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.”
“Why wouldn’t that work?”
“Because I need you in the New York office,” he said. He wasn’t giving her up. She was one of the only two assistants he’d ever had that didn’t annoy him and actually made him want to go into the office, Lucille being the other.
“I’m still not following why you came up with this solution,” she said. She wasn’t belligerent or demanding, which he would have brushed aside.
“The only thing that will get the press off your back is if we take control of what they are covering. A wedding is the kind of thing they eat up.”
She tipped her head to the side and gave him a long, level stare. “So, we’re getting married?”
“No, just planning a wedding.”
She shook her head. “Do I seem that desperate to you?”
“No, you don’t seem desperate.”
“Well, then why do you think I’d settle for being your pretend fiancée?”
“Because you aren’t going to be able to stay here at my parents’ house the way I’d hoped. And your home in Brooklyn isn’t going to offer you any protection from the paparazzi. They’ll follow you from the second you leave until the moment you return. Are you ready to deal with that on your own?”
She shook her head and then turned away from him. He let her have a moment of privacy, but he could sense her weakening and he’d already decided this was best for both of them.
And he wasn’t backing down. Sheri was going to be standing in his parents’ den really soon, toasting their engagement with a smile that would convince the world that they were the real deal.
He went over to her, touching her shoulders. How he’d never noticed her before last night still amazed him. She had an incredible body. He lowered his head, dropping a soft nibbling kiss against the back of her neck. He ran his hands down her arms and drew her back against his body.
“I want what’s best for you, ma petite,” he said, unable to resist kissing her collarbone.
Her skin tasted faintly sweet, something he’d never noticed in a woman before. But she tasted good to him. And he brushed his tongue against her smooth skin to take a little more of that taste into his mouth.
She shivered in his arms, arching against him, tipping her head back against his shoulder. Her eyes were wide as she looked up at him. So very wide and vulnerable.
Her mouth trembled and he knew she was on the cusp of giving in to him. He leaned down and kissed her. Not softly, but with all the passion inside of him. He kissed her like a man who was hungry for his woman and wanted everything that she had to give.
He broke the kiss only when he needed to breathe and immediately came back to her again, sucking her lower lip into his mouth and drawing on it. She moaned and turned in his arms until he felt the curve of her breast brush his upper arm. Her nipple was hard; he felt it through the fabric of her maillot.
He felt a twinge of conscience at pushing her now. But in the end, he knew what he had to do to take care of her. This was all that was in his control.
“Tristan?”
“Hmm?”
