She forced herself to roll her eyes. “Fix it? Like your lie to Congresswoman Rotham? That didn’t fix anything. Even if she believed you—”
“How much do you know about what I do?” he asked, cutting her off.
She stilled, a noodle midway to her mouth, surprised by the sudden shift in topic. “I know you’re a hedge-fund manager, but I don’t know more than that.”
“Being a hedge-fund manager is a confidence game. I talk people into trusting me with huge amounts of money. For me to do that, they have to have absolute faith in me.”
She could imagine. That smile of his alone—half self-deprecating, half charm—was pure confidence. If the job required him to win people over, he must be a natural at it. You just wanted to trust him.
Trusting him had created this problem. Falling for his charm had gotten her into this mess. Despite that, when he said, “Trust me,” she wanted to.
“I came from nothing,” he continued. “When I first started in this business, all I had was a good education, a hell of a lot of determination and my own belief I could succeed. On that alone, I convinced those first few people to hand over their fortunes. If I can do that, I can convince people that we’re engaged.”
She could imagine him charming people out of their money. Not because he intended to steal it out from under them but because he knew he could make them more, and he had the guts to go after his dream. She’d been subject to his persuasive tactics herself. She knew how convincing he could be.
Yet even now, she couldn’t blame him for seducing her. No, his seduction had worked because he spoke to something inside of her, something no one else had tapped into. The experience had rocked her to her very soul. It shattered every belief she’d had about herself.
Which was precisely why she couldn’t find it in her heart to wish she hadn’t experienced it. Put simply, having sex with Connor was one of the best experiences of her entire life. Now that she’d had it, she couldn’t wish it away any more than she could her own DNA. It was a part of her. Now she just had to learn to live with the repercussions.
Even if their fake engagement worked and her reputation stayed intact, she’d never again be the person she was before she met Connor Stone.
Connor couldn’t read Brittney’s emotions. She’d been silent while he spoke. Trying to gauge her reaction, his heart started pounding. What was up with that?
After all the clients he’d wooed, all the deals he’d put together, all the hundreds of millions of dollars he’d made—through all of that, he’d been as relaxed as a debutant getting her nails done. But this made him nervous?
All he could figure was for the first time, he actually cared about the gamble he was taking. With every other risk he’d taken, he’d always known something else was right around the corner. If he lost a client, he’d find another. If a deal fell through, he’d put together another one. If he lost money, he’d just make more. He never once doubted that he’d make it work one way or another. But with Brittney…well, there was only one of her. If he screwed this up, there’d be no second chance.
“What do you say? Do you trust me?” he prodded.
She searched his face, her eyes wide as she bit down on her lip. Finally she nodded. “I do.”
All too aware of their surroundings, he set down his chopsticks and cupped her jaw with his palm. He ran his thumb across her cheek, entranced by how smooth her skin was. She blushed in response to his touch, her breath coming in a delicate tremble. The pink in her cheeks made her look unexpectedly vulnerable, and once again, the usually unflappable Brittney looked charmingly disheveled.
“Connor, really—”
He cut off her protest by kissing her. For an instant, she stiffened. Then, he ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, the gentlest of requests. Her mouth opened beneath his.
He deepened the kiss, his tongue moving against hers in a subtle imitation of the intimate act they’d performed just the day before. She lost herself in the kiss almost immediately, as if she’d been waiting all day for this moment, though she hadn’t given him the slightest indication she had. Her hands clutched at his shoulders, and he felt her tension seep out of her.
His blood surged in response, but this time he didn’t let his desire get the better of him. He kept one hand on her face, the other on her shoulder, focusing all his attention on just kissing her. Slowly, sensuously. Like a man content to spend all day doing only that.
And then, just as he’d planned, flashes went off. The paparazzi had arrived.
The burst of camera flashes snapped Brittney back to the present so quickly it made her head spin. One minute, Connor was kissing her with such soul-wrenching thoroughness she could barely remember her own name. The next she was the target of half a dozen flashing cameras.
Her mind reeled, only a single coherent thought tumbling through it: how the hell had this happened to her again?
She struggled to her feet, with Connor rising beside her. His hand was steady and sure at her back. He did not look nearly as surprised as she felt. Before she could wonder why, a reporter from one of the cable gossip shows shoved a microphone in her direction.
“This is the second time in two days you’ve been caught in a compromising position, Ms. Hannon. Would you care to comment?”
A second, less polite reporter pushed her microphone forward. “Any truth to the rumours about an engagement?”
“That ‘good girl’ comment must have really pissed you off, huh? Guess you have more of your mother in you than you’ve been letting on,” a third reporter asked.
Brittney blinked as her confusion washed away in the wake of her anger. She was basically a peaceful person, but everyone had a breaking point. She reached out a hand, ready to grab the microphone and shove it somewhere creative.
Connor, it seemed, had not lost control of his faculties the way she had. He grabbed her hand and clutched it to his chest in a gesture that seemed cuddly rather than preventative. Then, to her amazement, he chuckled.
“You caught us again.” He bumped his forehead against hers in show of playful affection. Then he turned the force of his charming smile on the reporters. “I just can’t keep my hands off her. Can you blame me?”
She’d thought he’d worked a miracle with Cynthia Rotham, but that was nothing compared with how he handled the press. In the next fifteen minutes, he transformed the pack of microphone-wielding vicious paparazzi into a group about as bloodthirsty as papillon puppies.
By the time the reporters left, they were all smiling and chuckling. He’d convinced every one of them that she and Connor were head over heels in love and—most importantly—that the photos from the day before were of innocent canoodling. Connor had one guy sharing tips on how to deal with meddling in-laws. Someone else had promised to e-mail him the name of a wedding caterer. She half expected Connor to toss them dog treats as they walked away.
Instead, he just smiled cheerfully and waved at them. Throughout the ordeal, he kept one arm firmly around her shoulder, glued to her as if he expected her to bolt.
Her own smile, she was sure, looked considerably less natural than his. “That was…” She shook her head. “I can’t even think of words to describe what that was.”
“Clever,” he supplied easily. “Brilliant. Inspired.”
She looked at him sideways. Dang it, but he was good-looking, with his easy smile and rakish black hair. “Do you always manage to get people to do exactly what you want?”
The look he gave her was surprisingly serious. “Only when it’s really important.”
“And this,” she gestured to where the reporters had been. “Convincing these reporters that we’re in love and that that photo yesterday was innocent—that’s really important to you?”
As bizarre as it seemed, that was the only explanation that made sense.
“Is that so hard for you to believe?” he asked.
“Yes.” She studied him again. She was used to his easy charm. It was the serious expre
ssions she had trouble reading. “I just wonder what’s in it for you.”
He removed his arm from around her shoulder and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “I clean up my messes.”
And there it was again. The second time he’d referred to her as a mess. Something to be cleaned up and taken care of. Why was she destined to be people’s mistakes? She’d known her whole life that her father saw her as an inconvenience at best, a political scandal waiting to re-erupt at worst. It was bad enough her own father saw her as a burden—she couldn’t stand for Connor to see her that way, too.
She’d worked so hard to maintain her independence. She took care of herself. She never made mistakes, because it was the only way to guarantee that no one would ever have to rescue her.
Yet she was Connor’s big mess. Once again a man she admired more than she wanted to saw her as little more than an inconvenience.
“We’ve gone over this already. It’s my mess,” she insisted. “Not yours.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. If I hadn’t been bent on seducing you, this never would have happened.”
“Why? Because you’re so irresistible?” As soon as she said the words, she regretted them. He was irresistible. Hadn’t he proved that over and over again? Before he could answer, she snapped, “Get that smug expression off your face.”
He shrugged innocently. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Yeah, but you were about to,” she accused.
As if she needed to hear more on that subject. Yes, he was irresistible. Yes, every time he touched her she lost all sense of herself. Blah, blah, blah. Enough already.
This man had turned her life upside down in just a few days. A lifetime of perfect behavior, and she threw it out the window just because he’s a good kisser? She’d had enough of this crap. She was taking control again. Starting now.
“Here’s the deal.” She rounded on him and poked a finger in his chest. “From here on out, I’m calling the shots.”
He raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
True, so far, he’d handled things brilliantly. He was a genius at manipulating the press—as well as Cynthia Rotham. But she couldn’t afford to let him manipulate her, as well. She was already far more drawn to him than was healthy. If they were going to spend the summer pretending to be in love, she’d have to find a way to put some emotional distance between them.
“If you really feel so bad about this,” she said, “then you’ll follow my lead and keep your mouth shut.”
His lips quirked, as if the idea of following anyone’s lead greatly amused him.
“Obviously you’re good at handling the press, so you can be in charge of them. But when we’re alone, I’m in charge. Do you think you can do that or not? Because if you can’t—”
He pulled her to him and planted a firm kiss on her lips.
She wedged her hands against his chest and pushed, creating some room between them. “And no more kissing! And definitely no more sex! From here on out, it’s strictly platonic.”
“Of course,” he agreed in a voice that didn’t wholly convince her. It might have helped if he weren’t still holding her body tightly to his.
“I mean it. We’ll be engaged in public, but in private there’ll be no canoodling, innocent or otherwise.”
“And how long exactly am I supposed to live like a monk?”
She thought for a moment. “At least until the end of the polo season. After we return to the city, we’ll be out of the spotlight and we can break things off.”
She half expected him to protest. The end of the season was five weeks away.
But he just nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay? You can really go that long—”
“Yes,” he said, looking a little chagrined. “I can wait that long.”
“Fine. Then you should start by letting me go.”
“I would. But there’s another reporter hiding behind the tent pole with his camera. It wouldn’t do for us to be seen fighting in public.”
She didn’t have a chance to look over her shoulder and verify the reporter behind the pole, because the arrogant jerk leaned down and kissed her again.
Six
Just as they both hoped, the news about their relationship quickly overshadowed the gossip about the photo. Their engagement made the headlines and disappeared from the papers almost without her father’s notice. There were several communications via his staff, but not so much as an e-mail from him personally. She was determined to view his lack of concern as faith in her ability to choose well.
After all, her father’s interest in her love life had begun and ended with her brief stint dating Phillip. Their relationship had ended two years ago, and her father still met Phillip for golf every Saturday morning.
Given her tenuous relationship with her father, she was glad he didn’t come out for the polo season anymore. She stayed at his house on Long Pond because she had enough flexibility in her schedule to work from home. Though she had the house and grounds to herself, she stayed in the guest quarters out by the pool, having converted one of the cottage’s two bedrooms into an office. She spent her weekdays ensconced there, neck deep in Java code. Normally when she summered at her father’s house, she got a tremendous amount of work done. But this year, her social calendar filled up faster than she could turn things down.
By lunch each Friday, Connor was back. The first two weekends, he’d stayed at a local hotel. But when she found out where he was staying, she insisted he take one of the bedrooms in her father’s sprawling mansion.
“It’s ten thousand square feet with no one in it except for the staff. My father never comes anymore, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t stay there,” she told him the second Sunday of the polo season as they sat in the bleachers, watching a match.
“I can afford a hotel.” His tone was terse—not unpleasant, but not the easy relaxed baritone she’d grown used to in such a short period of time.
She pulled her gaze from the match she was barely paying attention to and slanted a look at him. He was hard to read, his expression inscrutable. Charm came so easily to him, she hardly knew what to make of the tension she read in his shoulders or the curtness of his words.
She wanted to ask what was wrong. But that seemed like such a girlfriend thing to do. There could be a hundred things bothering him.
It could be work. She’d lived her whole life under the political microscope, but that was nothing compared with juggling billions of dollars in investments.
It could be something with his family. From comments he’d made, she gathered he had a large extended family, most of whom he wasn’t close to but still kept in touch with. Her own family tree was tall but narrow. Only her grandmother, father and she remained from a line that stretched all the way back to the Pilgrims. Yet sometimes keeping just her father and grandmother happy was difficult enough. She couldn’t imagine trying to negotiate the needs of three siblings, plus parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Surely that would be reason enough for him to be tense.
And of course, she realized with a thudding heart, it could be someone else. After all, what did she really know about his personal life, or about him? Yes, he’d come on to her, quite persuasively and persistently. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have someone else in the wings.
Before she could stop herself, she asked, “Is it someone else?”
“What?”
His baffled look made her instantly regret her question.
She forced her gaze back to the polo field where the horses and black-clad riders of the Black Wolves zipped by in a blur. “You seemed upset. I thought maybe…” She let her words trail off, unsure how to phrase the question that now seemed both presumptuous and ridiculous.
But he wouldn’t let her get away with it. “You thought what?”
“I don’t know, that maybe there was someone back in New York who was unhappy about this…” Again she trailed off, unable to put into words the complicated tangle of lies they’
d fallen into.
“Someone like a girlfriend?”
If she’d thought his tone was tense before, it was nothing compared with the blunt force of his words now.
“Yes,” she admitted defensively. “Like a girlfriend.”
“You thought I had a girlfriend. In New York. That I didn’t bother to mention.”
“It didn’t seem impossible,” she hedged. Other men had done that kind of thing before. Phillip, for example.
“You don’t think it would have come up before now?”
“Well, it’s not like our engagement was something we had time to plan.”
“True,” he drew the word out. “But it was something I came up with. I wouldn’t have suggested it if I had girlfriend in the city.” Then he shook his head as if unable to believe he was even having this conversation. “Hell, if I had a girlfriend in the city, I wouldn’t have slept with you in the first place. What kind of guy do you think I am?”
She tried not to cringe. “Look, I’m sorry. Obviously I offended—”
“Damn straight you offended me.”
“You wouldn’t be the first guy in the world to cheat and get caught.”
“No, but I also wouldn’t be the first guy in the world to make a mistake and do the honorable thing.”
Good point. One she wished she’d thought of before opening her mouth.
He sat forward, ostensibly to watch the action at the far end of the field. But she couldn’t help noticing the movement angled his back toward her. His shoulders, even tenser than before, were like a wall of unspoken accusations between them.
All she could do now was apologize. “I guess I don’t know that many honorable guys.” She raised her hand to hover just above his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Her hand hung there for a moment in awkward indecision before she lowered it to his back. The muscles of his shoulder jumped under her hand, solid and unyielding. Instantly she wished she hadn’t touched him. Then he straightened. He took her hand and wove his fingers through hers.
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