Craving CEO's Touch - English Version

Chapter 22

The first thing Nevin saw when he entered was the couple Valeria and Tony, the living room was full of people. Nevin didn't know most of them but he was sure that Zion knew them. As they entered, a beautiful woman approached and immediately hugged Zion.

'Zion darling,' he greeted Zion, 'Where have you been? I've been looking for you for a while now. I've missed you. I want to hear all about this darling little station you've bought. Come and talk to me.'

He glanced at Nevin and swept his gaze from his face and body, then he turned to Zion and pulled him out of the living room. On any other occasion, he probably would have laughed at the woman's actions, but when it came to Zion, he was hurt, he was too emotionally involved to feel anything but intense, searing jealousy.

'Madeleine, you know Nevin is small but there's no need to crush him underfoot,' Zion drawled dryly, forcing the lady to acknowledge his presence.

Madeleine acknowledged him with a voice that dripped condescension, her eyes dismissing Nevin as an unworthy opponent as she immediately launched into a conversation featuring mutual friends in Manila whose names meant nothing to Nevin, apart from the fact that he had occasionally come across them in the gossip columns.

'Zion's got a great place here,' Paul commented enviously when Nevin joined them, and he could see from his expression that he was thinking of the day when he would be successful enough to own something as luxurious.

'It is lovely,' Valeria agreed, smiling warmly at Nevin. 'A lot of our friends were surprised when he gave up his Manila service flat to move down here, but I wasn't.'

She said it so confidently that Nevin looked enquiringly at her. Zion was still talking to Madeleine, his dark head bent over her blonde one. The pose was familiar to Nevin from gossip column glossies, and jealousy ate into him.

'Don't be fooled by the sophisticated exterior,' Valeria warned him. 'Other people have dismissed Zion as nothing more than an elegant playboy—to their cost. What he is today he achieved single-handed, and you don't do that without collecting a few scars on the way. Zion was an orphan, you know,' she told Nevin, who was a little surprised that as a friend of Zion's of such long standing, Valeria should speak to him in this vein, but an explanation was soon forthcoming. Tony and Paul were deep in a discussion on the rival merits of local and national radio, and Valeria drew Nevin a little to one side.

'Look, perhaps I'm sticking my nose in where it isn't wanted,' she began without preamble, wrinkling the item in question with a rueful air. 'Tony's always telling me that I act before I think, but on this occasion intuition tells me that I'm right. It's pretty obvious you aren't just one of Zion's decorative idiots. Oh, you're pretty all right,' she added hastily.

'But I'm not cast in the same mould as Madeleine, for instance,' Nevin supplied comprehendingly.

Valeria grinned. 'Would you honestly want to be? Oh, I know she looks fantastic, but once you've said that you've said the lot, and I'm not just being bitchy. I could never understand what Zion saw in those empty-headed model types he used to squire around—apart from the obvious, of course. When he brought you to our house the other week, I was astonished, at first, and then when I'd had time to think about it—the fact that he joined Radio Zamboanga so quickly, without a word to anyone, buying a house down here, the whole thing—I realised that this time it must be serious...'

Nevin took a deep breath.

'I wish it was,' he said frankly, for some reason feeling that he could trust Valeria. 'But it isn't. At least not as far as Zion's concerned.'

There was a long silence, and then Valeria said briskly, 'If that means what I think it means, I've really gone and put my foot in it, haven't I? I could have sworn that Zion felt something for you, though. He looked definitely possessive the other night...'