The Fiancée Charade

Until now.

Taking his boarding pass with automatic thanks, he strolled through the busy airport, barely noticing the travelers jostling around him. In the midst of a crowd, it was an odd time to feel alone. An even odder time to examine the stark truth, that despite the constant demands on his time, his own personal life was as sterile and empty as a desert.

But that was about to change. He was on his way to the Mediterranean island of Medinos, the ancestral home of the Messena family. And the place where Gemma just happened to presently reside.

If he had a mystical streak, he would be tempted to say that the coincidence that he and Gemma would finally be together at the same location was kismet. But mysticism had never figured in the Messena psyche. Aside from the passionate streak, Messena men had another well-defined trait that went clear back to the Crusades. Ruthless and tactical, fighting for the Couer de Lion, Richard the Lionheart, they had flourished in battle, winning lands and fortresses. The habit of winning had been passed down a family line rich in sons, culminating in large holdings of land and enormous wealth.

Plundering was no longer in vogue. These days, Messena men usually leveraged what they wanted across boardroom tables, but the basic principle was still the same. Identify the objective, execute a plan, obtain the prize.

In this case the plan was simple: remove Gemma from Zane’s clutches and install her back in his bed.

“Gabriel Messena … engaged before the month was out …”

The snatch of conversation flowing in off the sun-washed terrace of one of the Atraeus Resort’s most luxurious suites stopped Gemma O’Neill in her tracks.

Her grip tightened on the tea tray she was carrying as fragments of the past surfaced like pieces of flotsam, taking her places that for six years she had refused to go, making her feel emotions she was usually very successful at avoiding.

A still bay, a clear midnight sky, studded with stars and pierced by a sickle moon. Gabriel Messena, his long, muscular body entwined with hers; hair dark as night, the cut of his cheekbones spare and faintly exotic, reminding her of crowded souks and the inky shadowed alcoves of Moorish palaces …

With an effort of will Gemma blinked away the too-vivid image, which was probably a result of being on Medinos, the kind of romantic destination that attracted newlyweds in droves.

Now, rattled instead of being simply on edge as she’d been before, she brought the trolley to a halt beside the dining table. The clatter attracted the attention of the two guests she had been tasked with settling in. They were VIPs in the most important sense of the word on Medinos, because they were close connections of the Atraeus family.

Although, in terms of Gemma’s past, one of the guests was much more than that, even if Luisa Messena, Gabriel’s mother, didn’t seem to have a clue that the person serving afternoon tea and petit-fours was one of her ex-gardeners.

And her son’s ex-lover.

Pasting a professional smile on her mouth, Gemma apologized, all the while keeping her face averted in the hope that she could hang on to her anonymity.

With crisp movements, she snapped a damask cloth open, settled it on the glossy little table then began the precision task of aligning plates and napkins. As she offloaded a carved silver teapot that was probably worth more than the car she needed to buy but as a single mother just couldn’t afford, she fiercely wished she hadn’t offered to give the hotel staff a hand with the influx of VIP guests.

“He’s certainly waited for her long enough … she’s perfect…. The family’s wealthy, of course….”

Despite the fact that she was doing her level best not to listen, because as far as she was concerned Gabriel Messena was old history, Gemma’s jaw locked on a surge of annoyance. Clearly Gabriel was on the point of proposing to some perfect preselected creature, probably a beautiful debutante who had been groomed and educated within an inch of her life and who was now finally ready for the wedding nuptials.

She ripped the tab off a bottle of chilled sparkling mineral water and tossed it in the little trash can on the bottom shelf of her trolley. A tinkling sound indicated that the tab had bounced off the side of the trash can and rolled onto the floor. Retrieving the tab, she placed it in the trash can with careful precision and poured mineral water into two glasses. Her jaw tightened as some sloshed over the side and soaked into her trolley cloth.

The knowledge that Gabriel was finally getting around to marriage after years of bachelorhood in the hushed stratosphere of enormous wealth in which he moved shouldn’t have impacted her. She was happy for Gabriel. Perfectly, sublimely happy. She would have to remember to send him a congratulatory card.

She could do that, because she had moved on.

The conversation out on the terrace had segued from Gabriel to the more innocuous topic of shopping, which was a relief. Gemma guessed she couldn’t hope to feel a complete absence of emotion about Gabriel, because as a teenager, he had been her focus; the man of her dreams. She had fallen in puppy love with him, and had mooned after him for years. Unfortunately she had been wasting her time because she hadn’t had either the wealth or the family connections to be a viable part of his world.

One night, Gabriel had quenched the flare of passion that had bound them together as systematically as she imagined he would have vetoed an investment that lacked the required substance. He’d been polite, but he had made it clear they didn’t have a future. He hadn’t elaborated in any detail; he hadn’t needed to. After the scandal that had hit the papers shortly after the one night they had spent together, Gemma had understood exactly why he had dropped her like the proverbial hot potato.

His father’s affair with the family housekeeper had shaken the very foundations of the family banking business, which was based on wealthy clientele who were old-school and conservative. Gabriel had been in damage control mode. He hadn’t wanted to inflame the scandal and undermine confidence in the bank any further by risking having his liaison with the gardener exposed to tabloid scrutiny.

Despite her heartache, Gemma had tried to see things from his perspective, to understand the battle he had faced. But the rejection, the knowledge that she had not been good enough to have a real, public relationship with Gabriel, had hurt in a way that had struck deep.

As soon as Gabriel had left after the short, awkward interview in which she had managed to remain superficially upbeat, she resolved to never look back or to even remember. It had been the emotional equivalent of sticking her head in the sand, but over the past six years, the tactic had worked.

Gemma took extra care transferring the bone china from the trolley to the table. Even so, an exquisitely delicate cup overturned on its saucer and a silver teaspoon that had been balanced on the saucer skidded off and hit a pretty bread and butter plate with a sharp ping.

She could feel the subtle tension and displeasure at the noise she was making. Her jaw set a fraction tighter. She had worked for the Atraeus Group for some years and normally didn’t mind in the least helping out with any task that needed doing. The Atraeus family had given her a job when she desperately needed one, and they had treated her very well, but suddenly she was acutely aware of her role as a servant.

She dumped a glistening silver milk jug and sugar bowl down next to the teapot and swiped at an errant droplet of milk that marred the once pristine tablecloth.

Not that she had an issue with doing a good job, but it was a fact that she wasn’t waitstaff. Just like she was no longer the gardener’s daughter on the Messena estate.

She was a highly organized and well-qualified PA with a degree in performing arts on the side, and she was still trying to come to grips with the fact that by some errant trick of fate, she had ended up once more in the role of employee to a Messena.

Serene and perfectly groomed, Luisa looked exactly as she had when Gemma had last seen her in Dolphin Bay, New Zealand. The friend accompanying her, though casually dressed, looked just as wealthy and well-groomed; her dark hair smooth, nails perfect. Unlike Gemma’s hair, which she’d been too tired after a near-sleepless night on the phone to New Zealand to do anything with except to coil the heavy waves into a knot.

As she placed the crowning glory of the afternoon tea setting, an exquisite three-tiered plate of tiny cakes, scones, pastries and mini sandwiches, in the center of the table, she caught a glimpse of herself in a wall mirror.

She wasn’t surprised that Luisa hadn’t recognized her. The housemaid’s smock she was wearing was at least a size too large and an unflattering pale blue, which leached all the color from her skin. With her hair pulled back into a severe knot, she didn’t look either pretty or stylish.

Definitely not the gorgeous hothouse flower who by all accounts had been reserved for marriage to Gabriel, despite the fact that Gemma had borne his child.

The thought was overdramatic and innapropriate, and she regretted it the moment it was out.

She had cut her losses years ago, and from the snatches of conversation, Gabriel was practically engaged. If that was the case, then she was certain the manner in which he had selected his future bride had been as considered and measured as the way he managed the multibillion-dollar family business.

What had happened between her and Gabriel had been crazy and completely wrong for them both, a combination of moonlight and champagne, and a moment of chivalry when Gabriel had saved her from the groping of a too-amorous date.

By the time she had realized three months later, despite a couple of skimpy periods, that she was in fact pregnant, the decision to not tell Gabriel had been a no-brainer.

From the brief conversation that had taken place when Gabriel had told her he wasn’t interested in a relationship, she had known that while he had been prepared to look after her and a baby if she had gotten pregnant, all he would have been doing was fulfilling an obligation. On that basis alone, she had chosen to take full responsibility for Sanchia. But there had been another driving force to staying silent about the baby.

Bearing a Messena child would have entailed links from which she would never have been free. She would have remained a beneficiary of Gabriel’s family for the rest of her life, forever aware that she was the employee Gabriel Messena had made the mistake of getting pregnant but who hadn’t been good enough to marry.

In the quiet solitude of her pregnancy, with the hurt of Gabriel’s defection fading, Gemma had made the decision that in order to avoid more heartache, Sanchia would be hers and hers alone. Keeping her daughter’s existence a secret had just seemed easier and simpler.

She straightened a cake fork. She guessed the part that made her hot under the collar about Gabriel’s pending engagement was the idea that he had been waiting for his bride to become available. If that was the case, it meant that Gemma had never been anything more than a diversion, a fill-in, while he waited for the kind of wife he really wanted.

More memories cascaded, distracting her completely from her final check of the table setting.

The pressure of Gabriel’s mouth on hers, the way his fingers had threaded in her hair …

Another pang of annoyance that Gabriel had given up on them so easily, that he was shallow and superficial enough to select a wife rather than fall passionately in love, started a sharp little throb at her temples. She wheeled the trolley with a little more force than was necessary to the door, clipping the side of a sofa in the process.

Luisa Messena, who was just walking in off the terrace, threw her a puzzled look, a frown pleating her brow, as if she was trying to remember where she had seen her last.

Bleakly, Gemma parked the trolley by the door and hoped Luisa didn’t recall that it was the summer six years ago when she had thrown caution and every rule she’d lived by for years to the winds, and slept with Luisa’s extremely wealthy son.

Jaw taut, in a blatant disregard for etiquette, Gemma didn’t offer to pour the tea. Smiling blankly in the general direction of Luisa, she opened the door and pushed the trolley out into the hall.

Closing the door behind her, she drew a deep breath and wheeled the trolley toward the service elevator at the other end of the corridor, stopping short when her cell chimed.