Dirty Sexy Player

by Laurelin Paige

  I still owed him a million.

  It was quite an amount to just write off, even for him.

  The irony of it was that I had more than twenty times that in my trust fund. I could’ve wiped the loan out myself years ago. If I’d wanted to.

  Again, Donovan was the only one who knew why I chose not to borrow from that sizable fund.

  And so, since Reach had begun with Donovan and me—and since we had pledged the most start-up money—when he covered my portion, he also got the advantage.

  It was one of the reasons why the company always felt like it was more Donovan’s than mine.

  And it was a reason I often bent to his will, even when I’d rather not.

  “Why is this merger so important to you?” I asked, unsure what to make of this offer. It wasn’t like Donovan held the loan over me all the time. It wasn’t like he wasn’t generous. He would give me the shirt off his back if it was the last thing he owned.

  But he also knew about integrity, and he understood that I wanted to be a self-made man. And he respected that.

  I respected him for getting me.

  So if this was that important to him, then I really needed to be listening. Because I would give Donovan the shirt off my back too.

  “Number one in Europe, Weston,” he said with a gleam in his eye. “We’ve only been open five years, and it would take a long time to get that title any other way. It’s been far more difficult than I’d hoped to crack that market the way we have here.”

  I always knew the guy was competitive, but this really took the cake.

  “And it’s just a fake marriage then? Just a sham?”

  Dammit. I couldn’t believe I was actually considering this.

  “A complete farce. You’d start right away, fake a whirlwind romance and engagement. Have the whole thing done in four, five months tops. But the benefits to Reach would last a lifetime. Think of it as your legacy, Weston.”

  I drummed my fingers on the tabletop. “This is fucking insane.”

  “You like insane,” he said, leaning in close, knowing exactly which words would push my buttons.

  How did he do this every time? He really was a mastermind. Able to wield the strings of all the puppets, controlling everyone, getting them to do his bidding. Not that I resented him for it. I admired him, truthfully.

  And there was that something in my life that was missing.

  Not that a fake wedding was going to fix it, but maybe the chance to contribute could make a difference. The chance to leave a legacy.

  And to be able to give something back to Donovan after all the things he’d given me—well, that was something I couldn’t take lightly.

  Plus the end of that loan. To be my own man. Finally.

  “Ah, fuck it. I got nothing better to do with my life. Let’s be number one in Europe.” Actually, that did have a pretty decent ring to it.

  The corner of his lip lifted. “You know how to talk dirty to me.” He reached into his pocket, where he’d deposited the ring back into its velvet box earlier, and handed it over before taking a long, satisfied sip of his drink.

  I dropped it inside my jacket. The small square shape felt like a lead weight against my chest.

  I wondered how heavy its contents were going to feel when it was on Elizabeth Dyson’s hand.

  Two

  I dropped my sunglasses and my Louis Vuitton purse on the table in the entryway of my mother’s condo and headed inside, searching for her. Since it was July and the sun was out, I knew exactly where I’d find her—on the deck outside the living room, sunning.

  “Mom,” I whined, bursting out onto the balcony. “Did you hear what Darrell’s done now?” I dropped the printout from my computer in her lap. Then I headed over to the table where Marie had set out lemonade and poured myself a glass, gulping it down in four huge swallows.

  I slammed the glass down on the table and turned back to face my mother. She sat stretched out on her lounge chair, her fingers bright with freshly applied nail polish. Marie was now working on her toes. She ignored the paper in her lap, which made sense—it was written in French and my mother didn’t read French very well.

  Honestly, I’d only printed it up for dramatic effect.

  “Good morning to you too, darling,” she said, lifting her chin up to present her cheek for a kiss.

  “I’m too worked up for pleasantries right now,” I said in a huff. But that wasn’t fair to Marie, so I turned to her. “Hello, Marie. The lemonade is perfect today, by the way.”

  “Thank you,” she said, looking up from my mother’s left big toe. Or rather, just looking over at my feet. “Your shoes are fantastic. Jimmy Choo?”

  “Valentino. I bought them to go with this pantsuit. I think they just—” I stopped. Fashion was not what I was here to discuss. And if I got onto the topic of beauty with my mother and her assistant, I was going to be off track all day long.

  “That’s not important. Darrell—” I threw my hands up in the air. Honestly, my father’s nephew was going to be the death of me. I was only twenty-five. I was not ready to be planning my own death.

  “Settle yourself down, dear. You’re going to break a sweat. Then tell me what it is that Darrell has done to get you in such a tizzy.” My mother nodded to the lounge chair next to her.

  I was entirely too upset to sit down, but I did try to rein it in a bit.

  “He’s selling off the children’s networks. The children’s networks,” I said again, when neither my mother nor Marie reacted with enough exasperation to satisfy me. “After last quarter’s suggestion that they sell off some of the news stations—” It was a sentence I could barely stand to think through to the end. “By the time I get my hands on this company, there’s going to be nothing left!”

  My mother looked to Marie, who gave an encouraging smile. “Maybe it will just mean less to manage when you take over,” the dark-haired assistant, who was more family than staff at this point, suggested.

  “Less to manage?” I couldn’t believe I was hearing this.

  I stomped back over to the lemonade and poured some more, wishing it was laced with vodka. I sipped this time, trying to remember the words of my therapist. You cannot let your day run you. You run your day. You cannot let your day run you. You run your day. I repeated the mantra a few more times and then turned back to my audience.

  “The company is only as good as the sum of its parts,” I explained, as calmly as I could manage. “Dyson Media is everything put together. Darrell wants to slice off bits and pieces, and sell them to the highest bidder so that he can collect money and profit while the company is still his. That means that when I take over, it will be nothing but crumbs. Don’t you see? There won’t be a Dyson Media anymore.”

  Not to mention that without the company, how on earth would I ever be able to make up for the wrongs of my father? By the time I stood in his place, I wouldn’t have any power, any platform. My cousin’s pockets would be lined with my legacy, while I was left to clean up the leftover rubbish.

  I didn’t expect them to truly understand. My mother had never been interested in business, and she’d hired Marie to help her do her makeup and go shopping with her.

  Marie was really good at shopping, I had to admit. I learned everything I knew about clothing from her, and I was really good with clothing.

  But looking good was not going to save the Dyson empire. And neither was waiting four goddamned years to take over. “I have to fix this. I have to do something drastic.”

  “But what exactly can you do, honey? That lawyer told you that appealing was a lost cause, and Darrell isn’t about to let you into the company before he has to. I swear, though,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked up at me. “If your father weren’t already dead, I’d kill him myself for the shit he pulled with the terms of this inheritance. Such an asshole. Treating his only child like this. I can’t believe I stayed with him as long as I did.”

  She’d stayed just ten years. I�
�d been born after two. She wasn’t his first wife, and neither of us were clear on whether he’d even been divorced when she met him. He’d gotten another wife soon after he left Mom, too. But I was the only kid out of all three of his marriages. A daughter. Maybe he would’ve been more attentive and loving and there if I’d been another gender.

  I’d never know.

  At least he hadn’t left us penniless. The divorce had left us with more than enough money. My mother never had to work another day in her life and was still able to live the lifestyle she’d gotten used to. I’d been able to go to the best schools and had the best opportunities. The best toys. The best cars. I never lacked for anything—besides a father.

  My bank account meant I could turn a blind eye and let Darrell do whatever the hell he wanted with the company. I could let it go. I didn’t need Dyson Media. I didn’t need my father’s legacy.

  But I did need it too. For reasons I couldn’t explain to anyone but myself.

  “You’re right. I can’t appeal,” I said. I’d spoken to a lawyer extensively. Three lawyers, in fact, to make sure I had absolutely no ground on which to fight to get my company earlier than my twenty-ninth birthday. “But there is something else I can do.”

  “And what’s that?”

  I watched as she removed the papers I’d left on her lap with the palms of her hands, careful not to touch them with her fingernails, and drop them on the empty lounge chair next to her. She was a nice bronze color already, her skin golden with rich yellow undertones that I lacked.

  I took after my father with my fair skin and red hair. She was all Italian and Mediterranean and blond. When I was a kid, and we’d go to the beach, she would soak up every ray while I practically had to wear a full wetsuit just so I wouldn’t get burnt.

  We were different in so many ways, and I hesitated, wondering how she would react to my decision.

  When I didn’t respond, she looked up at me expectantly. “Honey?”

  “I can get married.” It hadn’t been the first time we’d discussed it, so it wasn’t exactly out of the blue.

  “But I thought you said that wouldn’t work either. You haven’t been dating anyone, and anyone that you brought into this affair would be a stranger. How could you trust them?”

  I walked around the table to the chair on the other side and plopped into it, trying to hide from the sun by sitting under the umbrella.

  “I still have my concerns,” I said hesitantly, “but Donovan Kincaid has approached me with a business transaction that might work.”

  Honestly, when Donovan had first asked for a meeting, I’d thought perhaps he was working for his father and wanted to sell me on their financial trusts. When he suggested his idea, it was so absurd I nearly walked out of the room.

  But there was something about the man that intrigued me. Something about him that spoke to me. He was manipulative and scheming and also brilliant. He was passionate about his work and the things that he thought we could accomplish. I was attracted to it—not in a sexual way, though he was an attractive and sexy man. It was more like he reminded me of who I wanted to be.

  And perhaps he reminded me of who my father could’ve been had my father actually been a decent man.

  When I left, I’d told him I would think about it, although I hadn’t really meant it. But after waking up this morning to the news that Darrell was selling the children’s networks, I was actually thinking about it.

  “Donovan Kincaid of King-Kincaid Financial?” my mother asked. I supposed my mother did pay attention to some business affairs, or at least the lifestyle pages.

  “That’s his father. Donovan has his own advertising agency, and he’s come up with an agreement where I could marry someone from the firm. It would look genuine, and no one would be the wiser.”

  “And what would Mr. Kincaid want in return?” she asked, peering at me with that cut-the-bullshit look. She’d been a trophy wife. She knew how these things worked.

  Or she thought she did.

  The women in our family had come a long way in a generation—I had more than my body to sell. “He wants to merge his company with Dyson’s advertising subsidiary. It wouldn’t be an outrageous loss. Dyson barely does anything in advertising. Most of their market share and focus is in television. It would be a small price to pay for control of the company.”

  I hoped, anyway. I really didn’t know that much about Dyson’s advertising firm.

  I really didn’t know that much about Dyson Media at all, to be honest.

  I didn’t know that much about business in general, if I was laying it all out on the table.

  Gah! What the hell was I doing?

  I was being ridiculous, jumping in too fast, dreaming too big. I stood and walked to the edge of the roof and looked out over the street below.

  “It’s a dumb idea,” I said now, all my confidence from earlier suddenly gone. “I have a meeting with Donovan this afternoon. I was going to turn his offer down when we met, but then I saw what Darrell was doing, and…I don’t know. I guess I thought I should do something...for some reason.”

  I heard the scrape of the lounge chair against the deck and knew my mother was coming over to me. A moment later, I felt her hand around my waist.

  “You thought you should do something because you knew you could,” she said, her warm voice dripping like honey.

  I sighed at her.

  “Elizabeth, if the company is that important to you, you should take whatever risk you need to in order to get your hands on it. I’m sorry I’m not a better advocate for you. I mean to be. I do. The problem is that you are your father’s daughter.”

  I cringed, hating it when she said that.

  “Don’t look at me like that. You are. And it’s wonderful that you are. Because if you were only my daughter you wouldn’t be even considering something like this. And I think it’s amazing and wonderful that you want to do something so bold and grand. But your father never got things done by doubting himself. He certainly didn’t get where he was by dismissing his own ideas as dumb. If this is what it takes to make you happy, I think you should take the chance. And if it’s not with Donovan Kincaid, then keep searching.”

  “You mean it?” I glanced over at her and this time I held her stare, searching for every bit of reassurance. With her encouraging me, the plan didn’t seem quite so dumb after all.

  “Yeah, I mean it. Go in there confident. Show them you have your father’s balls.” She pulled me into a tight hug that was quickly followed by an exclamation of, “My nails, my nails!”

  I let her go so she could examine her manicure and make sure that it had come out unscathed. Just then, the old grandfather clock chimed the hour from inside the apartment.

  “It’s one already?” I checked my wristwatch, needing the double verification. “Shit. I have to get going if I’m going to get to Midtown by one-thirty. So much for grabbing lunch first. Thanks, Mom, for the advice and for listening.” I bent in and kissed her cheek then walked over to Marie.

  “There’s chicken sandwiches in the fridge,” she said, standing to give me a side hug. “Take one on your way.”

  “Thanks. I will.” I started inside.

  “Elizabeth,” my mother called after me. She waited until I turned to give her my full attention. “Are you going to go through with this plan, then?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Maybe. Yes. Probably. I haven’t met the groom. I won’t agree if the guy’s lame. It’s a fake marriage, but I do have standards. My name is riding on this.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky, and he’ll be good-looking! Wouldn’t it be nice if a woman got to have a trophy spouse for once?”

  I laughed, but I wasn’t holding my breath. I was taking her advice to heart, though. If Donovan Kincaid’s plan was going to be a real option, he couldn’t know I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I had to be confident and self-assured, like my father would have been. I had to show the men of Reach that I had balls.

 
; I had to prove I could own that meeting and every man in it.

  Three

  “Weston, quit pacing and sit the fuck down,” Donovan said—correction, demanded—from his seat on the couch at one-thirty the next day. “You’re making me dizzy.”

  It was easy enough for him to sit calmly, enjoying his after-lunch Scotch since he didn’t have a hangover and a fifty-pound ring in his breast pocket.

  I ran a hand through my hair, ignoring his instructions to move to the couch. “I don’t know how you talked me into this. You laced my drink with something?” Drinks. Many drinks. There had been so many drinks.

  “You were still rather sober when you agreed, as I recall.”

  I looked out the window over the city. Our offices occupied the top floors of the King-Kincaid building we rented, and the view was spectacular. We’d designed the space so all of us had floor-to-ceiling windows, and the lounge where we entertained all incoming clients had the best views of all.

  Usually, looking out over the small specks on the sidewalks below made me feel powerful and confident, gave me a bit of the backbone that Donovan had naturally. But today I just felt agitated and nervous, like all the people below were priceless pawns in a chess game, and somehow I was going to squish them with my bad behavior.

  “Nate really could do this,” I said, turning to look at Donovan now. “Twenty years difference… What does that mean these days? It’s a fake marriage anyway. Who’s going to care?”

  “It’s important this marriage looks like it’s real. Those running the business aren’t going to want to relinquish power, so they need to be convinced that the two of you are in love if they’re not going to contest. Nathan doesn’t even give the vibe of a groom.”

  “And I give the vibe of a—?” My sentiment was cut off by the opening of the lounge doors.

  Speak of the devil, Nate came bounding in and glanced around the room. “Good, I’m not late.”

  No, he was late. But so was the Dyson girl.

  “I was arguing shades of green with one of the design teams. I swear half the staff we’ve hired is colorblind.”