SIX

Daniel Winters stepped through the immaculately polished glass door of the Las Duex with a smile on his face. At a proud six foot four, it was hard not to take notice of him. His face was the epitome of every woman’s wet dream as he stood with his back straight and carried himself with a stride accustomed to strength and power.

“Mr Winters! You’re early tonight!” the club’s madame sauntered up to him in a slinky midnight blue dress as soon as she spotted him. She gave Daniel a lingering kiss on his freshly shaved cheek and allowed him to inhale her strong but sensual scent of black truffles and ylang-ylang.

“Hmm…are you wearing the ‘Black Orchid’?” Daniel murmured as his hand trailed down to the madame’s tiny waist, pulling her against him. Madame Dominique smirked and placed a hand on his chest, seductively twirling her index finger on his dark grey blazer, “Oh my, Mr Winters, nothing escapes you.”

He grinned, he was feeling good, very good indeed.

“All drinks in the club are on me tonight,” he announced to an extremely pleased Dominique. She squealed in delight and immediately rang orders for the best wine in the house to be served to Daniel.

Daniel felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted off his chest. He’d managed to find a Russian bride. She even had an eleven month old baby! Never mind that the baby was nearly one, he would just have to improvise and come up with a swoon-worthy story for the public to feed off. Both mother and baby would be flown over in two days’ time and they would officially be husband and wife for twelve months; no more, no less, before filing for divorce over ‘irreconcilable differences’. He had it all planned out and no one was going to take away what rightfully belonged to his family anymore.

In his excitement, he’d forgotten that he couldn’t speak the language - but given the circumstance he was in, he figured they would just communicate through sign language or something. Daniel Smith sucked at languages and the only Russian he knew was ‘zdravstvujtye’  for ‘hello’ and ‘svidaniya’ for ‘goodbye.’ But then again, one could not expect him to be obscenely handsome, filthy rich, mind-blowingly smart AND multilingual at the same time. Right? RIGHT?

“Mr Winters?” Dominique’s high pitched voice halted his train of thoughts. “This way, your room is ready,” she said with a slight bow, allowing him a very good view of her deep ample cleavage before leading him down the dimly lit but spacious and tastefully decorated corridor of full-length mirrors and marooned cushioned walls.

Daniel was a VIP at the club and therefore had access to the VIP floor where the elite mingled. And boy was he going to mingle tonight, but first, a trip to the bathroom had to be answered. He excused himself and turned to the left where another corridor led him to answer nature’s call.

Daniel was about to enter the gentlemen’s bathroom when the door abruptly burst open, and out ran a waitress. She had her head down and her face was obscured by her silken chocolatey locks. Perhaps because of that – and the fact that she was obviously flustered from having entered the gent’s bathroom, she ran right smack into Daniel Winters’ broad chest. BAM!

She had charged like a clumsy quarterback, albeit a cute one, only to stumble backwards with the same amount of force and would have undoubtedly fallen flat on her ass had it not be for Daniel’s lightning quick reflexes. In a blink of an eye, he reached out, quickly caught her by the waist and swung her towards him.

“Oh Lord!” she gasped as she looked up at him through her lush lashes and for a moment, his heart stopped. This woman had a halo, or maybe it was from the light emenating from the bathroom lights behind her. But as Daniel Winters looked down at the petite young creature in his arms, her beauty pulsed like a beacon in the darkened corridor, glowing with an angel’s aura. Her eyes, a perfect pair of ocean blue swirls gazed up at him as her cheeks flushed an embarrassing red against her porcelain skin, matching the colour of her sensual cherry-stained lipstick. He liked shy women, and he enjoyed it even more when they were in his arms.

“Hello there,” he greeted her with his most charming smile. Like all successful, dashing young billionaires, Daniel had an insufferable arrogance the size of Antarctica.  The girls at the club adored him, and he was sure this newcomer in her very inviting uniform would come to love him too.

But her reaction was far from what he imagined it would be. Roughly, she pushed him away as if the very touch of him burned her. No woman had pushed him away like THAT before. Except for foreplay but this was a different thing altogether.

“I’m so sorry sir! I went to the wrong bathroom and didn’t realize it. I didn’t see you coming in –“ she was rattling nonsense, going on like a locomotive train and bowing her head repeatedly at him as if she was performing a Japanese ritsurei ritual.

Under normal circumstances, Daniel Winters hated it when people talked non stop but for some reason, this woman amused him. She was not very tall, five feet five at most and was very young. She didn’t look a day over twenty and she clearly did not look like she belonged to the club, though her uniform said otherwise.

“Your name?” he asked, stopping her in mid-sentence, surprising himself. He never once stopped to ask for a waitress’ name. Most times he just wrapped their legs around him, gave them the time of their lives and tossed them away after he was done with them.

‘I must really be in a good mood,’ he thought to himself.

His sentence caught her by surprise too for she stopped bowing and snapped to attention, flipping her hair back like a Pantene commercial. Her innocent charm caught him off guard and an strange sensation blossomed within him, causing his heart to soar like a bird that had been let out of its cage. It was an alien feeling; one he had never before experienced in his twenty-eight years of life. His lips curled downwards, in a sour frown, not liking what was happening to him and consciously squared his shoulders like a man ready for battle.

She swallowed hard at his question and a brief spell of silence fell between them. She fidgeted,  seemingly weighing her answer before she finally spoke.

“Jane….just Jane,” she whispered, her fingers lacing one another as she stood against the cushioned walls. She looked extremely uncomfortable in her uniform.

He studied her features and noticed the puffiness around her eyes. Had she been crying? A strand of cinnamon-coloured hair fell in front of her face and he had the sudden urge to brush it away for her, but he restrained himself. He had a feeling she did not like people touching her.

“I’m sorry sir, I’ll help to clean the stain on your shirt,” she said quietly this time.

‘Huh?’ Daniel looked down and was greeted with a thick red lipstick stain on the collar of his wrinkle-free Armani shirt. She’d missed his blazer by just an inch.

‘Ohhh…’

His gaze travelled back towards her and that was when he noticed that her blouse, her very tight blouse was wet.

“Your blouse is stained as well, “ he pointed out, sounding more pissed than he intended to.  

A look of shock claimed her oval face and her hands flew to her chest covering them in shock.

“Shit!” she cussed. Oh…he liked women who cussed. They turned him on.

“I’m leaking!”

Leaking? She’s a mother?

Daniel Winters never did get the chance to ask for the alluring young waitress quickly zipped past him to barge into the women’s bathroom next door and disappeared from his view.

***

Two hours later, Daniel Winters was no longer smiling. He spat the Bloody Mary into the crystalized glass and swore, “F**king A**holes! Motherf****r!”

The glass slammed onto the surface of the round diamond crusted tabletop and droplets of the red cocktail splashed onto the surface. The raven-haired hostess who sat on his lap fell from his lap and landed on the black carpeted floor with a soft thud.

A horrified look fell on her face and she quickly went on her knees, trembling in fear.

“I’m so sorry Mr Winters!” she apologized, not exactly sure what she had done wrong.

The fact was, she had done nothing to enrage him at all. But the phone call he received mere seconds ago badly messed up his plans. The Russian bride had changed her mind and decided to join the convent.

He contemplated adopting a baby from the orphanage and hiring an escort. But what would he do with the child after a year? Dump the toddler back at the orphanage? No, that would be just evil. Daniel Winters was a cold and ruthless man, but he wasn’t evil.

Fuck!

“Out!” he ordered with an outstretched arm pointing towards the door of his private VIP room. This sent the petrified hostess scampering out, her bra strap still hanging off her shoulder and in her haste, the door to the room was left slightly ajar.

“Damnit!” Daniel shouted and ran both hands through his hair, groaning in frustration. Now how on earth was he going to find another wife and baby in two days? He’d already called for a press conference to announce his ‘secret marriage’ to the world.

How on earth was he going to –

“LET GO OF ME!”