Stripping the Billionaire Read online

  He didn’t give Ben a chance to respond. Just walked back into his bedroom and closed the door.

  Ben was still standing in the dark hallway, wearing nothing but his underwear, when Mandy came slowly up the stairs.

  Her eyes were on him as she approached, and there wasn’t enough light to really read her expression. She didn’t say anything until she was standing directly in front of him, close enough for him to reach out and touch.

  Then she asked, very softly, “Do you have anything you need to tell me?”

  He wasn’t going to say anything. It would change his life, change his nature, change his entire world—and he’d been safe in this world of his own making for so long now.

  It would be breaking his second vow.

  But he heard himself saying the words anyway. “My name isn’t Ben Cain.”

  As the admission hung in the air, his heart started to hammer wildly, and he was hit by a hot chill. He had absolutely no idea what was going to happen now.

  He had absolutely no idea why he’d just told Mandy the truth.

  He felt naked, exposed, stripped utterly bare, with nothing left to hide behind.

  Her hand was trembling visibly as she raised it to rest on his chest, just over his heart. “What is your real name, Ben?”

  He wasn’t sure he’d be able to say the words out loud. Not even to Mandy, who was gazing up at him with no surprise, no betrayal, only hope on her face.

  Like she was hoping that he’d finally live up to the man she thought he was.

  The man he’d never believed himself to be.

  “Please tell me,” she whispered.

  So he did—because he’d see the whole world in ashes around his feet before he disappointed her again. “My name is Benjamin Damon.”

  She swallowed hard and gave a strange little nod. Then she dropped her hand, her chin, her eyes.

  “Mandy, I’m so sorry—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “Not tonight. Let’s not get into it tonight.”

  “Okay. Are you okay?” he asked. She looked delicate, damaged. Like she was wounded. Like he’d wounded her.

  She looked up at him, her face twisting just slightly. “I don’t know, Ben. I really don’t know.”

  And he couldn’t stand it—not any of it. He pulled her into his arms with a choked sound and hugged her against him, trying to protect her, comfort her, make the damage he’d inflicted go away.

  She shook against him but didn’t cry. She hugged him back, though, and it felt like something was mended inside him as he felt her tight, clinging arms.

  She needed this. She needed him. As much as he needed her.

  “What can I do, Cupcake?” he asked at last, tilting his head down to nuzzle her soft hair. “What do you need me to do?”

  She raised her head and there were tears on her cheeks after all. She was still shaking helplessly. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

  His heart lurched at the question and only subsided a little when she qualified it by saying, “Just to sleep.”

  “Yeah. I’ll stay.”

  They both went into her bedroom, and he closed the door behind them, shutting the last light out. In the darkness, he climbed into bed beside her and let her scoot up against him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

  He didn’t understand exactly why, but she felt as naked and vulnerable as he was. As if his confession—forced out of him against his will, far too late—had stripped her utterly bare too.

  Eight

  The next morning, Mandy opened her eyes to the sight of Ben’s chest.

  It was a very good chest, so it wasn’t the worst way to begin the day. But she was stiff and hot and confused about why it was in bed with her. She shifted, trying to pull away, only to discover she was trapped by his arms.

  The arms released her as soon as she moved, however, and she tilted her head up to find that Ben was already awake.

  It felt like it was still early, but morning light was starting to peek through the closed blinds, so she could see his face clearly. She smiled at him because his dark eyes were softer than she normally saw them.

  He smiled back.

  “How long have you been awake?” she asked, her voice breaking like it wasn’t used to speaking.

  “A while.” He rolled over onto his back and stretched his spine and his left arm, although his face was still turned toward her.

  When his arm moved closer to her, it caught her attention. She grabbed his hand and pulled it up so she could better see his forearm. All down the inside were an intricate network of dark tattoos. They were artistic, well-done, and most of the time she barely noticed them, but this morning she found them strangely compelling.

  “What do these mean?” she asked, stroking her hand light down the marked skin.

  “Why are you asking me now?”

  “I don’t know. I always kind of wondered. It looks like it might be some sort of ancient language, but I can’t recognize it.”

  “It’s because the lettering is artistic. One word is tangled with the next.”

  “What language is it?”

  “Ancient Hebrew.”

  Her eyes widened as she tried to sort out individual words or letters on his arm. “What does it say?”

  He gave her a half-smile. “You’ll laugh.”

  “I will not. Why would I laugh?”

  “Because I had it done at a low point, and now it sounds kind of…melodramatic.”

  “I won’t laugh. What does it say?” She was still stroking his arm, gently caressing over the beautiful design.

  He cleared his throat. “Shake yourself from the dust and arise. Loose the bonds from your neck.”

  Her breath hitched at the intrinsic beauty and power of the words—and at the thought of what Ben must have been feeling when he inked them onto his skin.

  Then she caught his eyes and saw he looked just slightly sheepish.

  “Well,” she began, the corner of her mouth tilting up slightly, “it might be a little melodramatic.”

  He chuckled, his eyes focused on where she was still brushing her fingers over his skin. “I’ve never told anyone else what the tattoo means.”

  Her breath hitched again, for a different reason this time. She met his eyes and looked quickly away, feeling strangely deep, shy. “Did you really feel like you were some sort of…captive?”

  “Yeah. Like I had to break free, if I was ever going to…take a full breath.”

  Her heart was so full that she acted without thinking. She raised his arm so she could press a soft kiss on the inside of his wrist. When she saw the look in his eyes—questioning, vulnerable—she quickly lowered his arm and very gently released it.

  She felt a wave of hot feeling washing over her, but she wasn’t quite sure what it meant.

  “What happened?” she asked, trying to sound natural. She turned over onto her side so she was facing him. “Why did you change your name and everything? Was your family really so bad?”

  “Not the whole family. My cousins are all right, I guess. We were never close, but they’re not bad guys. But my uncle, my mother’s brother…”

  She saw he was at a loss for words, that emotional tension flickered across his face, so she tried to ease their way into the conversation. “Cyrus Damon. I’ve heard some about him, of course. He’s kind of eccentric?”

  “That’s putting it mildly. He wants to live like an eighteenth-century lord of the manor, and he expects everyone around him to fall in line with his very narrow worldview and unreasonable expectations.”

  “But he’s just your uncle. It’s not like he’s your dad or something. Couldn’t you just let him do his own thing?”

  His reaction was dramatic—he tensed up as if something hurt.

  Breathlessly, she prompted, “Ben?”

  “I know he’s not my dad,” he rasped. “But for a long time, I wanted him to be.”

  She suddenly understood something. It wasn’t just that Ben coul
dn’t stand being forced into some narrow box. It was that his trust, his hope, his love had been betrayed by his uncle.

  “Anyway,” Ben continued, “my uncle doesn’t let people just do their own thing. He wanted all of us—his nephews—involved in the business with him. I actually wasn’t opposed to it. I always wanted to be an architect, but I’d have been happy to work for the company. I never had a father, so I thought…” He released a thick breath and shook his head. “I was a kid. What did I know?”

  Her heart ached at the pain—tightly suppressed—on his face, evident even beneath the beard. “So he didn’t want to be close to you?”

  “I don’t think he knows how to be close to anyone. He wanted to be involved in my life—in every way. He wanted to dictate everything. Where I went to school. Where I lived. How I dressed. How I acted. Who I dated.” He shook his head.

  “Who you dated? Why would he care about that?”

  “Because he has this ridiculous archaic code of honor, and who we’re in relationships with matters to him. He wouldn’t talk to Harrison, my oldest cousin, for months because he wouldn’t dump the woman he’s married to now. He’s always been a tyrant. I had to break free.”

  “I get that.” Mandy reached over to take his hand and twine her fingers with his. “But I still don’t understand how it got so bad that you broke ties completely. I mean, you even changed your name. Couldn’t you just tell him you didn’t want to be part of that life?”

  “I did tell him.” His voice had gotten hoarse. “I did tell him. Over and over again. I told him I wasn’t going to live that way. I wouldn’t work for his company if he was going to try to turn me into someone I wasn’t and try to control my relationships.”

  “Were you dating someone he didn’t like?” She was fascinated by Cyrus Damon’s eccentricities, but this went too close to Ben’s pain to hearwith anything as distanced as curiosity.

  “Yeah. Her name was Chelle. She was a tattoo artist.”

  “Oh no. I can’t imagine your uncle would have been too happy about that.”

  “He hated her.” Ben sighed so deeply she could feel it in his body. “He despised her. I was into her, but I wasn’t in love or anything—but she became the sticking point. He demanded that I stop seeing her, and I simply refused.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “He gave me a bunch of ultimatums. He threatened to cut me off from my inheritance. At that point, I didn’t care. I didn’t want anything to do with his money. So, when that wasn’t enough of a threat, he said he would cut my mother off too.”

  She gasped. “Did he mean it? He would cut off his own sister—”

  “I don’t know if he was serious. He didn’t end up doing it. And I’ve never been told that he’s disinherited me, but he may have. Or he might in the future. I really don’t care. I don’t want him money.”

  “So what happened with Chelle? Was she the one who got away?”

  Ben shook his head, his eyes momentarily soft. “Of course, she wasn’t the one.”

  Absurdly, Mandy felt relieved. She didn’t like the idea of Ben having any ones in his life before her. “So what happened with her?”

  “I was with her for a couple of months after the blow-up with my uncle. She’s the one who did this tattoo. But we weren’t right for each other. We kind drifted apart until there wasn’t any reason to stay together.” He glanced away from her for a minute. “You know, she was the last real girlfriend I’ve had. I was so angry and bitter that I didn’t want to be close to anyone.” He reached over to stroke her cheek with his knuckles. “Until you.”

  She felt a shiver of feeling, but tried not to get distracted from the conversation. “Was your uncle that hard on your cousins? Andrew and the rest of them?”

  Ben shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. At least, I never saw him act in the same way. Harrison and Andrew lived with him since they were kids, so they were always closer to him. Harrison is his poster boy, until a couple of years ago, when he fell in love with someone he shouldn’t have. Andrew was always an embarrassment, but he never seemed to be quite so…ruthless with him.”

  She could see that it bothered him—that he genuinely thought his uncle had been harder on him than on his other nephews. “So you don’t know why he was that way with you?”

  Ben closed his eyes briefly. “I think it was because Michael died.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yeah. We thought for a long time that it was just an accident—it was raining, at night, and Michael was driving the daughters of one of my uncle’s business associates. I think maybe he felt guilty or…or something. And he thought he needed to keep me exactly in line so something similar didn’t happen. I don’t know. I used to think about it a lot, but I don’t know if that was right. But it got to the point where I couldn’t…I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t really about Chelle, although she was the catalyst. No attempt to pull away and have my own life would work. So I just had to break ties completely. Just the sound of his name made me…sick, so I legally changed my name so I wouldn’t have to keep hearing it.”

  She sighed. “Did it hurt your mom, when all this happened?”

  “Of course, it did. I did my best not to make it worse for her, but of course it hurt her. But I didn’t know what else I could do.” They were still holding hands on the bed, and he adjusted his hand so he could stroke the back of her hand. “When did you find out? You already knew, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.” She shifted uncomfortably, thinking of how much it had hurt when she found out he’d been lying. “I put the pieces together just yesterday morning.”

  She felt his body tighten. “That’s why you were so upset,” he breathed.

  “Yeah. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected you to open up to me yet. I mean, maybe our relationship wasn’t at that place yet. But it…it hurt.”

  “I know it did. I’m so sorry. We were in that place in our relationship, and I shouldn’t have I lied to you. I know honesty is important to you, and I broke your trust.”

  “I understand why you did at first. I just wish…” She trailed off, not wanting to lay a guilt-trip on him.

  “Once we got closer, I shouldn’t have kept lying to you. I know. I know it doesn’t change what I did, but I really am sorry.”

  She nodded. She could see in his eyes that he meant it, and it soothed an ache in her chest. She could forgive him. She could understand.

  “I haven’t been close to anyone in a really long time,” he said, holding her gaze as he spoke. “I’ve made a point not to…not to try to please other people. I’ve never told anyone else about who I am, about all of his mess. You’re the first.”

  She nodded again, swallowing over a lump as she was deeply touched by the admission. “I’m glad you told me.”

  “I feel…”

  His gentle stroking of her hand was generating all kinds of feelings in her—some in her heart, some in her body. “You feel what?” she asked breathlessly.

  “I’m glad I told you.”

  She swallowed again. She wanted to kiss him, to move in his arms, but that part of their relationship hadn’t changed. He’d opened up to her, but he was still the same man he’d been the day before. He had too much baggage. He wasn’t ready to be a husband. And that was what she needed.

  “So will you go to Andrew’s wedding?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

  And that was proof that something had changed. The day before, she knew he hadn’t even considered it.

  ***

  Ben felt strange—like a weight had been lifted off him but he was almost dizzy from the freedom, suddenly balanced on the edge of an endless drop.

  He wasn’t sure if he liked the feeling or not.

  They had breakfast with Andrew, and then he left for the airport, encouraged by assurances that Ben would try to get to his wedding if he could.

  Then spent the morning working around the house. Both of them were quieter than no
rmal, but it wasn’t awkward or tense. Ben would sometimes turn his head and see Mandy smiling at him—almost intimately—and he both loved and was terrified by it.

  He’d known this would happen. Telling her the truth would change everything. And now he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  That afternoon, they stopped working at around four—because they were both tired and it was getting unbearably hot and humid.

  Ben went to take a shower and, as he was getting dressed afterwards, his eyes landed on the closet of his room.

  This had been his room growing up, and it still looked basically the same as it had when he was in high school and college. He still had a bunch of clothes in the closet—the stuff he’d seldom worn and hadn’t wanted to take with him. There must be some sort of suit in there that he could wear to the damned cotillion coming up on Saturday night.

  He started digging through the closet and retrieved four different suits from various points in his history. The sight of them made him feel vaguely ill, since they reminded him of when he’d been trying to be a Damon, but he pushed through the feeling and didn’t let it stop him, the way it normally would have.

  His mom wanted him to go to this cotillion, and he could hardly wear jeans and a t-shirt to the ball.

  He had one arm in the first jacket when a voice came from his doorway. “That’s never going to fit you, Ben.”

  He frowned over at Mandy, who was leaning against the frame and smiling. She looked so pretty and fond that he had some trouble holding onto the frown, but he managed. “It might.”

  She laughed and came into the room, taking the hanging half of the jacket and guiding his arm into the sleeve. “It’s not going to fit. When did you wear this thing?”

  “I don’t know. I think it was for a fancy wedding I had to go to in college. I don’t think I’m that much bigger…” He stopped talking because the jacket was too tight to even pull up over his shoulders.

  Mandy was still giggling as she pulled the jacket off. “What else do you have?”

  Ben showed her the old suits he’d pulled out.