he wanted!
“Congratulations,” Roark said dully.
“We’re looking for a place in Connecticut. I’ll commute to the city for work, but still have a nice house with a yard for the kids. Emily wants a garden….”
A garden. Roark had a sudden memory of an Italian garden full of roses. Blooms in red, yellow, pink, hidden from the world by a medieval stone wall seven feet high. The feel of the hot sun, the buzzing of honeybees and the wind rattling the trees. And the taste of her skin. Oh, God, the sweet taste of her …
“And to think I only met Emily because of that West Side land deal,” Nathan continued. “Do you remember it?”
Roark put down the half-empty glass and said evenly, “I remember that we lost it.”
The loss was still sharp for Roark. It was the only time he’d ever lost anything.
No. There’d been another time. When he was seven years old and his mother had dumped him in the snow in the middle of the night. Her face had been black with soot, streaked with terrified tears. She’d run back into the cabin for her husband and older son. Roark had waited, but they’d never come out….
“It was at the Black and White Charity Ball that I first met Emily.” Nathan nodded his thanks at the cocktail waitress who’d brought his drink. “She works for Countess Villani. You remember the countess, don’t you?” He whistled through his teeth. “That’s a woman no man can ever forget.”
“Yes, I remember her,” Roark said in a low voice. No matter how hard he tried to forget Lia, he remembered. He remembered the way she’d felt in his arms when he kissed her at the ball. Remembered the tremble of her virginal body when he took her in the garden. Remembered the explosive way he’d desired her.
The way she’d looked at him with wonder as they made love—then hatred when she learned his name.
All things he didn’t want to remember. Things he’d spent the past year and a half trying to forget.
He’d never seen a woman her equal. And he’d only had her once, taking her with frenetic, desperate passion. He’d wanted more. He’d wanted to take her again and again, to slow down, take his time, to enjoy her.
She was the only woman who’d ever denied him the chance to take his pleasure for as long as he desired.
Forget her? How could he, when Lia was the one woman every man wanted—and he was the only man who’d ever touched her?
At least, he had been the only one. He suddenly wondered how many men had taken Lia to bed in the last year and a half.