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

A large sitting room with French doors opened onto a stone terrace. An ultramodern kitchenette occupied an alcove. Opening the fridge, she placed the now warm bottle of French champagne on a shelf to chill.

Briskly, she set about completing her preparations. If Zane had only agreed to talk to her, she wouldn’t have had to resort to these lengths, but as she stepped into Zane’s bedroom and was confronted with what looked like a king-size bed, the risk she was taking suddenly loomed large.

A niggling doubt surfaced. Encountering Zane’s coolness at the launch party had leached away her confidence. The fear that she had resolutely suppressed, that proposing a real relationship was a ludicrous solution, came back to haunt her.

The idea of proposing a fake engagement was seeming more and more viable.

The fact that she had an alternative solution cheered her up and brought her normal positivity and optimism bouncing back to the surface.

Heart beating even faster, she walked through to the bedroom, her gaze automatically flinching from the king-size bed.

Now that it had come to the crunch, her seduction plan seemed basically unworkable because of one chilly little fact. Sexually, so far, she hadn’t really felt anything for Zane.

It was a glitch she had happily glossed over, but that now loomed large—a fatal flaw in her plan.

She didn’t know why she couldn’t quite whip up the enthusiasm to fall passionately in love with Zane, despite both working and socializing with him. According to magazines and tabloids, practically every other woman on the planet was desperate for her ex-boss.

Instead she was shaking like a leaf and suddenly the whole idea of touching Zane, of actually shifting out of the comfortable casual friendship they’d shared to actually kissing him, seemed absurd.

An image of Gabriel and his cool, assessing gaze flashed into her mind. She stopped dead in the middle of the high-ceilinged lounge decorated in the spare but dramatic Medinian way, with dark furniture and jewel-bright Kilims scattered on the floor, her already shaky resolve wavering further. In that instant an oil painting featuring a woman draped in vivid, hot pink silk caught her eye. Pink was Sanchia’s favorite color.

The thought of her daughter and their predicament was a timely reminder.

Grabbing the bag with the negligee, she walked resolutely through to the bathroom. Keeping her gaze averted from a wall-length mirror in a heavily carved gold frame, another exotic museum piece, she quickly changed into the negligee.

As she straightened and shoved her dress into the bag she caught a full frontal view of herself and blushed. With her hair tousled, her eyes dark, her pale skin gleaming through the lace, she looked like a high-priced courtesan.

That was the whole idea, of course, so she could hopefully shock Zane into seeing her as a woman instead of just a friend. But crazily, she still felt as if what she was planning was some kind of betrayal of Gabriel.

Although why should she feel guilty that after two years of dating she was finally attempting to launch her relationship with Zane on to a proper, intimate footing?

Unless, in her heart of hearts, she did still carry a torch for Gabriel?

She blinked at the thought, which had been at the edge of her mind ever since she had overheard the conversation in Gabriel’s mother’s hotel suite.

It would explain her emotional reaction, then the tension that had zinged through her when she had caught sight of Gabriel tonight. Not just tension that he was in the room and could possibly find out about Sanchia, but an acute feminine reaction that had shivered along her nerve endings and heightened all of her senses.

The kind of reaction that had hit her six years ago, and that had ended in a pregnancy.

The kind of reaction she had failed to feel for Zane.

The stark realization that she had been incapable of falling for anyone since the passionate interlude with Gabriel hit her with enough force that she froze in place.

She drew a shaky breath, feeling faintly ill. It was time to take her head out of the sand. The utter lack of sex and passion in her life wasn’t because she was too busy as a working mother, and simply too tired to date. Or that she was ultrapicky about a man’s qualities because, first and foremost, she needed to choose someone who would be good for Sanchia.

It was because somehow Gabriel Messena did still matter to her in a deep, intimate, personal way.

Blankly, she walked out of the bathroom. Stomach tight, legs feeling like noodles, she came to a halt in the middle of the sitting room. Dazed, she stared at the cool white walls, the rich trappings of the room. She didn’t know how it could have happened, just that it had.

On an intellectual level, she had convinced herself that she had cut ties with Gabriel and wasn’t attracted to him in any way. But the problem was that she had been a virgin when they had made love. Gabriel was her first and only lover. She had never fallen for anyone else in her entire life, including her teenage years. All of her experiences of love, sex and passion were bound up with Gabriel.

It was no wonder her body had reacted. She had seen Gabriel and the emotions and sensations she had only ever experienced with him, and that she had never gotten closure for, had resurfaced.

A knock on the door sent adrenaline shooting through her veins.

Logic told her it couldn’t be Zane; he wouldn’t knock. The thought that it could be Gabriel made the breath catch in her throat, although the whole idea that, after glimpsing her at the party, he would come after her, or even know that she was in Zane’s room, was ridiculous. He hadn’t contacted her in years, so why would he now?

Clutching the lapels of her negligee together, she gripped the medieval iron door handle and opened the door a crack. It was Lilah. Knowledge and guilt seared her as she registered the hurt in the other woman’s gaze.

She had known Lilah was attracted to Zane and seemed to be pursuing him with limited success. She had ignored the complication, because a great many women had chased after Zane.

Lilah’s expression chilled as she took in what Gemma was wearing. “You should stop trying and go home. Sex won’t make Zane, or any man, have a relationship with you.”

A sharp pain stabbed at her heart. Six years ago, instead of bringing them closer together, sex had destroyed any chance of a relationship with Gabriel. He had probably thought that she always gave in on a first date.

Although why she was thinking about Gabriel again, when this situation was entirely different, she didn’t know. The whole point of the seduction scenario was that Zane would see her as the woman she was and stop treating her like a younger sister.

She lifted her chin. “How can you know that?”

The same pain Gemma had experienced just seconds ago flashed in the other woman’s gaze. With a jolt, Gemma realized that Lilah was in love with Zane.

“Logic. If you couldn’t make him fall in love with you in two years, then it’s probably not going to happen.”

The fatal flaw in her plan.

Relief rolled through Gemma. Lilah had stated the one simple fact that she had somehow managed to talk herself around, but that happily undermined every one of her plans. Time had passed and nothing had happened between her and Zane, and there had been plenty of opportunities.

She had put it down to the fact that she was always so tired and stressed with juggling Sanchia, a never-ending stream of nannies and a job that often included travel. Sex had just not been a priority. But it should have been for a hot alpha male like Zane.

The grim fact was that they were more like brother and sister than possible lovers.

Sudden embarrassed heat washed through her as she realized how exposed she was to Lilah, dressed for seduction and obviously waiting for Zane. And now she couldn’t wait to leave.

Zane. Panic jolted through her.

She had to get out of his suite before he found her.

With a brief apologetic look toward Lilah, she closed the door, found the bag with her dress and raced to the bathroom. Wrenching the negligee off, not caring when the fine silk and lace caught and tore, she fumbled into her dress, dragged the zipper up and jammed the negligee into the bag, out of sight.

She did a quick check of the bathroom and bedroom to make sure she left nothing behind. Walking through to the small kitchenette, she retrieved the bottle of champagne she had put in the fridge.

Embarrassed heat burned her cheeks as she found her shoes, jammed them on her feet and did a last hurried check of the sitting room before she left.

She must have been mad, certifiable, in thinking that she could have convinced Zane Atraeus that she could be more than just an employee and friend, that she could possibly be his lover or his wife. It was the same mad optimism she had clutched at when she had made the mistake of sleeping with Gabriel.

She could still remember the dull depression when she had realized that the few hours they had spent together hadn’t meant a thing to him, and she’d heard the relief in his voice when she’d said she wasn’t pregnant.

Lilah Cole’s pale, blank expression minutes ago said it all. Gorgeous, hot billionaires did not marry small-town girls with no substance behind them. Slinging the strap of her evening bag over her shoulder, she headed for the door, now desperate to get out of the suite. But as she reached for the handle, Murphy’s law—the one that states that what can go wrong, will go wrong—kicked in. The door popped open and Zane strode in.