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

by Kali Anthony

  ‘Thank you, and my apologies to the captain and flight crew. Has my fiancée arrived?’

  The ache inside intensified at the sound of his voice. She snapped her magazine shut and gripped it tightly in her lap.

  ‘Yes, and may I offer my congratulations. Please take your seat and buckle up. If there’s anything you need after we reach cruising altitude, just ask.’

  Eve turned to see Gage coming on board. There should be a fanfare of trumpets heralding him. He was like some glorious corporate angel. Briefcase in hand, sporting a dark grey suit, pale grey shirt and silver tie, he stalked into the space with an authority that made her silly little heart swoon. He checked his phone before sliding it into his pocket and dropping into the seat opposite her. He was so tall his knees almost brushed hers. It was all she could do not to move away.

  ‘Darling, it’s good to see you,’ he said, his gaze tracing over her body. She tugged at her shirt and wished she’d done up all the buttons rather than leave a few open, giving the merest hint of cleavage. At least she was dressed for business in a trouser suit. A reminder that for the foreseeable future every moment of her day was work. ‘How did your family take the news of our engagement?’

  The flight attendant walked back towards the cockpit with a warm smile for them both. Eve tried to return it, but felt sure what she gave in response looked more ill than pleased.

  ‘As well as could be expected.’

  Not well at all. She’d told her mom and sister that Gage had agreed to save the company. That they had unfinished business. Her mother had wailed about liars and cheats, betrayals and blood money, before taking to her room where she’d no doubt still be. Veronique had simply turned her back with the words ‘It’s treachery. He’s a filthy Caron.’ She’d ignored them both.

  ‘What did your parents say?’

  ‘My parents only want me to be happy,’ he said. A tiny muscle in his jaw clenched, and she wondered about the truth of what he’d said. There was no warmth or caring in that voice. She could almost hear the sneer of My family’s better than yours.

  And as far as he knew, that was true. He was the only child, and doted on. Which was one of the reasons why the secret she held must always be kept. He’d idolised his father. Did Gus Caron even know Gage wasn’t his? They’d always seemed to be such a small, happy family whenever he’d spoken of them. She wasn’t sure her parents ever thought about her happiness. Not really. Her father was only interested in the dynasty, as if that warmed you on a cold night. Having two daughters had been a profound disappointment.

  ‘I thought we could visit for Thanksgiving,’ Gage said.

  ‘That’s...four months away. Will we still be playing this game then?’

  ‘Since game-playing is your forte, it doesn’t matter how long this goes on. Sit back, relax and enjoy it.’

  She blew out a slow breath and buckled up her seat belt as the captain announced take-off. ‘Fooling people we don’t know is one thing, but carrying on a charade in front of your family, in person? I can’t and I won’t.’

  ‘You scared of being caught out as a fraud?’ His eyes were on her, cold and hard like blue steel. He could hate her all he liked. She’d take his approbation, but he wouldn’t push her around.

  ‘No, but people get excited about weddings and you’re their only child.’ The lie almost stuck in her throat. ‘I’m mindful of hurting the family you love.’

  He looked out the window as the world raced by. Her stomach swooped as the wheels left the tarmac and the plane began to climb. She swallowed as her ears popped, and stared out the window too. Anything to ignore the man who sat like a force of nature in front of her. She could feel him, the air almost bristling and shimmering around him with restrained energy. It put her on edge, just when she needed to relax.

  When he turned back to her, his face had softened a little. Like the hard edges had been sanded away. ‘No Thanksgiving, then.’

  The plane levelled out and the captain announced they could release their seat belts, so Gage unbuckled his and strolled to the front of the aircraft into the cockpit. Eve couldn’t help watching him go. His strong, broad shoulders, tapering into a narrow waist. The way his suit trousers sat low and firm on his lean hips. A prickly kind of heat rushed over her. She looked away before she ogled his backside because that had always been one of her favourite parts of him. The way she’d gripped him as he’d moved over her...

  No. She would not go there. He’d grown up, that was all. Lost his youthful softness, his angles now hard and one hundred per cent adult male in his prime. Any female on the planet would be transfixed by all that golden hair, tanned skin and muscular physique, but obsessing about something she would never have wasn’t worth the energy.

  Eve sank back into her seat and closed her eyes, the painkillers she’d taken earlier finally taking the edge off her headache. She could work but nothing held her interest right now, everything depressingly bleak for the US operation. She didn’t need to read the most recent reports emailed to her to know most of the businesses her father had purchased in the last few years hadn’t lived up to the heady expectations of them. Or to know that the board’s lack of due diligence was also to blame, believing her father when they should have been questioning the madness of his obsession with beating Caron Investments at all costs.

  She might try to snatch a bit of sleep but as she tried to blank her mind and relax, the atmosphere changed again, like everything held its breath. She opened her eyes and looked up to find Gage standing in front of her. He reached into his coat pocket and removed something then sat in the seat opposite.

  ‘This is yours.’ He held out a small blue box. The knot in her belly tightened because she knew what it was and didn’t want it. This was all a mockery, eating at her like a rat in corn. Still, she reached out to meet him halfway, trying not to touch him, not to let their fingers brush. She needn’t have worried. Gage was as keen to avoid her as she him. He pulled back his hand as if any contact between them would singe. She looked at the exquisite, embossed leather ring box. It was still warm from the heat of Gage’s body.

  ‘It’s unnecessary.’ Why did her voice sound so faint? Once she’d been desperate to wear his ring. They’d talked about getting one after they’d crossed the border and married. There was no time beforehand and Gage had been devastated he couldn’t do things the right way around—treat her like a princess, or so he’d said at the time. There was no point remembering any of that but, still, the difference between their dreams then and the reality now tore at her heart a little.

  ‘You and I will soon be officially engaged. Of course it’s necessary. Completes the blissful picture of our impending happy union.’

  She could do this. It was only a piece of jewellery. It meant nothing.

  And that was the whole problem, how meaningless this all was. It dirtied the memories of what they’d had together. Memories that had kept her going through seven years of long, cold, lonely nights. Memories of what love could be and what she might find for herself again one day.

  No. There was no going back there. Her father had made it plain what would happen. Gage’s family would be destroyed. Their business ruined. Gage would have hated her. Not immediately, but eventually. When the beautiful gloss wore off and everything was tarnished, he would regret the day he’d ever peeked over the back wall separating the two family’s estates from his perch high in the magnolia tree, and said hello to a little girl picking flowers. That love of theirs would have morphed to hatred and they’d still be here, yet his life would be in tatters. She could never have done that to him. Love meant sacrifice. They were in the same place they would always have been. She’d done the right thing.

  She had.

  Eve lifted the lid of the box. Nestled in black velvet sat a huge emerald-cut sapphire, not dark but almost a cornflower-blue. The same colour blue as Gage’s eyes. The magnificent stone was su
rrounded by baguette diamonds and framed in white gold. It glittered under the lights, precious and perfect. She breathed through the burn at the back of her nose. She’d dreamed once of a ring like this when she’d been innocent, and everything had been simpler.

  Her hands trembled as she lifted it from the box. Slid it onto her ring finger. ‘It fits perfectly.’ The gem sat there, heavy and warm; almost comforting, when there was nothing comforting about this at all. ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘I knew your ring size once.’ Back then she’d never expected anything like this. While their families were wealthy, as two runaways they’d had very little. ‘I just sized it up a bit.’

  She stilled. Stopped staring at the gorgeous gemstone on her finger, as if trying to ascribe a meaning to the sapphire it didn’t have. Was he saying what she thought he was trying to say? She looked at him, narrowed her eyes.

  ‘What do you mean by that, Gage?’

  In all the time she knew him, she’d only seen him embarrassed once. The first time had been when they’d sneaked a kiss at the bottom of the garden on her seventeenth birthday and he’d tried to touch her breast. He looked a little like that now. Eyes not quite holding her gaze. A faint stain of colour on his cheekbones. It made him look young, uncertain. Her heart ached for that simpler time when everything had been perfect and new.

  ‘It means I took into account that you’d be more...’ He cleared his throat. She almost smiled at his discomfort. ‘...womanly now.’

  He was right. Even though it had happened in her twenties, pregnancy did that to a woman’s body. After she’d overcome the crippling grief of losing her child, losing every hope for her future, she’d relished the changes in her body the experience of pregnancy had wrought. The breasts that had never gone back to their normal size. Her wider hips. The curves she’d once have starved away in a quest for perfection, which she now wore like armour, always reminding her of the child who might have been. The little boy lost to her for ever. She refused to think about whether he’d have looked like Gage or like her.

  She shut her eyes. Controlled the tears that she wouldn’t let fall, not here. She coated herself in the icy indifference she’d perfected and opened her eyes again. Hiding from everyone what had happened to her. She looked Gage up and down to make a point but immediately regretted it. Being up close to him only accentuated how much he’d changed from a lean twenty-three-year-old to a vital man of thirty.

  ‘Yes. We’ve all grown and sized up a bit.’

  His nostrils flared. Gage looked down at the ring on her finger. A kind of heat burned in his eyes, which seemed even bluer than before. It slid through her like a jolt of spirits.

  ‘Do you like it?’ His voice was softer. He said it like he almost cared what she thought.

  ‘I adore it,’ she whispered, and he looked at her with the faintest of smiles teasing at the corner of his mouth. Vulnerability here was a mistake. She’d allowed herself that weakness once but now he’d wield it against her. She hardened her heart and her voice. ‘It suits the narrative you’re trying to fabricate perfectly.’

  That banked heat in his eyes bled away till all that was left was a cold, unfathomable blue. Almost like he couldn’t believe they’d had a civil conversation. He stood and she couldn’t help but snatch a fleeting glimpse of the tight pull over the fly of his trousers, the unmistakeable bulge there. Heat rose from her throat to her face as he tugged his suit jacket closed and buttoned it, hiding the evidence of his arousal from view. The realisation that she might still affect him thrummed through her, potent and intoxicating. She could have moaned at the thought of it. How he tasted, how he smelled. Those memories didn’t fade either, no matter how many times she tried to file them firmly in the annals of her past.

  ‘It’s a long flight. There’s a bedroom down the back. You look tired. While it suits my narrative to have the world think I’m exhausting you with hours of lovemaking every night, you might not want the dark rings under your eyes for the inevitable pictures.’

  She responded with a tight smile as he gave with one hand and took away with the other. She’d asked for it, and he’d delivered. Did he know how much he still affected her too? Did he care?

  ‘I might just do that.’ At least it would get her away from him, from this shimmering attraction that zapped through her. That made her crave things she couldn’t have. Because that’s what exhausted her every night. The lack of sleep, being woken by dreams of their bodies intertwined. His hands all over her skin. Exploring, probing. Those midnight fantasies were like an endless torment. ‘Thank you for your concern.’

  ‘I’m not concerned, cher,’ he said as he turned and began to walk towards the cockpit again. ‘I really don’t give a damn about you at all.’

  As she sat back in her seat, crushed under the emotional weight of the engagement ring on her finger, she realised they were both liars.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HE SHOULD HAVE allowed Eve to travel alone, but he’d wanted to test himself. To show that she didn’t affect him anymore. That he didn’t care. Yet those hours on the plane with her were a nightmare because his body cared, the clawing desire for her like an addiction that no drug could fix.

  Even when she’d taken herself to the bedroom of the airplane it had ridden him hard—the need to open the door, slide onto the bed with her, see where it led. He’d lost control and had almost embarrassed himself after he’d given her that infernal engagement ring. Why the hell was he interested in what she thought of it? And yet the look on her face as her eyes had lit up, as she’d stared at the perfect gem on her finger... One of a kind. It had warmed something inside him.

  He’d told her he didn’t give a damn, and that was the truth. He didn’t care, not even when he’d stood and she’d looked at him like her favourite kind of candy. None of that mattered. She was a means to an end. And then he’d end it. Redeem his family name, take Caron Investments and conquer the damned world. Move on with his life and finally be free of her.

  To hell with his unruly hormones.

  The car ride ahead of them now they’d landed was around an hour. But he was an adult and could survive at least that long. Gage grabbed his tablet from his briefcase and scrolled through some emails—tried to read a few financial reports—but his concentration kept wandering back to Eve with every elegant move she made, from checking her phone to reapplying her lip gloss or merely crossing her long, slender legs. His heart began racing in a thready, excited kind of rhythm like he’d been for a damned run without the benefits of taking any exercise.

  Why hadn’t he hired a helicopter to fly them the distance? But that would have been excessive. He understood his position of privilege in the world based on luck of birth and tried not to abuse it. Though right now he wished he wasn’t trapped in this ever-shrinking space with her.

  After not nearly enough time and yet far too much, she looked out the window and frowned.

  ‘We should be there now. Aren’t we going in the wrong direction?’

  ‘And where should we be?’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘That’s where we’re meeting Greta for dinner, but that’s not where we’re staying.’

  He went back to work, numbers swimming as her scent filled his head. Something fresh and sweet and floral. Every time he saw damned flowers, smelled flowers, he thought of her. So he wouldn’t have them in his offices or any of his homes, no matter how hard his staff tried to encourage him, because when he’d first spied Eve from his vantage point in the old magnolia tree she’d been clutching a handful of blooms and looking like the mythical fairy at the bottom of the garden.

  He’d never forgotten that first glimpse of her, he would probably remember it till his dying day. How innocent life had seemed then...

  ‘Earth to Gage. Some communication would be nice.’ He realised he’d zoned out and gritted his teeth. Going mad as a result of this endeav
our wasn’t his plan, but much more time with Eve and he might totally lose his mind. He looked at her as she worried her lower lip. He wanted to slide his mouth over hers, ease the redness her perfect white teeth had left. Kiss her till they both forgot who they were.

  Time to wrest back some control of this situation, let Eve know where she really stood in the hierarchy of things.

  ‘My secretary no doubt advised you of our itinerary. Other than that, I’ll inform you of anything I believe is important.’

  ‘I see.’ Her eyes narrowed, the watery blue of them darkened to something wilder, like the Gulf in a storm. ‘You say jump and I ask how high. Is that how this is supposed to work?’

  ‘You’re getting the picture.’

  ‘No, I’m not. You may be on your way to owning Knight, but I’m not some young thing you can push around. It doesn’t mean you own me.’

  The freeze of those words chilled his veins. He hadn’t pushed her around when they’d been together. She’d wanted what he did, he was sure of it. But her words echoed every lie told about him. He couldn’t let them go unanswered.

  ‘What the hell are you trying to say?’ That chill started cracking under the banked heat of his anger, always simmering just below the surface.

  ‘I accept you’ll never like me. You can hate me for all I care. But just because this ring is on my finger...’ she waved her hand in front of his face ‘...it doesn’t mean I have to accept you being any less than the gentleman your mother raised you to be.’

  The desire to be a gentleman, to be a good man by any measure, had almost been wrung out of him years before. When he’d been beaten by her father and his henchmen, cuffed by the police, thrown in a cell, all for having the temerity to love the woman sitting in front of him. Wanting to protect her. He’d taken the beating, accepted the scars on his face and his soul for their love. Had kept his mouth shut as a gentleman who’d made promises would, and it meant nothing. ‘And this assessment of proper conduct comes from who? You? Shouldn’t a lady keep her promises, Eve?’