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Vanessa was having a hard time breathing. It was as though he’d turned over her solid wood desk and placed it on her chest. Thirty years. This wasn’t a temporary arrangement. He was talking about the rest of her life. Shackled to this man.
She tried to imagine turning away again. Imagined telling him the deal was off, and he could take his shares and the entirety of Pickett Industries to hell with him for all she cared.
But she couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come. They wouldn’t even form in her brain in a cohesive manner. The idea of Lazaro losing his hold on her didn’t open up a wide arena of possibilities for her life, rather, it showed just how narrow her scope of options truly was. Without Lazaro, the company crumbled. Without the company she had no job, no relationship with her father.
She’d promised her father, the week that Thomas died, that she wouldn’t fail him, and she’d set out to make sure she didn’t from that day on. She’d dropped out of the photography club she’d been in at school, started doing some basic business courses instead. Done whatever she could to ensure she didn’t let her father down.
In her mind, she was a Pickett. She was a loyal daughter. She was the CEO of Pickett Industries. Without that … she didn’t know who she was beyond that. And without Lazaro’s help, she wouldn’t be any of those things. Of course, it was his interference that forced her to choose. But without him, there might not be any choice at all other than to watch Pickett slowly sink beneath the waves of debt, another casualty of a shifting business landscape.
And while this might not have been her first choice for how her life would end up, it was the right thing. At least this way, she would keep the business going. She would have children who would eventually take over.
Her stomach cramped at the thought. Yes, she’d planned on having children someday, but if she said yes they would be Lazaro’s children. The room suddenly seemed much too small, Lazaro’s presence in it far too big.
Another thought, small and insidious, reminded her of that moment of pure exhilaration when she’d realized that she had changed her future. That she had diverged from the path so carefully laid out for her.
If she said no now, it was back to that path. Everything would stay the same. The thought was suffocating.
She shook her head. “I don’t want that.”
“What is it you don’t want?”
“You have to be faithful to me, Lazaro,” she said, her throat tight. The entire conversation made her body feel hot, restless and edgy. She knew that she would be sleeping with Lazaro, and just the thought made her feel charged with adrenaline.
But the sex would be a purely physical act, with legal paperwork to make it all legitimate. There would be no feelings. No love. She didn’t even have to ask him about that. The hardness in his dark eyes answered that question.
Fair enough, since she couldn’t imagine falling in love with the cold man standing before her. It was shocking enough that her body seemed to respond to him. But she didn’t want to share him either. There were a host of reasons why that thought didn’t sit well with her, her health being foremost among them. Another being pure, possessive jealousy. But what woman would want to share her husband? None. Love or not.
“You have to give me that at least,” she said. “If we have children … I assume you want children?”
“I need them.”
He was talking in terms of producing heirs, and in that sense, she needed them too. It felt wrong to think of them that way, when it never had before. She’d always been confident that she would love her children, so it had never mattered if that was part of the incentive for marriage. But now, knowing Lazaro felt the same way made her see just how cold it was. Made her worry that he wouldn’t ever see the children as anything more than vessels for his legacy.
Like your father?
She shook the thought off and continued, “If we have children, I think they need to know they can aspire for better than a marriage filled with lies and infidelity.”
“I will honor the vows I speak,” he said, clenching his jaw tightly.
“Good. Then I’ll honor mine. And even if we’re a miserable, distant, sexless couple, I will stay with you.”
“Inspiring.”
“Why should it be?” she asked. “This is a cold, mercenary agreement. I’m not pretending it’s anything other than that. I don’t want or expect you to fall in love with me, but respect would be nice. I consider knowing that the person you’re sleeping with isn’t out sleeping with other people to be a great sign of respect.”
“Then you will be faithful to me,” he said, his voice hard.
“I said I would be.”
“And you will not deny me when I come to your bed.”
Vanessa put her hand on her stomach, trying to calm the butterflies that were staging a riot inside of her. “After the wedding.”
He nodded once, his eyes trained on her face. “After the wedding.”
“My father isn’t going to like this. I have to … Well, there’s the arrangement I mentioned. And his family will be—”
“You are engaged to this other man?”
She held up her ringless left hand. “No. But there was an understanding.”
“Your father will be grateful to you if he finds out the circumstances surrounding the union.”
“No.”
“You don’t want him to know?”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t … I don’t want him to know how far things have fallen … how … how bad things have gotten.”
“He will have to know what I’m bringing into the union,”
Lazaro said, dark eyes glittering. “I want him to know that I intend to revamp Pickett. I want him to know that I am saving it. That I’ve done what he could not. If you want to take credit for meeting me while pursuing my help, it is of no concern to me. But I want him to know that I was the one to pull this dying, outdated company into a new life in the modern era.” His voice was hard, uncompromising. He knew what it would do to her father to have to accept help, let alone to have to accept help from someone he believed to be beneath him, and Lazaro was relishing it.
Vanessa had never been able to believe what her father said about some people being better than others thanks to their bloodlines. She’d seen too many cruel, horrible people in her social class. People who wasted their money and used those around them with no thought to anyone but themselves. Believing that those people were somehow better than the rest of humanity was depressing.
And when she’d been sixteen, her emotions had been held captive by a boy her father considered to be lower than them. A boy who had grown into the man standing before her.
Looking at him, she felt her chest get tight, pride swelling within her. It shocked her. But she was, she realized, proud of what Lazaro had become, professionally at least.
“Showing you have the real power?” she asked softly.
“Money is the real power, Vanessa. Money is how I got into this position, how I managed to purchase Pickett’s shares.”
“Then why do you care about the rest of it? Why do you need me at all?”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “Because I can have you.”
Her stomach tightened. “The proof of how far you’ve come?” she asked, voice dry.
“Perhaps. But it has very little to do with anyone else’s perception. I want every door open to me. I have earned it. Money, I have—I want the social power as well.”
Lazaro’s blood burned in his veins, adrenaline spiking through him. He wanted everything. To be at the top of absolutely everything. To sit as a social equal with the man who had had him beaten for daring to touch his precious daughter.
And to make Vanessa his. To finally to satisfy his desire for her.
“The old-money society, the American aristocracy, it’s as outdated as your father’s business model,” he said.
“And you’ll tear down centuries of it all by yourself, Lazaro?”
“I don’t want to tear it down,” he said, his voice rough, his accent taking over his words. “I want in.”
She looked away, turning her focus out her office window and onto the Boston skyline. “And it frustrates you that you can’t do it without help.”
Lazaro bit down hard, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “None of this is done out of necessity, Vanessa. It is a bonus. You wouldn’t know about the necessities in life, not when your biggest concern is staying employed in a multi-million-dollar position you’re not qualified to do. You could walk away and there would be no great tragedy to either of us.”
She just sat, frozen behind her desk, dark eyes wide, her mouth pressed into a firm line. She wouldn’t walk away. She was too married to the tradition, to the lineage of her family, just as her father had been.
What will people think?
He wondered if she’d had a share in his broken nose if, after refusing him, she had told her father all about how the low-class housekeeper’s son had made an attempt to touch her with his filthy, laborer’s hands.
He wondered if Vanessa shared culpability for putting his mother and him out on the streets.
That had been the worst part about all of it. As he’d spat blood out onto the grimy pavement in the alley after being beaten by Michael Pickett’s men, after he’d been warned never to set foot on the Pickett estate again, been warned that if he so much as looked at Vanessa again, the consequences might be fatal, the very worst part had been wondering if Vanessa had been complicit in it. If she might have wanted her father to make sure she was rid of him.
His mother had lost her job. He’d lost his job. They’d lost their home and his mother had paid the price with her health. Ultimately with her life.
But now he knew that whatever part Vanessa had played in what had happened, she had never intended it. She was thoughtless, but she wasn’t evil.
That moment, when he’d been lying in the alley, had been the lowest of his life. But it had been then, jobless, broken and bleeding, that he had vowed to ensure no one else ever held power over him like that again. He would never allow anyone but himself to hold his fate in his hands.
That goal had consumed him, had propelled him from the gutter to the boardroom, had made him millions.
That Vanessa would be the key to unlock the final door, to allow him into the last segment of society where he was still unwelcome, was poetic justice.
He didn’t hate her. He had no desire to hurt her or exact revenge on her. But he no longer cared for her. His body still ached for her, that was all.
Michael Pickett, on the other hand, deserved hell on earth and in the hereafter. Taking Vanessa, making her his own, wrenching her from her father’s control … the satisfaction in that was endless. The man had been willing to commit murder if necessary to keep Lazaro away from his daughter, and now there would be nothing he could do to prevent him from claiming Vanessa.
“You know I can’t walk away. You might not see it as a necessity, Lazaro. But this is my whole life.” She met his gaze, her dark eyes glittering. “And I don’t think you’ll walk away either. You need me, too.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do.”
His gut burned. “You or any other society princess.”
“We both know this is about more than that.”
Why bother to deny it? “True. It is rather satisfying, the idea of marrying into the family whose floors my mother wasn’t good enough to clean.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked, well-groomed eyebrows drawn together.
“I mean, your father fired my mother. We ended up on the streets. So yes, I suppose there is something especially satisfying about it being you.”
There was no triumph in her eyes, only shock, sadness. For him? For his mother? It was far too late for that.
“I didn’t know.”
“Did you think we went on an extended holiday?”
“I didn’t know,” she repeated, her voice low.
He shrugged. “We’ll start with dating, of course.”
“What?”
“We need to be seen together, prior to the actual engagement.”
Vanessa tried to ignore the knot in her stomach. She didn’t know his mother had been fired. She wondered if that had been when he’d disappeared. If that was why he’d never come back after their disastrous almost night together.
She didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to let him know she still thought about it. That it still mattered.
She cleared her throat. “And you want us to … date?”
“Of course. I intend to seduce my fiancée with all of the skill that I possess.”
He took her hand in his and bent over it, pressing firm, hot lips to her skin. The gesture was light, gentlemanly even. Not even a little bit erotic. At least it shouldn’t have been. But it was. It pushed all of her thoughts and concerns right out of her head and caused a riot of sensation through her system, made her entire body weak and energized at the same time. Made her breasts feel heavy as a pulse started to beat at the apex of her thighs.
She hadn’t felt this way, not with this level of intensity, since the last time Lazaro had taken her in his arms when she’d been a completely inexperienced sixteen-year-old. And she hated that she still responded this way to him now. He was the man who was holding her future hostage and that she would melt under his touch with absolutely no resistance was appalling.
She pulled her hand back and pressed her palm to her chest, feeling her heart rage against her breastbone. “No seduction required,” she said tightly. “You can seduce the media, I don’t really care, but not me. I’ll do my ‘wifely duty’ once we’re married, but until then, you can keep your lips to yourself.”
He tightened his jaw, his eyes dark, glittering. Angry. “Don’t worry, princess, I won’t defile you in any way.”
A stab of regret hit her. For a moment, she wondered if she’d hurt him. But the moment passed quickly. Lazaro Marino didn’t do feelings. And the last time she’d turned down his advances he’d walked out of her life. All he saw her as was a body. Well, now he saw her as more than that. A body and a stepping stone on his way to the top.
It wouldn’t hurt him to wait.
“One thing you need to know, Vanessa. With me, sex will never feel like duty. I guarantee it.” His eyes were hot on her, making her body temperature rise along with her heart rate. His words were an invitation to sin a saint could hardly resist.
Sign me up for sainthood then, because I’m not going there.
She would do what she had to do. She would make this deal work for both of them, but she wasn’t going to fall under his spell. She’d done it once, and she had no intention of ever succumbing to his wicked, deceptive charms again.
“Anything else?” she asked stiffly.
“You and I have a date tomorrow night.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“OF course you picked Chev’s,” Vanessa murmured as Lazaro helped her from the limo.
She wasn’t happy about it, that was clear. It was written all over that beautiful face of hers, her dark eyes glittering with barely suppressed anger.
“Of course,” he said, drawing her to him, wrapping his arm around her slender waist.
It was a cool evening, the cobblestone sidewalk wet from rain that had fallen earlier. But Vanessa’s arms were bare, her legs barely covered by the sheer veil of her nylons, killer black heels added to the look, making his mind spin with fantasies that couldn’t possibly be legal at this sort of establishment.
Everything about her look was designed to entice. To torment. The formfitting, silken dress she was wearing acted as a flimsy barrier between his hands and her soft, smooth skin. He knew it was soft and smooth. He remembered, in explicit detail, how she had felt beneath his fingertips.
He slid his hand around to her lower back, the deep blue fabric catching on some of the rough patches on his hand, still calloused from so many years of labor. For a moment, his world reduced to Vanessa, to the tease she presented. It would be so easy to tear the gown from her body so that he could touch her, could see just what it would be like to feel her bare skin beneath the palm of his hand.
“This is going to get back to my father in a couple of hours. If it even takes that long.”
He felt her tense, the idea of her father seeing them together clearly not something she wanted to think about.
“He won’t like to hear about it?”
She shot him a sideways glance. “What do you think?”
He could imagine what Vanessa’s father would think. Vividly. Almost like a blow to his face. “He’ll learn to deal with it.”
“I doubt it.”
“Easier to handle than having you deposed as head of Pickett. Or having to file for bankruptcy.”
“Possibly,” she said, teeth gritted.
Lazaro didn’t wait for the host. He opened the door for Vanessa and ushered her into the small, intimate dining room.
“Your usual table, Mr. Marino?” The host approached them and gestured toward the back of the restaurant.
“We’ll sit somewhere up front,” Lazaro said.
The other man nodded. “Excellent, come with me.”
Vanessa turned and gave Lazaro a look that could have frozen fire.
He leaned in, allowing a moment, just a moment, to enjoy her scent. Light. Feminine. The same as it had been twelve years ago. He moved his lips near her ear, brushing her thick, glossy hair back. “The better for us to be seen, my dear,” he whispered.
He felt a shudder go through her body. Attraction. Need. The kind that lived so strong in him. She wanted him. Good to know. He didn’t want a martyr in his bed. He wanted her hot, begging for him.
“Great,” she said, acid corroding the word.
She still didn’t want to be seen with him. She was still worried about what people would think. Rage poured into the well of lust that had opened up in him, mixing, mingling, each making the other more potent.
He bypassed the host again and pulled the velvet chair out for Vanessa. She sat, her body held stiffly, her face stony.
Lazaro turned to the host. “Bring whatever you think is best.”
“Of course, Mr. Marino.”
Lazaro took his seat across from Vanessa. Her facial expression hadn’t changed, her bright pink lips set into a firm line, her white-tipped fingernails drumming on the table. He put his hand over hers and halted the motion, curling his fingers around hers.
“You could at least try to look like you’re enjoying yourself. Hell, you could actually enjoy yourself, I promise not to tell.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Sorry if I’m not finding this whole sudden forced-marriage thing all that amusing.”
“You use the word force, Vanessa, and yet I am not forcing you into anything. There is no way for me to do so. You made the choice, you agreed to it.”
“Strong-arm tactics were involved,” she said, raising a glass of red wine to her lips.
“Maybe. But you could walk away.”
“I can’t,” she said, balling her hand into a fist beneath his before pulling it back and setting it in her lap.
“Status is so important to you?”
“What about you? That’s why you’re marrying me.”
It was much harder to remember the logical reason behind the union when she was so close to him. Much easier to remember the visceral, base reasons for it. Revenge. Lust.
“Essentially,” he said. “But I’m not acting like a victim. I need something, you can help me with it. It’s the same for you. So we can use each other, go forward, obtain our goals.
If you want to drag yourself around like a martyr for a few months that’s your prerogative.”
“That’s … I’m not doing that.”
“You are. You made the choice.”
“So own it?”
He shrugged. “Or make a new choice. Walk away now, Vanessa. I’m not going to force you to stay.”
Vanessa met Lazaro’s eyes, forced herself not to look away. He was right. It was so easy to blame him. To make all of this his fault somehow. And, well, him buying up all the stocks was his fault, but the position she was in wasn’t. And agreeing to the marriage had been her choice.
She swallowed, uncomfortable with the revelation. It was more palatable to have it be Lazaro’s fault and his alone. To feel as though she’d been forced into it all. It was harder to accept that she’d agreed to it because she couldn’t take the thought of failing.
She forced a smile. “You’re right.”
“It didn’t even choke you to say it,” he said, his voice laced with dark humor.
“I may not say it again,” she said. “But in this instance, you are. I made the choice. I’m not walking away.”
She’d chosen this path a long time ago, and while this thing with Lazaro was a diversion, the road would end in the same place. She wasn’t turning back now just because things had gotten harder. Picketts didn’t quit. She didn’t quit. She would see it through.
A server came to the table and set a plate in front of each of them. A whitefish fillet and spring vegetables. Very elegant and perfectly cooked. Exactly what she needed to take her focus off Lazaro for a few moments. But not even a divine lemon sauce could keep her from being aware of him. He was just so very there. So present. Close. And he made her tremble inside. Made her remember what it was like to be kissed with the kind of passion normally reserved for books rather than real life.
She set her fork down and put her hands in her lap.
“Now what?” she asked, looking around the restaurant.
She saw Claire Morgan in the corner, eyeing them both with interest. Claire was a major gossip, had been in high school and still was. And Vanessa was willing to bet that she was holding her phone beneath the table frantically texting people to find out if they knew why Vanessa Pickett was at a restaurant with famed billionaire Lazaro Marino.
“Now we wait for Claire to spread the word?” Vanessa asked, looking back at Lazaro.
Lazaro shrugged. “Her, or anyone else interested in why the two of us might be together. They’ll wonder what we’re saying.” He leaned in slightly and Vanessa fought the urge to jump back, away from him, away from the danger he presented.
He was appealing. Much too appealing. He made her thoughts tangle, and she didn’t want him to have that kind of power. If she was going to follow through and marry him, she was going to do it on her terms. That meant not allowing him to reduce her to a mass of quivering female longing just by looking at her.
“Your friend over there is watching us.” He looked in Claire’s direction. “And there’s a table of women in the back corner that have been watching us since we came in.”
Probably watching Lazaro, anyway. He was the kind of man that a woman really had to stop and admire. He was everything a man should be. Strong, exuding confidence and a kind of masculine grace. He was also drop-dead sexy, and that certainly didn’t hurt his cause.
“They’re probably creating our conversation for us,” he continued, his voice husky, inviting. It made her want to lean in toward him. To draw closer. “Probably imagining me telling you how beautiful you look. That your lips look far more edible than any dessert they might have here. That your dress, as beautiful as it is, is a crime because it covers up all of your beautiful skin. That I want to spend an hour removing it, teasing you, teasing myself.”
Vanessa was held in thrall by his words, her heart pounding in her head. He reached across the table and brushed his hand over her cheek, his thumb skimming her bottom lip. Her lips suddenly felt dry and she slicked her tongue over them quickly. She could taste him. The slight, lingering flavor of him. Just a tease. Enough to make her wish it were more.
“They probably think I’m telling you that I want to take you to my bed and spend hours kissing and tasting every inch of your beautiful body.” He leaned back again, a wicked smile spreading over his face. “They have vivid imaginations.”
Vanessa blinked. “Oh.” She cleared her throat. “They’re thinking all of that, huh?” Her face was burning-hot, and she was sure her cheeks were bright pink, a perk of having pale skin.