The Billionaire's Disgraced Virgin (Billionaire Knights Book 2) by Nic Saint Page A

erotically enticing as the black dress he’d admired before, because he was now aware of the curvy woman concealed underneath.
    He’d gotten the survey report back from IT. They’d done a thorough investigation of her email and internet behavior from the day she’d entered Knight employ but no red flags had been raised. On her lunch break she habitually checked real estate listings in the English countryside, gardening sites, and Nigella Lawson’s cooking recipes. Not exactly spy material.
    He allowed his gaze to slide down to her hands, now resting in her lap, and when he saw how small and delicate they were he could well imagine her in the garden of her cozy home, lovingly placing bulbs in the welcoming soil. From there it was a small leap for his mind’s eye to produce a smattering of images of Chloe smiling at her loving husband, toddlers cavorting in a nearby playpen…
    He clamped down on the unwanted imagery and turned his attention to the scenery as the car ate up the miles. He hadn’t been to the domain in Oxfordshire in quite a while. Not since his grandfather had died at the end of a long winter.
    He could remember those last dreadful moments when he and his two brothers had gathered around his sickbed. The old man had implored them not to make the same mistakes their father had made. Recently widowed, Knight Sr had dived into the London nightlife with reckless abandon, quickly sinking into a quagmire of dating questionable women and enjoying the dangerous buzz of recreational drugs and booze, until he’d married Caroline Popping, well-known reality star and not a stranger to those very same vices herself.
    They’d made quite the couple. Not a weekend had gone by when Dad hadn’t been featured on the front pages of the tabloids, his lurid behavior a disgrace to the entire family and the ancient and respectable house of Knight.
    It all had ended quite tragically one night when he’d wrapped his Aston Martin around a tree, returning from yet another drug-fueled celebrity fest in London. Popping, whom Mike now had the debatable pleasure of calling stepmother, miraculously survived with minor scrapes and bruises, but their father had lain slain. The next morning the tabloids had carried the story of the formerly respectable businessman and one of the country’s richest men, succumbed to a hellish orgy of sex, drugs and alcohol.
    The scandal had very nearly destroyed the family and the business that carried their once proud name, and it had been a dark time for everyone. Which was why their grandfather had urged them to be extremely careful to whom they plighted their troth. Stuart had gotten married last year, and the marriage proved an exceedingly happy one, the once stalwart Stuart really opening up and becoming the loving dad Mike had never seen in him. Steve, his youngest brother, was a different story. After returning from his third tour of duty, heavily scarred both emotionally and physically, he’d retreated to another family property, a small private island off the coast of Scotland, to quietly recover without being a nuisance to his friends or family.
    And while Stuart ran the day-to-day business of Knight Enterprises, it was left to him, Mike, to take care of its future, expanding Knight into other arenas and making certain they remained the number one player in their field.
    He hadn’t wanted to move in a different direction altogether, but the more he thought about it the more it made sense to take over Press Corp. He’d even become convinced it wasn’t merely necessary but highly critical to the future of the group. There were rumors that Press Corp had been looking into taking over Knight, and that would have been a lot worse. It just went to show the old adage was true: it was either eat or be eaten in the cutthroat world of business.
    He chanced another glance at the woman seated not a foot away from him and vowed once more not to let his personal feelings interfere with his business