Virgin: Undone by the Billionaire. Jennie Lucas
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He took a deep breath, desperate to regain control over his body and his mind. Business. Ask her about the land! he ordered himself.
But his mouth wouldn’t follow his orders. He couldn’t stop looking at her.
It was because she was naked. It had to be. Once she was covered up, he would be able to think again. Bending to pick up her discarded white dress and panties from the grass, he handed them to her.
“Why did the count marry you, if not for your body?”
Looking dazed and disoriented, she stared at him, clutching the fabric in her hands. “He married me to be kind.”
“Right,” Roark said sardonically, forcing himself to look away. It was easier to be distant when he couldn’t see her or touch her. “That’s why men get married. To be kind. I had business dealings with Count Villani once or twice. The man was ruthless.”
“He was my father’s friend.” From the corner of his eye, he saw her slip on her dress, pulling up her panties beneath. “My father’s shipping company was stolen by a heartless corporate raider, and a few months later he died of a heart attack.”
Roark looked at her sharply.
“Giovanni came to L.A. for the funeral,” she continued simply. “He saw my sister had no money to pay for her treatment. He saw my mother was mad with grief. And he tried to save us.” She shook her head as tears filled her eyes. “But it was too late for them.”
A shipping company. Los Angeles. It was all starting to sound too familiar.
The Olivia Hawthorne Park Foundation thanks you for your generous donation.
Roark hadn’t paid attention to the name before. Now, a sick feeling went through his chest. “What was your father’s name?”
“Why?”
“Humor me.”
“Alfred … Alfred Hawthorne.”
Roark swore silently.
Just as he’d feared. Her father was the same man who, ten years ago, had mortgaged himself to the teeth trying to fight Roark’s hostile takeover of his shipping company. He had heard the man had died a few months later, followed to the grave by his teenage daughter who’d had some kind of brain tumor. Then the mother committed suicide with sleeping pills.
Only their oldest daughter had lived. Amelia.
Lia.
And she’d just given him her virginity.
Roark clenched his hands. She’d only done it because she didn’t know his name. By some miracle he’d managed not to tell her. But if she knew …
Once she knew, he wouldn’t have a shot in hell of getting her to spit on him to save him from burning to death, much less getting her to sell him the New York property.
“Did you know my father?” she asked softly, looking up at him.
“No.” And in a way it was true. He’d never really known the man. He’d just taken his poorly managed company and broken it into parts, destroying the docks and selling the valuable oceanfront property in Long Beach for a brand-new condominium development.
“I wish you had. I think you would have liked each other. Both powerful men, focused on success.”
The difference being that Roark always won, while her father had been a weak failure, a third-generation heir of a company he didn’t know how to properly run.
Roark managed not to point this out to her, however.
He had to convince Lia to sell him the New York property before she found out who he was.
Walking away from her, he took some papers out of the black leather briefcase he’d left beside the garden gate. The gate creaked loudly as he closed it and returned to her. “I want you to do something for me.”
“What is it?”
“A favor.”
“A favor?” she teased, smiling. “A bigger favor than giving you my virginity?”
He gave her his most charming smile in return. “It’s a small thing, really.” He paused. “Build your park somewhere else besides New York.”
Her jaw dropped. “What?”
“Transfer your purchase rights to the property site to me. I will make it worth your while. I’ll pay you ten percent over the asking price. Call it a finder’s fee.” He spread his arms in an expansive gesture. “Build the park in Los Angeles to honor your sister. Let me build skyscrapers in New York.”
She looked up into his face, her skin the color of ash. “That’s what this was all about? That’s why you kissed me in New York? Why you followed me to Italy?”
He ground his jaw. “It wasn’t the only reason….”
She shoved his chest, pushing him away very, very hard as she looked wildly over the rose garden. “That’s why you paid a million dollars to dance with me at the charity ball.” Her eyes glittered as she raised her chin. “That was why you seduced me. Just to get the land from me?”
He was losing the deal. He could feel it slipping through his fingers.
Looking at her, he shook his head. “Of course I want the land. More than you can possibly know. I can build five skyscrapers on that property that will last hundreds of years. The biggest project I’ve ever done. It’ll be my legacy.” He took a deep breath. “But that has nothing to do with making love to you. Taking you like this was … a moment of pure insanity.” He reached for her, trying to bring her back into his arms, back under his control. “If I’d known you were a virgin …”
“You know everything about me now, don’t you?” she said bitterly. “My name. My family. Where I live. And I still know almost nothing about you.” Evading his grasp, she clenched her hands into fists. “I don’t even know your name.”
If she heard his name, all was lost. “What difference does my name make? Think of the deal I’m offering you.”
She raised her chin, and her dark-hazel eyes glittered. “I want to know your name, you cold-hearted bastard.”
“I’m offering you a fortune.” He pushed the land-transfer contract into her hands. “Just look at these numbers …”
“Tell me your name!” she shouted.
And he couldn’t lie to her. His honor was more important than anything—even than the deal of a lifetime. He took a deep breath.
“My name,” he said quietly, “is Roark Navarre.”
CHAPTER SIX
LIA stared at him. “Roark … Navarre?”
She still remembered her father’s cry that lovely June morning, long ago. “He’s done it, Marisa. Roark Navarre has ruined us.” Lia had just graduated from high school and was still reveling in being accepted by Pepperdine, an expensive private university in Malibu she’d attend in the fall. Olivia had just started a promising experimental treatment with a new doctor. And their mother, who always switched so quickly between ecstasy and despair, had been happily painting the distant Santa Monica pier with watercolors on canvas. The California sunshine had been bright and warm against their three-story beach house.
Then her father had come home in the middle of the morning, staggering into her mother’s arms as if he’d just received a heavy blow.
“He’s done it, Marisa. Roark Navarre has ruined us.”
Roark Navarre.
Now Lia whirled on him, trembling and hot with fury. “Your name is Roark Navarre?”
“So you do know me.”
“Of