Claimed by the Millionaire: The Wealthy Frenchman's Proposition
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“Why wouldn’t that work?”
“Because I need you in the New York office,” he said. He wasn’t giving her up. She was one of the only two assistants he’d ever had that didn’t annoy him and actually made him want to go into the office, Lucille being the other.
“I’m still not following why you came up with this solution,” she said. She wasn’t belligerent or demanding, which he would have brushed aside.
“The only thing that will get the press off your back is if we take control of what they are covering. A wedding is the kind of thing they eat up.”
She tipped her head to the side and gave him a long, level stare. “So, we’re getting married?”
“No, just planning a wedding.”
She shook her head. “Do I seem that desperate to you?”
“No, you don’t seem desperate.”
“Well, then why do you think I’d settle for being your pretend fiancée?”
“Because you aren’t going to be able to stay here at my parents’ house the way I’d hoped. And your home in Brooklyn isn’t going to offer you any protection from the paparazzi. They’ll follow you from the second you leave until the moment you return. Are you ready to deal with that on your own?”
She shook her head and then turned away from him. He let her have a moment of privacy, but he could sense her weakening and he’d already decided this was best for both of them.
And he wasn’t backing down. Sheri was going to be standing in his parents’ den really soon, toasting their engagement with a smile that would convince the world that they were the real deal.
He went over to her, touching her shoulders. How he’d never noticed her before last night still amazed him. She had an incredible body. He lowered his head, dropping a soft nibbling kiss against the back of her neck. He ran his hands down her arms and drew her back against his body.
“I want what’s best for you, ma petite,” he said, unable to resist kissing her collarbone.
Her skin tasted faintly sweet, something he’d never noticed in a woman before. But she tasted good to him. And he brushed his tongue against her smooth skin to take a little more of that taste into his mouth.
She shivered in his arms, arching against him, tipping her head back against his shoulder. Her eyes were wide as she looked up at him. So very wide and vulnerable.
Her mouth trembled and he knew she was on the cusp of giving in to him. He leaned down and kissed her. Not softly, but with all the passion inside of him. He kissed her like a man who was hungry for his woman and wanted everything that she had to give.
He broke the kiss only when he needed to breathe and immediately came back to her again, sucking her lower lip into his mouth and drawing on it. She moaned and turned in his arms until he felt the curve of her breast brush his upper arm. Her nipple was hard; he felt it through the fabric of her maillot.
He felt a twinge of conscience at pushing her now. But in the end, he knew what he had to do to take care of her. This was all that was in his control.
“Tristan?”
“Hmm?”
“I… Why don’t you want to really marry me?” she asked, her voice so soft it was hardly a whisper.
He closed his own eyes. “I told you I had my once-in-a-lifetime love, remember?”
“Yes, of course I do. But what has that got to do with marriage?”
Tristan turned her in his arms and tucked her up close to his body, trying not to remember how perfectly they’d fit together when making love despite the differences in their heights. Once he’d been buried hilt-deep in her body, he’d felt the perfection of it.
He drew her back into his arms, lowering his head once more, wanting to take her mouth and stop her questions.
But she pulled away. “No more. I want you, but I want answers, too. I don’t understand why you won’t really marry me.”
“It is not you,” he said, the words spilling out. “I will never marry again.”
“Then why pretend to be engaged?”
He pushed his hands through his hair and turned his back on her. He couldn’t look at her and lie. When she’d said she couldn’t lie to him, in the office a few short weeks ago, he’d had no idea what she felt like. Now he did.
And he wasn’t giving her up. He hadn’t gotten Sheri Donnelly out of his system yet and he wasn’t going to let her go until he did.
“It’s the only way I can protect you the way I want to, ma petite.”
“Why do I need protecting?”
“Because this is my world and I seduced you without thinking of the consequences.”
“You didn’t force me to sleep with you,” she said, cheeky tone in place.
“I know that, Sheri. But you weren’t aware of what it is like to be hounded by the press and I should have taken steps to protect you and your identity from them.”
Even if she’d known how things would turn out this morning, Sheri doubted that she would have not gone with Tristan last night. Even now, sitting in a well-appointed formal living room surrounded by the entire Sabina family, she didn’t regret her decision.
Tristan sat next to her, his arm resting casually over her shoulders. He toyed with her hair, something he did a lot. Sitting there she felt a sense of rightness all the way to her soul and she knew she’d said yes to his outrageous proposal for one reason and one reason alone. She was going to find a way to make Tristan Sabina fall in love with her.
She was going to do everything in her power to keep this man who’d stayed. And she was coming to realize that Tristan gave her clues all the time about what it was that he enjoyed about her.
If she paid attention, she could be what he needed her to be for him to fall in love with her. It didn’t have to be the all-encompassing love that he’d had with his late wife. She’d be satisfied with just some kind of deep caring from him.
She settled into the curve of his body as Rene lifted his champagne flute and said something in French that she couldn’t understand. Tristan squeezed her shoulder and lifted his own flute. So she did the same, taking a delicate sip of the delicious French sparkling wine.
Tristan leaned closer to Sheri and whispered directly in her ear. “Rene said that he wishes us happiness and laughter all the days of our lives.”
She smiled up at him. “Well, I want that, too.”
Tristan’s eyes narrowed a bit but he dropped a quick kiss on her nose. She realized that he was going to fight her the entire time. Try to keep her in the role of pretend fiancée. And the only way she was going to get him to think of her as anything else was to make him need her.
He needed her body, but was sex enough? Could she hold him with sex when she’d never really tried to keep any of her previous lovers…? Okay, there hadn’t been that many, but she had to look at it from a historical perspective.
Blanche stood up next. Tristan’s sister made Lucille look like a country bumpkin. She was simply elegant and sophisticated. She spoke in a sweet tone, smiling indulgently toward Tristan.
Again the toast was in French. Tristan didn’t lift his glass this time. Instead he put it on the table and stood up, leaving the room without a comment.
Sheri felt awkward. “I’m sorry, my French isn’t good enough to know what you said.”
Blanche shook her head. “I just said that we were happy to see him moving past the pain of heartache and moving into a new love.”
But the way they were all staring at her, she realized they knew what she’d known all along. That Tristan wasn’t in love with her. It was fine for the two of them to know that lust was all they had between them. But his family…
“I’m not the love of his life,” she said.
“I’m not so sure about that, Sheri. You’re the first woman he’s brought to meet us in eight years.”
Sheri took small comfort in that. “Will you please excuse me?”
“Of course. If you are looking for Tristan, try the third floor. Fourth door on the left.”
She left the room without another word. Walking slowly through the house, she was reminded again that there was a huge difference between her and Tristan. This one—the material things—didn’t seem as big a deal as their difference in willingness to love.
Tristan was such a dominant, arrogant man, she had a hard time imagining that he was afraid of anything, especially falling in love again.
But those rumors about his first marriage…about his first wife… She needed to find out exactly what she was up against.
She climbed the curving staircase, looking at the huge portraits hung on the walls. Pictures of men who resembled Tristan, and some portraits of people who were vaguely familiar to her. His famous grandparents, she thought.
He’d grown up surrounded by a rich history, whereas she had only what she took with her. Aunt Millie’s warm memory and the cold emptiness of her father’s desertion.
She got to the third floor. At the landing there was an upholstered chaise centered under a dominant portrait of the Sabina siblings when they were younger…probably late teens, she thought.
Blanche was seated in the center and Rene and Tristan stood on either side of her. Blanche was elegant even as a teenager, smiling beguilingly out of the portrait. Rene was serious and even then looked as if he were all business. And Tristan. Her heart caught in her throat. He was laughing, very much the rebel in his casual rock T-shirt, whereas his siblings were dressed to the nines.
She had never seen an expression like that on Tristan’s face and she thought that this is the part of him that died when his wife did.
She reached out to touch his face, letting her fingers hover over the curve of his mouth. It felt like what she’d done so many times in her apartment late at night. Lusting after a man she couldn’t have.
And now that she had the Tristan she’d thought she wanted, she realized he only was giving her half of himself. The part he thought she’d accept without question.
And she knew now she wanted more. She was falling in love with Tristan Sabina, and she wasn’t going to be satisfied with merely keeping him from leaving.
She needed him to fall in love with her. Not just to care for her, but really fall head over heels in love. She turned to walk down the hall and saw the gilt-framed mirror and the reflection of the woman there.
She was going to have to make some serious changes if she was going to win Tristan’s love.
Nine
Two weeks later, Sheri wasn’t sure who she was anymore. Despite the fact that Tristan wanted their lives to remain the same, they had been changed by the “engagement.” Blanche had even taken her shopping before allowing her to leave Paris. And Sheri had enjoyed her time with Blanche.
She found herself interested in clothing for the very first time. Standing in front of her closet in the brownstone in Brooklyn, she realized that it might be a bit small. It never had been before.
But then, she’d never had a closet full of outfits for every type of event known to man. She’d turned into a socialite without even trying. She was exhausted, because Tristan had been extremely serious when he said that he still wanted her to work for him.
Her phone rang while she was in the middle of getting dressed in a Chanel linen-and-cashmere strip tunic that ended well above her knees, showing off her trim calves and ankles. She’d never really thought about her body, but Tristan’s lovemaking and comments left no doubt that he liked hers. Her legs were slim because she’d always lived in the city and walked everywhere.
“Hello?”
She was getting better at accessorizing, but had been keeping the outfits put together the way Blanche had arranged them for her. Trying to make Tristan fall in love with her, trying to remember how to be fashionable and avoiding the paparazzi were a lot to add to her life. Most of the time she felt as if she was juggling and dropping most of the balls.
“Bonjour, ma petite. I’m downstairs in the car waiting for you.”
“Good morning, Tristan. I’m almost ready.”
Propping the phone between her ear and shoulder, she paired the tunic dress with a pair of lizard-and-lambskin sandals and a calf-skin belt in white with a distinctive Chanel belt buckle. She had a chunky bracelet that she put on her right arm and then she carefully opened the box with the diamond watch that Tristan’s parents had given her as an engagement present. They’d had her initials and the date of their engagement—the date she and Tristan had made up—engraved on the back.
“This would be a lot easier if you’d just move in with me.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because then I’d have to move out again when the engagement was over. This way, I’ll never have lived in your house.”
“Or slept in my bed for an entire night,” he said.
She always came back home after they made love at his apartment. And he never stayed the night at her place. She was doing everything she could to insulate herself against the pain of heartbreak, but she had the feeling that no matter what she did, it was still going to hurt her if he left.
“Well…”
“Well, what? Why are you so stubborn about this one thing?”
“Because I’m your pretend fiancée, Tristan. If I were really your woman and you were going to claim me in front of the world, then I’d be living with you in a heartbeat.”
He said nothing, as she’d suspected he would. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
She hung up the phone and turned back to the mirror. Her dark brown hair now had highlights and she knew how to put on makeup so that she looked like all the other women who had always surrounded Tristan. A part of her was amazed at how she looked, another part disgusted. She was changing every part of herself for a man who was her pretend fiancé, and she was no closer to figuring out how to make him fall in love with her.
She stared down at the engagement ring on her left hand. Tristan had wanted something big and flashy but she’d stubbornly refused. If he really loved her and was buying her a ring that symbolized his love, she would have bowed to his wishes, but he’d been buying the ring for others to see and she had dug in her heels.
She liked the understated platinum ring she had on. It fit her hand and her finger. And unlike a more costly ring, it didn’t make her feel as if she’d sold herself to Tristan.
The clothes she knew she’d donate to Dress for Success when she was done pretending to be his fiancée—if she didn’t turn the pretend part into reality.
“Why did you hang up on me?”
She yelped and spun around. Tristan stood there, gorgeous as always. “Why are you in my house?”
“You gave me a key, remember? I am your fiancé.”
She made a face at him in the mirror. “Just for pretend.”
“Sheri.”
He said her name in a stern tone that told her she was pushing too hard. But she didn’t want to back down. She was tired of pretending, and the only way for that to stop was for Tristan to see her as more than a lover and an assistant. She was pretty sure that’s all he saw when he looked at her.
“What?”
“What is the matter with you this morning?”
She shrugged. If he’d demanded an answer or kept pushing her, she could have gotten angry and then used her anger to keep the truth at bay.
“Answer me. Please.”
“No.”
She reached for a pair of platinum bangle earrings and slipped them into her ears. Tristan came up behind her, rested his hands on her shoulders and leaned in low so that his gaze met hers in the mirror.
“What is wrong?”
She bit her lower lip, afraid of saying too much. But suddenly she realized that the changes she made were all superficial and deep inside she was the woman she’d always been. And that woman wanted more.
“I don’t want to be your fake fiancée. And frankly, I can’t understand why this isn’t real.”
Tristan would be damned if he was going to have this conversation with her. He’d been dodging the same questions from Gui, who had warned him that toying with a woman’s emotions was only going to lead to trouble. And Christos, who didn’t know the engagement wasn’t real and thought that he had made a great decision. Since Christos’s marriage to Ava, the man thought all anyone needed to be happy was a wife.
But Tristan knew better. He wasn’t toying with Sheri’s emotions, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to really marry her. He knew himself well enough to know that there were only certain things he could control. And surprisingly Sheri was one of them.
He bent his head to nibble on her neck in the spot he knew was sensitive. She undulated under his hands and reached back to put her arms around his neck, turning her head to the side until their lips met.
He hated not waking up with her every morning. He suspected that was why he still wasn’t ready to move on from her. He had yet to spend an entire night with her, save for that first one on Mykonos. And he hadn’t appreciated it then.
“I thought you were in a hurry this morning,” she said, turning in his arms.
“Just to see you.” Her dresser surface was clear except for a small jewelry box. “Are you wearing panties?”
“Yes,” she said. “I tend to wear them when I’m going to work.”
“Take them off.”
“Ask me nicely,” she said.
And Tristan leaned down to take her mouth with his, kissing her slowly, thoroughly. He caught her earlobe between his teeth and breathed into her ear as he said, “Please.”
She shivered delicately, her hands clenching on his shoulders before she stepped back half an inch. “Okay.”
She tugged the short hemline of her dress higher and lowered a pair of whisper-thin white cotton panties. She balanced herself by putting one hand behind her on the dresser as she stepped out of her underpants.
The movement thrust her breasts forward. The high, round neck of her tunic didn’t show nearly enough of her chest for him. He reached for the belt at her waist and unhooked it, letting it fall to the floor.
He lifted her up on top of the dresser and pushed her tunic dress to her waist. She parted her legs and he groaned her name. Blood rushed through his veins, pooling in his groin.
She continued smiling up at him as she leaned back on her elbows. “Was this what you had in mind?”
“Almost,” he said, pushing her dress even higher until her breasts were bared to his gaze. The bra she wore had thin lacy cups and he could see the distended nipples peeking through the lace. He leaned down and licked them both.
Her legs shifted restlessly around his hips. Though it had been just last night, it felt like an eternity since he’d last held her in his arms.
He’d been aroused since he’d entered her house. She reached up and pulled his head down to hers. Her mouth opened under his and he told himself to take it slow, but slow wasn’t in his programming with this woman. She was pure feminine temptation and he had her in his arms. He slid his hands down her back, finding the clasp of her bra and undoing it.
He grasped her buttocks, pulling her forward until he was pressed against her feminine mound. He felt the humid warmth at her center through the fabric of his pants and reached between them to caress her. She shifted more fully into him.
The fabric of her dress, bunched under her arms, just covered her breasts as she breathed heavily. He saw the hint of the rosy flesh of her nipples and lowered his head, using his teeth to pull the loosened fabric away from her skin. He ran the tip of one fingertip around her aroused flesh. She trembled in his arms.
Lowering his head he took one of her nipples in his mouth and suckled her. She held him to her with a strength that surprised him, but shouldn’t have.
Her fingers drifted down his back and then slid around front to work open the buttons of his shirt. He growled deep in his throat when she leaned forward to brush kisses against his chest.
She licked and nibbled and made him feel like her plaything. He wanted to let her have her way with him, but there was no room here, no time for seduction or extended lovemaking.
He pulled her to him and lifted her slightly so that her nipples brushed his chest. Holding her carefully, he rotated his shoulders and rubbed against her. Blood roared in his ears. He was so hard, so full right now that he needed to be inside of her body.
He caressed her creamy thighs. God, she was soft. She moaned as he neared her center and then sighed when he brushed his fingertips across the entrance to her body.
The area was warm and wet. He slipped one finger into her and hesitated for a second, looking down into her eyes.
She bit down on her lower lip and he felt the minute movements of her hips as she tried to move his touch where she needed it.
He was beyond teasing her or prolonging anything. He needed her now. He swept her dress over her head and tossed it on the floor. She shrugged out of her bra and he lifted her off the dresser, turning her to face its mirror.
“What are you doing?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him.
“I want you to watch us as I make love to you.” She murmured something he didn’t catch. “Bend over slightly, ma petite.”
She did as he asked, her eyes watching his in the mirror. “Take your shirt off, please. I want to see your chest.”
He smiled at her as he shrugged off the shirt she’d unbuttoned. His tie was tangled in the collar, but he managed to get them both off. He took out the condom he’d put in his pocket this morning and donned it quickly.
“Hold on and keep your eyes on mine in the mirror.”
“Yes,” she said.
He covered her with his body. Their naked loins pressed together and he shook under the impact.
He cupped her breasts in his hands then slipped one hand down her body, finding her wet and ready. He adjusted his stance, and then entered her with one long, hard stroke.
She moaned his name, still holding his gaze. He bit softly at her neck and felt the reaction all the way to his toes when she squirmed in his arms and thrust her hips back toward him.
A tingling started in the base of his spine and he knew his climax was close. She writhed more frantically in his arms and he moved deep with each stroke. Breathing out through his mouth, he tried to hold back the inevitable. He slid one hand down her abdomen, through the slick folds of her sex, finding her center. He circled that aroused bit of flesh then scraped it very carefully with his nail. She screamed his name and tightened around him. Tristan pulled one hand from her body and locked his fingers on the dresser over her small hand, then penetrated her as deeply as he could. Biting down on the back of her neck, he came long and hard.
Their eyes met again in the mirror and he knew that he wasn’t going to find a way to live without her while he kept making love to her. And that meant he needed to come up with another plan. Something that didn’t involve her being his pretend fiancée.
Ten
Two weeks later Sheri was still no closer to getting the answers she wanted from Tristan. But plans for the engagement party were going forward. The Paris branch of the Sabina Group was prepared to launch a new magazine on weddings and was using their engagement party as the first big glamorous event they’d cover. She’d promised Tristan that she’d stay with him until the engagement party was over.
A part of her worried that what she’d found with him was going to end too soon. Another part was afraid that it wouldn’t end soon enough.
The one thing she didn’t doubt was that she was in love with Tristan.
“Sheri, have Maurice come to my office in ten minutes.”
“He’s going to want to know what you need to see him about.”
Tristan glanced up from the folder in his hands. “I’m going to fly your suggestion for the Travelogue column at the back. See if we can use celebrities instead of travel writers.”
“Really? It was just an idea to boost readership.”