Married on Paper: The Argentine's Price / The Inherited Bride / Marriage Made on Paper

CHAPTER SIX

“I’VE already heard your news, Vanessa. I’ve been down at the club this morning.”

Vanessa fought the urge to hang her head and stare at the toes of her ruby-red shoes. Something happened to her when her father used that tone, that flat, disappointed tone that let her know she’d somehow made a mess of things. She felt like a child again. Small and desperately inadequate, trying to live up to an ideal that had been placed just out of her reach, an ideal she was falling so short of it was nearly laughable.

Michael Pickett wasn’t a large man; he wasn’t young anymore. His voice was thin now, wispy. He couldn’t yell. He didn’t need to. What he could do with a small hint of disapproval in his voice couldn’t be underestimated.

Vanessa swallowed. “Well, it was … unexpected.” She looked down at the rug, a floral-print rug, the same one that had been in place in her father’s office since she could remember. Everything was the same at the Pickett estate. Nothing ever changed. The house was like a relic, surrounded by the modern world but not really a part of it. Like the owner of the estate himself.

“And what of your obligations to Craig Freeman? Do they mean nothing?”

“I want to marry Lazaro,” she said. “I don’t want to marry Craig.” That, in the very strictest sense, was the truth. In spite of the fact that things had been stilted between the two of them since the previous night’s engagement, he was still the better option.

“Since when is life about what you want?” he said, his voice soft, and deadlier for it.

“I …”

“Don’t be stupid, Vanessa. This man is beneath you.”

She could sense the moment Lazaro’s control slipped its leash. The moment he was no longer playing his part.

“You had better damn well watch what you say to my fiancée,” Lazaro said, his voice hard, dangerous, each word rougher, less civilized, as though a veneer was slowly being stripped away, revealing the true man. Dangerous. Feral. As far from the polished, old-money setting as it was possible to be.

Lazaro had been silent for most of the meeting, letting Vanessa do the talking. But the silence was broken now. “Vanessa was handed a crippled corporation, and with the remains that you gave to her she’s fashioning something that can survive the new market, the modern sensibility, something no one else on your staff, including you, had the creativity to do.”

She waited for him to say exactly why they were getting married. That he was the one saving the company from a slow corporate death. But he didn’t.

Her father curled his hands into fists. “I’m not taking orders from a man whose mother used to scrub my floors.”

She felt Lazaro stiffen next to her. “But maybe you will take orders from the man who is now the principal shareholder of Pickett Industries. Interesting thing about going public, Mr. Pickett … the public can buy pieces of your company. And I’ve bought quite a few pieces for myself.”

“Having money does not make you an equal with my family,” her father said. “Money doesn’t buy class.”

“But money does buy stock.”

“Vanessa.” Her father leveled his cold gray eyes on her. “Did you know about this?”

“Yes.” Vanessa cleared her throat and tilted her chin up, fighting the urge to look back down at the carpet. She wasn’t going to look down anymore. “He’s my fiancé. So it will still be all in the family, won’t it?”

She felt a thrill of excitement race through her, a surge of adrenaline that chased away any intimidation or fear.

“You do not have my blessing on this.” Michael Pickett stood from behind the desk, and suddenly Vanessa saw her father clearly for the first time. How he controlled her. How hard he tried to exert his will over her.

“I didn’t come here to get your blessing.” She bit out the words. “Just to tell you what was going to happen. What do you want?” she asked him. “Do you want the company to succeed? Because, trust me, right now we need Lazaro for that. Accept him, welcome him, and we stand a chance at some success.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No. I’m telling you how it is. This is reality.” Her heart was pounding hard, blood roaring through her ears. She felt dizzy.

“We’ll be in touch,” Lazaro said, wrapping his arm around her waist and leading her from the room. He closed the heavy oak door behind them, the sound echoing in the expansive corridor of the old house.

“Thank you,” Vanessa said quietly when they were back on the paved circular drive in front of her childhood home.

“For?”

“For saying that stuff. For making it sound like some of the good ideas were mine.” She expelled the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “I don’t think any of them were.”

Lazaro opened the passenger door of his dark blue sports car and she sank inside, letting the soft leather seats absorb some of her tension.

He rounded the car and slid into the driver’s seat, putting the key into the ignition and turning the engine on.

When they were on the maple-lined highway, headed back into Boston, Lazaro flicked her a glance. “Why exactly do you work so hard to please him?”

“I …” She looked out the window and focused on the trees, watching them blur into a steady stream of color. “He’s all I have. My mother died when I was four. And my brother died when I was thirteen. Thomas was going to take over the company. He was brilliant. He would have done an amazing job. But without him … there was only me.” She turned to face him. “It’s up to me, Lazaro. I can’t be the one that fails.”

“Do you love what you do?”

“Do you?”

He laughed. “I love the money that it brings in. And yes, I like solving problems. Fixing things. Making them run better.”

“I don’t love what I do. I have to take antacids when I get up in the morning,” she said. She’d never said that out loud to anyone. She’d never even fully admitted to herself that she was unhappy, that she didn’t like what she was doing. She was the CEO of a much-lauded company and saying she would rather do almost anything else seemed ridiculous. But it was true.

It was also too late. Her course had been set since she was thirteen. She knew there were plenty of people who would have walked away. People who would have pursued the life they wanted. But there was such a weight on her, a burden of responsibility. She couldn’t turn her back on it.

If not for her father, then for Thomas’s memory.

“And before you ask why I do it,” she said, “I’ll just tell you. Because how could I be the one to put an end to a legacy? How could I let it be my fault? Because Pickett Industries has to keep going, for my eventual children as much as for my father and for the memory of my brother. I do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

She took her phone out of her pocket and fiddled with the touch screen, moving icons around with her thumb. “My father will accept the marriage because he has no other choice. But the bluster was kind of a necessity for him. It’s how he is.”

“I know,” Lazaro said, his voice hard, his grip tight on the wheel.

Vanessa looked down at the ring on her finger and turned the phone camera on, snapping a picture of the diamond glittering in the late-afternoon sunlight.

“What would you do if you could do something else?” Lazaro asked.

She smiled. “I would take pictures.”

“Of what?”

She leaned her head back against the seat and let the soft leather ease away some of her tension. “Everything.”

“You might find the time to do that someday. Maybe not of everything, but … of some things.”

She forced the corners of her mouth up into a smile. “Maybe. Maybe when all of this gets sorted out, and things settle down in the company I’ll have time.”

“You will.”