Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (70 page)

“I’ll be back in a
moment,” said Daniel, heading towards the loft staircase that I assumed
led to his bedroom. “Make yourself at home.”

I collapsed on one of the sofas,
slumping in a very unladylike fashion not befitting of my elegant apparel. The
ceiling looked like it was a thousand miles away. I shivered a little, hugging
my bare arms. Excessively high ceilings always made me feel cold, for some
reason.

Daniel came back down the stairs
two at a time, his tie gone, shirt un-tucked, and sleeves rolled up to the
elbows. “Can I get you something?”

I shook my head. “I think
I’d just like to go to bed.”

He hesitated for a moment.
“Of course. Tomorrow, if you don’t have other plans, I was hoping you
could stay over and work on our story for the INS interviews.”

“Sure,” I said, getting
to my feet. “Which way?”

“You can have your pick of
the two guest rooms. Here, I’ll show you.”

He walked ahead of me down the
hallway, opening the first door we encountered. “Here’s the bathroom. I’ve
put out some fresh towels.” He moved on to the next door, pushing it open
and flicking on the light. “This is the main guest room.”

I peeked in. It was every bit as
sterile and un-lived-in as the rest of the apartment. “Okay,” I said.

“And here’s the other. It’s
a bit smaller, but some people prefer that.”

I followed him further down the
hall.

At least this one looked a little
bit like a normal bedroom. It was cozy, just the right size, and there wasn’t a
bamboo plant in sight. “Yeah, this’ll work.”

“I had a feeling you’d pick
this one. There are some fresh clothes in the closet; Emma gave me some
guidance on that.”

“Thanks,” I said. I
could have sworn that my brain was telling my feet to walk forward, to go into
the room and shut the door. But I just kept standing in the doorway, inches
from Daniel, hyper-aware of the sound of his breathing.

“You really do look stunning
in that dress,” he said. “I wasn’t just saying that.”

I swallowed before I spoke.
“That’s not what you said before.”

“It’s not?”

“No, you just said ‘stunning
dress.’”

“Well, I meant you look
stunning. The dress just complements it.”

My eyes drifted to the floor,
instinctively. Accepting complements gracefully was not among my talents.
“That’s very nice of you to say,” I muttered.

“Look at me,” he said,
his voice soft and persuasive.

I did. He looked as if he were
struggling to say something, or perhaps struggling not to say it.

“Hey,” I said.
“I’m really tired. We can talk tomorrow, okay?”

“Yes,” he said,
finally. “Of course. I’m sorry. Good night, Maddy.”

He withdrew abruptly, and was
gone in a moment. I shut myself in my room and flopped over onto the bed,
trying not to let myself think too hard about what had just happened between
us. For the first time, I was sure I’d seen Daniel’s façade crack. I was sure
he had some genuine attraction for me, beyond what he was required to display
for the sake of our “relationship.”

Then again, maybe he’d just been
swept up in the seductive atmosphere of the evening. Hell, maybe he’d had a sex
dream about me.

I sat up, biting my lip. It had
been a joke in my own head, but the idea of weighing so heavily in his thoughts
that he couldn’t even escape me in his dreams…a powerful man rendered helpless,
writhing between the sheets, wanting me, needing me…

No, no, no. I had to keep my head
screwed on straight. These weren’t harmless fantasies; not when I was going to
be living with his man and pretending to be his wife. I was going to lose sight
of what we were really doing. I was going to fall for him if I wasn’t careful.

There it was. That was the first
time I’d really admitted it to myself, in as many words. Was I really that
pathetic, to fall in love with a man simply because he was creating a
believable facsimile of wooing me? Admittedly, he was good at it. The dress,
the restaurant, the way he’d looked at me, like I was the only thing in the
world he’d ever wanted. It was enough to turn anyone’s head around.

I was pretty sure I remembered
reading somewhere - or maybe learning in a class - about how a large percentage
of humans’ affection for each other is purely related to proximity.

“Well, I’m fucked,” I
said out loud to the empty room.

Chapter Five

I wasn’t sure if it was the
sunlight or the noises from the kitchen that woke me up. I dragged myself out
of bed and down the hallway to the bathroom with some difficulty; I’d finally
been able to drift off to sleep after hours of staring at the ceiling in the
dark, but I definitely hadn’t gotten any decent rest.

After a quick shower, I felt
slightly more human. I wrapped up in a thick, fluffy robe and padded down the
hallway towards the kitchen. Daniel turned around when he heard one of the
stools at the elegant breakfast bar scraping along the floor.

He was wearing jeans and a tee
shirt that said something about a corporate fun run in 2008. So he did know how
to dress like a normal person. That was encouraging.

I just wished the sight of it
didn’t make my mouth water.

Well, maybe I was just hungry.

“Good morning,” he
said, smiling at me. His eyes flicked up and down a few times, as if he hadn’t
expected me to come to breakfast in a bathrobe. But what the hell - we were
going to be married soon, right?

“Hi,” I said. His hair
was falling loose over his forehead, and I couldn’t stop staring at it, wanting
to push it back into its proper place. “I like your…shirt.”

I’d almost said pants. Clearly, I
just needed to keep my mouth shut.

“Thank you,” he said,
taking it as gracefully as anyone might be expected to. “How do you take
your eggs?”

“Over medium, I guess.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten eggs that I didn’t prepare for
myself. As it turned out, he made them just the way I liked - gooey but not
runny, no uncooked whites. While I dipped my toast in the yolk, I watched him
eat the frittata he’d made for himself. There was a veritable rainbow of
chopped vegetables mixed in, almost more than there were eggs. No toast. So
this was how he maintained his figure. For some reason, I’d always imagined him
as one of those people who can eat absolutely anything and never gain an ounce.
It was comforting to know he had a human side after all.

After breakfast, I got dressed in
the surprisingly casual clothes he’d picked for me, and we settled down in the
living room. Daniel pulled out a small notepad and pen.

“We need to get our story
straight on certain details of our relationship,” he said. “Since
we’ll be living together, and acting as a couple, we ought to be able to give
genuine answers to most of the questions. But there will be questions about the
beginning of our relationship, about very personal things we might not know
about each other. They’ll be the sorts of questions that are difficult to fake.
When it comes to the time of the interview, if they ask you a difficult
question that we haven’t prepared for, simply say that you don’t know or you
can’t remember the details of what they’re asking about. Never try to guess or
make up an answer.”

I nodded. Just the thought of the
interview was already making me nervous, even though it was likely to be months
and months away.

“You’ll probably be expected
to describe the features, layout, and décor of this place,” he said.
“But that shouldn’t be too difficult after a while. When it comes to those
sorts of questions, make sure to be accurate, but not too thorough. You don’t
want to sound rehearsed.”

“Jesus,” I said, more
to myself than him.

He looked up, mildly startled.
“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

“No, no.” I played with
the hem of my new shirt. “It’s just…it’s a lot, is all.”

“You’ll do fine.” He
touched my shoulder, rested his hand there for a moment, and then pulled it
away abruptly. His eyes flicked back down to his notepad. “Your
birthday…May 16th, 1986. Yes?”

I nodded.

“Mine is November 7th, 1982.
Memorize it.” He turned the page. “What were some of the first things
we talked about, when our relationship became personal? What did we have in
common?”

“Are you asking me to make
something up right now?”

“If we discuss these things,
we’ll both be more likely to remember.”

“All right, so…Woody Allen
movies?”

He blinked. “Sorry?”

“That’s what we had in
common. We both liked Woody Allen movies and we started talking about it.”

His brow was just slightly
furrowed.

I sighed. “Fine, what’s your
idea, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you don’t like
mine.”

“It just…sounds made
up.”

“Those are some awfully
judgmental words coming from a man with no ideas.”

“Fine.” He scribbled on
the notepad. “We’ll put it down as a temporary answer and we can revise it
later if I think of something better.”

“I don’t think that’s a good
idea. If we keep changing things, we’re going to get confused. We need to pick
something and stick with it. Don’t you think?”

He exhaled. “All right. We
both liked Woody Allen. What about our first meeting? Can you describe
it?”

“In real life, or are we coming
up with an alternate reality for this too?”

“In real life. Everyone
knows you work for me, so that’s obviously when we met.”

I crossed my arms, thinking.
“I’m not sure we ever really did ‘meet.’ I saw you, obviously. But I don’t
know if we were ever formally introduced until you called me into your office
to…discuss the special project.”

“About that.” He
cleared this throat. “You found out later that there was, in fact, no
special project. I only called you into my office because I wanted to talk to
you. I’d become smitten from a distance. I wanted an excuse to have a
conversation with you, and get to know you better. Or at all. That’s when we
discovered that we both liked Woody Allen. Over the next few days, I kept
calling you to my office for more ‘meetings.’ Things became…physical, very
quickly. We both kept it a secret, due to the conflict of interest. But then, I
finally decided I didn’t want to keep our love hidden anymore. So I asked you
out to dinner with me. Shortly after that, you quit your job and moved into my
apartment.” He looked up, smiling slightly. “So, that’s the story of
us.”

“Your alternate universe
doppelganger is very aggressive,” I said. “Did I have any say in the
matter at all?”

He looked mildly offended.
“Of course,” he said. “What kind of fictional man do you think I
am?”

I had to laugh. “All right,
okay. What if they ask me if I knew about your…you know, predicament?”

“Of course I told you,
because I didn’t want you to think I was only marrying you for that. You were
skeptical at first, of course, but as time went on, you realized that I
genuinely loved you.”

“That’s very touching. Do
you think they’ll fall for it?”

“There’s no law against
marrying someone if you’re at risk of being deported. What’s illegal is
marrying someone because you’re at risk of being deported. It’s all right for
them to be suspicious that we might have rushed into things because of my
situation, as long as they can’t prove that was the only reason we got
married.”

“That sounds incredibly
dodgy, just so you know. If I worked for the INS I’d be driving you across the
border myself.”

“Your vote of confidence is
much appreciated,” he said dryly, flipping the page in his notebook.
“But I told you, I have inside help. I have to go through the formalities,
and I have to not trip over my own feet while doing so. They’re even going to
make a special exception for me. Normally, it would take two years of marriage
before I could apply for a permanent visa, but they’ve reduced it to one.”

“Thank God,” I said out
loud, without thinking.

He raised an eyebrow at me.
“I realize you have no way of knowing this, but I promise being married to
me won’t be an actual nightmare.”

I could feel my face turning
bright red. “I know,” I said, hastily. “I didn’t mean…it’s just,
you know, a year of my life. That’s scary enough to think about.”

“Relax. I’m teasing
you.” He glanced down at his notepad again. “We need to pick a
favorite sexual position.”

I stared. “Is that a
comment, or a question?”

“Just pick one,” he
said, still looking down at the paper.

“Uh, fine,” I said.
“Doggystyle? Is there like…a scientific term for that? Or something
classier?”

“I don’t think so,” he
muttered, scribbling something down.

“I hope you’re actually
writing down ‘doggystyle’ then,” I said, willing myself to stop blushing
furiously, even if there appeared to be no imminent danger of him raising his
head.

I was wrong - he looked up at me
then, frowning. “I’m not writing any of this down,” he said, sharply.
“And neither will you.”

“Jesus.” I raised both
of my hands. “Do you see me taking notes?”

“I’m sorry.” He toyed
with his own pen for a moment. “I just…I can’t emphasize how important it
is that we don’t have a written record of any of this. I’m taking notes that
will help remind me of what we decide here, but no one else would be able to
interpret them. Even so, I won’t let this notebook out of my sight.”

“I know,” I said.
“Believe me, I don’t want to end up in prison for criminal
conspiracy.”

He chuckled. “Someone’s been
researching.”

“I just wanted to know what
the worst case scenario was. It’s comforting.”

“Let’s not borrow trouble.
It won’t come to that if we’re careful.” He cleared his throat. “All
right. They’re very likely to ask about what kind of birth control we use, are
you on anything I should know about?”

I shook my head. None of my
relationships had lasted long enough for me to think about getting on anything
long-term.

“Condoms, then,” he
said. “What kind?”

I snorted. “What kind of
condoms?”

“That’s exactly the kind of
details they’re going to ask about,” he said, patiently. “Simple to
answer if you’re being honest, but very difficult if you’re lying.”

“Fine. I don’t care.
Whatever you normally use.”

He hesitated. “Maybe it
would be better if we said we were planning on having children as soon as possible.”

“You don’t think that’s
laying it on a little too thick?”

He was chewing on the side of his
thumbnail. “Better they should think we’re disgustingly in love, and
wildly irresponsible, than faking it.”

“Fine.”

He flipped back through the pages
of his notepad. “I think that’s everything we need to go over. We’ll
review it from time to time. We shouldn’t be called up for an interview until I
submit some of my paperwork, but it’s best to be prepared.”

“Sure,” I said.

He stood, tucking the notepad
into his pocket. “Would you prefer to wait until after we’re married to
move in?”

I gaped at him for a moment
before I spoke. “Uh, yes. Please.” I hadn’t even considered that he
might suggest otherwise, and the idea of sharing such close quarters with him
gave me goose bumps. All right, so it was a big apartment. But it was still an
apartment. An apartment where I’d shortly be living with him, for an entire
year.

He looked slightly taken aback.

“I just need some more
time,” I said, quickly. “To get everything settled. You know. My
lease - and everything.”

He was frowning. “I’ll pay
it off,” he said. “If that’s a problem.”

“I’m not ready,” I
said, a little more forcefully than I meant to. “If I have another problem
that can be solved with money, trust me, you’ll be the first to know.”

Daniel stepped back. “Of
course,” he said, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

I watched him as he disappeared
up the staircase into his loft bedroom, leaving me alone on the sofa with my
thoughts.

I felt vaguely sick to my
stomach, sad and unsettled. I didn’t like hurting his feelings, but he had to
make more of an effort to understand how strange this whole situation was going
to be for me. All that mattered to him was the end goal; with his eyes fixed on
the prize, he seemed to be losing sight of the fact that he was asking me to
give up my entire life.

The minutes ticked by, marked by
the ultra-modern clock above the mantelpiece. Finally, I stood up and headed
towards the staircase, because I didn’t know what else to do.

The journey seemed to take
forever, and I was acutely aware of the sound of every footfall. When I finally
reached the top, I let my eyes drift over to the small sitting-area in the open
part of the loft, two love seats facing each other with a little coffee table
between. Finally I looked over to his bedroom door, which was hanging open.

He was sitting on the edge of a
massive four-posted bed, so high off the floor that his feet dangled. He lifted
his head when I walked in, and for the first time, I noticed the stress and
exhaustion that was etched all over his face. Or maybe this was the first time
he’d allowed me to see it.

I hoisted myself up on the
mattress next to him.

“I’m sorry,” I said.
“But this is weird.”

He nodded, sighing, as he dragged
his fingers through his hair. Right now, he was a million miles away from the
perfectly-groomed businessman I knew at work, the one whose hand I’d shaken to
cement our strange agreement.

“I don’t want to pressure
you into anything that makes you uncomfortable,” he said, finally.
“You know that, don’t you? Just because I’m paying you…what I’m trying to
say is, you shouldn’t feel obligated.”

“Okay,” I said,
laughing a little. I couldn’t help it.

“What?”

“You know that’s impossible,
right?” I met his eyes. He genuinely didn’t seem to understand what I was
driving at. “With the amount of money you’re giving me, how can I possibly
not feel obligated?”

He shook his head. “You’ve
got to stop thinking in those terms. I know it’s…I know it’s hard. The nature
of what we’re doing is so, so uh…if I thought there was another way, trust me,
I’d do it. But we won’t be able to pass as a genuine couple if we don’t live as
one. And because of that, I think things have the tendency to
get…muddled.”