Call it Love

by Kress, Alyssa

  Silently cursing, Chess took the chair to her side. He had no idea what her problem was. He only knew that everything was at risk.

  Robbins took the seat behind his desk and pulled a manila file folder in front of himself. "First of all, I want to thank you both for choosing Scallini, Lampert, and Robbins to handle the negotiation for your bank loan. It's a considerable amount of money, and we appreciate the trust you've placed in our firm."

  "We didn't think David would choose wrong," Chess explained. "He used your firm for years."

  Robbins inclined his head and continued. "Of course, we cannot proceed with the final processing of the loan until Ms. Thibideaux marries, fulfilling the condition whereby she can inherit her father's shares in the business. Only then does she have the power to vote to put the factory up for collateral."

  Cookie's demeanor didn't change a micro-inch. She continued to wear an expression of restrained pique and disgust. Her free foot rotated about her ankle.

  Robbins gave her a keen, if oddly amused, regard. "Your father made it clear to us that not just any marriage would do. It had to be a real marriage, one based on mutual respect and caring." He paused. "Not a mere business deal for you to get your hands on the shares."

  Cookie's foot kept rotating. She glared at Robbins and didn't say a word.

  Chess could feel adrenaline zinging through his blood, preparing him for a fight. Everything was on the line here, everything he'd worked for over the past dozen years of his life. But all of that paled in comparison to a deeper hurt. He'd trusted her. How could Cookie betray him this way?

  Robbins dropped his gaze to his manila folder. He opened it up. "I see no reason not to proceed with the necessary papers for the loan now. Mr. Bradshaw, do you want to sign these first?"

  Chess was so stunned that he didn't at first understand the man's words.

  "Twice on the top sheet," Robbins went on, "and once on the three sheets underneath." His lips twitched when Chess still didn't make a move to approach the desk. "I understand it's a big move, putting up your factory as collateral. But you did want that loan."

  Chess finally got it. Robbins had given his seal of approval on the marriage. He was giving the go-ahead on the loan.

  The room settled back down on its axis. With a shake of the head, Chess rose from his chair and took Robbins's proffered pen. Unbelievable. They'd pulled it off—despite her. Robbins hadn't even asked any probing questions. Though he didn't understand it, Chess wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He signed in all five spots. Then he turned and handed the pen to Cookie.

  She took the instrument with an extremely ill grace and then rose and signed as Chess had. She lifted her head to confront the attorney. "Is that it?"

  Robbins cleared his throat. "As a matter of fact, no. There's also an envelope for you, Ms. Thibideaux."

  Her face went blank. "What?"

  "Your father left us an envelope to keep until such time as you got married." Robbins sifted through the papers in his folder until he found a well-stuffed envelope. He handed it across the desk to Cookie. "I think I can trust you to wait until after the wedding to open it."

  Instead of taking the envelope, Cookie regarded it as though it were a venomous snake. "What's inside?"

  If Chess hadn't been so angry and disappointed in her, he might have been moved to pity. She looked positively stricken.

  Robbins smiled gently. "I assume it's some sort of letter."

  "But—" Cookie looked past the envelope to the attorney. "Why would my father write me a letter?"

  At this, Robbins' smile faded and he slowly dropped his hand. "I don't think he expected to get a chance to speak to you again before he died."

  Chess saw Cookie swallow. "But— I know we weren't speaking. But these tiffs—they never lasted more than a couple weeks. Surely—" She stopped, seeming to come to an understanding. Her voice then came out as a faint whisper. "He knew."

  Robbins gave a solemn nod. "He had a previous heart attack, a few weeks before the fatal one. He knew that another was going to come soon and that he'd have very little chance of surviving it."

  "He knew," Cookie repeated, sinking back into her chair. Her face was ashen.

  It was a strange thing that, furious as he was, Chess still couldn't stand to see her in pain. It caused a pain right inside of himself.

  He rose to his feet. "We'll take that," he growled, scooping the misbegotten envelope from Robbins's desk. "Come on, Rebecca, it's time to go home."

  She offered no resistance as he took a firm hold of her arm.

  "Oh, and Chess?" Robbins's voice stopped him at the door.

  Chess turned around, displeased. Cookie slipped out of his arm and proceeded unsteadily down the hall.

  Robbins rose from his seat. "The wedding's less than a week away, right?"

  Chess tensed, aware of the dangerously increasing distance Cookie was putting between them. "The ceremony's Friday."

  "Look." Robbins grinned. "Don't take these moods personally. I remember my own wife nearly chopped off my head with an ax the night before the wedding."

  Chess's gaze sought out Cookie at the end of the hall. Somehow he didn't think this was pre-wedding jitters.

  "Just you wait." Robbins was chuckling now. "When they get pregnant, it's about a hundred times worse."

  Chess hit the attorney with a killing glance before turning to catch up to his bride. Pregnant! Hell, he had to make sure she'd walk down the aisle.

  But Cookie seemed to have forgotten her dispute with Chess—whatever it was—in favor of brooding over the envelope her father had left her. During the drive back toward Chess's house, the thing lay like a loaded bomb behind the gearshift.

  "I wouldn't take it wrong." Chess felt determined to break her morbid concentration. "David was simply trying to make up with you."

  Cookie kept her gaze out the front window. "Only on condition I get married."

  There was no arguing with this fact, so Chess didn't try. Instead he observed, "We came very close to not getting married at all."

  Cookie raised a shoulder. "The lawyer bought it. That's what matters."

  Chess's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "What got into you, anyway?"

  She set her jaw and crossed her arms under her breasts. "I decided we'd do better playing it as a spat than all lovey-dovey."

  "I'm not buying that. You aren't playing. So why not tell me what you're mad about?"

  Her voice was clipped. "Nothing."

  Bullshit. Chess wanted to pull the car over and throttle her. In his entire life, he'd never met a woman who could rile him so thoroughly.

  "Look." He gritted his teeth to keep his tone relatively calm. "We're getting married. Neither one of us can afford to hold grudges."

  "It's not a real marriage," Cookie replied with a flip of her head. "You don't own me."

  That did it. Chess pulled to the side of the road, after all. He found a parking spot in front of a Chinese restaurant, squealed to a halt, and jerked up the parking brake.

  Cookie must have guessed what was coming because she pushed open her car door at the same time Chess did.

  But he was stronger than she and not wearing high heels. Before she'd taken two steps from the car, he'd caught her arm.

  She gasped and nearly lost her balance.

  Chess steadied her by pushing her back against the car.

  "Let go of me!" she muttered.

  "Not until we get something straight." Chess heard his own voice come out low and gritty. Her words played in his head, radiating out with barbs of pain. You don't own me. "This is going to be a real marriage, Rebecca. For as long as we're married, all the ties and bonds that go along with that are going to be very real." He didn't know when he'd made that decision, but as he spoke he knew that he meant every word of it.

  "Is that right?" Cookie's chocolate eyes, eyes that were usually as warm as the sun, were now as cold as the North Pole. "All ties and bonds?" She smirked.

  Hi
s hands tightened on her shoulders. "You belong to me. I want your word. I want your word that while we're married, there won't be any other men."

  For a minute she looked at him as though he'd gone crazy. Then the coldness expired, leaving behind nothing but a misty ruin of sorrow. "My word?" She dropped her lashes. "Sure, you can have it."

  He let go of her, feeling thoroughly ashamed. Damn it all! How had she managed to do that? In the space of an instant, she'd turned the tables. She was the victim now, and he was a prime heel.

  "Fine," he grumbled. "And the same goes for me."

  Her movement checked as she straightened. "Pardon?"

  "I said, you have my word, too."

  She stared at him. "Isn't it a little late for that?"

  "Excuse me?"

  She put her hands on her hips. "You've already told your girlfriend all about the business aspect of our marriage. Some ties and bonds."

  "What?"

  But Cookie was already striding off down the sidewalk. She'd apparently decided to catch a bus the rest of the way home.

  Chess ran after her. He stopped himself from catching hold of her, though. He'd manhandled the woman enough this afternoon.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Chess insisted, dodging other passersby as he strove to keep up with her surprisingly quick pace.

  "You're going to get a parking ticket," Cookie coolly observed.

  "Who cares? What girlfriend? I don't have a girlfriend."

  She came to an abrupt halt, whirling to face him.

  His expression was pure bafflement, Cookie saw. Apparent innocence. Why did he insist on playing such a game? When he wanted, the man could be brutally honest.

  "Please," she told him. "I do have eyes in my head. Diana, Chess. You told Diana about our deal."

  There was a long silence between them in the midst of the clamorous city. Buses lurched by, cars honked, and there was the steady drill of a jackhammer further up the street. Chess's normally impassive face underwent some startlingly expressive transformations: shock to disbelief and then horror. Finally, and to Cookie's considerable astonishment, he laughed. "Diana?"

  "Oh, please." Cookie didn't think she was obliged to take his mockery. She turned.

  "Cookie. No." He reached out both hands to grab hold of her and then stopped himself, raising his palms in a gesture of surrender. "Please, don't walk away. Just—hear me out."

  She paused, uncertain.

  "Cookie." His voice turned unexpectedly soft. "God's honest truth. Diana is not my girlfriend. Never was, and I have no interest in changing that."

  She wanted to believe him. Foolish as that made her, oh, how she wanted to believe him. She struggled against such weakness. "If she isn't close to you, then why did you tell her the truth about our marriage?"

  For a moment he was baffled. "Did I?"

  "She knew about the deal. That we needed to get married to allow the loan."

  His brows drew down. "She did," he slowly admitted. "I must have told her, I guess." He shook his head. "I've been discussing marketing ideas so heavily with her that it probably slipped out. I'm sorry, Cookie. You're right. That wasn't fair."

  She stared down at her gray pumps. Was it possible he was telling the truth? Though Chess could be sneaky, she'd never known him to outright lie. Which meant that Diana really wasn't his girlfriend. Angelic voices started to sing in her head, celebrating. Diana wasn't his girlfriend. Cookie tried to tamp them down. "Is there someone else?"

  Chess drew in a breath. When she ventured to glance up at him, she saw him release it with a peculiar smile. "No. No one else. And I'm sure as hell glad that you asked."

  Cookie blinked up at him as he took her arm. "You are?"

  "Yes." He spoke softly, leaning close to her ear. "Because that means you care."

  The timbre of his voice shivered through her. "Of course I care," Cookie muttered back. "We're getting married, aren't we?"

  He laughed, low and a little wicked, as he pulled back. "My feelings precisely. We're getting married."

  He let go of her, and Cookie went still as she regarded him.

  Had he been hiding this from her, or had she refused to see? Well, Cookie saw it now. She saw it in his eyes and felt it in the tension of his body.

  He wanted her.

  Okay, don't panic. Cookie was used to men wanting her. Chess was no different from any of the rest. Just a simple beast who wanted his physical needs fulfilled.

  So why didn't she immediately set him straight? Why was she standing there like an idiot, staring at him and feeling all sorts of wheels start into motion, wheels she'd never known existed inside of her?

  He smiled and raised one hand to brush his knuckles across her cheek. His touch was soft, as gentle as the one he used on his roses. "You're in this just as deep as I am."

  "No." But Cookie's body seemed to uncurl at his touch.

  "I didn't believe it at first, either." Chess leaned closer, his nose against her neck. "But now I think this must have been between us all along. Otherwise, I don't see how it could have gotten so strong so fast." His lips, cool and soft, touched the edge of her jaw. "We just neither of us wanted to admit it."

  "I'm not sure I want to admit it now." But Cookie had to bite back a moan at the feel of his kiss. And though Chess then took hold of her shoulders in his big hands, his strength didn't bother her the way such things usually did. Instead it felt...rather good.

  "I thought we should resist it, but now I'm not so sure." His lips grazed her neck.

  I am. That's what Cookie would have said. I'm sure we should resist it. But the sensation of Chess's mouth on the surprisingly sensitive skin of her neck prevented her from being able to say anything at all.

  "What do you think?" Amusement hummed in his voice. "Should we ignore this?"

  The sensations he was sending through her made the suggestion absurd. But Cookie realized it was one thing for her to enjoy this gentle, subtle by-play. It would be quite another to endure the rudeness of a full sexual encounter.

  "I think we should...think about it," she managed to counter, though it didn't sound like she had much to think about from the way her voice came out, all soft and sweet.

  Chess touched his lips to her neck once more and then pulled back. He wore a very satisfied smile. "I can't begin to tell you how good you smell."

  "Oh, Chess..." From him, this was the highest possible compliment.

  He raised his brows, a smile lingering on his face. "You still need to think?"

  No, she needed to escape. This was a perfect disaster. Chess thought she was into him sexually when the thought of actual sex threatened to make her lose her lunch. "The marriage was only supposed to be a business arrangement," she said, scrambling to extricate herself.

  "True." Sobering some, he tilted his head. "Is that the way you want to keep it?

  The question shone like a light in a forest. It was her out, her escape.

  "I..." Something was wrong with her. She didn't rush to take the out.

  "Hmm." His thumb brushed against her lower lip, brushing every nerve in her body at the same time. "I believe you said you wanted to think about this."

  "Well, yes, I—"

  "Fine." He tapped two fingers against her lips. "You have three days. Think about it."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Since they lived in the same neighborhood, it was not actually uncommon for Chess and his longtime business rival, Bernard Korman, to have the occasional run-in. Chess found it particularly unfortunate, however, that such an occasion should occur early the morning of his wedding.

  He was on his way out of the local dry cleaner with his tuxedo over his shoulder when Korman walked in.

  The two men glared at each other for a moment in silence. Then Korman nodded his head of silver hair in the direction of the clothes Chess had draped over his shoulder.

  "So, it's true. You're getting married." He had a gruff, gravelly voice. It went with his wide build. The older man wasn't
fat, but he was built heavy. He would have made a good wrestler, Chess had decided once in a rare whimsical mood, having himself been captain of his college wrestling team.

  "I'm getting married," Chess confirmed. "This morning." He did his best to ignore the odd burst of nerves this statement produced.

  The proprietor of the store had gone into the back. The two men were alone. It was an opportunity, Chess decided, for a little digging. "I'm going to have the money to launch my new scent," he told Korman. "It's going to wipe anything you have off the shelves by Christmas."

  A faint smile graced the other man's mouth. "Not quite everything."

  Chess went cold. It was an outright admission—or close enough. Bernard Korman had been behind the cheap fakes.

  Chess knew his voice sounded lethal. "I'm going to find him."

  Korman lifted his brows. "Who?"

  "Somebody stole the classic formulas. They had to." Chess smiled tightly. "You have a good 'nose,' but nobody is that good. Those imitations were real. That means you have a spy."

  Korman lowered his brows to a dark scowl. "I have no spy. And as far as the imitations go, I only made a limited number of them. It was...an experiment. They'll be gone by the end of next month."

  Chess's gaze was replete with scorn. "You expect me to believe that?"

  Korman lifted a shoulder. "Believe what you want." His eyes suddenly looked sad. "The experiment didn't work."

  "I'll bet it didn't." Chess huffed. "It didn't put me out of business. Not this time and not any of the other times you've tried it over the past ten years."

  Korman's sad expression shifted, turning almost amused. "No, I haven't managed that, have I?"

  A very odd spark of gratification lit inside Chess. Bernard Korman had been his rival ever since Chess had assumed design control at Scents Allure. There was a perverse pleasure in hearing the more experienced man confess Chess had given him a run for his money.

  "So don't go and ruin everything you've accomplished by gambling on this launch," Korman went on to say. He nodded toward the owner, who'd finally reemerged from the back of the store.