A Hint of Scandal (6 page)

Olivia stood rooted to the spot, her breath trapped somewhere in the base of her throat.
The lowest.
Yes, she had been there, and she had ended up there because she had fallen in love. But it was never going to be enough. She couldn’t make someone love her. Whether it was her past, her failures or the total package she presented, no man was ever going to love her, not the love-you-no-matter-what kind. And for the most part, she had accepted the hard truth.

Except for times like now, when the truth smiled at her and gutted her, leaving her shaken to the core.

Alex cursed as Olivia turned away, a distinct shakiness to her movements, her face devoid of any color. Damn it, she had flinched as though he had raised his hand.
Where was his head?

But no other woman aggravated him so much as her. She didn’t have a filter between her brain and her mouth. She constantly argued with him, sometimes he was sure just to prove that she could. Why else would he have spelled out how distasteful he found her irreverence in gritty detail?

He tugged her around, his hand at her elbow.

The air around them cackled as she turned, her lower lip caught between her teeth. For a minute, he wondered if she was going to cry, if he had pushed her too far. He cupped her jaw and tilted it up.

She grunted, pulled herself away from his hold sending him backward where the couch hit the back of his knees. Suddenly, they were both falling into the leather couch, her slender body on top of his, their legs a tangle.

Her breasts crushed against his chest, her hands locked between them. The juncture of her thighs rubbed against his crotch giving him an instant hard-on. He shook with the need to pull her closer, to bury his mouth in the crook of her neck, to kiss her pinched mouth. Instead, he pushed her a little with his hands on her shoulders, anything to stop the soft press of her breasts against him. Every muscle in his body shuddered with the pressure to keep still. “You done?” he muttered through gritted teeth.

Pink seeped up her neck, drawing his attention to the pulse at her neck, frantic and pulsing. She moved off him, took a few steps back, her breathing harsh and shallow. “You provoke the worst in me.”

He frowned, his libido still not under control. “Believe me, it’s completely mutual.”

She laughed, the sound strained with something he couldn’t put his finger on. There was such a sense of defiance, a-devil-may-care attitude about her that it was hard to think anything could touch her. Yet his words had clearly hit a raw nerve. He dismissed the glimmer of concern that sliced through him.

“If you despise me so much, I can just leave.”

He shook his head. He was letting her get under his skin. And it had to
stop
now. “There’s an event I have to attend this evening and I need my wife there.”

“And they say you’re a genius businessman. A tip to clue you in,” she drawled, a bold gleam in her eyes. “Hurling constant insults in my face is definitely not the way to my heart.”

He pulled the check he had signed earlier from his back pocket and extended it to her. “The last thing I want is your heart, Olivia, but merely your—” their gazes collided instantly, his hungrily running over her body, her face curiously devoid of color “—cooperation,” he finished, wondering what he had said now.

She took the check from him, leveling her gaze somewhere at his chest. “What’s this?”

“Let’s call it a non-disclosure agreement that I would like you to enter. That you won’t reveal to anyone while you’re with me that you’re the famous Olivia Stanton.”

“You’re paying me—” her voice shook as she advanced on him again, the hurt in her eyes replaced by outrage now “—to keep my mouth shut, to pretend to be Kim?”

“Or we could call it that.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t found anything else that’s dear to you.”

“To blackmail me?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “No, to get your cooperation. Any other woman would have agreed to it, if nothing else, for her sister’s happiness. With you, I don’t know.”

“You think money will ensure my cooperation?”

“Yes. Even with all your business ventures, it seems you don’t have two nickels to rub together. Kim bought your plane ticket to the wedding.”

She advanced toward him again and right on cue, his senses came alive. Irritation flickered through him. She was the most tactile woman he knew with no sense of personal space. He flicked a hand through his hair and frowned.

But of course, she didn’t heed his warning. She marched right up to him, effectively filling his vision with her.

She waved the check in his face, and he dragged his gaze to her face. Really, he was acting like a teenager. “Whatever else I’m, I’m not stupid, Alexander.”

“No, you’re not.”

“So care to tell me why the big payoff?”

“I have already.”

“Fine,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. If he believed for a minute that he had her compliance, he was wrong. “But I don’t want your money.”

He snorted, anything to dislodge her wild rose scent from his nostrils. “And here I assumed you at least weren’t stupid. Your outrage isn’t going to pay the six months’ rent you owe on that hole you call home.”

“How do you—” Her words sputtered to a stop, her ponytail flying around as she shook her head. Olivia Stanton trying to rein in her temper. It was a rare sight, he was sure. “No, I don’t even want to know.” She scanned the check in her hand again, a glimmer of something in her eyes. “You know what? You’re right. If I have to be here, suffering through your horrible, arrogant,
judgmental
company, I should get paid for it.”

He grinned as she raised her gaze to his. “I’m always right. It’s something you’ll get used to.”

“For whatever reason, you need me.” A smile split her mouth, lighting up her eyes. His temperature spiked several degrees as she captured his hands in hers. “But I need something more than the money you threw at me if you want my cooperation.”

He raised a brow. Her hands were still tucked in his, and it made him a little slow to answer. “It’s not open for negotiation.”

She went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “I want your word that you’ll help me with the pitch for the advertising contract for LifeStyle Inc.’s new sportswear line.”

Surprise made him slow to react. LifeStyle Inc. was one of his own companies. He lifted her and deposited her out of his way. “No.”

She waylaid him again, her gaze earnest. “Before you jump to conclusions and call me a few names again, let me finish. I’m not asking you to do anything underhanded. Our agency has already been shortlisted. All I want is your help in understanding the ins and outs of how such a huge advertising campaign works. I’ve...never worked on something of that scale.”

“Fine, you have my word. Not that it’s going to make any difference. That sportswear line is the talk of the fashion industry right now. Whoever wins that contract must be extremely talented and hardworking.” He leveled a look at her. Her eyes shone with excitement that he didn’t want to crush. But she was only setting up herself for disappointment. Really, he was doing her a favor. “You’ve no chance of winning it.”

Her chin went up a notch, the animation gone from her face. “I didn’t ask for your opinion on that.”

He grabbed his jacket and shrugged it on, fighting the insane urge to take back his words.
Why, when he had spoken only the truth?
“I’ll return in a couple of hours. In the meantime, there will be a personal shopper here. Buy what you need for your stay.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not going out with me dressed like that.”

Her chin tilted up, her gaze blazing with a challenge. “Like what?”

With her luscious body outlined in the tight T-shirt and short shorts for every man’s pleasure. The words danced around on his lips. But of course, he couldn’t say that. A simple conversation with her took more energy than poring over a crumbling business’s finances. “Like a street urchin who hasn’t had a proper meal in six months.” He ducked as she threw a velvet cushion at him and laughed. “Which is probably true,
right?
”

“You’re going to regret bringing me here,” she said, her gaze glinting with determination.

“Buy whatever you want, do as much damage as you can. But don’t forget that you’re supposed to be Kim. No fistfights, no arguments, no getting drunk and most of all, no flirting with every man present. Even if he offers you the whole world.”

A shadow fell across her face. She swallowed, drawing his gaze to the slender column of her throat. “There’s no chance of me forgetting that. If not for Kim, I wouldn’t spend a single minute in your company.”

* * *

Alexander shrugged into the Armani suitjacket and adjusted his collar. The breathtaking views of Seine and Paris, twinkling in its glory, couldn’t hold his attention.

His meeting had taken much longer than he had expected which meant he’d arrived with only a few moments to spare. His gaze sought the closed bedroom door so much that he was beginning to memorize the pattern of the wood. As much as he hated the recklessness that embodied her every action, he had to admit he found Olivia exhilarating.

As if on cue, the door opened. His hands stilled on his collar.

Her gold tinted brown hair, usually a mass of unruly curls, was combed into submission and pulled back into a knot at her nape. The severity of the hairstyle pulled every sharp angle of her face into focus, adding to her sensual allure. A red cocktail dress hugged her bodice, highlighting her generous breasts, dipping provocatively to her tiny waist, before flaring out, ending a couple of inches above her knees. Gold colored sandals with their straps winding around her toned ankles completed the outfit.

If he looked at her with an objective eye, there was nothing provocative, even remotely scandalous about her dress, or makeup. Only he knew what lay under the elegant facade.

Yet he had never seen a sexier woman before.

Desire pounded through his veins, feral in its intensity. He rocked back on his heels, welcoming the fiercely alive feeling for a few seconds, enjoying her raw sex appeal. As he’d already told her, it was a natural reaction of his body. She would look sexy in a burlap sack.

Yet as he waited for the stab of lust to run its course, waiting for the moment he could control his body again, it never came.

The heaviness in his lower body increased tenfold as her hands smoothed over her tiny waist and her hips. Her shoulders pulled back, there was an inherent challenge in every line of her sensuous body.

She was bracing herself for an attack, not surprising after what he had said earlier. But then, she was always like that. Olivia always seemed prepared for battle, swords drawn as if she anticipated the world to throw the worst at her. And he had done exactly that.

He moved toward her, unable to turn his gaze away from the stubborn tilt to her chin, the gentle rise and dip of her breasts in silhouette as she turned, daring him to criticize.

He pulled her hand into his and crushed the sparks of awareness that shot through him at the contact. He slipped the diamond ring and the plain band he had found earlier on the kitchen counter onto her finger. Her hand shook in his grasp. He held it fast between them when she tried to pull it back, a surge of anger rising through him. Irrational, he knew, for whatever her faults, she wasn’t responsible for the escalating intensity of his desire for her.

“Until Kim comes back, you’re going to keep the ring on.”

He met her challenging gaze and smiled, finding pleasure in the torture that was self-denial. Was that what she was?

A temptation, a challenge to test what part of him was his out-of-control parents and what part his own man.

CHAPTER FIVE

O
LIVIA
LEANED
BACK
into her seat and closed her eyes to shut out the seductive intimacy the luxurious interior of the limousine pressed upon them. Alexander didn’t help matters, watching her with hooded eyes seated across from her. Really, the man had the longest lashes she’d ever seen. Which meant she could never really make out what he was thinking. The black suit fitted perfectly against the breadth of his shoulders, and with his hair slicked back, he looked like he belonged on
Mad Men.

Their attraction shimmered around them spinning that web again. Even as they tried, they couldn’t keep their eyes off each other, a dark heat surrounding them.

She turned with a sigh and caught her reflection in the tinted glass. She had spent all afternoon in the very capable hands of the personal shopper and a stylist, being plucked, groomed and polished to an inch of her skin. If they had wondered how Alexander King’s very accomplished wife had nails bitten to the skin, they didn’t let on. And she had thoroughly enjoyed being pampered. Being broke meant she hardly had money to buy nail polish much less a manicure.

Only now, looking at how polished and sophisticated she looked, how much like Kim, she felt the afternoon’s bliss sliding off her as easily as the expensive silk of her designer dress. She was the exact image of her sister, the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Of course, Alexander was attracted to her. The thought spread through her like a vein of ice, stealing every drop of warmth from her skin. She shivered and pulled the cashmere wrap tighter around her shoulders.

God, how could she have overlooked the little fact? She had been brazen, finding perverse satisfaction in the fact that she threatened his control. But he had reminded her, once again, she was supposed to be Kim.

She ran a hand over her forehead, too restless to sit still, a perverse anger rising through her. Just looking at him got her heart racing, her concentration fragmented to bits. Of all the men on the planet, why did it have to be him who could threaten her good intentions? How was she going to be able to even face them when they were back together?

Her troubled thoughts stumbled as the limo came to a smooth stop. She tried to get a glimpse of their destination but a man in a black suit opened the door and tucked his head in. A swift exchange followed between Alexander and him and then the man closed the door behind him. A dark velvet box in his hand, Alexander settled next to her and the limo gained speed again.

She leaned back into her seat and crossed her legs as the solid length of his thigh lodged against hers, sending her pulse skyrocketing again. Distaste coated her tongue with a bitter taste as she realized what the box in his hand was. “I’m wearing my sister’s ring. I’m with
her man,
pretending to be her. Isn’t it enough?” Her throat caught on the words, her heart a squeeze of pain. She pushed the words out, more for her sake than his. It was a bitter reality but it was the only thing that could root her sanity. “Because no amount of window dressing is going to make me like her, transform what’s inside. Believe me, I’ve tried.” Tucking her hands in her lap, she threw him an irritated look hating the tremor in her voice. “And I hate diamonds.”

He tugged her icy hands into his and held her gaze. It drilled into her, making mincemeat of her fragile defenses. But he didn’t say a word. “I had a feeling about the diamonds,” he said, his gaze still raking her, and clicked open the velvet case.

A huge ruby pendant nestled on a thin, almost-not-there gold chain.

She leaned back into the plush leather seat, panic swirling through her. “You ordered that between when we left and now? It must cost a...fortune.”

He frowned. “It’s a trinket, Olivia, something to wear with that dress.”

Of course, it didn’t mean anything. She turned around meekly. She took a deep breath, fighting for composure as he put the chain on her. The graze of his knuckles sent ripples of sensation over her skin. But there was no place for the warm, gooey feeling swirling inside her. The fact that he called a pendant that probably would pay for a penthouse in New York, a trinket, said it all. It was nothing but another step in ensuring her cooperation.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

She ran a finger over the pendant, nestled in the valley of her breasts and his gaze followed it. She folded her hands in her lap and looked away from him. The quiet surrounding them scraped against her nerves. She needed chatter, something, anything to dispel the cocoon of desire spinning around them. “Did you ever want to be an actor?”

At his continued silence, she sighed. “So let me get this straight. You can pass judgment on every aspect of my life, but I can’t even ask an innocent question about yours.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is it an innocent question?”

“Of course it is. Seeing that you’re the son of Oscar-winning parents, and are particularly easy on the eyes, one does wonder.”

“Am I?”

“Are you what?”

“Easy on the eyes?”

She shrugged. “You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever laid eyes on, even when you’re shooting daggers at me for one of my multitude of sins.”

Heat uncurled in his gaze, the dark pupils shimmering against the blue. “The drama of my parents’ life was enough to keep me away from anything connected to them.”

“Do you ever see them?” She was skating dangerously close to the edge. His penchant for privacy was as widely known as his business acumen. But she couldn’t stop herself. It was either engage her mind or her senses.

A warning glittered in those mesmerizing blue depths. “No.”

The finality of that answer, the utter lack of emotion in it sent a shiver through her. No second chances, no looking back for Alexander King. Granted, in this case, his mother had shot his father, leading to one of the biggest scandals in Hollywood. “The press always makes more of it than it is.”

“There’s never smoke without fire, Olivia.”

She tried to ignore the censure in his gaze, fought the urge to explain her past. “No. But sometimes, there’s foolish naïveté instead of actual offense.” Like her assumption all those years ago that once she was out of her father’s control, her life would be a bed of roses, that she would forge herself a successful career, find a man who loved her. Like her sister’s assumption that Alexander King was the perfect man. He was, if you lived in a world where no one ever made mistakes. The thought curled up around her chest, making it hard to breathe.

“Not in the case of my parents,” he said without compunction. A shadow fell over his features, as if he wasn’t in the present. “They were incapable of thinking beyond their needs, their desires or their passion, as my mother was fond of saying, as if it was just another great part she was playing. As a result, Emily and I spent months in and out of court, social services and the rest of our days haunted by the press. Is your curiosity satisfied now?”

Having pushed him into answering, Olivia didn’t know what to say. At least, his sister would have been too young to understand much. But he had taken the brunt of it. It explained his obsessive need for privacy, to protect his sister, to control every aspect of his life and how it was perceived even. “I would have preferred it if my mother had shot my father instead of leaving.”

A lick of fury came alive in his gaze and she wished she hadn’t made the remark. “Why did she?”

She ran a hand over her throat. “Did you never ask Kim?”

He shrugged. “I know that it pains her to mention your mother. So I left it at that.”

Bitterness rose like bile through her, choking her.
She abandoned us, Liv.
Kim’s words rang in her ears. Yes, their mother had found an escape from their father, leaving them at his mercy. With their mother gone, he had turned his corrosive attention to them. But the one thing Olivia remembered despite her father’s best efforts was the cloud of misery that had always surrounded their mother. “How perfect you are for each other, looking down your noses at weaker people, sweeping it all under the rug so that none of it touches you. Did Kim say our whole family was perfect, like her?”

He raised a brow, his gaze raking her. Her nails dug into her palms. “She could hardly claim that with you as her twin.”

For once, his caustic comment hurtled her out of the past, from under the crushing weight of memories. She wondered if that’s what he had intended.
A hint of kindness beneath the ruthlessness?
There she was again, imagining things that weren’t true. “No, she couldn’t.” She tried to push away the memories to a corner. “That wasn’t fair to Kim.” Her twin loved her no matter what. “But it’s the one thing Kim and I’ll never agree upon. She never forgave my mother for finding escape, for leaving us with our father.”

Alexander stared at Olivia. Because he understood Kim’s anger. Even more surprising, because for all that he knew about Kim and her twin, he was learning that Olivia had suffered the most at the hands of her father. And she was the one with more sympathy for her mother. “And you have?”

She shrugged, her fingers laced tight in her lap. For once, the casual gesture, her well-worn defiance couldn’t hide the pain glittering in her gaze. And it reached out and stirred a part of him he kept locked tight. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

“Nothing to forgive?” He couldn’t keep the anger out of his words. “What kind of mother leaves her daughters at the mercy of a man she hadn’t been able to cope with herself? Especially one like Jeremiah, who’s a bully even in the boardroom.”

“What if she had no choice?” she threw back at him. “It couldn’t have been easy to cope with my father and us. I know, because she had never been in the best of health. Even before she left, I was a handful, failing classes, mixing with the wrong crowd, and every time I failed, he blamed her, called her a useless mother.”

He pulled her white-knuckled fist into his hand, surprised yet again, by the jolt of sensation that ran up his arm. But he didn’t drop it as every instinct in him warned him to. It scraped him raw, her belief that she was somehow responsible for what her mother had done. It was an abyss he was very familiar with, having climbed out of it through sheer will. “You cannot hold yourself responsible for her leaving, Olivia. Just because you weren’t a model child doesn’t excuse her.” He should know, because he had done everything he could to be the perfect son and still it hadn’t been enough.

She pulled her hands back, anger flashing in her eyes, dark and blistering. “Not everyone is strong and perfect like my sister and you.”

He frowned, the fact she thought him perfect not sitting right with him. He was far from it. The fact that all he could think of at that moment was to lean forward and kiss her trembling mouth, sink his hair into her silky hair and muss it up as it had been before was proof enough.

No, he was just like any other man, one slippery slope away from temptation, from becoming that needy, hurting boy he had once been. Just thinking about the past filled him with shame. How many blows had it taken before he’d learned to not interfere between his parents, how many days of crushed hopes that he could somehow make it all better? How much self-discipline to get rid of the nauseous guilt even when he had finally walked out?

“No one who’s known you could call you weak, Olivia.”

Shock flickered in her gaze, her hands slow and shaky as she pulled the wrap closer around her. “You obviously didn’t see me fleeing my father with my tail between my legs at the reception.”

The bitterness in her words surprised him, even more so that it was directed at herself. She was a mass of contradictions, one minute—a fighter who didn’t take any punches, the next—a vulnerable woman too aware of her own weaknesses. “Actually, it’s what tipped me off that it was you and not Kim. And I understand why you did it. I’ve been a witness to Jeremiah’s temper more than once. Not every battle is worth fighting and it doesn’t make you a coward.” As he’d learned the hard way.

Her gaze flew to his and lingered. A smile curved her lush mouth, mischief dancing in her eyes. “Are you thanking me for not causing a scene at the reception?”

He laughed at the way she turned the tables on him. “Since you were the cause of it in the first place, no.”

Olivia couldn’t shift her gaze away from him. His mouth bracketed into deep grooves, his blue eyes crinkled with laughter, he was gorgeous, divine. His smile reached out like a wave, something deep inside her roaring in response. Looking away from him, she thought back to the afternoon when she had finally given into temptation and looked him up on Google. But she hadn’t found anything
of a personal nature,
which was what she had been looking for really.

What she had found about him was enough to give her a complex, though. A successful businessman who specialized in investing in small businesses in dire need of capital, influential board member on a wide variety of charities, and even the women he had dated in the past—all successful businesswomen in their own right, had only good things to say about him. Alexander King, apparently, was the perfect man by all accounts. She thought she might be a little sick.

In contrast to her life, which was a comedic mixture of wrong decisions and desperate measures to compensate for those wretched decisions, his was a faultless canvas where nothing ever went wrong. Because there was no room for emotions, feelings or the mess they caused. Her gaze flicked to him and shied away, a chill sweeping up and down her arms.

Fortunately, the limo came to a stop again. With her hand in his, she stepped out, her gaze rising upward to take in the lavish building in front of them. She shouldn’t have been surprised that the Ritz was their destination. Still, she just stood there, taking in the glamorous setting until Alexander nudged her with his hand at her back.

The moment they stepped inside, it was like entering a different world. Even her father, who looked down his nose at everything, would have been impressed by the deference shown to Alexander by the staff. She had very little time to appreciate the vaulted ceilings, the architecture around her before they were shown into what was a private banquet hall. She glanced around her luxurious surroundings, trying very hard to not gape openmouthed. Light glinted off the gold paneling on the walls, playing shadows with the sparkling fountain. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, the silverware twinkling in the shards of its light.