by Megan Bryce
“And what discount rate are you using?”
“Fifteen.”
He barked out a laugh. “Fifteen percent interest for fifty years? Now who’s indulging in fantasy.”
“I’ve done it for the last ten.”
He put his mouth next to her ear and murmured, “Have you? Perhaps I hired you for the wrong position, after all. But let’s be a little more realistic and say ten.”
“If you’re not going to beat the market, what’s the point?”
“Let’s just see what you come up with.”
She worked on the spreadsheet for a few minutes, then sat back and they looked at the number together. Her heart started beating very fast.
“Well,” he said. “You should have been an accountant.”
“Looks to me like I can be anything I want now.” She swallowed. “Is it worth that much to you?”
She couldn’t decide if she wanted him to say yes or no. Talk about a mutually beneficial agreement. She just might throw in a kid or two for that.
And still, she knew, it wasn’t anywhere near half his fortune.
Ethan said, “If you really can get ten percent per year, I can just give you an even million. You won’t have to go work for HGC, at least.”
She wouldn’t have to work for anyone ever again. She could sell her house, move somewhere cheaper than L.A., and live pretty well.
He breathed in her ear. “You could just take a share of the company. It would practically be the same.”
Except she’d never be rid of him. “I don’t know why you keep trying to give away part of your company. Stop it.”
“I think my mother would like you if she could hear you protecting my interests.”
“Someone has to. You keep trying to give away your legacy.”
“But this way you know I’m serious.”
She gestured toward the computer. “I’ll know you’re serious with this, too. Are you really going to pay me a million and a half dollars to be your fiancé for six weeks?”
“No. Just a million.”
“I like the sound of a million and a half better.”
“Who doesn’t?”
She twisted in her chair. “I could say two million.”
He raised his eyebrows. “There are probably a number of women who would do this for two million.”
“Good. Call them up.”
“I’ll thumb wrestle you for the half.”
She shook her sadly. “Good thing you inherited your fortune. I don’t think you would have made it on your own.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve won quite a few negotiations with my stellar thumb wrestling skills.”
“Since the sixth grade?”
“If you’re going to be picky about it. . .”
She couldn’t help her smile. “Half now, half later?”
“You don’t trust me? That hurts, Wyatt.”
She could see he was real worked up about it. “It’s not really about trust. It’s more I just don’t believe you’ll do it.”
“To show I trust you, I’ll have the full million wired into your account in the morning.”
“Million and a half.”
He shook his head. “It’s never going to happen.”
“You shouldn’t have begged. I know you’ll pay the half.”
He held his hand out and she gave him the pre-nup. He read it over quickly. “I hesitate to bring this up but you’re missing something.”
“What am I missing?”
He wiggled his eyebrows at her and she shook her head. “I’m not missing anything. There will be none of that.”
“None of that or none of that? And what about this and that?”
“There will be none of any of it, so I don’t need to include it.”
He looked down at her lips. “I’m just saying it’s ambivalent. Just how real is this pretend engagement going to be?”
“It’s not real at all. This contract is for our public performance.”
He leaned down close to whisper in her ear. “Ooh, public performance. Will there be any of that?”
She placed her fist in his belly and his breath rushed out. He said in an exaggerated wheeze, “I’ll have to remember you have a temper.”
“Please do.”
He rubbed his stomach, then grinned. “Okay, you can have the half. But I expect something good for that half.”
“Mmm. If only we were in Nevada. Because that is illegal in California.”
He sighed heavily. He grabbed the pen from her, scribbling one million only where she’d put one and a half, and signed it with a flourish. He held the pen out to her. “Very well. At least this way I’ll know that if I get you into bed it will not be because I’m paying you.”
She took it gingerly. “You’re not getting me anywhere near a bed.”
“Semantics. It could be the couch, a table, the floor.”
She shook her head.
“But a bed is the most comfortable. A guy’s got to hope.”
She paused, staring at the paper, then closed her eyes and scrawled her name hastily.
She whispered, “Shit.”
He chuckled, folding the paper and putting it in his pocket. “I’ll keep this until we can get a copy made for you.”
“You’re the devil.”
“You’re the only one that thinks so.”
“That doesn’t make me wrong.”
His fingers circled her wrists, pulling her gently out of the chair and towards him. She resisted. “What are you doing?”
“Sealing it with a kiss.”
She reared back. “No, no, no.”
He kept pulling her closer. “We’re engaged. I think it’s tradition for a man to steal a kiss from his intended after a lengthy battle.”
She kept her eyes wide open as his lips touched hers, as his breath mingled with hers, as his heat touched her skin.
He looked at her through lidded eyes and whispered against her lips. “Thank you, Mackenzie.”
When he pulled back, she nodded and tried to pull her wrists out of his grip.
He held on. “Really, Mackenzie. Thank you.”
She looked into his eyes and saw no twinkle, no charm, no persuasion. She stopped fighting and simply said, “You’re welcome.”
He smiled, releasing her wrists. “Before we leave L.A. we need to give them some pictures. That’s our best chance of having it clear in New York. It’s harder for the paparazzi in New York but they’ll do it if they have to.” He looked her up and down. “I’ll have mother and grandma take you shopping, get your hair done. Tomorrow night we’ll go to dinner and let the paparazzi get all they want.”
Mackenzie grabbed her beer bottle. “Oh, God. I need hazard pay.”
He pulled a blue box out of the desk and set it beside her. She looked between it and him, and said, “What’s this?”
“Your temporary engagement ring. We’ll get a better one in New York, but as my grandmother noted, an engagement’s not real until there’s a ring on your finger.”
She didn’t touch it. She took another pull of her beer. He stared at her for a minute, waiting for her to open it, then said, “This is the first time I’ve given jewelry to a woman who didn’t jump in my arms at the sight.”
She snorted.
He flipped the box open, showing off a diamond as big as a sugar cube.
“Holy crap!” She looked up at him. “That’s the temporary one? Just how big do you think a diamond has to be?”
“For my fiancé? Big.”
“And when this is all over?”
“Keep it.” He smiled. “We’ll call it hazard pay.”
She shook her head and he said, “You never complained about those bonus checks I signed. Just think of it like that.”
“Yeah, I earned those.”
He took the ring out, reaching for her hand. “You’ll earn this, too.”
He slid it on to her finger. “We’ll get it sized tomorrow.”
She tried to laugh. “Good thing I
’m taking some time off. There’s so much to do now that I’m your fiancé.” She looked up into his face, so close, and took a step back. “I’d better get to bed early tonight if I’m to spend the day with your family.”
She might need to stock up on booze if she was going to be spending a lot of time with his mother. Chocolate just wasn’t going to cut it.
He took a sip of beer, watching her. “Sounds like a plan. Whose bed?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re trying already? I’m not staying here with you.”
“I’ll get you another suite. The paparazzi will still be waiting for you at home.”
“I’m staying at a friend’s house.”
He grabbed pen and paper from the desk and held it out to her. “The number you can be reached at.”
She thought about giving a fake one but decided that ship had sailed. She was going out shopping with his mother– and wouldn’t everyone involved just love that– and to dinner with him tomorrow night. She accepted that he would probably need to get ahold of her. She scrawled Cassandra’s number on the paper, then headed for the door.
He followed her. “Tell me again why you are the only person in the world who doesn’t have a cell?”
“Because I don’t like being instantly available to anyone and everyone.”
“That’s what the off button is for.” He shook his head. “You’re even stranger than I thought you were.”
She smiled slightly, shutting the door behind her before he could follow her out. She walked to the elevator, her hand clenched to keep his ring from sliding off her finger, her lips still tingling from the lightest kiss she’d ever received.
This she knew: she was stupider than she thought she was.
Ethan watched through the peephole until the elevator doors closed behind Mackenzie. Then he took out his hard-earned contract.
He flopped onto the couch, propping his feet up, and read over the contract quickly. He shook his head. A million dollars for a fiancé. Bad deal, Ethan. But he couldn’t stop grinning.
He really couldn’t tell who’d won that negotiation. And that was always the way with Mackenzie. He’d go in thinking he could get her to do what he wanted, just like he could with anybody else, and he’d come out later in a great mood, with a lot less money in his pocket.
A million dollars!
And if she kept after that half, he knew he’d eventually give in. He was turning her life upside down and he felt an inkling of guilt about that. She’d ferret that guilt out eventually.
He frowned when he read again that she would leave O’Connor Capital at the end of their “engagement”. She was his best salesman. How she did it, he didn’t know. She wasn’t personable, friendly, chatty, sexy. . .
Okay, she was a little sexy. In a hold-the-whip, take-no-prisoners kind of way.
But she could see if and how much others wanted what she was selling. He couldn’t remember how many times he’d heard her clients say they wouldn’t have paid a dollar more.
He’d talk her out of leaving at the end. He knew she didn’t want to.
Even if she did suddenly find herself holding a small fortune.
It was the game that drove her, and if she left she’d have no one to compare herself to. No one to compete against.
Ethan knew she was too competitive to flourish without that in her life. She’d get gray and boring without that drive. Ethan had six weeks to point that out to her.
He pulled out his cell and called up his grandmother.
“You might want to get Mother something strong to drink. I talked Mackenzie into playing fiancé.”
“Good. Not more than three percent, I hope?”
Ethan grimaced. “She didn’t want it. She wanted payment up front.”
“How much?”
“A million. With a possible half at the end.”
“A possible half your shares at the end?”
He laughed. “No. Another half mil.”
“I guess it’s a start.”
He shook his head. “We’ll go to dinner tomorrow night, give the paparazzi some happy couple pictures. Can you take her shopping in the morning? She’s out of her element with all the cameras and I don’t want her to feel self-conscious.”
“I’ll bring your mother. They’ll fight each other and distract themselves.”
He’d hear about it from his mother, and wondered briefly if he’d hear about it from Mackenzie as well.
His grandmother asked, “Did you get a ring?”
“She has it. It needs to be sized.”
“We’ll do it.” She laughed. “Tomorrow will be fun. And don’t worry, your mother will warm up to her.”
Ethan grinned. “I doubt it. But it should be pretty fun anyway.”
They hung up and Ethan glanced down at Mackenzie’s hastily scrawled signature.
This would work.
The tabloids would stop quoting his exes, reminding him how much he hurt those he cared about. Mackenzie would keep him from hurting anyone else for a while, and he had no fear of somehow finding her falling for him. If anybody in this world was O’Connor-proof, it was her.
And at the end, he would go into a woman-free mourning. He’d make sure Mackenzie came out on top and that the world knew that his heart was broken. If he played it right, he could get a year off by this six-week engagement. He would become more careful, a little more introspective. Slower to jump in to the next relationship.
He already knew this was going to be the best million dollars he’d ever spent.
All he really had to worry about was keeping that half mil in his pocket for the full six weeks.
Four
Ethan’s grandma had called Mackenzie early the next day. Ellen had said, “We’ve got some work to do today, I hear. We’ll turn you in to a pretty picture to hang on my grandson’s arm.”
“Is that the goal for today? Let’s just aim for no one questioning whether this engagement is real. I don’t need to look like a Barbie.”
Ellen had chuckled. “Good. Then in that case we’ll go out, have some fun, spend some money, eat some lunch. He doesn’t need a Barbie hanging on him, he needs a grown woman walking beside him. We’ll make sure he gets what he needs.”
It had gone worse than Mackenzie could have possibly imagined, with her somehow ending up with blond locks worthy of a pin-up. All it had taken was one look from Christine O’Connor that plainly said no one in their right mind would believe that Ethan had fallen for her, and wham, she’d allowed the stylist do whatever he wanted.
Mackenzie’s only consolation was that Christine had hated the transformation just as much as she did. And probably for the same reason. Mackenzie hadn’t known hair could scream sex but this hair did.
After escaping from the stylist she headed to work. She quickly tamed the fluffiness as best she could, wrapping her hair into a bun. Maybe she could deal with the color. Maybe she could wear a hat.
She grabbed a baseball cap out of her batting bag and instantly felt better. She wasn’t willing to test whether blonds really did have more fun. She was way too sure that they did.
Mackenzie entered her office, thinking this was the last time she’d ever come here. She started boxing up seven years of hard work and was unsurprised when Rob came in, sitting down in her uncomfortable chair like it was a cozy sofa.
“You’re marrying the boss? I didn’t see that one coming.”
You and me both, she thought.
She tried a smile. “He wore me down.”
“There was a bet going on how long it would take for you two to sleep together, but no one guessed you’d ever get engaged.”
She closed her eyes. She’d been very, very right about having to quit. She would never be able to show her face here again.
Rob said, “I lost a packet. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
She looked up, trying to decide if that was a compliment or an insult. His smirk made her lean toward insult. “You should leave before you
say something really stupid.”
He stood up slowly. “Probably.” He pointed to the chair he’d just vacated. “Take that thing with you before it injures someone.”
She shut the door behind him and leaned against it. She wasn’t really sad about leaving. She had no one she even wanted to say good-bye to. Rob was as close to a friend as she could call a co-worker, and she wouldn’t exactly miss the guy. But it felt like a closing. This chapter of her life was ending, a situation she’d been working toward for quite some time now, but the suddenness of it kept catching her off-guard. Technically, she had six weeks left. As far as anyone knew, she was only taking a vacation. But she knew she’d never come back.
A bet about their sex life? Ugh. Ethan was going to pay for that.
She finished packing her things, smiling slightly when she took out her hidden stash of chocolate. She’d miss that. She’d miss Ethan waltzing in and disrupting her life. She shook her head. This time he’d made it a doozy.
She threw the boxes into the trunk of her car, looking longingly at her batting bag. She could go spend an hour at the batting cages or she could go home and wash the gunk out of her hair and prep for an evening filled with Ethan O’Connor and camera-wielding crazies.
She sighed, slamming the trunk. She was not getting paid nearly enough.
Cassandra greeted her at the door with her mouth hanging open. “Well, that’s different.”
“Here’s a general rule. Don’t get your hair done with the mother of the man you’re pretending to marry when she hates your guts. Even if she knows it’s pretend.”
“It doesn’t look bad. It’s just different.”
“As different as she could make me without surgery.”
Mackenzie flipped the bathroom light on and inspected her now blond hair. “This was not what she was going for. She should have taken me to a stylist not quite so versed in bleached blonds.”
Cassandra started opening drawers and piling makeup on the counter. “With this color you’re going to need more dramatic makeup. Your usual boring look will wash you out.”
“Please. I have spent the afternoon with a woman who would like to run me over with her car. Can I get a little less lip from my best friend?”
“What’s a less insulting word for it. Demure? Your usual demure makeup will wash you out with this color.”
