Free The Most Expensive Lie of All by Michelle Conder

referring to.
    ‘My offer?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It’s real.’
    ‘That doesn’t make sense. Why would you lend me money to buy a property you are trying to buy for yourself?’
    ‘Because I believe I’ll win.’ And he had just decided to instruct Lauren to keep upping his offer until it was so ludicrously tempting Joe Carmichael would see stars.
    Aspen shook her head. ‘You won’t. Joe is very loyal to me.’
    All families were loyal until money was involved. ‘Care to back yourself?’
    She looked at him as one might a maggot on a pork chop. ‘I never realised how absolutely ruthless you are.’
    ‘I’m absolutely successful. For a reason.’
    She shook her head. ‘You’re not going to be this time. But can I trust you?’
    The fact that she questioned his integrity annoyed him. ‘I didn’t have to tell you this, did I?’
    ‘Fine,’ she snapped, pacing away from him to the other side of the neat sitting room. She glared at him. Shook her head. Then paced back. Picked up the pen. ‘It’s not like I have a better option right now.’
    Her fingers shook ever so slightly as she put pen to paper and something squeezed inside his chest.
    ‘I’ll do it.’
    Impatient for this to be finalised, he grabbed the pen and replaced ‘once’ with ‘one night’. Then he scrawled the date and his signature on the bottom of the page.
    His gaze drifted down over her neat summer tunic which showed the delicate hollows either side of her collarbones and hinted at her firm breasts before it skimmed the tops of her feminine thighs. She’d been soft and firm pressed up against him yesterday. Svelte, he decided, glancing at her fitted jeans and ankle boots.
    His body reacted predictably and he told himself it was past time to stop looking at her.
    * * *
    The flight from East Hampton to Acapulco took five hours. It might as well have been five days. Cruz had barely uttered a word to her since leaving The Farm—not much more than ‘This way’, ‘Mind your step’ and ‘Buckle up; we’re about to take off’. And Aspen was glad. She didn’t think she’d be able to hold a decent conversation with the man right now. He wasn’t a rat, she decided. He was a shark. A great white that hunted and killed without compunction.
    And she was playing the game of her life against him.
    Thank heavens she had her uncle on her side. But could she trust Cruz to give her the money? He’d looked startled and not a little angry when she had questioned his integrity. Yes, she was pretty sure she could trust him. His pride alone would mean that he upheld his end of the deal.
    The deal. She had just made a bargain to sleep with the devil. She shuddered, glancing across the aisle to where Cruz was seated in a matching plush leather chair and buried in paperwork. It was beyond her comprehension that she should still want him. Which was scary in itself when she considered that she didn’t even like sex. And, yes, she’d enjoyed kissing him, but that wasn’t sex. She knew if they’d been anywhere near a bed she would have clammed up.
    Urgh ... She hated the thought of embarrassing herself in front of him. He was so confident. So arrogant . She hated that he just had to look at her and she had to concentrate extra hard to think logically. His touching her made her want to do stupid things. Things she couldn’t trust.
    And she particularly hated the thought of being vulnerable to him. Especially now. Now when he had made it clear that he’d win anyway. That she was doing this for nothing. It just made her more determined that he wouldn’t.
    Aspen pulled out her textbook. Questioning whether she had done the right thing in coming with him wouldn’t change anything now. She’d signed the document she herself had drafted and she’d assured him that she wouldn’t ‘welsh’ on him.
    It would mean that her beloved home was hers. It would mean she would have the chance to put all the naysayers who didn’t believe that a girl on her own