Читать книгу Virgin: Undone by the Billionaire - Jennie Lucas - Страница 12

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 course I know you. You destroyed my family!”

“It wasn’t deliberate, Lia. It was just business.”

“Business,” she spat out, tossing her head with a derisive sneer. “Just like it was for the sake of business that you seduced me?”

“Lia, I didn’t realize who you were until just now.”

“Right.” She shook her head furiously. “Why should I believe a word you say? You caused my father to lose his company—”

“He would have lost it to someone, if not to me. Hawthorne was completely inept. A typical third-generation heir bumbling his way through a business he didn’t understand.”

“How dare you!” She paced, then stopped, covering her mouth with her hands in a horrified gasp. “I let you take my virginity.”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you. I enjoyed it very much.”

She sucked in her breath, crumpling the contract he’d given her, twisting and strangling it in her hands.

“Get out.” She threw the contract at him. It bounced off his chest and fell to the grass. “The land is going to be a park, across the street from the hospital where my sister died. I would die before I let you put skyscrapers on Olivia’s park!”

Clenching his jaw, he shook his head. “You’re making this personal. It’s business. If you don’t have any fond feelings for me, fine. Take me for every penny you can. Force me to double my offer—”

“It’s too late.” She suddenly felt the insane urge to laugh. “Before I left New York, I signed the papers that turned the land irrevocably over to the trust. I sent it by messenger. It’s been too late for hours. The property is permanently out of your reach.”

She saw something like grief and fury cross his face. She’d hurt him. She’d prevented him from having something he really, really wanted.

And she was glad. She wished she could do more. She wished she could hurt him a fraction of the way he’d hurt her.

“Because of you, my father lost every penny we had,” she whispered. “My sister had to go for months without treatment. My mother couldn’t take the anguish of losing her husband and her daughter. They all died. And it’s your fault!”

“It was your father’s fault,” he said coldly. “Your father was the failure. He was a fool. A man shouldn’t have a wife or children if he can’t even take decent care of them—”

Lia slapped him.

Looking shocked, Roark touched his cheek.

She stared up at him with hatred. “Don’t you dare call my father a failure.” She felt tears rising to her eyes, and she fought them with all her might. She would die before she would let him see her cry! “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 straightened, holding his hands stiffly clenched at his sides. For several seconds their eyes locked. Lia could hear the pant of her own anguished breathing and the sound of the birds overhead, a warm breeze rattling the leafy fullness of the trees.

Then his jaw clenched.

“I’ve already had your body,” he said. “And since it’s too late to buy the land, we have nothing else to discuss. Nothing about you is interesting enough to deserve another second of my time.” His eyes were like black ice as he tossed back callously, “Let me know if there’s a baby, won’t you?”

Picking up his briefcase, he turned and left through the garden gate.

Shocked, she listened to the departing sound of his footsteps. It wasn’t until she was alone in the rose garden that Lia allowed herself to collapse into sobs. Putting her face in her hands, she fell to her knees on the soft grass and cried. For her family. For herself.

She’d just given her virginity to the man who’d destroyed her family.

Four months after that horrible day they’d lost everything, her father had died of a heart attack in the little two-bedroom Burbank apartment they’d rented after their beach house was sold for debt.

Thank God for Giovanni. Her father’s old friend had come from Italy for the funeral. He’d seen eighteen-year-old Lia trying to support her sick younger sister and a mother who was silent and half-mad with grief. The next morning he’d proposed marriage.

“Your father once saved my life in the war, when I was barely older than you. I wish I’d known about your troubles—I wish he’d told me,” he’d said with tears in his eyes. “But I can take care of you all now. Marry me, Amelia. Become my countess.”

“Marry you?” she’d gasped. As kind as Count Villani was, he was three times her age!

“In name only,” he’d clarified, his cheeks turning red. “My wife of fifty years died last year. No one will ever replace Magdalena in my heart. I’ll never ask anything from you but your company, your friendship and the chance to repay my debt to a man who’s dead. He was my friend, and I didn’t even realize his business was in trouble. Your mother is too proud to accept my help, but if she believed this was truly your choice …”

So Lia had married him, and she’d never had reason to regret it. She’d been happy with him. He’d been a good man. But her marriage ultimately hadn’t saved her sister and mother. It had been too late to pursue the experimental treatment in L.A., so they’d moved to New York where Olivia could be a patient at St. Ann’s, the best pediatric brain cancer facility in the country. But in spite of her determination and bravery, Olivia had died at fourteen. A week later their fragile mother had died from an overdose of sleeping pills. Lia still wasn’t sure whether her mother had deliberately taken her life, or just been desperate for one night’s sleep to escape the grief. She almost didn’t want to know.

If Roark hadn’t ruthlessly taken her father’s business and left him a broken-down man with oceans of debt, Alfred might have found new investors. Perhaps he would have saved the company instead of being swallowed by the stress of his failure. Olivia could have continued her experimental treatment and it might have worked.

Or maybe Olivia would have died anyway. Her treatment in California had been experimental with only a slight chance of success.

But now Lia would never know.

She only knew that if not for Roark, her whole family might still be alive. Her father. Her sister. Her mother.

Roark Navarre. His name caused a surge of hatred to tighten her hands, crushing a red rose between her fingers. A thorn drew blood on her thumb.

And as if he hadn’t done enough already, he’d deliberately taken her virginity for the sake of a business deal! Did the man have no conscience at all? Did he have no soul?

The bastard. The ruthless bastard.

With a soft curse, she sucked the blood off her thumb.

Lia went into the castle to take a shower, desperate to wash the scent of him off her skin. She tried not to remember the feeling of his naked body against hers. The hoarse whisper of his voice, “Ah, Lia. What you do to me….”

She leaned her head against the cool tiles. Standing beneath a stream of water so hot it burned her skin, she was overwhelmed with guilt and shame. She’d betrayed Giovanni’s memory in the worst possible way. Taking pleasure in Roark’s arms, she’d betrayed her whole family. She knew it was the worst moment of her whole life.

She was wrong.

Three weeks later she discovered she was pregnant.