Takeover In The Boardroom: An Heiress for His Empire

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE ENGAGEMENT DINNER was a lot more enjoyable than Maddie had expected it to be.

Especially considering the fact the guest list had grown to include some Archer second cousins, a Madison great-aunt, one of Misha’s nephews and his wife, who just happened to be visiting friends who owned a vineyard outside of Napa, and Romi.

Maddie’s father was all smiles, though underlying his bonhomie was an unfamiliar reticence with her that gave Maddie a certain level of comfort. He had not escaped this morning’s debacle in the conference room unscathed.

Small winces indicated he did not like her new habit of calling him by his first name, either, but if he wanted her to stop, he’d have to ask. Nicely. And behave like a father. Somehow.

She hadn’t started calling him Jeremy to hurt him, but because it simply hurt her too much to refer to a man who treated her like a stranger more often than not as Father.

Vik acted as a buffer between them, not exactly a new role for him, but one he hadn’t played with any consistency in six years.

Taking it a step further than he used to, Vik actually physically stood between her and others in unconscious protection whenever she felt herself growing uneasy. While no one had the bad taste to actually mention the articles spawned by Perry’s lies, family could manage intrusiveness in subtle ways strangers never could.

Thankfully, Vik seemed to recognize her moods—sometimes even before she did—and took steps to make sure the questions didn’t get a chance to edge into being blatantly intrusive.

Tellingly, no one seemed to find it hard to believe they’d been carrying on a relationship outside the media’s radar for months now. Not even Misha’s nephew evinced surprise at the engagement.

Everyone was happy to congratulate Maddie and Vik, making her feel like maybe this thing could really work.

Regardless of what had precipitated the engagement, their friends and family considered them a good match. A big part of her agreed.

She only hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake...that Vik was the man she was discovering. More the white knight in Armani than the heartless tycoon following in her father’s footsteps that she’d seen him as for the past six years.

Vik’s grandparents were wonderful, as always.

Misha was a gray-haired, slightly stooped version of Vik with an exuberant warmth very unlike his more reserved grandson. A retired scientist, Ana was both highly intelligent and gently affectionate by nature. She wasn’t as overt as her husband, but she would make a wonderful great-grandmother for Maddie and Vik’s children.

The magazine photographer turned out to be extremely good at fading into the background and Maddie found herself relaxing and enjoying the first real family dinner she remembered since her mother’s death.

* * *

“Your grandparents are such nice people.” Maddie allowed Vik to remove her coat and his own before taking both of them and hanging them in the hall closet.

Such a simple thing to do. She’d done it hundreds of times for other guests, but never with the same homey feeling—or sense of irrevocability that washed over her as she closed the closet door.

Vik was staying the night.

And Maddie’s heart was pounding in her chest like a bass drum.

Not from fear, though. No, nothing like it, though that surprised her. Shouldn’t there be at least a little anxiety?

She’d never done this before, after all.

But all she felt was excitement.

Maybe it was because she knew Vik would leave if she asked him to. Only she didn’t want him to leave.

She wanted him to follow through on the promise of passion in their kisses earlier. Besides, if they weren’t compatible in bed, that could be a real problem.

Right?

Only what were the chances when his kisses turned her inside out. Self-justification much?

She made a sound of self-deprecating humor.

“Liking my family is a source of amusement for you?” Vik’s hands landed on her shoulders before he turned her to face him.

His expression wasn’t mocking or judging, just inquisitive.

She smiled up at the beloved handsome face as she shook her head. “No, I was thinking about the things we tell ourselves to justify doing what we want to do.”

His look promised things she’d never experienced but was pretty darn sure she wanted to. “What things do you want to do?”

“Like you don’t know.”

He shook his head. “I’m still a little stunned you’ve never done them before.”

“Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“In what way were you pathetic?” Vik asked in a tone that didn’t bode well for anyone who might have used that word to describe her.

Including herself.

She liked the feelings his instant protectiveness engendered in her despite the fact she thrived on her independence.

Feeling a little odd about that, she moved away from him and crossed the living room, which was decorated in her favorite shabby chic. While she loved the perfect blend of distressed wood furniture, floral damasks, lifelike silk bouquets set in epoxy to look like water, the pristine whites and abundance of feminine styling screamed “single woman living alone” to her.

And while there was nothing bad about that, she wasn’t as pleased by the fact she’d never even had a short-term relationship. She’d be happier if something in her home indicated the need to take someone else’s preferences, or even needs, into account.

“What would you call a twenty-four-year-old virgin?” she asked, turning back to face him.

“Picky.” His smile melted her.

She grinned up at him. “That’s one word for it.”

“You were waiting for me.” She could tell by his tone he thought he was joking.

A sudden revelation hit her. Romi had definitely been right all along. “I was.”

She might have been able to get over her first love, but Maddie had never moved on from thinking that Viktor Beck would be the ideal lover. And so she had turned down every other man.

Yes, trust was an issue for her, but right along with her lack of trust in other men had been a primal certainty of whom she wanted to share her body with.

A certainty she’d been consciously denying but living under for the past six years.

Espresso eyes darkened with unmistakable lust, blowing her mind. He wanted her. He’d said he did. He’d kissed her like he did, but that look?

It was imbued with the same primitive passion she’d acknowledged in herself. So predatory. It sent shivers chasing along her nerve endings.

“You were made for me,” he said, confirming it wasn’t her imagination.

The driving force between them was very mutual.

“A pity you didn’t realize that six years ago.” She regretted the words as soon as she said them and shook her head. “Forget I said that.”

Maddie got why Vik had turned her down before. Wishing they’d already taken this step so she wouldn’t be dealing with her public humiliation right now was both futile and borderline ridiculous. Because even if they’d gotten together then, there was no guarantee they would still be together now.

His jaw firm, his lips set in a determined line, Vik moved toward her with intent. “I was not ready for marriage and you were not ready for me.”

“I—”

His finger pressing against her lips stopped the argument. “We both had living to do.”

“You were really thinking about this then?” she asked with surprise she couldn’t hide.

“Yes.”

“But you weren’t happy about it.” Wasn’t happy about the memory if his current expression was anything to go by.

“You were eighteen. I was still used to thinking of you as a child. It felt wrong.”

“I was an adult, a grown woman.” But even as she made the claim, she knew that compared to Vik she had been a child.

“You could vote, join the armed forces and take on your own debt. That didn’t mean you were ready for a relationship with a man like me.”

“A relationship, or sex?”

“Same thing when it comes to you and me.”

“Is it?”

“It has always been marriage or nothing between us, Madison.” Vik reached out and traced the line of her bodice, his fingertip never straying from the sapphire-blue taffeta of her dress to the skin of her bosom.

Her breath hitched, but she didn’t move away. “Because of AIH.”

“Because my grandfather raised me to be a man with a sense of honor.” The “unlike Frank Beck” went unsaid, but she heard it anyway.

Vik would never be like the father that had caused both him and his grandparents so much grief and disappointment.

“You may be a shark, Vik, but you’re an honest one.”

He smiled wryly, his fingertip resting on the point of the V dipping between her breasts. “And I don’t eat guppies for breakfast.”

“Am I a guppy?” she asked breathlessly.

“No.” Satisfaction burned in his dark gaze. “You are a twenty-four-year-old woman.”

The emphasis he placed on the word woman was a conversation all in itself.

“You planned to marry me before Perrygate ever happened.”

“I did.” Vik looked with significance down at the custom ring on her finger and she caught on.

There was no denying the truth in front of her eyes. “You really did have the rings made for me.”

“I do not lie.”

“No, but...” The scope of what he was saying left her grasping for words that would not come.

“Timwater forced me to move my plans forward, but only by a couple of weeks.”

“You were going to ask me to marry you?”

“I planned to date you first,” he said with some wry humor, almost self-deprecatingly. “We needed to rebuild the rapport we once had.”

His thinking made him a different man than her father in ways she didn’t feel like enumerating, but wouldn’t deny. “You recognized before Jeremy did that the only way my father would have an heir to leave in charge of the business is if I married him.”

“Yes.”

“So, you made plans to play on my father’s desire to leave his legacy to family.” It was brilliant. And manipulative.

But he’d already shown that as important as his own plans for AIH were to Vik, he would not ignore Maddie’s happiness. He’d offered to buy her a building for her dream as a wedding gift.

Calculated? Maybe, but for her benefit, not to her detriment.

Vik’s silence was answer enough. Not only had he strategized, but he’d also started working on her father already. Jeremy had come to the whole “his daughter must marry to save herself and the company’s reputation” pretty darn quickly otherwise.

“I’m not sure how I feel about this,” she admitted.

She understood. To an extent.

But it still felt like she’d been maneuvered.

Vik’s touch finally strayed entirely from her dress to the upper swell of her breasts, tracing the same path as before, only along her skin this time. “While you are deciding, take into account that if you had been a different woman, my plans would have taken a different direction.”

She shivered, her breath quavering in her chest until another thought came to her. “You would have taken AIH out from under my father?”

Horrified because as much as she didn’t get her father, she loved him, and she was certain Vik would have done exactly that. Rather than allow a stranger to come in and take over what he considered to be his.

Vik shrugged, neither confirming, nor denying. “It was not necessary.”

“You said Jeremy is your friend.”

“He is.”

“But you would still take his company.”

“I would not have betrayed him.”

No. That wasn’t Vik’s style. “You still would have figured out a way.”

“Does that upset you?”

“I said before that you’re ruthless.”

“This is not news.”

No, it really wasn’t. “My mind doesn’t work like yours.”

“Make no mistake, you have your own brand of ruthlessness, but if you were too much like me, we would not fit so well together.” Both his hands moved to settle on her waist.

She was distracted by the sensation of his thumbs brushing up and down against her lower ribs. “You think we fit?”

“I know we do.”

“So, you’re saying you don’t just want the company. You want me, too.” Not just sex with her, but Maddie as a complete person.

At least the Madison Archer he knew about. What would Vik think of Maddie Grace?

“You will support my dreams in a way a woman of less strength could not do.”

“Your plans would have been really messed up if I’d picked one of the other candidates Jeremy put forward.” She gave in to the irresistible urge to poke at the bear.

Vik’s gorgeous mouth twisted in disdain. “You were never going to choose another man.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I know.”

“Another word for excessive confidence is arrogance.”

“I prefer honest.”

She laughed softly and then had a revelation. “You manipulated the choice of candidates.”

“I was not expecting Maxwell Black.”

“Neither was I.” And she still wanted to know what the man had done to Romi. “He’s intense.”

“He’s a good businessman.”

“Is he honorable?”

“Yes.”

“As honorable as you?”

Vik considered his answer for a second. “I would do business with him on a handshake.”

“Good to know.”

“Why? Considering your options?” He didn’t sound too worried by the prospect.

“According to you, there are no other options.”

“True.” Vik looked like he was considering what he was going to say next. “We grew up together.”

“What? Like in the same neighborhood?”

“Same Russian-American-dominated street, same school, same afternoons spent in activities sponsored by the Russian cultural center.”

“Were you friends?”

“We still are...of a sort.”

“You’re too alike to be really close.”

“We jockeyed for the top place in class until we went to different universities.”

“No one else had a chance.”

“No.”

Maddie bit her lip, but finally decided she would be honest about her concerns. “Romi dated him.”

Vik’s gaze flared. “I see.”

“He’s intense,” Maddie repeated.

“Are they still dating?”

“No.”

“Then...”

“I don’t need to be worried?”

“He is a good man.”

When it was Viktor Beck making the claim, Maddie believed him.

“Are you really spending the night?” she asked, focusing on what mattered most in the present moment.

“Yes.”

“After a single day.” One day in which they had decided to get married, made that decision public and negotiated a future they could both live with.

“In one respect, but between us?” He pulled her body close so they shared heat. “Tonight is the culmination of ten years.”

“We’ve barely spoken in six.”

“When was the last time Frank was in town?” Vik asked her, like she’d know.

And she did. “Three months ago. He was in San Francisco for Christmas.” Vik’s father had attended Jeremy’s holiday party along with Misha and Ana.

Vik nodded, his expression dour. “Babulya was pleased.”

“But you couldn’t wait for him to leave.”

“You are the only person who knew that.”

She found that hard to believe, but then...maybe not. Vik didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve.

But that wasn’t the point, was it? “Just because I saw your father at my father’s home and knew he was in town doesn’t mean you and I communicated in any meaningful way.”

“Didn’t we?”

Okay, so in the past two years, they’d had increasing numbers and depths of conversations. And it struck her. She’d thought she was just being grown-up about the past, but he’d been working on rebuilding that rapport he had mentioned earlier.

The man made Machiavelli look like a preschooler in the art of the deep play.

“Still.” Not a brilliant comeback, but what she had.

Vik smiled that shark’s smile. “When was the last time I took a date to an event?”

So, she knew the answer. She’d revealed earlier in the car with Conrad how closely she watched Vik without meaning to watch him at all. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Vik...”

“I believe both the fact that I have not had another woman on my arm in over a year and the fact you know that is significant.”

“Really?” she drawled sarcastically even as she couldn’t help wondering if he was right.

“I know that you haven’t dated, either. I wasn’t entirely sure about Timwater, but the way you two are together doesn’t imply sexual intimacy.”

“I should hope not.”

“Besides, he was sleeping with other women.”

She’d suspected, though Perry had always tried to play it like he didn’t sleep around. She wasn’t sure why. It wouldn’t have mattered to her either way.

Vik knowing however, meant he’d been paying attention. “You have a file on him, don’t you?”

“Naturally.”

“And Romi?”

“Romi has been your friend for longer than me.”

“You’re saying you don’t have a file.”

Vik leaned down and spoke softly, right into Maddie’s ear. “I’m saying I don’t need one.”

It wasn’t exactly sweet nothings, but she still shivered from the sensation of his breath gently blowing across her ear.

“You know her well, too,” Maddie said, not even sure why she was trying to keep the conversation going.