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He stilled. How dared she pretend? She was complicit in the suspicion that followed him. The women who’d chosen him, only wanting the bad boy. He was all too aware how a carefully placed whisper could bring everything crashing down. Sure, he’d done well. Working with his father, Caron had become a powerhouse, exceeding their wildest expectations. But Gage wanted more. Caron would be truly international. If he could secure the current deal he sought with the Germans—a deal he needed Eve’s help to achieve, as much as it galled him—then the world would see what he was capable of. It’s what he was owed, and Eve would pay up.
‘I gain everything I want.’
‘You want to marry me?’ She blurted that out and he could tell she hadn’t meant to say it. The mottle of red creeping up from her throat, marring her flawless skin, told him so. He laughed.
‘Of course not. Don’t worry, cher. It’s only temporary and won’t hurt a bit. Not unless you want it to. You know I always give a woman what she wants.’
The column of her slender throat convulsed. The thought of laying his hands on her flawless skin, had his body tight and on high alert. It was as if everything slowed, the air in the room becoming thick with possibilities. If he could touch her again, maybe she would be burned from his system once and for all.
‘I don’t want any of it.’
‘Another lie, cher? How disappointing. You still want me. The whole of you tells me that like you’re screaming it out loud.’
He could see it in the way her eyes tracked his every move. Surveying him, fixing on his hands, his mouth. Those parts of him he’d used to toy with her mercilessly the rare times they’d been able to sneak away from family and indulge their obsession with each other. And it had been an obsession. That’s one thing she could never fake. The delicious heat of satisfaction slid through him.
‘You’ll agree. The engagement will last as long as it needs to, then I’ll end it. And all the while you’ll fake it with a smile on your face. History tells me you’re good at doing that.’
She didn’t even balk at the jibe, proving exactly what he’d accused her of being.
‘And what if I want it to end?’
‘That’s not how this works.’
‘I need to know.’ She licked her lips, leaving them moist and kissable. Would her kiss still have the power to obliterate all rational thought? He craved to swoop down, capture those soft lips with his own. Loathed the fact that she still held some power over him. ‘What’s in it for you?’
‘Apart from crushing your father by forcing him to believe that a Caron’s hands are all over his daughter again, and that I’ve finally won? Let me see...’
He wanted to witness the look on the man’s face when he realised he’d lost everything. His company. His beloved daughter. The world coming to know that the falsehoods he’d secretly whispered in the right ears had all been lies.
A look shifted across her face, fleeting, like clouds over the sun. ‘There’s something you need to know. Is everything that’s said in this room absolutely confidential?’
‘Don’t you trust me, cher?’ She winced at the endearment but he didn’t care. Once she’d meant everything to him, and she’d thrown it in his face by trying to take him down. He’d never forgive her, ever.
‘You’re an intelligent man. This whole meeting was designed to take revenge against my family and we both know where that leads, to nowhere good. Of course I don’t trust you.’
‘The only person who has a problem with the truth, is you.’
‘And yet here I am trying to tell you a truth and you don’t seem interested.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘I—I need to know that this deal is safe.’
‘If you agree to my whole proposal until I say we’re done, then yes. It’s safe.’
The whole of her slumped a little. Her shoulders dropped. Her eyes shut briefly, dark lashes feathering over her cheeks. Then she opened her eyes, and that hint of vulnerability disappeared. Her eyes lost their soft baby-blue colour. Now they were all hard steel.
‘My father’s in hospital. The ICU.’
It was as though the earth shifted under his feet. The whole of him a morass of sensations that jumbled together in an uncomfortable soup of feelings he barely understood. There was disappointment that Hugo Chevalier wasn’t going to see this, wouldn’t feel the full weight of horror at the realisation that Gage had taken it all from him, but there was something else too, something that stuck like a knife under the ribs. A spike that felt a whole lot like sympathy.
He shook his head. He didn’t have a sympathetic sentiment left in him. Eve had seen to that.
‘How bad is it?’
She must be hurting. She loved her daddy. She had to, considering she’d chosen to go back to Hugo and her trust fund rather than keep running with him. Eve looked up at him, no expression on her face. ‘He has an infection. They’re worried about multi-organ failure. It’s as bad as can be without being told to call a priest.’
She said it like she was asking him how he wanted his eggs for breakfast.
