The Argentine's Price

CHAPTER THREE


SURREAL didn’t even begin to describe it. Waking up and realizing she had consented to marry Lazaro Marino the night before was surreal on an epic scale worthy of Salvador Dali. Given the state of things, she wouldn’t have been shocked to see her clock melt off the wall.

But, as surreal as it was, it was her new reality. Nonetheless she couldn’t make it feel real. She felt as if she was in a fog that not even driving to work through Boston’s harrowing traffic could shake her out of. And when she sat down at her desk it didn’t get any better.

It was early, the sun rising pink against the skyline of the city. Vanessa picked up her smartphone and snapped a picture. It was muted, nothing like it would have been if it had been done with an actual camera, something she’d never bothered to buy for herself. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford one, but she didn’t have time to indulge in any hobby that didn’t directly benefit her company.

She would have even less time as CEO of Pickett Industries and fiancée to Lazaro Marino. She looked at her left hand. It was bare, no engagement ring. But there would be one, she had no doubt about that. Lazaro was a man of details and a detail like that wouldn’t be overlooked.

She leaned forward and rested her forehead on the cool wood of her desk. How had she gotten so deep into a life that she didn’t want? She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, trying to halt the tears that were starting to form.

She’d made her choice. Long before Lazaro had walked back into her life, she’d made her choice to do what she had to do to keep Pickett Industries in the family. She’d gone to college and majored in business so she could see that that happened, and that she did the best job she could. She’d chosen to put everything personal on hold in order to keep the business afloat.

It was just a part of her duty to Pickett. It felt like more though.

A strange bubble of exhilaration filled her chest because suddenly her future was different. The man standing at the altar in her mind was no longer Craig Freeman; it was the one man who had inspired a kind of reckless abandon in her. The one man who’d made her want to break the rules.

By marrying him, she was both toeing the line and rebelling against it.

That was liberating in some ways, terrifying in others. And what she really wanted to do—hide under her desk until the storm blew over—was impossible because she had to keep it together. She was the CEO of Pickett. She couldn’t question her decisions, and she couldn’t hide from the hard stuff.

The choice was made. There was no going back. She was committed.

“And possibly in need of being committed, since you’re clearly certifiable,” she mumbled into the emptiness of her office.

There was the small matter of telling her father that she would not be following his “advice” and pursuing a marriage with Craig. And that Lazaro was the one she was choosing instead. His wrath would be monumental. But she was between a serious rock and a hard place, and the broken marriage agreement, such as it was, would be much more forgivable than the loss of the family legacy.

A sharp knock on her office door had her lifting her head quickly, smoothing her hair. “Yes?”

The door swung open and her heart dropped into her stomach. Whether it had been twelve years or twelve hours, Lazaro still had all the power to make her body hot and achy, to make her lips tingle with the desire to feel his kiss.

“Good morning,” he said, coming in without waiting for her permission. She doubted he ever waited for permission to do anything.

“Not especially. What brings you here?”

“I couldn’t stay away from my beautiful fiancée,” he said, his blinding smile making her stomach curl tightly.

Her stupid, traitorous heart leapt back into her chest and started thundering madly, despite the dry humor in his tone. She cleared her throat. “Right. Why are you here?”

“Because there are details we need to work out.”

“Right. Details,” she said, her voice hollow.

“There will be a prenup.”

“I would hope so,” she said, fighting to keep her tone neutral while nerves tightened her throat.

She didn’t know if she could go through with it. Marry him. Live with him. Sleep with him. Let her whole life get tangled up in Lazaro.

Speak now, or forever hold your peace.

She looked at him, at the hardened line of his jaw, the glint of steel in his dark eyes. It was too late. If she went back now, he would take everything from her. Everything that made her Vanessa Pickett.

The words stuck in her tightened throat.

“I’m not counting on a lifetime of wedded bliss,” he said, his voice dry.

“You aren’t?”

“Hardly. But what I am expecting is that you will stand beside me with all the duty and conviction of a politician’s wife.”

“What exactly does that mean?” she asked, feeling dizzy all of a sudden, fighting to convey only cool composure.

“During a political scandal, no matter how vile, the politician’s wife always stands beside her husband because it is about more than marriage. It is her job. This marriage will be your job.”

“Planning on creating a vile scandal, are you?” She treated him to her deadliest glare. He seemed entirely unaffected.

“Not in the least. But my point is that no matter what, your commitment to our union must outweigh the circumstances. If at some point we are leading separate lives it is of no concern to me, so long as appearances show a united couple.”

She’d been wrong about him being the friendlier option to her arrangement with Craig. As little as marriage with Craig had been truly discussed, she’d assumed he would at least try to be a husband to her. Lazaro wasn’t promising that. Not even close.

“Does that mean that even if you cheat on me I have to stay with you?”

“As I will stay with you,” he said, his voice hard. “The union, the legal marriage, is what I need. I cannot project thirty years into the future, but I will ensure that you are still with me.”

Vanessa was having a hard time breathing. It was as though he’d turned over her solid wood desk and placed it on her chest. Thirty years. This wasn’t a temporary arrangement. He was talking about the rest of her life. Shackled to this man.

She tried to imagine turning away again. Imagined telling him the deal was off, and he could take his shares and the entirety of Pickett Industries to hell with him for all she cared.

But she couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come. They wouldn’t even form in her brain in a cohesive manner. The idea of Lazaro losing his hold on her didn’t open up a wide arena of possibilities for her life, rather, it showed just how narrow her scope of options truly was. Without Lazaro, the company crumbled. Without the company she had no job, no relationship with her father.

She’d promised her father, the week that Thomas died, that she wouldn’t fail him, and she’d set out to make sure she didn’t from that day on. She’d dropped out of the photography club she’d been in at school, started doing some basic business courses instead. Done whatever she could to ensure she didn’t let her father down.

In her mind, she was a Pickett. She was a loyal daughter. She was the CEO of Pickett Industries. Without that … she didn’t know who she was beyond that. And without Lazaro’s help, she wouldn’t be any of those things. Of course, it was his interference that forced her to choose. But without him, there might not be any choice at all other than to watch Pickett slowly sink beneath the waves of debt, another casualty of a shifting business landscape.

And while this might not have been her first choice for how her life would end up, it was the right thing. At least this way, she would keep the business going. She would have children who would eventually take over.

Her stomach cramped at the thought. Yes, she’d planned on having children someday, but if she said yes they would be Lazaro’s children. The room suddenly seemed much too small, Lazaro’s presence in it far too big.

Another thought, small and insidious, reminded her of that moment of pure exhilaration when she’d realized that she had changed her future. That she had diverged from the path so carefully laid out for her.

If she said no now, it was back to that path. Everything would stay the same. The thought was suffocating.

She shook her head. “I don’t want that.”

“What is it you don’t want?”

“You have to be faithful to me, Lazaro,” she said, her throat tight. The entire conversation made her body feel hot, restless and edgy. She knew that she would be sleeping with Lazaro, and just the thought made her feel charged with adrenaline.

But the sex would be a purely physical act, with legal paperwork to make it all legitimate. There would be no feelings. No love. She didn’t even have to ask him about that. The hardness in his dark eyes answered that question.

Fair enough, since she couldn’t imagine falling in love with the cold man standing before her. It was shocking enough that her body seemed to respond to him. But she didn’t want to share him either. There were a host of reasons why that thought didn’t sit well with her, her health being foremost among them. Another being pure, possessive jealousy. But what woman would want to share her husband? None. Love or not.

“You have to give me that at least,” she said. “If we have children … I assume you want children?”

“I need them.”

He was talking in terms of producing heirs, and in that sense, she needed them too. It felt wrong to think of them that way, when it never had before. She’d always been confident that she would love her children, so it had never mattered if that was part of the incentive for marriage. But now, knowing Lazaro felt the same way made her see just how cold it was. Made her worry that he wouldn’t ever see the children as anything more than vessels for his legacy.

Like your father?

She shook the thought off and continued, “If we have children, I think they need to know they can aspire for better than a marriage filled with lies and infidelity.”

“I will honor the vows I speak,” he said, clenching his jaw tightly.

“Good. Then I’ll honor mine. And even if we’re a miserable, distant, sexless couple, I will stay with you.”

“Inspiring.”

“Why should it be?” she asked. “This is a cold, mercenary agreement. I’m not pretending it’s anything other than that. I don’t want or expect you to fall in love with me, but respect would be nice. I consider knowing that the person you’re sleeping with isn’t out sleeping with other people to be a great sign of respect.”

“Then you will be faithful to me,” he said, his voice hard.

“I said I would be.”

“And you will not deny me when I come to your bed.”

Vanessa put her hand on her stomach, trying to calm the butterflies that were staging a riot inside of her. “After the wedding.”

He nodded once, his eyes trained on her face. “After the wedding.”

“My father isn’t going to like this. I have to … Well, there’s the arrangement I mentioned. And his family will be—”

“You are engaged to this other man?”

She held up her ringless left hand. “No. But there was an understanding.”

“Your father will be grateful to you if he finds out the circumstances surrounding the union.”

“No.”

“You don’t want him to know?”

She shook her head. “No. I can’t … I don’t want him to know how far things have fallen … how … how bad things have gotten.”

“He will have to know what I’m bringing into the union,”

Lazaro said, dark eyes glittering. “I want him to know that I intend to revamp Pickett. I want him to know that I am saving it. That I’ve done what he could not. If you want to take credit for meeting me while pursuing my help, it is of no concern to me. But I want him to know that I was the one to pull this dying, outdated company into a new life in the modern era.” His voice was hard, uncompromising. He knew what it would do to her father to have to accept help, let alone to have to accept help from someone he believed to be beneath him, and Lazaro was relishing it.

Vanessa had never been able to believe what her father said about some people being better than others thanks to their bloodlines. She’d seen too many cruel, horrible people in her social class. People who wasted their money and used those around them with no thought to anyone but themselves. Believing that those people were somehow better than the rest of humanity was depressing.

And when she’d been sixteen, her emotions had been held captive by a boy her father considered to be lower than them. A boy who had grown into the man standing before her.

Looking at him, she felt her chest get tight, pride swelling within her. It shocked her. But she was, she realized, proud of what Lazaro had become, professionally at least.

“Showing you have the real power?” she asked softly.

“Money is the real power, Vanessa. Money is how I got into this position, how I managed to purchase Pickett’s shares.”

“Then why do you care about the rest of it? Why do you need me at all?”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “Because I can have you.”

Her stomach tightened. “The proof of how far you’ve come?” she asked, voice dry.

“Perhaps. But it has very little to do with anyone else’s perception. I want every door open to me. I have earned it. Money, I have—I want the social power as well.”

Lazaro’s blood burned in his veins, adrenaline spiking through him. He wanted everything. To be at the top of absolutely everything. To sit as a social equal with the man who had had him beaten for daring to touch his precious daughter.

And to make Vanessa his. To finally to satisfy his desire for her.

“The old-money society, the American aristocracy, it’s as outdated as your father’s business model,” he said.

“And you’ll tear down centuries of it all by yourself, Lazaro?”

“I don’t want to tear it down,” he said, his voice rough, his accent taking over his words. “I want in.”

She looked away, turning her focus out her office window and onto the Boston skyline. “And it frustrates you that you can’t do it without help.”

Lazaro bit down hard, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “None of this is done out of necessity, Vanessa. It is a bonus. You wouldn’t know about the necessities in life, not when your biggest concern is staying employed in a multi-million-dollar position you’re not qualified to do. You could walk away and there would be no great tragedy to either of us.”

She just sat, frozen behind her desk, dark eyes wide, her mouth pressed into a firm line. She wouldn’t walk away. She was too married to the tradition, to the lineage of her family, just as her father had been.

What will people think?

He wondered if she’d had a share in his broken nose if, after refusing him, she had told her father all about how the low-class housekeeper’s son had made an attempt to touch her with his filthy, laborer’s hands.

He wondered if Vanessa shared culpability for putting his mother and him out on the streets.

That had been the worst part about all of it. As he’d spat blood out onto the grimy pavement in the alley after being beaten by Michael Pickett’s men, after he’d been warned never to set foot on the Pickett estate again, been warned that if he so much as looked at Vanessa again, the consequences might be fatal, the very worst part had been wondering if Vanessa had been complicit in it. If she might have wanted her father to make sure she was rid of him.

His mother had lost her job. He’d lost his job. They’d lost their home and his mother had paid the price with her health. Ultimately with her life.

But now he knew that whatever part Vanessa had played in what had happened, she had never intended it. She was thoughtless, but she wasn’t evil.

That moment, when he’d been lying in the alley, had been the lowest of his life. But it had been then, jobless, broken and bleeding, that he had vowed to ensure no one else ever held power over him like that again. He would never allow anyone but himself to hold his fate in his hands.

That goal had consumed him, had propelled him from the gutter to the boardroom, had made him millions.

That Vanessa would be the key to unlock the final door, to allow him into the last segment of society where he was still unwelcome, was poetic justice.

He didn’t hate her. He had no desire to hurt her or exact revenge on her. But he no longer cared for her. His body still ached for her, that was all.

Michael Pickett, on the other hand, deserved hell on earth and in the hereafter. Taking Vanessa, making her his own, wrenching her from her father’s control … the satisfaction in that was endless. The man had been willing to commit murder if necessary to keep Lazaro away from his daughter, and now there would be nothing he could do to prevent him from claiming Vanessa.

“You know I can’t walk away. You might not see it as a necessity, Lazaro. But this is my whole life.” She met his gaze, her dark eyes glittering. “And I don’t think you’ll walk away either. You need me, too.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do.”

His gut burned. “You or any other society princess.”

“We both know this is about more than that.”

Why bother to deny it? “True. It is rather satisfying, the idea of marrying into the family whose floors my mother wasn’t good enough to clean.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, well-groomed eyebrows drawn together.

“I mean, your father fired my mother. We ended up on the streets. So yes, I suppose there is something especially satisfying about it being you.”

There was no triumph in her eyes, only shock, sadness. For him? For his mother? It was far too late for that.

“I didn’t know.”

“Did you think we went on an extended holiday?”

“I didn’t know,” she repeated, her voice low.

He shrugged. “We’ll start with dating, of course.”

“What?”

“We need to be seen together, prior to the actual engagement.”

Vanessa tried to ignore the knot in her stomach. She didn’t know his mother had been fired. She wondered if that had been when he’d disappeared. If that was why he’d never come back after their disastrous almost night together.

She didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to let him know she still thought about it. That it still mattered.

She cleared her throat. “And you want us to … date?”

“Of course. I intend to seduce my fiancée with all of the skill that I possess.”

He took her hand in his and bent over it, pressing firm, hot lips to her skin. The gesture was light, gentlemanly even. Not even a little bit erotic. At least it shouldn’t have been. But it was. It pushed all of her thoughts and concerns right out of her head and caused a riot of sensation through her system, made her entire body weak and energized at the same time. Made her breasts feel heavy as a pulse started to beat at the apex of her thighs.

She hadn’t felt this way, not with this level of intensity, since the last time Lazaro had taken her in his arms when she’d been a completely inexperienced sixteen-year-old. And she hated that she still responded this way to him now. He was the man who was holding her future hostage and that she would melt under his touch with absolutely no resistance was appalling.

She pulled her hand back and pressed her palm to her chest, feeling her heart rage against her breastbone. “No seduction required,” she said tightly. “You can seduce the media, I don’t really care, but not me. I’ll do my ‘wifely duty’ once we’re married, but until then, you can keep your lips to yourself.”

He tightened his jaw, his eyes dark, glittering. Angry. “Don’t worry, princess, I won’t defile you in any way.”

A stab of regret hit her. For a moment, she wondered if she’d hurt him. But the moment passed quickly. Lazaro Marino didn’t do feelings. And the last time she’d turned down his advances he’d walked out of her life. All he saw her as was a body. Well, now he saw her as more than that. A body and a stepping stone on his way to the top.

It wouldn’t hurt him to wait.

“One thing you need to know, Vanessa. With me, sex will never feel like duty. I guarantee it.” His eyes were hot on her, making her body temperature rise along with her heart rate. His words were an invitation to sin a saint could hardly resist.

Sign me up for sainthood then, because I’m not going there.

She would do what she had to do. She would make this deal work for both of them, but she wasn’t going to fall under his spell. She’d done it once, and she had no intention of ever succumbing to his wicked, deceptive charms again.

“Anything else?” she asked stiffly.

“You and I have a date tomorrow night.”