by Sierra Rose
“There’s a gala?”
“There was one every year, very lavish in the old style. She passed away two years ago, and I think that was what convinced him it was time to step down. None of us live forever. They had a grand time while it lasted. I remember sneaking champagne from the trays as a child at the parties, and thinking the entire world was made of gold and roses.”
“It must have been wonderful. Were they very happy together?”
“Yes. But—they met and married before he made his fortune. So he knew he could trust her. That she was more than a golddigger. They were partners in the beginning. She worked right alongside him until my mother was born. Then they had enough money that she could be a society wife and my mother a debutante.”
“Then how is it you’re a Conners if your dad isn’t one?”
“I carry my mother’s name. My grandfather’s name. My father was the husband in a youthful folly that didn’t last long.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I mean, I was totally being nosy.”
“I don’t mind it. I thought it was common knowledge. I spent most of my childhood away at school, holidays with my grandparents and Mother and whoever her latest boyfriend was.”
“That’s...sad. My parents were...not super happy together, but they stayed together until I graduated high school and Pax was in college.”
“Then what? Did they divorce?”
“Yeah, and by the time I was 21 they were both gone.”
“You mean they passed away?”
“Yes.”
Her mom was the teller at a bank that was robbed. The guy saw her push the silent alarm and shot her. The year before that, her dad wrecked his car while he was drunk. So basically, she didn’t enjoy her college years. But she didn’t want to seem depressing and dark, so she left all that out.
“That’s horrible, truly, Paige. I’m so sorry.”
“I still have my sister. At least...”
“What?”
“For the time being. She’s battling cancer. Gosh, I bet you’re just thrilled you started talking to me. I’m the most depressing person ever.”
“No. But you may have the worst karma,” he said. “Sorry, I was attempting to make a joke, and it was in poor taste. As my humor normally is. I hope your sister gets well. Responds to treatment. Shit, what’s the appropriate thing to say about cancer?”
“Fuck it. Fuck cancer. That’s the appropriate comment.”
“Did you just say fuck to the CEO at the office?” he asked.
“Yes. I did,” she said.
“Then fuck cancer. It’s taken too many excellent people.”
Then Luke Conners did the strangest, most unexpected thing. He hugged her. Quickly swept her against him, squeezed her tight and released her. She felt startled, excited, and almost stronger as if he’d braced her up somehow.
“Should I call HR? Because you totally grabbed me at work,” she said. “I was joking. In poor taste, of course. It’s only fair.”
“It is only fair, I agree. So, what can I do to get that offer back on the table?”
“Did you think sending me shoes would work? Because they’re gorgeous, the prettiest thing ever. But I can’t accept them.”
“Do they fit?”
“They fit. Absolute perfection. But I can’t accept such an expensive gift. It creates an obligation like it’s in exchange for my cooperation.”
“What if I’m only trying to make you like me?” he said archly.
“I already like you.”
“I thought I was a douchebag.”
“You are sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like you anyway,” she said. “But really, the shoes. It’s too much. Let me give them back to you.”
“But I won’t look good in them.”
She laughed. “I’m sure you wouldn’t look good in them. But you can get your money back. Or they might give you a refund on a gift card you can use. Seriously.”
Paige got the box out and tried to hand it to him. He shook his head.
“No, I gave you a pair of shoes, and you gave me truth serum evidently. I told you more about my family in the last five minutes than I’ve told any other woman I’ve,” he paused and ran a hand through his hair.
“I think the euphemism you’re looking for is dated,” Paige offered.
“Indeed. Please keep the shoes. If at some point you decide you like me well enough to reconsider becoming my fake wife, that would be most helpful.”
“That’s so...formal. Clinical even. Most helpful? It’s hard to reconcile the romantic and thoughtful gifts with the icy logic and prep school manners, Luke.”
“Then my contradictions can be the thing that captivates you most about me,” he said.
“You’re not serious. The most I could say for your contradictions is that they’re confusing. I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Entertainment value. The possibility of an engagement charade.”
“Why would you want me? When you can get that British guy to find you someone who’s less of a mutant and not your employee? Like, why give me flowers and shoes like it matters who it is?”
“Because you’re not boring.”
“What?”
“You’re surprising and refreshing in the best possible way. You stalked into my life barefoot and full of opinions. I haven’t been able to think properly since I saw you,” he said.
“That was weirdly romantic. And a little insulting. Which I think may be your strategy—be charming and offensive at the same time to keep women off balance.”
“I’ve relied on my looks and my fortune in the past. Perhaps it’s time I tried this new strategy.”
“The offer is still off the table. Thank you for the shoes.”
“You’ll keep them.”
“If you insist, then yes. But please stop sending gifts, Luke.”
Paige left him standing at her desk, staring after her.
Chapter 6
PAIGE WAS A CHALLENGE. He remembered how the air between them crackled with energy. It was electric. Memorable. Mind-blowing.
Still, that didn’t explain why he found his beautiful current date so incredibly dull. She was an heir to her late father's multibillion-dollar fortune and would look good on his arm. He was told the society world would love her, worship her.
He frowned as she showed him pictures of a murky, purple milkshake.
“It was the most gorgeous smoothie ever. Acai berries, pomegranate, kale, just a little coconut oil blended with ice. Amazing,” she said, swiping to show him photos of it from different angles. It looked disgusting.
“I don’t care for smoothies,” he said tightly.
“What about sushi? I had some really next level sushi last night,” she said, undeterred, and flicked back to pictures of her supper plate. It was a small white square that displayed three tiny pieces of sashimi. He made what he hoped were appropriately admiring noises.
“Not sushi either? Get out your phone. Show me what you had for dinner,” she demanded.
“I don’t take pictures of my food. I just eat it and assume no one wants to see a photograph of it.”
“How many followers do you even have on Insta?” she asked with disdain.
“I have no idea. I don’t have a personal Instagram account. My image occasionally appears on the Conners company account, like my recent visit to the Tokyo office. I understand it was popular with stockholders and followers alike.”
“Really? What was Tokyo like?”
“Crowded. I saw a nice landscaped park from the taxi. Otherwise, it was narrow lanes and skyscrapers, small offices and smaller hotel rooms. I felt like a giant.”
“Are people in Tokyo short?” the woman asked.
“Not generally, no. I’m American and used to more space. That was what I meant.”
I want more than beauty, he thought.
Luke wanted someone who made him laugh, someone he had a connection with, somebody who wasn’t this obnoxious. This definit
ely wasn’t the woman for him. He didn’t want to seem rude, but he wished he was anywhere but here...on this date, on this horrible date.
“Did you have sushi while you were there?”
“Probably. It was a whirlwind of meetings and receptions and speeches. I hardly know what I ate or if I ate at all.”
“Oh, Luke, how could you miss out on all that culture? Not even remembering if you ate at all!”
“I suppose if I’d taken photos of all my meals I could reconstruct the trip better for you. As it is, I’m afraid I have an early meeting,” he said, standing up to gesture for the bill. He’d wasted an entire hour on this one with her milkshake pictures and her opinions about Tokyo and about him, and the fact that he didn’t sufficiently appreciate kale. What had Magnus been thinking, suggesting this woman for a twelve-month marriage when he could hardly endure sixty minutes with her?
This was the third one. He felt depressingly like a judge at a dog show, studying the form and accomplishments of a blameless but uninteresting breed. On the way back to the office, he saw a message on his phone from a number he didn’t recognize. He opened it and saw a photo—not of a kale smoothie, but of the top of someone’s foot in a pink shoe. “I wore them tonight when I went out to dinner with girlfriends. Thanks again, Paige.”
He smiled despite himself and messaged back, “Your foot is the most exciting thing I’ve seen tonight. Had to look at pics of my date’s former meals.”
“Sounds boring,” she replied, “Here’s my water glass.” She sent him a picture of a glass of water on a table.
“Why do ppl do that? Take pics of food and drinks?” he asked.
“To inspire envy and prove they are fabulous,” Paige replied.
“Your foot is fabulous. Sushi from days ago...not so much,” Luke found himself typing.
She sent him a laughing emoji, then a meme that said ‘No one cares what your sad salad looks like. Quit posting.’ Luke laughed aloud at that and told her so.
“RU on a date? Should I stop the msgs?” he asked.
“Nah. Out with Gina and girls.”
“Tell her u love the shoes, she helped with size.”
“What????”
He was impressed that Gina took her confidentiality agreement seriously enough not to spill that she helped him shop for Paige. “Tell her she can talk to you,” was all he replied.
A few minutes later, he found himself holding his phone, waiting for a message from Paige. When nothing ever came, he went back to work and double checked the Johnson projections. Later, he took a break and got a water from the refrigerator. The same one that had drawn her out of Gina’s office, barefoot and too curious that night. He held the bottle of water in his hand and grinned as he got an idea.
The next day, he sent an intern down to Paige’s desk with a bottle of water from the executive floor refrigerator labeled ‘contraband.’ An hour later, he had a bottle of Rosé delivered to her office with a note that read ‘We could turn the water into wine.’ That afternoon, he had one of the IT department guys take Paige an optical drive with a message attached about teaching her to do a hot swap. He wondered if she knew what it meant and hoped she didn’t—hoped she only saw the double entendre there, the innuendo.
When he got no response, no interoffice email or text message, he went looking for her. Yes, he’d gotten work done that day, but he’d been preoccupied with getting Paige to think about him, reconsider accepting his proposal to join him in a mutually profitable fake marriage.
Luke pressed the button to call the elevator. When the doors slid open, Paige was in the elevator. He stepped in and closed the doors, smiling.
“What are you doing all the way up here? Stalker,” he said.
He stepped closer to her. He couldn’t help it. The vanilla smell of her hair, the way he remembered how she felt when he held her. His whole body was alive with wanting her, with reaching for her, a powerful drive to close the space between them instantly.
“I was looking for you. You weren’t lurking near my office like I expected.”
“And you weren’t lurking in conference room doorways like I’d hoped,” he returned.
Paige licked her lips. She was wearing a yellow blouse, a tight skirt. She wasn’t wearing the pink shoes. Her hair was pinned up. It would be so much fun to take her hair down right here and let it loose to fill his hands. She was looking right at him. Not acting shy or turning away. His gaze settled on her mouth. Her lips were beautiful, rose pink and lush, a full soft curve. Luke felt the ache low in his belly, the tightening of want as his pulse sped up, his skin heated. He wanted to take possession of her lips, of her body, claim her, and fuck her senseless. His imagination ran wild with anticipation of what he was going to do to her.
“You could be a bad decision for me,” Paige said.
“But don’t bad decisions make for good stories?” he retorted.
Luke put out his hand to touch the curve of her cheek. She moved in toward him, closing those last inches between them. He could feel the warmth and softness of her body at the places where her chest, her leg grazed against his. He felt alive, electrified at those points, at the faint brush of her. He paused to look into those melting dark eyes, to slant his mouth over hers. He was going to savor this. He’d been after her for days, thoughts of her crowding into his normally productive routine and invading his dreams at night. This was going to be the beginning of something, Luke thought, and it was going to be delicious.
He saw the dark smudge of her eyelashes fan across her cheek as she let her eyes drop shut, ready to be kissed by him. A surge of victory, possessiveness coursed through him as he leaned closer to claim her lips. Her breath was soft and warm against his mouth as his lips brushed hers. They were soft as rose petals. He ached to part them and slide his tongue inside. Her fingers went to his chest, her fingertips pressing against his shirt.
The line had been officially crossed.
The elevator door slid open suddenly. They sprang apart, hearts pounding. She leaped to the other side of the elevator and pretended to study the buttons as if deciding on a floor. Luke pushed back his cuff to look at his activity tracker as the COO stepped into the elevator.
“I thought something was wrong. The car wasn’t moving. But when I pressed the button the doors came open. Everything all right?” she asked.
“Fine,” Luke said, cursing the day he’d ever promoted her and created the top administrative position in the company. Cursed, perhaps, the day she’d been born, because nothing she did to improve efficiency in this corporation could atone for the fact that she’d just interrupted the kiss of a lifetime.
Chapter 7
PAIGE PRESSED THE BUTTON for her own floor and got out of the elevator there, heart pounding wildly. They’d almost kissed. He’d barely kissed her. She could still feel it, like the afterburn when she’d scalded her hand on boiling water—a sting that persisted. In the seconds before they’d been interrupted, Paige had had two thoughts. One, that her heart was going to burst out of her chest from beating so hard. Two, that every man she’d ever kissed up until now had been doing it wrong.
She felt giddy and foolish as she went back to her office. All she wanted to do was run and find him, kiss him more, if only to see what it would really be like. Because if her body’s reaction to three seconds of kissing was any indication, there was no way she’d survive having sex with this man. And why had she thought of that at all? He was the CEO of the company where she was a secretary making minimum wage.
Of course, they weren’t going to sleep together. Which was a good thing, she thought sensibly, because he was either an Olympic level kisser who reduced women to easily seduced, weak-willed groupies or else he had some dirty Harry Potter-style magic powers. Either way, she had no business going near him.
Which didn’t keep her from going up to his floor supposedly to see Gina. Gina, the turncoat, who’d helped the boss with her shoe size. Gina, who was shipping them relentlessly like they were chara
cters on a TV show. So, there was Paige, using the scanner in the executive suite copyroom when the CEO himself slid past her to reach for a flash drive from the shelf.
“Oh, I didn’t see you there,” he said.
“I saw you come in,” she said.
“Did you think about the hot swap?”
“I think you’d need an IT person to help you with that. I looked it up, and it’s not in my skill set.”
“I could teach you.”
“Thanks anyway, but it’s unlikely that a vice president’s assistant will be called upon to do that. If you need a backup HDD put in without shutting down the system, I’m pretty confident your entire information systems team could handle it without asking me.”
“What if I want your help?”
“You wouldn’t possibly have to do anything like that yourself because you’re the boss. I’d be happy to assist you with anything that’s within my job description. I’m pretty sure all the help you want is above my pay grade.”
“How does one million dollars sound?”
“Like a lot of money. More than you’d have to pay an IT guy to swap out your hard drive.”
“To be my wife. Twelve months. No strings except a nondisclosure agreement.”
“I’m not for sale.”
“A date then,” he said, his hand brushing against her bare arm in a way that enlivened her senses. Chills raised on her flesh. She wanted him to touch her again.
“No, thank you,” she said, finishing her scan.
“But you offered the first time we met.”
She shot him a little smirk. “Guess you had your chance...but I’m afraid that offer has been revoked, taken off the table.”
He smiled, and she slipped out. She brushed past him, her hand grazing with seeming carelessness across his stomach. The outline of rock-hard abs pressed into her palm as she made her escape. She was giddy, wanted to giggle with the thrill of touching him and being touched by him.
Chapter 8