Bound By The Millionaire's Ring

CHAPTER TWO

WITH FURY BURNING a hole in the pit of her stomach, Isidora did her job and sent out the notices that a press conference would be held in the media room of Sauveterre International’s Paris tower. The skyscraper in Madrid was its twin, built the same year on the same specifications. Until today, Ramon had worked out of that office, which was why she had not requested a transfer back to her home country, where she could be closer to her parents.

She desperately wanted to call her father with the news that Ramon was retiring. Her father had been a fan of all types of racing long before his client’s son had begun entering grand prix races at a mere nineteen years. After showing some talent for racing while learning evasive driving, Ramon had spent an inheritance from one of his grandparents on a car and team, much to the late Monsieur Sauveterre’s dismay. Ramon had won that first year and had won or placed in nearly every race since.

Some of Isidora’s most cherished memories involved catering to her father as he parked himself in front of the television for a twenty-four-hour endurance race, or biting her nails alongside him as cars zoomed through the narrow streets of Monaco. In the beginning, she hadn’t been so much a fan of racing as she was of her father’s passion and delight in having a companion while he watched.

Of course, by the time she was twelve, she had definitely been a fan of one particular driver, heart pitter-patting as Ramon rocketed through turns and occasionally spun out only to straighten and take over the lead once again.

Ramon’s winning streak, coupled with his Sauveterre name and the fact he represented both France and Spain, made him more than a darling in the racing world. It set him on a level beyond infamous. Demigod.

He had certainly dazzled her young heart.

But after That Day, which had actually been an early morning, when she had bumped in to Ramon leaving her mother’s house wearing rumpled clothes, a night’s stubble and a complete lack of remorse, she had stopped watching the races with her father. She had claimed she was too busy with university, and would go to her deathbed before she admitted she had watched alone, in dorm rooms, or plugged into her laptop, tucked away in a solitary corner of the library.

She hated Ramon Sauveterre, but she had always needed to know he survived to race another day. How could she be disappointed on his behalf that he was giving it up? She ought to be doing a happy dance that he wasn’t getting what he wanted for a change, the arrogant, heartless tyrant.

Her father would be even more devastated, but as the former VP of PR for Sauveterre International, he would understand. Even she had understood, before embarking on this profession, that when it came to publicity, Ramon stole the lion’s share of attention as a way to take the fall for his family, particularly his sisters.

That behavior had continued even as she’d taken over her father’s position. Since she had come aboard earlier this year, she had watched it happen—if somewhat mysteriously. Ramon had to be the source of the leaks, but he took care of them in his own way, never involving her and never charging into her office to demand why she wasn’t preventing his scandals from going viral.

Still, his escapades always seemed to hit the light at the right time to pull attention from his siblings. When Angelique had been called a two-timer because photos of her kissing not one, but two different princes had turned up, photos from one of Ramon’s “private” parties had surfaced. He had been half-naked and canoodling with a stripper on each knee. When Trella reentered society via the wedding of a family friend, causing a social-media riot, a tape of Ramon’s blue-streaked voice mails had taken over the talk-show circuit. The minute Cinnia’s twin pregnancy had become a target, an online feud had erupted between Ramon and a fellow driver.

So, in a way, she wasn’t surprised he was announcing his retirement when a secret as big as Trella’s pregnancy was hitting the airwaves. It just made Isidora...sad. And sheepish, for calling him faithless.

Not that she would admit that after he had threatened her job and future, the power-drunk bastard. Why did he have to be so hard on her? What had she ever done except like him a little too much?

She smoothed her hair, painted her lips a demure pink and told her throat to stop feeling so raw at the injustice.

She texted Ramon that she would wait for him at the elevator, but Etienne joined her first. He had been her father’s protégé and had taken her out a few times last year, breaking it off when their sex life hadn’t progressed as he had desired. She had gone to London to finish her degree and had been quite happy to never cross paths with him again.

Then her father had retired and Henri had used a press-gang of euros and guilt trips to bring her aboard. Etienne had believed he was a shoe-in for her father’s position. Instead he had wound up answering to her. He was not happy.

“So it’s true?” he said, his tone bordering on belligerence.

“What’s that?”

“Trella is pregnant?” His tone rang with obviously. “That’s what this press conference is about, isn’t it?”

“I’m need-to-know, same as you.” She pretended to read something on her phone. “But today’s announcement is on another topic entirely.”

A beat of silence, then he asked, “You’re not going to tell me what that topic is?”

“You’ll find out in five minutes. That’s why I invited you to hear it firsthand.”

He swore, muttering something about favoritism.

When she made no response, he said, “So you don’t deny it?”

“Deny what?”

His jaw clenched, then he spat out what had clearly been chewing at him. “You were hired because of your father. You’re not even qualified. You don’t have my experience.”

“I was given a chance because of him, yes. But if I stuff things up, I can assure you they will have no qualms about letting me go.”

A door closed down the hall and they went silent as Ramon’s firm steps approached. She pasted on the same composed smile she would use to introduce him to the rabid hounds of the press.

“Henri.” Etienne greeted Ramon with a deferential nod. He waved at the elevator she’d been holding, inviting Ramon to enter ahead of him.

“Ramon,” he amended as he stepped into the car.

“Of course,” Etienne said, visibly flustered as he came in last and pressed the button for the bottom floor. “The memo didn’t specify.” He sent a malevolent look at Isidora. “I didn’t realize you were here. I suppose your brother is still in Spain with—”

“Bernardo never had a problem telling us apart,” Ramon interjected. “And neither does Isidora. It’s a quality we appreciate in those closest to us. Don’t ever gossip about my family again. I have no qualms about letting you go for that.”

* * *

It wasn’t working. After a brief ripple of flashes and murmurs over his announcement, the callouts quickly turned to Trella.

“Can you confirm the pregnancy?”

“When is she due?”

“Who is the father?”

“Ladies and gentlemen, please confine your questions to today’s topic.” Isidora leaned her fragrant hair under his nose so the microphone picked up her well-modulated voice. “Ramon is retiring from racing to free up his time to restructure the company. These are details that will be of interest to your financial and market readers as well as the sports fans.”

Such a smooth, unruffled command as she stayed on message, just like her father. As competent as she was, however, Etienne was right. She lacked experience. She didn’t have Ramon’s well-honed skill for manipulating the press—techniques he had learned from her father under the worst possible tutelage.

“Cuánto lo siento,” Bernardo had said fifteen years ago, pleading for Angelique’s forgiveness while Ramon had held her small, sweaty palm in his equally clammy hand.

The police thought a public plea for help would urge people to come forward with tips that could rescue their sister from her kidnappers.

“Emotions move people, Angelique,” Bernardo had said. “I don’t mean to cause you more pain. Lo siento mucho. I know you’re frightened and hurting, but please don’t try to hide your tears. People need to see how you are feeling. This is what makes it stick in their minds and moves them to act the way we need them to. Lo lamento mucho. I wish I didn’t have to ask this of you, but I need you to reveal your heart to the camera.”

It had been a disgusting thing to ask of a nine-year-old girl. Using her terror and anguish had bordered on exploitation. Their father hadn’t been able to watch, too filled with self-contempt at putting his shy, sensitive daughter through such an ordeal when she was already so traumatized. But they had been desperate, all of them.

Their father had held their weeping mother in the other room while Henri stood beside the camera, so Angelique could look at him as she pleaded for Trella’s return. Henri had worn the same ravaged expression that Ramon had felt upon his own face.

They had all developed a deep, deep hatred of the public attention that had never been invited and had turned their family into a target in the first place.

After Trella was rescued, and they were trying to move on with their lives, they had all found different ways of coping with the continued attention. Henri stonewalled at every opportunity. Angelique accepted and ignored. Trella had retreated to seclusion, becoming an elusive unicorn who had gone several years without being photographed.

Ramon preferred to play them at their own game. He didn’t care what was printed about him. It amused him when the facts were wrong, especially when those “facts” came from him. One of his fellow racers had gleefully exchanged a volley of insults with him for several weeks earlier this summer, to take the pressure off Cinnia as she floundered under the weight of two babies and more attention than anyone should have to suffer—especially if they hadn’t become inured to it the way the rest of his family had.

Now another baby was on the way. Ramon would quietly strangle his sister at some point for getting herself into that situation, but that was a job for another day.

Today’s task was to protect that unborn Sauveterre. And Trella. Despite the progress she had made in the last year, she was still very fragile. She had barely survived her kidnapping. The critical press that had dogged her for years after had made every effort to finish her off. Ramon was very cognizant that a renewal of that harsh focus could give her a setback.

“Is it true that Trella watched some of your races last year, by pretending she was Angelique?”

Yes, and that was a can of worms that needed to stay closed. Ramon had to bring the focus back to him. Leaving racing wasn’t doing the job. The dry topic of restructuring a corporation was certainly not holding anyone’s attention.

Emotions move people. Reveal your heart to the camera...

His mind raced to find and evaluate options, quickly discovering the line he would have to follow if he wanted to stay in front of the pack.

“The truth is, I’ve discovered something for which I feel more passion than racing,” he announced in a firm voice. “Hard to believe, is it not? Racing has been my life for over a decade, but with my brother so happily married and starting his family, I find I can’t wait to enjoy the same. I’m deeply in love and...well—”

He moved around Isidora so he was no longer behind the podium and sank to one knee beside her.

A massive gasp went through the crowd.

The bombardment of flashes and clicks increased, but the shouting of questions ceased. An eerie expectancy characterized that wordless explosion of repeated shutter clicks and flashes. The lights strobed against her skin as he looked up to Isidora’s incredulous expression.

She paled as comprehension dawned. Her eyes showed white around her gray irises. One hand came to her mouth and she might have said, “Don’t you dare.”

“Lo siento, mi amor,” Ramon said with loud pride over the mechanical clicks and pops. “I cannot sneak around any longer, trying to keep this quiet. I love you too much.”

He couldn’t recall ever saying those words to anyone except his mother and siblings. It felt strange, pulling disturbingly at that inner door he kept so firmly closed. The push-pull gave his voice the appropriate amount of unsteadiness as he continued.

“You said if I quit racing, you would marry me. So, mi corazón. Now will you make me the happiest man on earth? Our fathers would approve, you know they would.” He added the last as a reminder of where her loyalty should lie.

He had to give it to her. She had studied well under Bernardo. Her eyes filled with glossy tears and she didn’t try to hide them. Her fingers against her lips trembled. Her other hand was cold when he took it in his, her fingers lax with shock.

The white fingers against her mouth curled into a fist.

“Was that yes?” He pretended he had heard a response no one else could and leaped to his feet. As he crushed her to his front, he played up the joyful act as he exclaimed, “She said yes!”

Then he dug his fingers into her hair, tipped back her head and kissed her.

She stiffened. Her breasts crushed into his chest as she sucked in a shocked breath.

He closed his grip on her more firmly, subtly, but implacably. Do this, he urged, but even he had his limits when it came to cold-bloodedly achieving his goals. Rather than force the kiss upon her, he brought all his sensual skill to bear and persuaded her to accept it.

* * *

Oh, this rat wasn’t content to threaten her job or break her heart. He had to knock her self-esteem into smithereens. He rocked his mouth across her lips in exactly the way she had fantasized all through her teen years. Confident, hungry, enticing. Like he loved her.

Exactly as he’d just said he did.

She couldn’t let his declaration affect her. It was a lie. She wanted to scratch his eyes out for playing with her like this.

Her own eyes stung, as if they’d been scraped raw behind her eyelids, but her self-control checked out. The besotted girl who had fallen in love so long ago came running out of her room, where she’d been crying into a pillow for five years. She threw herself into Isidora’s body, heart singing with joy. She offered her mouth and drank up the sweet sensations that washed over her as Ramon acted, finally, like he wanted her.

Everywhere they touched, her skin bloomed with heat. Her bones turned pliant and the betrayal of his putting her on the spot like this evaporated. Her, the girl who had crushed so hard on a boy who was too old for her, the girl who had been ignored, rejected, then brutally passed over for her mother, the girl who had dealt with those horrible feelings of treachery and rebuff... She kissed him back.

She wasn’t terribly experienced and that was his fault, too. These were the arms she had wanted from the first. These were the lips. This was the man.

He drew back and she realized he had one possessive hand drawing slow circles on her butt. That’s why flutters of excitement were working up her lower back and into her loins. The fireworks that had been going off behind her closed eyelids were actually flashes. The roar in her ears was excited laughter and cheering. Sly jeering.

At her expense.

Oh, this mean bastard of a man. He didn’t even let her go when she pressed her weak arms against his chest and tried to make space to catch her breath.

His embrace tightened to keep her smeared across his front. All she could do was hide her face by resting her ear against his chest and look toward the back wall—where Etienne stared at her with his lip curled in contempt.

* * *

“You—” So many filthy names crowded her tongue as Ramon closed them into his office minutes later that she couldn’t pick one. “How could you?”

Her chest was tight, her voice fractured. Her entire world was topsy-turvy and it didn’t help that she was in the mirror image of Henri’s office, situated on the other side of a pair of connecting doors to her right. She definitely felt as though she stood on the wrong side of a looking glass.

Ramon threw off his jacket and slung it over the back of the sofa as he passed the conversation lounge. He dug his ringing phone from the pocket of his pants on his way to his desk in front of the tall windows.

“I need to take this. Stay here until you can find a suitable glow of delight. You looked like hell as we left. Good thing they only saw the back of you. Hola.”

“Are you serious?” a woman’s voice said. It sounded like Trella, but she and Angelique sounded very similar.

Ramon propped the phone against his laptop dock and glared at it. “This is your fault. Say ‘thank you.’”

Definitely Trella.

“Why would you do something like that to poor Isidora? She didn’t know it was coming, did she?”

“Did I take you by surprise, mi amor?” He turned his head to glance at where she stood like a whipped dog, hovering inside the closed door, trying to find her bearings among the cool masculine colors and implacable lines of the décor.

“Izzy’s with you? I’m so sorry, Izzy.” Trella was one of the few people who could get away with calling her that.

“It’s fine,” Isidora lied, forcing herself to move until she was close enough to see both Trella and Angelique in the screen, but not so close she joined Ramon in the tiny window. “I should have found a way to defuse those photos before they became more than we could contain. But we’ll need a statement from you. There’s no more avoiding it.”

“It’s not your fault.” Trella spoke in the same pained tone she had used each time Isidora had tried coaxing her toward a disclosure. “I know I have to cop to eating for two, but I don’t want...”

To tell the father. That was obvious, since she refused to name him even to her family. They all had a very good idea, however. Isidora had concluded herself that the man in question had to be Prince Xavier of Elazar, who had been photographed kissing “Angelique” earlier this year.

As Ramon had said himself, Isidora had never had a problem telling the twins apart. She had known straight away that Trella had been caught kissing that particular prince, while Angelique was the twin in the photos with Kasim.

Did Prince Xavier know which twin he had kissed? That was a question for another day. She imagined Angelique’s fiancé, now King Kasim, must have some opinions on the matter as well, since his intended appeared to have two-timed him. But Angelique had never said a word on the topic. Today, she showed nothing but loving protectiveness as she looped an arm around her sister and gave Trella a comforting hug.

“Why don’t I walk over right now and we can discuss some angles,” Isidora suggested. She could use an excuse to leave the building and get some air.

“Pahahaha!” Trella sputtered.

“You can’t!” Angelique cried at the same time, urgently shaking her head.

“Why not? Is there something going on at the design house—?”

“You’re one of us now, moza amiga.” Trella leaned forward as though speaking to a child. “You travel by armored tank and avoid leading the hunters to the door. Seriously, hermano. What were you thinking?”

“What do you mean?” Isidora asked, even as reality began to sink in. Declaring a fake engagement, putting her on the spot in front of the cameras like that, had been awful, but the greater ramifications began to strike her consciousness.

No. The explosion of excitement downstairs had been for Ramon. Hadn’t it? The paparazzi wouldn’t think they had found a fresh target in her, would they?

She had never thought of herself as naive, but suddenly saw herself as the world’s most gullible idiot.

“Have you talked to your parents?” Angelique asked with concern, voicing what was finally hitting Isidora’s sluggish brain. “They’re probably getting calls.”

Her mother.

Isidora touched her brow. All those years she had spent lying to the world, including to her own father, spinning and downplaying her mother’s affairs so their family wouldn’t be talked about and vilified. Now every single tryst would be dug up. Her mother’s past lovers might even throw their names into the ring of fame, just to have their moment in the spotlight. It didn’t matter that her parents had eventually divorced over Francisca Villanueva’s infidelity. She had cheated on Bernardo Garcia dozens of times and he would be forced to relive all of it. He would be humiliated all over again.

Isidora flung around to face Ramon. Of all the things he’d done, this was, by far, the worst. “I will never forgive you for this.”

CHAPTER THREE

ISIDORA’S MOTHER ANSWERED her call with “Oh, mi cielo. Henri just called. Such thrilling news! You’ve always loved Ramon so much—”

“Henri called you?” Isidora interrupted, praying her mother’s voice hadn’t carried.

Ramon was focused on his own phone as it buzzed with incoming texts. “Si,” Ramon said to Isidora. “Henri was watching the press conference. He’s sending a car for your mother now.”

“Henri is worried reporters will descend on you,” Isidora informed her mother.

Francisca would definitely say the wrong thing if she knew the engagement was a publicity stunt. Isidora didn’t clear up her mother’s misconception, and just said, “You should pack, Mama. Don’t keep them waiting.”

“Where is Ramon? I want to give him my love.” It was a twist of the knife her mother had plunged into her heart five years ago.

Isidora didn’t waste hatred on her own flesh and blood, though. She didn’t even bother speculating why her mother had taken Ramon to her bed when she had known how her daughter felt about him. She had processed long ago that her mother had an illness. An addiction. It looked like a dependence on sex, but it was actually a broken, empty soul starving for love and admiration. She was permanently an abandoned adolescent, like a broken runaway, with the same lack of judgment and gaping emotional needs.

Isidora would never feed in to that heartache by rejecting or reviling her. She did what she could to protect her. That’s why she held Ramon in such contempt. How could he take advantage of someone so vulnerable?

“Henri has spoken to both your parents. He’s bringing them to Sus Brazos for a few days while things blow over,” Ramon told her.

Don’t put them together, Isidora wanted to protest. Her parents were weak-willed where the other was concerned. It always ended the same, with her mother cheating and leaving for another man while her father nursed a freshly shattered heart. The hairline fracture left in Isidora’s heart pulsed with an old ache as she contemplated another round of emotional turmoil.

“Is that the doorbell, Mama?” Isidora broke in to her mother’s breathy ramblings. “Tell the staff to ask for identification. Call me when you’re settled. Te amo.”

Isidora ended the call and sent a text to her mother’s housekeeper with the same instruction about checking for identity.

“So,” Ramon said as their flurry of communication ended and they set aside their phones.