Bound As His Business-Deal Bride (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Kali Anthony

  Now

  EVE SAT AT the expansive table in the plush boardroom with its million-dollar view over Seattle. Everything here screamed of a company on the top of its game with sparkling glass, gleaming wood, bright chrome. A company winning at everything, taking no prisoners. The last place on earth she wanted to be, yet a place she couldn’t avoid.

  She checked her watch. Ten past the hour. He was making them wait. She tapped her finger on the papers in front of her, stomach churning in a tumult of emotion she didn’t think she’d ever untangle, no matter how many years she lived.

  ‘I’m not sure this is a wise idea, Ms Chevalier.’ She shot a stern glance at her lawyer, the man who’d served her family company for years. He was part of the problem and not the solution for what had gone catastrophically wrong. Yet she’d been forced to bring him, the board having trouble accepting her at the helm in lieu of her father. Trust was in short supply where she was concerned. She doubted she’d get any here either.

  ‘It’s our only option.’ That was a truth that even the most pious believer in miracles could accept. The family company, Knight Enterprises, sat on the brink. Teetering, ready to plummet over the precipice into oblivion. If it died a swift and public death she’d survive. She’d been through worse than anyone could imagine—this was nothing.

  Eve ignored the bright stab of pain that at any other time might threaten to crack her heart in two, the fleeting memory of a tiny white coffin in an empty church on a bright sunny day. There were far worse things than a company failing, but her mother and little sister had no chance if Knight folded. Protected to obsession, controlled, they’d fail right along with it. She wouldn’t let that happen.

  She’d done some things; terrible, hurtful things in her life. Destroying her mother and baby sister would never be one of them. Never.

  ‘Your father would say otherwise. Your father—’

  Another sharp glance sideways from her and the lawyer stopped talking. She’d become good at silencing people with a glance. Like father, like daughter. The burn of gall rose in her throat. Would Daddy be proud of her right now? She hated that he might be.

  ‘My father is unconscious in hospital. He has no say here.’ He’d been cut down in a way his enemies had never been able to accomplish. A mosquito bite, an overwhelming infection. It was hard to contemplate that something as mundane as an insect had felled the man now lying in an ICU bed in Jackson. She searched deep down for a shred of emotion, but all her energy was taken up with hiding the truth of her father’s illness for now, while keeping Knight afloat.

  Her father had forced them into this mess when he’d reset a ticking time bomb seven years earlier. She either defused it in this room or the whole thing blew up in their faces. Eve was an expert at defusing things. She’d done it her whole life. She’d do it again.

  ‘Caron has been chewing at your father’s heels for years. You do this and it will be the end for Knight. Do you want that on your conscience?’

  Caron Investments did more than chase after them. It was a behemoth, mouth agape, waiting to swallow them whole. A hatred between two families and business rivals had led her to this boardroom. She was currently reaping the toxic reward of all that loathing, but in her case that punishment was deserved. She’d fuelled the enmity, throwing petrol on a bonfire. In many ways, she was the reason they were sitting here.

  Ultimately, one of the companies was destined to consume the other—she’d just never thought it would be Caron devouring Chevalier in its bloodied maw.

  But today, it seemed, Caron would win the battle.

  ‘If someone had told me what was going on, we may not have ended up here,’ she hissed. She hadn’t seen it coming, having been tucked away safely overseas. Hidden, inured from it all. She raised an eyebrow at the man sitting next to her, who now fidgeted with a pen and his compendium. ‘But they didn’t. And I still haven’t received an explanation as to why I was never informed about the parlous state of things in the US. It’s gross negligence on the board’s part, which you should know, being the company lawyer.’

  She reached for the glass of water in front of her, condensation slipping down the sides and pooling on a coaster protecting the mirror-like wood of the table. Gage was being rude with this lateness. A deliberate message.

  ‘You’re nothing. You have no importance to me. You are here at my bidding. Your fortunes survive or fail on my word alone.’

  She could stand up. Go. Refuse to tolerate the slight and walk from here with her head held high and let everything implode around her. There was a certain wicked satisfaction in imagining that. Her father’s one true love, his company, being destroyed at her whim.

  But Gage had called her and requested the meeting. Well, not Gage himself but an assistant, requesting her attendance at his Seattle headquarters. That was enough to keep her in the chair, because she hadn’t seen Gage in the flesh since that night seven years earlier. When he’d looked up at her in that gritty abandoned building, kissed his fingers and run, drawing her father and his men away from her.

  The door cracked open and her heart rate spiked, a pounding that punched at her throat. Eve swallowed down the sickening sensation. She wouldn’t allow anyone here to know her blood pressure pushed critical. She took a deep, steadying breath. Frosted herself over. Icy was a veneer she’d perfected years ago. No one could touch her, not anymore. She’d no tears left to shed. She’d cried them all as a naïve twenty-year-old. Her well was now truly dry.

  Finally, he appeared, filling the doorway. Her breath was crushed in her chest, there was no air in the whole world enough to fill her lungs. All the years of seeing photos, reading about his business exploits on the internet, was not enough to prepare her for seeing Gage in the flesh again.

  He strolled into the room, looking down at his phone, no acknowledgement of her presence at all. Not even that could hurt her, though, as she devoured the sight of him. His hair golden and perfect, every part of him the golden boy the press claimed him to be. He owned the room in a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt, red and blue tie. Bespoke, tailored to fit his impressive body. He loomed as a presence more than a mere man. Like he owned everything around him—in perfect control.

  Eve tried to keep breathing, tried not to show the effect he had on her because, damn, after all these years he still owned her body.

  She hated him for it.

  Gage grabbed the back of a chair while flicking through something on the phone screen. The leather dented under his grip. He pulled the chair out from the table. Undid the button on his suit jacket with calm precision and sat. Then—only then—did he look at her.

  It was like being stabbed by an icicle. A cold thrust, deep into the heart of her, his vivid blue eyes piercing and frigid. Was he remembering the last time they’d spoken, in that terrible phone call her father had given her no option but to make? It was all she could do not to rise from this chair, say Thank you for your time and flee.

  She’d never expected to have to face him again. She’d hidden out in France after being banished there seven years ago—the deal she’d struck to save Gage, to protect him from secrets he could never know. Secrets that would destroy him, and his family. She’d hold those in her heart for ever. Except she was done running. Running turned things into a disaster, as she and Gage both knew. They’d reaped the poisoned rewards of their own actions years before.

  ‘Ms Chevalier.’ His voice was all dark nights and silk sheets and her damned heart tripped over itself in guilty pleasure at the sound. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  Eve forced herself to look into his beautiful face. It was chiselled in a way it hadn’t been in his early twenties. All softness had been hewn away, leaving a specimen of male near-perfection. The only thing marring it was the sliver of a scar under his right eye and the merest bump on the bridge of his nose where it had no doubt broken under the crack of a clenched fist. Her fingers itc
hed to stroke over the flaws, to whisper how sorry she was for the wounds her father had left. But the cold disdain in his gaze told her there were no number of apologies she could offer that would make him forgive her.

  ‘Gage. Thank you for inviting us here.’ His eyes widened a fraction. She’d bet anything that everyone called him Mr Caron. Eve refused to play that game. While she might be prepared to beg for his help eventually, she’d start this negotiation as his equal.

  ‘You can thank me at the end of the meeting when you see what I’m offering.’

  ‘Getting straight to business. I like that.’

  The corner of Gage’s mouth kicked up in the hint of a smile that told her she’d pay, and he’d enjoy extracting the price. ‘If you’d liked business a little more, perhaps Knight Enterprises wouldn’t be in the desperate state that it is.’

  Eve gritted her teeth. She’d tried to grab the reins when she’d sensed things were careening off track, but no one had wanted to listen to her. They’d parked her in France and let her play with the businesses there. The US was her daddy’s domain, and he’d taken risks on things he shouldn’t have. Too many chances that hadn’t paid off. Now the company was fat and bloated and incapable of surviving the coming storm.

  ‘My father and the board were responsible for the US division.’

  ‘And yet you’re here instead of him.’

  Eve stiffened. She’d locked down news of her father’s illness, determined to keep it quiet until she’d been able to assess the full scope of the disaster he’d wrought. The silence had bought her time, and that time had almost run out.

  ‘Right where you want me?’

  ‘I’d say almost the perfect position. Are you going to prostrate yourself? Beg me to help you wade your way out of the mire you’ve created?

  Her solicitor started forward, beginning to rise from his chair. If he stepped in, she’d lose ground here. She wasn’t some little girl who needed defending. She’d been fighting for herself and winning for years. Eve held up her hand and her solicitor stopped, sat back down, muttering under his breath. Gage raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  He’d soon learn she was no pushover, not anymore.

  ‘The failings were my father’s. His choices are not mine, and I refuse to own them for that reason.’

  ‘I’m pleased to see you owning your decisions, Eve. Does that mean you’ll take responsibility for what’s coming your way?’

  She reached for her glass, tried to keep the water inside still and steady as she sipped. The cold liquid hit her knotted stomach, which heaved in protest. She swallowed the sickening sensation down. She was made of stronger stuff now. She’d fought and won against bigger demons from her past than Gage Caron.

  ‘I’ve never shirked responsibility for my actions, ever.’

  He laughed, but there was nothing entertaining about the sound. Gage straightened some papers in front of him. Laid his perfect hands flat on the polished table-top. ‘Well, hasn’t this been fun. Let me be blunt. Knight’s financial state is parlous. You’ve not grown organically or strategically but instead purchased anything and everything, particularly companies that Caron was considering.’

  ‘If Caron considered them, I’d assume they were sound investments.’

  Gage’s eyes sparked something of a warning, a vicious kind of pleasure burning behind the polar blue.

  ‘I rejected them as high risk with too little return.’

  That’s not what her father had said. Hugo Chevalier had taken delight in gloating, especially to her, about how he’d stolen yet another company from Gage, like some brutal, never-ending purgatory. Gage speared her with his frigid gaze again.

  ‘Knight was welcome to them. Each and every one.’

  Cold dread trickled through her. It wouldn’t have been hard to manipulate her father, his quest for revenge all-encompassing, an unhealthy obsession. She’d only fuelled it by running with Gage, when all they’d hoped had been that the inevitability of a youthful marriage might heal the wounds between their families.

  What a naïve, childish dream.

  ‘Aren’t you clever,’ she said. Gage had planned this. Where once he’d been an avenging angel on her behalf, the sword he carried today would be used against her. He was revelling in their fall and part of her couldn’t blame him for that. ‘Let me share something with you. So am I.’

  ‘If you’re so clever, where are the investors? No one will touch you. The juggling act must be exhausting. Drop one ball and it’s the beginning of the end. All it would take is a whisper in the wrong ear...’

  The only piece of information held back right now was her father’s incapacity. If that came out in an uncontrolled fashion, it was all over. She couldn’t let that happen. Her mom and sister would never survive it. They were clueless about what was going on here, and that’s how she wanted it to stay for now.

  ‘It seems you know a great deal.’ More than she’d expected. He was right, she’d tried everything, and doors kept closing in her face. It was as if someone had been chipping away, determined to make the Chevalier name meaningless. She was staring at the man responsible; she was sure of it.

  ‘I’ve had seven years of solid study.’

  ‘I like to think I can still surprise people.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can tell me about yourself I don’t already know. It pays to have the measure of your enemies.’

  A shiver ran through her.

  Heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turned.

  She’d bet anything that Gage didn’t know everything, and she knew that she had some devastating surprises she could spring on him if she wanted revenge of her own. In some respects, she believed her father hoped that one day she would tell Gage all the secrets she held. But no matter how much vitriol he spilled on her, she wouldn’t lower herself to joining the battle that had been waged by the two men so far.

  ‘I understand what led us here. That’s in the past.’

  He picked up his sleek black and gold pen, twirling it nonchalantly in his fingers. ‘If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’re doomed. The past is instructive on what never to repeat.’

  ‘Thank you for the lesson. Today is for looking forward.’

  Gage smiled. Once that smile would have lit her up like a candle. Warm, genuine. Now there was no heat in it. It was a shark’s smile, full of teeth and hinting of blood in the water and the bite to come. That smile chilled her to the marrow.

  ‘Knight should be allowed to topple and fall. It’s not a business. It’s your father’s vanity project.’

  ‘Yet you called me.’

  This wasn’t an attempt at investment. It was a ritual humiliation. Revenge at its most acute from a man determined to destroy them all. If that was the ultimate end, Eve wanted to get it over with. She was tired of trying to prop things up when everyone around her seemed intent on cutting them down. If Madame Guillotine was bound to fall, she didn’t have the energy to watch Gage sharpen the blade while she waited for it to slice her.

  He steepled his fingers. ‘There might be some aspects of the business that interest me.’

  Eve let out a long, slow breath.

  Let the games begin.

  ‘What are you offering?’

  ‘A lifeline.’

  ‘I can feel the “but”. What are the conditions? I’m assuming I won’t like them.’

  ‘Medicine isn’t supposed to taste pleasant, Eve.’

  ‘And I’m sure you’re going to take pleasure in administering my first dose, so let’s get started. I’m not big on procrastinating.’

  ‘Your father will be removed as CEO.’ Her lawyer spluttered. Funny, she’d forgotten he was even there. No matter. Since her father was currently in a hospital bed and she’d been carrying out the CEO’s role in his absence, that was no problem. ‘There will be a restructure. My wo
rd is final on what Knight keeps and discards. It needs to discard a great deal.’

  ‘And will Knight retain its name and integrity as a company?’

  ‘Caron will own eighty per cent.’

  That was no answer at all.

  Eve suspected there were many things Gage had become, but a liar was not one of them. This wasn’t a lifeline, it was a takeover. The members of her family held shares. Her mother and sister weren’t interested in the business side of things, other than the money and security that it bought. If Gage took so much, there’d be nothing left and he’d squeeze them out. With their shares’ current value, the offer on the table was almost worthless. She could rebuild. She had skills, determination and contacts outside her father’s sphere. Her mom and Veronique wouldn’t have a chance if she agreed to Gage’s terms. She shook her head.

  ‘Knight has a brand. The goodwill of the name is worth millions. You want that for some reason, so we come to this as equals.’

  ‘How entertaining. There’s nothing equal about us. You are so far below me in all respects, it should be considered a miracle I’m talking to you.’

  She’d thought, “Better the devil you know”, hoping that maybe Gage had wanted to see her, that things had mellowed over the years. That thinking had been a terrible mistake. She’d have to try elsewhere to find a saviour. A private equity firm perhaps, someone from overseas who hadn’t heard the rumours. They might carve up the company but at least they’d treat her with respect to her face, even if they laughed behind her back.

  ‘I will not sit here and be insulted, which seems to be the only reason you called me to your office. We have nothing more to say.’ She stood. Her lawyer stood.

  ‘Liar,’ Gage murmured. Eve froze. Was she so easy to see through? Most other people couldn’t read her, the frosty veneer she’d perfected years ago renowned. If she couldn’t keep secrets from Gage, this would be a huge problem because her life was full of them. Gage leaned back in his chair, a smirk on his face. He turned to her lawyer. ‘Mr Stoddart, I’d like to talk to your client alone.’