Marriage Made on Paper (6 page)

Gage took her hand and a flash of heat raced up through her fingers and into her whole body, warming her core, making her heart beat faster. She wished she could blame that on the press conference, but she couldn’t. Gage had an unexpected, unaccountable effect on her body. One that made her feel like she was out of control, which she hated more than anything.

He tugged on her lightly and led her up the stairs and to the podium. Gage held her hand up and moved it out toward the light so that the massive ring, which she had placed on her own finger only a few minutes earlier, caught the light. The noise in the crowd quieted, everyone staring at them, their eyes expectant, hungry for a story.

“Thank you all for coming this morning,” Gage said, lowering their hands. “Before any rumors started flying, we wanted to make a formal announcement. I’ve asked my public relations specialist, Lily Ford, to marry me and she’s accepted.”

Then, like an invisible barrier was broken, flashes from cameras went off and questions started flying at them from all directions.

“Mr. Forrester, is this in any way related to the news story about your sister this morning?”

She could feel Gage tense, his hand squeezing hers tightly. Reflexively, she reached over with her other hand and traced her fingers lightly over his knuckles.

“We are not discussing my sister or the blatant untruths that were printed about her, any more questions along that line and we’re finished here.”

The sound of his voice acted like a high beam in the fog of her brain. She jerked her hand away from his,
horrified that she’d touched him like that. Like she had permission to do it, like it was natural.

“Do you have a date set?” This came from a woman in the crowd.

“We’re still looking at venues,” Lily responded.

“And what does this mean for your dating life?” one of the men asked.

“This means he’s through with dating,” Lily said sharply. Usually she was very cool in these situations, but she greatly resented the excessive interest in the lives of public figures anyway, and being at the center of it only added to the resentment.

“She’s right about that,” Gage said, drawing his thumb over the back of her hand, sending little ripples of sensation through her. “I never thought I would get married. But when I met Lily … Well, she’s all that I want.” He looked up, his blue eyes intent on hers. Her breath caught. He looked like he meant every word he’d just spoken, his expression sincere, his eyes trained only on her. No mystery why he scored so many beautiful women with such ease. He could do romance without breaking a sweat, and he could sound completely honest while speaking words that were nothing more than beautiful lies.

And the worst thing was that, even knowing that, even having a complete and total man embargo, it affected her. Her heart was thundering, her stomach tight, her breasts heavy.

And when his eyes dropped and his focus moved to her lips, she was silently hoping he would lean in and close the distance between them.

She shook her head sharply and tried to force the image out of her mind. She didn’t want to kiss him. He was charming her. Like he’d done to thousands of other
women multiple thousands of times. But she wasn’t like those other women. She had standards. She knew what happened when you let a man in like that, when you gave someone else so much power in your life. She would never make that mistake. Her life was just as she liked it. Well-ordered and entirely in her control.

The rest of the questions went by in a blur and she stood there, smiling, her face placid, her manner serene. She was a professional at projecting calm when her thoughts were churning beneath the surface.

Everything in her was concentrating on ignoring the place where Gage was touching her, on where he was moving his thumb over the sensitive skin on her hand. On the heat that coursed through her from such a simple, nonsexual touch.

“Thank you, we won’t be taking any more questions. We both have some work to get back to, and I’d hate to have to fire my fiancée.” The crowd laughed softly at his joke. Lily tightened her lips to try and avoid grimacing.

He led her off of the stage and the minute they were safely ensconced in his limousine she jerked her hand away from him, rubbing at the spot he’d been brushing with his thumb.

“Try not to act like my touch offends you next time,” he said.

She tilted her head up to face him and immediately wished she hadn’t. The impact of him, his blue eyes narrowed, his expression hard, was more than she’d anticipated. After working with Gage for four months she should be used to him by now, but, while he was always in charge, no doubt about it, he didn’t usually give off that level of intensity. He was completely serious about his work, but beneath it all was a definite security. He
wasn’t the kind of man who had to posture and get worked up over every minor detail in order to project his power. Never had she felt a hint of the intensity that she knew was just beneath the surface right now.

She knew he loved his sister, knew he was protective of her, but she hadn’t realized just how much.

“I didn’t act like your touch offended me,” she said, looking out the window at the harbor, watching the white boats blur together. “I was perfectly composed.”

“And stiff.”

This was not a new refrain. She couldn’t even recall the number of times she’d been called frigid, on those ill-fated, unwanted dates that had been concocted by her well-meaning friends.

Stiff was actually a little bit nicer, but she imagined the sentiment was much the same.

“Sorry, I’ll work on my fawning.”

“Do that,” he said, his voice icy.

“No one else could tell. And if they could they would attribute it to nerves from being in front of a crowd.”

“You make statements to the press on an almost daily basis.”

“True,” she admitted, “but not personal statements. Maybe I’m private.”

“You are very tight-lipped about your personal life.”

Personal life? That would be a fun conversation. The gym four nights a week. A health-conscious meal for one, and then whatever show she felt like watching on TV since there was never anyone there to complain. If she didn’t have issues with pet hair she would probably have a cat, which would at least give her companionship, but would give him unfair ammo against her.

“That’s why they call it a personal life, Gage, although clearly you didn’t get the memo.”

“Tell me this, Lily, is there any point for me to try and hide my personal life? You know how the media is, and if you aren’t up front about what goes on behind closed doors they make it up, or someone makes it up for them.”

“Okay, I see your point. But you tend to … flaunt.”

“No, I happen to date women who are as high profile as I am, and that makes us targets. We go out, and that seems to constitute as news. We can’t stay in my bedroom all the time.”

The way he said that, his husky voice low and intimate in the confines of the limo, made her heart rate skyrocket. Why,
why
was he able to this to her? Why did he have the power to fill her head with images of tangled limbs and the sounds of heavy breathing, the scent of sweat-slicked bodies? Men, in a real life, personal sense, never did that to her.

She liked men, she just liked them from a distance. Like in the pages of a glossy magazine or on a movie screen. She had a sex drive, just like most everyone else, but in actual, personal application … that was what made her feel anxious. Which wasn’t conducive to arousal. Orgasm required a loss of control she couldn’t fathom being able to achieve, or even wanting to achieve, with another person.

But it was as if Gage was able to bypass all of her natural issues, all of her closely guarded reserve, and make her want things she’d never anticipated having a desire for. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to abolish her personal barriers so that she could experience real desire and satisfaction with Gage, it was a matter of them seeming to dissolve and her desperately wishing
they would return. He was her boss, and work was too important to even consider engaging in an affair that would damage that.

Fine for some women to have flings and keep themselves emotionally separate, but she was afraid she wasn’t one of those women. Her mother certainly wasn’t. Every man she ever slept with consumed everything she had. All her emotion, all her time, her self-respect. It had made growing up a living hell for Lily. There had been nothing she could do at the time, but now, it was up to her how she ran her life, and she chose to maintain total control.

End of story. So her hormones could just deal with it.

“I don’t suppose you can,” she said, teeth clenched.

“Check your alerts,” he said, back to his high-handed self.

She took her phone out of her pocket and pulled up her email. She’d received a few email alerts, letting her know Gage’s name had popped up in search engines. She opened the first one. “It looks like our engagement is big news. Huge news, in fact.”

“How about Maddy?”

“The story’s still there, and I wouldn’t call it buried,” she said, looking through the pages of search results. “But it’s quieted.”

“Good,” he said.

Gage took his phone from his jacket pocket and dialed Maddy, setting the mobile to speakerphone. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, Gage. I’m fine.”

She didn’t sound distraught, but he could tell she’d been crying, which made his stomach tighten. “It’s handled.”

“I saw that,” she said. “I don’t want you doing this for me. I’m an adult, Gage. I have to clean up my own messes.”

“Not this one, Maddy. Callahan is a bastard to drag you into this, and it’s way out of your league. Let me handle it.”

“Gage, you have to let me stand on my own sometime.”

“I know,” he said, his chest tightening. “After this.”

He knew Maddy was an adult, and he understood her feeling like she needed to fight her own battles, and, if he was honest, he was more than ready to have a little less involvement with her life. But he wasn’t letting her deal with this on her own.

“I’m sending you over to the Swiss resort for a couple of weeks. Just until all of this dies down.”

“Gage …”

“Maddy, let me fix it.”

He heard her heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “Okay, Gage, I’ll go to Switzerland. Are you still going through with your fake engagement?”

“How do you know it’s fake?” he asked, looking over at Lily, who was still staring out the window, trying to ignore him. Her slight shoulders were set rigidly, her long, stocking-clad legs crossed. And they were extremely fine legs. Lily wasn’t very tall, she barely skimmed his shoulder, even in her man-slaying stilettos, but those legs were long and shapely, just begging for him to run his hands over them, to draw one up so that she had it wrapped around him, bringing her closer so that he could …

He slammed a mental door on his errant fantasy.

“Because she isn’t your type at all. She’s too … stuffy,” Maddy said.

Lily’s head whipped around, brown eyes wide, full lips pinched. He swore and punched the speaker button off. “Enjoy Switzerland, Maddy. Let me handle the rest.”

He snapped the phone shut. Lily was looking away again, her focus very firmly on the scenery out the window.

He wanted to touch her. To see if he could make her melt. To see what it would take to get her to loosen her hair, to get her to unbutton a little bit. Or all the way. It was easy for him to picture her naked, her perfect, petite body on display for him. She was so pale … the thought of all that milky white skin contrasting against his black sheets was the most erotic fantasy his subconscious had ever created for him.

Two things kept him from exploring the fantasy. First, she was an employee, and that was a no-go as far as he was concerned. Second, she had
serious
written all over her. He didn’t do serious. Not in his sexual relationships. He’d done serious. Not in romantic relationships, but his entire childhood and young adult years had been nothing but responsibility.

His mother had done okay raising him to a point, but Maddy had been a late-in-life surprise, and his mother hadn’t been willing to miss more years on the job to raise a child she hadn’t wanted. His father had always put his career first and had even less time for Maddy. And that left him. He was fifteen years older and more than capable of caring for her.

When he was twenty-five, just out of college and making his first million in property development, Maddy had called and told him it had been three days
since anyone had been home, and she hadn’t had anything to eat. He’d gone to get her and she’d lived with him from the age of ten until she’d gone to college. That was a lot of serious for a confirmed bachelor who had his own career to try and build. Fortunately, he’d had a network of good friends that had helped him try to balance work and what basically amounted to sudden parenthood.

He didn’t resent it and he would never have given it up for anything, but he was done with that. In his estimation, he’d raised a child, when he’d been much too young to do it, and he had no intention of going there again. He’d already dealt with the angst of a teenage girl’s first crush, threatened her dates with bodily harm if they laid a hand on her, helped her find a dress for prom, then seen her off to college.

And despite the fact that Lily certainly didn’t seem like the kind of woman who had a biological clock ticking, she still read serious. She didn’t date very often and she was probably the kind of woman that took a certain amount of seduction before she engaged in a physical relationship.

He preferred women who were fun and uncomplicated, and if that made him shallow in the eyes of the press, that was fine with him. He was the one who had to live his life, and as long as he was happy with it, he didn’t concern himself with the opinions of others.

Except when it came to Maddy.

“So, now what? We have to go to galas together?” Lily asked, her voice dry. What Maddy had said bothered her that was obvious. And if she hadn’t been so very off-limits he would have offered comfort. But he only knew two ways to do that. One was parental, and
one was decidedly not. He imagined neither would be welcome.