The Billionaire's Bidding

by Barbara Dunlop

“At least I don’t have a boyfriend,” she hissed, after the waitress left.

  Katie straightened, looking tragically hopeful. “Is that a yes?”

  “No, it’s not a yes.” Then Emma paused, desperately trying to gather her thoughts. “We can’t…” She clenched her jaw. “It’s not right…It galls me to even think about giving in to that man.”

  “At least we’d keep half the company.”

  Fair point. Emma took another sip of her drink. If Alex got the bank to call in the loan instead, they’d be lucky to keep one hotel.

  If only they had more time. If only they knew someone who could underwrite them quickly and extensively. If only their father’s heart hadn’t given out.

  The three of them were a team. They’d weathered storms before, and she was sure they could have found a way out of this maze.

  “Emma?” Katie prompted.

  Emma picked up her fork and stabbed into the shrimp salad. “We’ll need to talk to Legal.”

  Katie’s blue eyes dimmed in the lamplight. “To declare bankruptcy.”

  Emma drew a bracing breath. No. They weren’t declaring bankruptcy. Not when they had a slightly more palatable choice.

  They were going to throw their lot in with Alex Garrison. If they didn’t, they’d be out on the street, and he’d be undermining their father’s life’s work by this time tomorrow.

  At least with Alex there was a chance. If they had a few good years, maybe they could buy him out.

  And it wasn’t like Emma had a boyfriend waiting anywhere in the wings. Nor was she likely to have one in the foreseeable future. Plain-looking, plainspoken hotel executives who traveled half the year weren’t exactly hot prospects on dating dot com.

  Truth was, a marriage on paper wouldn’t be that big of an inconvenience for her. A justice of the peace, a couple of publicity snapshots, and they’d barely have to see each other again.

  She looked Katie straight in the eyes, not giving herself time to rethink the decision. “We have to talk to Legal so we can make sure Alex can’t do something crazy with our inns.”

  Katie’s eyes went wide. “You’re going to do it?”

  Emma dropped her fork and drained her glass. “I’m going to do it.”

  Two

  Mrs. Nash had been calling Alex Alex his entire life. But since he’d moved out of his penthouse and back into the family’s Long Island mansion six months ago—another of Ryan’s brilliant plans to improve his image—she’d taken to calling him Mr. Garrison. Every time she did it, Alex glanced around for his father.

  The old man might have been dead for three years, but he still had the power to make Alex jump. It was bad enough that Alex had taken over his father’s study, he didn’t need to take on his name as well.

  “Call me Alex,” he grumbled, glancing up from the financial section.

  Mrs. Nash squared her shoulders in the doorway. “Mr. Garrison.” Her faint British accent grew more pronounced when she was annoyed. “A Ms. McKinley has arrived to see you.”

  Alex flipped his newspaper down at the fold, his senses coming on alert. “Which one?”

  Mrs. Nash’s formidable brow went up. “Ms. Emma McKinley, sir.”

  “Okay, now you’re just trying annoy me.”

  “Sir?” There was an undeniable twinkle behind her blue-gray eyes.

  “It’s Alex. Alex. You changed my diapers and smacked my butt.”

  She sniffed. “And I dare say, it didn’t help much, did it now?”

  Alex set the newspaper on his spotless, mahogany desktop and stood from the tufted leather wing chair. “Can we at least dispense with the sir?”

  “Yes, Mr. Garrison.”

  He drew closer to her as he headed for the door. “You’re fired.”

  Her expression remained impassive. “I think not.”

  “Because you know where the bodies are buried?”

  “Because you’ve never memorized the combination to the wine cellar.”

  He paused. “Excellent point.”

  “Very good then…sir.”

  “Insubordinate,” he muttered as he passed her.

  “Will Ms. McKinley be staying to lunch?”

  Good question. Was Emma going to say yes and make both their lives easier? Or was she going to stay up there on her high horse and cause him no end of trouble? Alex gave it a fifty-fifty chance.

  He drew a bracing breath. “I have no idea.”

  Mrs. Nash nodded and carried on into the study, where she’d straighten the newspaper and erase any lingering trace of his presence. It was eerie, living in a house that forgot about you every time you left the room. Sometimes he’d leave subtle traces, a book out of place on a bookshelf, a sculpture slightly to the left on the mantel. But he hadn’t tripped her up yet.

  He headed down the hallway under the watchful eyes of his ancestors. The portraits were newly dusted and plum-line straight. His father was last, looking dour and judgmental, probably wishing he could grill Alex on the bottom line. Alex imagined that’s what his father hated most about being dead—standing by silently while Alex ran amok with the family business.

  He rounded the corner to see his latest business problem standing in the sky-lit rotunda foyer, clutching a patterned handbag against an ivory, tailored coatdress. Her shoulder-length, chestnut hair was tucked behind her ears and pulled sleek by a pair of sunglasses perched atop her head. Her lashes were dark against coffee-toned eyes, her lips were shaded a lustrous pink, and diamond studs twinkled against her earlobes. She was immaculately made-up and clearly nervous.

  That could be a good sign, or it could be a bad sign.

  “Emma.” Alex held out his hand, deciding to pretend they hadn’t parted on sarcastic terms.

  “Alex,” she nodded with a brief, brusque shake.

  “Would you care to come in?” he asked, gesturing toward the hallway.

  She peered suspiciously down the wide corridor.

  “To my study,” he elaborated. “We might be more comfortable there.”

  After a second’s hesitation, Emma nodded. “All right. Thanks.”

  “Not a problem.” He waited until she was beside him, then fell into step.

  “How was traffic?” he asked, instantly regretting the impulse to make small talk. He wasn’t nervous. He was cool as a cucumber when it came to business deals. And this one was no different than any other.

  If she said no, she said no. He’d either change her mind or come up with plan B. Ryan was making way too much of this wedding thing, anyway. Alex’s future didn’t depend on Ms. McKinley’s whims.

  His study was back to being immaculate, as he knew it would be. The newspaper had been folded and placed in the front center of the desk. Alex knew he should sit behind it, putting himself in a position of power. But instead he touched one of the wing chairs clustered around the stone fireplace, gesturing for Emma to sit down.

  She nodded her thanks, sinking into the chair and crossing one shapely leg over the other. She smoothed her ivory skirt and tucked the frivolous handbag in beside her.

  Then she folded both her hands over her slender knees and looked up.

  He quickly cleared his head of the picture her legs made and sat down across from her.

  “Traffic was fine,” she said.

  He nodded, telling himself to get straight down to business. “And you’ve made up your mind?”

  She drew back ever so slightly. Then she nodded. “Yes. I have.”

  He cocked his head. “And?”

  She twisted a sapphire-and-emerald band around her right ring finger. “I’ll marry you.”

  She sounded like she was agreeing to the gallows.

  Well, it wasn’t going to be any picnic for him either. He was about to saddle himself with a reluctant wife, curtailing his social life, curtailing his sex life and, given her current expression and body language, conjugal relations weren’t going to be any part of this union.

  Which meant he was celibate. For the duration. Wasn’t t
hat just wonderful.

  “Thank you,” he forced out.

  She gave a sharp nod and made to rise.

  “Wait.”

  She arched a brow.

  “You don’t think we have more to discuss?”

  “What’s to discuss?” she asked. But she did sit back in the chair and recross her legs.

  “For starters, who do you absolutely have to tell?”

  “That I’m marrying you?”

  He shook his head. “That it’s a fake.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. That part. My business partners know.”

  “My sister knows.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “My lawyer.” It was her turn to sit forward. “You can expect a call from him on the prenup.”

  Alex coughed out a laugh. “You want a prenup?”

  “Of course.”

  “You check my net worth in Forbes last year?” A prenup protected him a whole lot more than it protected her.

  The expression in her brown eyes was more than a little judgmental. “Of course not. I couldn’t care less about your net worth.”

  He found that somewhat hard to believe. But, whatever. The important thing was to get this farce moving along. “First thing we have to do is get engaged.”

  “I thought we just did that.”

  He opened his mouth, but she kept talking.

  “You said ‘marry me or I’ll bankrupt you.’ And I decided to take the lesser of two evils.” Her pretty lips pursed. “And, you know, I really don’t think it gets any more romantic than that.”

  Sarcasm? She was getting millions of dollars, while he was accepting an inferior business deal for the sake of his reputation, and she was handing out sass?

  “You’re not very grateful, are you?” he asked.

  “Your blackmail victims are usually grateful?”

  He shook his head in disbelief. So much for Emma being panicked and intimidated. “You were expecting champagne and flowers?”

  “I was hoping for a bank loan and a good actuary.”

  “Well, you got me instead.”

  She nodded slowly, peering down her delicate nose at him. “That I did.”

  This bickering wasn’t getting them anywhere. Alex stood, shaking off his restless energy. “If we’re going to make this work, there are a few things we’ll have to do up front.”

  “Like learn to tolerate each other?”

  “Like convince the press we’re in love.”

  Emma’s lips slowly curved into a grin. First time he’d actually seen her smile. It gave her eyes a golden glow and put a dimple in her right cheek. And when the tip of her tongue touched her front teeth, he felt a jolt of desire right down to his toes.

  At this rate, he was going to have to rethink which sister was the pretty one.

  “What?” he asked, tamping down the unwarranted reaction.

  “I’ve now figured out the difference between us.”

  Alex squinted. Had he missed something?

  “I’m firmly grounded in reality, while you dare to dream the impossible.”

  He wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but true enough.

  “I think we can probably learn to tolerate each other,” she continued. “I don’t see how we could convince anyone we’re in love.”

  Alex took a pace forward, catching the scent of her perfume, tamping down yet another jolt of desire. This was crazy. He couldn’t be attracted to Emma. He wouldn’t let himself be attracted to Emma.

  “You know your biggest problem?” he asked.

  She stood up, but he still had eight inches on her. “No, but I bet you’re going to tell me.”

  “It’s your defeatist attitude.”

  “Actually, my biggest problem is you.”

  “Sweetheart, I am your salvation.”

  “Humble, aren’t we?”

  “When you work hard and pay attention, you don’t need to be humble.” He inched closer, dropping his voice. “There are only six people in the world who know I’m not in love with you. I’m about to convince the rest.”

  “The entire world?” She arched a sassy brow.

  “You need to think big, Emma.”

  “You need to think realistically, Alex.”

  “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

  “Statistically? I believe they are.”

  “Then you need to be the exception.” Alex grinned to himself. He could give back as much sass as he got. “And, Emma, my darling, I am exceptional.”

  She eloquently rolled her eyes. “Can I get something in the prenup prohibiting your ego?”

  “Only if your lawyer’s a whole lot better than mine.”

  She took a half pace back. “So that’s your big plan? We gaze adoringly at each other in public, while our lawyers duke it out in the back room?”

  He gestured for her to sit back down. “That pretty much covers it. Now, back to our engagement.”

  She sat down and her chest rose and fell beneath the tailored dress. “I assume we’re talking about a very ostentatious ring?”

  “Absolutely.” He eased down into his own chair. He’d been giving this some thought. In the event, of course, that one of them said yes. “Thing is, we don’t want them talking about if we’re engaged. We want them talking about how we got engaged.”

  Emma paused. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  “You a Yankees fan?”

  She shook her head, and he could see the exact second she got his point.

  Her brown eyes went round, and her complexion paled a shade. “No. Oh, no. Not the JumboTron.”

  “It’d make a splash.”

  “I’d have to kill you.”

  “Bad plan. You wouldn’t be in my will yet.”

  “You may not have noticed, but Katie does the McKinley publicity. She’s the extrovert.”

  “If you’ll recall, I did try to marry Katie.”

  Emma’s expression tightened for a split second, and he realized his words might have sounded like an insult.

  “She’s taken,” Emma declared. “Deal with it.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Sure you did. No JumboTron. Got it?”

  Alex hadn’t meant he preferred Katie. He didn’t care one way or the other. But another denial would be overkill. And it would probably just tick Emma off.

  “How about if I surprise you?” he asked instead. “Add a bit of realism to the situation.”

  “This is silly,” said Emma, straightening in her chair and getting all prim and proper on him. “We should be talking about the business merger. Who cares how we get engaged?”

  Had she missed his point entirely? This whole thing was all about his reputation and his image.

  “I care,” he stated flatly. Sass was one thing, but she needed to understand his interests. “You’re getting one sweetheart of a monetary deal, and I’m getting some good PR. The how matters. The ruse matters.”

  She opened her mouth to rebut, but he was done debating.

  “Make no mistake about it, Emma. You and I are going to convince the world we’ve fallen in love or die trying.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” Emma said to Katie as they walked off court number twelve at Club Connecticut. Distracted by Alex’s plan, she’d lost decisively to her sister, game, set and match.

  She wasn’t an actress. And she wasn’t a public person. While some hotel socialites hit the club scene and made the front pages of the tabloid press, Emma jealously guarded her privacy.

  “Is he being a real jerk?” asked Katie, sympathy in her voice as she gestured to an empty umbrella table with four white deck chairs.

  “No jerkier than we expected,” said Emma honestly. “Problem is, he’s got this whole fantasy, fool-the-press thing planned. And I’m definitely not up for playing the simpering Wall Street bride.”

  Katie frowned for a minute as she took her seat. “Well, I suppose he has to get something out of it.”

&n
bsp; “He’s getting our hotels.”

  “Only half.”

  Emma raised her eyebrows at her sister. Did Katie honestly think Alex was being reasonable? “We promised him a wife, not a trophy bride for the front page.”

  Katie shrugged. “So he wants to show you off a little. Why not go with the flow?”

  Emma peeled off her sweatband and shook out her hair. “Because the flow will be trite and embarrassing. And, if you’ll recall, the flow is also one very big lie.”

  Katie smirked. “No harm in looking good while you’re lying.”

  Emma pulled a bottle of water out of the acrylic ice bucket in the center of the table. “Quit laughing at me.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just—”

  “That it’s me and not you?”

  Katie’s tone changed. “Of course not. I’m grateful. You know I’m grateful.”

  Emma sighed. “I have to find a way to convince him to keep this low-key. A justice of the peace. A small announcement in the classified section.”

  Katie reached for a bottle of water, cracking the cap. “Or I could lend you some clothes and you could hit the party circuit on his arm.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt you to get out and about. You know you work too hard.”

  “Not hard enough to save the company.”

  “Hey, you’re saving the company now.”

  Emma sat back in her chair. She wasn’t saving the company through her guile and business acumen, that was for sure. “It feels like prostitution.”

  “Without the sex?”

  “Without the sex.”

  “Then it’s not prostitution, is it? Lighten up, Emma. We’ll go to Saks.”

  “Oh, yeah. Saks will solve the problem.” Because as long as Emma had the right wardrobe, she could easily prance through uptown Manhattan casting mooning looks in Alex’s direction.

  She shuddered.

  “Oh my,” Katie muttered, her attention shifting to a spot over Emma’s shoulder.

  “Oh my, what?”

  “He’s here.”

  “Who’s here?” Emma twisted her neck, trying to get a look.

  “Alex,” said Katie.

  Emma froze. “What?”

  “Alex is here.”

  She turned to face Katie. “He’s not a member.”