Free The Billionaire Affair by Diana Hamilton Page A

told herdidn’t gel with the picture of Ben Dexter she had built up in her mind: an arrogant, self-serving deceiver—a picture reinforced by his behaviour last night; his announcement that he’d won round one, as if he’d brought her here to engage in a battle. An announcement she’d been too filled with shame and embarrassment to question.
    Had she been totally wrong about him? Had she misjudged him?
    She pushed herself to her feet, putting the enigma that was Ben Dexter out of her mind. She had a job to do and it was pointless to waste her mental energies on a man who had as good as declared himself to be her enemy.
    Bracing herself, she climbed the staircase to the room that had been her father’s. The cumbersome Victorian wardrobes were empty as was the solitary chest of drawers, cleared out by the grieving Dorothy Skeet. The only piece of any value, the Italian, carved giltwood tester bed, which the housekeeper had sometimes shared, brought a lump to her throat.
    She made a note of its likely value in the pad she carried and made a swift exit. Why had her father never loved her? Why had he actively disliked her?
    Making a mental note to see Dorothy before she headed back to London she forced the memories of her troubled childhood to the back of her mind and carried on. The rooms that had been unused when her father had been alive were now cheerful and bright, either furnished with twin beds and colourful, functional chests and hanging cupboards, or madeinto bathrooms, ready for the youngsters who would be spending time here.
    Ben must have invested a considerable amount of his private fortune in this charitable enterprise. Because he remembered his own deprived childhood?
    The state had supported his mother, but only barely. Janet Dexter had tried to supplement her benefit by growing and selling fresh fruit and vegetables but the villagers, suspicious of the hard-eyed, grimfaced woman and her wild son, had refused to buy. Someone, she remembered now, had once threatened to report her pathetic entrepreneurial efforts to social security.
    Life must have been tough for both of them, and what had brought mother and son to the village in the first place was unknown. Close as they had been during that long-ago summer, he had never talked about his earlier life. There were always things he’d kept hidden, even then.
    Admiration for what he had made of himself, for his altruism where similarly disadvantaged children were concerned, made her bite her lip. She didn’t want to think well of him. She couldn’t afford to; she could so easily fall right back under his mesmeric spell, she admitted honestly. Last night had shown her that much.
    Needing to keep her mental image of him sullied she reminded herself of the child he had fathered and had callously abandoned. Her own father had told her that Maggie Pope was a slut, had warned her notto have anything to do with her, ever, because if she did she’d be locked in her room until it was time to go back to school. Yet during those last traumatic days he’d said, ‘Ask Maggie Pope who fathered that brat of hers. Dexter. You don’t believe me? Well, just go and ask her!’
    Caroline shuddered, her body suddenly cold, as if she’d been immersed in icy water. It had been the worst day of her life and she didn’t want to relive it, but couldn’t stop the pictures that flashed into her mind.
    The baby girl, around two months old at that time, had had silky black hair, just like Ben’s, and Maggie had said sourly, ‘Sure she’s his. Only he don’t want to know—that’s his sort all over. Drop a girl as soon as the novelty’s over, or someone tastier comes along—no sense of responsibility!’
    Swallowing hard, Caroline forced her mind back to the job in hand. At the far end of the corridor, where the old Tudor wing joined the main part of the house, there had been a handsome mahogany linen