A Very Fake Fiancée: The Fiancée Charade / My Fake Fiancée / A Very Exclusive Engagement

“With a calculator for a heart, no doubt.”

She accepted the glass he handed her. “I didn’t say that. If you had a calculator for a heart you wouldn’t have bothered to rescue me. Twice.”

His pulse racing that she had mentioned the previous occasion that he had intervened to help her, he said, “Just a suggestion, but maybe you need to rethink the kind of guy you’re dating.”

The second the words were out, he wished he could retract them. Six years on from the one passionate night they’d shared and he was sounding like an older brother—worse, a father figure—dispensing advice.

“I intend to. As of tonight, I’m not dating anyone afraid of commitment—”

The distinctive chime of her phone distracted Gemma from a conversation and a simmering tension that was continually pushing her out of her depth. She had been worried because Sanchia was due to call her and she absolutely could not take the call right now.

Feeling under siege, she dug the phone out of her evening purse, intending to simply turn it off. Sanchia would understand. She knew that Gemma couldn’t always answer, and that she would pick up on the missed call when she could.

The phone ringing was a sharp reminder that she could not afford another sizzling fling with Gabriel. Before she could hit the power button, the phone was whisked out of her hand. Incensed, Gemma grabbed at the phone, desperate to get it back. “That’s mine.”

“You can have it back once Zane’s hung up.”

“Why would Zane be ringing me?”

Gabriel’s gaze was cool and flat. “I’m not prepared to take any chances.”

The small silence that followed, the knowledge that Gabriel was not only acting unreasonably, he was behaving in a distinctly possessive way, made her stomach clench.

Although she refused to accept that Gabriel’s disconcerting focus on her was either real or lasting. She knew now that Zane and Lilah had found the kind of deep, committed love she herself longed for. She wished them well with all of her heart, but that didn’t change the fact that their togetherness underlined her single, lonely—and now desperate—state. “I’m not Zane’s girlfriend or his mistress.”

Gabriel’s expression underlined his disbelief. Given that he had dropped her like a hot coal six years ago, his opinion shouldn’t register, but tonight it did.

She was tired of being judged and dismissed and treated as if she was a pretty airhead just out for a good time. She was strong and independent; she had dreams and desires and plans. She certainly wasn’t the good-time girl the tabloids had dubbed her.

Just the thought of that derogatory label made her feel sick. The only good time she’d ever had had lasted just a few short hours. “I am not interested in an affair with Zane. If only you knew, it’s the last thing I want.”

One final chime and the call went through to answer phone.

She drew an impeded breath. She should be angry that Gabriel was behaving so high-handedly in taking her phone and switching it off. That he could believe, even now, after everything that had happened, that she would try to remain in contact with Zane.

But she couldn’t sustain the anger for one simple reason. Gabriel wouldn’t behave in such an arrogant fashion if he didn’t care. The thought clutched at her deep inside and refused to let go, generating a dangerous excitement she recognized only too well. She lifted her chin. “And if Zane does call, what then?”

“I’ll deal with him.”

“It’s none of your business, but the number that flashed up was my sister’s, in Dolphin Bay. She’s looking after Sanchia until I get home.”

She caught the flash of relief in Gabriel’s gaze and in that moment a startling thought hit her. Gabriel was jealous. The revelation took root, spiralled through her on a dizzying wave of delight.

So it definitely wasn’t chance that he had used the secret tunnel that had come out near Zane’s door. He must have deduced where she had gone and had probably chosen the hidden way to avoid the press.

He let out a breath, dragged long fingers through his hair, his expression repentant enough as he handed her the phone that she had to resist the urge to smile. “Damn. Sorry.”

And just like that they were back to the softness, the singular, sweet camaraderie that in tiny fragments they’d shared over the years, and which she had always adored.

She drew in a breath at the curious melting sensation inside, the crazy desire to step close to Gabriel and test out her theory by winding her arms around his neck, lifting up on her toes and kissing him again.

Feeling suddenly in need of air, she turned to the French doors behind her, fumbled at the handle and stepped outside.

The fresh, cool night air took her breath as she walked to the edge of the balcony and looked out to sea and a magnificent view of the nearest island, Ambrus. Anything to dissipate the perilous warmth, the heady tension that gripped her.

Below the balcony a sweep of floodlit lawn flowed to a wild, rock-strewn garden, then down to a smooth stretch of sand. Further out dark clouds blotted out the stars. A gust of wind, a forerunner of the distant storm, sent strands of hair drifting around her cheeks and raised gooseflesh on her bare arms.

In the instant she felt cold, Gabriel’s jacket dropped around her shoulders, the weight of it deliciously warm, a hint of his clean masculine scent clinging to the fine dark weave.

Grateful for the warmth, she resisted the urge to meet his gaze and succumb to that particular madness again. She’d gone to the Castello tonight needing a knight in shining armor. Instead, she was here on an ancient watchtower balcony with the fascinatingly dangerous Gabriel Messena, the last man she had thought she would ever be alone with again.

Worse, she was feeling every one of the tingling symptoms of attraction that she had tried to feel for Zane, and failed.

Desperate to break what was becoming an uncomfortable silence, Gemma checked her wristwatch and quickly texted Sanchia. She knew it was late on Medinos and that Gemma could possibly be asleep, so she wouldn’t be too worried if Gemma didn’t call back right away.

She tried for a bright, relaxed smile as she hugged his jacket around her, soaking in the warmth. “Thank you. I guess I’m still acclimating.”

Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the parapet, looking sleek and muscular and as graceful as a big cat. With his dark hair blowing around clean-cut cheekbones, he looked utterly at ease in the stark Mediterranean landscape. “If you want to know why I helped you, it’s because I saw a piece about you and Zane in a newspaper. I felt responsible, since I was the one who originally recommended you for the job.”

Gemma frowned at Gabriel’s alleged involvement in her landing the Atraeus job in Sydney four years ago. Originally, it had been for a PA position in one of the Sydney hotels. She had thought at the time that it had been a minor miracle that she had beaten off a number of better-qualified applicants but she would never in her wildest dreams have imagined that Gabriel had helped her out. “I thought it was Elena Lyon who put in a reference.”

Elena was a girlhood friend, also from Dolphin Bay, and well known to the Messena family, since her aunt had been the housekeeper who was supposed to have had the affair with Gabriel’s father. Although Elena swore black and blue that the affair was nothing more than supposition and media hype.

Gabriel lifted his shoulders. “Maybe she did, but Constantine approved the appointment on my recommendation.”

Gemma firmly suppressed a surge of pleasure that Gabriel hadn’t forgotten about her altogether, that he’d cared enough about her to ensure she obtained a good job. “In that case, thank you, but I still don’t understand why you thought you had to intervene then or now. I’m well used to looking after myself.”

Gabriel was silent for a beat. “I’m sure you are. But what about the father you need for your child?”

Eight (#ue314a0d7-f5ba-5014-8563-e9063c8a61c4)

Gemma froze. Her first thought was that he knew Sanchia was his, but then the way he had referred to her registered.

He had said “your child,” not his child. Which meant he had probably read one of the gossipy snippets of information the tabloids had recently printed. Snippets which had implied that Zane was the father and thankfully hadn’t included any real details about Sanchia, such as her age. The reporters had been more interested in repeating known facts about Zane rather than far less interesting facts about either herself or her daughter.

For a few taut seconds, the urge to confess to Gabriel that Sanchia was his was strong enough that she actually opened her mouth to speak, but the caution that had gripped her ever since the last nanny had accused her of being an unfit mother reasserted itself.

The custody situation was difficult enough without introducing the complication of Sanchia’s biological father. “That’s why you intervened? Because you thought Zane wouldn’t be interested in fatherhood?”

Gabriel frowned. “I intervened because I was the one who put you in a situation where you came into Zane’s sphere of influence in the first place.”

Gemma gripped the lapels of Gabriel’s jacket, hugging it more closely against the wind, although that was a mistake, because the movement released more of his clean, masculine scent.

She went back to the issue of just how she had gotten her job. “What makes you so sure I wouldn’t have gotten the job purely on merit?”

“Constantine wanted someone who could be trusted with confidentiality. I told him you could.”

If Gemma had felt chilled before, she was warming up fast. Gabriel probably thought he was pouring oil on troubled waters, but as far as she was concerned it was more like pouring gasoline on a smoldering fire. “You mean I got the job because I kept quiet about sleeping with you?”