SEDUCING THE BILLIONAIRE

Chapter Nine

'You're here to do a job, focus on that and stop trying to make him fall in love with you.'

I had to keep reminding myself of this, the man had made it clear that I was not his type and as much as it hurt to hear that, I had to respect his preference. Instead of fixating on Duke and wondering when he was going to fall in love with me, I focused on people who actually appreciated my company, his house management team and his little sister. If I wasn't with these people, I would be talking to my sisters or on my laptop checking out houses on the market.

Two months into our marriage, I had bought my very first house and I was very proud of myself. I hadn't told anyone except for Duke who assured me that I had nothing to worry about, in the divorce I would keep every asset with my name on it. The house I had bought had three bedrooms with the master bedroom self-contained, a modern kitchen with kitchen units, an electric gate and a borehole. There were tiles, pavers outside and a ceiling board. I had immediately put it on rent and was planning on buying another house, I now wanted to save up and get semi detached or wait a bit more and buy an apartment building.

Rhoda was having her ceremony to celebrate and make her marriage official, turns out she and her husband had secretly gone to the civic center and gotten married when my family wouldn't let her marry him before I got married, we all just thought they were just cohabiting. Now that they were free to marry, they were having a marriage blessing and a reception.

"Will you be coming with me?" I asked Duke that Friday, the event was on Saturday. Lindsey had already excitedly agreed to attend with me, and we had even bought outfits for her, a baby pink dress for church and a royal purple one for the reception.

"Do I have to?" Duke asked

"Well, it'll be weird to see a newly married woman attend her sister's wedding without her husband," I pointed out and he let out a sigh.

"Fine, I'll go." He agreed, making it sound like it was such a chore.

I wanted to point out that he would be the one losing custody of his sister if our marriage fell apart but really wasn't in the mood for arguments, so I bit my tongue and walked out of his room.

The next morning, we went to church for the marriage blessing, people staring at him and wondering why he was wearing glasses and a mask.

"His eyes are hypersensitive to light, and he has a weak immune system, he easily gets allergic reactions that's why he always wears a mask in public," I told an aunt when she asked.

The ceremony was really beautiful, and Rhoda looked great in her cream white wedding dress, her kids being the flower girl and boy. After the church ceremony we went to take some photos, but Duke was so impatient and kept on insisting that we go home for lunch, he did not want to have lunch with my family at my aunt's place, because of his complaints I quickly took pictures with my sisters and mum and dad then excused us from the family lunch.

"Why can't you stay and interact with the family?" mum asked "most of your cousins and aunties didn't make it for your wedding and never got the chance to know your husband," she pointed out.

"Am sorry mum but you know he's a very busy man. He has a work lunch, but we will make it to the reception" I promised and quickly dashed out of there.

We had lunch at home, Lindsey excitedly talking about the wedding, and she looked forward to seeing more dancing. The reception was starting at 18:00hrs but Duke had us get there at 19:00hrs because he wanted to spend as little time as possible there.

Rhoda had been talking about wanting to upgrade her kitchen and make it more modern so I gave her $1,000 cash as a wedding gift, I knew that would go a long way in helping with the renovations. Her husband had inherited the house from his parents, and it had stayed for decades without really undergoing many renovations except for painting and adding tiles and a ceiling board.

The reception was really fun, and it felt great to be out there with my family, dancing and just being in the joyous celebratory mood. But of course, it was cut short by Duke who wanted to leave at 21:00hrs.

"Lindsey can't stay out too late, it's past her bedtime," he said to me.

I knew he was only using her as an excuse, surely, she could stay out with us just this once. But I didn't want to argue so I said goodbye to my family and left.

.

.

On Monday, I had woken up late and was expecting to find Duke had already left his room and was down in his home office or library but when I stepped through the door separating our rooms, I found him pacing back and forth with a document in hand.

"Oh..." I stopped in my tracks "morning, I thought you would be out by now."

"Aunt Brenda is suing for custody," he told me

"What? But I thought the marriage would get her off your back."

That woman really had issues only God could solve.

"Nope," he said through a clenched jaw and dropped the paper on the bed "she is claiming that I am using Lindsey's money carelessly, spending it on ... and I quote 'a woman he is practically paying to be married to him, she is a gold digger, and he knows it, but he doesn't want to be alone so he's paying for her acceptance of him'.... She says for Lindsey's sake, she must be taken away from me." Duke explained to me. his voice fighting to stay steady but still coming out a bit shaky and heated.

"But you can prove that you're not using her money, right?" I asked.

"I use her money to pay for her school fees and buy her clothes or whatever else she might need," he spoke "Any good lawyer can argue that I can be channeling the money to something else. And she will point out that the profits from my companies have dropped so I might be tempted to use Lindsey's money..."

"Wait, you're making losses?" that came as a shock.... But if he was making losses, how was he managing to give me $10,000 per week?

"No, we're not making losses. Before my parents died, I was making about 150% in profits before tax, after their death I got disturbed and my businesses got hit, now we're making about 80% profits before tax so yes, we're still making profits, just not as much as we used to."

"But it's understandable, you experienced something tragic, you're still making a lot of profit."

Sure, dropping from 150% to 80% was really crazy but it's not like he was making losses. And he had stopping socializing, networking, that had probably affected the business, he was the face of the brand and the more people saw him out there, the more he was marketing the business but now he was just cooped up in the house, people were perhaps slowly forgetting that he still existed.

"Do you need me to do something?" I asked him, I really wanted to help. Sure, we were not in a great place in our relationship, but I knew how much he loved his sister, and I knew Lindsey would be miserable living with Aunt Brenda.

"I don't know," he rubbed his forehead "if the judge signs off to have my bank statements presented, they'll be able to see that I send $10,000 to you on a weekly basis, that will prove Aunt Brenda's allegations that I am misusing money and paying you in order to keep you in my life," he explained.

Yeah, that did not sound good at all, maybe he should have been paying me in cash.

"We can't just give up."

"We're not, I've already called my lawyers," he informed me "if this case is taken to trial, I'll need you to act your ass off, show the judge that you're hopelessly in love with me and don't care about the money, say it's for the house bills or something, Jerome and his team will coach you on what to say when put on the stand."

I just nodded in understanding, how was I going to convince the court that I was hopelessly in love with a man who made me feel bad about my body? How was HE going to convince the judge that we were together for love when he didn't even like me?

I just prayed that we would not screw things up and ruin Lindsey's life.