Claimed by the Millionaire: The Wealthy Frenchman's Proposition

“I can’t believe this,” she said.

“What?”

“I took a chance last night… Man, I knew that leaving the reception with you was a bad idea, but I was only thinking about what you might think when you saw me naked.”

Tristan drew back and tipped her head up toward his. “What I might think when you were naked?”

“Yeah, you know, stuff like, ‘she’s a lot flabbier than the women I’m used to….’”

“Ma petite, you were perfection in my arms last night.”

“You don’t have to lay it on that thick, Tristan. I look in the mirror every day and what I see staring back at me isn’t perfection.”

“Your mirror is not the best. Otherwise you’d never leave your flat in the clothes you wear.”

“Um…are you trying to make me feel better?” she asked.

He gave her a quick pat on the backside and stepped away. “I was, smart-ass.”

“So how are we going to deal with this?”

“We are not. I am.”

She shook her head. No way was she going to leave everything to Tristan. Thus far he hadn’t exactly been successful in getting the paparazzi off his own tail. And she wasn’t like him. She couldn’t afford a security detail, or a chauffeur. She took the subway to work and walked seven blocks from the station to her office.

“Tristan—”

“Enough. I said I will deal with it. Trust me.”

Tristan wasn’t surprised by the flash of temper in Sheri’s eyes. But he was surprised that she backed down. She crossed her arms over her chest, and he saw tears gleaming in her pretty brown eyes.

He was angry. At himself for not anticipating that photographers would be bold enough to take advantage of an intimate moment. At Sheri for looking up at him with wounded doe eyes that made him realize he had to fix this. She simply wasn’t as sophisticated as the heiresses and actresses he usually brought to his bed, and laughing off this kind of scandal was beyond her.

And mostly he was mad at the tabloid that had decided to print this picture. He suspected it was because the publisher, Gabrielle Damienne, was an ex-lover of his and they hadn’t parted on the best of terms.

“Sheri?”

“Yes.”

“Will you trust me?” he asked.

Distantly he heard the doorbell ring, but knew the housekeeper would answer it. He had the feeling that anyone who came to the door today he wasn’t going to want to see.

“I’m not sure.”

Was her trust really important to him? She was more than a one-night stand, she was a woman he cared for, but he wasn’t going to love her. So was trust really that important?

Yes, he thought. He wanted her to say she trusted him to handle this for her. He wanted to demand it. To make her admit that she would rely on him to handle this media mess.

“You seemed sure last night.”

She narrowed her eyes and then tipped her head to the side. “Last night was lust. Surely you knew that.”

He felt the burn of her words and that sickly sweet tone she used. He knew he’d been rushing her out the door until he’d seen the paper. He hadn’t really cared if she’d picked up on that fact earlier. But now, hearing those words come from her lips…he realized he already cared more for Sheri than was prudent.

She was dangerous because she made him feel way more than lust for her sexy little body, which she kept hidden under the ugliest clothing he’d ever seen on a woman.

Today, dressed in his sister Blanche’s blouse and trousers, she looked…almost beautiful. Actually, the only thing detracting from her beauty were those wounded eyes of hers. She was hurting, and a different man, a man who still had a romantic heart, would soothe her.

There was a rap on the door. “Mr. Sabina?”

“Please come in.”

Mrs. Thonnopulus opened the door. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but Count de Cuaron y Buatista de la Cruz is here to see you.”

Gui. He must have seen the paper this morning. And Tristan was glad to have his friend interrupt this situation with Sheri, which was going from bad to worse.

“Send him in.”

Less than a minute later Gui strode through the door. Wearing jeans and a designer one-of-a-kind shirt, Gui looked relaxed and casual. Not like the aristocrat he was, but more like the second son he also was.

“Ms. Donnelly, Tristan, please pardon my unscheduled visit. But I need a word with you, Tris.”

“About?”

“A sensitive matter,” Gui said.

“Does it involve the photos of us in the newspaper?” Sheri asked, all blunt American.

Tristan wanted to order her from the room so he could have a discussion with Gui without her sarcasm.

“Indeed. So you’ve already seen the papers.”

“Papers?”

“Reuters picked up the photo. It’s in every tabloid I’ve been able to put my hands on this morning,” Gui said.

Sheri started trembling. She turned her back on both men and dropped her head down to her chest. Tristan watched her, knowing she was dealing with the pain and unable to make himself walk across the room and comfort her.

He’d done enough of that this morning. He needed to keep a distance between them.

Gui arched one eyebrow at him and nodded toward Sheri. Tristan shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. Gui rolled his eyes and went to Sheri’s side. He wrapped one arm around her shoulder and handed her a snowy-white handkerchief.

And Tristan saw red. It was that simple. He knew he’d just dismissed her, but he couldn’t stand to see Gui touching Sheri. She was his. His.

He was across the room before he realized he was moving. He nudged Gui aside and pulled Sheri into his arms. She put her head on his shoulder and he felt the warmth of her tears sinking through the cotton fabric of his shirt.

A wave of total helplessness swamped him. How was he going to fix this? He’d spent the last eight years since Cecile’s death moving forward, never stopping to answer questions or challenge the paparazzi that followed him and the scandals he wove effortlessly.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her the way he hadn’t held a woman in eight long years. He held her to give comfort. He felt the shackles he’d tried to wrap around his heart shift.

He lifted her face to his, aware that Gui had stepped out to the balcony to afford them some privacy at this moment.

“Ma petite, stop your tears.”

“I… Yes, I will. It’s just, I have no idea how to handle this,” she said, sniffling delicately.

Damn those big doe eyes of hers, he thought. He wiped her cheek with his thumbs, brushed them down her face until the tracks from her tears were completely gone.

Step away, he told himself. Comfort was one thing, but kissing her now would be the kind of mistake he was too smart to make.

He’d started to lower his head, wanting to taste her one last time, and she rose on her tiptoes, eyes closing, and leaning into his body. And he knew that for her sake, so that he didn’t hurt her any more than he already had, he couldn’t kiss her.

So instead he brushed his lips against her forehead and stepped back. He turned away, but not quickly enough to miss the disappointment and hurt on her face.

Sheri had to get out. When Tristan turned his back and walked to the balcony, where she saw Gui waiting, she grabbed her handbag and made a beeline for the door. Enough of staying here. She was clearly not wanted.

And she had experienced more than enough of that in her life. She needed to move. She checked for her hotel-room key and her passport. Both were in her handbag. She also had enough money to pay for a cab.

She wondered if she should take the time to ask the housekeeper to call one for her or just take a chance at flagging one down on the street.

She heard the rumble of Tristan’s and Gui’s voices and knew that hanging around wasn’t going to work for her. She was probably going to cry again, which was a stupid “girl” reaction to the situation, but she was tired. And she’d made love—no she’d had sex—with a man she’d been fantasizing about for too long. And now the entire world would know.

The only silver lining she saw was that Aunt Millie was dead and wouldn’t see the picture.

She walked down the stairs to the ground floor and paused in the kitchen, looking around and remembering how excited she’d been when she’d followed Tristan through this room.

How very much she’d wanted that man.

And he’d wanted her, she thought. At least for one night.

She opened the kitchen door and stepped outside into a perfect February morning. Or at least, perfect on the island of Mykonos. It was a resort town. A place the trendy visited.

She should have felt out of place all week but there had been something very welcoming in Tristan’s group of friends. Ava had made her feel so at ease, but then again the other woman was an American and had somehow recognized the attraction that Sheri felt for Tristan.

“Mademoiselle?”

“Miss?”

“Hey, lady?”

The cries came at her from every corner as a group of photographers moved closer to her. She scrambled backward, reaching for the handle on the kitchen door. She tried to open it but her hands were sweating and she couldn’t get a good grip.

She covered her face with her hands, took a deep breath and then opened her mouth and screamed the way she’d been taught to in self-defense class. A deep-throated loud sound that actually stopped the questions that the photographers were throwing at her in every language imaginable.

Asking her name. What kind of lover Tristan was. Did she think she’d finally snagged the elusive bachelor?

The door opened behind her and she felt Tristan’s arm come around her waist as he drew her back into the kitchen and slammed the door closed.

She glanced up, thinking to thank him, but he looked so angry. So…not in the mood to be teased. She’d had no idea he could ever look that mad.

“What were you thinking? Why would you leave the house without my permission?” he asked.

She backed away from him but he put his hands on her shoulders and held her in place.

“I want answers, Sheri. This isn’t a game. The paparazzi are going to be all over you until this blows over.”

“I needed to get away,” she said.

“From me?”

She nodded. “I…I like you way too much to be your plaything.”

Tristan cursed under his breath, using the few French words she’d become very familiar with since he used them regularly in the office.

“Merde is right. I’m trying to be cool about this whole thing but…I’m not ready to this morning. I’m tired and my body still tingles from the last time we made love, and you were pushing me out the door this morning.”

She tucked a strand of her curly hair behind her ear and looked up at him from under her eyelashes. His expression was unreadable.

“So I was trying to leave,” she said, concluding as quickly as she could.

Tristan turned away from her, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “First of all, I’m not expecting you to be blasé about sleeping with me.”

“Well, that’s good. Because I’m not.”

He started to speak, but she held up her hand. She couldn’t bear to hear him say that she was one of many to him. “I don’t expect you to feel the same.”

He shook his head.

“I can still feel you on my body, ma petite. The remembered feel of your sheath clasping me is making it damned hard for me to let you go.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh. Maybe you don’t know quite everything.”

She looked down. “I never meant to imply that I did.”

He nodded. “Good. Then stop trying to manage this on your own. We need to deal with this together, or else you’re going to get hurt.”

She wrapped her arms around her waist before realizing what she was doing. The move was a dead giveaway that she felt vulnerable, and Tristan already had seen her with tears in her eyes. She knew him well enough to know that weakness wasn’t something he understood.

He was immune to that flaw. And if he wanted her by his side, wanted them to be a team, she wanted to be worthy of staying with him.

This was the first time a man had come after her and brought her back. The first time a man hadn’t walked away from her, or simply let her walk away.

She knew better than to read too much into it, but she felt her heart beat a little faster.

Six

The getaway was simple. Gui, Sheri and Tristan left together via Tristan’s dark-windowed Mercedes sedan, which the housekeeper drove to the private airport where the Seconds corporate jet waited for them. They had decided that Sheri would accompany Tristan to Paris and then back to Manhattan instead of getting on the commercial flight straight back to New York that he’d booked for her return.

She’d lost that wounded-doe look and smiled at him whenever he looked at her—which wasn’t as often as he would have liked, but ignoring her was the only way he could even pretend to himself that he wasn’t starting to care for her.

In that moment when they’d heard her scream, he’d felt fear for another person for the first time in eight years. And the fact that he’d wanted to first protect her and then rip apart the photographers who had threatened her, had been a warning Tristan couldn’t ignore.

Despite the fact that he knew Gui was right and the only way to protect Sheri was to keep her by his side, another part of him—the man who’d experienced the crushing blow of losing the only woman he’d ever loved—wanted her far away from him.

“Have you been to Paris before?” Gui asked Sheri.

“No, never. This trip to Mykonos was the first time I’ve been out of the U. S.”

“You should travel more,” Gui said. “Tristan, you should make sure that Sheri has the opportunity to see the world. Do you know she still lives in the same brownstone that she was raised in?”

Since he wasn’t deaf and the corporate jet wasn’t a jumbo one, he’d heard the details of her life as Gui pried into her past. He knew it was Gui’s way, but he hated the attention that his friend was giving to Sheri. And hated even more the way she soaked it up. She was hungry for a man to talk to her.

“I heard.”

“It’s in Brooklyn.”

“Thanks, Gui. I know where my assistant lives,” he said.

Sheri flushed and he saw her sink deeper into her chair. He’d crossed a line with that comment. He didn’t need to put her back into the employee role at this moment.

Gui gave him a sharp look and turned back to Sheri, telling her about his latest escapade with one of his cousins who was at the Spanish royal court.

She laughed, but the sound was hollow and he knew he’d done that. Taken away her joy by being a complete ass. He should apologize but, when she was ignoring him, he knew that they were both moving apart. The way they needed to.

But dammit to hell, if Gui didn’t move away from her, he was going to leap across the aisle and strangle his friend. “Sheri, when you have a moment I’d like to discuss a few things with you.”

“What about?”

“Work. Our delay in returning to the office will mean rescheduling some appointments.”

“Of course. I didn’t bring my laptop with me….”

“You can log in on mine,” he said.

“Surely that can wait,” Gui said.

Sheri patted Gui on the arm. “No, it can’t. I don’t mind working. It’ll give me something to occupy my mind.”

Sheri moved across the aisle so that she was sitting in one of the captain’s chairs and she turned it to face him. He turned his laptop around on the built-in desk. She leaned forward, a lock of her hair slipping free and brushing against her face.

She concentrated on typing her log-in to the network and then her password.

He leaned back in his leather chair and watched her work. Since this was the corporate jet owned by Seconds, there were three distinct areas. Gui’s area, where Sheri had been sitting, was decorated in a classic style very much befitting an aristocrat. There was something quite traditional about Gui underneath his rebel exterior.

Christos’s area was modern and sleek. Eschewing anything traditional due to a severe disagreement with his father when he was eighteen, Christos always chose things that wouldn’t fit the traditional Greek way of life that his father, Ari, wanted for him.

Tristan’s area was a blend of modern and classical. His desk had been handed down to him by his grandfather. It was old, though well polished, and except for two marks, looked to be in perfect condition. There was a small ink stain near the hole where an inkwell was once kept, and under the blotter was a series of initials. Each Sabina who inherited it added theirs to the line.

For all that he was a second son, he wasn’t like Christos, who hated his family’s traditions. He liked knowing his place in the Sabina line. But then, he had sisters and a large pool of cousins. Christos had recently lost his only brother in a plane crash.

“When do you anticipate being back in Manhattan? You have two video conferences scheduled this week. Rene could handle them in your place.”

“I saw those e-mails, too. I think we need to get Maurice on the phone to talk through the book for Global Traveler. The new layout is supposed to start in the next issue, and I’m still not satisfied with the changes.”

Sheri typed as he talked. He knew she was jotting down notes. He did like how efficient she was. Even before they’d been lovers, he’d liked watching her work. Her fingers were long and elegant. He would have said they were the most attractive part of her, before he’d seen her last night.

Her body was exquisitely formed with generous curves, but not overblown. And she’d been—

“Tristan?”

“Hmm?”

“I asked if a conference call will be fine? We can get the book scanned into a PDF and have it available this afternoon.”

“Yes, that is fine,” he said, and turned his attention to work. It was the one safe thing they had between them, and he knew that, when they landed at Le Bourget airport in Paris, he’d once more be focusing on the woman and not his executive assistant.

Tristan’s sister Blanche waited for them in the chauffeur-driven Mercedes at the airport. Sheri immediately wanted to hide back on the plane. But that was cowardly and she’d… Well, she wasn’t going to do it, no matter how tempted she might be.

“Bonjour, Tristan,” Blanche said, embracing him. She continued speaking in French, which Sheri couldn’t follow at all when the speaker was talking as quickly as Blanche was.

It was clear from her tone that she was upset with Tristan and reading him the riot act. Sheri stood in the shadows and watched the two interact. She saw the affection beneath the lecture.

And Tristan smiled down at his sister indulgently. Sheri watched the two of them longingly. She’d always wanted a big family. Not necessarily blood relatives, but a network of people who cared deeply for her and let her do the same for them. It was clear that Tristan had that.

Watching him with Gui and Christos over the last week had given her a glimpse into that world. Seeing him with his sister added another dimension.

“Why are you hiding over here?” Tristan asked, coming back to get her. “Blanche wants to meet you.”

She took a deep breath. “I wasn’t hiding. I wanted to give you a moment alone with your sister.”

“I appreciate that.”

“It looked like she was lecturing you. I didn’t think you’d tolerate that from anyone,” Sheri said, without really thinking.

Tristan smiled, and for the first time she realized that he usually had a practiced smile for business, because this one lit up his eyes. He loved his family, she thought. She couldn’t help smiling back at him.

“She’s eleven months older than I am and thinks she can boss me around.”

“Not many people can do that because of your arrogant attitude.”

“Arrogant?”

“Um…I think you know what I mean,” she said, blushing a little because she’d never meant to say that out loud.

“I really do not know. Explain it to me.”

She shook her. “I’m not myself today. I didn’t mean to say that.”

Tristan tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. She tried not to react to his touch. But everything feminine in her came to attention. She almost sighed, but that would have been too revealing. So instead she took a deep breath.

“Looks like she does a fairly good job at it. Bossing you around that is,” Sheri said.

“Well, she is not the only one,” Tristan said, arching one eyebrow at her as he led her across the tarmac toward the waiting car.

“I would never try to boss you around,” she said.

“I might let you in bed,” he said, and they were at Blanche’s side before she could respond.

“Blanche, this is Sheri Donnelly. Sheri this is my sister, Blanche Sabina-Christophe.”

Sheri held her hand out to the other woman but Blanche leaned forward and air-kissed her cheek. Sheri did the same but felt kind of silly. Blanche smiled kindly at her.

“Your name is familiar to me. Have we met before?”

“She works for me in the New York office,” Tristan said.

Blanche’s eyes narrowed as she glared up at Tristan. Sheri took a step back as the affable woman of just seconds before was replaced by someone who definitely resembled Tristan when he was angry.

“I don’t think we’ve had the chance to meet before, Mrs. Sabina-Christophe.”

“Please, call me Blanche.”

Sheri nodded. There was renewed tension between brother and sister and she had no idea what to say to break it. As Tristan’s assistant she was used to stepping in and smoothing over awkward situations but this…there was no way she could interfere.

“Um…I guess you saw the tabloids.”

“Oui. The entire family is gathering to discuss it.”

Sheri took a step backward, longing to hide back on the jet. Even more, she yearned for her small, comforting brownstone. The one place in the world that had always been her constant. The one place in the world where she felt safe.

“Can you give us a moment, Blanche?”

“Certainly.”

“Why don’t Blanche and I take the second car and give you and Sheri some time alone on the drive to your parents’ house?” Gui said.

“I need to talk to Tristan about some family business,” Blanche said.

“I don’t mind riding with Gui,” Sheri said, thinking that would be the easiest solution.

“I would mind. Blanche can go with him. We need to talk.”

Sheri realized that his indulgent attitude toward his sister only lasted for so long. The commanding man Tristan normally was had come back to the surface.

“Tristan—”

“Blanche, this is not open to discussion.”

She shrugged in a way that Sheri thought was distinctly French and turned to Gui. “I suppose that will be fine. You must be on your best behavior, Gui.”

He lifted Blanche’s hand to his mouth and brushed his lips across the back. “With you that will be easy.”

“I’d be flattered if I didn’t know you were always trying to charm anyone female.”

Gui laughed and said, “You always say the nicest things.”

“Your ego can stand it.”

“Indeed,” Gui said, leading her away.

Tristan led Sheri to the car, and she slid inside. She started to move across the seat to make room for him, but he closed the door behind her and walked around toward the other side. She sat there for a moment feeling as if she’d stepped into someone else’s life. And realized that she wanted it.

Tristan wasn’t sure that coming to Paris was the best idea he’d ever had. But he needed the resources of his family and he’d wanted to take Sheri to the safest place he could think of. The Sabina house on the outskirts of Paris was just that.

His grandmère had been a famous actress in Europe, and his grandpère, a director twenty years her senior. They’d had a scandalous love affair that had resulted in a marriage that lasted for fifty years, until his grandpère’s death. And the paparazzi had hounded them all their lives.