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

by Kali Anthony

  The column of her slender throat convulsed. The thought of laying his hands on her flawless skin, had his body tight and on high alert. It was as if everything slowed, the air in the room becoming thick with possibilities. If he could touch her again, maybe she would be burned from his system once and for all.

  ‘I don’t want any of it.’

  ‘Another lie, cher? How disappointing. You still want me. The whole of you tells me that like you’re screaming it out loud.’

  He could see it in the way her eyes tracked his every move. Surveying him, fixing on his hands, his mouth. Those parts of him he’d used to toy with her mercilessly the rare times they’d been able to sneak away from family and indulge their obsession with each other. And it had been an obsession. That’s one thing she could never fake. The delicious heat of satisfaction slid through him.

  ‘You’ll agree. The engagement will last as long as it needs to, then I’ll end it. And all the while you’ll fake it with a smile on your face. History tells me you’re good at doing that.’

  She didn’t even balk at the jibe, proving exactly what he’d accused her of being.

  ‘And what if I want it to end?’

  ‘That’s not how this works.’

  ‘I need to know.’ She licked her lips, leaving them moist and kissable. Would her kiss still have the power to obliterate all rational thought? He craved to swoop down, capture those soft lips with his own. Loathed the fact that she still held some power over him. ‘What’s in it for you?’

  ‘Apart from crushing your father by forcing him to believe that a Caron’s hands are all over his daughter again, and that I’ve finally won? Let me see...’

  He wanted to witness the look on the man’s face when he realised he’d lost everything. His company. His beloved daughter. The world coming to know that the falsehoods he’d secretly whispered in the right ears had all been lies.

  A look shifted across her face, fleeting, like clouds over the sun. ‘There’s something you need to know. Is everything that’s said in this room absolutely confidential?’

  ‘Don’t you trust me, cher?’ She winced at the endearment but he didn’t care. Once she’d meant everything to him, and she’d thrown it in his face by trying to take him down. He’d never forgive her, ever.

  ‘You’re an intelligent man. This whole meeting was designed to take revenge against my family and we both know where that leads, to nowhere good. Of course I don’t trust you.’

  ‘The only person who has a problem with the truth, is you.’

  ‘And yet here I am trying to tell you a truth and you don’t seem interested.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘I—I need to know that this deal is safe.’

  ‘If you agree to my whole proposal until I say we’re done, then yes. It’s safe.’

  The whole of her slumped a little. Her shoulders dropped. Her eyes shut briefly, dark lashes feathering over her cheeks. Then she opened her eyes, and that hint of vulnerability disappeared. Her eyes lost their soft baby-blue colour. Now they were all hard steel.

  ‘My father’s in hospital. The ICU.’

  It was as though the earth shifted under his feet. The whole of him a morass of sensations that jumbled together in an uncomfortable soup of feelings he barely understood. There was disappointment that Hugo Chevalier wasn’t going to see this, wouldn’t feel the full weight of horror at the realisation that Gage had taken it all from him, but there was something else too, something that stuck like a knife under the ribs. A spike that felt a whole lot like sympathy.

  He shook his head. He didn’t have a sympathetic sentiment left in him. Eve had seen to that.

  ‘How bad is it?’

  She must be hurting. She loved her daddy. She had to, considering she’d chosen to go back to Hugo and her trust fund rather than keep running with him. Eve looked up at him, no expression on her face. ‘He has an infection. They’re worried about multi-organ failure. It’s as bad as can be without being told to call a priest.’

  She said it like she was asking him how he wanted his eggs for breakfast.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The words stuck in his throat, but it was the right thing to do, to give his sympathy. He wasn’t a complete savage—on most days, at least.

  Eve didn’t soften but appeared completely unmoved. ‘No, you’re not. But you needed to know because if it’s revenge you’re after, all you have is me.’

  Her face was still impassive, as if it was merely business they’d been discussing. Hugo Chevalier’s name had been the single thing holding that company together. One word about this spoken to the wrong person and Knight was done. He could have his revenge with no effort at all, but that would never satisfy him. He wanted the axe to fall by his hand. To know he’d won and taken everything for himself. So he still needed Eve, to achieve public redemption.

  He hated it. Hated that he required her for this. Hated that all he’d ever wanted was her. Desire lashed him like a whip-crack as he watched Eve now. Her wide-set blue eyes, petite nose, luscious mouth, sleek hair. That beautiful body all trussed up in a business suit he wanted to snip at and unravel till she fell apart. It had always damned well been her, whether in love or revenge. She shifted in her seat and the gentle scent of jasmine and spring teased his nose, inflamed his blood. Made all of him hot and tight under the suit. He’d shrug off his jacket if he wasn’t so damned hard she’d tell in an instant that while his head might loathe her, his body craved her with an unhealthy obsession.

  ‘You’ll do,’ he said, his voice grinding out all rough and unrecognisable. She blinked fast, like something had been flung at her face.

  ‘Was that meant to sting? Because nothing can hurt me anymore.’ He wondered fleetingly what possible hurt she could have suffered in her privileged, protected life. ‘It was such a long time ago, and we both know where revenge leads. It’s beneath you.’

  Sure, it might be beneath him, but while some memories in life had dimmed, one hadn’t. Eve and those last weeks before the end haunted his dreams. Trying her phone in increasingly frantic efforts. Getting nothing then one day having her pick up. The relief that she was okay had flooded him, until she’d cruelly discarded him. From the tinny, hollow sound of the call he’d known he was on speaker and her father had been in the room, listening to it all. Doubtless gloating.

  No, he could never forget.

  He’d tried to exorcise her from his life. But to his fury every time he’d touched another woman, his body had rebelled. He’d cut a swathe through the female population at college, trying to drown out the memory of her, but he’d never been able to. Any time he’d seen the bright splash of golden hair or a flash of pearly skin his heart rate had spiked, thinking it might be her. But she’d been happily getting on with her life in France as he’d been trying to rebuild the pieces of his broken heart. It had taken years to forget the breathy sounds she made as she came. The smell of her, like the flower gardens she loved so much and wanted to create for herself. Time now to rid her from his life for good.

  He sat on the table near her. Her gaze trailed down his shirt, hesitated on his tie, drifted to rest on the buckle of his belt and lower still. A swift shot of adrenaline punched right through him as her gaze lingered there a bit damn long. If she kept looking, she’d know exactly how much his cursed body still wanted her.

  What if he kissed her? Would she react? By the flaring of her nostrils and her blown pupils he bet he could lay her out on this table and take her hard and fast till she screamed so loudly the lawyer outside would hear. Show her that, while he might not have been good enough to marry, she still wanted him.

  That would be beneath him. Not this—an engagement as fake as the woman in front of him. If it could get the European deal over the line, it would be worth everything. Revenge was just a tasty morsel on the side. An amuse-bouche. Cleansing his palate for better things. It was time t
o get Eve out of his system once and for all. Because he’d never trust her, not again. She’d cured him of that gentler sentiment.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say, isn’t it? You haven’t suffered any consequences.’

  Her brow creased. ‘Consequences? I don’t—’

  ‘Enough. The innocent act, as compelling as it seems, doesn’t suit you.’ He stood, stalked to the other end of the table and grabbed a glass of water, taking a long, cold gulp. It didn’t help cool the fire of anger burning in his gut. ‘But don’t worry. All it’ll require is for you to pretend for a little while, which should be easy. I’m not trying to rekindle old flames and I don’t want to tie myself to you permanently. Just long enough to get a deal over the line and then you’re free.’

  ‘A deal? Who is this merry charade for?’

  He hesitated. She didn’t need to know, there was nothing he had to tell her, and yet...she’d told him about her father. That was a devastating secret being kept from the business world, which he could have used to destroy everything without any effort on his part. She could have kept quiet about it till she had his money. He didn’t understand why she had so willingly handed him the perfect means to ruin her.

  Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to tell her why he needed her. If she worked with him on this, rather than against him, their association could be over sooner. It’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? A tightness settled low inside him, like that thought was somehow wrong.

  ‘Greta Bonitz.’

  Eve’s eyes widened. The German industrialist was renowned for her investments in renewable technology. Reclusive, private and family minded, it had taken one hint that Gage may not have had impeccable morals for her to cool and put their discussions on permanent hold.

  With Eve as his fiancée, that would change. A partnership with the Bonitz group of companies would give Caron Investments what it should have had years before, premier billing on the world stage. He’d do that for his father, for all the times things had not gone as planned because of what Gage had done as a stupid twenty-three-year-old drunk on lust and a belief in true love.

  He’d finally be relieved of this burden of guilt he’d carried.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She needs to believe the lie that you and I are together. Help me get an agreement over the line and Caron will bail out your company and keep your precious mother and sister safe from the wolves already coming down the mountain for them.’

  He saw the flare in her eyes, the intelligence ticking in a way that said she thought she might be able to find a way out of this. ‘Take care, Eve. You’ve got more to lose than me. Fail, and I might lose a deal. You’ll lose everything.’

  ‘You’re the only wolf at the door, Gage. You have been for years, haven’t you?’

  He smiled. She’d come to realise just how determined he’d been to bring them to this point, sitting across the table from one another with her future in his grip.

  ‘Seven, to be precise.’

  He saw the moment she knew she’d been backed into a corner she couldn’t escape. She took a deep breath, straightened her spine and looked him in the face, her lips a tight, tense line. ‘When do we start this fantasy?’

  ‘You’ve got twenty-four hours to get things in order. We leave for Europe in forty-eight. I want to go through Knight’s French holdings first. Then we meet with Frau Bonitz.’

  ‘That—that’s not long. How do I prepare my family?’

  ‘I assume that’s a rhetorical question. If it’s not, tell them that after rigorously thrashing out our differences in the boardroom we concluded that we’d never stopped wanting one another. That should do it. Everyone loves a fairy-tale.’

  Her cheeks flushed a gorgeous rose. Even though he loathed her, she was a beautiful woman. In her early twenties, he’d thought she was incomparable, but she’d been a pale imitation when compared to the woman who sat before him now. Fleshed out, with grown-up curves. It was all he could do not to reach out and haul her to him.

  ‘We need the business side committed to an agreement.’

  Business. Yes. He needed to remember. He opened the folder sitting on the table in front of him, scribbled relevant percentages in the blank spaces his legal team had already left on his instruction, and drafted a short paragraph allowing for the provision of Caron shares. That bit galled him, but it didn’t matter. He would win far more than he lost in this deal.

  He signed and dated the back page and slid it to Eve with a pen on top.

  ‘Here’s a memorandum of understanding. Our lawyers can sort out more formal details but this will do for now, since I never go back on my word. Unlike some.’

  She picked up the papers and his pen slipped with a clatter onto the gleaming wood table-top. Then she read through the document slowly, her jaw clenched tightly. He fancied he could almost hear her teeth grinding. When he’d walked in today, he’d known almost exactly what he was prepared to offer, no more, no less. It was all about filling in a few blanks, which had cost him less than he thought. It told him how desperate she really was.

  ‘Aren’t you well prepared?’ Eve ignored his pen like it was a snake sunning itself in front of her. Instead she slid an elegant silver fountain pen from her bag and signed in neat, precise script. ‘How commendable.’

  ‘I’ve had a long time to prepare for this day, cher.’ Nothing took him off guard anymore. He allowed for every contingency. He’d never be surprised ever again. He’d waited long enough for today. He’d left nothing to chance.

  ‘I thought after seven years you wouldn’t care.’

  He couldn’t read what was going on behind her intelligent eyes, but she’d get a warning nonetheless that he wasn’t one to be crossed.

  ‘Oh, cher. Beware the fury of a patient man.’

  Eve nestled into the plush leather seats of a jet sitting on the tarmac of a private airfield. She rubbed at her temple, trying to ease the throbbing that had taken up residence and didn’t seem fit to move any time soon. It was as if her body had set out to spite her, ignoring the painkillers she’d downed as soon as she’d boarded. Even though her head pounded, she wasn’t sure what hurt the most, that or her heart. It had been a close-run thing since Gage had burst back into her life.

  She’d thought it would make things better, knowing the company and her mother and sister were at least safe from the worst that creditors could throw at them, but it hadn’t made any difference, the dread replaced by another fear. Old doubts and regrets had resurfaced. The more she tried to shut them down the worse things became, so she allowed herself to sit with the thoughts for a short while. The ‘what-ifs’ she’d discarded years before.

  They’d been too young. It would never have worked long term. These were the things she knew, that she’d told herself every day until the fantasy had died. Even if they’d survived the disclosures about his parentage and the ruination of his family, the seven-year itch would be settling in about now. It would be far worse for things to have ended up in a mess of recriminations at the hands of divorce lawyers than the way they had. A swift, clean break, no matter how painful at the time.

  She just had to get through this, however long it took to play out. She could do it; she’d been through worse and while she allowed herself a few reminiscences right now, she wouldn’t dwell on some memories. Not those of a tiny white coffin in a lonely church. Not of a baby born too soon.

  No good ever came of memories like those.

  Eve glanced over at the baggage cupboard where she’d stowed the little yellow case that travelled everywhere with her, which held all her grief and tears. She’d have preferred to keep it at her feet, but the flight attendant had reassured her with a smile that it would be safe. Maybe she could just go and check? She resisted the urge that welled up inside and bit at her heels. There had been days where all she’d done had been to sit and weep over the contents. Now, to simply know it was wit
h her was enough.

  Instead of needless worrying, she grabbed a magazine from a low table in front of her and flicked through it. Beautiful people, salacious gossip, fashion. It all blurred in a whirl of colour till she turned to an advertisement of a flower-filled field with a bottle of perfume overlaying the scene. A picture she recognised, the warmth of pride flowing through her.

  That was her field. The farm she’d bought in the south of France with the help of her trust fund and a loan from Knight’s French arm. A breakout luxury perfume brand had bought her flowers to make their new flagship scent, and was keen to contract her exclusively. Especially since she’d hinted about the new rose she and her chief grower had developed. Her only regret was that she couldn’t keep the property all to herself. Renting out the house for part of the year to fund her loan was a sad necessity. One day it would all be hers, but not for a while yet.

  She smiled at this indulgence on the side her father didn’t know about. He’d never understood her love of growing things. That was for gardeners—staff—and not his daughter. Getting dirty in the garden was something to be discouraged. Something beneath her. But it’s how she’d first spied Gage. She’d been picking jonquils in the lower reaches of the garden and there he’d sat, staring down at her from the dizzying height of a huge old magnolia tree, framed by a sky as blue as his eyes.

  That was another memory she shouldn’t be wasting her time on. He wasn’t that mischievous boy in the tree any longer. She wasn’t that hopeful girl. They’d grown up, grown hard and moved on. Her focus was on building her farm. She could almost smell the scents of lavender, rose and jasmine hanging on the warm air and her headache eased a fraction. This was her happy place, where her worries seemed to leave her, the place she now felt most at home. She lingered a little longer on the picture as the flight attendant moved through the cabin and to the rear door of the aircraft.

  ‘Mr Caron, it’s a pleasure to see you. You’re cutting it fine today.’