“Tell me this, Lily, is there any point for me to try and hide my personal life? You know how the media is, and if you aren’t up front about what goes on behind closed doors they make it up, or someone makes it up for them.”
“Okay, I see your point. But you tend to … flaunt.”
“No, I happen to date women who are as high profile as I am, and that makes us targets. We go out, and that seems to constitute as news. We can’t stay in my bedroom all the time.”
The way he said that, his husky voice low and intimate in the confines of the limo, made her heart rate skyrocket. Why, why was he able to this to her? Why did he have the power to fill her head with images of tangled limbs and the sounds of heavy breathing, the scent of sweat-slicked bodies? Men, in a real life, personal sense, never did that to her.
She liked men, she just liked them from a distance. Like in the pages of a glossy magazine or on a movie screen. She had a sex drive, just like most everyone else, but in actual, personal application … that was what made her feel anxious. Which wasn’t conducive to arousal. Orgasm required a loss of control she couldn’t fathom being able to achieve, or even wanting to achieve, with another person.
But it was as if Gage was able to bypass all of her natural issues, all of her closely guarded reserve, and make her want things she’d never anticipated having a desire for. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to abolish her personal barriers so that she could experience real desire and satisfaction with Gage, it was a matter of them seeming to dissolve and her desperately wishing they would return. He was her boss, and work was too important to even consider engaging in an affair that would damage that.
Fine for some women to have flings and keep themselves emotionally separate, but she was afraid she wasn’t one of those women. Her mother certainly wasn’t. Every man she ever slept with consumed everything she had. All her emotion, all her time, her self-respect. It had made growing up a living hell for Lily. There had been nothing she could do at the time, but now, it was up to her how she ran her life, and she chose to maintain total control.
End of story. So her hormones could just deal with it.
“I don’t suppose you can,” she said, teeth clenched.
“Check your alerts,” he said, back to his high-handed self.
She took her phone out of her pocket and pulled up her email. She’d received a few email alerts, letting her know Gage’s name had popped up in search engines. She opened the first one. “It looks like our engagement is big news. Huge news, in fact.”
“How about Maddy?”
“The story’s still there, and I wouldn’t call it buried,” she said, looking through the pages of search results. “But it’s quieted.”
“Good,” he said.
Gage took his phone from his jacket pocket and dialed Maddy, setting the mobile to speakerphone. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes, Gage. I’m fine.”
She didn’t sound distraught, but he could tell she’d been crying, which made his stomach tighten. “It’s handled.”
“I saw that,” she said. “I don’t want you doing this for me. I’m an adult, Gage. I have to clean up my own messes.”
“Not this one, Maddy. Callahan is a bastard to drag you into this, and it’s way out of your league. Let me handle it.”
“Gage, you have to let me stand on my own sometime.”
“I know,” he said, his chest tightening. “After this.”
He knew Maddy was an adult, and he understood her feeling like she needed to fight her own battles, and, if he was honest, he was more than ready to have a little less involvement with her life. But he wasn’t letting her deal with this on her own.
“I’m sending you over to the Swiss resort for a couple of weeks. Just until all of this dies down.”
“Gage …”
“Maddy, let me fix it.”
He heard her heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “Okay, Gage, I’ll go to Switzerland. Are you still going through with your fake engagement?”
“How do you know it’s fake?” he asked, looking over at Lily, who was still staring out the window, trying to ignore him. Her slight shoulders were set rigidly, her long, stocking-clad legs crossed. And they were extremely fine legs. Lily wasn’t very tall, she barely skimmed his shoulder, even in her man-slaying stilettos, but those legs were long and shapely, just begging for him to run his hands over them, to draw one up so that she had it wrapped around him, bringing her closer so that he could …
He slammed a mental door on his errant fantasy.
“Because she isn’t your type at all. She’s too … stuffy,” Maddy said.
Lily’s head whipped around, brown eyes wide, full lips pinched. He swore and punched the speaker button off. “Enjoy Switzerland, Maddy. Let me handle the rest.”
He snapped the phone shut. Lily was looking away again, her focus very firmly on the scenery out the window.
He wanted to touch her. To see if he could make her melt. To see what it would take to get her to loosen her hair, to get her to unbutton a little bit. Or all the way. It was easy for him to picture her naked, her perfect, petite body on display for him. She was so pale … the thought of all that milky white skin contrasting against his black sheets was the most erotic fantasy his subconscious had ever created for him.
Two things kept him from exploring the fantasy. First, she was an employee, and that was a no-go as far as he was concerned. Second, she had serious written all over her. He didn’t do serious. Not in his sexual relationships. He’d done serious. Not in romantic relationships, but his entire childhood and young adult years had been nothing but responsibility.
His mother had done okay raising him to a point, but Maddy had been a late-in-life surprise, and his mother hadn’t been willing to miss more years on the job to raise a child she hadn’t wanted. His father had always put his career first and had even less time for Maddy. And that left him. He was fifteen years older and more than capable of caring for her.
When he was twenty-five, just out of college and making his first million in property development, Maddy had called and told him it had been three days since anyone had been home, and she hadn’t had anything to eat. He’d gone to get her and she’d lived with him from the age of ten until she’d gone to college. That was a lot of serious for a confirmed bachelor who had his own career to try and build. Fortunately, he’d had a network of good friends that had helped him try to balance work and what basically amounted to sudden parenthood.
He didn’t resent it and he would never have given it up for anything, but he was done with that. In his estimation, he’d raised a child, when he’d been much too young to do it, and he had no intention of going there again. He’d already dealt with the angst of a teenage girl’s first crush, threatened her dates with bodily harm if they laid a hand on her, helped her find a dress for prom, then seen her off to college.
And despite the fact that Lily certainly didn’t seem like the kind of woman who had a biological clock ticking, she still read serious. She didn’t date very often and she was probably the kind of woman that took a certain amount of seduction before she engaged in a physical relationship.
He preferred women who were fun and uncomplicated, and if that made him shallow in the eyes of the press, that was fine with him. He was the one who had to live his life, and as long as he was happy with it, he didn’t concern himself with the opinions of others.
Except when it came to Maddy.
“So, now what? We have to go to galas together?” Lily asked, her voice dry. What Maddy had said bothered her that was obvious. And if she hadn’t been so very off-limits he would have offered comfort. But he only knew two ways to do that. One was parental, and one was decidedly not. He imagined neither would be welcome.
“I was thinking a romantic getaway,” he said, enjoying the way her lips tightened further. He wasn’t used to seeing Lily flustered, but she was exactly that about the whole situation.
“And what ab
out our jobs?”
“It will be a working getaway of course. I was planning on going to Thailand to check on the resort progress sometime in the next week. And now seems like a perfect time. Maddy’s in Switzerland until the story blows over, and she’ll be at one of my resorts, so the security will be tight, and with that taken care of, we can get publicity for the resort.”
“And for us,” Lily returned dryly.
“Doesn’t hurt.”
Lily’s heart beat faster. Curse the man. “If Maddy is taken care of …”
“We still have to see this through. If you’re caught lying so blatantly, your credibility will be destroyed. Along with the rest of your career.”
And curse him again, he was right. That was always the risk with this job. There was a fine line between bending the truth and outright lies. She avoided lies whenever she could, but ultimately, her client’s image—or in this case, his sister’s—was her concern. But if she was caught being … economical … with the truth, the media would never take her seriously again. Credibility, once it was damaged like that, was not an easy thing to repair.
“Point taken.” She put her smile on, the one she reserved for press conferences. “I guess we’re going to Thailand.”
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS late when Gage’s private plane landed on the island of Koh Samui. A car was waiting for them when they got off of the plane. Lily expected nothing less. Gage was always efficient. Or at least, the people he hired were always completely efficient. Which, she imagined, brought it back around to Gage being efficient.
She took a deep breath of the humid, salty air before getting into the limo.
Gage settled in beside her. His top button was undone, his tie long discarded, his sleeves pushed up over his elbows, revealing tanned, muscular forearms that demanded an in-depth study from female admirers. He still smelled good, too, even after long hours of travel.
“Don’t you find the limo a bit cliché?” she asked, running her hands unconsciously over the cool leather.
“I find it practical. I have a driver, I have privacy. I have enough room to work—” he looked at her, his blue eyes hot “—or play.”
She held up a hand and tried to ignore the chip in her manicure. “I don’t need to hear about your backseat exploits.”
He reached across the seats and gripped the clip that was holding her bun in place, letting her brown hair fall around her in a heavy curtain. He slid his fingers through it, rubbing the tender places that were sore from so many hours pinned back. The gentle pressure of his fingers felt so good. It was part massage, part sexual tease. She wanted to tilt her head and lean into his touch. To moan in ecstasy over what he was making her feel.
Instead she jerked her head away from his touch. “Why did you do that?”
“You may not want to discuss any of my backseat exploits, but if there are reporters waiting at the resort it wouldn’t hurt you to look as though you’d been engaging in some of your own.” He drew his thumb lightly over her cheek. “You’re already flushed.”
She let her breath out slowly. “It’s hot.”
His blue eyes were serious, studying, and she felt her face get even hotter. “Yes. It is.” He moved away from her, leaning back against the seat.
“How is the building project going?” she asked. Anything to break the tension that had just stretched between them, so real and tight that it had seemed like a physical force. It was worse that she was sure he felt it.
But then he was a man, and she was a woman, so, naturally, if she was giving off any attraction vibes he was going to pick up on them and reciprocate. It was the way it worked. A woman didn’t need to be especially desirable, only available.
“It’s going well. Most of the individual villas are up and ready for use. The main portion of the resort is still under construction, but I’ve made sure that the villa we’re staying in is totally stocked, and some of the housekeeping staff I’ve already hired are staying on site, so they’ll be around to take care of our needs.”
“I don’t need housekeeping,” she said dryly. “How do you think I manage in my daily life?”
“I assumed you were busy and you would have some domestic help.”
Which would require her to allow a stranger in her house. Which might seem fanatical to some, but she’d done cramped, shared communal living with her mother and whatever man of the month her mother was currently attached to. No privacy. And some of the men had attempted to take advantage … it was no wonder she’d never been the kind of woman to experiment with flings. She’d had to work too hard to maintain any sort of innocence in that environment.
“We’re not all billionaires, Gage.”
“But I know what I pay you,” he said dryly.
“But you don’t know my expenses. Maybe I own beachfront property.”
“You don’t.”
She turned to him, eyebrows raised. “You don’t think I do?”
“You’re too sensible.”
She smirked. “As it happens I own a beachfront condo.”
The West Coast, the ocean, had been her dream growing up. She’d seen the ocean for the first time at seventeen, when she moved to California, and it had been her goal to be able to see it from her bedroom window. It had taken quite a few years, but eighteen months ago she’d finally gotten the keys to her new beachfront home. A home she’d worked for. The home she’d earned. It had been the best feeling in the world. The ultimate reward for her years of hard work, focus and independence.
“You don’t seem the type.”
“I don’t?”
“Do you surf? Swim?”
She laughed. “No.”
“That’s why you don’t seem the type.”
“I used to dream about the ocean,” she said without thinking. “In Kansas we have seas of cornfields. No ocean. I thought if I could see the ocean … it was like the world would be open to me. Endless possibilities on the horizons.”
As soon as she finished she wished she hadn’t said anything. She’d never told anyone that before, not even any of her friends. Her dreams had always been her own. She had a really nice group of friends, but they kept things casual, not really in depth. And that was how she liked things in general with people. Now she felt horribly exposed, and to Gage of all people, who always seemed like he could see into her, like he knew things about her even she didn’t know.
“It’s a good dream,” he said. “And now you have it.”
She nodded once. “Part of it.”
“You want success.”
“I want unsurpassed success in my field,” she said.
“Something I understand.”
“You have that kind of success, Gage.”
He offered her a partial smile. “Yet, I still want more. It’s never quite enough, that’s the thing about ambition. But that’s what keeps me going, and in business, you have to keep going. Money doesn’t wait for you. If I wasn’t building this resort, someone else would be, and it would be my missed opportunity. As it is, it’s my payday and someone else’s regret.”
“You don’t do regret, do you?” she asked.
“I make sure I never need to.”
They pulled onto a road that was newer than the main highway, the pavement dark and smooth as the road curved around the base of sheer rock face covered with vines and moss. The road led up the mountain and the foliage grew thicker and greener and palm trees and other topical plants grew thick along the roadside.
It certainly hadn’t been overtaken by Forrestation Inc., as some of the environmental groups had feared. With the exception of the road, Lily could barely make out any signs of civilization.
The partially built resort was at the top of the mountain, with a clear view of the crystalline ocean and the white sand beaches. Paths led from the main building and into the trees and, she assumed, to the separate teakwood villas.
The limo came to a halt and Lily got out without waiting for Gage, or the driver, to open her d
oor for her.
“It has a view of the ocean,” Gage said, coming to stand beside her.
She cleared her throat. “Yes, it does.” It bothered her now, that he had that little piece of her. Now he knew what to say, and he knew why this place was so perfect to her. He would know what she was thinking.
She shrugged off the unsettling thought. “So, where am I staying?”
“We are staying in the house I had built for my own personal use.”
The thought of staying with him did not settle well. “Why are we staying together?”
“The board is visiting. That means we have to look as cozy as possible.”
“But it’s a whole house?”
“Yes. More than three thousand square feet. You’ll never have to see me. Unless you want to, of course.”
The look that he gave her was so heated it made her body temperature skyrocket. His meaning wasn’t implied so much as stated. Boldly, explicitly.
“I don’t,” she said, tight-lipped, knowing how uptight she sounded.
He lifted an eyebrow. “What if there’s a business matter we need to discuss?”
“Then I’ll look for you.”
“What did you think I meant, Lily?”
She made a scoffing sound in the back of her throat. “You know perfectly well what … because it’s what you were implying.” He was flustering her. Honestly flustering her. That did not happen. Ever.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even try to break the thick silence with a clever comment. He only looked at her, his blue eyes roaming over her body, making her feel like he was undressing her. Like she was already undressed. Like he could see everything. Every flaw, every imperfection, every bit of her.
She looked away, throat dry. “Okay, so where’s the house?”
“Just down the path.”
He surprised her by opening the trunk of the limousine and taking their suitcases out himself before heading down the heavily wooded trail. She followed him, as best she could in her stilettos, which were not made for a natural path, however nicely constructed.
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