THE BILLIONAIRE'S LOVER

5 | IN WHICH SHE WENT TO ONE HYDE PARK

Mr. Marshall pushed the contract back to her as he opened another contract. 'Sign and date again, please.'

When Malora raised her head he was watching her steadily. He smiled coldly. It occurred to her that he believed his dealings with her to be beneath him. She was expensive trash. He had thoughts about her that were supremely unflattering.

'Well, that's that, then. Here is your copy.'

He pressed a buzzer that brought his secretary. 'Lana here will take your bank details and tell you everything else you need to know.'  He half stood and held his hand out. 'Thank you, Miss McCarran. Please do not hesitate to call me if you have any further queries.'

In the back seat of the Maybach, Malora found a Boots bag and inside it her prescription. She asked Henry to stop at a cash machine. Malora popped her debit card into the hole in the wall and could hardly believe it.

Two hundred thousand and thirty-two pounds, seventy pence.

By heaven!

*

Malora thought she would be prepared for the apartment Titan asked her to go to. But her thoughts turned out to be way off.

The apartment he had nonchalantly offered her was part of this crazy glass and steel-bladed monolith called One Hyde Park. Except somehow she'd expected him to be there when she arrived, so they could fall on each other in a mutual frenzy of desperate passion and have sex everywhere, in all the ways—up against the wall, knocking stuff off tables, even on the stairs like in the remake of the Thomas Crown Affair. She meant, for example.

But it was the middle of the day and Titan was obviously out of London and waiting for her instead was a blond guy.  He was intimidatingly attractive up close: all lips and cheekbones and symmetry, the sort of face one would expect to see on a billboard for a product that would cost the earth and basically make no difference to one's overall attractiveness.

'You must be Malora.' He shook her hand before she had a chance to make sure it wasn't sweaty and awful. 'Justice Blake. Mr. Pitts' secretary.'

'Um. Yes. I remember you.'

'Likewise.'

Too shaken by this sudden turn of events, Malora attempted humor. 'You sure you haven't muddled me up with someone else who may have mistakenly walked into the wrong place at the wrong time?'

He didn't laugh. Didn't even look a teensy bit amused. This was going super well.

'Mr. Pitts asked me to help you settle in. And you'll need a retinal scan.'

'What? Why?'

'Security.'

It felt a lot like being arrested—well, the way being arrested looked in the movies. Malora was scanned, coded, fingerprinted, visually identified, practically strip searched, and eventually permitted into the lift with Blake, who had waited with this terrible patience through the whole extensive procedure.

He reminded her a little bit of Titan. Not that they were actually all that similar, unless you counted the fact that they were both scary hot, but Malora could imagine them having devastatingly efficient conversations together. Even more disconcerting was the realization that Blake couldn't have been much older than her, and he was already executive assistant to one of the richest, most powerful men in the UK. Oh God. She was doomed.

'This way, please.'

Malora trailed after him into the apartment and it was. . .she meant, holy fuck, it looked like a picture in a magazine. Beautiful in this totally unreal way. Everything was marble and granite and silk and. . .designed. In these somehow extravagantly muted colors, taupe and cream and pearl gray. Malora was lowering the value of the place just by being there.