“Ben Sabin.” Sally Parker couldn’t hide her glee as she positioned her cell to video him. “Did you know the Messena twins are here? Although how could you not, since they’ve been resident in Miami for the last three months.”
Ben’s jaw tightened. Even though he’d known all of that information well in advance, his response was sharp and visceral, which didn’t please him. He should have been over his fatal attraction to spoiled heiress Sophie Messena by now.
And it wasn’t as if he didn’t know what the likely outcome of a liaison with a woman like Sophie would be. At age nine he’d a had front-row seat to the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, which had literally petered out when his father’s Texan oil wells had dried up. He could still hear his father bitterly commenting on how failing to find more oil had cost him his marriage. All Ben had been able to think as he’d watched the rooster tail of dust kicked up by Darcy Sabin’s departing car was that he had lost his mother.
Then six years ago he’d found himself in his father’s predicament when his beautiful, wealthy fiancée had left him within twenty-four hours of a financial crash that had almost bankrupted him.
Years of hard work and calculated risk later, and after an inheritance that had made him an overnight billionaire, suddenly he was back. At least as far as Sophie Messena was concerned.
Sophie Messena. Tall, lithe and athletic, with the kind of slow, fluid walk that would have turned heads even if she hadn’t been gorgeous.
Caught once more in the crosshairs of a woman who seemed more interested in his share portfolio than in who he really was, for Ben, the decision to walk away from the one night they had spent together had been a matter of self-preservation.
But the press had seen things somewhat differently, courtesy of a neat publicity stunt Sophie had pulled a few days later, which had made it look like she had dumped him.
Irritatingly, Sally Parker was still keeping pace with him. His flat “no comment,” as he strode toward a bank of elevators, seemed to fall on deaf ears.
“It’s not the twins, plural, that you’re interested in, though, is it? I hear that you and Sophie Messena were once a hot item, despite the fact that yesterday you were heard to say…now let me get this right.” She frowned and smiled at the same time, as if she was having trouble remembering the headline she’d splashed across multiple social media accounts just hours ago. “Hmm…that the twins are ‘empty-headed and spoiled and that any man would have to be brain-dead to date either of them.’”
Ben came to a halt. Keeping a tight leash on his patience—a patience that had been forged by time in Special Forces, then honed by years spent in the hard-edged construction industry—he stabbed the call button for the high-speed private elevator that led directly to Nick Messena’s penthouse office. His gaze rested on the flashing numbers above the sleek stainless-steel door that indicated the elevator was on its way.
He had not said those words.
If he had, it would mean that a year ago he had been brain-dead and that he still was because, despite walking away from Sophie, nothing had changed: he still wanted her.
He hadn’t said the words, but he had a fair idea who had. The brief conversation he’d had on the way to the airport with his new, brilliant but opinionated business manager, Hannah Cole, was the only possible source of the comment. Clearly it had not been a private conversation.
The gossip columnist, oblivious to the fact that she was being ignored, leaned on the wall. A cat-that-got-the-cream smile played around her mouth. “Strange then, to use a euphemism, that you did ‘date’ Sophie Messena. Now, a year after she ditched you, you’re involved in a business deal with her brother, Nick, and gorgeous Sophie is also in town. So, what’s really going on, Ben? Seems to me you just can’t stay away.”
The doors finally slid open. His expression remote, Ben stepped into the elevator, swiped the key card and punched the button for Nick’s office. Seconds later, he was propelled several stories up to the penthouse. As he stepped into the hushed foyer, Hannah, who had once worked as a PA for his late uncle Wallace, and whom Ben had inherited along with Wallace’s multibillion-dollar construction and real estate business, stepped forward and checked her watch. “You’re almost late.”
Ben lifted a brow. Hannah was middle-aged, plump, wealthy in her own right and possessed of a dry, no-nonsense sense of humor. Sometimes he wondered if he had made a mistake in employing someone who didn’t need the job and knew just a little too much about him and his checkered family history. But after years of dealing with the tensions of younger, ambitious managers, Hannah’s bluntness worked for Ben. “I ran into some interference.”
“Let me guess,” Hannah grumbled as she moved in the direction of Nick’s office, “the Messena girl?”
Ben pushed back the cuff of his jacket and checked his watch. “The one I’d have to be brain-dead to date?”
Hannah gave him what passed for an apologetic glance, although it was so brief he almost missed it. “Sorry about that. I should have waited until we were out of the taxi before I made that comment.”
Because the taxi driver had clearly taken the quote straight to the press, no doubt for a healthy cash payment.
“You shouldn’t have said it, period. I haven’t seen Sophie for a year.”
Though the very last time he had seen her was still indelibly imprinted on his mind. Her ridiculously long lashes curled against delicately molded cheekbones. Dark hair trailing down the sleek, elegant curve of her naked back. The one slim arm flung across his pillow as she slept.
Sophie Messena had in no way looked like the A-list party girl she was purported to be, and that was what had fooled him. There was a cool directness to her glance, a clear intelligence and a habit of command that should have annoyed him but which he had found more than a little fascinating…
Hannah stopped and pinned him with her brown gaze. “You want my opinion? You should have picked another time to sign this contract. One when Sophie wasn’t around. The fact that you chose a time when she would be around says something. You’re supposed to be getting into bed with The Messena Group, not Sophie Messena.”
Ben repressed the urge to pinch his nose. He remembered a time, pre–Sophie Messena, when the conversations he’d had with business colleagues were about managing risk, contractual obligations, closing out deals and headhunting the right people. Now everyone seemed to have an opinion about his dysfunctional love life. “There’s a new deal to be signed, and this resort is the last project I managed for Nick before I left Messena Construction. I need to be here.”
Hannah made a rude sound. “And that’s another thing. If you get tangled up with Sophie Messena again, Nick is going to react. Big-time. You can kiss any future deals goodbye.”
She trundled past the receptionist’s desk and started toward an open door at the end of a broad corridor. As Ben strolled toward Nick’s office, he noted the lineup of Medinian oil paintings that decorated light-washed walls. The paintings, all from the Mediterranean island of Medinos, were old, priceless and very familiar, because Ben had seen them on a daily basis when they had adorned the office of Nick’s Dolphin Bay Resort in New Zealand.
Despite the Messena family leaving Medinos and most of them settling in New Zealand, their connection to Medinos was still strong. The abiding theme of battle-scarred warrior ancestors was hard to miss, the message clear: don’t mess with Nick Messena or his baby sisters.
Hannah was right, he thought grimly. Nick had overlooked his