by Lauren Smith
“I figured.” His friend chuckled. “You were only gone fifteen minutes. Is the meeting off?”
“For now. She talked me into delaying it. She fed me some line about wanting to change her pitch now that she’s here.”
He halted his pacing at the sight of a woman strolling along the beach beneath the moonlight, her hair dark and her body shapely. His body tensed, his heart pounding against his ribs as he strained for a better look, and then he sighed. It wasn’t her. His sudden disappointment at that fact only made him more frustrated.
“I don’t think that’s necessarily a line. Most good advertisers like to visit the space they plan to try to represent and add materials.”
Denver grunted in response and threw himself into his chair. The real reason he was on edge had nothing to do with Blair’s marketing presentation. Seeing her again—and knowing who she was—only made him more desperate for her. The thought of tossing her on his bed, seeing her dark hair spread out on his white sheets and peeling off that little dress to see what her modest two-piece swimsuit had hidden underneath, and then just taking her, as wild and hard as they both could stand . . . It left him as hard as a rock and frustrated as hell. He wanted to fuck her to death—to burn her right out of his system—and then maybe he’d feel better and be able to move on.
“You okay?” Simon asked.
“What?” He hadn’t realized Simon was still there.
“You have this whole I’m going to strangle someone look. You want to tell me what’s really going on?”
Denver tried to shrug off his anger. It was easier thought than done. “She is Paul Ashworth’s daughter. The man who put the FBI onto my father.”
Simon’s face drained of color. “Christ, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to handle it. I’d never met her before. I just knew she existed. And to find out she was the woman I met on the beach . . .” He stopped short of saying that he wanted her. That wasn’t the right word. Craved was more accurate.
“So what’s the plan? We could send her home, but it wouldn’t look good to have a guest who paid up front tossed off our property.”
The thought of throwing her off his land gave him far too much pleasure, yet the thought of not seeing her again, not listening to her voice full of excitement or not seeing the way her cheeks flushed when he stared at her, left him strangely desperate to prevent her from leaving. He’d given her two days, and the panicked clench of his gut eased at the realization that he had more time with her.
“No, she’s staying a few more days. I agreed to let her pitch to me.” He shook his head. “Because I’m a fool.”
Simon pretended to be casual as he pulled out his phone. “When is the new pitch meeting?”
“To be determined,” Denver muttered. “She wants a few days to add some things.”
“Well . . . Keep me informed. And you might consider sending her dinner.”
“Why?”
“Because you invited her for dinner, then ditched her.”
Damn Simon, he was right. If Denver had been in a better mood, he would’ve eaten dinner with her, but now he wasn’t hungry. Maybe she wasn’t either, but he had been raised a gentleman.
“How did your talk with Jack Hudson go?” Simon asked.
Denver was grateful for his friend’s careful change of subject, but he wasn’t happy with what he had to report to Simon. “The man wanted to know why I’m not married. He believes my bachelorhood makes me risky to invest with. It’s absolute bullshit from the 1950s.”
“Married? You?” Simon snorted as he barely stopped himself from laughing.
“Just because I like to keep things simple and not tie myself to one woman—”
“Hundreds,” Simon corrected as he failed completely this time to stifle his laughter.
“Point is,” Denver emphasized over his friend’s amusement, “I need to find a woman I can trust who will pretend to be my fiancée while Hudson and his wife are here.” He still couldn’t believe he even had to deal with this. Being married or even seriously dating someone had no influence on how he worked, but if this bizarre requirement helped him seal the deal with Hudson, he’d do it. The man and his wife were steady investors, the kind who would be in it for the long haul, and that was something special, given the volatility and ephemeral nature of most investment companies these days.
“I suppose we could ask someone on the staff, but you’ll need to be convincing. If Mrs. Hudson sees you with some woman and there’s no chemistry, no spark, she’ll know you’re faking it.”
“You have a point. I also don’t like the imbalance of power. It could look like coercion for me to be dating an employee.” Denver tapped his fingers on his desk as he mentally ran through the list of his staff members. He didn’t want anyone he chose from his staff to be upset when they had to end the relationship.
“Oh dear God . . . ,” Simon said, sitting up straight.
“What?” Denver sat up as well.
“I have either the best idea or the worst one ever.” Simon’s face reddened, and it was then that Denver realized what his friend was thinking.
“No way in hell.” Denver slammed his hand down on his desk.
“Wait, just think for a minute,” Simon insisted. “I know you aren’t going to consider using her company for the new ad campaign, but maybe if you commit to at least truly considering it, she’ll play the fiancée. And she won’t mind when you break it off, which I’m guessing was your plan all along with whoever you picked, right? She won’t be silly enough to fall in love with you like someone else might. In a way, she’s the safest bet you have for this. Besides, you said yourself you were attracted to her.”
His body loved the idea, perhaps a little too much, but his mind firmly shut down the idea.
“That’s insane, Simon. What if she tries to hold me to it? The last thing I want is to be stuck married to her.” He could think of no worse nightmare than having that bastard Paul Ashworth as his father-in-law.
“So make a contract if you think you need protection. You get a fake fiancée, she gets genuine consideration on her pitch. It’s a win-win. Although I really don’t even think you need the contract. It’s not like you can’t call the thing off whenever you want. She’ll be discreet because it would look bad for her if it got out that she’d faked a relationship just to get a chance to do business with you.”
Denver got to his feet, ready to move again to quell the renewed restlessness.
“I can’t.”
“Why not? The woman is gorgeous. You said you were attracted to her.”
“Attraction isn’t the problem. Affection is.” He couldn’t fake affection for that woman, not when he hated her with every fiber of his being.
Simon’s blue eyes were suddenly deep pools of understanding.
“There’s a fine line between love and hate . . .” Simon paused, holding Denver’s gaze. “Maybe just take a tiny step across it now and then. You might be surprised at how easy it is.”
Denver stared at him. “If this blows up in my face—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Simon replied with a smug grin. “It’s my ass.”
“You bet it is.” Denver stalked toward his office door.
“Don’t forget to bring her some dinner!” Simon’s words and laughter followed him out.
Blair was curled up on the couch, her paperwork and mock-up campaign ads spread out over her lap while she watched TV in her pajamas. The soft chime of her front door drew her to her feet. She figured it must be Erica or one of the other hotel staff. She had made a call to see if she could have some snacks delivered since she’d missed dinner..
She opened the door and froze.
Denver stood there, glaring, still wearing his perfectly tailored dark-gray suit and holding a large metal case in his arms.
“I brought you dinner.” His tone was gruff, and Blair wasn’t sure what to say.
“I . . .”
“Do you
want to eat or not?” He held up the metal case. In that moment her stomach chose to grumble loudly, and his eyes lowered to her stomach. He arched one brow as if daring her to argue against her own stomach.
“I could eat.”
Dumbfounded, she stepped back and opened the door wider to let him enter. He strode past her and set the case on the dining room table. In one smooth motion, he slid out of his jacket and tossed it carelessly over the back of the couch and then rolled up his shirtsleeves. Blair swallowed audibly as she took in the way he naturally dominated his environment without a second thought. When he removed the dishes from the case, she saw two plates of fish and salad.
“The chef’s recommendation is a lemon-basted sea bass over a bed of wild rice. I hope you like fish.” He put his hands on his hips, still glowering a little.
“Yes, thank you. I love fish. Let me get some glasses of water.” She half turned, but he caught her arm. Sparks flew instantly between them, and her gaze shot to his as they both stared at where he touched her. Lust wasn’t far behind his frown as he slowly released her.
“I also have the drinks covered.” He showed her the bottle of chilled white wine and retrieved two stemless glasses from the cabinets in her kitchenette. She stared at him, still totally confused about why he was here—with her, with dinner—when it was so clear he wanted to be elsewhere.
“Please, sit,” he said with less of a scowl. She chose a seat and watched him prepare her place and his before he dug in his trouser pocket for a small bottle opener.
After he poured two glasses of wine, he held her glass out to her and gestured for them to sit. As she sipped the wine Denver had given her, Blair suddenly imagined herself as Persephone in Hades’s realm, being given the pomegranate fruit that would seal her fate and tie her to his dark, sinful world. But she was wrong. This man was no underworld god; he was a sea god. Even now, his eyes instinctively drifted toward the moonlit water out the window.
“Thank you for dinner,” she murmured as she finally got comfortable in the chair opposite him at the small table.
They ate in silence at first; the sea bass was exquisitely cooked, and the white wine brought out all of the meal’s flavors to perfection. They played a game of eyes meeting slowly, then darting glances away and back again over and over as though neither of them knew what to say.
It was intimate, this meal, this moment, and even more so because she wore her cotton shorts and button-up pajama top while he was still fully dressed. That subtle imbalance of power created by their clothing made her vulnerable. If this hadn’t been Denver, this sort of thing was something she’d always dreamed about. Getting home from work early, changing into her PJs, and then sharing dinner with her boyfriend after a long work week. Then she’d get him out of his clothes and into their bed. Blair hadn’t done a lot of serious dating. She was more of a casual fling type, never really feeling the men in her romantic sphere were “the one.” But Denver came closer to her idea of a dream man than any man she’d ever met, and yet he would never be anything to her because of what her father had done.
She took a few bites of the sea bass in silence. He had brought the food, so she would let him lead the conversation, or lack thereof.
“I have a proposition for you,” he said after a long moment, his gaze leaving hers.
“A proposition,” she echoed.
“I have potential investors coming this week. They arrive tomorrow and will be evaluating the Seven Seas for a possible partnership in another resort I have planned for Bali.” He speared a piece of his fish with his fork and paused.
“Okay . . . How do I fit in?” His mention of Bali had her immediately engaged. Maybe he needed a campaign for that instead of Seven Seas. It would be easy enough to switch gears.
“The company, the Fawkes Group, is run by a married couple. The owners are Jack Hudson and his wife, Anne. They will also be evaluating me, not just my hotel.” A tic worked in Denver’s jaw.
“Evaluating how?” Blair knew she would have to drag the details out of him.
He gave a shrug. “My ability to work with their team. They’ve made some assumptions based on my reputation.”
“Oh . . .” Blair put the pieces together. “You mean the endless womanizing and ballsy boardroom tactics paint a risky picture for a group looking to partner with you in the long term.” Blair could have smacked herself. She shouldn’t have said that. She had no right to criticize him, even if she was correct.
“So you understand the problem.”
“Yes, but again, how do I fit in?” Her nerves crawled under her skin. She had a feeling that whatever he planned to say next would pull the rug out from under her feet.
“I told Hudson I have a girlfriend and that I’m planning to propose to her this week.”
There went the rug . . . and the floor below that. Blair sucked in a breath as the violent plummeting sensation filled her so quickly that she would have swayed if she hadn’t been sitting down.
“And me?” she whispered.
Denver’s eyes flashed once, brief but hot over her body. “You will be my girlfriend. I’ll propose to you sometime this week in front of Hudson and his wife. If you help me sell the romance of the century, I will actually consider working with you.”
For a second her mind ran amok with daydreams of being this man’s wife and all the things that could mean, before his last few words sank in.
“Wait, you weren’t going to consider me before?” Blair’s head spun with the sudden shift between despair and hope.
“I was going to humor you and hear your presentation. But really consider it? No.”
His words hit her in the ribs, bruising them more than she’d ever expected he could without touching her.
“But if you do this, if you help me get the Fawkes Group to invest in Atlantis Rising in Bali, I’ll give you a fair shot at the contract. Five years, no out clause. I’ll spend so much money on ads that your dear uncle’s eyes will roll back in his head with dollar signs, and you’ll be able to bathe in entire pools of champagne paid for by the deals you’ll make as an account executive when other companies come to you for advertising.”
Blair wasn’t stupid. Pacts with the devil always had a catch.
“What’s the catch?” she asked, her voice wary.
“No catch, but there will be things we will have to do together that won’t be easy.” He swirled his wine glass while watching her with a hooded look. “We’ll have to act like we actually like each other and are wildly in love. I need to know tonight if you’re in. But you have to convince me that you can act in love, like you’re addicted to me. If you can, then we have a deal.”
Blair was silent a long moment before she took a sip of her wine. Then she set the glass down on the table, her heart sprinting like a frightened rabbit as she realized she was going to do this and now she had to prove she could. She wanted her share of her father’s company back; she wanted a future leading the ad agency. She also wanted Denver, and she knew how easy it would be to play a woman who was obsessed with him. Modern women could have relationships with no strings attached—she’d been doing it for years—but why did this feel different than all of her other casual hookups? Was it because she was having to show emotion for the first time? Her heart had to be engaged, and she wasn’t going to have to fake that much with him because she’d already felt more than was wise when it came to him.
Prove you can pretend to be in love with the man of every woman’s dreams . . . the man of your dreams. It was hard to tell what was reality and what was fantasy she’d created in her mind now that she’d committed to this plan.
She pushed her chair back and rose, then circled the table, coming up behind his chair. She rested her hands lightly on his shoulders.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come home, honey,” she purred as she leaned in to kiss the shell of his ear, then lightly nibbled his lobe. He went rigid beneath her touch as she slid her hands down the front of his shirt and began to un
button it just enough to create space for her hands to slide beneath his shirt and caress his bare chest. She lightly raked her nails against his skin.
“Did you miss me while you were at work?” She pressed a kiss to his neck as her hands moved down farther until she was playing with the buckle of his belt. His breath turned shallow as she traced the silver buckle with her fingertips. Pure euphoria filled her at the thought of the power she wielded over him, how her touch had turned him rigid with hunger. When she was certain she had his full attention, she pulled her hands away and stepped back.
“Convincing enough?” she asked. Somehow, she had managed to keep her own raw desire from escaping in a rush of flames. She wasn’t sure who had been more affected, him or her.
Denver cleared his throat and reached for his wine, taking a gulp. “Yes, I suppose that will do.”
That will do? Did he want a damned lap dance?
Blair curled her fists at her sides.
“And you? How do I know you can play the part of the besotted lover?” she challenged.
“I think I can handle it.” He finished the last of his wine with a smirk.
“Prove it, then,” she fired back.
He stood and towered over her. Blair swallowed and automatically retreated at the fire in his hazel eyes. Was it the fire of anger or lust—or both? She kept moving backward as he advanced until she was trapped against the wall, his hips pressed tight to hers, and she felt all of him digging into her waist through her cotton pajamas. He placed one hand on her hip, and the other caught the back of her neck, holding her his sensual prisoner for his every desire.
“I’m glad to be home, baby, glad to have you in my arms. You know what you do to me.” He rolled his hips, his hard, aroused cock taut against his trousers as he rocked against her. “You’re my everything, Blair.” He murmured her name seductively, his lashes fanning down as he gazed at her mouth and licked his lips. “You’re the breath in my lungs, the beat in my heart, the blood in my very veins. I am nothing without you.” His eyes lifted back to hers, and God help her, she believed every honeyed word dripping from his kissable lips.
