Exclusive Love (British Billionaires Series) by Sorell Oates Page A

couldn’t bear explaining what happened. I picked it up this morning when I couldn’t find you. I had all sorts of crazy thoughts running in my head like you were punishing me for my rudeness or had abandoned me because I was mad. I picked up the button and thought, have you really risked someone so important to you over a button?’
    His arms slipped round her shoulders, the embrace bringing her head to his sweaty chest. Rather than experience the ‘ick’ factor snuggled to his sodden shirt, Katy exhaled feeling she could be herself.
    ‘How can someone of your means, who’s climbed high on the career ladder at a young age be plagued with such self doubt?’
    Oscar posited the rhetorical question into her hair, a mixture of sea air and strawberry shampoo. The girl was phenomenal. A complete diamond, somehow lost in the constant rush and dog-eat-dog world of New York and the journalistic profession.
    Katy’s ears pricked. The question reminded her why she was plagued by self-doubt. She didn’t have any financial ‘means’ and was barely hanging onto the bottom rung of the career ladder. Here she was with a semi-eccentric, dashing British billionaire, well bred, with numerous Oxbridge degrees in the ‘staff quarters’ of his Hamptons Palace which was three times the size of the house she had lived in since birth with her parents.
    Scratching and scrabbling for money to fund her higher education, she plowed through and invested years in her career only to snatch a crummy job on the local rag. Compatible as they were intellectually, and hopefully sexually, their upbringings were extreme opposites. Remaining composed and considered in Oscar’s presence, Katy was the eternal swan swimming gracefully on a lake with her feet paddling madly underneath to propel her.
    Throw into the equation the fact she was placing innocent Oscar in front of the firing squad with her expos é on snobbish British millionaires seeking solely rich American women and he would have an explanation to his question. These unpalatable facts circled endlessly in her head.
    Unsure how long she’d been nestled to his chest, listing her poor choices over the past fortnight, she broke away from Oscar. Paternally, he kissed her forehead.
    ‘I wasn’t feeling great before, but how about a hearty breakfast and indulging in some fun,’ he paused deliberately leering at Katy, ‘in the sun!’
    Due to Oscar’s underwhelming shop, breakfast consisted of peanut butter and jelly on toast and a bowl of Coco Pops for Katy. Oscar had toast and butter. Sitting at opposite ends of the twelve seated dining room table, Oscar raised his head to see Katy’s transparent glass.
    ‘Breakfast may have been less bland had I thought to buy an orange juice,’ bellowed Oscar down the pine table.
    ‘Water benefits the mind and the body. After tossing and turning all night over a button, it’ll probably invigorate me for the day ahead.’
    Oscar removing the rubbish from the take out splurge, had Katy insisting on washing up. Hands frantically flinging open doors and head assessing each cupboard around the mammoth kitchen, she was stumped. Returning from dumping the garbage, the handful of plates, bowls and glasses remained in the sink. Placing his finger over Katy’s lips, he hushed her apology. Taking her hand, he led her to a shiny metallic compartment that could easily have been part of the set of a futuristic sci-fi television program. Sliding the door down revealed a dish washer.
    ‘What even the servants are too posh to wash up?’ blurted Katy incredulously.
    ‘Servants? This isn’t Downton Abbey. They were employees and valuable ones at that. Given the work they did at the main house, back at home they were entitled to put their feet up and have a break from domestic duties.’
          ‘Yes, of course,’ she said.
    She was ignorant of hired help. Even with her parents working at the local school, sadly not as teachers (Katy’s mother worked in the