by Naima Simone
“Don’t you want to know what saying yes entails?” he interrupted her, his steady gaze assessing. Analyzing. And she didn’t like it at all. “Five hundred thousand dollars. If you agree to be my fiancée for four months, I’ll give you half a million dollars. And another two hundred and fifty thousand after a staged breakup.”
She gasped, shock pelting her like icy sheets of rain. “Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars?” she wheezed. “For four months?”
He shrugged a wide shoulder. “Call the extra quarter of a million bonus pay.” Studying her, he murmured, “So what is your answer, Nadia?”
Good God, what she could do with all that money. Pay off debt, move to a better neighborhood, splurge a little for both Ezra and herself, have actual savings. To a successful business tycoon and billionaire like Grayson, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars might be pocket change, but to her? To Ezra? It meant a complete change in circumstances, in lifestyle. Hell, in life.
But who would believe you two are a couple? Even his mother refused to accept it.
The soft, scoffing whisper ghosted across her mind, and she felt the lash of truth.
Grayson was a Chandler. They were American royalty, like the Rockefellers or the Kennedys, possibly richer and with a more sterling reputation. A woman from a tiny, obscure Georgia town who was the daughter of the town Jezebel and didn’t even know who her father was didn’t belong with a man who could date his ancestors back beyond the Mayflower.
He needed someone like his ex—urbane, sophisticated, moneyed, connected, gorgeous...thin. No one looking at Adalyn Hayes would question why they were together. Next to women like Adalyn, Nadia would seem like a deviation, a charity case from the other side of the tracks.
Then, there was the night they’d spent together. Ducking her head, she crossed her arms over her chest. Both to hide the inconvenient puckering of her nipples at the thought of him naked on top of her...inside her...and a feeble gesture to protect herself from his piercing scrutiny. She couldn’t deny the unrelenting arousal that his presence ignited. Even when he stared at her, cool and calculating, offering three-quarters of a million dollars. Being in close proximity to him for months spelled Danger with a capital D.
He would be a menace to her reason, her control and, as much as she loathed admitting it, her heart. That treacherous heart that insisted on forgetting that rich, handsome men expected the world, and when they didn’t receive it, left wreckage behind.
She refused to be wreckage for anyone else again. Ever.
“Your offer—” bribe “—is generous, but I’m going to turn it down.”
Though his expression remained passive, his eyes glinted with anger. “Why?” He slowly perused her from head to toe, and she ordered herself not to fidget as he regarded her thrift store suit made for a woman a little bigger than her own size sixteen and shoes that weren’t fashion forward but comfortable. With a growing man-child under her roof and the bills to match, the shoes weren’t only all she could afford, but they were also her armor. And damn Grayson Chandler for causing a sliver of embarrassment to slide between her ribs.
“You don’t need the money?” he asked.
Bastard. “No, because I’m not a whore,” she ground out.
He arched an eyebrow. “I don’t believe I mentioned sex being included in our arrangement.”
Of course he hadn’t. Heat rushed up her neck and poured into her cheeks. The night of the blackout had been an aberration for him. He might have professed to admire—no, adore—her curves then, but today, except for that insulting scan down her body, his gaze hadn’t wavered from her face. She hadn’t glimpsed so much as a glimmer of desire in his eyes. Frustration, yes. Anger, oh, plenty of it. But not the need that had flared so brightly in his gaze less than two days ago.
Like she’d said, an aberration.
Though mortification singed her face, she hiked her chin. “You’re right, you didn’t. But there’s more than one way a woman can prostitute herself,” she said. Her company. Her pride. Her soul. “And sorry, but I’m not willing to do it. So, if that’s all...”
“Do you want more money? Is that it?” he pressed.
Fury mingled with her humiliation, and both loosened her tongue. “You’re my employer, as you pointed out earlier. When you roped me into that scene downstairs, it wasn’t like I could’ve disagreed with you and not feel like I was jeopardizing my job. But now that you’ve assured me that you won’t fire me, I feel very safe in saying, Hell. No.” She pasted a fake, too-bright smile on her face. “Now, if that’s all...” she repeated.
Not waiting for him to dismiss her, she pivoted on her chunky heels and exited his office. Gratefully, Mr. Webber had meetings for most of the day and didn’t ask her about hers with Grayson. And she didn’t volunteer any information. By the time she clocked out for the day nine hours later, her head throbbed with a low-grade headache. A couple of aspirin, a glass of wine and a bed with a Netflix series called her name. They were the only things that could possibly salvage this day.
Just as she exited the elevator and stepped into the almost deserted lobby, her cell phone rang. She smiled, already knowing who waited on the other end.
“I’m leaving now,” she said to her brother in lieu of a greeting. “And I’m cooking spaghetti and meatballs,” she added since one of his favorite questions was “What are we having for dinner?”
Ezra laughed, and she could clearly picture his wide, easygoing grin and sparkling dark eyes. From his laid-back and affable manner, no one would guess they had grown up in the same house with the same neglectful mother. Or that he’d seen things in his seventeen years that no child should.
Though they shared a mother, it was anyone’s guess who his father was, just as Nadia would have a better chance of winning the lottery than finding out the identity of hers. She and Ezra had the same brown eyes and facial features from their Caucasian mom. But where Nadia’s lighter, caramel skin and loose curls and waves hinted at a father with Spanish or even biracial heritage, Ezra’s darker tone and tighter curls that he’d twisted into locs denoted an African-American or Afro-Latino father. Didn’t matter to Nadia. He was her brother, bonded by blood and experience.
She loved him as if she’d birthed him herself. And protected him just as fiercely.
“See? I wasn’t even calling you about that, but it’s good to know.” He laughed again, and she grinned. “I couldn’t wait until you got home. I had to call you now.”
Nadia halted midstride across the lobby, pausing in front of the security desk. Nerves tumbled and tugged in her stomach, her fingers tightening around the phone.
“What is it?” she breathed.
“I got in!” Ezra crowed, his excited shout blasting in her eardrum. “I got into Yale!”
“Oh, my God!” she shouted before quickly remembering where she was. The evening shift guard quirked an eyebrow at her, and she jabbed a finger at the cell she still held at her ear. “He was accepted into Yale!” she explained as way of apology, and at only a slightly lower volume. The guard mouthed congratulations, and she gave him a thumbs-up.
“Who are you talking to?” Ezra teased. “Please tell me you didn’t just tell a complete stranger that your little brother was accepted into college?”
“Not a total stranger,” she scoffed. Then she chuckled. “Okay, kind of one. But he’s happy for you, too. Ezra,” she whispered, pride, joy and such an immense surge of love swelling inside her. “I’m so happy for you. So damn proud. You’ll be the first in our family to attend college. And not just any college. Yale.”
“You should’ve been the first, Nadia,” he said, loyal to the end. “You’re brilliant and could’ve easily gotten into any school you wanted. But instead you stayed at home. Because of me.”
Blinking against the sudden sting of tears, she waved a hand in front of her face and battled back the moisture. She continued out of
the building and stopped on the sidewalk. Closing her eyes, she tilted her face up to the gray-and-purple sky that still contained the last rays of sun. Yes, she’d sacrificed her dreams of a degree in nursing for him, but she’d never regretted it.
“And I’d do it again,” she murmured. “Now,” she cleared her throat of the emotion clogging it. “Spill. Give me everything.”
He read the acceptance letter, delight coloring every word, his normally relaxed voice pitched high with exhilaration. “And, Nadia, they awarded me a partial scholarship!”
“That’s amazing!” But worry sank its fangs into her delight, poisoning it. Partial scholarship. The annual tuition for Yale was almost fifty thousand dollars. When he’d first applied, they’d been counting on him receiving a full ride. With his grades, it was possible. But even with the help of the aid he was receiving, she still had to come up with twenty-five thousand.
And she couldn’t help him. When Nadia had been eighteen, she’d tried to get a car loan only to discover that her mother had been using her name and social security number for everything from bills to credit cards for years. If Nadia applied for loans on his behalf, and on the off chance received them, the interest rate would be so high, she would be repaying that loan even after she died. And she hated for Ezra to incur debt even before he graduated college. Jesus. They were barely making ends meet as it was. And tuition didn’t include books, food and other necessities...
“That’s okay, sis,” Ezra said, as if reading her mind. “It’s just an honor to be accepted. I understand if we can’t afford for me to go. There are plenty of great colleges here in Chicago. And—”
“Ezra.” She broke in on his sweet but heartbreaking speech. “No, stop it. You’re going to Yale. I’ll come up with the money.”
“But how, Nadia?” he demanded, the stubborn nature they both shared making its appearance. “If you’d just let me apply for loans...”
“No,” she said, adamant. His young life shouldn’t begin choked by debt that would take decades to pay off. “I’ll handle it, okay? I don’t want you to worry. You should be celebrating right now! So forget spaghetti. When I get home, I’m treating you to a deep dish at Pequod’s. Be ready,” she ordered. “And I mean it, Ezra. I’m proud of you. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, sis.” He coughed, cleared his throat. “And I love you.”
She gasped even as tears stung her eyes again. This time she let a few tears roll before carefully wiping them away. “Good God! Did the zombie apocalypse hit and nobody told me? You actually said the L word!”
He sighed. “And you wonder why you don’t have dates. You insist on talking.”
She loosed a loud bark of laughter, startling the couple walking past her. Their pace kicked up a notch. “Oh, you’re going to pay for that one. Don’t be surprised when you wake up one morning eyebrowless.”
With his chuckling still traveling through their connection, she hung up. As her arm dropped to her side, her hilarity ebbed, then disappeared, allowing entrance for reality and the dread accompanying it.
Only one option would completely cover Ezra’s tuition and expenses.
Dropping her phone in her purse, she turned and headed back inside. All the way to the elevators and then the ride to the twenty-fifth floor, she reminded herself why she couldn’t turn tail and run in the opposite direction. She conjured images of Ezra—as a gap-toothed six-year-old with a mess of unruly curls; at eleven, wide-eyed and big for his age on his first day of middle school; at fifteen, when he walked into her bedroom, clutching the ragged piece of notebook paper their mother had left behind explaining how she’d moved on with her new man.
Nadia’s little brother had experienced too much—suffered too much—to not receive everything life had to offer.
She stepped off the elevator and retraced the path she’d taken that morning beside Grayson Chandler. His assistant’s desk loomed large and empty, so she strode to the closed double doors of his office and knocked. Maybe he’d already left for the day, too. God, she hated the thought of having to do this all over again tomorrow...
“Come in.”
The deep, commanding timbre reached her through the doors, and she couldn’t contain her shiver. Not fear or revulsion. Far from it. It was a dark, wicked sensation that knotted her belly even as it pooled low beneath her navel.
Oh, for the love of...
She had to get it together before she walked into this office and committed a cardinal sin. Like throw herself at his feet and beg him to touch her, make her explode under his knowing fingers, brand her with his mouth and his...
You’re here for one reason alone. Ezra.
With those words ringing in her head, she twisted the knob and entered the lion’s den.
Grayson sat behind his desk, his focus on the computer monitor. A small frown creased his brow, but nothing could detract from his almost overwhelming masculine beauty. Trepidation struck her again, full force in the chest. How could she ever hope to pull this off? What made her think she could go through with this or that people would believe it?
He glanced up, noticed her standing in the doorway and the V of his eyebrows deepened. “Nadia?” He rose from his chair. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? Nothing.”
But he’d already circled his desk and stalked across the office toward her. The predatory stride did something totally inappropriate to her lungs and her sex. As if the two were mystically joined, and Grayson’s sexual magnetism had flipped the switch to activate the connection.
She shook her head, closing the door behind her. “Really, nothing’s wrong. I just...” She exhaled a hard breath, and he drew to a halt inches away, his disconcerting and too-damn-perceptive gaze roaming over her face. “I wanted...”
“You’ve changed your mind,” he finished for her, his stare hooded, full lips absent of the gloating smile she’d expected. Instead, his face remained an inscrutable mask that revealed none of his thoughts.
Again she asked herself, who was Grayson Chandler? And the fact that she couldn’t pin the answer down unnerved her.
“Why?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” she replied. Going through with this charade meant giving him access to her time, her personal space and even her body if they were to pretend to be a loving couple. She had to shield some parts of herself from him. And her life with her brother was one of those parts. Grayson couldn’t have that. “Is the offer still open?”
He didn’t immediately answer but continued to scrutinize her as if she were a column of profits and losses that refused to reconcile. She wasn’t, though. She was just a desperate woman willing to sacrifice her pride for the one she loved, but not her soul.
Not her heart.
Never that.
He crossed his arms over his wide chest. “It is. Are you sure you want to do this, Nadia? Are you sure you can handle all it entails?”
“Yes.”
No. Hell no.
“I’ll pretend to be your fiancée for four months, and at the end we break up. Money exchanged. We resume being employer, employee.” Although, how she was supposed to return to being a random secretary instead of “the boss’s ex-girlfriend” she had no clue. It seemed unrealistic to think everything could go back to normal, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. Maybe while she played fiancée, she would also search for another job. “What wouldn’t I be able to ‘handle’?”
“Since it’s my parents and Adalyn that we’re trying to convince, that means attending dinner parties, galas and other social events. It means bearing the brunt of the scrutiny and attention and not wavering. It means...” His voice lowered, and she tightened her thighs against the pull deep inside. “It means not flinching when I put my hands on you. It means moving into my touch, making every photographer and media outlet believe you want it—my touch, my lips. Make them believe you want
me. Can you do that?”
Could she do that? Pretending to want him wasn’t hard. The most difficult part would be keeping him from knowing how much she craved him.
No, the most difficult part would be guarding her heart so it didn’t mistake fiction for fact, desire for affection.
She’d made that mistake once. Had let herself forget that most rich men only crossed the tracks for one thing. Women like Nadia were good for dirty little secrets, but not to openly court, not to marry. For a moment, she believed that rule hadn’t applied to her, but she’d been cruelly reminded.
She’d never forget again.
But dammit, why did he have to describe what he expected in detail? Now she couldn’t evict the images of him lowering his head to nuzzle her throat or brush her mouth with those beautiful lips.
“I can do it,” she said, forcing a firmness into her voice that was more bravado than certainty. “Can you?” She’d asked it in jest, in challenge, but underneath, she truly needed to know.
“Can I convince anyone that I’m hungry for you? Can I make people believe that I might be holding your hand, but I’m five seconds away from dragging you over to the nearest flat surface and making you come until we’re both sweating and shaking?” A tight smile barely curved his lips. “Yes, Nadia, I can do it.”
Oh. Damn. His words seemed to seep into the air, burrow into the walls, camp out on the furniture of his sitting area. They inhabited the room, inhabited her, so she breathed them, wallowed in them, drowned in them.
“Promise me one thing,” he murmured, his blue and green eyes shadowed, his jaw like stone. “Don’t fall in love with me.”
She blinked. Then laughed, the sound hard, strangled. “Well don’t you think highly of yourself.” Was he serious? Fort Knox had nothing on the fortress hiding her heart. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”
“Good,” he said, still in that soft tone with the underlying thread of steel. “Because I don’t want to hurt you. Do you make my dick hard? Yes. But that’s where it begins and ends. I don’t want a relationship. So don’t let me hurt you, Nadia. Protect yourself from me.”
