Married For One Reason Only by Dani Collins

CHAPTER FOUR

WORST. IDEA. EVER.

Duke Rhodes hadn’t booked her into a hotel. He’d added Oriel to the roster of guests on a yacht. Granted, it was a billionaire’s superyacht and was full to the gunwales with entertainment industry movers and shakers as well as artists and designers. Oriel even knew a handful of them and she’d been given her own stateroom—not that she was in it.

Payton had instructed her to use this to her advantage. See and be seen. Easier said than done when Duke wanted her by his side like a security blanket.

At least he wasn’t being a creep about it. He had looped his arm around her as they walked the red carpet, keeping it colleague-friendly, not pervy, but she had still hated it.

She was so burnt out, she felt like charred bacon. She had been working nonstop for weeks, putting in long days and getting most of her sleep on airplanes crisscrossing the Atlantic. She was beyond ready for vacation, but she had to paste a smile on her face and pretend to be thrilled with Duke’s latest film—which struck her as a paint-by-numbers rehash of every action flick ever made. The audience’s tepid response seemed to agree.

By the time they arrived back on the yacht, the after-party was in full swing.

Oriel wished she had confessed to the headache that was intensifying behind her brow. It was growing bad enough to make her nauseous.

Duke was holding court, though, drinking and smoking and making off-color jokes. He wasn’t a terrible person so much as a man in denial of his age. He wanted to be twenty, so that’s how he was acting. He loved his cigarettes, which he lit with a shaking hand, making her suspect he had social anxiety, but the smell was turning her stomach.

Either way, all her years of practicing aloof, unbothered looks were being severely tested as Duke blathered on about his glory days.

“I need the powder room,” she murmured and excused herself.

She needed to find a tender to run her to shore. She was flying home to her parents’ in the morning and had overheard someone say the yacht was hauling anchor at first light. Why had she agreed to this wretched stunt?

She texted Payton as she moved into the crush of the saloon, telling him she was done with this pageantry, and asked if he knew of any rooms she could book at this late hour.

What happened? I told his people this was only for publicity. If he’s crossed a line, tell me. I don’t put my clients in harm’s way.

Oriel didn’t feel like explaining that pretending to be with Duke made her feel cheap. It made her think about everything he wasn’t. About who he wasn’t and who she really wanted to spend her time with.

Not that the man she did want had reached out in the nearly two months since they’d spent their rapturous night in Milan. Granted, she’d been on the move, but she wasn’t hard to reach. She could be contacted online fairly easily.

Maybe he’d given her the wrong number on purpose. That’s what she kept thinking. He could have given her his number again with that second note, but he hadn’t. She was the ultimate feminine stooge who had fallen for a player’s game, and it made her feel like an absolute neophyte.

She caught up to a steward, who told her she only needed to go down to the lower deck in the stern where she had come aboard. A tender was making regular trips to shore all night.

She moved down a staircase to the passageway that led to her room and halted. A man in a dark suit stood outside the door to her room.

Mon Dieu, he looked just like Vijay.

Her heart screeched to a stop in her chest while such a rush of joy exploded in her, she had to reach back and grasp the rail to stay upright. At the same time, her mind blared an alarm at how not normal it was that he would be here.

It had been nearly two months to the day since she’d met him. Slept with him. He’d been on her mind every day, but when the number he’d given her turned out to be wrong, she’d decided they weren’t meant to be.

Or that he had never really wanted them to be. How had he known where to find her? Bumping into him in a restaurant a few blocks from her hotel had been unexpected, but a reasonable happenstance. Of all the yachts in the south of France right now, however, he was on this one? Standing outside her door?

No, he must have come to find her, but how had he gotten on board? Given all the celebrities in attendance, security was very tight. He had some sort of security company, she recalled vaguely, but it still seemed very odd.

As she stood there trying to assimilate his presence, he turned his head.

“Oriel.” His voice pierced as sharply as his flaring gaze.

His innate energy leaped down the long passageway to catch at her, threatening to overwhelm her the way he had the first time. It was so visceral, it alarmed her. She hadn’t properly gotten over him, and here he was about to make it worse.

Acting purely on instinct, she whirled around and fled up the stairs like Cinderella from the ball. She didn’t know why she needed to get away. She just did.

She tried to, anyway.

“Sweetheart. Where you going?” Duke lurched in front of her, swaying, eyes barely open.

Oriel tugged Duke out a door so they stood at the rail and dredged up a lame smile.

“This has been so much fun.” Lie. “But I have an early flight tomorrow. I’m going to get a room on shore.”

“What’s the problem, sugar? Feeling neglected?” Duke splayed a hand on her waist. “I can’t help it if I’m popular. C’mon. We’ll go to my room.”

“What? Ew. No.” She tried to brush his hand off her, but he caught hers and wouldn’t let her shake him off. “Duke.”

People further along the rail turned their heads.

He crowded into her, cajoling, “Don’t make me look bad, sweetheart.”

Good heavens, was he begging? What a poor, desperate man.

She looked him straight in the eye and said, “You need rehab. Do you want me to ask my agent to arrange it if yours won’t?”

He dismissed that with a tired curse, hissing, “I need good press, darling. Come to my room. Let people think what they think. That’s all I want. Swear.”

“No.”She pressed his chest, but he kept her trapped against the rail. “Seriously, Duke. Back off. Let me go.”

“Come on. I got you a room so you’d at least pretend we’re having sex.”

“I’ll see that you’re given a full refund,” she muttered and pushed harder. “Let me go.”

Duke was suddenly yanked back a few steps.

“I will cut you up and throw you to the sharks,” Vijay said in the most frightening tone Oriel had ever heard.

“Vijay!” She shot out a protesting hand.

Before she could react further, security guards emerged from the shadows and closed in on all of them. They clapped their hands on Vijay, forcing him to release Duke.

“I know him,” she blurted, still holding up her hand as if she had some kind of magical powers to stop men from acting like barbarians. “Tout va bien.” Was it fine? Maybe Vijay was some sort of stalker who had followed her here. She didn’t know.

“I’m Vijay Sahir. I work for TecSec. Let me go.” Vijay tried to shrug off the men holding him. “I’ll show you my card. You can call in for my credentials.”

Confusion ensued. Duke spat venom in her direction about bitches being crazy, and staggered off. Oriel and Vijay were invited to quit ruining the party and wait in her stateroom until Vijay’s identity was confirmed.

Oriel could have balked at being left alone with him. His presence here was growing more bizarre by the second. Her parents used TecSec. Were they okay?

He was the only one with answers, so she led him into her stateroom. It was a midrange one with built-in shelves, recessed lighting, and a double bed. The shades were pulled over the windows, and she hadn’t bothered to unpack, so her suitcase was open on the rack.

Somehow, she had wound up with one of Vijay’s cards in her hand.

“This says Vice President of TecSec Asia Division.” At least one mystery was explained. She had mistaken a five for an eight when she had texted him her bikini photo. “You made it sound as though you were barely scraping by.” Why else would he have been working in maintenance at the hotel?

“I told you we had a deal in the works that I couldn’t talk about. Are you all right? Did he hurt you?” He noted she was massaging her wrist and carefully took her forearm in his two hands.

His touch. It was as beguiling as ever, sending little tingles of awareness all through her.

She made herself pull away and step back. It took everything in her not to let him see how thrown she was by his turning up this way. How defenseless he made her feel. Her whole body felt electrified. Awake. Which undermined her confidence, because she didn’t want to be this sensitive and reliant on anyone, least of all a man who had stripped her down to her most elemental self and seemed like he could effortlessly do it again.

“I’m fine.” She might bruise later, but only because when Duke had released her, she had snapped her hand back so hard she’d bumped her wrist on the rail. “Why are you here?”

“They wouldn’t let me near you at the premiere, but fans of Rhodes tipped me off to the fact you were staying on board with him here. I swear, the best security system in the world is no match for autograph seekers,” he said ironically. “This yacht is leaving for Italy in the morning, though. I didn’t want to miss you.”

He was different than she recollected. His hair was a little shorter, his tailored suit on par with those of the movie stars and producers continuing their gaiety beyond these walls. His expression was forbidding, though. Nothing like the easygoing man she’d taken him for.

Or the humble maintenance man he had pretended to be.

“How did you know I was in Cannes? Are you some kind of super fan?” Worse? “Have you been spying on me? Tracking my phone?” She glanced around for it as if it would be glowing with a beacon.

“Nothing that high-tech.” He was still using that dry tone. “I overheard your conversation in Milan. You said this trip would cut into your vacation. I thought it would be a good idea for you to have personal time after we talk.”

“That’s very arrogant.”

“Which part? Assuming how you’ll react to what I have to say?” His voice hardened. “Or that you would speak to me at all?”

That took her aback until she recalled that she had run the minute she’d seen him.

All this time, she had been telling herself she was fine with not hearing from him. It was what they had agreed on, but deep down, she’d taken it as a rejection, one that stuck like a thorn in her heart.

As sophisticated as she’d tried to be about their night together, she’d also been more uninhibited with him than she’d ever been in her life. That knowledge kept hitting her in ever stronger waves as she remained in his presence, like a tide coming in. Her self-consciousness was deepening by the minute, and her feet were stuck in the sand. She wanted to get away, but couldn’t.

Meanwhile, he stood there with his Just The Facts Ma’am attitude, suggesting he barely remembered they’d clung to each other while moaning with abject passion.

“I was surprised to see you,” she said with as much dignity as she could scrape together. “Why didn’t you reach out through my website or my social profiles?”

“You had my number but didn’t reach out,” he said with a negligent shrug. “I wasn’t sure you would take my call, and this is important.”

She wanted to say, You gave me the wrong number, but if this card was anything to go by, he’d given her the wrong everything.

“Why were you working for that hotel in Milan? Were you actually in their security department?”

He licked his lips, the first sign of him not feeling completely in control of this moment. “We hope that hotel will join our roster of clients. I presented to them while I was there, but no. I was not working for them in any capacity when I met you.”

“Then why...?” She was growing deeply uneasy, pinching his card so hard her thumbnail went white.

“I told you the truth when I said I was trying to prove something to my sister.” His detached air cracked enough that his cheek ticked. “As it turns out, she was right and I was wrong.”

How much did it cost him to admit that?she wondered with a twinge of grim amusement.

“What is that supposed to mean? What are you doing here? What were you doing there?” She could feel hysteria edging into her psyche. It made her sick that he’d had some sort of ulterior motive when they’d made love. It sullied her memory of a night that was otherwise pure and wonderful. It made her feel used. Not desired for herself.

Unwanted.

He flicked open his jacket as if he was overheating.

Despite how fractious this moment was, she became acutely aware of his flat stomach and had a flashing vision of kissing across his muscled abdomen while her breasts nestled his erection. He’d tangled his hands in her hair and groaned as if she was torturing him in the most exquisite way possible.

A searing mix of arousal and embarrassment poured through her. She had been utterly shameless with him. It had felt right at the time, as if they were both revealing something no one else had ever reached, but now her gaze pinned itself to the floor, mortified.

A sudden knock rapped before the door swung open, making her gaze fly up in a panicked What now? One of the ship’s security guards strode in and handed Vijay the passport he’d taken from him a few minutes ago.

“Thank you for your patience, sir. You’re free to go anytime. Please let me know if I can assist in any way.”

“Thank you.” Vijay pocketed his passport and nodded at the door in arrogant dismissal. The man left, closing the door behind him.

Oriel stared at the closed door, wondering if she should be reassured by the deference that man had shown or intimidated. She clung to her elbows.

“Are my parents okay? Does this have something to do with them?”

“Not in the way you think. To the best of my knowledge, your mother and father are completely fine. But you should sit down.” Vijay pulled out the chair tucked beneath the built-in desk. “What I’m going to tell you will shock you. It’s about your birth family.”

Oriel instinctively backed away. She was already against a wall, though. Some kind of knob was trying to puncture her kidney. She barely felt it. Her hair scraped against the wood as she shook her head.

“I know all I need to about them.”

His face blanked with shock. “You do?”

“Yes.” Oriel repeated what she had always known. “They were a mixed race couple, and that was a problem for my birth mother’s family, so she gave me up.” Which cut Oriel to the bone, obviously, but not everyone enjoyed the advantages she and her parents had. She tried not to judge her biological mother too harshly, not when she didn’t have all the facts. “I’ve never wanted to cause problems to resurface for them, so I’ve never tried to find them. Plus, it would hurt my parents if they thought I was looking for my birth family. So, no thank you. Keep whatever you know to yourself.”

Despite her dignified refusal, her heart pounded so hard she thought her ribs would crack. Her stomach was seriously trying to turn itself inside out.

Vijay set his hands on his hips. He started to speak a few times before finally saying, “I’ve been thinking about this from every angle, trying to work out how to phrase things. It never once occurred to me you wouldn’t want to hear it. But okay.” He nodded with bewilderment. “That’s your choice.” He rubbed his jaw, casting about the room as though completely at sea. “You have my card if you change your mind.”

He looked at the card she held. In her agitation, she had twisted it beyond recognition. He removed a fresh one from his pocket and set it on the folded clothes inside her suitcase.

He stood there a long moment, staring at her.

A million images flashed into her mind, from his first sexy side-eye when he had entered her suite to his quick smile at the bar. The way the touch of his leg against her own had filled her with melting heat, and with a cocky brow, he declared they were on a date. His kisses and caresses and deeply generous lovemaking and his note that had claimed it had been an amazing night.

She waited for him to acknowledge any of that, but he only nodded once and said, “Good night.” He started for the door.

“That’s it?” she cried, panic-stricken that he would walk away so easily. Again. “You can’t just stroll back into my life with a baited hook and dangle it like that! What were you trying to prove?”

“To my sister? You just said you don’t want to know.”

She pressed back into the wall again. “If you tell me you and I are related...”

“No,”he choked out. His mouth twitched, but he added firmly, “Absolutely not.”

She hugged herself, searching his eyes for clues. Until this moment, she would have sworn that she had no interest in learning about her birth parents. She had long ago made peace with the fact she would never know more about where she came from than she’d always known.

She suddenly discovered she did have questions, though. Thousands of them, each one making her burn with curiosity. There was a scorch of guilt that came with it. This desire to hear more felt disloyal to the people who had always treated her as though they’d made her themselves.

“I love my parents,” she blurted.

“I’m sure you do.” His voice gentled. “This is my mistake, Oriel. It’s been a busy few weeks for my company. I got it into my head that I had to have all of that wrapped up so I could catch you here in Cannes before you went on vacation, but you’re right. This is something you should learn in your own way on your own timeline. It’s just...” His gaze flickered down her silver gown, which was covered in sequins that caught the light. “Well, it was good to see you again. Call if you want to talk to me.”

“Why didn’t they just write to me? What about an email?” She threw up a flailing arm. “Have they always known where I was?” The thought of that nearly broke her into pieces. Who kept something like that from someone? “Why didn’t you warn me that you were planning to come back into my life with news like this? Why are you the one delivering this news? Mon Dieu, is that why you sought me out in Milan?”

It was. She knew it as she said it. Her heart hardened into a stony lump in her chest. She had thought she was special, that they had shared something extraordinary. But she had never been special. Not special enough. Not good enough to keep.

“The situation is delicate.” His cheeks hollowed. “Best handled personally so things can be managed on both ends. I don’t want to say more than that because you’ve just said you don’t want to know.”

“Who do you think you are?” she cried, charging forward a few steps. “You’ve come all this way. I’m not going to let you torture me with it. Tell me.”

He stiffened as though bracing for a physical attack. His head went back and he looked down his nose, but otherwise he was very still.

“Are you sure, Oriel? There’s no going back—”

“Vijay.”A pulsing charge was running through her, burning painfully in her arteries, throbbing and stinging and making her stomach swish around and around. She thought she might throw up, but fought it back, glaring at him. Daring him to speak or walk out. She didn’t even know what was worse right now, looking into his eyes knowing he didn’t care about her, or letting him walk away with her deepest secrets still unlocked.

He seemed to hold every part of her in his wide hand. Did he realize that?

After an interminable silence, he nodded at the chair. “You look like you’re going to snap in half.”

Sitting down felt like lowering herself onto a bed of nails. Her whole body was prickling with confusion, wanting to react to something big without knowing what it was. She clutched her hands together and pressed them to her trembling lips, probably most infuriated by the fact he was witnessing her react this nakedly.

“My adoption is supposed to be my information,” she told him resentfully. “I should decide who I share it with and how much is known. You’re not supposed to come here and tell me things I don’t know about myself. Not things that are so...” the word intimate wasn’t strong enough “...integral to who I am.”

“You’re right.”

She instantly hated him for that ultra-reasonable tone. It told her how badly she was betraying herself if he thought she was in danger of a breakdown and had to neutralize her emotions by sounding all calm and agreeable.

Bitter tears stood in her eyes as she watched him lower to the corner of the bed. He set his elbows on his knees and linked his hands loosely. His expression was very grave.

“It’s not much of a defense, but I didn’t believe this theory would prove true. It seemed too outrageous. I went to Milan thinking I would prove to my sister she was being fed a fabrication.”

“Kiran,” she recollected. “You thought someone was trying to take advantage of her.”

“Yes. Because reuniting lost families isn’t something we even do, but this man had seen your photo and thought you looked like his sister. The timing of your birth matched a trip she’d taken to Europe a few years before she passed away.”

“She’s dead.” A cold wind buffeted her, pushing her back into her chair. She had to take a measured breath to absorb what a blow that news was. She really had been carrying a lot of unacknowledged maybes and somedays. Tears of grief and loss gathered in her throat.

Vijay waited until she lifted her gaze.

“I’m sorry.” He offered his hand. “Do you want me to give you a few minutes?”

“No,” she choked and tucked her cold, bloodless hands between her knees.

“I’ll tell you up front that I have no idea who your birth father is. He remains a mystery, but our client saw your photos and recalled some remarks his sister had made. He became convinced you were his biological niece. I thought he was using the mystery to spend time with Kiran, and the sooner I proved him wrong, the sooner he would leave her alone.” He paused as though giving her a chance to brace herself. “I went to your room in Milan so I could steal your toothbrush. I sent it to a DNA lab.”

“You’re not allowed to do that,” she hissed, sitting up straighter. “You’re supposed to get a person’s consent.”

“It was expensive,” he allowed with a tilt of his head. “I didn’t attach your name to it. I thought the man was a fraud, Oriel. I thought I would force him to admit he was blowing smoke and make him disappear. Or he’d go through with the test, it wouldn’t match, and I could tell him to go to hell for sending us on a wild goose chase. I didn’t expect it would lead back to you. And I never once took for granted what I was doing was crossing a line. I am sorry.”

“It matches?” Of course it did, or he wouldn’t be here.

Her stomach tightened, and she pushed herself deeper into the chair. On some higher plane she was appalled that Vijay had gone behind her back. She would never forgive him for interfering in her life in such an underhanded way, but her eyes were fixated on his mouth, her ears straining for every word.

“He’s...my uncle?”

“It came back with a high statistical likelihood that you’re related, yes. You look a lot like his sister, Lakshmi Dalal. She was a very famous Bollywood star around the time you were born.”

“No.” Oriel dismissed it on reflex. “My birth parents were from Romania and Turkey. I was born at a private clinic in Luxembourg.”

“Lakshmi went to Europe with her manager about four months before you were born, supposedly to record some songs at a private studio. When she came back, she was different. Her brother could tell she was grieving. He believes her manager pressured her to give up her baby for the sake of her career.”

“Is he still alive? The manager? Has anyone asked him?”

“Jalil is being very careful. He’s afraid the manager, Gouresh Bakshi, will attack you and smear Lakshmi’s memory. Or he’ll lie or line his own pockets by selling some version of the story. Jalil would love more answers, but he doesn’t believe he would get the truth from that man. He hoped you or your parents might have some piece of the story. Would you be willing to speak to him?”

“Go to India?”

“Or video chat. Take as much time as you need to think about that.”

“I don’t need to think.” She shook her head and rose. Adrenaline was pouring into her system, and her mind fixated on one thing. “I need to go home. I need to see my parents.”

She needed to go to ground like a wounded animal. Her mind was too shocked to form any other thought. She began to gather her few items scattered around the room as though she could outrun the crazed hurt and anguish breathing on her neck and sending trickles of apprehension down her spine.

She couldn’t make sense of what this might mean and wouldn’t even try. Better to carry on with her original plan.

“Oriel.” Vijay tried to catch her by the hands. “You’re in shock.”

“Oh, don’t pretend you care!” She shook him off. “Really, Vijay? Really? This is the reason you slept with me? To steal a toothbrush and ruin my life? Go to hell!”