“How did you arrange such a thing? Thad, you are remarkable.”
“It’s easier than you think. Times Square is all about marketing.”
She nodded and sat back against him. “I’ll never forget this night.” She sighed happily and rested her head on his shoulder.
The pause and silence in the car felt thick with something awkward.
He cleared his throat. “They seem to be buying the fairytale we’re throwing out there.”
Ah, was he uncomfortable, thinking she was falling for it all? She was, but she was supposed to pretend otherwise.
“Totally! And you had every woman there full of stars in her eyes. It was the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard of. Thad, we are living a romance novel.”
He relaxed. “I hoped it would do the trick. I want to make sure you come off respected and valued through this.”
Her heart warmed even more toward him. She was a goner. “Thank you. After tonight you can be sure of one thing. Everyone thinks you are a rock star date and I’m the luckiest person in New York.” She laughed. “Which is just fine for now. I’ll find a way to make some gesture of my own.”
“I don’t think you’ll need to do a thing from a marketing perspective. But I do remember a certain challenge you issued. About me not willing to try new things?” He paused, eyebrows raised.
“That’s right! I completely forgot.” Her mind started whipping through ideas. “Okay, I’ll plan the next date. And prepare yourself.”
“I already said, I can take whatever you throw at me.” His over confident grin challenged the competitive side of her nature. She would raise his Times Square duet and play something of her own.
And not fall in love with him in the process.
Chapter 12
Thad’s phone scrolled about a billion messages. Most from Torren. The breakfast meeting was going to be something. He braced himself.
Lucan wanted to talk before. He’d, of course, been setting up security and background checks on Sage. It was more difficult to do for her since she lived in the United States and less of the surveillance type measures were legal, but Thad was sure Lucan would find a way to be aware of as much of this experiment as he could.
Thad moved to sit on his balcony, the late night air finally losing some of the day’s scorching heat. The park would look beautiful in a few more hours when the early morning light begins to chase the shadows away. Thad lifted the laptop and turned it on. Video opened immediately to the conference room and his mother stepped in front of the camera.
“Hello darling.”
“Oh hello mother.”
“I want to look into your face when you answer these questions. Who is Sage Parker? Why are you giving her so much attention? Trying to win her back? And what was Monique doing there? Kissing you? Thad, are you alright? This just isn’t like you. Do you need to come home? That awful penthouse can be nothing like your rooms at the palace. You were happy here.”
He laughed. “Mother, which question would you like me to answer?”
“Oh just any. I want the whole story.”
“Sage is a good friend. She is the co-CEO of the company I work for, and I have the greatest respect for her.”
Tripp’s voice made him smile. “And she’s a hottie.”
“No one’s a hottie to you, except Jenneca.” His mom swatted at him.
“I didn’t say I was interested, just praising Thad’s taste.”
His mother waved Tripp away behind her. It didn’t matter where Tripp stood in the room, his mother’s face took up the whole laptop screen. “Don’t listen to him. Hottie or not, she’s an American, Thad.”
Jo cleared her throat in the background.
“Not, that we have any problems with Americans. Of course we love Jo. But honey, she doesn’t seem like the Torren type. Would she want to live here? Because I’m sure you don’t want to live there forever, become an actual American, do you?”
“Mother, you don’t have anything to worry about.” Though Thad had those same concerns. “I’m Torren through and through.”
Lucan peered in over their mother’s shoulder. “He says this while wearing his Mickey Mouse shirt.”
“No one has anything to worry about. As soon as everyone gets here, I’ll cover it in my report.”
His mom sniffed, then said, “I miss you darling. Will you be back for our August festival?”
“I’ll try.” It would be excellent publicity. “Maybe I’ll bring Sage with me.”
Trane’s hoot made Thad smile. “He’s bringing a girl home for the festival. There’s something to worry about now, if there ever was.”
“Oh stop.” Their mother held a hand at the side of Trane’s face and kissed his cheek. “I love you boys. So many of you are happily married with wonderful women. I just want the same for you all.”
Lucan groaned. “We know, Mother. You wish us all strapped to a woman with little children in tow.”
“The women in the room might not appreciate the word, ‘strapped’.” Jo smiled, but Thad knew she was starting gentle and Lucan might hear more if he didn’t correct himself.
“I’m sorry, Jo. You are all family. No one is strapped.” He dipped his head in a short bow. And Jo waved him away. “I know what you mean. But I’m working on everyone’s language. Make sure you say what you mean, precisely.”
Lucan mumbled in his hand mic so that only Thad could hear. “I said exactly what I meant.”
Thad smirked and shook his head. “Is everyone present? I have to get at least some sleep before heading to work early this morning.”
“Meeting your new love?” Nico sat beside his wife.
Jo kissed the lips he offered and Thad had to smile. Their relationship was inspiring to him. If he could have the same unity and love and care for Torren, he and his wife reaching for dreams and accomplishing individual goals, he would be happy.
Jo said, “We will hear all about this new love when it’s his turn to report.”
Nico leaned back with hands behind his head. “Then by all means, let’s begin with him. The far wall pulled up a video of Thad’s song in Times Square. It had several million hits already.
Thad was surprised. “Wow, some of the commentaries must have picked it up. Fan sights and blogs?”
“And twitter. You have several fake accounts and all of them have picked it up.”
Thad nodded. Excellent, better than he’d hoped.
They watched the song to its conclusion. He winced when Sage began singing. She really could not sing. But he gave her extra points for trying anyway. For some reason he was shocked to realize she couldn’t carry a tune and that reminded him he knew very little about her. The thought made him nervous. He had had to remind himself multiple times through the night that all this was for show and that his real relationship was moving at a slower pace.
When the song finished, his family turned to him. He looked from face to face. He missed them. Being a Valdez was something special. He didn’t want to be far from them for most of the year.
“So, that is Sage.”
“She has a lovely singing voice.” Lucan covered his mouth and coughed.
Jo scowled. “Oh stop. She was darling to sing anyway. She didn’t know that was coming, right?”
Thad laughed. “She had no idea. I’ll tell you, she’s a brave one. I brought her to the center of Times Square and started singing. Ha, I’ll never forget her face.” He paused. Every one of his family had raised eyebrows. “I do like her, you know.”
“We couldn’t tell.” Nico smiled.
“But here’s the situation with her. I’m sure Lucan already knows.”
As usual he didn’t confirm or deny any knowledge.
“They hired me to be this CEO figure head type person, to up their marketing with a royal at the head of their company, but, they had already begun conversations with Sage and so Zachary hired us both. We are co-CEOS.”
“Did you know she was part of the deal?”
“No. Unfortunately, Zachary isn’t confident that my lack of experience can truly run a company. So Sage is there to make sure we actually act like CEOs.” It grated, but he tried to understand from a business perspective that he was a risk.
“And…” Lucan tried to hide his smile.
“And. Then some cameras caught us at a nightclub and afterwards walking along the water, and they took off with a story about us having a CEO-ship or something.”
The brothers heckled him for a few minutes. Their mother said, “Do you really like her?”
He thought about the answer. “I do. I see the complications of us ever being together but I really like her, enough that I was thinking of seeing where it could go before…”
“Before?” His mother smiled encouragingly. She was not going to like the rest of the story.
“Before Zachary roped us into pretending we are in a relationship to continue to ride the publicity.”
“What? No, surely Sage didn’t agree to such a thing?” Their mother’s mouth was pinched in a full front of disapproval and Thad was reminded of her days as queen of Torren.
“She has no choice mother. Her reputation and total career is at stake with this. I am sure at times she wishes she had never entered conversations with the company at all.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We are riding it out, and we worked out our whole story for the press, start to finish. Zachary is calling for a wedding.”
“What! No, how could you countenance such a thing? What would our citizens think? With a divorce soon after?”
“No, mother. We told Zachary no.”
She settled back in her chair, but Thad could see this conversation was going to fester for days.
“So, that’s my report. As far as Torren press, everything seems to be going according to our normal routines. If I need to, I’ll make some statements about my situation in America, but there seems to be enough going on of real importance that they are leaving me alone for now.”
They moved on, mercifully, to other topics, but Thad knew he hadn’t heard the end of the conversation from his mother, or Nico, or even Lucan. Later that morning, he left for the office feeling unsettled. Explaining everything to his family brought all the obvious problems with the plan out in the open and the second thoughts that were always bugging him, pushed and prodded more insistently as his driver fought morning traffic.
One thing he should try to do was ease off on his real, non-pretend pursuit of Sage. But he didn’t know how he was going to be able to do that when he found so many reasons to do just the opposite.
As he was pulling in, Lucan’s text said, “Check into their real-estate holdings on the Mediterranean.”
A niggle of worry added to his stress. And he wondered if Zachary had even more reasons for bringing him on than he had originally disclosed.
Chapter 13
Sage was deep into planning their second public date when she realized she was going to be late for work. She jumped up, dropping her laptop to the floor. She had never been late for anything, that she could remember. She flew to the shower, barely let the water splash her before she was throwing on clothes. She took her time on her hair and makeup since she could be photographed at any moment. And then grabbed her work bag and ran down the hall.
The elevator was slow. She tapped her foot, checked her watch five times, and then as soon as it opened she took off out into the main foyer. But she skidded to a stop, almost sliding in her heels, when she saw the huge crowd of people, all with cameras pointing through the glass at her.
The doorman said, “I just rang up to your flat. But looks like I missed you.”
“What do I do?” She swallowed.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, we’ve never had a famous person living here before.”
“Do you have security?”
“I think so.”
“Could you call them please?”
He nodded and picked up the phone. Meanwhile the crowd waited, waved at her, cameras pointing. She decided the footman wasn’t going to be any help. “Is there a back door?”
He started to point and she said, “Don’t point. Just tell me.”
“Oh, oh right.” He looked from the crowd to her and back. “So you head back toward the elevators, go down one flight to the basement, then go down the long corridor, sorry about the smell. There’s a set of stairs at the end and an emergency exit. The alarm won’t go off, just use that door.”
“Ok thanks.” She pushed the elevator button twenty times even though she knew it wouldn’t come any faster. And then pushed it one last time to go down. At last, she was running down a long and very smelly corridor to the end. She pushed open the door and was immediately surrounded by cameras and people and shouting.
“Oh no! Please.” They jostled her and pushed up against her, everyone shouting a question at once.
She held up her hands. “One at a time please.”
Then a burly man, at least six foot eight pushed through. “Move aside. Step aside. I need you to move.” Until he reached her. “Sorry we are late.” He reached a hand out to her. She had never seen this person before, but hesitated only a second. At least she would follow him through the crowd, then she could make a break for it if she needed to.
Once they were a few steps away from the noise, he said, “Thad hired me. He told me to use the keyword, romance novel.”
A big smile broke out on her face. “Thank you.”
He opened the door to a black sedan with tinted windows. And soon she was driving through the streets of New York toward work.
“You saved me back there. So Thad hired you?”
He nodded.
“Are you from around here? Is this your typical employment?”
He didn’t answer.
So she texted Thad. “Thanks for sending the big man. He’s a strong silent type but I could kiss him.”
A row of question marks answered.
She laughed. “He saved me. It’s just an expression. Plus he does have an appealing jawline.”
Her phone rang. “Yes?”
“How appealing?” His sexy voice growled.
She laughed again. “I don’t know. It’s nice, chiseled in a rough-guy sort of way.”
“So you like chiseled. Are we talking like Tom Cruise chiseled?”
“What? No. He’s so old news. Hugh Jackman. MMMM.”
“OK, that’s not even a real comparison. Is his jaw chiseled at all?”
“Of course it’s chiseled. I wouldn’t have even mentioned him otherwise.”
“You just like him because he can sing.”
She gasped. “How did you know I was into that?”
“Why do you think I sang to you in the park?”
Her face warmed. “I thought it was just a good guess.”
“Oh no. I’m on to you. I’ve got plans.”
“This is such a weird experiment.”
He was silent so long she thought she lost her signal. Then a quiet voice answered. “I know. Sometimes I forget we are supposed to be faking it.”
“Are you faking it?”
“Right now? No way. But I guess I am just having fun. I mean we don’t know if we should pursue this. We have no idea if it is a good idea to be together. We are just sort of forced into it and we may as well have fun, right?”
Now it was her turn to pause. She was way more into him than the reverse, or at least it seemed that way. “Fun is perfect. And thanks for saving me. Where did that crowd come from anyway?”
“Our video has a few million hits on YouTube.”
“What!” She couldn’t believe it had picked up traction that fast.
“We are going to need to talk about increasing your security. I hope you like chiseled jaw man because he is your new personal body guard.”
“Are you sure I need one? That seems a little extreme.” Then she thought about the crowd. “But thank you. I wouldn’t have even known what to do about that group today. They were in the back alley
behind my place.”
“Your doorman tipped them off.”
“Wait. Are you serious? He needs to be fired.”
“He was.”
“Oh. Awesome. Are you like secret service too?” She couldn’t believe how quickly he had taken care of everything and how much he knew.
“It’s Lucan. He has fingers on the spy networks, runs security for our country. And especially for our family.”
“Who’s Lucan?”
“Oh, he’s my brother. Sometimes I can’t believe you don’t know anything about me.”
“Or you, me.”
They pulled into the building and jaw man parked and followed her in.
“Are you coming with me?”
He nodded, eyes searching the parking lot.
She shrugged. “We’re here Thad. I’ll see you in a sec.”
“Come to the conference room. They already started.”
She hung up. “Ugh.” So unprofessional to be late. She was supposed to be running this meeting. And if Thad was flirting with her on the phone, he wasn’t running it either. Which was probably for the best. How much did he know about running a business anyway?
And these doubts brought a whole new set of concerns to light. She knew so little about him and she was falling for the fun date planner who was also his public persona which he himself said was only a part of who he really was. The part he didn’t let the public see, his private side, she didn’t think he let her see either. She knew she needed to guard herself as much, or more than he was.
In the meantime, she shook her head in disbelief at herself, she had a company to run.
Chapter 14
She rushed out onto the floor and turned a corner hurrying for the conference room. Thad stepped in front of her, swinging her into his arms. “Are you alright?”
She hugged him back, surprised, and then glanced over her shoulder at the new bodyguard who trailed behind her. “I’m fine, but late. We should get in there.”
“Just a minute.”
“No, Thad. I’m never late. Look, we have a job to do, an actual real life job with a company to run.”
The American (Billionaire Royals Book 6) Page 6
