The Italian Proposal: His Virgin Acquisition / Her Little White Lie

THE PHONE HAD BEEN ringing all day. How reporters had gotten hold of the extension to access his office line, he didn’t know. Once the phone stopped ringing he would have to interrogate his staff.

Granted, he wanted press. That was the point of the arrangement. But he certainly didn’t want the paps to have personal access to him. It was his PA’s job to field phone calls, and he paid her handsomely for it.

The trip to Tiffany’s had done its job, just as he’d planned. The picture of Elaine and himself entering Tiffany’s together, and exiting holding the telltale robin’s-egg-blue bags, had spawned a host of articles in every news source from the New York Times to TMZ—the latter speculating that it was a Mafia arrangement. His Italian heritage was all he could credit for the creation of that rumor. But then, when did a tabloid need anything silly like facts to come up with a story?

That, combined with strategically leaked information about his reservations at La Paz, a trendy restaurant in Manhattan, had the press engaged in a feeding frenzy to extract more information about Marco De Luca and his mystery woman.

He answered the phone midway through the first ring. “I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told everyone else. Ms. Chapman and I will comment when there is something to comment about.” Denial, in his experience, was the best way to fuel a rumor. The more he downplayed it, the more interest would be piqued.

“That’s a shame. I thought you’d be a little more straightforward with your own brother.”

“Rafael.” He was pleasantly surprised to hear his younger brother’s voice. Despite living less than half an hour from each other, with Marco being a workaholic and Rafael being a family man, it was hard for their schedules to coincide. “I take it you picked up the paper this morning?”

“Actually, Sarah showed me. She loves all forms of gossip media. Though I doubt you’re getting married to this woman to save her father from a mob hit.”

Marco laughed. “Not even close. The Mafia has recently quit asking my opinion on whose knees they should break.”

“Why are you getting married, then?”

Marco picked up a pen and started doodling on his day planner. “Oh, the usual reasons.”

“Love?” Rafael asked, in what Marco thought was a hopeful tone. His brother had drunk the love Kool-aid a couple of years ago, and seemed to think that he should want to do the same.

“No. Financial gain.” He explained how the arrangement had come about.

“Well, that sounds typically you,” Rafael grumbled.

“That’s because it is typically me, little brother. We can’t all be happy running a dinky little real estate office. Some of us have ambition.”

“My ‘dinky little office’ is a multi-million-dollar operation. And anyway, I have a wife I like to go home to every night.”

Marco cut him off. “Well, that’s fine for you. But I’ve raised one kid already, and I’m not planning on willingly doing anything like it again. Commitment of any kind is not on the agenda. This is for business.”

Rafael cleared his throat. “I know that taking care of me wasn’t easy. But I’m grateful for it.”

“I don’t need your gratitude, Rafael. You’re my brother and I did it gladly. But this marriage, if you want to call it that, is strictly a business arrangement. The length of the marriage isn’t indefinite. The longest it will last is a year. If neither of us has achieved our goal by then, we’ll go our separate ways—no harm, no foul.”

“And the woman? She knows that you’re not madly in love with her?”

Marco huffed out a laugh. “I’m a ruthless bastard, Rafael, but not even I’m that bad.”

Rafael sighed. “You’re going to go ahead with this no matter what I say, aren’t you?”

“Always. But you will agree to be my best man? It’s the only chance you’ll have.”

“Of course I will. No one else would do it.”

Marco barked out a laugh. “That’s probably true. Now, let me get back to work, little brother. Some of us work for a living.”

Marco turned back to his computer and tried to get on with his work day. The phone rang again.

* * *

The phone in Elaine’s workspace rang for what seemed like the twentieth time since she’d come back from lunch.

She looked at it dubiously. It was either a reporter or, worse, her father again. He’d called her at work early this morning, beside himself with glee that Elaine had managed to snare herself such a rich husband, and even happier that Elaine was finally settling down. Probably because her marriage, especially such a suitable one, would go a long way in blotting out that “unfortunate incident” from a few years back.

Thankfully he didn’t seem suspicious about her marrying the man who’d just bought his company. He was too busy congratulating himself for raising a daughter who had finally wised up to the fact that a woman’s place was in the home, not behind an executive’s desk. And probably too confident in his skills as a businessman to even begin to think that his daughter could have seen a loophole that he hadn’t.

She had ended the conversation with her father feeling renewed determination. That was exactly the reminder she’d needed for why this was necessary.

She picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said curtly.

It was another reporter, rattling off questions at lightning speed that were both personal and degrading. She hung up on the man mid-sentence, and rested her forehead on the cool veneer surface of her desk.

Her head popped up when she heard a knock on her office door—or, to be more accurate, her cubicle wall.

Marco’s handsome face appeared around the corner, followed by the rest of him. Her mouth went dry at the sight of him. Her memories of how gorgeous he was didn’t do him justice. And it had barely been twenty-four hours since she’d last seen him.

“Have the press been hounding you?”

She blew out a breath. “Yes. My phone has been ringing all day.”

“The cost of doing business.”

“So it seems.” She sighed. “You know, I’m not putting myself through this just because I feel some sort of sense of entitlement—like I deserve it because I’m my father’s daughter.” It seemed important somehow that she tell him the details to make sure he understood what she’d accomplished and why she felt the way she did. She shouldn’t care what he thought, but even as she reminded herself of that, she did care. “Four years ago Chapman’s nearly declared bankruptcy. I identified a flaw in the system and helped my father rework the way products were shipped. It shaved four points off the cost and brought the company back into the black. I proved myself. I saved the company. My family’s company. And still he’d rather let your corporation absorb what he built up from nothing than give it to me. All because I’m a woman. Do you see why I feel the way I do?”

“If everything goes according to plan, you should be getting exactly what you’re entitled to.” Truth be told, Marco wasn’t the most modern guy. He was of the opinion that in general women should stay home and take care of their kids. But he could understand why she wanted to claim what was rightfully hers. It was a feeling he understood very well.

“Well, Miss Chapman.” He took her hand and pulled her from her sitting position. “I believe you and I have a date.”

* * *

“I’ll just pop in and change. You can wait in the living room.” Almost as soon as Elaine closed the front door to her apartment someone knocked on it. She opened it to a woman with spiky pink hair and a man whose eyebrows were more immaculately groomed than her own. “Can I help you?”

“I’m not sure how to say this tactfully, so I won’t bother. You need some help if you’re going to look believable as my fiancée,” Marco said from behind her.

Elaine stared blankly at him, the realization of what his statement meant slowly dawning. “You’re giving me a makeover?”

“I’m not; they are.” He gestured to the two people still standing at the threshold.

Her ears were burning. A makeover! “I’m not your dress-up doll, De Luca. You can’t just mandate things like this!”

He sighed in exasperation. Why was he exasperated? She was pretty sure she ought to have the market on exasperation cornered at that moment.

“Why bother to fight me on this? You need it—trust me—and I’m going to get my way, so you might as well sit your cute little butt down.”

She gave an indignant squeak and stood facing him with her mouth open.