A Very Fake Fiancée: The Fiancée Charade / My Fake Fiancée / A Very Exclusive Engagement
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Gabriel logged the look of horror on Gemma’s face that his family was lobbying for a marriage between first cousins.
The whole idea was archaic, dynastic, downright Machiavellian in his opinion, and despite the tension amusement tugged at him. “Mario’s pushing that one. I think my mother could be looking outside the family.”
When Gemma appeared outraged rather than amused, he shrugged and gave up on the joke, although a part of him was loving it that Gemma was mad on his behalf. “Now you’re beginning to see what I’m up against,” he murmured. “High maintenance doesn’t cut it with my family. But, to put your mind at rest, Mario’s not trying to sell his daughter into an incestuous marriage. Eva Atraeus isn’t a blood relative, she’s adopted.”
Her gaze flashed. “I’m relieved. If that’s the case, I don’t know why you didn’t ask her—”
“No.”
Gemma was silent for a long drawn-out moment, as if trying to gauge whether there was any flexibility in the one short word he’d used. “So why, exactly, do you need to take me shopping?”
Gabriel dragged at his tie, feeling suddenly way out of his depth. “Both Mario and Eva will expect you to be wearing designer clothes and jewelery.”
Gabriel frowned as Gemma extracted a small diary and pen from her purse and made a note, as if she was an efficient employee following instructions. “What time is dinner, and where?”
“Eight. I had planned to cater the dinner at my apartment.”
She frowned behind the glasses and he had to control the urge to pluck them off the delicate bridge of her nose.
“We’re not going out to a restaurant?”
“Not tonight.” He watched as she made another small, very efficient note. “Did you want to go out?”
“What I want isn’t at issue.”
The coolness in her voice informed him that he had made a mistake. It occurred to him, too late, that he had somehow blundered into what his twin sisters, Francesca and Sophie, termed “value” territory. “Mario’s old. I didn’t want to present him with a fait accompli in a public place.”
Instantly, her expression softened and Gabriel found himself relaxing at the hint of approval.
Gemma placed the pen and notebook in her handbag. “What happens if you can’t remove Mario as trustee?”
Back on familiar ground, Gabriel propped himself on the edge of his desk. “Mario can’t interfere in the day-to-day running of the bank. His power of veto applies to big-ticket investments, which is affecting some of our biggest clients and almost every member of my family. If Nick can’t obtain his financing for a big development, he’ll have to pull out of the bank and go elsewhere. Both Kyle and Damian have large projects on hold until Mario agrees to release funds.” He shrugged. “Their loyalty to me is hurting them.”
“So this is hurting your family.”
Something relaxed inside of him at Gemma’s insight. Family was big with both the Messena and the Atraeus clans, which was the reason he had been reluctant to remove Mario with a psychological evaluation. He was old, but he was family, and until the past six months, he had been an asset. “That’s right.”
Setting her coffee down, Gemma rose to her feet and walked over to the windows, ostensibly more interested in what was going on down in the street than the tension that vibrated between them. After an interminable few moments, she turned. “Okay. I can do the shopping thing. But I get to choose what I wear.”
“Just one proviso. No beige.”
Gemma looked faintly disconcerted, as if she’d forgotten their conversation about her new repressed look. “No problem.”
Her phone chimed, and Gabriel tensed as she fished her cell out of her bag. The call went through to voice mail and he wondered grimly if it had been Zane she had just ignored, or worse, some other man he didn’t know about.
As annoyed as he was, Gabriel didn’t make the mistake of pressuring her about the call, sensing that if he pushed too hard she could change her mind about the engagement. “As part of the remuneration package the bank can offer you a loan on any business you want to start.”
The quiet way she turned and met his gaze told him that he had just made a further mistake with the offer of finance.
“I don’t want a loan, but thank you for offering. All I’ll accept is the salary agreed to in the contract I signed and the apartment, since that’s part of the remuneration package.”
His jaw tightened at her insistence on sticking strictly to the terms of the contract, and the new, quiet distance. In that moment he realized that since Medinos, something had changed. In the few days since she had left his bed, Gemma had become as closed down and crisp as the disguise she was wearing.
He didn’t know what, exactly, had changed, but he was determined to find out. “The job itself isn’t temporary, just the engagement. The position of PA is real. Maris works for me at the bank. Once Ambrosi Pearls is up and running, and I install a new CEO, she’ll come back to the bank with me. Plus there are other positions in the design department and in retail management opening up. With your background with the Atraeus Group, you would be perfect for any one of them.”
Her gaze brightened at the possibilities, although he decided he couldn’t be sure about what had cheered her up the most: the possibility of her pick of a number of jobs, or the fact that he would soon be leaving.
Gabriel checked his watch and slid his phone out of his pants pocket.
He could sense the conflict that pulled at Gemma, the mystifying factor that constantly saw her applying the brakes to what she so obviously felt for him. But the fact that she had emotions she needed to control was key.
Something shifted inside him, settled.
One week, maybe two.
It wasn’t long enough, but it was a start. Despite all the ploys, Gemma did still want him. And when she came back to his bed, like the night on Medinos, he was pretty sure there wouldn’t be a lot of conversation involved and that the passion would be the same: searingly hot and mutual.
He punched a speed dial on his phone. The clerk in charge of the bank vault picked up the call. A brief conversation later, and Gabriel set the phone down and extracted his car keys from a desk drawer. “If you’ll come with me now, I’ve arranged to get a ring out of the bank vault, then we’ll drop by my sister’s shop.”
Gemma, in the process of slinging the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, froze. “A ring?”
Gabriel paused at the door, riveted by the combination of uncertainty and pleasure on her face. “I read your P.S. on the note you left in Medinos. Your condition was that we would both have to play our roles to the letter, and in my book that means a ring. Besides, Mario will expect to see one. So will the lawyers.”
Before Gemma could argue, he opened the door, which brought Maris into view and earshot.
Pale but composed, Gemma walked past him on a waft of the warm perfume that still had the power to stop him in his tracks. Despite the horrible color, the tight little beige suit was distractingly sexy, and the short skirt made her long legs seem even longer.
His heart slammed against the wall of his chest as he strolled beside Gemma to the elevator. With every moment that passed, he was more and more certain that she cared for him in a deep, meaningful way. It explained the dichotomy of her behavior, the way she’d avoided him at first, but then had melted in his arms.
Relief mingled with a fiery elation coursed through his veins. She hadn’t been able to resist him; they hadn’t been able to resist each other. He would bring her around. It would take time, but time was a commodity he now possessed.
As he stepped into the elevator with Gemma at his side, a curious feeling swept over him.
For the first time in his life he realized he was approaching a point where he could commit.
Somehow, he had finally ended up in relationship territory.
Eleven
Gemma watched the elevator doors seal shut, closing her in with Gabriel. After spending the night with him, she had realized that she had to tell him about Sanchia. And she intended to do so...when she found the right time.
The fake engagement, as outrageous as it was, would at least give her a few days to find a way to break it to him.
She didn’t know how Gabriel would react, or how the situation would work out. All she knew was that Gabriel deserved to know his daughter, and Sanchia needed to know her father. Given that marriage for her was looking doubtful, Gabriel could be the only father Sanchia would ever have. It would be difficult sharing Sanchia, but she knew that ultimately it would be the best thing for her daughter.
The doors swished open. Gabriel’s hand cupped her elbow, sending a hot tingle clear up her arm and spinning her back to the night in his apartment.
As they strolled out of the elevator into an underground parking area, she forced herself to relax. For the next week she would have to get used to this kind of casual touching.
Gabriel stopped beside another low-slung muscular car and held the passenger-side door for her. “Did you get custody of your daughter back?”
“Not yet. Getting this job and the apartment sped things up. I should have her back within the week.”
Gabriel closed her door and, thankful that he hadn’t pushed for more information, Gemma fastened her seat belt.
As he slid into the driver’s seat and negotiated the tight lanes of the parking building, she made an effort to relax.
The powerful hum of the car drew her attention as Gabriel accelerated into traffic. Happy to concentrate on anything but personal issues, Gemma examined the interior of what was, she realized, a gorgeous Ferrari. “Somehow I don’t see you as a Ferrari kind of guy.”
“Tell me, what do you think I should drive?” His gaze briefly connected with hers. His teeth flashed white against his bronzed, clean-shaven jaw, and there they were, back on that dangerous, easy wavelength.
She tried not to respond to the killer smile, the easy charm, and failed. She stared determinedly ahead, concentrating on traffic. “I guess I got used to seeing you in a Jeep Cherokee, like the one you used to drive in Dolphin Bay.”
Sunlight flowed into shadow as he pulled into another underground garage. He pulled into a named parking space and turned the powerful engine off. “Maybe that’s why I like them.”
Feeling suddenly suffocated in the confined space with Gabriel just inches away, his clean male scent keeping her on edge, Gemma busied herself unfastening her seat belt. “Tired of being typecast?”
He shrugged. “When Dad died, overnight I became head of the family, with five siblings, two of them under twenty.” He shrugged. “Parenthood at age twenty-five wasn’t what I’d planned for my life. Damned if I was going to drive a Volvo or a BMW.”
Gemma’s fingers curled in on the soft buttery leather of her handbag. Parenthood hadn’t been so great at twenty, either. “It’s a shock if you’re not ready for it.”
“Were you?”
The soft question drew her gaze. “By the time I had Sanchia, I was. Now that I’m a mother, I couldn’t imagine life without her.”
A little annoyed by his probing and the blunt way he was steering the conversation, Gemma asked the one burning question that had kept her awake at night. “Is that why you didn’t want any more than the one night we shared six years ago? You wanted to preserve what freedom you had?”
“The business and the family were under a lot of pressure. A relationship wasn’t viable.”
Even though she hated the answer, it was a reason she understood. Gabriel had had his choices taken away. He had shouldered the burden for his family, even though it had meant putting his own dreams and desires on hold.
Given the sacrifices he’d already had to make, she could understand his distaste for being maneuvered into a marriage not of his choosing.
More than ever, she was happy that she hadn’t told him she was pregnant, that she’d chosen to take responsibility for the outcome of that night. For Gabriel, having an instant wife and family forced on him would, literally, have been the last straw.
Gabriel locked the Ferrari then led the way into the bank through a door with a security PIN.
The chill of air-conditioning was a relief after the humid heat, cooling her skin as they strolled through hushed, carpeted corridors, past offices occupied by beautifully suited executives.
Gabriel acknowledged staff as they walked past. When she asked how many people worked for the company, the number of personnel he employed took her breath. The bank was the hub of a financial community, and Gabriel was tasked with overseeing it all.
For the first time she understood the crushing burden taking over all this had been. While she had been struggling with a life-changing pregnancy, Gabriel had been fighting to control all of this.
He opened a door and allowed her to precede him through to an older part of the building possessed of beautiful mosaic floors and soaring ceilings decorated with intricate plaster moldings. Light flooded through high arched windows, imbuing the rooms with a lavish, Italianate glow, and dark paneled doors opened into large offices fitted out with state-of-the art electronics.
She stared at the painstakingly preserved gold leaf embellishing an already ornate ceiling rose, a hand-painted fresco depicting saints and sinners. Whimsically, she decided that with his olive skin and the fierce male beauty of his features, Gabriel could have been an angel lifted straight out of the fresco. And in that moment a part of Gabriel that she had never quite understood fell into place. In all the years she had known him, she had never seen him in his true environment, at the leading edge of a dynasty, and at the center of the Messena empire.
Gabriel didn’t attempt to take her arm again, for which she was grateful, because she was still coming to terms with this new view of him and a whole host of contrary emotions.
Disappointment and regret, a crazy longing to follow up on the cues he was giving her and claim the ephemeral closeness of a temporary relationship, even if it meant she was going to be badly hurt.
Gabriel lifted a hand to a burly man dressed in a security uniform who had just stepped out of a side room. Minutes later, they were taken through another security door and shown through to the section of the vault given over to safe-deposit boxes.
Gemma shivered slightly at the cooler temperature as Gabriel extracted a box, set it on a table and waited for the guard to insert his key. He then produced his own to unlock the box. Inside there were a number of jewelry cases stacked one on another. He chose a case marked with a symbol that Gemma, through her years of working for the Atraeus family, recognized instantly.
She stiffened. “You can’t give me that. It’s Fabergé.”
She looked around quickly, to make sure the security guard hadn’t overheard, but he had already retreated to a small glassed-in office.
“As my fiancée you would be expected to wear significant jewelry. This set belonged to my great-grandmother Eugenie. She was Russian.”
Gabriel flipped open the box. Inside was a gorgeous set, which included a diamond necklace, earrings, a gorgeous set of hair clips and a ring. The diamonds were large and shimmered with burning flashes of fire under the lights, signaling purity and perfection of cut. She couldn’t imagine the cost of the diamonds, let alone the fact that they were designed and set by Fabergé.
Gemma shook her head. “No. Absolutely not.”
“It’s either this, or we have to go to a jewelry store in town.” He checked his watch. “We’re due at Sophie’s shop in half an hour. If you want to shop for something else, we can do that afterward.”
Gemma sent Gabriel a frustrated look. “There’s no point in shopping for a ring when I only need it for a few days.”
“Then wear this.” Gabriel picked the ring out and insisted she try it on. “You need a ring for tonight. If this one fits, we’ll take it.”
“We could get a piece of costume jewelry, or else something smaller and cheaper—”
Gabriel’s glance cut her off. “No Messena bride would wear anything but family jewels—it’s tradition. Mario is a traditionalist to the bone. He’ll want to see which set you’ve been given.” The faint ruefulness of his glance softened the demand.
“There must be something smaller and cheaper in the box—”
“If there was, no Messena bride would wear it.”
Despite herself the phrase Messena bride sent a small thrill through her. “I’m not a bride, not even close.”
“And that’s not even close to an excuse.” Picking up her left hand, Gabriel slipped the ring on her third finger.
The warmth of his fingers, the faint calloused roughness against her skin sent another sharp little kick of sensation through her. The ring warmed against her skin. Her breath caught; the fit was perfect.
Gemma lifted her head, which was a mistake, because Gabriel was so close. Her gaze caught and held with his and for a long, drawn-out moment she thought he might kiss her.
She blinked, unexpectedly emotional, because the ring, this scene, was something she had never dared dream about. Yet here she was, and Gabriel had just placed the most beautiful engagement ring she had ever seen on her finger. It should have meant fidelity and undying love; instead it meant absolutely nothing.
The sharp little pang of hurt finally made her face something she should have known all along. She wasn’t just fatally attracted to Gabriel; somehow, despite all of the things that had gone wrong between them, she was in love with him. Seriously, devastatingly, in love.
She felt the blood drain from her face. Straight-out warmth and friendship she could cope with, but she knew the extremity of her nature. It had gotten her into trouble often enough. Issues were black or white, emotions either hot or cold. If she was in love, that was it.
Gabriel’s hands closed around her upper arms, steadying her. “Are you all right? You went dead white just then.”
“I’m fine. A little tired.” Even though she knew she would be compounding the situation by letting him touch her, she allowed him to draw her close. For a few moments she gloried in the anchoring heat of his touch, his concern, and examined the frightening truth: that even fighting and arguing, she would rather be with Gabriel than anyone.
She loved being with him now, touching him, wrapped in his warmth, the beat of his heart thudding in her ear. She loved him, and it couldn’t be.
Misery wound through her. In that moment she recognized a stark truth. As much as she wanted to marry and settle down, to have a husband she could love and more children, it wasn’t going to happen.
She wasn’t going to fall for anyone else. She had been in love with Gabriel for years. If she was honest, since she was about sixteen years old and had volunteered to help her father at the Messena estate, just so she could catch a glimpse of Gabriel.
It explained how curiously content she had been not to date or get involved with any of the men who had tried to entice her into relationships after she had gotten pregnant.
Loosening his hold, she sniffed, still ridiculously emotional. She glanced at the ring, which burned with an impossibly white fire, desperate for a distraction, because any moment now she was going to cry.
Surreptitiously, she dashed at one dampening tear, but the movement alerted Gabriel, who was busy repacking the safe-deposit box.
“Hey.” He cupped her face and brushed his thumbs over her cheeks and pulled her close.
She stiffened for a moment, then gave in, wound her arms around his waist and leaned into him. Distantly, she registered the firmness of his arousal, although the hug was devoid of sexual demand. Gabriel just seemed content to hold her.
A sound from the small glass office made her stiffen.
The moment broken, Gabriel let her go. Automatically, she started to tug the ring off.
“Leave it on,” Gabriel said quietly. “That’s the whole point.”
The security guard collected the box and as he did so he glanced at the ring. “Just got engaged?”
He beamed, his face pink as he shook hands with Gabriel. “I tried not to notice, Mr. Messena, but I couldn’t help but see that something special was happening. Have you named the date?”
Gemma opened her mouth to protest, but a dark glance from Gabriel cut her short. “We haven’t set a date yet.”
Gabriel introduced her to the guard, Evan. When he heard her name, he frowned. “The name’s familiar.”
Gemma’s stomach sank, but Gabriel forestalled any further questions by picking up the case that contained the rest of the jewels, slipping them in his jacket pocket then checking his watch again.
After asking after Evan’s wife, who apparently suffered from arthritis, and successfully diverting him, Gabriel urged her from the room, one hand at the small of her back.
Gemma caught the reflected glitter of the diamond on her finger as the heavy vault door swung closed behind them. Another set of doors, these ones made of heavy glass, threw their reflection back at them.
Gabriel looked tall, broad-shouldered and darkly handsome; Gemma looked unexpectedly voluptuous and Italian in the biscotti suit. By some kind of weird alchemy the color had added a richness to her hair and invested her pale skin with an olive glow. With the flash of the diamond on her finger, she looked every bit the expensive, pampered bride.
As they turned a corner into the mosaic floors and gorgeous architecture of the lavish office suites, Gabriel indicated that he needed to collect something from his office.
He smiled as Gemma looked curiously around the light-flooded room. “One of the perks of the job. If you want to freshen up, there’s a bathroom through there.”
Bemused, Gemma checked out the cream marbled bathroom, which contained a walk-in shower and a heated towel rail draped with fluffy white towels. She was used to the Atraeus family and their extreme wealth, so she was accustomed to opulent surroundings. She guessed she just wasn’t used to seeing Gabriel in the center of the same kind of elaborate wealth and power. In Dolphin Bay he had seemed attainable. Here he did not.
As she stepped back out into Gabriel’s office and his gaze connected with hers, the tension she had briefly managed to leave behind returned full force.
While he checked his computer, she sank into a leather chair that felt like a cloud and tried not to fall in love with the ring on her finger, or the shattering, improbable idea that Gabriel might want the engagement to be real.
Even if Gabriel did genuinely want her, the second he found out about Sanchia, everything would change. He wouldn’t be happy that she had kept Sanchia from him and they would be forever linked in a way that took away his choice. There would be no more easy companionship or heart-pounding lovemaking. Nothing would be either simple or easy between them again.
A quick tap at the door and a husky female voice had her head turning. A pretty, blue-eyed brunette came in, a sleek computer tablet in one hand. Dressed in an elegant white suit that made her skin look like porcelain, and possessed of a delicate serene beauty, for a confused moment Gemma thought she was Lilah Cole, then the differences registered. Her hair was shorter, just brushing her shoulders in a sleek bob, and she was shorter and more delicately built.
Not tall and just a little lanky, or too forthright, as Gemma was.
Gabriel made introductions, but before Gemma could do more than acknowledge Simone, apparently one of the bank’s investment analysts, Gabriel walked her out into the corridor, where he completed his discussion with her.
As the conversation ended, Simone glanced in the door and gave Gemma a long, silent look before turning on her heel and strolling back to wherever it was she had come from.
Gemma realized that somewhere along the way she had forgotten to breathe. As Gabriel collected a briefcase from his desk, she rose to her feet. The glitter of the gorgeous ring caught her eye again, and she wished, too late, that she hadn’t hidden it in her lap while Simone was in the room.