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We can’t be together.
Before he’d barely finishing uttering those words, tears stung the back of Allyson’s eyes. Her breath caught in her chest and she had to force herself to exhale. Force herself to think. To not let the overwhelming swirl of emotions take over. “What do you mean?” She hoped he didn’t hear the catch in her voice.
“I know we’ve said a lot of things over the last several days, but we’ve let circumstances get the best of us.” He gave her a pointed look, his piercing blue eyes fixing her in place.
“The things you said at the hotel. And then in the music room. You didn’t mean any of it?” Pain and confusion clouded her mind. After they’d first had sex at the Greenville Lodge over the weekend, he’d been reluctant to end things. Then, in the mansion’s music room, he’d confessed that he cared about her. She’d let herself believe when she should’ve been guarding herself.
He paused. “Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, things are said. Things that shouldn’t be.”
The even tone of his voice weighed on her heart. His voice was so calm. Like he was dictating a task to her. There was no emotion. No regret.
She gazed at him, searching his eyes for some hint that he still cared. Still wanted to see where their feelings for each other might lead.
Nothing.
There was nothing in those gorgeous blue eyes of his.
The air in the office seemed to grow heavier. Choking off the oxygen. “Why are you doing this? At the Lodge, you were upset when I wanted to end things. Now you don’t care?”
“I can’t care,” he replied harshly. Those three words were as cold and sharp as a razor.
“What does that mean?” she demanded.
“My family has already tried to ruin you. My mother almost succeeded in less than twenty-four hours.” He shook his head. “This was a mistake. It’s my fault for tossing you into the deep end of all this. But I’m going to fix it. There isn’t going to be any more lying or sneaking around.”
Of course he doesn’t want you, a voice inside her head cruelly reminded her. Monica’s mocking laugh sounded in the back of her mind. Monica had warned her that Dane would never want his assistant. Maybe in the harsh light of his mother’s actions he realized what a mistake he was making. Not that it mattered. She and Dane weren’t even dating. No promises had been made. Nothing declared. They had agreed to take things slowly because of all the craziness with their fake relationship, fake lies, fake marriage. She couldn’t even be angry with him for breaking up with her, because they weren’t really together to begin with. It was as if all her feelings and hopes had been as fragile and empty as the air they’d waltzed on. And from that thin air she had allowed herself to fantasize. When she had taken a walk on the beach she daydreamed about what they might become. What a complete fool she had been.
“So, this is over,” she said. The shock of his rejection had made her desperate enough to try to get answers. For a moment, the shock even made her think she might be able to talk him out of it. But she wasn’t going to let him see how much pain she was in. She was a professional after all, and they still had to work together.
“Yes. All of it,” he said. “We’ll call the media and tell the truth.”
“What? No. Not after everything I’ve just been through.” If he ordered her to stop pretending, she knew she would fall to pieces. She’d sacrificed so much to keep up this charade. Her reputation. Her job. Her heart. So much had been at stake. If they gave up on this now, the merger would fall through. If she was going to suffer the humiliation, the least they could do was get something out of it.
“I’m putting an end to it so you don’t have to go through any more,” he said. “Don’t you see? The world I come from is vicious—”
“And you don’t think I can handle it,” she interrupted bitterly.
“Few can.”
“It’s just for one more week,” she pointed out. She realized now that, even though Dane didn’t care that she didn’t come from wealth, he didn’t think she had what it took to survive in his world. And who could blame him? She had wilted under the attention of a handful of reporters. She hadn’t been prepared for his mother. He might not think she was ready, but if she secured that merger he’d see that she was.
She’d be showing not only him, but her family. Herself. Maybe Dane would never go for an assistant like her. But she was done living her life on the sidelines. Done hiding behind the fact that her family didn’t believe in her. It made her heart ache to know that nobody in her life believed in her. Not her family. Not her boss.
For most of her life she had never been brave enough to go after what she wanted. One weekend with Dane had changed all that. For years, her family had convinced her that she was an underachiever. Done nothing to make her family proud. Until Dane had stood up for her. Defended her when nobody else ever had. Maybe he’d defended her in the heat of the moment, but it had made her brave enough to show him how she felt about him. Not that he cared about her feelings.
If what they had was over, she was going to show him that she was going to get on without him. She had to hold on to her dignity. Her pride. Even if every other thought was of him. Even if her body craved his. Even if her heart beat out his name.
“We can finish this.”
“I can’t ask you to do that, Allyson,” he said.
“You’re not.” She sat straighter. “You might be my boss, but you can’t control everything in my life. You can’t control me. Or my decisions. If you don’t want to go through with this, fine. Just don’t back out because you think you’d be doing me a favor.”
For a moment, he said nothing. All he did was focus on her. His eyes studying her. It was if he was looking for something. She didn’t know what it was he searched for.
What she did know was that she still shivered under his intense gaze. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. That old desire hadn’t gone away. It troubled her to think that there was a chance it never would. There was a chance that her feelings for him might be so strong that every attempt to put him behind her was doomed to fail.
His jaw clenched. “I guess my mother will be pleased to hear that you’re willing to go through with all this.”
“She’s probably more pleased about the bullet you’re dodging.”
“Right.” Dane grimaced. “Probably in our best interest we don’t tell her we ended up in bed together.”
Her face heated. Memories of the night before came flooding back. Even now, her skin tingled in anticipation as she remembered the heat of his touch. The trail his lips branded on her body. His eyes sweeping over her as he drank her in, one inch at a time. In the music room, he had told her that their night together meant everything to him. Now she knew that, for a man like Dane, everything wasn’t enough. “Well, she freaked out when she thought we were married,” Allyson murmured. “Now that she knows the marriage is fake, I’d rather not repeat that. Best not to tell her about a fling that’s already behind us.”
She kept her tone light, refusing to give away any hint of the dark emotions washing over her. Falling apart over a relationship that hadn’t really existed would only prove his point. That she couldn’t handle the world he came from. If she wanted to prove him wrong, she had to keep it together. Had to get a hold of herself in her personal life the same way she did as his assistant.
If this merger worked, she’d be proving everyone wrong. It would show Dane, his mother, and her family what she was made of. She wasn’t going to be chewed up by high society. She wasn’t a gold-digger who cut corners to avoid doing the hard work. She wasn’t an underachiever. Most of all, she’d prove to herself she was strong enough to get over Dane. Strong enough to keep things professional. If she could survive the next week, pretending to be married to a man who had flat-out rejected her, surely she could survive anything.
The office door swung open and Dane’s mother stepped inside. She eyed them suspiciously, and frowned. “You two haven’t been arguing, have you?”
“No,” Dane muttered.
Liliana pursed her lips. “Good. Because we need you to look like the happy couple.”
“Mother,” Dane started, sounding exasperated. “Have you even asked Allyson if she wants to do this?”
“I want to do this,” Allyson said forcefully. His defense turned her insides to molten lead. She forced herself to fight her reaction to him. It was all very well and good for him to come to her rescue now, but he hadn’t believed her when she’d most needed him to. Sure, he’d apologized, but he had believed that she was a thief and a liar. She let the resentment take over. Let it push away the tender feelings she had for him.
“See?” His mother smiled. “She’s a sensible woman. She seems to know what she wants. Not to mention there will be a sizeable bonus in it for her.”
“I’m not doing this for money,” Allyson said.
Liliana narrowed her clear blue eyes. “Then what are you doing this for?”
She opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. What was she supposed to say? That part of her was going through with this charade because she didn’t want Dane to see how much he’d hurt her? That the other part of her didn’t know how to let him go?
Finding an excuse to spend time with him was the only solution she could think of that didn’t tear her into a thousand pieces. It was paradoxical. Crazy. But then, so much of what they shared together was paradoxical and crazy. They pretended to be together, only to end up in bed for real. Being with him was dizzying, maddening. One brief fling was turning her inside out. Breaking down every defense she had ever put up to protect her heart. She had trusted Dane so completely that she let him in, and she had no idea how she’d ever be rid of these intense feelings.
“I’m loyal to the company,” Allyson said blandly.
Liliana raised an eyebrow. “Well, in that case, your loyalty is needed once again, Ms. Smith—I mean, Mrs. Prescott.”
“What do you need?” Allyson asked, ignoring Liliana’s mocking tone.
Liliana turned to her son and held up her hands. “Dane isn’t going to like it.”
Dane crossed his arms. “What won’t I like?”
“I talked to some of my press contacts and, for now, they’ll hold back on snooping any further into the story...”
Annoyance flickered in Dane’s eyes. “But?”
“But one contact wants a favor in exchange,” Liliana rushed on. “They’d like to do an interview with you two.”
“Absolutely not.” He rose to his feet, glowering.
“Don’t be so hasty, darling,” his mother insisted. “We’ll have the press on our side, and we’ll be able to control the story. I say we let them think you two got married this weekend. After the merger, you can reveal that you’ve broken it off. We make the wedding up in Greenville look like a non-traditional wedding. One of those non-legal weddings you lovebirds rushed into, but it was never legally binding so you parted ways soon after.”
“One of those spur-of-the-moment type things,” Allyson put in.
“Exactly.” Liliana beamed. “See? Allyson has the idea. Do the interview and play along with all this. We get the merger, and then control the story so nothing negative blows back on Prescott.”
“It’s a good angle,” Allyson said. “It’s more believable if we look completely crazy about each other.”
“Young love gone awry,” Liliana said. “All you have to do is play your part in the interview.”
Dane furrowed his brow, lost in thought. “I don’t like this.”
Allyson sighed heavily. “It’s the best solution for all of us. We’ll have to put an end to this charade anyway. We might as well play it to our advantage.”
“She sounds like a Mrs. Prescott already.” A cold smile played on Liliana’s lips. It chilled Allyson down to the bone. Made her wonder if Liliana knew the true nature of their relationship and was trying to twist the knife further into Allyson’s back. She wouldn’t put it past Liliana to play head games. That was probably how she had gotten ahead all these years.
Before coming to Prescott Hill, Allyson would have thought her suspicions bordered on paranoia. But after seeing Liliana’s behavior up close, she knew what the older woman was capable of. The only way to survive in Dane’s world was to be prepared, and Allyson wasn’t about to let Dane’s mother get in her head.
“When’s the interview?” Allyson asked.
Another cold smile. “Tomorrow.”
