by Kira Archer
Constance huffed, already done with the game. “You know very well what they are of. I want to know what we can do about it.”
“Do? Why should we do anything? They’re pictures. Ignore them.”
“I can’t ignore them! Because of those pictures I might lose my girls.”
Luca’s amusement faded. “What girls? The ones who were here? They are yours? All of them?”
Constance glared at him. “My directors think I brought my charges here and exposed them to…”
Luca’s eyebrow rose a notch.
“Well, brought them here so I could…so we could…”
Luca’s brow rose higher and Constance glared at him. “I’m sure you can figure out what they think.”
“I’m sure I can, too. Maybe I want to hear you say it.”
“Mr. Vasilakis,” she said, her temper overriding her determination to keep herself under control.
“Call me Luca.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
She frowned again. “Because I don’t know you well enough.”
That damned eyebrow rose again. “I think we know each other well enough for first names. Besides, I wish it.”
He sat back as if that decided the matter, and she opened her mouth to argue the issue with him, and then reminded herself there were more pressing matters than what she’d call him. Especially since she didn’t intend to see him again after tonight.
She closed her eyes for a brief second and composed herself, drawing in a deep breath and straightening her back. But she opened them to find Luca’s gaze boring into her with an intensity that sent a shudder rippling through her. Maybe if she avoided looking directly into those impossibly dark eyes she’d be able to get through this. She looked instead at the slight dimple in his chin.
“Mr. Vasilakis, I came to ask if you would speak with my directors on my behalf. Explain to them that nothing happened.”
“That might be rather hard to explain considering the images they’ve seen,” he said with a laugh.
She glared at him. “You said you hadn’t seen the pictures.”
“No, I said I hadn’t been online tonight. I didn’t say I hadn’t seen the pictures.”
He reached over to a stack of printouts on the table next to the couch and handed her a tabloid from the top of the pile.
“I don’t normally read these, either, but Joe thought I might want to see these so he took the liberty of printing out a few articles from a few of the more thorough sites.”
The top page showed an overblown, up-close image of her in Luca’s arms, bodies pressed together from head to toe, looking like she was extremely happy to be there. She should have taken the face-full of dirt. It might have hurt, but it would’ve saved her a lot of trouble.
“Oh God,” she groaned. “I’ll be sacked for sure.”
“Maybe not,” Luca said, a tone in his voice that Constance couldn’t identify.
“What do you mean?” she asked, afraid to hope he’d actually agree to help her.
“I have a proposal for you.”
“What kind of proposal?”
Luca turned to Joe who stepped forward. Constance frowned.
“Mr. Vasilakis is in a bit of trouble of his own,” Joseph said. Luca grimaced but he didn’t interrupt. “His father wishes him to”—his gaze flicked to his employer and he appeared to be choosing his words carefully—“live a more sedate lifestyle.”
Luca snorted.
“Well, I can understand that, but what does it have to do with me?”
Luca gestured to the tabloid Constance had dropped on the coffee table. “Some enterprising peon in my father’s employ saw the pictures of us and did a little digging on you. Seems you are a fine, upstanding young woman with no warrants, arrests, or blemishes on your record of any kind. Moreover, you have dedicated your life to help those less fortunate and are currently working as a House Mother in one of the children’s village homes where you spend your days looking after orphans and foster children. My father is over the moon.”
Constance’s frown deepened. “I can’t possibly see why.”
“You are the type of woman with whom he’d love to see his son settle down,” Joseph said. “One who might ‘tame Luca’s wild ways’ as I believe he put it.”
The thought of even attempting to tame Luca sent a thrill through Constance she couldn’t quite contain. But she’d be damned if she let him see it.
“I’m flattered,” she said drily, “but again, I don’t see what your father has to do with me.”
Luca leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’ll help you out of your mess if you help me out of mine.”
Constance drew in a careful breath. “What does helping you out of your mess entail?”
“Our company is set to open its new offices in New York. If I want to run them, as I have been anticipating, I need to prove I can settle down and start ‘behaving like a responsible adult’ as my father puts it. Otherwise, the job will go to someone else and so will most of my shares in the company. I’d like to avoid that if possible.”
Constance nodded. Sounded reasonable enough, although she still wasn’t sure how she could help.
“You, I take it, would like to keep your position and remain with your charges.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“So my proposal is that for the next month you pose as my fiancée.”
Constance’s mouth dropped open, but for the life of her she couldn’t make herself speak. If he had told her his plan was to have her dress in feathers and parade around town clucking like a chicken she couldn’t have been more surprised.
“I…I…” She took a deep breath. “How does that help you?”
“It gets my father off my back. If I’m engaged to a respectable person such as yourself, he’ll assume my old ways are behind me. We play up the lovebird act for a month or so until I’ve been made president of the New York offices and am in full control of my shares, and then we both go back to our own lives.”
“How is that supposed to help me?”
“I’ll speak to your director, tell her that you were bringing the girls you care about so much to meet me, at my request. If we are engaged, it would be natural for them to meet me as I would become part of their lives as well. It still might not be ideal for them, but it’s better than the alternative: that you brought the girls with you so you could trespass on private property and once there, accost the poor, unsuspecting owner—a much-sought-after celebrity—with your young charges watching.”
“But that’s not what happened!”
“It’s only a slight twist of the truth and the pictures support the story.”
“That’s blackmail!”
“I choose to see it as helping each other out.”
“You can choose to see it any way you wish. It’s blackmail and you know it.”
Luca shrugged. “What choice do you have?”
Constance fumed, fury flooding every cell in her body until she nearly vibrated with it. She took a deep breath, struggling for calm. “What exactly would this charade involve?”
Luca leaned back against the couch with a smug look that Constance itched to smack off his face. He waved at Joseph, who came forward and handed her a stack of papers.
“I will have a contract drawn up, complete with a nondisclosure agreement similar to this.” He handed her the papers. “At the end of the month, well, six weeks because your association will need to extend at least a week or so past the date Mr. Vasilakis is approved for the position, your relationship will dissolve. At that time, you’ll be free to go your separate ways with the stipulation that neither of you reveal any details about the relationship and its validity or anything that took place during the time of your association. You’ll need to spend a great deal of time with Mr. Vasilakis, of course.”
“But the girls…this isn’t a babysitting job. I’m their legal guardian. Their mother for all intents and purposes. They
live with me. I can’t disappear for six weeks.”
Joseph jumped in. “The girls are welcome to accompany you, of course.”
“Joe,” Luca snapped. “We’ve already discussed that.”
Constance frowned, not understanding.
Luca filled in the gaps for her. “Joe feels my hanging out with orphans will help drive home the message that I’ve changed. A little extra PR.”
She glared at him. “You are not going to use my children as some sort of prop for this ridiculous farce.”
“Of course not. I’ve already told Joe no pictures.”
“I wasn’t suggesting they be used as…props, for lack of a better word,” Joseph said.
“Good,” Constance ground out, her threshold for politeness rapidly disappearing. “Because I absolutely won’t allow that.”
“No, no, of course, not,” Joseph said. Then he turned back to Luca. “But as they must stay with Miss Constance and we need her with us, it stands to reason…”
Luca sighed. “Yes, so you’ve said before.”
“No.” Constance folded her arms. She wasn’t backing down on that point.
Joseph tried again. “We will do our utmost to keep the photographers away from them, certainly. Our interest is in you, Miss Constance. However, if it were to be known that they were spending time with Mr. Vasilakis…”
“No,” she said again, standing firm.
“If they will be here with you anyway, I don’t see the harm in leaking that fact,” Luca said. “I agree there will be no pictures of them. But a few stories about them hanging out with me won’t traumatize anyone. They will never be directly involved. They seemed to be having a grand time earlier today. Do you really think being taken on trips and getting to swim in my pool is going to upset them?”
“That’s not the point,” she said.
He released an exasperated sigh. “It’s exactly the point. They aren’t going to be damaged or mistreated. No orphans will be harmed in the making of this film,” he said, making those ridiculous finger quotes.
She could almost hear the eye roll in his voice. “I thought you didn’t want them here.”
“I don’t. But I do need you here. And at least the illusion that I’m spending time with the kids wouldn’t hurt either. If letting them hang out by the pool for a couple days gets me a little respectability, I’m willing to make the sacrifice. I doubt very much they’ll mind.”
She hated to admit he was right. Given the choice, the girls would jump at the chance to hang out in his pool and go on more excursions. Yet it still worried her. Luca’s lifestyle wasn’t one she wanted them exposed to, even if they did manage to keep the photographers at bay. Something she doubted was possible.
“I suppose appealing to your decent side and asking you to help me out with no strings attached wouldn’t help?”
“Sorry. I don’t have a decent side that I’m aware of.”
She glared at him. “I need some air.”
She stood and marched through the kitchen and onto the back patio. The scene of the crime where the whole fiasco started. She groaned and plopped onto a chaise with her face in her hands.
What in the hell was she supposed to do? If she walked out of there, she’d be facing her director the next day and would very possibly lose her girls. She would do anything for them. Take a bullet, jump in front of a bus, whatever it took to keep them safe and happy. In that context, spending a few weeks being treated to all the luxuries life had to offer in order to keep their family intact really didn’t sound all that bad. As long as it was understood her girls would not be used as paparazzi fodder. Underneath it all a tiny part of her, the part she didn’t like to acknowledge existed, was even excited by the thought of spending so much time with the enigmatic and completely annoying Luca.
Regardless of how she felt about it, he was right. She didn’t have a choice, not if she wanted to keep her girls. Son of a bitch.
She took a deep breath and marched back into the house, resuming her seat. Luca and Joseph looked at her, eyes wide and waiting.
“I don’t want my girls in any questionable situations,” she said.
“No, no,” Joseph said. “We’ll have several activities planned, outings the two of you can take them on, picnics, days at the beach, that sort of thing. I promise they will enjoy themselves.”
She had no doubt that they would. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was them having too much fun. Getting too attached to a lifestyle, and maybe a man, that they couldn’t keep. She wouldn’t allow anything that might hurt them down the road. They’d been through enough in their lives to dangle such a shiny carrot only to yank it away.
“I wouldn’t want the girls to know what’s going on. For them, if I agree, it can be just a fun vacation that has a beginning and an end, with a man who is just a friend. No fake couple stuff in front of them.”
“I’m not sure that will be possible if we are to get the publicity we need.” Joseph shifted his feet and glanced at Luca.
“Minimal then,” she said with a sigh. “Nothing that would make the kids think it is real. They’re going to have to go back to their old lives and I’m not going to let them be hurt by any of this. It’ll be hard enough to go back to the real world when the vacation is over. I’m not going to let them get attached to someone they think might be sticking around. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to keep it PG around them.”
After a quick glance at Luca, Joseph nodded. “Not at all.” He gave her a kind smile and she blew a breath out. “Now, you’ll need to move onto the estate for the duration of your engagement in order to facilitate intimate photo opportunities and make the relationship appear more realistic.”
“You want me to move in?” Constance asked, looking between the two of them. She wasn’t sure if it was horror or excitement that made her legs shake like palm fronds in the wind.
“You may have your own room, of course,” Joseph started but Luca interrupted him.
“No. You’ll share my room.”
“What?” Constance asked, completely taken off guard.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and a dangerous twinkle in his eyes. “And my bed.”
Even Joseph’s eyes widened at that one. Constance stared at Luca, barely able to draw breath. He returned her gaze, stone-cold serious for once. His entire body was tense, his muscles clenching and unclenching like he was trying to prevent himself from jumping up.
Her mind shouted angry obscenities at the arrogant jerk even as her body nearly trembled at the thought of being in such close proximity with him.
She shook her head, her words coming out more as a whisper than the forceful declaration she’d meant them to be. “You can’t blackmail me into having sex with you.”
Luca’s lips twitched into a half smile. “I’ve never been that hard up, love. I didn’t say that we’d be having sex, though I’m certainly open to that any time you wish.”
Constance glared and gritted her teeth. Luca just grinned and continued on. “I said we’d share a bed. Despite Joseph’s vigorous screening process and more nondisclosure agreements than I can count, somehow the intimate details of my life still manage to get leaked to the tabloids on a distressingly frequent basis. If we’re going to make this look real, you can’t live with me in a room down the hall. You’ll have to share my room, and my bed, like my real fiancée would. Well, almost like a real fiancée. I assure you, your virtue is safe from me. As long as you want it to be.”
She shook her head, thankful she had a legitimate reason they couldn’t argue with to get out of his twisted little plan. “I can’t do that. I told you, I can’t abandon my children. Moving in here would certainly fall under that criteria.”
“Why do you keep calling them your children? What, you adopted them all?” Luca asked, his forehead creased.
“No, but the arrangement is similar. It’s possible the girls who still have families might return to their homes one day, but it’s highly unlikely. Rele
asing children to the program is a last resort step for most families. Only undertaken if there are no other options, no other means of support, because in order to create safe, stable environments for these kids, it’s necessary to give them permanent homes. Permanent caregivers. Keep them from being bounced back and forth.”
“So you signed up to take care of six kids, permanently, all on your own.”
She frowned slightly at him. “I can’t believe you’ve never heard of this program before. It’s not like it’s some secret organization.”
“I’ve heard of it. Not the specifics, but I know the gist.”
Constance shook her head. “And that’s the problem right there. If more people like you knew, or cared about more than the gist about programs like this, we wouldn’t need programs like this.”
His eyebrows rose. “So people like me should…what? Go adopt everyone?”
“No, but it wouldn’t hurt for you to be a little more involved.”
“Maybe. Depends on your definition of involved.”
It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. He held his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, not all of us are cut out to parent half the island.”
Her lips twitched despite herself. “I didn’t know I’d end up with six children, but we don’t like to split up sibling groups. I’ve got two sets of siblings. And Elena. And I don’t do it entirely on my own. In some locations, House Mothers live near each other, some even in special villages built for the purpose, in order to give each other support and additional stability for the children. There isn’t anything like that on Mykonos yet, though I hope there will be one day. For the moment, I live next door to a widow, Mrs. Ballas, who helps me.”
“So why can’t this Mrs. Ballas watch them for a few weeks while you stay here?” he asked, stretching out his long legs. His bare feet were inches from her own legs and she shifted a bit so he wasn’t quite so close. He gave her a smug smile that she ignored.
“She helps out, kind of like a housekeeper. But I told you I am their mother. I wouldn’t leave them to someone else for several weeks for no good reason any more than I’d do that with my own biological children. This program isn’t like a typical foster care system, certainly not like the one in America. I’m not technically an adoptive parent, but the program does make me legally, physically, morally, and spiritually responsible for my girls for the rest of their lives. Well, technically until they’re legal adults. But I’m not going to raise them as my own and then walk away once they are eighteen. I’m not just going to walk away from them for weeks on end either.”
