At the Ruthless Billionaire's Command

PROLOGUE

‘WHAT’S HE DOING HERE?’ Lia couldn’t take her eyes off the man standing back slightly on the other side of the open grave where her father’s coffin would soon be laid to rest.

‘Who—? Oh, God, no...’

Lia ignored her friend’s gasp of dismay as her feet seemed to move of their own volition, taking her towards the dark and dangerous man whose image had consumed her days and haunted her nightmares for the past two weeks.

‘Lia—no!’

She was barely aware of shaking off Cathy’s attempt to restrain her, her attention focused on only one thing. One man.

Gregorio de la Cruz.

Eldest of the three de la Cruz brothers, he was tall, at a couple of inches over six feet. His slightly overlong dark hair was obviously professionally styled. His complexion was olive-toned. And his face was as harshly handsome as that of a conquistador.

Lia knew he was also as cold and merciless as one.

He was the utterly ruthless, thirty-six-year-old billionaire CEO of the de la Cruz family’s worldwide business empire. A business empire this man had carved out for himself and his two brothers over the past twelve years by sheer ruthless willpower alone.

And he was the man responsible for driving Lia’s father to such a state of desperation that he’d suffered a fatal heart attack two weeks ago.

The man Lia now hated with every particle of her being.

‘How dare you come here?’

Gregorio de la Cruz’s head snapped up and he looked at Lia with hooded eyes as black and soulless as she knew his heart to be.

‘Miss Fairbanks—’

‘I asked how you dare show your face here?’ she hissed, hands clenched so tightly at her sides she could feel the sting of her nails cutting into the flesh of her palms.

‘This is not the time—’

His only slightly accented words were cut off as one of Lia’s hands swung up and made contact with the hardness of his chiselled cheek, leaving several smears of blood on his flesh from the small cuts in her palm.

‘No!’ He held up his hand to stop two dark-suited men who would have stepped forward in response to her attack. ‘That is the second time you have slapped my face, Amelia. I will not allow it a third time.’

The second time?

Oh, goodness—yes. Her father had introduced them in a restaurant two months ago. They had both been dining with other people, but Lia had been totally aware of Gregorio de la Cruz’s gaze on her, following that introduction. Even so, she had been surprised when she’d left the ladies’ powder room partway through the evening to find him waiting for her outside in the hallway. She had been even more surprised when he’d told her how much he wanted her before kissing her.

That was the reason she had slapped his face the first time.

She had been engaged at the time—he had been introduced to her fiancé as well as her that evening—so he had stepped way over the line.

‘Your father would not have wanted this.’ He kept his voice low, no doubt so none of the other mourners gathered about the graveside would be able to hear his response to her attack.

Lia’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘And how the hell would you know what my father would have wanted when you don’t—didn’t—know the first thing about him? Except, of course, that he’s dead!’ she added vehemently.

Gregorio knew far more about Jacob Fairbanks than his daughter obviously did. ‘I repeat—this is not the time for this conversation. We will talk again once you are in a calmer state of mind.’

‘Where you’re concerned that’s never going to happen,’ she assured him, her voice harsh with contempt.

Gregorio bit back his reply, aware that Amelia Fairbanks’s aggression came from the intensity of her understandable grief at the recent loss of her father—a man Gregorio had respected and liked, although he doubted Jacob’s daughter would believe that.

The newspapers had featured several photographs of Amelia since the start of the worldwide media frenzy after her father had died so suddenly two weeks ago, but having already met her—desired her—Gregorio knew none of the images had done her justice.

Her shoulder-length hair wasn’t simply red, but shot through with highlights of gold and cinnamon. Her eyes weren’t pale and indistinct, but a deep intense grey, with a ring of black about the iris. She was understandably pale, but that pallor didn’t detract from the striking effect of her high cheekbones or the smooth magnolia of her skin. Long dark lashes framed those mesmerising grey eyes. Her nose was small and pert, and the fullness of her lips was a perfect bow above a pointed and determined chin.

She was small of stature, her figure slender, and the black dress she was wearing seemed to hang a little too loosely—as if she had recently lost weight. Which he could see she had.

Nevertheless, Amelia Fairbanks was an extremely beautiful woman.

And the sharp stab of desire he felt merely from looking at her and breathing in the heady spice of her perfume was totally inappropriate, considering the occasion.

‘We will talk again, Miss Fairbanks.’ His tone brooked no argument this time.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, scorning his certainty.

Oh, they would meet again. Gregorio would ensure that they did.

His gaze was guarded as he gave her a formal bow before turning on his heel to walk across the grass and get into the back of the black limousine waiting for him just outside the graveyard.

‘Señor de la Cruz?’

Gregorio looked up blankly at Silvio, one of his two bodyguards, to see the other man holding out a handkerchief towards him.

‘You have blood on your cheek. Hers, not your own,’ Silvio explained economically as Gregorio gave him a questioning glance.

He took the handkerchief and rubbed it across his cheek before looking down at the blood that now stained the pristine white cotton.

Amelia Fairbanks’s blood.

Gregorio distractedly put the bloodied handkerchief into the breast pocket of his jacket as he glanced across to where she stood beside a tall blonde woman at her father’s graveside. Amelia looked very small and vulnerable, but her expression was nonetheless composed as she stepped forward to place a single red rose on top of the coffin.

Whether she wished it or not, he and Amelia Fairbanks would most definitely be meeting again.

Gregorio had wanted her for the past two months—he could wait a little longer before claiming her.

CHAPTER ONE

Two months later

‘I NEVER REALISED I’d accumulated so much stuff.’

Lia groaned as she carried yet another huge cardboard box into her new apartment and placed it with the other dozen boxes stacked to one side of the tiny sitting room. The other half was full of furniture.

‘I’m sure I don’t need most of it. I definitely have no idea where I’m going to put it all.’ She looked around the London apartment with its pocket-size sitting room/kitchen combined, one bedroom and one bathroom. It was a huge downsize from the three-storey Regency-style townhouse she had shared with her father.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers. Not that Lia was exactly a beggar—she had a little money of her own, left to her by the mother—but the comfortable lifestyle she’d known for all of her twenty-five years no longer existed.

Every one of her father’s assets had been frozen until the extent of his debts had been decided and paid by his executors—which would take months, if not years. Considering the dire financial situation her father had been in before his death, Lia doubted there would be anything left.

Their family home had been one of those assets, and although Lia could have continued to live there until everything was settled she hadn’t wanted to. Not without her father. The business sharks were also circling, ready to snap up the assets of Fairbanks Industries as soon as the executors had decided when and how they were going to be sold off to pay the debts.

Lia had used her own money to pay her father’s funeral expenses and the deposit on this apartment, plus the few bits of furniture she had deemed necessary to fill the tiny space. She hadn’t been allowed to remove anything from the house except personal items.

She had resigned from all the charitable work that had taken up much of her time—with her father dead and his estate in limbo those charities no longer considered the name Fairbanks as being a boon to their cause!—and she’d looked for, and found, a job that paid actual wages. She needed to be able to earn enough at least to feed herself and continue paying the rent on this apartment.

She had taken charge of her own life, and it felt strangely good to have been able do so.

Cathy shrugged. ‘You must have thought you needed it when you did the packing.’

She didn’t add what both of them knew: a lot of the contents of these boxes weren’t Lia’s at all, but personal items of her father’s she had packed and been allowed to bring from their home. Items that had no value but which had meant something to him, and which Lia couldn’t bear to part with.

Lia had put all these boxes in storage for the past two months, while she’d stayed with her best friend Cathy and her husband Rick. That had been balm to her battered emotions, but a situation Lia had known couldn’t continue indefinitely. Hence her move now to this apartment.

She was over the absolute and numbing shock of finding her father in his study, slumped over his desk, dead from a massive heart attack the paramedics had assured her would have killed him almost instantly. Cold comfort when they’d been talking about the man Lia had loved with her whole heart.

In some ways she wished that previous numbness was still there. The loss of her father’s presence in her life never went away, of course, but now a deeper, more crippling agony at the loss would suddenly hit her when she least expected it. Standing in the queue at the local supermarket. Walking in the park. Lying in a scented bubble bath.

The loss would hit her with the force of a truck, totally debilitating her until the worst of the grief had passed.

‘Time for a glass of wine, methinks,’ Cathy announced cheerfully. ‘Any idea which one of these boxes you put the wine glasses in?’ The tall blonde grimaced at the stack of unopened boxes.

‘I’m space-challenged—not stupid!’ Lia grinned as she went straight to the box marked ‘Glassware’, easily ripping off the sealing tape to take out two newspaper-wrapped glasses. ‘Ta-da!’ She held them up triumphantly.

Lia had no idea what she would have done without Cathy and Rick after her father died. The two women had been friends since attending the same boarding school from the age of thirteen, and Cathy was as close to her as the sister she had never had. Closer, if what she’d heard about sisterly rivalry was true.

Luckily Cathy worked as an estate agent, and was responsible for helping Lia find this affordable apartment. But, even so, there was only so much advantage she could take of Cathy’s friendship.

‘You should go home to your husband now,’ she encouraged as the two of them sat on a couple of the boxes drinking their wine. ‘Rick hasn’t seen you all day.’

Rick Morton was one of the nicest men Lia had ever met—as much of a friend to her as Cathy was, especially this past two months. But the poor man must be longing to have his wife and his apartment to himself.

‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay?’ Cathy frowned.

‘Very,’ Lia confirmed warmly.

Rick had been persuaded to go off and enjoy a football match with his friends that afternoon. A welcome break for him, it had also allowed the two women to move Lia into her new home. But there had to be a limit to how much and for how long Lia could intrude on the couple’s marriage.

‘I’m just going to unpack enough to be able to make the bed and cook myself something light to eat before I go to sleep.’ Lia gave a tired yawn: it had been a long day. ‘I don’t just have a new apartment to organise, but a new job on Monday morning to prepare for too!’

Cathy slipped her arms into her jacket. ‘You’re going to do just fine.’

Lia knew that. After the past two months she had no doubt that she was capable of looking after herself. Nevertheless, she still had to fight down the butterflies that attacked her stomach whenever she thought of all the changes in her life since her father had...died. She still choked over that word—probably because she still couldn’t believe he was gone.

And he wouldn’t be if Gregorio de la Cruz hadn’t withdrawn De la Cruz Industries’ offer to buy out Fairbanks Industries. The lawyers might have presented that death knell to her father, but there was no doubt in Lia’s mind that it was Gregorio de la Cruz who was responsible for the withdrawal of that offer.

Her father had watched the decline of his company for months and, knowing he was on the edge of bankruptcy, had decided he had no choice but to sell. Lia firmly believed it was the withdrawal of the De la Cruz offer that had been the final straw that had broken him and caused her father’s heart attack.

Which was why all of Lia’s anger and resentment was now focused on the man she held responsible.

Futile emotions when there was no way she would ever be able to hurt a man as powerful as Gregorio de la Cruz. Not only was he as rich as Croesus, but he was coldly aloof and totally unreachable.

The man had even been accompanied by two bodyguards at her father’s funeral, for goodness’ sake. They hadn’t been able to prevent Lia from slapping him, though. Was that because Gregorio de la Cruz had allowed it? He had certainly indicated that the two men should back off when they would have gone into protection mode.

She was thankful it had been a private funeral, and that there had been no photographs taken of the encounter to appear in the newspapers the following day and stir up the media frenzy once again. There’d been enough speculation after her father’s sudden death without adding to it with her personal attack on Gregorio de la Cruz.

Nevertheless she had found a certain satisfaction in slapping the Spaniard’s austerely handsome face. Even more so at seeing her blood streaked