The Billionaire’s Prodigal Wife
Chapter 9

Alessandro looked at his wife’s bent head of glossy hair as she ignored him and filled out a form on her desk. While he wasn’t in the least happy by her behavior, he admitted he was intrigued by this new side to Mackenna. She’d always been feisty and strong-willed, but he had always been able to coerce her to do as he wanted.

He enjoyed the challenge she was presenting to him and as he watched her tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear before turning over the papers and moving to enter information into a computer on her desk, he admitted her pull on him was still extraordinarily strong. He was going to enjoy bringing his wife back home.

“Fine, we’ll discuss it later over dinner. For now, I will let you do your job.”

She almost snorted at his words considering the last dinner he’d promised her. “I’m not having dinner with you. Sit down and fill in the information on all three of those pages,” she didn’t look at him as she finished entering Derrick’s information and then scowled as she realized she’d missed another purposefully placed miscoded number. She needed to call him again and get it sorted.

“Damn it, Derrick.” She lifted the receiver and dialed the number to his desk.

“Hey gorgeous, missing me already?”

“No, I don’t miss you at all. I’m going to wring that thick neck of yours.”

“So, you noticed I work out?” Derrick teased. “It’s not only my neck that’s thick though.”

She was no longer even remotely in the mood considering the devil himself sat across from her desk eavesdropping. “Doctor Portman, I swear to God if you don’t quit it, I’m going to come down there and murder you and splay you out on your own damn operating table as an example to the damn team. You did the surgery on Mr. Meyer Sunday in the early morning correct?”

He sensed she was really upset and instantly stopped teasing. “Yes, Mac, are you okay?”

“I’m fine Derrick; just stop screwing with my billing, okay?” She tried to keep her cool. “Unless you want to get paid at the basic rate instead of the weekend morning rate, you’ll quit it. I have enough to do without double-checking your work.”

“I’m sorry Mac. Do you need me to come down there?” He asked as he’d never heard the tone she was using before. “I can redo it myself.”

“No, it’s fine.” She took a deep breath. “Just tell me now if you did any others like this?”

“No, it was just the MRI code and the Sunday morning one.” He spoke quietly. “Are you really angry with me over this?”

She closed her eyes at his question. She was not mad at him. The man opposite her, she was absolutely furious with but not him. “No Derrick, I’m not really angry. We’ll talk later, okay?” She smiled into the phone unable to stay mad at him as she fixed the codes on the screen.

“Over dinner?” he asked hopefully and was rewarded with a quiet laugh.

“No, not over dinner, you oaf.” She hung up the phone before he could ask anything else. She turned back to Alessandro. “I’ll need your insurance cards.”

“The company is paying one-hundred percent of the bills directly.” He shook his head and didn’t miss Mackenna’s scowl at his words. He ignored it. “Are you having an affair with Doctor Portman?”

“No,” she held his gaze without shame, “much to his chagrin.” She extended her hand for the first of the papers and then rolled her eyes. “Alessandro, you haven’t even filled this out.”

“Forgive me for being distracted by you. You’re lovely.” He took her hand in his instead of taking his papers back. “I like your hair long. It is very becoming.”

“I didn’t grow it out for you,” she yanked her hand back, dropped the papers on the desk and pushed a pen across the desk. “Please fill them out so I can get this started.”

She looked up when her assistant knocked on the door.

“Mac, the insurance rep from the claim last week is on the phone and he is arguing with me over the bills we submitted.” Tabitha’s words trailed off as she took in the sight of the man sitting in the seats in Mac’s office. Her mouth hung open as she stared blatantly.

Mackenna scowled as Alessandro chuckled at the girl’s reaction and then he gave another laugh as Mackenna swore under her breath at it. “Tabitha, pick your jaw up off the floor. He’s just a man. He puts his pants on the same way you do, one leg after the other.” She saw the woman blink rapidly and turn to look at her as if she hadn’t heard a syllable she’d uttered. Good grief. “Just transfer the call to me. I assume it’s Sigmund?”

“How’d you guess?” Tabitha blushed as the man winked at her. She slowly backed out of the office.

“Nice,” Mackenna griped, “Flirting with my admin assistant. Now I’ll have to spend a week listening to her detail her wet dreams.” The man knew how attractive he was. He was tormenting her assistant and she didn’t have time for it.

She ignored the choking sound Alessandro made at her rude comment and picked up the buzzing phone line. “Sigmund, why must you torment me so?”

She waved at Alessandro to finish filling out the papers as she dealt with the man on the other end of the phone. She rolled her eyes when after three or four minutes he suggested they meet for dinner to discuss the billing. “Sigmund, I don’t think we need to have a meal together to get this sorted out. I tell you what, how about get your supervisor Myriam on the line and I’ll deal with her directly.” She listened for a moment and then smiled smugly as she adjusted papers on her desk. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Talk to you soon, I’m sure.” She hung up the phone and grimaced.

“Does every man you deal with invite you out dinner?” There was no denying the irritation in his voice.

“Only the ones who want to sleep with me.” She retorted smugly, instantly rewarded with another angry hiss of irritation from the bane of her existence.

Before he could comment though, Savannah poked her head into the office and stared at her from behind Alessandro. “Uh, hi.”

Mackenna shot her a warning glance. “What?”

“I have to work,” Savannah hadn’t been able to get out of it. “Half the trauma team is out with the flu so nobody can cover for me.”

Mackenna pointed her pen at her. “If you bring it home with you, Doctor Kirkland, I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

“Hey, you haven’t died yet from my infectious diseases.” Savannah grinned unapologetically.

“No, I simply spent a week in quarantine from measles and ten days in intensive care from meningitis. I don’t want influenza. Knowing you, it’s probably some seventeenth century strand of flu and I’ll end up losing my spleen or something.” She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair aware Alessandro was listening to every word. She stuck her tongue out at his bent head and earned a grin from Savannah. “What time are you off then?”

“Midnight at the earliest.” Savannah copied her and stuck her tongue at him and then made a rude gesture with her finger too and Mackenna grinned at her. Sometimes being childish felt good.

“I was thinking maybe you should go home with Derrick tonight.” She grinned as the man’s pen stopped moving on the paper and he turned around to face her. She instantly stopped smiling. It was no wonder Mackenna had taken five years to get over the man. She’d seen photos but in person he was breathtakingly beautiful with high cheekbones, golden eyes, and jet-black hair. She looked to Mackenna with serious eyes. “You should call Derrick. I think I’d feel better knowing he was making you pasta than you home alone unguarded. I don’t know if it’s safe.”

Mackenna saw the way Alessandro’s shoulders moved impatiently under his jacket and she shook her head at Savannah. “Savannah, don’t you have a patient you have to save or a butt-plug to remove?” Alessandro’s head spun to look between them.

“No,” Savannah glared at Alessandro who opted to glare back at her rather than question Mackenna’s last comment.

“Savannah, go back to the trauma center. I’ll see you later.” She stood up and moved to the door and pushed her best friend out. “Call me at home later.”

Savannah pointed at her. “You’d better be there, or I’ll kick your butt.”

“Where else would I go?” Mackenna returned her stare.

“Don’t go anywhere with him.” She jerked her chin in Alessandro’s direction.

“I have no intention of going anywhere with him. I’d rather pour gasoline over my naked body and light a match.” She heard his furious breath as Mackenna had to pry her friend’s fingers from the door. “Go back to work, Savannah.”

She closed the door and moved back to her desk and took the completed papers from where Alessandro had set them down. She quietly began entering the information into the computer.

“You live with that woman?” Alessandro asked.

Of all the things he’d heard, this was his line of questioning? Mackenna almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. “That woman,” she used the same intonation he did mockingly, “is a trauma unit doctor and a damn good one. She is also my best friend. Don’t be so condescending.”

“She’s rude.” Alessandro retorted. “Is this where all the crude language I’ve been hearing has come from? She’s very rude,” he repeated.

“I can’t argue with you, she is rude, but so are you,” Mackenna hated the way her stomach curdled just typing Dulce’s name into her system. She took a breath and then when she had everything entered, she printed documents on her printer and stood up to get them. “Did Doctor Portman tell you how long Dulce will be staying?”

“A minimum of two weeks before she can be moved.” Alessandro commented as he watched her mark an ‘x’ on multiple lines. “She fractured her tibia, her fibula and her femur. She fell off the catwalk.”

Mackenna grimaced distastefully, replaceing no pleasure in the thought of such a horrific fall. “Will she be all right? Will this affect her modelling?”

“Doctor Portman said it was too early to tell but said she’ll require months of therapy before he could even begin to form a solid opinion. He had to put a pin in her thigh.” Alessandro shook his head sadly. “The poor girl is devastated.”

“Mm,” Mackenna kept her gaze averted. She didn’t wish the woman ill, but she found she had no sympathy for her either. The sound of the woman’s hauntingly lyrical voice telling her how much she’d enjoyed making love to Alessandro still echoed in her head. She pointed to the lines. “Sign everywhere I marked an ‘x’ when you’re done reading the forms.”

“I trust you Mackenna. I don’t need to read them.” He simply signed them and then passed them back to her. “What is your relationship with Doctor Porter?”

“He’s a friend.” She folded his copies of the forms and slipped them into an envelope after she signed them.

Her phone rang again, and she reached out and picked it up. “Mac Keebler.” She listened for a moment and then answered the inquiry of the caller before hanging up.

“When did you shorten your name to Mac?” Alessandro didn’t like it. It sounded too masculine in comparison to the woman she was. She was soft and curvy and delectable and not hard and cold as her nickname sounded.

“Savannah started it and it stuck.”

“And did she encourage you to revert back to your maiden-name?” He wished she would look up at him as he spoke to her, but she merely took the credit card she’d asked him for without even glancing at him.

“No, I did it by myself.” She knew she was at the end of her rope. Thirty minutes with Alessandro in her office was obviously her limit as her body suddenly felt like it was sleep-deprived and aching and her head began to pound from the unshed tears she’d managed to keep at bay.

“Why?” He picked up the card she clicked back to the desk.

She looked at him then, the hate she’d allowed to build up over the last five years finally spilling out at him. “Because when you chose to leave our bed to go to your lover, I realized our wedding vows meant nothing to you, so I stopped considering myself your wife.”

“What are you talking about?” Alessandro asked quietly.

“I got up that night Alessandro. I got up and you were gone. At first, I didn’t believe you would leave after making love to me to go to her. I was such a fool. I went to the club. I saw you for myself, dancing with her and your hands were all over her and hers were all over you. You made your choice. I told you to choose and you chose. There is nothing you can say to me to ever convince me I was wrong.”

It was the first time they had had a real conversation on the matter of Dulce wherein he didn’t mock her, and the words poured out of her like an eruption. She wished it felt more cathartic than it did.

As he studied her angry glare he swallowed deeply. “Because we were dancing?” A memory floated in his head a suddenly he knew why she’d left, and he was, for the first time in his life unsure of her. When she didn’t answer and simply continued packing up for the day he spoke again. “You saw Dulce k**s me.”