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Marco’s cellphone rang. “De Luca.” He paused for a moment. “Yes. Go ahead and put me down for one hundred thousand.” He paused again, and Elaine could hear a man’s excited chatter on the other end. “Not at all. It’s a worthy cause. Thank you. You too.” He ended the call and put his phone back in his suit pocket.
“Was that for a charity?” she asked, feeling something soften inside her.
He nodded briskly. “A charity that provides financial support for the families of children with special needs. I make frequent donations to them.”
“That’s nice of you.”
He stopped walking. “I’m not a nice man, cara. The sooner you realize that, the easier your life will be for the next twelve months.”
“But you donated all that money…” She trailed off.
“And it benefits me. It will be a very high-profile donation. Philanthropy can be good for business.” He turned away from her and started walking again, his strides so long she had to take two to his every one.
All of the soft feelings vanished. She knew he was ruthless when it came to business. His reputation was legendary. The man who, ten years ago, had become the youngest billionaire in the world. The man who crushed competition without a hint of conscience. He was well known for destroying any obstacles in his way, regardless of the fallout to anyone else. The bottom line was king. Wasn’t the fact that he’d agreed to a marriage with her to boost his profits ample proof of that? Of course she supposed, as the marriage was her idea, she fell into the same category.
His reputation with the opposite sex was just as legendary as his business acumen. A couple of years ago he’d broken up with an Italian supermodel and she’d sold her story to one of the gossip rags. She’d spilled a lot of shocking details, and ever since then he’d become serious tabloid fodder. Elaine doubted that even half of what the woman said about him was true, but what she knew for sure was that he managed to be photographed with a different beautiful woman on his arm every weekend.
She had come in prepared for that. Prepared for the fact that he was sexy and that his charm was lethal enough to affect most any woman. But she had underestimated him. She had assumed that, with her practiced indifference to the masculine gender, she would be immune. The stark reality was that she was not.
It was the only downside to their little arrangement. She’d known he was handsome, she’d seen him at charity balls, around her father’s office and in grainy magazine pictures, but she hadn’t been prepared for how amazingly attractive he was up close. His face was square and undeniably masculine, yet his eyes, for lack of a better word, were beautiful. They were rich chocolate-brown with golden green flecks, framed by a fringe of long dark lashes. It was enough to make her mouth water. His body was another problem altogether.
She slowed her pace a little and allowed herself to take in the view. A frisson of something new and scary shivered through her. He had a broad, well-muscled chest that tapered down to a lean waist and narrow hips that led to—heaven help her, but she had noticed—the most heart-stoppingly sexy backside she’d ever seen. And she’d made those observations when he was fully dressed. If she lived with him, the odds of catching him without a shirt or—the image made her knees quake—in a towel were overwhelming.
He turned and quirked a black eyebrow at her, the glint in his eye letting her know that he was well aware that she’d been taking advantage of her position by checking out his assets.
She quickened her pace so that she was beside him again, the distracting view, as well as her erotic thoughts, placed out of sight. “Well, aren’t you the master of the public image? A fiancée and a large charitable donation all in one day!” she returned tartly, banishing the images that were parading through her mind’s eye.
“That’s half of doing business, Elaine. You should know all about that.”
Angry color rose in her cheeks. Leave it to this arrogant, infuriating man to remind her of her own personal black moment. “I do. I’m just not accustomed to seeing a public image that’s so well crafted and so far removed from the true individual.”
“Image is half, but business acumen and unflinching ruthlessness make up the rest.”
She felt as if his dark eyes were looking into her, as though he could see through her polished, smooth façade, to the insecure girl inside her. She didn’t like it.
“You have the ruthlessness, and a mercenary streak a mile wide. Selling yourself to me proves that.”
Heat spiked through her. “I did not sell myself to you. Don’t make me sound like a harem girl. I made a business deal with you. Yes, I used unconventional means, but there was no other way. Believe me, if there had been I would not be standing here with you.”
“You misunderstand, cara mia. I admire your ability to shut off all of your finer feminine emotions in favor of marrying for mutual gain.” He jerked open the passenger door of his car, which was parked closely to the curb. “So long as you remember that all you’ll be getting out of this is your father’s company.”
He dipped his head close to her, his dark eyes blazing. She smelled the clean, musky scent of his aftershave and it made her stomach feel as if it had inverted.
She swallowed. “As I’ve already assured you, I have no interest in a husband. Nor do I have any interest in your vast fortune. I want what belongs to me. As my father’s only child, I don’t think it’s outrageous for me to expect to inherit the company. I know I can do it, and if he would give me a chance he would know it too.”
“Is that what all this is about? Proving yourself to your father?”
She ground her teeth together. “No. I want to take control of my life and make something of myself. Surely you can understand that.”
She sank into the car and he slammed the door behind her. He got in and turned the key aggressively, the engine of the car purring like a big exotic cat. “I’m a self-made man. Whatever I have I’ve worked for.” He shifted into second gear as he eased into traffic and the engine growled as if emphasizing his point. “Including my reputation. A solid reputation is difficult to build, and one indiscretion can undo decades of work. That’s why image is so important. I’m sorry if you find it duplicitous.” His tone made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t sorry in the least.
“It’s why you need a wife,” she said, trying not to sound smug.
He laughed—a low, dark sound. “I don’t need you, cara, but I will certainly find use for you.” He flicked an unconcerned glance at his wristwatch—a watch that undoubtedly cost more than her annual salary. “I have an appointment this evening that I cannot break.” He turned to look at her, his dark eyes heating her, filling her with a longing that was nearly unbearable. “But you and I have a date tomorrow night.”
Chapter Three
THE phone had been ringing all day. How reporters had gotten hold of the extension to access his office line, he didn’t know. Once the phone stopped ringing he would have to interrogate his staff.
Granted, he wanted press. That was the point of the arrangement. But he certainly didn’t want the paps to have personal access to him. It was his PA’s job to field phone calls, and he paid her handsomely for it.
The trip to Tiffany’s had done its job, just as he’d planned. The picture of Elaine and himself entering Tiffany’s together, and exiting holding the telltale robin’s-egg-blue bags, had spawned a host of articles in every news source from the New York Times to TMZ—the latter speculating that it was a Mafia arrangement. His Italian heritage was all he could credit for the creation of that rumor. But then, when did a tabloid need anything silly like facts to come up with a story?
That, combined with strategically leaked information about his reservations at La Paz, a trendy restaurant in Manhattan, had the press engaged in a feeding frenzy to extract more information about Marco De Luca and his mystery woman.
He answered the phone midway through the first ring. “I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told everyone else. Ms. Chapman and I will comment when there is something to comment about.” Denial, in his experience, was the best way to fuel a rumor. The more he downplayed it, the more interest would be piqued.
“That’s a shame. I thought you’d be a little more straightforward with your own brother.”
“Rafael.” He was pleasantly surprised to hear his younger brother’s voice. Despite living less than half an hour from each other, with Marco being a workaholic and Rafael being a family man, it was hard for their schedules to coincide. “I take it you picked up the paper this morning?”
“Actually, Sarah showed me. She loves all forms of gossip media. Though I doubt you’re getting married to this woman to save her father from a mob hit.”
Marco laughed. “Not even close. The Mafia has recently quit asking my opinion on whose knees they should break.”
“Why are you getting married, then?”
Marco picked up a pen and started doodling on his day planner. “Oh, the usual reasons.”
“Love?” Rafael asked, in what Marco thought was a hopeful tone. His brother had drunk the love Kool-aid a couple of years ago, and seemed to think that he should want to do the same.
“No. Financial gain.” He explained how the arrangement had come about.
“Well, that sounds typically you,” Rafael grumbled.
“That’s because it is typically me, little brother. We can’t all be happy running a dinky little real estate office. Some of us have ambition.”
“My ‘dinky little office’ is a multi-million-dollar operation. And anyway, I have a wife I like to go home to every night.”
Marco cut him off. “Well, that’s fine for you. But I’ve raised one kid already, and I’m not planning on willingly doing anything like it again. Commitment of any kind is not on the agenda. This is for business.”
Rafael cleared his throat. “I know that taking care of me wasn’t easy. But I’m grateful for it.”
“I don’t need your gratitude, Rafael. You’re my brother and I did it gladly. But this marriage, if you want to call it that, is strictly a business arrangement. The length of the marriage isn’t indefinite. The longest it will last is a year. If neither of us has achieved our goal by then, we’ll go our separate ways—no harm, no foul.”
“And the woman? She knows that you’re not madly in love with her?”
Marco huffed out a laugh. “I’m a ruthless bastard, Rafael, but not even I’m that bad.”
Rafael sighed. “You’re going to go ahead with this no matter what I say, aren’t you?”
“Always. But you will agree to be my best man? It’s the only chance you’ll have.”
“Of course I will. No one else would do it.”
Marco barked out a laugh. “That’s probably true. Now, let me get back to work, little brother. Some of us work for a living.”
Marco turned back to his computer and tried to get on with his work day. The phone rang again.
The phone in Elaine’s workspace rang for what seemed like the twentieth time since she’d come back from lunch.
She looked at it dubiously. It was either a reporter or, worse, her father again. He’d called her at work early this morning, beside himself with glee that Elaine had managed to snare herself such a rich husband, and even happier that Elaine was finally settling down. Probably because her marriage, especially such a suitable one, would go a long way in blotting out that “unfortunate incident” from a few years back.
Thankfully he didn’t seem suspicious about her marrying the man who’d just bought his company. He was too busy congratulating himself for raising a daughter who had finally wised up to the fact that a woman’s place was in the home, not behind an executive’s desk. And probably too confident in his skills as a businessman to even begin to think that his daughter could have seen a loophole that he hadn’t.
She had ended the conversation with her father feeling renewed determination. That was exactly the reminder she’d needed for why this was necessary.
She picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said curtly.
It was another reporter, rattling off questions at lightning speed that were both personal and degrading. She hung up on the man mid-sentence, and rested her forehead on the cool veneer surface of her desk.
Her head popped up when she heard a knock on her office door—or, to be more accurate, her cubicle wall.
Marco’s handsome face appeared around the corner, followed by the rest of him. Her mouth went dry at the sight of him. Her memories of how gorgeous he was didn’t do him justice. And it had barely been twenty-four hours since she’d last seen him.
“Have the press been hounding you?”
She blew out a breath. “Yes. My phone has been ringing all day.”
“The cost of doing business.”
“So it seems.” She sighed. “You know, I’m not putting myself through this just because I feel some sort of sense of entitlement—like I deserve it because I’m my father’s daughter.” It seemed important somehow that she tell him the details to make sure he understood what she’d accomplished and why she felt the way she did. She shouldn’t care what he thought, but even as she reminded herself of that, she did care. “Four years ago Chapman’s nearly declared bankruptcy. I identified a flaw in the system and helped my father rework the way products were shipped. It shaved four points off the cost and brought the company back into the black. I proved myself. I saved the company. My family’s company. And still he’d rather let your corporation absorb what he built up from nothing than give it to me. All because I’m a woman. Do you see why I feel the way I do?”
“If everything goes according to plan, you should be getting exactly what you’re entitled to.” Truth be told, Marco wasn’t the most modern guy. He was of the opinion that in general women should stay home and take care of their kids. But he could understand why she wanted to claim what was rightfully hers. It was a feeling he understood very well.
“Well, Miss Chapman.” He took her hand and pulled her from her sitting position. “I believe you and I have a date.”
“I’ll just pop in and change. You can wait in the living room.” Almost as soon as Elaine closed the front door to her apartment someone knocked on it. She opened it to a woman with spiky pink hair and a man whose eyebrows were more immaculately groomed than her own. “Can I help you?”
“I’m not sure how to say this tactfully, so I won’t bother. You need some help if you’re going to look believable as my fiancée,” Marco said from behind her.
Elaine stared blankly at him, the realization of what his statement meant slowly dawning. “You’re giving me a makeover?”
“I’m not; they are.” He gestured to the two people still standing at the threshold.
Her ears were burning. A makeover! “I’m not your dress-up doll, De Luca. You can’t just mandate things like this!”
He sighed in exasperation. Why was he exasperated? She was pretty sure she ought to have the market on exasperation cornered at that moment.
“Why bother to fight me on this? You need it—trust me—and I’m going to get my way, so you might as well sit your cute little butt down.”
She gave an indignant squeak and stood facing him with her mouth open.
“What? No snappy comeback?” he mocked. “I think I should notify the press.”
She could not remember ever being so angry before. He was taking control from her bit by bit, and there was nothing that threw her off more than losing control.
She gave him a look that would have cowed most men. Leave it to her to get engaged to the one man who didn’t seem to find her the least bit intimidating. “The measure of a woman is not her looks.”
“Very nice sentiment. It’s also patently untrue.”
“It is not!” Great. Now he had reduced her to petty playground tactics.
“It most certainly is. And the same is true for a man. If you dress the part you’ll be more likely to get the part. If I showed up at a board meeting in swimming trunks I wouldn’t be taken seriously, and your feeble, stereotyped sense of style is hardly going to earn you any respect.”
Neither had dressing feminine, but she certainly wasn’t going to get into that with him. “Be that as it may,” she said crisply, “I’m not here to play trophy wife.”
He continued to smile for the benefit of the stylists, who were busy pretending to ignore the fight. She wasn’t fooled by the grin frozen on his face. It had hardened, and his jaw shifted, the muscles in his shoulders bunched tight. “You’re here to be whatever I ask you to be. And if I ask you to be my trophy then that’s what you’ll be. We do both want this marriage, don’t we…cara mia?” The threat was implicit.
Icy fingers wrapped around her heart. She couldn’t lose this deal. She had worked too hard. And she certainly wasn’t going to lose it over something as trivial as a hairtrim and a little lipgloss.
She sat in the chair that was moved for her, keeping her face carefully neutral.
The petite hairdresser talked animatedly while she worked, waving her scissors every now and then to emphasize her point. She put a row of foils on the top of Elaine’s hair, turning it a lighter, less brassy shade, and cut six inches off the length, bringing it up so that it just skimmed her collarbone, and added long layers to give it body and movement.
The man, Giorgio, was there for make-up and, Elaine wasn’t terribly surprised to hear, eyebrow waxing. Her face was scrubbed and peeled and waxed and finally painted.
Giorgio stepped back and examined her like an artist looking at his masterpiece.
“I’m brilliant,” he said as he handed her a mirror.
She barely recognized the woman looking back at her. She had fun, modern hair that looked full and healthy. Her face glowed, probably from the gold powder that Giorgio had brushed all over it, and her eyes looked larger and brighter with the expertly applied eyeshadow and her newly shaped brows. She hated so much to admit that it was an improvement. But it was.
Marco took her by the hand and pulled her up out of the chair, and dropped a light kiss on the tips of her fingers. Her legs wobbled.
“You look beautiful.”
A new knock on her door broke the moment, and Elaine wrenched her hand from his. “I assume you know who that is too?”
He nodded, and walked to the door and opened it, taking a garment bag and tipping whoever it was that had made the delivery. “Your dress for dinner.”
He placed the hanger in her hand, and she stared at it. He was changing everything about her, from her hair to her wardrobe, in order to make her look like his type. Either that or he was just trying to drive her insane.
She opened her mouth to offer up a sour comment, but the frosty look in his deep chocolate eyes stopped her cold. This was her end of the bargain—the part she had to keep in order to get what she wanted. She swallowed the comeback and went to her room, making her footsteps heavier than necessary, and unzipped the garment bag, revealing a filmy golden-brown dress with beaded spaghetti straps.
It fit her perfectly. Too perfectly. The gown clung to her curves like a second skin, showcasing her small waist and full bust, and revealing a little too much cleavage for her comfort.
Marco hadn’t even asked her size. He’d guessed. If there was a more potent reminder of just how much of a womanizer he was, she couldn’t think of it. And what was even worse was that she had a sneaking suspicion that the boiling feeling she got in her tummy when she thought about him with other women just might be jealousy. Which was a completely futile road to walk down. Men like Marco De Luca could have, and did have, any woman they wanted. And women like her were not exactly the women that men like him wanted.
