The Fiancé by Stefanie London
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ava
DANIEL’SPENTHOUSEAPARTMENT is not at all what I expect. I mean, I’m pretty sure his coffee machine cost more than my teaching degree, so that’s on brand. But I’m expecting a place full of white and silver and glass, sleekly modern and cold. Impersonal. Like a showroom.
What I get is something else entirely.
The old building was once a factory, so the penthouse apartment isn’t actually that high up. But due to the fact that we’re facing the Yarra River, the view is uninterrupted. One side of the apartment is exposed brick, which contrasts with lighter wood flooring and white walls. The kitchen has stark black countertops. There’s a giant metal staircase leading upstairs, and windows so big they run the full length of both floors.
The furniture—a large cognac leather couch, a table and chairs to seat eight, and a coffee table that looks vintage—has personality. On top of the coffee table sits a well-loved classic science-fiction novel next to an empty espresso cup, and a matching saucer sprinkled with crumbs.
“Wow, it actually looks like you live here.” I blurt the words out before I have a chance to think about how silly they sound. “I mean...”
“You expected me to take you to a fake apartment?” Daniel looks confused.
“No, what I mean is I expected something different.” I turn around to face him and fiddle with the handle of my suitcase. He’d insisted on wheeling it for me, but I already feel that I’m accepting more from him than I would under normal circumstances.
But these are not normal circumstances. These are very, very unusual circumstances.
“Like what?” He cocks his head, his eyes tracking my face.
“Something sleeker.” I cringe. Now it sounds like I’m insulting his taste. “I mean, this has more personality than I expected.”
Oh wow, that’s even worse.
“That’s a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one.” His mouth does that half smile, half smirk thing and my stomach automatically flips.
“Well, it’s just that you seem so...modern.” Dig up, stupid. “And all your recent projects have been very modern, too, right? The Cielo, that tower down in the Docklands. Oh, and the hotel your company designed near Southern Cross Station.”
Daniel raises an eyebrow. “You have done your homework.”
“Well, maybe I’m not TSTL after all.” I nod. “This place is really nice. It’s warm.”
“Warm and old,” he replies affectionately. “I like old things. They have character and a story behind them. I like thinking about their history when I’m shopping for a new piece.”
“You decorated yourself? I thought rich people use interior designers.”
Daniel motions for me to follow him. “Rich people who don’t have control issues use interior designers.”
Something about the way he says “control issues” makes my mouth run dry. I try to swallow but find my heart is beating harder in my chest and it’s difficult to walk and breathe and swallow at the same time.
You’re acting like a complete giddy fool.
“I’ve set you up in here.” Daniel leads me to a room on the bottom floor that’s tucked away behind the kitchen.
It’s so gorgeous I almost gasp. The window runs from the floor all the way up, flooding the space with natural light. There’s a large bed with a wrought iron bedhead and soft cream linen, and a blanket thrown over the foot in a pale dusty blue. There’s even a bookshelf filled to the brim, a mix of architecture and art books and spine-cracked novels.
“You’ve got your own bathroom through there.” Daniel points to where an open arch shows a small room with a spa-like shower and a claw-foot tub. “It’s stocked with shampoos and soaps. My assistant put some other girlie things in there for uh...makeup and stuff.”
“Makeup and stuff?” I’m touched by the gesture. Imposing and blunt as Daniel may be, I get the impression he really does want me to feel comfortable here.
“It’s been a long time since anyone was here but me, so I’m a little out of touch with what women need in their bathrooms.” The cryptic statement has me curious but before I can even think about opening my mouth to pry, Daniel moves on. “Towels are in the drawers. And there’s plenty of space for you to hang clothes in here.”
An antique armoire is the feature of the room, the rich reddish wood standing out against the white walls and sun-bleached floors. When I pull the doors open, I’m shocked to find a few things already hanging inside. There’s a sparkling black dress, one in blue and another in deep purple.
“Tell me this isn’t left over from the last woman.” I glance at him over my shoulder and the bastard grins at me. He’s pushing my buttons.
“Get all the jokes out now, you’ve got a long night ahead of you,” he replies, leaning against the doorframe. How easy could it be to imagine this is really my life—a perfect home, perfect dresses and a perfect man to take them off at the end of the night.
This isn’t real. None of this is real.
“How do you even know what my size is?” I raise an eyebrow. “And if you feed me some bullshit about you can tell by looking at a woman’s body, I’m going to brain you with my shoe.”
“I had my assistant call the catering company to get your uniform size under the guise of wanting to surprise you.”
“Oh.” That’s smart. “You thought of everything, didn’t you?”
“At the risk of sounding like a snob, I thought you may not have anything in your wardrobe fit for the opera.” He shifts on the spot, like he’s acutely aware of how this simple thing highlights how different we are. “In France.”
“France?” I squeak. “Excuse me? I must be having hearing problems. It sounded like you said we’re going to France.”
“That’s right.”
“As in, France in Europe?”
Daniel watches me from his vantage point, hands jammed into his pockets in a way that encourages me to lower my gaze. “Do you know of another France?”
“Don’t be smart.”
“I was going to talk to you about it today. I’m supposed to leave on Wednesday for a meeting, and I figured that we should be seen together anyway, so you can come with me and we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
I gape at him. “When you said we’d take a holiday, I assumed it would be in a fancy hotel here. Maybe Sydney.”
“Why would I stay in a hotel here when my apartment is better than any hotel?” His genuine confusion makes me want to smack him. Or kiss him.
Or push him down to the floor and straddle him and—
“You’re looking a little red,” Daniel comments, taking a step toward me.
“I’m fine,” I snap, holding up a hand to stop him coming any closer. “You never said there would be international travel involved. What if I didn’t have a passport?”
“You don’t have one?”
I can’t help but bristle at the way he says it like everybody would have a passport. Clearly someone as worldly as Daniel Moretti wouldn’t consider that international travel might not be in everyone’s budget. But I do happen to have a passport from my gap year, where I backpacked around Europe with a friend, living on a few dollars a day.
Something tells me this trip to Europe will be different.
“Well, yes, I do have one,” I admit. “But I didn’t pack it.”
“So we’ll swing by your house and get it.” I can tell he’s getting frustrated with the objections I’m throwing up. Clearly Daniel likes to be in charge and he’s planning to make all the decisions through the course of our arrangement.
Part of me wants to press on him, to show him that I can hold my own. “And what about tonight, then? I need to be prepared.”
All I know about the Morettis is what I gleaned from a few online searches. Loaded...like seriously loaded. Divorced parents, father accused of multiple affairs, which certainly explains why Daniel is going to such lengths to prove himself right now. I couldn’t find a single picture of Daniel and his father together from the last decade and a half.
He gives me a noncommittal shrug. “They’re not going to quiz you.”
“Do you want them to believe us or not? Or am I supposed to be a trophy fiancée who doesn’t know anything about anything?”
Daniel looks at me curiously, as though he’s trying to figure me out. “Is that the kind of woman you think I want?”
“Well, I don’t really know because you’re about as communicative as a pet rock.” I fold my arms across my chest, defensiveness tightening my muscles. “Seriously, for someone who’s willing to buy himself a fiancée, you sure seem to resist anything that might help me do my job properly.”
“If I’d wanted a ‘sit still, smile quietly’ woman, then I have failed miserably in choosing you, haven’t I?”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” I reply primly.
“You should.” He stares at me for a moment, dark eyes roaming my face and making my body slowly heat as though he’s cranking the dial to my internal thermostat.
“I want to know what I’m walking into tonight. They might not quiz me but if you want anyone to actually believe we’re a couple, then some sense of family dynamics would be helpful,” I say. “If it wasn’t painfully obvious the night we met, I sometimes put my foot in my mouth.”
“Will you stop prodding if I give you something?”
“Yes.” Maybe.
“My father cheated on my mother for years until they divorced, which I’m sure you were able to gather when you looked me up. They would fight, but she ultimately turned a blind eye so long as nobody outside the family knew.” He snorts, making his stance on his mother’s actions very clear. “He brought women into our family home and she didn’t put a stop to it. Eventually they divorced. We didn’t hear from him for several years, because he wanted to have a ‘clean slate’ with his new wife and that didn’t involve Marc or me. Then he started trying to contact us again out of the blue when I was about eighteen.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I haven’t spoken to him in years.” His expression is so blank and so careful, I can only assume there’s something painful being masked inside him. “And I have no desire to.”
“Okay, duly noted. Don’t mention your father.”
“Needless to say, I have no desire to follow in my parents’ footsteps, so this engagement will be a shock to everyone.” He pauses, looking off like his mind is lost in the past. “I have no idea why my parents got married in the first place.”
“You don’t think they loved each other back then?” I ask.
“Possibly, in the early days. But that clearly didn’t last, did it?” His voice has a sharp, cynical edge. “That’s the thing about love, it’s not deserving of the pedestal people place it on.”
I bite back my instinct to disagree. Even with my mother’s negative experience and all the pressure she’s put on me to get married so a man can “save” me, I still believe in love. Real, passionate love. I used to spend hours looking at old photo albums of my grandparents when they were young. The way my grandfather looked at my grandmother—like she was the only thing in the world that mattered—I want that. And I want someone to give it to in return.
“I understand why you would have that opinion,” I say. And I do, even if I don’t agree.
“I expected you to jump to love’s defence,” he says, raising an eyebrow.
“Because I’m a woman?”
“Because you’re a romantic.”
“And what do you base that assessment on?”
“Anyone else wouldn’t care about winning my family over, given this is a business arrangement. But you want them to like you. And you’re worried about lying.”
“Doesn’t that make me a good person rather than a romantic?”
“It means you have a rose-coloured glasses view of the world, which is inherently romantic.”
Daniel seems like the kind of man who once he’s made up his mind, nothing short of a gun to his head will change it. And really, why should I care what he thinks of me? As he said, this is a business arrangement.
“How on earth are you going to convince the world that a romantic like me fell in love with a cynic like you?” I ask with a teasing tone.
“I’ve got a PR manager to help with that.” He smooths his hands down the front of his jeans, and I track the movement with my eyes. Everything about him screams self-assurance—from his posture, to the firm grip he has on every conversation, to the way he looks at me with unwavering eye contact, no matter how I prod him. “All you have to do is look like you’re enamoured.”
I try to resist a smirk. “I might need some practise. You haven’t exactly given me much to be enamoured by.”
Liar.
“Fine. Let’s practise,” he says, his tone issuing a challenge. Clearly he’s not content to let me do all the prodding.
“Seriously?”
He shrugs. “Why not? It’s got to be better than you poking around in my personal life.”
“Sorry for wanting to get to know you.” I roll my eyes.
Surely it wouldn’t hurt to have a little “rehearsal” of how we’re supposed to act? Truth be told, I am a little nervous. His family belongs to another world. He belongs to another world...a world where money can buy anything. Even a fiancée.
And I’ve never faked anything, not even an orgasm. Because if a guy can’t make me feel something real, I’m not going to stroke his ego by pretending.
But if I fail to convince his family, he might not hold up his end of the bargain. Then I’m screwed—no apartment, no catering job to help me get by since my “indiscretion” is plastered all over the internet. I have to make this work.
I take a few steps forward and plant one hand against his arm. The soft fabric of his shirt hugs the curve of his biceps and it’s heaven beneath my fingertips. I tilt my face up to Daniel’s as though we’re about to kiss, and I give him what I hope is a convincing expression of a woman head over heels in love. But Daniel’s husky laugh makes me frown.
“Let it come naturally,” he says. “Stop trying so hard.”
“But—”
My words are cut short when he presses his finger to my lips. His face is close, so close I can see each thick lash framing his dark eyes, and the hint of stubble impressing itself on the skin around his jaw, like darkness is peeking through from inside him.
My breath hitches as he slides his hand around my neck, his fingers driving into my hair. He tilts me back, his thumb brushing my cheekbone and the corner of my lip for a moment that stretches on endlessly. Anticipation winds through my body, tightening like a snake and squeezing. Making me want, need, desire.
Making me ache.
My lips go slack, calling silently to his. Calling for his kiss.
Daniel’s head comes forward, his dark gaze holding me captive. In this moment, I am his to command, soft and pliable under his touch. When his lips part, I almost whimper. Yes.
But the sound of his ringtone slashes through the moment. Daniel pulls back and digs the device out of his back pocket, cancelling the call. I’m almost burning up. I’m like a flame he’s coaxed to life and I hate myself for it. I force myself to push away the pink fog of lust addling my brain.
How does he play me so easily?
“Okay, so...” I square my shoulders like I wasn’t about to allow him to kiss me senseless for no good reason. I can’t let him see the effect he has on me. “Dinner with the whole family and a trip to France. Anything else I should know about before I unpack?”
“I’m a light sleeper.” Daniel’s eyes are dark, almost black but not quite. It makes him hard to read, hard to decipher. The man, so far, is full of contradictions—sleek image and a home filled with personality; he acts like he doesn’t care about my opinion and yet he stocks my bathroom with everything I could possibly need. I don’t know what to make of him. “If you hear me walking around at night, don’t worry. We’re not getting burgled.”
I already know what’s going to happen tonight. I’m going to lie awake, listening to the sound of him, wondering what it might be like if he cracked my door open and padded softly into my room to pick up where we left off a moment ago. Wanting to know what it might be like to be burned by him.
Wanting it all.