Marriage Made on Paper

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“Gage,” the blonde said breathlessly. “I’m so glad I saw you here. There’s dancing out in the courtyard,” she added.

She noticed that Gage didn’t bother with his signature smile. “Thank you. I’ll be sure to dance with my date.” He hooked his arm around her waist and slid his fingers over her hip, the light touch sending heat ripping through her body. When he brought her close to his side her legs felt as if they might buckle.

She’d never in her life been affected by a man’s touch like that. Of course, that could be because she rarely let men touch her. She’d watched her mother go through an endless succession of men. Men who had asked her mother to uproot them and move from one town to another, men who had berated and belittled both of them, men who had always held the control over both of their lives. Lily had never wanted that. By the time she was thirteen she’d decided that from what she’d seen of relationships she wanted nothing to do with them.

She’d finally left home at seventeen and moved to California. Ten years later she had her own business, a beautiful apartment, complete control over her own life, and still no man. She had never regretted it. Some of her friends thought she was crazy, and insisted she was missing out on one of life’s fundamental experiences. But every time she agreed to go on a date with some guy her friends promised would be perfect for her, she found herself dissecting his behavior, imagined how the possessive hand on the curve of her back would change to a fist intent on controlling her once the newness of the relationship wore off. She didn’t have second dates.

It was fine for her friends. Fine for other women who hadn’t seen the steady digression of a relationship over and over again.

But Gage’s touch didn’t make her think of being controlled. She couldn’t think of anything. All she could feel was the gentle sweep of his fingers over the curve of her hip.

“Care to dance?” he asked, his lips close to her ear, her body responding so eagerly she felt certain he would be able to see just how much he was affecting her. Her breasts felt heavy and she was thankful for her moment of near-defiance in purchasing the navy blue. Hopefully it would help conceal her tightened nipples.

The blonde was giving her a glare that had the potential to turn a lesser woman to stone, and her pride only left her with one answer to give Gage. “Of course,” she said.

In a moment of total madness, she reached up and touched his face, the dark stubble there scraping her palm. Her heart hammered hard, her throat suddenly dry. She dropped her hand back to her side. She’d thought about touching his face before. Fleeting moments that had invaded her thoughts while she fought for sleep at night, fantasies that had now bled over into reality. Her palm still burned.

She followed him through the hallway lined with more aquariums and out into one of the outdoor courtyards where a band was playing.

He took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers and drawing her into his body, his expression intense. Her heart was thundering in her chest now, and there was no pretending that what she felt wasn’t attraction. The most acute, real, dangerous attraction she’d ever felt in her life.

“This is inappropriate,” she said, horribly conscious of the fact that her voice felt as shaky and jittery as her whole body felt.

“Would you rather I danced with Cookie?”

She snorted a laugh, then covered her mouth with the hand that had been resting on his shoulder. She lowered it when she caught her breath, not sure whether or not she should put it back on him. “That’s not really her name is it?”

“It might be a nickname, I’m not sure.”

“You never asked?”

“It wasn’t important at the time.”

That spoke volumes about the way Gage treated relationships. He avoided commitment with flings. She avoided relationships by not having romantic contact with men altogether. But they were both avoidance tactics. In that, at least, they obviously saw eye-to-eye. Relationships were overrated.

Gage put his hand on the small of her back, on her bare skin, and he felt a small shiver go through her whole body. She was feeling every bit of the attraction he was. Strange, because he had only ever seen her in her buttoned-up professional mode, now suddenly she was unbuttoned and very, very hot. Although, she’d always been hot. He’d thought more than once about uncoiling her tightly wound hair and watching the dark curls tumble down.

She shifted against him, her hip brushing his body intimately. His muscles tensed and desire roared through him, his body hardening at the accidental contact.

He drew her closer, letting her feel. Letting her know exactly what she was doing to him. He didn’t hit on employees as a rule, ever. But she tempted him. And that was a new experience. Women appealed to him, and he desired them. But he’d never considered them a serious temptation. If it wasn’t the right time, it was easy for him to leave his date standing on the doorstep and go home without taking her to bed. There had been a lot of times in his life when pleasure had had to be deferred due to responsibility, either because of his family or because of business. He was an expert at deferring pleasure if necessary. But this feeling, this hot surge of lust coursing through him, didn’t feel like something that could be deferred or denied.

Her head jerked up, her dark eyes wide, her breath coming in short bursts. “That’s definitely not appropriate,” she whispered.

“Maybe not, but I’m enjoying it.”

She licked her lips, the slow, sensual movement hitting him like a punch to the gut. She looked down again, not saying anything, but leaning in a little bit closer, her breasts brushing his chest.

Her eyes fluttered closed, her lips parted slightly and she swayed a bit in his arms. Then she went stiff, pulled back quickly, her brown eyes huge with shock.

“Did you make all the bids you were planning on making?” she asked, her breasts rising and falling with her labored breathing.

“Yes,” he said, trying to ignore the ache of unsatisfied desire that was gnawing at him.

“Then we should go. We’ll probably have another early morning.”

She turned and walked back into the building. He shook his head. She was right to have stopped things, as much as his body rebelled against the admission. He valued her too much as an employee to sacrifice it for sex. Even if it would be incredibly hot sex.

He liked to keep his life compartmentalized. There was work, there was his family life, and then there was his sex life, and he didn’t combine them. Ever.

Though with the memory of her in his arms, how soft and sweet she’d felt there, how close he had come to tasting her lips, it was hard to remember why that was.

Lily couldn’t sleep, and it was all Gage’s fault. And hers. He’d nearly kissed her. She’d nearly kissed him. Curiosity. That was all it had been. The need to know what it would be like. She’d wondered about it. She wouldn’t be human if she hadn’t.

Gage was so much more than any other man she’d ever met. More successful, more driven. And those were things that appealed to her. But she had never felt so compelled to abandon all of her tightly held business principles for a few moments of … of … lust.

She hadn’t wanted to pull away, hadn’t felt like he was trying to manipulate her in any way. She’d felt … passion. For the first time in her life she’d experienced real, physical passion. She’d always felt passion for her work, a drive and a need to succeed, but that was where it had been contained.

Her body still felt hot and restless, unfulfilled.

“I don’t want Gage,” she told her empty bedroom. “I don’t.”

He was her boss. If she wanted a relationship, which she definitely didn’t, it wouldn’t be with him. Her job was too important to risk it by blurring personal and professional lines. It had never been an issue for her before.

Her clients had been almost exclusively men, and even when they’d shown interest, like Jeff Campbell, she hadn’t been remotely tempted to accept. There was a clear line drawn in her mind. Work was work.

She clenched and unclenched her fists, trying to make the shaky feeling go away. The worst thing wasn’t that Gage was her boss, it was how out of control he’d made her feel. She’d kissed men before—several of them—and the experience had ranged from completely undesirable to okay. None had lit her on fire from the inside out. But the near kiss with Gage made her feel like she was burning.

The worst thing was that she knew that if his lips had touched hers, that last shred of sanity would have turned to a vapor and any inclination she had to resist him would be gone with it. And when had she ever struggled with her willpower? She created her own destiny. She was in charge of her own life.

She let out a low growl of frustration and tossed off her covers before stalking over to her computer. If she wasn’t going to get sleep, she would get work done.

She opened up her email account and clicked open the message that she knew contained her search engine alerts on Forrestation Inc. and Gage Forrester. It was important for her to keep tabs on what was being said about him so she could release a statement if necessary.

She scanned the message and her stomach dropped. She bit out a curse and picked up her phone, speed dialing Gage’s number, not caring that it was three in the morning.

“Gage, we have a very serious problem.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“THIS is garbage.” Gage threw the printed papers back down on his desk, his muscles tense, his entire body wound up and ready to attack at any moment.

Hearing Maddy’s voice, thick with tears on the other end of the phone a few moments before, had made him feel capable of very serious violence against the person responsible for spreading such venomous rumors.

It made him feel physically ill, seeing the article written with such foul accusations. Accusations directed at Madeline. She was doing well now, had graduated from college, was finally coming out of her shell and putting their neglectful childhood being her. She’d been such a quiet little girl, as if she was afraid to step out of line. Afraid he might abandon her, too. But she’d grown so much in the past few years, and now this threatened to destroy everything Maddy had battled so hard for.

“I agree,” Lily said. “It’s not news, and it’s a shame we live in a culture that thinks it is. But the simple fact is that we do, and this story is going to be in every print and digital publication this morning, from respected newspaper to scandal rag.”

“She doesn’t need this. She’s been through enough. She just graduated. It’s hard enough finding a job, and she won’t let me help her. Add this, and no one will hire her.”

Lily sucked in a sharp breath and tugged on her suit jacket. “I know, Gage. Trust me. I’m fully aware of how hard it is to be a woman in the corporate world, and a …” She looked at him, her expression filled with distaste. “Sorry, but a sex scandal is hard to move past. For the woman, at least.”

“She wasn’t involved with him,” Gage growled, skimming the article on the top of the stack again. “She swears she wasn’t. She says he was her boss, she was doing an unpaid internship, and he came on to her. She refused to sleep with him, and now, now that his wife is leaving him because he’s a lecherous old jackass, he’s blaming Maddy to try and make her look like she was some kind of predatory female out to destroy their marriage, out to take him down and ruin his life.”

“Regardless of whether she had a relationship with him or not …”

Gage’s heart thundered harder, rage pounding through him. “She didn’t.”

Lily put her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, you know your sister better than I do, if you say she didn’t, she didn’t. But now that it’s out like this … there’s very little we can do to fight it. It’s going to be everywhere. Even if she were to come back with her own version of the story, which I think she should do in the future no matter what, this is going to hit like an explosion. William Callahan is so high-profile … and his wife—soon to be ex-wife—is more famous than he is.”

Gage was familiar with the man’s trophy wife. She’d come on to him at several industry parties, and, despite the fact that she was a world-famous model whose looks had, literally, been memorialized in song, he’d never even been tempted. He didn’t poach other men’s wives. He didn’t need to. But she was definitely open to playing around behind her husband’s back, and clearly Mr. Callahan was no better. And they were trying to drag his sister into their sordid lives.

“Infamous is more like it,” he bit out. “I’ll ruin him for this.”

“I don’t blame you, Gage, I don’t, but before you engage in serious ruination, we need to figure out how we’re going to handle the media firestorm Madeline is about to get hit by.”

Lily had met Maddy on a few occasions. She was a pretty brunette, petite and fine-boned, delicate and small, none of the height Gage had inherited passed down to her. She looked young, and in some ways seemed younger. It was obvious that Gage doted on her, and that, despite that, Madeline made an effort to be independent, which Lily completely respected.

She also understood the kind of dilemma she found herself in. It was hard for a woman to be taken seriously in business. It was hard to find the right balance. Dress up too much, men make assumptions about what you’re there for … not enough and you would get torn apart by the other women.

“We can create our own distraction.”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “No. I don’t know what you’re thinking, I just know it’s probably going to create a big cleanup for me.”

He shook his head. “It won’t. But it will take the focus off of Maddy. If we can bury this story with one of our own, it will at least soften the blow.”

“You have a valid point, but I seriously doubt you’re going to magically stumble upon something that overshadows a scandal of this magnitude.”

“I thought I might announce my impending marriage.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Marriage? You aren’t getting married.”

“No. But don’t you think it would make a nice headline?”

She let out a completely undignified, involuntary snort. “No one would believe it.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No. You’re not exactly the marrying kind.”

“And why is that?”

“Marriage requires monogamy,” she said. At least it was supposed to require monogamy. She’d witnessed all the drama that came when people strayed. Her mother had thrived on the drama, the jealousy.

“I don’t cheat on women. If I’m attracted to someone else, I end the relationship I’m in. I see no point in pretending to want one woman if I want another.”

“You seem to change the woman you want with alarming frequency.”

“And that’s why it would be such a big story if I were preparing to get married. I’ve dated enough actresses and models to have serious headline appeal with the tabloids.”

“Okay, yeah, I’ll give you that. But where are you going to find a woman who won’t want to marry you for real? One who will keep her mouth shut about the arrangement.”

She looked back at Gage—his blue eyes were trained on her and a slow smile spread over his handsome face.

“Lily.”

She didn’t like the way he said her name, with intent, his low voice rolling over it, making it sound like a verbal caress. And it made her stomach tighten and her breasts feel heavy. Like last night. Like when he’d held her in his arms.

“I want you to marry me.”

She could only stare at him. Words were failing her, which was virtually unheard-of. She always knew what to say. She always knew how to respond in every situation, quickly and efficiently, cutting if necessary. She was never speechless. Except she was now.

She opened her mouth, then shut it again, trying desperately to think of some kind of sharp, witty response. Instead she settled for simple. “Not really, though.”

A short chuckle escaped his lips. “No. Not really. I just want you to be my fiancée.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No! Absolutely not.”

“How much do you value your job, Lily?”

She locked her teeth together. “It’s everything to me. I’ve worked very hard to get where I am.”

“It would be a shame to have any of your hard work compromised, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” she bit out.

“I don’t want Madeline’s hard work compromised because she got tossed to the wolves. I don’t want her to lose all of the progress she’s made, all of the confidence she’s managed to gain.”

The threat, though he didn’t state it explicitly, was certainly implied. If she wanted to keep her job, she had to play by his rules.

“And it has to be you,” he continued. “You and I were seen together at the gala last night, and we were definitely breaching the boundaries of professionalism.”

“We were well within normal boundaries of a boss and employee attending an event together,” she said, even as images of him holding her close flashed through her mind.