The Tycoon’s Fake Fiancée (European Tycoon Book 2)

by Leslie North

  “She’s an angel,” Geneva agreed. “What did you do to win her? You know Mum has fallen completely in love with her, don’t you? I mean, she was ready to love pretty much any girl you might bring home… but look at the two of them together. You know how difficult it is to please her deep down. And I’d say your choice of fiancée has put her over the moon.”

  That was what had Gavin the most worried. He could see now what they all stood to lose once the truth came out. Sarah, who had always longed for a family, now had that in abundance—a love that clearly extended both ways. In truth, Gavin’s heart wasn’t the only potential casualty in all of this.

  “No way,” Geneva whispered in his ear. “Am I really seeing this? Do you see that?”

  He did, unfortunately. His mother had pulled Sarah aside and was drawing something out of her pocket. As they watched, Sarah set her wineglass aside and covered her mouth, obviously astonished and touched, as Olivia Burrows presented her with a golden heart-shaped locket.

  “She’s giving her the locket,” Geneva breathed. “She’s giving her Great-Times-Five Grandmother Agatha’s locket. She’s more married to us now than she’ll be married to you on your wedding day—which, by the way, I was thinking, if you did schedule it for this spring—”

  Gavin had to put a stop to this. It was one thing for him to give his heart to Sarah in secret, telling no one—not even Sarah herself—and suffer the consequences. He would find a way to survive somehow. But this, watching his mother pass along the locket that had been in their family for generations, was too much. He disengaged from Geneva and strode across the dance floor with every intention of putting an end to it.

  “Ah, Gavin. There’s the man of the hour,” Olivia announced him before he could make his presence known. Sarah turned to him, eyes shining, and he found he was rendered speechless by just how beautiful she was. “Help your fiancée put this on, won’t you? There’s a good lad.”

  Gavin found himself obediently going through the motions of securing the locket around Sarah’s neck. So much for telling the truth. The necklace now adorning her neck was the most high-cost lie he had told to date, but the price he was paying wasn’t merely monetary. “Sarah, care to join me in a dance?”

  “What about a toast first?” Olivia called after him with a mischievous grin, but Gavin ignored her interference in favor of sweeping Sarah away.

  “Gavin!” Sarah giggled as a clumsy move on his part caused her to collide with him. “Are you sure you want to dance? I thought you didn’t like—“

  “Sarah.” She must have seen the gravity of his expression; her face fell suddenly, and she moved more easily into step with him as they began to dance amid the swaying bodies. “We can’t continue this. After tonight—“

  “I know.” Her voice shook, but Gavin couldn’t, wouldn’t, dissect what it might mean. Steel your heart. This woman isn’t yours. Not really.

  They rocked together, complementing one another as they moved, even as they said nothing. Gavin felt as if he had swallowed a stone the size of that locket.

  “It was nice while it lasted,” he heard her murmur. Her face was hidden in his shoulder so he couldn’t see her expression as she said it. Probably by design.

  “We’ll let it last a little longer.” Gavin tucked his chin atop her head and willed himself to be strong. “And after tonight—“

  “After tonight,” she echoed.

  “After tonight,” he agreed.

  “All right, then.”

  “God, Sarah, I’m so sorry for putting you in this position.”

  She only shook her head, and her fragrant curls jostled and spilled between them. Gavin buried his lips in her hair and inhaled. Even the floral scent of this impossible woman made him shiver. Impossible, because she couldn’t be his. She shouldn’t be. Sarah wanted all this: society, family, love and acceptance. He couldn’t bring himself to want what he’d had in abundance for so long—the same thing that had historically gotten in the way of his solitary pursuits.

  In the way of his dream. He needed to be alone.

  Didn’t he?

  His hand came up to caress the locket that dangled between her breasts. Sarah leaned into the touch as if instinctively, and Gavin let out a shuddering breath. He stared deeply into her eyes, too deeply, and found himself lost.

  What the hell. It was all part of the show. His hand moved to cup her jaw, and she melted against him as he kissed her. A raucous cheer went up as he deepened the kiss, his lips sealing the memory of hers to him, his tongue entwining with her own.

  One last time.

  “It’s for the best, Sarah,” Sarah coached herself as she sat down at the desk in her room. It had been a while since she’d slept in the bedroom at her aunt and uncle’s house, much less gotten any work done there. How the last few days had changed since the engagement party, even though she’d done her best not to notice.

  She stared down at her closed laptop, fingering the locket around her neck. She had never been one for jewelry, but she had already gotten used to the weight of the necklace—even as she had gotten used to the feel of Gavin’s counterfeit engagement ring on her finger. Shaking her head, Sarah drew the ring off, then opened her laptop to check her email.

  “No way,” she breathed after a moment as her eyes scanned the most recent item in her box. A job offer, in London. It couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. She knew Uncle Matthew had been bragging about her to his horticulturist friends, but this…

  Cecilia Greene worked for the leading horticultural company in England. All of England. What Sarah was looking at now was a job offer for a consulting position she had only dreamed about, even as she’d applied for it.

  “Perfect timing,” Sarah murmured as she began to type out her response. But a few lines in, her fingers started to hover more than they typed, and her mind drew a blank. How many sentences were required to say yes? And why did it suddenly seem that she couldn’t find the right keys to form the word?

  “…I’ll finish this tomorrow,” she promised herself as she saved the draft of her email response. She sat back in her office chair, turning the locket over and over in her fingers.

  There was so much to consider. Yes, this was a dream job—and the perfect opportunity to get away from Scarborough for a bit and try to get over Gavin. She would finish up with the garden at the castle, and then…

  Then what? Her uncle’s business would scarcely survive without her. She had been hustling hard all summer to gain the contracts she’d won, knowing that her work at Gavin’s would sustain them for at least a little while. But what then? What if Aunt Jean had another health scare and had to be hospitalized again? Her uncle was already working full-time to ensure her aunt was well taken care of and comfortable. He managed the business from home, mainly handling the administrative aspects, but couldn’t go into the field himself anymore. Without her to help monitor it all and get her hands dirty, odds were he would have to close his business. He would be heartbroken, she knew, but he would also be the first to push her toward realizing her dream in London.

  “This is the right move, Sarah. This is… right.” Sarah dropped her head into her hands, then rose and, like a teenager, flung herself onto her bed with a caveman cry of frustration.

  “Sarah?” Her uncle’s alarmed voice sounded from the kitchen. “Everything all right in there?”

  No! she wanted to bellow back at him. No, nothing is all right! It’s all working out the way it’s supposed to, and yet… and yet…

  And yet.

  12

  The silence in the solarium was maddening.

  Gavin glanced over his shoulder for the umpteenth time, half-expecting to find himself alone at last. But that wasn't the case—and hadn't been for the better part of the afternoon. No, but there was Sarah, crouched over the same plot of dirt she had been studying for the past twenty minutes.

  They couldn't go on like this.

  "Love, can we talk?"

  Her blonde head
shot up at the same instant Gavin regretted his word choice. He shouldn't let endearments like that slip out, not anymore. It would be too painful for both of them in the end.

  And the end had arrived.

  "I was hoping you'd say that." Sarah turned to him with a hesitant smile, and he could see it was unfeigned. The hope she beamed his way was enough to make his heart soar in wildly felt sympathy. But they had both fallen for a ruse. There could be no love, no future between them. That was what they had agreed on.

  He had to release her—release them both.

  Gavin rose from the panel he was working on and pulled off his work gloves. He gestured awkwardly to the garden bench, still fresh off the truck and without a proper placement in the solarium, but Sarah took him up on his offer and sat down. "Sarah..." He parked himself beside her, then rose at once. He paced. He scratched the back of his head. Then again, maybe standing or pacing was a bad idea. He sat back down. "I'm going to tell my family the truth today. About us."

  "You're... oh." Sarah blinked, then stared very hard at her hands. "I see. Does that mean... is the roof done?"

  "Yes." It had been completed for a while, actually. "And your garden?"

  "Your garden," she was quick to correct. "And... yes. Yes, it's done. I came in under budget after the... after you decided you didn't want the swing. So I've just been looking at additional touches." She gestured to the bench they occupied as Gavin tried not to focus on the words “additional touches.”

  "So we've concluded our contract," he said.

  "I guess so," she replied, and he was surprised when her tone grew short. "Please don't expect a handshake from me or anything."

  Gavin sat back in shock. "I was going to... I was going to suggest a drink at the pub, but—"

  "If you need help finding the courage to tell your family, please don't count on me for that." Sarah’s voice shook as she rose, and she gripped her gardening gloves as if she wanted to fling them all the way across the solarium—or slap him in the face with them. “I’ve got a check to return to my own family.”

  “Very well.” He tried to keep his own frustration under control. Couldn’t she appreciate how damnably hard this was for him as well? “Sounds like we know precisely what needs to be done.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  Was she going to echo every word he said until he left her alone? Gavin stood and nearly reached out to grasp her and pull her to him. The alarmed look in her eye—or was that anticipation?—told him the maneuver wouldn’t come as a surprise. But how would she receive him kissing her in that moment? Making love to her? Demanding that they forget everything, even themselves and what they wanted, in the name of something he couldn’t easily define on paper or assemble in a workshop?

  Sarah’s lips parted, and then she closed them again. She tossed her gloves down on the bench. “Looks good there,” he thought he heard her mutter. “I… excuse me.”

  “No. Excuse me,” he said. “Please, finish what you had planned for the day. I’ll be in… office.”

  “You’ll be in office?”

  “I’ll be in my office.” Gavin turned from her. His face felt as if it were on fire. It might well consume the rest of him. He couldn’t handle being around her, and a part of him suspected he couldn’t handle being away, either. Time to test the latter theory. He beat a hasty retreat from the solarium and decided on his way up the stairs that he would send out a conclusive email of some sort. That would be the professional thing to do.

  He spent the afternoon casting frequent glances out the window, trading his time between looking for Sarah and imagining throwing his sorry self from the battlements.

  He didn’t know which scenario was more torturous.

  That evening, when Sarah left the castle, she wound up pulling over in the work truck and staring at her phone. No text from Gavin, no email, nothing. Her thumb hovered on his contact, but she couldn’t touch his name on the screen. Not if he didn’t want to talk to her.

  It was pretty clear to her that it was over.

  She opened up her email instead, and typed out a long-overdue response:

  Dear Cecilia,

  Thank you for the job offer. It is my absolute pleasure to accept. Let’s discuss my travel plans over a phone call. I have already spoken to my aunt and uncle and am prepared to leave Scarborough ASAP.

  She actually hadn’t spoken to her family yet, of course. She had been holding out for something she couldn’t now define—a fairy-tale wish. A pipe dream. She had been holding out for Gavin Burrows to come to his senses, but who was she to demand so much from him? It was all there on paper: their arrangement.

  Their agreement not to fall in love.

  When she dialed her cell, it was the number for Adrianna, her best friend from back home, that she called… before hanging up with an unhappy sob. Sarah dropped her arms against the steering wheel and buried her face in them. It occurred to her minutes later, when she pulled back onto the road with rumpled hair and a tear-stained face, that she had pulled over on the wrong side of the road. Oh well. It didn’t matter now. No police had come to question her, and Gavin Burrows certainly hadn’t ridden out of nowhere to save her.

  She was alone. But not without a plan. She would take her broken heart with her to London and never look back. She would tell her aunt and uncle the truth; Adrianna would come later.

  And what of Geneva? Gavin’s brothers? She wanted so desperately to see Gavin’s siblings one last time, but of course, that was impossible. She should thank him for taking over the task of telling them, she supposed. Sarah fingered the locket around her neck. Its chain had grown so familiar to her, but she had no choice but to give it up now alongside everything else. And that was something she needed to handle personally.

  When Sarah pulled over again, this time she did it on the correct side of the road. Instead of fighting back her tears, she let them flow as she gazed out the window toward the sea. She would miss it almost as much as she would miss the people she had come to know.

  But there was no turning back now. She was a woman of her word.

  Even if what she wanted to hear, most of all, was three little words spoken by a man who already felt far, far away from her.

  13

  “So it was all a lie.”

  Gavin sat across his office table from his mother. Olivia Burrows’ face was as expressionless as he had ever seen it… which, being her employee and son, he understood to mean she was upset.

  “Do you understand why I did it, though?” He leaned forward, lacing and unlacing his hands on the table’s surface. Damn it. All of his hard-won negotiating techniques went completely out the castle window when he was faced with the woman who had taught him everything he knew.

  “It was an excellent charade. I’ll give you that.” His mother primly picked up her tea and blew a cloud of steam off it. Or at least, she pretended to. They had been sitting in his office for twenty minutes now, staring each other down while Gavin tried to formulate the words to tell her about his lie. He knew, based on the temperature of his own tea, that his mother’s drink had long gone cold.

  “An excellent charade, but a stupid one,” she concluded.

  Gavin bristled. “I don’t happen to think it was stupid. I happen to think—“

  “That’s your problem,” his mother cut in. “That’s always been your problem, Gavin. You think too much. My fear with your purchase of this castle was that it was only going to make that side of you worse. You’re up here brooding over problems that don’t exist—and contracts that are completely unnecessary.”

  “Mother—“

  “And in the midst of all that thinking, did you even think for a moment, when you told me all this, that my feelings might be hurt?”

  Gavin rocked back in his chair as if she had physically struck him. He scanned his mother’s face for some sign that she was making a joke at his expense, but he came up short. Olivia returned his look
evenly, and he saw the fatigue around her eyes. And the disappointment.

  “I didn’t,” he admitted quietly. “I figured it would be water under the bridge?”

  “Is it? Is it really water under the bridge, Gavin? For you? For Sarah?”

  Gavin dropped his head and clutched his hair. If his mother was tired, disappointed in him, her feelings on the matter paled compared to what he was going through. He had to keep it together, at least until he was out of his office. Then he could allow himself to fall to pieces if he wanted. “Sarah knew what she was signing up for. We both benefited from the arrangement.”

  “I never intended for this kind of thing to happen,” his mother said. She sighed. “Maybe I was the first to take things too far. All I wanted, Gavin, is what any mother wants: for her children to be happy and healthy. I wanted you near me; that’s why I held to you so tightly. Not only do I love you, because you are my son, but I value all that you bring to the company. I was so proud of you.”

  His eyes were wet by this time, but he refused to let the tears fall. “Was?” he echoed.

  “I still am, of course.” He could perceive from the sheen in his mother’s eyes that she was also holding back. “But now I want to give you the freedom to pursue your inventing. No more holding you hostage professionally, if you will promise me no more lies.”

  “Mother…”

  “I should have let you go earlier. I only want you to be happy, Gavin. But please consider what that means for you.” She rose, abandoning her tea alongside her hold over him. Gavin, having dreamed of this moment for years, was startled to find that he felt… hollow. Empty.

  “I will,” he promised. And, hours later, after his mother had gone, he found himself wandering the castle garden, remembering happier times. Times when he hadn’t been alone.