LITMIR.BIZ

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      She invigorated him at this moment in time, but it wouldn’t have lasted.

      He would have become restless, got itchy feet. It never failed to happen.

      Which was why, he thought with conviction, it was imperative he left. Rose, underneath the tough veneer, had risen above the odds dealt to her in her background and turned out to be endearingly romantic. Were he to stay on, there was a chance that she would have fallen for him.

      And then what? A broken heart when he vanished? A life in need of being rebuilt? Looking at the bigger picture, he was doing her a favour.

      ‘That’s because,’ Art told her patiently, ‘there’s always more to people than meets the eye, and that includes billionaire developers.’

      ‘Really? I hadn’t noticed. Do you want to tell me what’s going on here, Art, or shall I make it easier for you by bringing it out into the open myself?’

      ‘What do you mean?’ He frowned.

      ‘I mean you...this atmosphere...’ She breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. ‘Something’s off and I’ll spare you the discomfort of spelling it out in words of one syllable, shall I? You’re leaving. Your time here is up. You came for a protest that ended up a damp squib. Perhaps you were hoping for more fireworks.’

      ‘The opposite,’ Art told her quietly.

      ‘You’re...not off?’

      ‘No, that bit you got right. I... It’s time for me to pack my bags and leave.’

      * * *

      Rose stared at him, horrified at how painful it was to hear those words. Everywhere hurt. He was going. She’d known he’d be off but, now that he’d confirmed it, it felt as though she’d been hit head-on by a train. Her legs had turned to jelly but she kept standing, holding her ground and hoping with everything inside her that the pain tearing her apart wasn’t reflected in her face.

      ‘Of course,’ she said politely.

      ‘You always knew I’d be leaving.’

      ‘Because you’re a wanderer in search of a cause.’

      ‘Not entirely.’

      ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’

      ‘I think this is a conversation better conducted with you sitting down.’

      ‘Why?’ Rose wondered whether she would be able to move at all without falling to the ground in an undignified heap. That was what jelly legs did to a person.

      ‘Because...you might find what I’m about to say somewhat surprising.’

      Rose looked at him uncertainly, then galvanised her body into action. She wasn’t going to sit at her desk. She wasn’t conducting an interview! Although the atmosphere felt hardly less formal.

      She walked towards the sitting room, which was the only room downstairs, aside from the large cloakroom, that hadn’t been converted into something useful that could be modified and used as a source of income.

      Like all the other rooms in the house, it was high-ceilinged and gracious in proportions. It was painted in soothing shades of grey and cream and lavender and the furniture was well-made and tasteful.

      Rose flopped down onto the sofa and then watched in tense silence as he prowled the room, his beautiful lean body jerky as he darted thoughtful glances in her direction.

      ‘Are you going to spare us both the drama and just say what you have to say? It’s not as though you haven’t warned me in advance and you needn’t worry that I’m going to do anything silly like break down and cry.’

      * * *

      ‘It might be better if I show you,’ Art said slowly. He pulled out his phone, found what he was looking for on the screen and handed it to her. And waited, eyes glued to her expressive face. Every nerve in his body twanged with the sort of tension he had seldom experienced in his life before.

      He watched as bewilderment turned to confusion, as confusion turned to disbelief and then, finally, as disbelief morphed into appalled horror.

      Long after she should have finished reading the article about him, just one of many to be found online, she kept staring at the phone as though hopeful that it might deliver something that would make sense of what he’d shown her.

      His biography. Succinct. Replete with his success stories. Sycophantic in its adoration of the man who had made his first billion before the ripe old age of thirty-five.

      She finally looked up with a dazed expression.

      ‘You’re DC Logistics...?’

      Art flushed darkly but he wasn’t going to start justifying himself.

      ‘Yes,’ he said flatly.

      ‘You’re the guy we’ve been fighting...’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You came here... You pretended to be... Why?’ She shot up, trembling, as thousands of implications clearly began sinking in. ‘You bastard.’ She edged away from him, recoiling as though he was contagious, and took up position by the large Victorian fireplace, leaning against it and staring at him with huge round eyes.

      ‘You came here with a plan, didn’t you? You came here so that you could infiltrate and get us onside. You didn’t like the fact that we were protesting about you putting up a bunch of houses that no one wants!’

      Art’s jaw hardened but there was nothing he could say to refute her accusations since they were all spot on. ‘I owned the land. I was going to build, whether you stood in the way or not. I thought it diplomatic to try to persuade you to see sense before the bulldozers moved in and trying to persuade you within the walls of my London offices wasn’t going to work.’

      ‘You used me.’

      ‘I...’ Art raked his fingers through his hair. ‘There was no need for me to come clean. And I did not use you. We both enjoyed what happened between us. I could have walked away without saying anything.’

      ‘Are you asking for a medal because you finally decided to tell the truth?’

      ‘There was also no need for me to grant the concessions that I have.’

      ‘No wonder you were so confident that the big, bad developers were going to accept our terms and conditions. Because you were the big, bad developer.’

      ‘I played fair.’

      ‘You lied!’

      ‘A small amount of subterfuge.’

      ‘You came here...you...’ She turned away because she needed to gather herself. Everything was rushing in on her and she was beginning to feel giddy. She took a few deep breaths and forced herself to look at him. To her fury, he met her gaze squarely, as if he was as pure as the driven snow!

      ‘I let you stay in my house.’ Rose laughed bitterly. ‘No wonder you insisted on paying rent! You’re worth a small fortune. It must have troubled your conscience that you were sponging off someone who couldn’t hope to come close to matching you in the financial stakes. Someone with rooms in need of decorating and plumbing on the verge of waving a white flag and giving up! I bet you’ve never painted anything in your life before or done anything manual at all!’

      ‘Going through each and every detail of the ways you feel deceived isn’t going to progress this.’

      ‘I slept with you.’

      Those four words, delivered without any expression whatsoever, dropped like stones into a quiet pond and silence settled between them, thick and uncomfortable.

      * * *

      ‘I’m guessing...’ Rose kept her voice level but the blood was rushing through

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