Dating A British Billionaire (BWWM Romance) Read online

  Dating A British Billionaire

  By Tasha Jones

  ***

  Nisha

  Here I was, another night, and another high society social function where I really didn't belong. The people glittered like diamonds and I was always weary that someone would know I was an outsider. They usually didn't though, because I knew how to play my part. I knew how to keep up appearances, but when I saw him, something inside me changed.

  Edward

  You would never guess a party with some of London's most wealthy and powerful could be such a bore. Each person less indistinguishable than the last. Merely drones, talking about summer homes, investments or other social gatherings. But when I saw her it was like finding a diamond in the rough. Her black stilettos stood out in the crowd and her beauty was more than just exotic, it was regal. I had to have her. I would make her mine.

  ***

  Tip: Search BWWM Crew on Amazon to see more of our great books.

  ***

  Get 3 Exclusive BWWM eBooks FREE!

  Hello There. As a very special thank you for buying this book, for a limited time only I want to send you three books completely FREE of charge directly to your email! You can get them by clicking here.

  Direct Link

  http://www.bwwmcrew.com/freebooks/

  These books are so EXCLUSIVE you can't even buy them on Amazon. When you download them I'll also be the first to tell you about the hottest new BWWM releases.

  ***

  Copyright © 2015 Tasha Jones. All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

  WARNING: This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language. It may be considered offensive to some readers. This book is for sale to adults ONLY.

  Please ensure this book is stored somewhere that cannot be accessed by underage readers.

  Dedicated

  To All The Readers Who Are Making My Dreams Possible

  Chapter One – Nisha

  I felt the bouncing before I heard the noise. My whole body bounded up and down, my mattress pushing me, as if to tell me to stop being a lazy bum and get up out of bed. I clutched at my duvet and turned over, tucking my chin under its big, fluffy mess, hoping that a little warmth would help me get back to sleep.

  Fat chance.

  “Mum!!!”

  “Ugh,” I groaned before I let my eyelids flip back, revealing the much-too-bright world in front of me. I couldn’t believe that the morning had come already. It seemed that just five minutes ago I was slipping out of my rented cocktail dress and draping it over my thrifted couch. I longed for the days when Sundays meant sleeping in until noon and grabbing brunch with my university friends. Now, I was already awake, very hung over and dreading the day, and the clock had not even passed nine o’ clock.

  However, when I turned to face Valerie, her tiny body effortlessly bounding up and down, her frizzy hair flying all about her joyous face, I felt nothing but love in my heart. What did she have to be excited about today?

  “Mummy! Mummy! It’s ballet day!”

  I pursed my lips as I shoved the duvet off of my legs and climbed out of bed. Oh right. That. “Val, get off the bed, baby.” I exclaimed, my own frustration pushing those words out of my mouth before I even had time to rethink them.

  Valerie seemed to have deflated. Her smile fell and she let herself fall onto the mattress, the unmistakable sound of wood cracking punctuating her movement.

  My heart stopped as I dove for the bed, lifting her off of it all in one motion. “ Val, look what you did,” I hissed as I dropped to my knees and peered under the bed. I immediately regretted the statement, after all she was just a kid. Sure enough, the center wooden beam had been completely cracked. I could already see the mattress sinking down into the frame.

  “How many times have I told you not to jump on the bed?” I said to her in the most stern motherly voice I could come up with.

  Valerie, who had scurried to the other side of the room, just looked back at me, a blank expression on her face.

  I frowned, in truth I couldn’t even remember the last time I had told her that. I loved her too much to stay angry at her for long.

  With a sigh, I turned back to the bed, my groggy, slightly poisoned mind trying to work its way around a solution to this surprise problem.

  “Mummy?”

  I had to physically stop myself from groaning. I was not caffeinated enough to deal with any of this. “Yes, Val?” I replied as I turned to face her. As soon as I got a good look at her watering eyes and tiny little frown, my heart softened and I began to wonder what was so important about that middle beam in the first place. But as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I got right back to being frustrated, but this time, at myself for losing my temper with my sweet child.

  “Could you maybe make me pancakes before I go to dance rehearsals?” she asked, her little voice colored with entitlement.

  I flexed my jaw. The last thing I had time to do was make pancakes for her. “Honey, no. We're in a rush and we have to get going if you want to make ballet on time.”

  Valerie stood there for a few seconds longer, her eyes narrowing and her lips curling with anger, before she stomped her feet twice, yelled, “I hate you!” and ran out of the room.

  I shrugged. Well, at least there was nothing out of the ordinary about this morning. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself at how moody my child could be sometimes. After I managed to pull my stubborn hair out of my face and throw on some joggers, I made my way to the kitchen to cook Valerie some quick oatmeal. It was a much more healthy breakfast choice for a growing girl who couldn’t seem to sit still anyway.

  I had only managed to get the coffee pot started before the silence was starting to get to me, so I poured my coffee and made my way to the small living room to find something on the telly. As soon as I clicked it on, a face materialized on the screen. I furrowed my brow, my head cocked to the side as I struggled to remember where I had seen it before. Although it was unlikely, it wasn’t entirely impossible that I had sat with him at a clients’ dinner or something. I glowered at the news headline at the bottom of the screen. “Billionaire owner of EDF Energy joins the campaign race for parliamentary seat,” I mumbled as I read the caption.

  My eyes went wide as the memory of the events from the night before came crashing down on me. I had serviced a client who was the head of accounting for EDF… And I barely remembered his face. But this guy… this… I stepped closer to the screen so that I could read what it said. This… “Edward Worthington” was the only man who clung to the back of my mind. My short conversation with him in that dense ballroom had been nothing more than a blur of beauty.

  But then he followed me all the way to the car park in the garage. I hadn’t actually meant to leave, only to catch some air in relative privacy. I knew that if Peter was lucid enough to follow me, he’d go right out the front door. He’d never know to go to the garage… but somehow, this Edward man did. I shook my head, remembering more of last night: my dress, my shoes, his eyes… They were a striking green color, the tiny specks of brown in them adding dimension. I could have stared at those eyes for a lifetime.

  But then he’d opened his mouth and slurred words of false confidence had come tumbling right out. I glanced at the napkin he had sloppily written his digits on. Part of me really wanted to call it, just to see what would happen, but another part of me knew he would wake up in a few hours, or even longer than that, and not even remember a thing.

  The scent of oatmea
l burning jarred me out of my thoughts. I dropped my coffee on the center table and scurried back into the kitchen, barely salvaging the batch.

  “Mummy! Can you help me with my bun?” Valerie came running back into the living room wearing white tights and a black leotard.

  I nodded, much more awake and thus ready to deal with my six-year-old daughter. “Okay,” I replied as I placed the oatmeal in front of her seat. “Sit and start eating.”

  As soon as she took her perch, I grabbed a large comb out of her hand and tried to be as gentle as possible with her hair. Of course my efforts were fruitless. I had only just begun to comb through her hair when she showered me with complaints.

  “Mummy! It hurts!”

  I rolled my eyes. “It has to be tight,” I replied as she began to squirm. With a huff, I said, “You need to let me do this baby.”

  With that, she miraculously stopped moving, and I found myself relaxing as I prepped her for class. For the next three hours, she would be preoccupied and afterwards, far too tired and we could both relax.

  It was only when I had managed to get her to dance practice on time and taken my seat in the back of the studio with the rest of the mothers, all at least five years older than me, that I allowed myself to drift back to my thoughts of Edward, and the napkin that still sat untouched in the center of my kitchen counter.

  Chapter Two – Edward

  One night earlier...

  I helped myself to another drink. Champagne was nothing but glorified soda water. Its bitter taste clung to my tongue and the insides of my cheeks. If I were at a real bar, and not the marble table in the back of a ballroom at London’s rendition of the Waldorf, I would have washed it down with something real, like Jack Daniels or Grey Goose.

  “Hello, Ed…”

  I looked to my right to find none other than Peter Clinton staring right at me. His tough, leather-like skin had an odd, pinkish hue to it; a tell-tale sign that he had been drinking…and a lot. I could almost smell that bitter stuff on his breath. It was not a good look. “I see the party is serving you well.” I tried not to make that sound like it had some sort of double meaning, but I’m not sure I succeeded.

  He leaned on the table, grabbing another glass of champagne from a tray that hadn’t even gone out to the floor yet. “Of course it is. I planned it.”

  I raised an eyebrow at this. Whenever Peter said he had done anything, or was responsible for anything, it usually just meant that he had slapped his name on top of weeks and weeks’ worth of work done by his team of glorified secretaries. “Did you?” I joked.

  Peter just shrugged as he took a sip from his glass, my half-insult completely going over his head. “What’s your problem, Ed?” he demanded.

  I winced as his breath washed over my face. “Don’t call me Ed,” I replied. That name was reserved for my father, and he’d been dead over ten years. So it’s not like I was too keen on finding anyone to fill the void. Even if I was, Peter with his greedy heart and pinkish skin would be last on the list.

  Peter just laughed at this, the sound of it somehow cutting through the music that blared through the hall.

  I looked away to keep myself from punching him in the face. My eyes surveyed the hall, taking stock of everything from the glistening chandeliers, their light bathing the entire room with their warm glow. Everything felt diamond-encrusted, from the railings on the staircase to the dresses on the people. “They look like little wax dolls,” I muttered, more to myself than to Peter.

  Peter narrowed his eyes in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “They all look the same. No one is distinguishable.”

  Peter released one of his boisterous laughs. “This is high society. We're all distinguished,” he replied.

  I scoffed. “Is that what you tell yourself so that you can sleep at night?”

  This seemed to go right over Peter’s head. He seemed more concerned with finishing his glass of alcohol, than actually having an educated conversation with me. “I’m not really sure I follow,” he replied.

  I chuckled, the sound of it lost in music, laughter and small talk. “Of course you don’t,” I replied as he leaned off of the marble counter, dropping his empty champagne glass on one of the trays that was circling around. I gazed around him. There was always a little part of me that enjoyed these types of evenings. I loved the London accents, viscously slipping in and out of my mind like the finest honey. I loved the champagne I could just taste the money in… even though it was bitter and intolerable. I loved all of this because my parents had. Standing here with two adults on either side of me, toting me around to their best friends, were some of the only moments when I truly felt a part of something. And now that I had nothing, the memory of that… and, by extension, anything that could bring about this memory, was enough for me.

  But then Peter stepped right in front of me, completely obstructing my view; as if I didn’t already have enough reasons to hate this conversation and the man that I was having it with. “Really, Ed, what is bothering you? You’ve got the whole world at your fingertips. Is it Alice?” he asked.

  I groaned at this. The last thing I wanted was to talk about my ex-girlfriend. “I don’t have to talk to you about this.”

  “I am your advisor,” Peter asserted with his slurring words.

  I grabbed another glass of champagne and took a healthy first sip before I responded. It was only then that I was beginning to feel a little light headed, that I found it more difficult to hold on to. “Hardly,” I replied with a harsh voice. “You were the manager of my account before I turned eighteen and could handle it myself. Now, you’re just the accountant of my company… with no obligation to advise me on anything… the very least, my love life.”

  Peter, whose eyes were glossed over as he seemed to stare right through me, looked as if he hadn’t even registered anything I said. “I just want to see you happy,” he replied as he slapped me on the shoulder.

  I took a step past him to recover my balance without losing my drink. It was just so much work waiting around for a whole ‘nother glass and then having that same, infuriating internal debate about whether or not I should have another glass. “If only that were true, Pete,” I replied as I drank the rest of my champagne and slammed the glass on the marble behind me.

  Perhaps it was the quick movement, or the speed with which I had that final bit of bitter alcohol, but somehow my dizziness felt far more than just a side effect of being in high society. Perhaps it was my heavy head, but somehow, my wandering mind had become nearly untraceable. Perhaps it was my tired eyes but, all of a sudden, I was sure I had seen something over Peter’s shoulder. At first glance it looked like an angel, or some sort of exotic princess.

  My eyes were wide and time seemed to have completely stopped. The world went on around me, but I felt oblivious to it. It was as if she had lifted me off of the ground and out of this world. As she reached the bottom of the staircase, I got a better look. She was tall, much taller than any woman I had been with, at least five foot, ten inches. But maybe that was just on account of the fact that she was wearing black stiletto heels. I glowered at them, my mind working a mile a minute because no other woman in that room had the balls to wear black stilettos to a cocktail party such as this. A skimpy, yet classic red dress draped her curvy frame, the crimson fabric contrasting beautifully against her dark skin. Her large, brown eyes were expertly framed with makeup only a professional could have done and her thick lips were covered in a matte red lipstick.

  I was so preoccupied with trying to convince myself that this was real, that I wasn’t completely imagining this woman, that I had failed to realize that she was headed right for us until it was too late. “What have you been up to, Peter?” she asked, placing a dainty hand on his shoulder.

  Peter turned to investigate where the hand had come from, but when he laid eyes on her he let out a boisterous laugh and wrapped his hand around her torso. “Oh nothing of note, darling. What kind of adventures have you got
up to?”

  She shrugged, “Oh nothing too exciting.”

  I cocked my head to my side. There was no way she was dating this man… “I’m sorry, and who are you?” I asked, cutting into their conversation before they had a chance to forget that I was there in the first place.

  She flinched. It was a small movement she quickly masked with a fake smile, one that twinkled nonetheless, but I saw the curious movement. All at once, she went from visionary to human, and somehow, that only made her even more stunning. “And what makes you think you are entitled to that information?”

  Her accent stuck out beyond the rest. It wasn’t exactly a change from the BBC that I got accustomed to having my head filled with, but then again, it wasn’t necessarily a departure from it. My drunken head had decided that this was enough to dwell on, until, "Ed, man…” Peter slapped my shoulder yet again. I really hated it when he did that.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “You were wondering who I was?” The woman gave me a knowing smile that drew me in and pushed me away all at once.