by Maisey Yates
“Only fools leave these things to chance. Even the best gamblers are calculating odds, not taking wild stabs in the dark.” She placed the stack of papers on his desk and pushed them toward his side. He bent to pick them up, slowly leafing through the pages.
“Calculation is important,” he said, as he continued to scan the papers. “But you should never underestimate the importance of being able to follow your gut. When you’re in a fight there often isn’t time to play it out like chess, even if it would be ideal. Sometimes you just have to trust that if you need to feint right, your body will feint right.”
“A nice theory. But that has nothing to do with legalities. What do you think?” She looked at him with her sharp blue eyes, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
“Everything looks good.” He sat back down behind his desk and opened the top drawer, taking out the ring he had stashed in there earlier. The velvet box made a muted sound as he pressed it slowly onto the wooden surface.
She looked down at the box, then back up at him. “Is that what I think it is?”
“That depends on what you think it is. Perhaps you should open it.”
She shot him a look that could only be described as annoyed and reached out, taking the box in her hands. She cracked open the lid and for nearly a full second her expression was blank. Tellingly so. It was very difficult to describe the shift that took place between the look on Victoria’s face when she was genuinely at a loss, and the look that appeared when she was trying to make others believe that she was blasé. A subtle softening in her eyes, an added tension around her mouth. It was barely noticeable, but it was there.
By the time she looked up at him she was in full control again. “I told you I don’t care for colored diamonds.”
“But it suits you. I made an executive decision.”
She arched a brow. “It suits me? Or was it just the most convenient diamond?”
A smile curved his lips. “Does it really matter? I’ve made the decision. This is your ring.”
“So that’s how this is going to be?”
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Ms. Calder. You might have come to me, but the moment I agreed it became my game. I do like a challenge, but I also like to win.”
She smiled brightly, so brightly that he knew it was false. “That may be a problem, because I like to win, too.” She tilted her head to the side, her expression taking on a mock thoughtfulness. “I did a bit of research on your mentor. He was from New Orleans. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” he said.
Her expression shifted slightly yet again, and this time the smile seemed more genuine. “Good. That’s an excellent venue for charity. And a location people enjoy traveling to. Also, it will appeal to the local moneyed class.” He could see her mentally tallying everything up, valuing it.
“You are terrifying. Has anyone ever told you that before?”
“Oh yes.” She waved her hand dismissively. “I’ve been told that on many occasions. But I don’t like to be idle, and I don’t see the point wasting time—do you?”
“I told you I wanted this rolled out as quickly as possible. Obviously I don’t see the point in wasting time. In fact, on that note I have already been in touch with the press to let them know that you and I have decided to marry.”
Her pale brows shot upward. “Well, excellent.”
“You seem surprised by my efficiency.”
“I’m accustomed to being the most efficient half of any partnership. As I’m sure you can well imagine.”
“Oh, I can well imagine.” He smiled. “But this is the first time you have ever worked with me.”
“A mistake, I think. We might make a fairly deadly duo.”
“Oh, I am counting on it.”
Victoria snapped her folio shut and stood, hands held in front of her, every inch the efficient businesswoman she always seemed. Though, he imagined she wasn’t truly a businesswoman. Her reputation was largely as a socialite, and yet she did not appear to be as insubstantial as one tended to assume socialites were. She had all of the strength and steel of someone who was accustomed to doing battle in the boardroom. He knew that she had her own money, mainly from making savvy investments and turning an already-healthy trust fund into a bank account she would be hard-pressed to drain over the course of her lifetime.
He imagined many people underestimated her as a result of her appearance, her petite frame, the fact that she could be easily written off as a lady who lunched and nothing more. He also imagined that some of her strength came from the fact that people underestimated her. Victoria Calder had more dedication, brilliance and determination than half of the CEOs he knew.
“I’ll be in touch about the New Orleans charity event. Would you like to set a budget?”
“This is coming out of my pocket, is it?”
She waved a hand, a gesture he was becoming used to. “Of course it is. I’m doing you a service. Naturally you will be paying for it. I will see what I can manage to get donated, of course, but I need to establish a venue, and there will need to be food.”
“Louise will send you something.” He looked down at his computer for a moment, then back up at her. “I would prefer not to be bothered by the arrangements. I figure our agreement should have as many perks for me as possible. And somehow I get the impression that planning an event is a perk to you.”
“It most certainly is. Especially in New Orleans. In the meantime I will be in touch with the media about the event, and I will let them know how deliriously happy I am to be wearing your ring.” She picked the ring box up from the desk. “Even though yellow is not my color.”
“I disagree, I think yellow could be your color. You just seem to insist on wearing black.” He examined the black pencil skirt and fitted black top she was wearing today. He couldn’t deny that she looked striking in black, but still.
“You, too,” she said, indicating his suit.
“Touché. We will be in touch.” She turned to go. “And Ms. Calder...” She turned back to face him. “You had better make sure to put the ring on. The press will be expecting it.”
The right corner of her lips tugged downward, and she reconfigured the things she was holding, opening the ring box and taking the jewel out. Then she slipped it, rather unceremoniously, onto the fourth finger of her left hand. “There—” she wiggled her fingers “—are you satisfied?”
No, dammit, he wasn’t. She was too cold by half, too in control. He didn’t like it. And before he could question why, he had stood and rounded the desk.
“Not just yet.” He closed the distance between them, watching as her blue eyes widened with each step he took nearer to her. “You do not look like a woman who has just had an encounter with her fiancé.”
“What do I look like?” she asked, tilting her head to the side, her expression still far too composed. All of the color in her cheeks was courtesy of her makeup.
“A woman who has just been in a business meeting. And I find that unacceptable.”
Her hair was already slightly messy from her trek across the city, but he still felt it wasn’t enough. He reached out, pressing his fingers to her temples and sliding his hand backward, fingertips sinking deeply into the softness of her hair. She froze beneath his touch, her eyes widening, her mouth rounding into a perfect O.
He shifted his hold, tugging at the pins that held her bun in place, letting the shimmering locks fall free around her shoulders. He raised his other hand, forking it deeply in her hair, ruffling it slightly as he might have done during a passionate kiss.
For the first time, he thought he might have actually succeeded in shocking her. Oh, certainly he’d had moments of surprising her, such as when he’d taken her up to his apartment in the gym and talked fake engagement logistics in a towel. But he didn’t think he had truly shocked her un
til this moment.
He was only guessing, of course, because of the way that she held herself so still, because of the way that she looked at him, blue eyes wide and lacking in the kind of sharpness they usually held.
There was something soft there now, something blurry.
His stomach tightened, lust grabbing him by the throat and shaking hard. He was on edge with her, a touch bringing him much closer to losing hold on his control than he would like to admit.
There was no denying that he found her very attractive. No denying that she was very attractive. And he wanted to know what it would be like to undo all those buttons on her blouse, to push that tightly fitted skirt up around her hips, tease her until she cried out, and then sink into her softness.
He wouldn’t do any of those things. She had him in a difficult position, and he would not increase the power she had by giving into this unwanted attraction.
She gasped, as though she had read his mind, as though she had seen into his filthy fantasies. But, though he wouldn’t act on them, he was fine with her being aware. Let her know. Let her understand. Let her feel the control slip from her grasp as she realized that he was the one with the upper hand.
That, while he felt the attraction, if he chose to act on it, she would be powerless to resist. That he could have her, begging, naked, if he wanted.
The color heightened in her cheeks, as though he really had kissed her. As though he had spoken the words that were running on a loop through his mind out loud.
“That’s better.” He released his hold on her and took a step backward, much more affected than he should be. Than he cared to be. He had been doing this to exercise control yet again, and yet again, she had tested it. “Now you look much more like a woman who has just been with her fiancé.”
“I think the ring would’ve done it,” she said, the crystal edge her voice normally held dulled, replaced by something much more husky. Something thicker, richer. And he knew that would be the voice she would use in bed. Soft like velvet and just as luxurious.
Desire slugged him sharply in the gut and he turned away from her. “That you think the ring would’ve been enough makes me wonder what you know about relationships, Ms. Calder. Perhaps that is why the engagement to your prince didn’t work out?”
It was an unkind thing to say, but he didn’t really care. He had never much minded whether or not people saw him as kind. In fact, he generally preferred for people to see him as the grumpy bastard he was.
Which was part of his problem now. He’d taken no pains with his reputation at all. His life had opened up wide when he’d retired from fighting, when he’d earned his money and he’d taken the chance to live it as he saw fit. To live without limits.
Too bad the public didn’t appreciate his expression of freedom to the same degree that he did.
“Fortunately for you, Mr. Markin, I do not need to understand personal relationships. I only need to understand how to improve one’s image in the media. I only need to understand how to put on a gala and get a charity running, and on that score I am an expert. I’ll let you worry about the rest. You seem to be doing an adequate job. I bid you good day.”
And when he turned back around she was gone, and he had the inescapable feeling that she had won a round yet again.
* * *
Victoria spent the next two weeks fielding congratulatory phone calls from friends and family and putting together plans for the launch of the Colvin Davis Foundation. A venue in New Orleans had been selected, local restaurants were providing food as a donation, she had managed to find a minor celebrity to act as master of ceremonies and she was just generally feeling really good about the decisions she’d been making lately.
Now that all of her overseas responsibilities had been arranged, she was doing one of her favorite things in the world. She was packing for a trip.
She’d never been to New Orleans before so she’d spent the morning researching what she might need to bring, then finding the corresponding items in her closet, making lists of what she didn’t have, and planning on when she could buy them.
She and Dmitri would be leaving in just two days. She managed to avoid him in the weeks since they’d made their engagement official. The media was chomping at the bit for a picture of the two of them, but in her mind that was so much the better. Better to leave them wanting than give them too much.
They would make their official debut as a couple at the fantastic and glittering affair she had planned. There, Dmitri would read his mission statement for the charity and cash would flow into the coffers like water flowing forth from a burst dam. She could see it all clearly in her head. More importantly, she could see very clearly the moment when she told her father that she had reclaimed their family business.
The Calder family hadn’t been ruined by the loss of London Diva—no, they were far too successful, with many diverse investments.
But money hadn’t been the issue. Not really. It was her father’s pride.
A man of no significant background, he’d clawed his way into the elite social circles, earning his fortune through hard work. London Diva had been his flagship company, the means by which he’d changed his whole life. And she had lost it.
But of course he had allowed the world to believe that it had been a foolish mistake of his that had cost him the boutique. He had allowed all of those upper-crust snobs to believe they’d been proven right, so that she wouldn’t suffer. He had done that to protect her when she had not deserved protection. Even in his anger he had done that for her.
And he had suffered. Invitations to events had all but disappeared, many investors had jumped ship, good friends had proven false. The reputation, the respect her father had worked so hard to achieve, wiped out by one foolish act on her part.
She’d been an idiot with stars in her eyes, feeding vital company information to a man who had so clearly never loved her that just thinking about it now made her cringe.
Yes, the wisdom that came with being a twenty-eight-year-old woman meant that she knew now just how disinterested Nathan had really been. The man had barely kissed her. At the time it seemed romantic. That he was somehow honoring her by refraining from taking her to bed.
The years, and that experience, had made her so much more cynical. She saw it now for what it was. Dear Lord, when a man was trying to take advantage of you and he didn’t add sex to that, he was so uninterested there was almost no scale by which to measure it.
And when she remembered her ultimate humiliation... No. She wouldn’t remember it.
She was organizing. She was in her happy place. She pulled out a few of her favorite outfits and walked out of the closet and into her bedroom, laying each carefully hung and wrapped ensemble on the bed. She stood there for a moment regarding them when her phone started buzzing from its position on the comforter.
She saw her father’s name and her heart did a shimmy up to her throat. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d made the engagement with Dmitri official. Mainly, she spoke to her father when she went home for dinner with him once a month. Being with him was difficult. Ever since her mistake it had been.
But then, it was sort of difficult to sit down to a meal with someone you’d betrayed so badly, whether or not you’d done it on purpose.
She took a breath to try to dispel the tension in her chest and picked up the phone. “Hello, Dad.”
“Hello, Victoria. What is this I see about your engagement?”
He was not one for preamble, her father. “Oh, yes. That. I was going to ring you about that.”
She’d intended to ring him about it a couple of weeks ago. She’d intended to ring him about it last week, too. She also intended to ring him about it last night. But every time she had started to dial his number she’d got cold feet. After the way the Stavros thing had blown up she hadn’t been feeling very k
een. Because she knew that this time her father would be suspicious of it working out, and in the end of course he would be right, because she didn’t intend to marry Dmitri. But it wouldn’t matter in the end because she would have returned what she had lost. Even so, it was a conversation she had been delaying purposefully.
“I confess I did not expect to read about my only child’s engagement in the newspaper.”
“Yes, well. That is unfortunate. I was quite surprised when Dmitri asked, and given his position the press is all over it of course.”
Her father continued on without pausing. “He owns London Diva.”
“Yes—” bugger, she had been caught out “—he does. I am aware of that.”
“What is it you are doing, Victoria?”
“Getting married.” She looked down at her manicured hands. “I am of marriageable age. Past, really. It’s about time, honestly. But yes, I was feeling hesitant about calling you because of circumstances being what they are. Dmitri’s ownership of what was formerly our family business, and of course my aborted arrangement with Stavros.”
“You are in love with him?” It wasn’t concern she heard in her father’s voice, rather, a cold curiosity.
“Honestly, Dad, I’m much more concerned with practicalities than I am with love. But I am very fond of him.”
Her father chuckled. “Neatly done, Victoria. If you had said that you are madly in love with him I would have known you were lying.”
Her father’s words disconcerted her somewhat. She had gone out of her way to change. To learn from her mistakes. To think with her head, rather than letting her heart lead. Even so, it did hurt a little bit to hear someone else’s assessment of her and her character.
But then, considering she had enlisted the services of a matchmaker to help her find a suitable and dispassionate marriage, she supposed she couldn’t blame her father. No, the blame rested squarely with herself. The thing was, she really didn’t care much about love, unless she was thinking in terms of avoiding it.
“Right. Well. Not lying. Are you concerned for my well-being...or...?”