Millionaires' Destinies

She was genuinely considering doing just that when Becky came in with two cups of latte and cranberry scones from the café down the street. She held them just out of Melanie’s reach.

“If I give you these, will you tell me everything that went on between you and Richard Carlton this weekend?” she asked.

“No,” Melanie said, snatching the coffee out of her friend’s hand. She could live without the scone if she had to. Caffeine was another story.

“Testy, aren’t you? It must not have gone very well.”

“That depends on your definition of success,” Melanie replied, taking her first sip of the heavenly latte. “He didn’t toss me out in the snow.”

“Interesting,” Becky said with a thoughtful expression. “Then you were stranded there all weekend?”

“Yes.”

“And with all that time on your hands, you couldn’t convince him to hire you?”

“I never even convinced him to read the proposal,” she admitted grimly. “I was just about to shred my copy and write the whole thing off as a loss.”

Becky stared at her in shock. “What kind of defeatist attitude is that? You never give up.”

“I do when the odds of winning are impossible.”

Becky’s gaze narrowed. “Did he seduce you?”

Melanie scowled at her. “No.”

“Did he at least try?”

Melanie thought back over the weekend and the dance they’d played. Richard had tossed out a proposition, she’d dodged it, he’d parried, then she’d taken a turn muddying the waters. “It was a bit confusing,” she said finally.

“Then he did try,” Becky concluded. “And you what?”

“I said no, of course.”

“And then?”

“What makes you think that wasn’t the end of it?”

Becky gave her a knowing look. “It was a long weekend.”

“Okay, then I threw myself at him.”

“Interesting.”

“No, stupid. I corrected the mistake almost immediately.”

“Almost?”

“Soon enough,” Melanie said. “I didn’t sleep with him. In fact, I only kissed him once. No big deal.”

“Oh, right. The sexiest, richest man in all of Alexandria, maybe in the entire Washington metropolitan region, kisses you, and it’s no big deal.”

Melanie sighed. “Okay, the kiss was a big deal, but that’s as far as it went and it won’t be happening again. He couldn’t get me out of there fast enough yesterday morning.”

“Probably because he was tempted,” Becky concluded. “Men do that, you know. They act all weird and crazy when they’re losing control.”

Melanie heard something in Becky’s voice, a faint catch, that hinted she was no longer talking about the weekend Melanie had just shared with a prospective client. “Something happen with you and Jason?” Jason was the love of Becky’s life, or so she’d persuaded herself. He was the fourth one this year, but even Melanie was almost convinced he was a keeper.

Becky’s eyes immediately clouded up. “We broke up. More precisely, he broke up with me.”

That was new. Usually Becky was the one running for cover. Melanie tried to muster the appropriate amount of sympathy, which was getting harder and harder to do. It was somewhat easier with Jason, because she’d genuinely liked him. She’d even thought Becky had gotten it right for once. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. I know you thought he was the one.”

“He is the one,” Becky said fiercely. “He’s just being stubborn and scared and stupid.”

“It’s really hard to argue with stubborn, scared and stupid,” Melanie pointed out. “You should know. You’ve done it often enough yourself.”

“But if it’s what you want, you have to fight for it, right?”

“I suppose.”

Becky gave her a challenging look. “Okay, then. I will if you will.”

“Meaning?” Melanie asked cautiously.

“I’ll keep fighting for what I have—what I want—with Jason, if you’ll keep fighting for Richard.”

“This isn’t about Richard and me. What’s going on with us isn’t personal,” Melanie replied irritably. “It’s about the Carlton Industries contract.”

Becky gave her a sympathetic look. “Oh, sweetie, it might have started that way, but it’s taken on a whole new twist. I can see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice. The sooner you wake up and accept that, the better off you’ll be.”

“It’s about the contract,” Melanie insisted stubbornly.

“Fine. Whatever gets you to pick up the phone and call the man,” Becky said.

“I will not call him. The ball’s in his court.”

“Not if you packed up all the balls and brought them with you when you left his house,” Becky said, then sighed heavily. “Okay, never mind. I recognize that tone. I’ll stop pushing. Just promise me you won’t shred the file.”

Melanie stared at the file she’d been fingering throughout the conversation as if it were some sort of talisman that linked her to Richard. “Fine. I won’t destroy the file.” She stared hard at Becky. “And you won’t call Jason.”

“But—”

“No, buts,” Melanie said firmly. “Let the man grovel for once. You know he will.”

“Eventually,” Becky agreed confidently. Her cheerful mood returned. “Before I land him, the man is going to have groveling down to a fine art.”

“Now there’s a goal.” Melanie regarded Becky wistfully. “I wonder if Richard knows the first thing about groveling?” She thought of how goal oriented he claimed to be and sighed. “Doubtful,” she concluded.

“Maybe he’s trainable,” Becky suggested.

Destiny had had a certain amount of luck teaching him manners, but she’d started at a relatively early age. Melanie had a hunch she was catching Richard far too late to change his ingrained habits.

Too bad, too, because more than once over the weekend, she thought he’d displayed amazing possibilities …and not one of them had anything at all to do with his candidacy for City Council.

She was still pondering that when the phone rang. Becky picked it up.

“Hart Consulting,” she said cheerfully, then listened, her expression going from surprised to dismayed so quickly that Melanie’s heart was thudding when Becky finally handed over the receiver.

Becky punched the hold button before Melanie could speak. “Prepare yourself. It’s that columnist from the morning paper. He’s asking about you and Richard.”

“About the consulting?” Melanie asked hopefully.

Becky shook her head. “About the weekend you spent together. He seems to have details.”

Oh, hell. This was a publicist’s worst nightmare, even when she wasn’t personally involved. Worse, it was too late to duck the call. Melanie sucked in a deep breath and prepared for some fancy tap dancing. She had to find out how much the reporter knew, or thought he knew.

“This is Melanie Hart,” she said briskly.

“Pete Forsythe, Ms. Hart. How are you? We met at the heart association gala last month.”

“Of course, I remember you, Mr. Forsythe. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for confirmation on something I heard this morning from an extremely reliable source.”

“Oh?”

“It involves you and Carlton Industries CEO and chairman Richard Carlton.”

“Really? I can’t imagine where you’d hear anything linking the two of us in any way. I barely know Mr. Carlton.”

“But you do know him,” he persisted.

“We’ve met.”

“Is there any truth to the rumor that the two of you are involved? That you spent this weekend with him at a family cottage at the beach?”

Melanie’s laugh sounded forced, even to her. “Don’t be ridiculous. As I said, I barely know the man. Sorry, Mr. Forsythe. I can’t help you.” She hung up before he could press her into saying something she’d regret, something that would send Richard into a blind rage.

“Is he going to print an item anyway?” Becky asked.

“More than likely.”

“Are you going to warn Richard?”

Melanie considered it and decided it wouldn’t help anything. She hadn’t given anything away. Richard might be angry enough to call Pete Forsythe and protest the man’s intrusion into his privacy, which would only add fuel to the fire. Better to let Forsythe think that there was no fire, that the rumor was off the mark. Maybe then, if he had even the tiniest shred of integrity, he’d have second thoughts about printing it.

“No,” she told Becky. “Maybe without my confirmation, Forsythe will conclude that there’s nothing to the gossip and drop it.”

Becky promptly shook her head. “I think you’re being blindly optimistic. This is too juicy. I’d certainly want to know if a powerful man like Carlton, who’s thinking of running for office, was holed up in a cozy little getaway with a major PR consultant. That’s hot stuff in this town. With what he has now, he can spin it a lot of different ways. An intimate rendezvous? A campaign strategy session that confirms Richard’s intention to run for Council? Either way, it’s news.”

Melanie couldn’t deny that. She could only pray that Pete Forsythe was the kind of reporter who’d want confirmation from at least one of the participants before printing anything, before deciding on what angle to pursue. He hadn’t gotten any sort of confirmation from her, and she doubted he’d risk going straight to Richard. Carlton Industries spent a lot of money in advertising, and Richard was a powerful man in the business community. Would Forsythe or his paper risk offending him for a titillating tidbit in tomorrow’s paper? The story could still die, she told herself staunchly. Really.

Sure, she thought grimly, and pigs could fly.

Chapter Seven

“Why was one of Alexandria’s most eligible bachelors huddling in a secret hideaway with a marketing expert last weekend?” Pete Forsythe’s insider column in the Washington paper asked a few days later. “Could it be that Carlton Industries CEO Richard Carlton is finally getting ready for that long-rumored plunge into politics? Or was this rendezvous personal? He’s not talking and neither is the woman, but we’ve confirmed that he was tucked away during last weekend’s snowstorm with Melanie Hart, an up-and-coming star on the local marketing and public relations scene.”

Richard tossed the newspaper in the trash where it belonged and buzzed his secretary. “Winifred, get Melanie Hart over here now!”

“Yes, sir.”

Melanie must have been lurking in the lobby, because she was in his office in less than ten minutes. She looked good, too. Great, in fact, as if she’d prepared for just the right look to get him to pay more attention to her than this situation she’d created by blabbing their business all over town. If she was still trying to convince him to hire her, she’d gone about it all wrong. He was fit to be tied.

“I had a feeling I’d be hearing from you. I was already on my way over here,” she told him, studying him worriedly. “I saw the paper this morning. How furious are you?”

“On a scale of one to ten, I’d say twelve thousand,” he retorted. “I do not intend to play out my campaign intentions or my personal life in some damned gossip column. You ought to know that.”

She stared at him a minute, apparently absorbing his barely disguised accusation, then said icily, “I do. I know it, not because I have a clue what goes on in that impossibly hard head of yours, but because it’s a bad strategy. It diminishes you as a candidate to have people perceive that you’re sneaking around with a woman for any reason whatsoever.”

Richard was taken aback by her blunt response. What made her think she could get away with being some sort of victim? He scowled right back at her. “Then what the hell were you thinking?” There it was. He’d said it. Now let her dance around and try to avoid the obvious. Only the two of them knew about the weekend, and he’d never spoken to For-sythe.

“Me?” she said, radiating indignation. “I had nothing to do with this. This isn’t exactly great for my reputation, either.”

His frown deepened, but for an instant his fury wavered. She’d made the denial sound almost believable. His temper cooled marginally as he struggled to give her the benefit of the doubt. What she’d said made sense. He regarded her intently, wanting desperately to believe she hadn’t betrayed him. “Then you’re swearing to me that you did not plant that item?”

She gave him another one of those withering looks intended to make him feel like slime.

“Absolutely not,” she swore.

Richard knew then that he owed her an apology, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to utter it, not without asking a few more questions. “Did you speak to Forsythe?”

Her expression faltered at that. “Yes, but—”

Richard seized on the admission, not even waiting for her explanation. “Why the hell would you even take his call? I didn’t. He never got past my secretary. No good can ever come from talking to a gossip columnist. You’re a professional. You should know that.”

“What I know is that sometimes a reporter can be an ally, if you know when to talk and what to say,” she retorted. “Besides, I was already committed to taking the call before I knew why he was calling. As soon as I realized what he was after, I thought it would be wise to find out exactly what he’d heard. Once he started asking questions about you and me being at the cottage, I danced around the answers and hung up.”

Richard sighed. She was making too damned much sense to be flat-out lying. “Then you never confirmed the story?”

She scowled at him. “Do I look that stupid?”

“Then who the hell was so reliable that Forsythe would print the story without confirmation from one of us? Someone in your office?”

“No. Becky would never do something like that.”

“Not even in some misguided attempt to do you a favor?”

“Never.”

“Who else knew you were down there?” he demanded, then stared at her stricken face as understanding dawned on both of them. He said it first. “Destiny, of course.”

Even though she’d clearly been leaning in the same direction, Melanie looked genuinely shocked that he would accuse his aunt of betraying them. “Surely, she wouldn’t do such a thing?”

Richard’s laugh was forced. “Oh, yes, she would, especially if she thought planting that story in the paper would accomplish her goal.”

“Do you know what her goal is? Because frankly, I’m a little confused.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve already confronted her about it. She wants us together,” he said grimly. If he hadn’t known it before, he did now. This was the act of a very determined matchmaker.

“You mean me working for you,” Melanie replied, still trying for a positive spin.

“No, together together,” he said impatiently. “A couple.”

Melanie turned pale, and for the first time since entering his office, she sank onto a chair. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. I know my aunt and she’s all but admitted as much, though if she’d been half as good at skirting the truth with Forsythe as she was with me, we wouldn’t be in this mess. That tells me she very deliberately spilled the beans.”

“This is crazy,” Melanie said. “She can’t just manipulate us into doing what she wants. We’re two reasonable adults who are perfectly capable of making our own decisions, and we’ve decided that we’re completely unsuited.” She met his gaze. “Haven’t we?”

“That was the way we left it this weekend,” Richard agreed.

“Then all we need to do is tell her that.”

“I did.”

“And?”

He dragged the paper out of the trash and waved it in her direction. “This was her response. She’s obviously not giving up.”

“She’s your aunt. Do something.”

Richard gave her a rueful look. He’d never been any good at thwarting Destiny when she was on a mission. It was smarter to give in than to wait to be mowed down. Maybe Melanie would have a better tactic.

“Any suggestions?” he asked.

He waited as her expression turned thoughtful, then forlorn.

“None,” she said finally. “You? You know her better than I do. Surely you can think of something to get her off this tangent.”

Short of strangling her, there weren’t a lot of viable options, even fewer he could live with. It struck Richard that they were simply going to have to play this out. He felt only minimally guilty that he didn’t feel nearly as bad about that as he probably should. Still, he managed a resigned air as he said grimly, “Then we have absolutely no choice. We give her what she wants.”

Melanie stared. “Huh?”

He grinned. “I thought you were quicker to catch on to things.”

“Not this,” she admitted. “This seems a little out there, like a publicity stunt that’s doomed to failure.”

“It’ll work. Trust me,” Richard said, injecting a note of certainty into his voice.

“Let me be sure I have this straight,” Melanie said, as if she were grappling with a Nobel Prize caliber physics theory. “You’re suggesting that you and I pretend to be together to get Destiny to back off?”

Watching the flash of heat in Melanie’s eyes, Richard began to warm to the idea. The part of himself he’d been struggling to ignore all weekend long was ecstatic about this new strategy, despite its obvious risks. In fact, he had no intention of looking too closely at the risks.

“That is exactly what I mean,” he said, trying not to sound too eager.

Melanie looked doubtful, not disgusted. He took that as a good sign.

“Won’t she be hard to convince?” she asked.

Richard considered his aunt’s insightful nature. “Very hard,” he agreed. In this case, that might work to his advantage. It would buy him some time to see if these odd feelings of his when he was around Melanie really meant anything. Since he’d never experienced anything quite like them before, he couldn’t be sure.

“Then where are we going to draw the line?”

Richard studied the woman seated on the edge of her chair, bright patches of color in her otherwise pale cheeks. “We might have to be a little flexible on that.”

Melanie shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said adamantly. “Couldn’t you just hire me, the way she asked you to? Wouldn’t that satisfy her?”

“Sweetheart, I think it’s fairly clear by now that that was just a smoke screen. Heaven knows why, but she won’t be happy till we’ve walked down the aisle.”

Horror registered on Melanie’s face. “I am not marrying you.”

“No kidding,” he said, more than ready to agree with her on that. Not even he was prepared to carry this charade to that extreme, but a few weeks of getting close to Melanie and giving Destiny what she so clearly wanted held a certain undeniable appeal. “I think we can draw the line there. No marriage.”

“No sleeping together, either,” she added, giving him a hard stare. “I want to be clear about that, too.”

“We might have to negotiate on that one,” he said, feeling a whole lot better about things. Maybe he could turn this into a win-win situation instead of a disaster, after all. “So, Ms. Hart, you’re hired.”

She blinked in confusion. “As your new marketing person?”

“No. As my fiancée-to-be. No pay, but there will be a lot of perks.”

“You want me to market myself to your aunt as your fiancée?” she asked, her expression incredulous.

“Fiancée-to-be,” he corrected. “For starters.”

“Whatever,” Melanie said dismissively. “Isn’t that a huge leap? She can’t possibly think we’re engaged or even about to be engaged. We’ve just barely met, and she knows that first meeting did not go well at all.”

“Ah, but last weekend,” Richard said, affecting a tone of pure rapture.

“Oh, stuff a sock in it,” Melanie said irritably. “She won’t buy an engagement this quickly. She’s too smart for that. She might think I’m dumb enough to fall for you in ten seconds flat, but she’s bound to know that you’re not the type to fall in love at first sight. Heck, you’ve probably already told her that I’m not your type.”

He flushed at that. “Doesn’t matter. Destiny is a romantic at heart,” Richard said. He’d never noticed that about his aunt before, but her meddling was giving him whole new insights into her personality quirks. “She wants us together. If we go out a few times, let her catch us kissing from time to time, then say we’re engaged in a week or two, trust me, she won’t look any deeper.”

“This is crazy,” Melanie said again. “There has to be some other way besides lying to your aunt.”

He gazed into her eyes. “Let me be clear about something. This isn’t just about my aunt, Melanie. After Forsythe’s column, we have to convince the entire world that you and I fell madly, passionately in love and can’t bear to be apart.” He gave her a wry look. “It was the last thing either of us expected, of course.”

“Of course,” Melanie said with a decidedly sarcastic edge to her voice.

He picked up his pen and made a note to start arranging some family get-togethers, then glanced at Melanie, who looked as if she might be about to explode. “We’re all set, then, right?”

She stared at him incredulously. “No, we are not all set. I hate this.”

“I’m not crazy about it myself, but I can’t see any other solution. We have to make it real. People will forgive a prospective candidate a lot if there’s love involved. They’re not so forgiving of sleazy affairs.”

She was shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Do you have a better plan to extricate us from this?”

She regarded him with an undeniable hint of desperation in her eyes, then sighed. “No.”

He took pity on her. “I’ll let you stage a bang-up scene when you dump me,” he offered, fairly sure that a chance to humiliate him would appeal to her baser instincts. It might make her feel better about letting him back her into this corner, which, frankly, was more fun than he’d had in ages. Maybe he did owe Destiny, after all.

As he’d predicted, Melanie looked intrigued by the prospect of getting even. “In public?” she bargained.

“Won’t be any fun if it’s not in public,” he agreed, willing to endure the humiliation if it gave him a few weeks to woo Melanie into his bed. That was his short-term—his only—goal. He had to remember that. Getting even with Destiny, getting public perception back on his side, those were purely a bonus. Happily-ever-after was out of the question. He didn’t believe in it. Or, perhaps more accurately, he didn’t trust himself to want it.

“How long do we carry out the charade before I get to dump you?” Melanie inquired.

Richard gave the question the serious consideration it deserved. Melanie had a right to know how much of a commitment she was making. “For as long as it takes to get Destiny off our backs and make it believable for everybody else.”

“A month?” she asked hopefully.

“She’ll never buy it.”

“Two?”

“How about six and we’ll see where we stand?” He gazed deeper into her eyes. “There’s no one in your life who’ll object, is there?”

“Sadly, no,” she said. “Believe me, I’d love to have an excuse to get out of this.” She gave him a knowing look. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

“I was reasonably confident that you wouldn’t have traipsed after me to that cottage if there had been an important man in your life.”

Her gaze narrowed. “I came down there on business. Even if there was a man in my life, he wouldn’t have the right to object to me taking a business trip.”

“He wouldn’t have left you down there, snowbound with me, though, would he? Not if he had an ounce of sense. He’d have been there to rescue you by dawn on Saturday.”

“Nothing happened that needed to be explained or forgiven,” she retorted, eyes flashing.

Richard gave her an innocent look. “Really? Here I thought that was when we fell in love.”

Melanie groaned. “Do you have any idea how much I hate this?” she asked again.

“You’ve mentioned that,” he admitted. “But you’re going to go along with it, aren’t you?”

For a minute it almost looked as if she might balk, but then she finally nodded.

At her acquiescence—albeit reluctant—Richard felt the oddest sensation in his chest. It felt a whole lot like relief. Or maybe elation. He couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t a sensation he’d ever experienced before. That was happening a lot lately.