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She knew what Richard meant. The merger with an airliner—still under wraps, but people had been talking. Charles had dodged questions about it, but watercooler gossip seldom steered her wrong. Maybe that was the reason why he attended this meeting, to make sure his rebel son would get the message. A modern-day intervention for the self-indulgent modern man.
“No, it doesn’t,” said Charles, his French accent very subtle after decades of living stateside. The rich heiress he’d married who had passed a year prior had been American, and invested in his vision. “Which is why we need to act before it’s too late.”
Richard flicked on the lights, and she felt exposed, even though the image on the screen disappeared. “I came up with the perfect solution for this series of events… Luc and Kira, you must marry each other.”
* * *
Marriage. Luc would have rocked back in his chair, had he not been amused by watching the lovely assistant struggle to keep her composure. Amused and aroused, but he had to forget about the latter.
Or maybe not. He straightened his shoulders and eyed her. She pressed her palms against the top of the empty chair she stood behind.
Was she in on the fake marriage idea with his father? Was she that good an actress? He reached inside his jacket and fished out his Montblanc pen. He rolled it around his fingers, an old habit whenever he was thinking. And now, he had to think. A lot.
“Do tell more, Richard,” Charles said.
Richard touched his tie, as if to make sure it didn’t need fixing, and gestured with his hand. “I’ll ask our legal team to draw a contract. How about one year? It should be the right amount of time for you to pursue your affairs, and for Luc to get fully adjusted to life here.”
“You aren’t serious,” Kira said.
“It’s a reasonable idea,” Luc said. He glanced at his father, whose expression softened a bit. Maybe the old man had told Richard to be the middleman in this charade, but for now, pretending he went along with it was the plan. What kind of father proposed his son marry a stranger for the sake of his business? The same kind who abandoned his two small boys to marry into a rich family and go make money overseas. Anger lanced through his chest. Poor Marcel hadn’t made it to see the day when their betraying father would lose something meaningful to him. But Marcel’s absence only stoked the fire burning in Luc’s heart.
“Reasonable?” Kira shot him a reprehensive look. “You wouldn’t be able to keep it in your pants, and you’d sleep with the entire city. It’d only make it a bigger scandal, and me, the butt of the joke.”
Richard raised his hand. “No. We’ll have clauses for that. If he cheats, he’ll have to pay a big penalty which we’ll donate the charity of your choice.”
“Why me though?” Kira asked.
“Because you’re the latest woman he’d been seen with. You’re down to earth, and don’t look like a high maintenance diva,” Richard said, then paused and swung his hands for the grand finale. “You look… relatable and ordinary.”
Relatable, maybe. Ordinary? The jury was still out on that one. Luc detected the way she shifted her weight from foot to foot, clearly unhappy with the poor qualifiers.
“Thanks,” she said dryly. “I hear that all the time.”
“People could really fall in love with you, Kira. And marriage will make Luc seem more stable and less of a liability,” Charles continued. “I’ll give you a decent amount of money. It could change your life.”
Of course. Money ruled the world, and his father knew it better than anyone.
Memories pierced through his soul, and he felt the rage crawling beneath his skin. His mother had been in a state of numbness and dark depression after his father had left her. Then the same pattern followed after Marcel died. Somehow Luc had gotten used to that lack of happiness, to the economy of smiles, the kind of quiet that rattled him inside. Keep it cool. At once, he stood up, speaking in a commanding voice, “I need the room.”
“But I’m not done with this meeting, with all due respect,” Richard said.
Luc removed an invisible piece of lint from his suit, and shot Richard a look that quietly threatened.
Richard acquiesced. “Okay, I’ll give you two ten minutes. But be quick, I have a lot of different magazines asking for comments,” he said before scurrying out.
Luc faced his father. The man he hated. The man who had killed his brother and left his mother a broken shell of a woman. The man who destroyed a part of his heart he could never regain. “You too, please. This is between me and Kira.”
Reluctantly, Charles stood and patted his shoulder before leaving. “You’d better come to an agreement with this lady. For all I know, she could sue us for harassment,” his father whispered, before leaving and closing the door behind him.
Luc bridged the gap between them, and each step he took in Kira’s direction amplified the heartbeat drilling his chest. He shouldn’t be excited about the idea of marrying someone who worked for the enemy—and who could be too close to him for comfort. She’d have access to him around the clock, and he’d have to outsmart her at every turn. Yet the idea of having her close unlocked something inside him he couldn’t deny. Red hot desire, unfiltered and unwavering. “Marry me, Kira.”
“What? You’re into this crazy idea too?”
A real wedding he wouldn’t do, but the idea of a fake one seduced him. Specially if it gave him round the clock access to her. The spy. “It’s a good one, and I don’t say that often. I’ll earn the trust of the company’s most conservative stockholders and partners, and you’ll walk away with a small fortune.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not your biggest fan.”
“And? You just don’t like being attracted to me.”
