Page 31 of Her Forbidden Bargain

He shook his head. “Sit down.”

She sank back down onto the lounge chair. It was thickly cushioned, probably more comfortable than the old mattress she slept on at home.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve decided the best way to handle the paparazzi is to take charge of the situation.”

She liked the sound of that. “Good. Running away seems cowardly to me.”

He gave her a faint smile. “You never fail to amaze me,” he said, and for once that arrogant tone she associated with him wasn’t there.

“How am I doing that?” She usually glided through life being dependable or invisible. Which, she realized, was why the photographers had shaken her. She’d never stood out from the people she worked with or dealt with on a daily basis. How could she handle the attention of the world?

“By being calm about the photographers and my family. A quick flight out of Greece to Paris hasn’t seemed to upset you at all.”

It was sweet of Tristan to say that, but she was anything but calm. “I guess we’re going to pretend that moment at the airport where I almost bolted didn’t happen. And the time when I started screaming in front of the photographers,” she said in a teasing tone.

That startled a laugh out of him, and she felt better for it.

“Exactly. The solution I propose may sound a bit odd to you at first. But let me explain everything before you comment on it.”

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. What was he going to say? Well, what could he say? The board and I think you need to find a new job. And I want you to deny ever being with me.

His touch on her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts and she looked up into those deep gray eyes of his. She loved his eyes, and had often imagined him looking at her just as he was right now.

“Breathe,” he said.

“I am,” she said, with a long exhale.

He took her hand in his and held it loosely in his grip. “You have such pretty hands.”

Of course he’d notice her hands. Considering she wasn’t beautiful like the women he normally surrounded himself with, her hands were probably the only thing he’d found good-looking about her.

He lifted one of them to his mouth and kissed the back of it, then tucked his fingers around it. She smiled at the way he did it…linking them together.

She felt a bit of calm steal over her. This didn’t feel like the big brush-off. And she’d had enough experience with being shown the door that she’d know if a man was doing that to her.

In fact, her stomach wasn’t a tight knot like it had been the day that her father had sat her down to talk. She realized suddenly that her dreams were still alive. All this time, she’d thought she was a cynic and a realist but, sitting in this beautiful solarium filled with the sound from the waterfall at the end of the pool and the scents of Eden around her, she was holding her breath not because she felt like something bad was about to happen, but because she anticipated something good.

Tristan made her feel like the kind of woman for whom a man would make a grand gesture to keep in his life. And in the car, he’d all but said he wanted to continue their affair. So what could this be about? What was he going to say to her now, in this paradise?

“So what did you come up with?”

“I want you to be my fiancée,” he said.

Sheri was sure she’d misunderstood him, because she knew he wasn’t the marrying kind, but she thought he’d said be his fiancée.

“What?”

“I want you to be my fiancée for the time being. Just until the furor of the press dies down.”

She felt the blood rush from her face and closed her eyes. Of course, it was temporary. She had forgotten the one truth of her life—she was meant to be alone.

Sheri pulled away from him and got to her feet. Moving a few yards away, she wrapped one arm around her waist and then a few seconds later turned back to him, putting both hands on her hips.

“Why would I agree to that? That’s a crazy solution. Who’s going to care that we’re engaged?”

“The Sabina Group board, for one. They wanted to transfer you to the London office where you could hide out until this blows over.”