Marriage Made on Paper

Lily sucked in a sharp breath and tugged on her suit jacket. “I know, Gage. Trust me. I’m fully aware of how hard it is to be a woman in the corporate world, and a …” She looked at him, her expression filled with distaste. “Sorry, but a sex scandal is hard to move past. For the woman, at least.”

“She wasn’t involved with him,” Gage growled, skimming the article on the top of the stack again. “She swears she wasn’t. She says he was her boss, she was doing an unpaid internship, and he came on to her. She refused to sleep with him, and now, now that his wife is leaving him because he’s a lecherous old jackass, he’s blaming Maddy to try and make her look like she was some kind of predatory female out to destroy their marriage, out to take him down and ruin his life.”

“Regardless of whether she had a relationship with him or not …”

Gage’s heart thundered harder, rage pounding through him. “She didn’t.”

Lily put her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, you know your sister better than I do, if you say she didn’t, she didn’t. But now that it’s out like this … there’s very little we can do to fight it. It’s going to be everywhere. Even if she were to come back with her own version of the story, which I think she should do in the future no matter what, this is going to hit like an explosion. William Callahan is so high-profile … and his wife—soon to be ex-wife—is more famous than he is.”

Gage was familiar with the man’s trophy wife. She’d come on to him at several industry parties, and, despite the fact that she was a world-famous model whose looks had, literally, been memorialized in song, he’d never even been tempted. He didn’t poach other men’s wives. He didn’t need to. But she was definitely open to playing around behind her husband’s back, and clearly Mr. Callahan was no better. And they were trying to drag his sister into their sordid lives.

“Infamous is more like it,” he bit out. “I’ll ruin him for this.”

“I don’t blame you, Gage, I don’t, but before you engage in serious ruination, we need to figure out how we’re going to handle the media firestorm Madeline is about to get hit by.”

Lily had met Maddy on a few occasions. She was a pretty brunette, petite and fine-boned, delicate and small, none of the height Gage had inherited passed down to her. She looked young, and in some ways seemed younger. It was obvious that Gage doted on her, and that, despite that, Madeline made an effort to be independent, which Lily completely respected.

She also understood the kind of dilemma she found herself in. It was hard for a woman to be taken seriously in business. It was hard to find the right balance. Dress up too much, men make assumptions about what you’re there for … not enough and you would get torn apart by the other women.

“We can create our own distraction.”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “No. I don’t know what you’re thinking, I just know it’s probably going to create a big cleanup for me.”

He shook his head. “It won’t. But it will take the focus off of Maddy. If we can bury this story with one of our own, it will at least soften the blow.”

“You have a valid point, but I seriously doubt you’re going to magically stumble upon something that overshadows a scandal of this magnitude.”

“I thought I might announce my impending marriage.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Marriage? You aren’t getting married.”

“No. But don’t you think it would make a nice headline?”

She let out a completely undignified, involuntary snort. “No one would believe it.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No. You’re not exactly the marrying kind.”

“And why is that?”

“Marriage requires monogamy,” she said. At least it was supposed to require monogamy. She’d witnessed all the drama that came when people strayed. Her mother had thrived on the drama, the jealousy.

“I don’t cheat on women. If I’m attracted to someone else, I end the relationship I’m in. I see no point in pretending to want one woman if I want another.”

“You seem to change the woman you want with alarming frequency.”

“And that’s why it would be such a big story if I were preparing to get married. I’ve dated enough actresses and models to have serious headline appeal with the tabloids.”

“Okay, yeah, I’ll give you that. But where are you going to find a woman who won’t want to marry you for real? One who will keep her mouth shut about the arrangement.”

She looked back at Gage—his blue eyes were trained on her and a slow smile spread over his handsome face.

“Lily.”

She didn’t like the way he said her name, with intent, his low voice rolling over it, making it sound like a verbal caress. And it made her stomach tighten and her breasts feel heavy. Like last night. Like when he’d held her in his arms.

“I want you to marry me.”

She could only stare at him. Words were failing her, which was virtually unheard-of. She always knew what to say. She always knew how to respond in every situation, quickly and efficiently, cutting if necessary. She was never speechless. Except she was now.

She opened her mouth, then shut it again, trying desperately to think of some kind of sharp, witty response. Instead she settled for simple. “Not really, though.”

A short chuckle escaped his lips. “No. Not really. I just want you to be my fiancée.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No! Absolutely not.”

“How much do you value your job, Lily?”

She locked her teeth together. “It’s everything to me. I’ve worked very hard to get where I am.”

“It would be a shame to have any of your hard work compromised, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” she bit out.

“I don’t want Madeline’s hard work compromised because she got tossed to the wolves. I don’t want her to lose all of the progress she’s made, all of the confidence she’s managed to gain.”

The threat, though he didn’t state it explicitly, was certainly implied. If she wanted to keep her job, she had to play by his rules.

“And it has to be you,” he continued. “You and I were seen together at the gala last night, and we were definitely breaching the boundaries of professionalism.”

“We were well within normal boundaries of a boss and employee attending an event together,” she said, even as images of him holding her close flashed through her mind.