Tied to the Billionaire(5)

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The cause of the strike, Mr MacIntyre. You asked about the cause of the strike. These poor women—your employees, sir, to whom you have a certain responsibility—generally make five dollars a week. They’d have to work for two weeks—twelve days, twelve hours per day—to afford one of your handkerchiefs. Do you think this is just?”

“Well, they should be grateful they have jobs.” MacIntyre leaned closer, his manner and his voice menacing. “And if you don’t stop your meddling, they won’t. I’ll fire every single one of them in a minute. There are plenty of people who’d be happy for steady work, for a reputable company that’s not about to go bust and put them out on the street.”

“Won’t you consider raising their salaries, Mr MacIntyre?” Olivia countered, inserting a bit of sweetness into her own voice. She laid her hand on his upper arm and felt his muscles shift under her fingers. “An additional dollar a week would make a big difference to them.”

“I’m running a business here, Miss Alcott, not a charity.” He pulled away from her grasp and shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts, then stepped past her to speak to the assembled workers.

“Go back to your machines, ladies. Don’t listen to this—this rabble-rouser. She’s only here to make trouble. You know that MacIntyre Textiles has always taken good care of you…”

“Oh, really, Monsieur?” Lisette Beauchamps pushed her way through the clot of ragged women to confront him. “Did you care when my daughter got the brown lung? Poor petite wheezing and coughing so hard that she couldn’t walk, let alone work? And no money for a doctor or medicine? Or when Maria Clermont’s hand got tangled in the spinning machine? After they cut it off at the wrist, the fever took her. Left her four children all alone, les pauvres. Now they work here too, in this hellhole that killed their mother.”

“Oui!”

“C’est vrai!”

The women besieged Andrew MacIntyre, crowding around him, blurting out their sad stories in broken English. For a moment, Olivia almost felt sorry for him.

“Silence!” His voice drowned out their pleas and complaints. The babble died away. He raised his fist as though to batter the closest of the supplicants. Then he let it fall to his side. “The next person who makes a sound will be arrested and thrown in jail.” Despite his rough words, though, he appeared uncertain.

She had a premonition of triumph.

“Miss Alcott, I’d like to speak with you in private.” Grasping her by the arm, he led her towards his motor car. He opened the door on the passenger side and practically pushed her inside.

Her heart leapt in her chest. Had she won? Or should she be worried? He levered his body into the driver’s seat, then turned to her with a peculiar expression she couldn’t read at all, but that somehow made her tingle all over.

“What’s in this for you?” he asked finally. “You’re obviously an intelligent and cultured woman. Why get involved with this rabble?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do, sir. These people need help.”

“You truly believe that?”

“I do.”

“And you thought you could make me believe, too?”

“I’d hoped I could, yes. That’s why I asked to speak to you personally. You’re young, educated, a different generation from the greedy swine who raped America for their own gain.”

“Like my father, you mean?”

She blushed in spite of herself. Normally she was more diplomatic.

“Well, then, Olivia—” The way he emphasised her first name made her shiver. “I have a proposition for you.”





Chapter Three





The instant he set eyes on Olivia Alcott, he saw her on her knees. The image came to him unbidden, unlike the fantasies he so often summoned to amuse himself. His twisted desires could not have been further from his mind. He’d been preoccupied with the strike and all the other manifold concerns of his industrial empire. Still, there was something about her erect posture, her trim curves, the set of her lush mouth, that called to his dominant nature and turned his thoughts from business to forbidden pleasure.

She was a modern woman—that much was immediately clear—self-confident and assertive. Although adequately polite, her forthright manner lacked any hint of the deference to which he was accustomed. She spoke to him as an equal. Yet his instincts told him that under her steely exterior lay something soft and yielding, a spirit hungry for surrender to the sort of power he loved to exercise.

Probably she didn’t realise it herself, but Olivia Alcott was a natural submissive, born to be mastered.

This sudden insight distracted him. He could scarcely look at her without imagining her graceful limbs wound with rope, her neat bosom bared to his pinching fingers, her lively brown eyes hidden by the blindfold that would give him licence to use her however he chose. His cock swelled to an uncomfortable bulk inside his trousers. He was grateful that the motoring duster he wore concealed the evidence of his excitement.

When he shook her hand, he sensed her shock of unconscious recognition. Her breath quickened and the colour rose in her smooth cheeks. Her voice grew softer as she entreated him to increase the millworkers’ wages, laying out the arguments, pleading with his better nature. He wanted to make her beg for something quite different.