The Billionaire's Forced Alliance

Chapter Thirty

Veronica Dansing.

No. No, it couldn't be. It wasn't possible. She didn't live in New York, she had run off to Spain with her lover after abandoning him. Ben felt thoroughly uncomfortable and his heart seemed to have come undone. His mother's name was Veronica. She was very educated, as his father had told him in his many drunken stupors that his mother was a scholar; she had a doctorate and in which subject even he didn't know.

Ben was just ten years old when Veronica Williams decided to pack her bags and leave in the middle of the night without even bothering to say goodbye or better yet, take him with her. The memory of the next morning still haunted him; when he had found out that his mother was gone. Her room was empty, her clothes, her books, her things, all gone, as if they had disappeared like the evening dew melts into the sun.

Sarah's professor, Mrs. Dansing couldn't be his mother, could she? Anybody's name could be Veronica but there couldn't lie such a vast coincidence and that was, that the man with whom his mother had run way was named Karl Dansing who was a famous painter.

"Ben? Is everything--alright?"

Sarah's voice brought him back from his trance. "Yes, yes." He shut her off abruptly and concentrated all his attention on driving.

Anger came to him in bouts, and all he could do was drive as fast as humanly possible. Beside him, he could sense her body tensing up in fear but for the first time, he didn't care. There were too many emotions that were making his brain a electrical circuit and slinging all kinds of impulses at different directions.

"Ben, please drive a little slow, I'm--" Her voice was reduced to a whisper.

He stopped the car in an abrupt halt, and swung his face towards her. She was breathing heavily, her hands on her throat, clutching the skin tightly. Her eyes were red, and as each moment passed, the colour intensified and her complexion took a slight greenish hue.

She looked sick.

Immediately, his hand reached upto her face, patting her cheek as he looked closely. "Hey---hey, what happened? Wh--are you okay? Hey!" He ran his hands along her throat, shushing her. "Hey, love, hey, please breathe. Breathe."

When she calmed down, she dropped her head back to the seat and closed her eyes. "I'm okay now."

He was dumbstruck. Wouldn't she tell him what just happened?

"What the hell was wrong?"

"I have motion sickness. If something's moving too fast, I tend to become nauseous." Her voice shook.

Damn, he was jerk.

In his own dejection, he had troubled her as well. Sighing deeply, he shook his head. "I'm so fucking sorry! You should've told me! I'm-"

"I did tell you. Many times. But--you weren't listening."

He was thinking, instead. Thinking about his mother and her betrayal that was still afresh in his heart. He hated people who had the audacity to betray. If you don't like to be with someone, you should say it, rather than betraying them. Or running away. It was this fear at betrayal that had prevented him to ever fall in love. It wasn't as if there weren't any women; there were loads of women in his life. Well, had been. Past tense. After his marriage, he hadn't been with anyone.

Still, the fear of betrayal and cheating had restricted him to go close to any woman or open his heart like a treasure box. He had always kept it shut. He had never allowed any woman to come intimately close to him, even during his one night stands and passing affairs, he had never taken a woman to his apartment. Never.