Boxed Set: Books & Billionaires by Nikki Steele

Author:Nikki Steele [Steele, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

Booker sighed in the spa beside me, hand going to the back of his neck. “I was wondering when you’d ask.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just…”

Just… what? That I’d just had sex with a married man? That I needed to know the competition? That I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to give him up?

I sighed. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay.”

“No. You deserve to know,” he said. “It’s just hard to know where to start.”

I ran my hand through the water, playing with it. “How about you treat it like a book? Start at the beginning.”

He chuckled. “Ok. Since you put it like that… Once upon a time, I guess we were in love. We married young, before I made my fortune. She was pretty, and she had a mean business sense.”

He hesitated. “I became wealthy not long after, and that’s when I first noticed the change. Suddenly it was all about the money. I’m sure jealousy was a part of it; I was the successful one, not her.”

He shrugged, apologetic. “I know it’s probably not what you want to hear, but I tried my hardest to fix things.”

It was exactly what I needed to hear. I motioned for him to continue.

“The real trouble began the first time I used my new money.”

“Did she think you were spending too much?” I murmured.

His laugh was short and sharp. “No. Especially since it was a gift for her.”

A diamond ring perhaps. Or a car. “What was it?”

“An island.”

I almost choked. “A what?”

“An island,” he repeated. “I bought an island off the coast of Borneo. Pristine wilderness—the most amazing beaches, beautiful clear water, and a government corrupt enough to let us do whatever we wanted with it.”

“Corrupt enough?”

His hand went to the back of his neck. “I was a different person back then, Clara. You have to understand, we bonded over business. My marriage was failing because my wife hadn’t been as lucky as I was.”

He looked out over the ocean. “The island was an anniversary present to my wife. We were going to build a resort on it; a way for her to make her own fortune, beside mine.”

“What happened?” I asked, lost in his story. “Did the resort go up?”

He shook his head. “That’s the problem. On our first trip there, I changed my mind. The land needed to be preserved, not destroyed. My wife disagreed.”

I looked at him, confused.

“I guess this is where I admit that I have an ulterior motive for this trip.” He indicated the horizon. “But it will be easier to show you. We should be there shortly.”

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