by Emily Bishop
Gray lets out another sigh and hangs his head. “Oh, fuck,” he mutters under his breath.
I snigger before I even know what I’ve done. Then my gut constricts in panic.
He looks up at me, fire in his eyes. “Don’t fucking…” he trails off. “Isabella? Isabella Price?”
“Guilty.” This is so awkward. “Hello, Grayson.”
He tosses his phone on the empty chair next to him. “This day just gets better and better.”
“Nice to see you, too,” I say. My mind races for something rude to say. I want to hit him before he hits me. “At least you’ll have an ambulance to brighten your afternoon.”
He sneers, then looks at my book. I watch his eyes track over the accounts sheet on my lap, his eyes taking in all the red. I try to cover it, but it’s too late. “Looks like you’re doing really well for yourself.”
None of the debt is my fault. My father ran it up and never let me know, but he didn’t do it maliciously. He never shared our financial struggles with me. He wanted me to be happy and free. Then his partner continued the façade after his death. All they wanted to do was protect me. I can’t blame them. And certainly not to Grayson Fairfax, of all people. “There are ups and downs in life,” I say. “Character helps you get through them.” I nod at my own words, which sound good to me. “Character and values. Money isn’t everything.”
“You go live in the gutter, then. With all your character and values.”
Ugh. “I see you’re still Prince Charming.”
“And I see you’re still Ice Queen.”
He stares at me. He’s so good-looking it’s aggravating. He thinks he’s god’s gift to women and I should be fawning all over him. I know he does. I stare back, refusing to break eye contact. Those dark brown eyes bore into me, but I’m firm.
He eventually looks forward again and glowers at everyone in the bank as if they’re personally responsible for his life problems. I go back to my book, but my eyes skip all over the words, and I can’t take anything in.
“You know…” he says after a while, then leans in and looks up at me. His voice no longer drips with malice. It’s smooth, suave. “It’s obvious you’re in financial trouble. Maybe I can do something to help out with that.”
“Judging by the fact you have zero pounds, dollars, or yen in your account, I highly doubt it.”
He tuts with impatience. “That’s temporary. And this is the last time it will happen. Ever. If you get my drift.”
“This sounds like a Grayson Fairfax story. As vague and wildly optimistic as ever.”
“Have you forgotten who my father was?”
“How could I?” I snap, thinking about my own father. “Since you reminded us in school every five minutes. Have you thrown away all his money already?”
“Do you ever shut up and listen?”
I cross my arms across my failing-business book. “Spit it out.”
He looks around then pauses. “Not here.”
“Are trying to recruit me to the secret service?”
“You think you’re so smart. With an attitude like that, you must be single.”
“I don’t see how that’s your business.”
He smiles. “I knew it.”
“I suppose you have a harem back in your English mansion,” I say, trying to make my voice as cutting as possible. What is it about him that gets under my skin like this?
“I don’t keep them long enough to build a harem,” he says with a laugh. “Anyway, are you going to sit here and sulk, and miss the opportunity of a lifetime? Or are you going to come with me?” He gets up and looks down at me.
I refuse to look up into those intense brown eyes. “I’m waiting for a manager.”
“Forget these arseholes. How much money are you looking for?”
I pause. “Six figures.”
“I can get you seven. Maybe even eight, if you’re a good girl.” He winks.
“I’m not sleeping with you for money, Grayson.”
He bursts out laughing. “I wouldn’t sleep with you if it was an edict from the Queen of England.”
I look down into my book and try to come up with something clever. My brain stays depressingly blank.
“Look,” he says, his patience waning. “It’s a business deal. Come for coffee and hear me out. You won’t be able to resist. But if you’re dumb enough to pass up the deal, you can come right back here and beg for your loan.”
I stand up and straighten out my skirt suit. He makes me feel so damn small. I force myself to look up and meet his eyes. “Fine. But you’d better make it good.”
“Oh, it’s good,” he says, already striding out. “It’s crazily good.”
Soon, we’re at the coffee shop. I want to maintain my Ice Queen demeanor, so a Frappuccino seemed like a good choice, but now every time I sip, the ice makes its way up into my brain, and I wince. I try not to let it show. My face has to be a mask he can’t read. I don’t want him to see the hope that keeps rising up when I think of the money.
I’m cynical. I mean, it’s Grayson Fairfax. I have to be cynical. But his connections to the moneyed are no joke. Every time he went back to England during the school breaks, we’d hear afterward about his exploits tearing up the young British aristocrat party scene. Playing polo with Prince William. Hitting a club with Prince Harry and staggering out after the sun had come up the next day. His friend using his father’s private jet without permission to whisk all his teenage friends off to Monaco. Perhaps in all that mess, he really did make some connections to help him. And if I play it right, to help me, too.
“Talk to me,” I say.
He sips his double espresso. “I have a proposition. Quite literally.”
“A proposition?”
“Let me just put this straight, right? But this is confidential, between you and me. No one can know this.”
“Right.”
“Promise me you’ll keep your mouth shut,” he says.
“Yes, OK.”
“That’s not a promise.”
“I promise,” I say. “Now what is it?”
He leans in over the table. “My father has recently died.”
“Oh.” I didn’t expect that. It hits me in the chest. All of a sudden I’m thinking of my father’s own funeral, and my voice comes out soft. “I’m so sorry, Gray.”
“Yeah,” he says, dismissively. “So, his title and broke estate is mine. Along with his personal assets of about a billion pounds.”
My throat constricts. “A billion?” It comes out a croak.
His eyes light up with mischief, and that one-sided smile all the girls melted over pulls at his mouth. “Thought you’d like that. But the bastard won’t let me get the money until I bring home a respectable woman.” He says “respectable” like it’s an infectious disease. “And you’re respectable. So, all we’d have to do is pretend to be engaged for thirty days. Then you get a fat check, and you can go on your way.”
I sit back in the chair, stunned.
He takes advantage of my silence. “I’m staying at the Hilton for a week, so we can practice pretending properly. Then we’ll go to England and convince my solicitor. Then he pays out the money. Simple.”
“Simple? How is anything about this simple? For one thing, it’s like lying to your late father.”
He shrugs. “He was a dickhead in life. So, he’s a dickhead in death. What’s the problem?”
I squeak the straw in and out of my cup, agitated. “Don’t you have any morals, Grayson?”
“Are you in the deal or out of it?”
I look him up and down. That gorgeous, cold face. Those intense, forceful eyes that drill into you and get you to bend to their will. Well, I won’t bend. “Out. Thanks for the offer.” With that, I get up and stalk out without looking back. I can do this on my own. I’ll persuade the bank and revive my father’s business, and I don’t need the likes of gorgeous, immoral, arrogant Grayson Fairfax to do it.
Chapter 3
Grayson
/> God, who knew Isabella Price would get my cock in my hand and my imagination running wild? She’s even hotter than that picture on Facebook. She’s still a goodie-two-shoes and a bore about morals, but she’s so strong about it. I’m going to break that ice-cold veneer and get under her skin. Into her knickers. I wonder if she wears red lacy things. No. Probably plain black sensible underwear. And no one ever sees it.
Ha.
She’s probably begging for it under that smooth, well-polished surface. She must have wanted me all along. Even those days in school where she’d cut me down in front of everyone and all the girls would rush to my defense. I’d maneuver them out of the way and stare Isabella down. She’d shoot me her icy gaze back for a while, but she was always the first to break eye contact. Like she was afraid of falling under my spell.
Well, I’ll get her. I will. I’m not Grayson Fairfax of school days, even though I was the best in school. I’m better than the best now. I’m Gray Fairfax, versed in making even the coldest women beg for my dick in their wet, hot pussies. Isabella wants me, really. I can’t wait to watch her go wild, bouncing up and down on my cock.
I look in the mirror at myself as I run my hand up and down my thickness. She’s going to love it. I picture bending her over right here in the hotel bathroom. I’ll pull up her skirt and slide my cock into her hot cunt. She’ll moan out, “Gray, Gray,” then have shaking, screaming orgasms as I give her the best fuck of her life.
Yeah.
Or I could have fucked her right there in the bank. Shocked everyone by undoing my trousers there on the waiting-room chair. She’d have lifted up her skirt and straddled me. My cock pushing deep inside her, her clit rubbing up against me as she rode that dick like her life depended on it.
A knock at the door pulls me out of my visions and back to stark reality. For fuck’s sake. “Who is it?” I bark. I push my hard dick flat against my abdomen and wrap a towel around me to hide it, then stride to the door and wrench it open, pissed off.
It’s her, wearing that same skirt suit. “Hello, Gray.”
I’ve shocked myself. Eddie bangs on about the Law of Attraction sometimes, the idea you can pull things toward you by thinking of them, and I think it’s all bullshit. But I half-wonder if I’ve tapped into some universal sexual power. When I masturbate about hot chicks, they appear at my door now? Will she step inside and beg me to give her the fuck of her life?
She looks me up and down. Her eyes track over my undeniably broad, strong chest. She looks impressed. Of course she does. She even looks a little lower, to where my towel is bunched up over my hard cock, and her eyes linger for a split second. I glance down quickly to check that my hardness really is concealed. It is. Then I look up and smile, nonchalant.
“So, may I come in?” she says, irritation rising in her voice.
I go over to the fridge. “Want champagne?” That’s my only invitation.
She walks over to the window and admires the view. “I thought you were broke. Everyone knows mini-fridge alcohol is extortionately overpriced. Maybe if you managed your money better, you wouldn’t be screaming at bank tellers and making a spectacle of yourself.”
“Have you forgotten about the billion already?” I pop the cork and it flies directly at the mirror. Crack. The mirror splits at the corner.
She turns, her gaze panicked. “What the…” Then she sees the mirror and sighs. “They’ll be way overcharging you for that as well.”
I shrug as I turn over the champagne flutes on the top of the fridge. “It won’t make even the tiniest dent in my bank balance, once this all works out.” I pour one glass each and hand her hers.
She pauses, hesitant to take it, but eventually she does. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I can’t help loving that American accent. That must be part of what has me hard for her.
She sits on one of the armchairs by the window and looks down in her lap. “I’ve been thinking about this, Gray.”
Go on, walk right into my trap.
I sit on the edge of the bed and watch her, like I have no idea what she’s going to say. “Hmm?”
When she looks back up, there’s fire in her eyes, but it’s not directed at me. “I went back to the bank, and they declined me again. And… well, I wasn’t going to come here, but I have to save my father’s business. He sacrificed so much for me, and…” Her voice cracks a bit, like she’s about to start crying. Please, god, spare me.
I clap my hands. “Great, so it’s settled. You’re my fiancée now.”
She rocks back on the chair and looks at me. “No. I’m your fake fiancée for thirty days only. And we need to discuss the terms of this contract. No sex, for one thing.”
“All right.” We’ll see.
“Secondly, I want in writing exactly how much I’m getting, and for us both to sign it. What is your first offer?”
I lean back against the headboard and watch her. She’s so serious. When does she ever relax and just go with the flow? “How much do you want?”
Her gaze flickers down for a moment, then up again. “Eleven million dollars.” She looks right at me. “That will be enough of a cash injection to get the businesses back on track. It won’t cover all the debt, but it will put us on the pathway to paying it all off within a couple years.”
“How much is the debt?”
She watches me warily. “Around thirty-five million dollars.”
“I could give you fifty mil,” I say. That would be less than five percent of what I stand to inherit. No big deal. It still leaves plenty for yachts and jets and Gucci suits and cruises up the River Nile. “Would that put you in a good position?”
Her whole body seems to light up. It shines in her eyes, and she gets up. “Are you serious, Gray? It’s so much money. Are you sure?”
I shrug. “Why not?”
She frowns. “Are you kidding? Is this all just a big joke you can run back and tell your high-school buddies about?”
“No.” I grin. “Watch this.”
My iPhone’s on the bedside table. A quick mental calculation tells me it’s ten o’ clock in the evening in England. A little bit late for the old Fink, but it’ll have to do. I can’t lose Isabella’s cooperation now. I video call.
“For god’s sake, Grayson. It’s the middle of the night.” Yet he’s still at his desk behind a mountain of papers. “Have you no breeding?”
“I know, I know, but I wanted you to meet someone, Finky.” I get up and go over to Isabella. “One sec.” I pull the other chair next to hers and get both our faces in the phone’s frame. “Look! This is my fiancée, Isabella. Isabella, this is my father’s solicitor, Mr. Fink.”
“Hello, Isabella,” Mr. Fink says.
To Isabella’s credit, after a quick flicker of shock, her face is composed. “Hi there, Mr. Fink,” she says cheerily. “So glad to see you at last. Gray’s spoken a lot about you.”
“And yet this is the first I’ve heard of you,” Mr. Fink says. “Isabella, if you’ll forgive me for my forthrightness, I have to stress to Grayson that the engagement must be genuine. I would have thought it more suitable for Grayson to find an eligible woman from among the aristocracy in Britain, with whom he is already well-acquainted. A stranger from America seems a rather odd choice, no matter how lovely the stranger might be.”
“Oh, but we’re not strangers,” Isabella says, with a lovely smile. “We were at boarding school together.”
“So, we’ve known each other…” I do a quick calculation in my head. We’re both twenty-eight now, and we met in our first year at thirteen. “Fifteen years.”
“Well, I do apologize for my assumption,” Mr. Fink says. “That puts my mind rather more at ease. I hope you can forgive me, Isabella.”
“Of course,” she says, with generosity.
“I shall be getting back to my paperwork. Do enjoy your evening. Grayson, refrain from calling me at such hours again. And perhaps you could deign to put a shirt—and pants—on before you call me
next time.” He says all this without even cracking a smile. “Goodnight.”
He hangs up, and I grin at Isabella. “You were convincing.”
“Don’t you remember I aced drama in school?” She gives a haughty smile then sips from her champagne flute. “This might actually be fun.”
“Yeah. The devastatingly sexy bad-boy aristocrat making Miss Straight Laced Boring Life unclench.”
“Ugh. I take back my last comment.”
I get up and saunter over to the wardrobe, thinking about what to wear for the evening. I might get dinner downstairs. Or out in the city. I can’t stand being cooped up in my room doing nothing. Room service is so overrated. I turn and smirk at her. “Want to come for dinner, fiancée?”
“No, thank you,” she says tightly. “I have to go check on one of my dad’s stores. We have late-night stocking tonight. I need to make sure the stock checking process is working properly. We’ve had some issues with it.”
“Someone stealing tinned tomato cans?” I mock.
“Considering it’s a department store selling designer clothing, makeup, furniture, and there’s not a canned tomato in sight, that would be quite a feat.”
“Designer clothing, hm?” Maybe I could stock up on some new suits. I’ve been clubbing in Seattle for a couple weeks now. I don’t want people to see me in the same clothes too many times.
She snorts. “You have less than nothing in your bank account.”
“I have over a billion—”
“Pounds coming into my bank account,” she says, in a cut-glass upper class English accent. “I know, daaahling.” She sips from her flute, her little finger sticking out.
“Mock all you want.” I select a dark gray suit. An unusual thought flashes through my mind then—will Isabella like it? “But it’s true. And the only way you can save your business is by being grateful and going along with it.”
She laughs, tipping her head back. “Being grateful? You need me as much as I need you.”
I open my mouth to tell her about the long line of girls standing behind her should she turn down the deal. But I know none of them will convince Mr. Fink. I could have chosen one of the aristocrat girls, like Mr. Fink—and probably everyone else—would have expected. But since that monstrosity of a person Lillia Smythe-Darcy weaseled her way into my life, I wouldn’t trust any of them as far as I could throw them. Isabella’s far too principled to have fun with, so she’d be no good as a real partner. If I ever wanted one, which I don’t. But she’s the perfect person to make a deal with. She’d never go back on her word or try to blackmail me for more money. She’s as dependable as the sun rising every morning. I can read her like a book.