His Ex's Well-Kept Secret(33)

Her father knew he couldn't control her choices. Not even Vitaly Koslov  in all his arrogance would arrange for her to meet a prospective date in  front of twenty colleagues. Not after an exhausting overseas dance  schedule and nine hours in the air across seven time zones. Would he?

A ringing noise distracted her from the question and she peered around,  only to realize the chime came from her pocket. Her cell phone. She must  not have shut it off for the plane ride. Withdrawing the device, she  muted the volume, but not before half the dancers on the plane turned to  stare. Including the group nearby who'd been gossiping about her.

None of them looked particularly shamefaced.

Sofia hurried toward an open seat and buckled into the wide leather  chair for descent. She checked the incoming text on her phone while the  pilot made the usual announcements about the landing.

Her closest friend, Jasmine Jackson, worked in public relations and had  agreed to help Sofia with a PR initiative this year to take her dance  career to the next level. Jasmine's text was about the interview Sofia  had agreed to for Dance magazine.

Reporter and one camera operator for Dance will meet you in terminal to  film arrival. We want you to look like you're coming off a successful  world tour! Touch up your makeup and no yoga pants, please.

Panic crawled up her throat at the idea of meeting with the media now  when she was exhausted and agitated about the other dancers' comments.  Still, she pulled out her travel duffel and fished around the bottom for  her makeup bag to comply with Jasmine's wise advice. Chances were good  that Antonia had misinterpreted her father's conversation anyhow. He  might be high-handed and overbearing, but he'd known about the Dance  magazine interview. She'd told him there was a chance the reporter would  want to meet her at the airport. He wouldn't purposely embarrass her.

Unless he fully intended to put her on the spot? Prevent her from  arguing with him by springing a new man on her while the cameras rolled?

Impossible. She shook off the idea as too over the top, even for him.  She already had the lip gloss wand out when her phone chimed with  another message from Jasmine.

WARNING-the camera person freelances for the tabloids. I'm not worried  about you, of course, but maybe warn the other dancers? Good luck!

The plane wheels hit the tarmac with a jarring thud, nearly knocking the  phone from her hand. Capping the lip gloss, she knew no amount of  makeup was going to cover up the impending disaster. If Antonia was  correct about her father's plans and some tabloid reporter captured the  resulting argument between Sofia and her dad-the timing would be  terrible. It would undermine everything she'd worked for in hiring a  publicist in the first place.

Celebrated choreographer Idris Fortier was in town this week and he  planned to create a ballet to premiere in New York. Sofia would audition  for a feature role-as would every other woman on the plane. Competition  could turn vicious at the slightest opportunity.                       
       
           



       

Maybe it already had.

Steeling herself for whatever happened in the terminal, Sofia took deep  breaths to slow her racing heart. Forewarned was forearmed, right? She  should consider herself fortunate that her gossipy colleague had given  her a heads-up on her father's plan. With cameras rolling for her  interview, she couldn't afford the slightest misstep. She could argue  with him later, privately. But she wouldn't sacrifice a good PR  opportunity when she had the chance of a lifetime to be the featured  dancer in a new Idris Fortier ballet.

She would think of this as a performance and she would nail it, no  matter what surprises the public stage had to offer. That's what she  did, damn it.

And this time, no one would say her performance lacked passion.

* * *

"Don't do something stupid because you're angry." Quinn McNeill tried to  reason with his youngest brother as he strode beside him toward the  terminal of the largest private airport servicing Manhattan. They'd  shared a limo to Teterboro from the McNeill Resorts' offices in midtown  this afternoon even though Quinn's flight to Eastern Europe to meet with  potential investors didn't leave for several hours. He'd canceled his  afternoon meetings just to talk sense into Cameron.

"I'm not angry." Cameron spread his arms wide, his herringbone pea coat  swinging open as if to say he had nothing to hide. "Look at me. Do I  look upset?"

With his forced grin, actually, yes. The men shared a family  resemblance, their Scots roots showing in blue eyes and dark hair. But  when Quinn said nothing, Cameron continued, "I'm going to allow Gramps  to dictate my life and move me around like a chess piece so that I can  one day inherit a share of the family business. Which I don't really  want in the first place except that he's drilled loyalty into our heads  and he doesn't want anyone but a McNeill running McNeill Resorts."

Last week, Quinn, Cameron and their other brother, Ian, had all been  called into their grandfather's lawyer's office for a meeting that  spelled out terms of a revised will that would split the shares of the  older man's global corporation into equal thirds among them. The news  itself was no surprise since the McNeill patriarch had promised as much  for years, grooming them for roles in his company even though each of  them had gone on to develop their own business interests. Malcolm  McNeill's apathetic only son had taken a brief turn at the company helm  and proven himself unequal to the task, so the older man had targeted  the next generation to inherit.

None of them needed the promised inheritance. But Cam was the closest to  their grandfather and felt the most pressure to buy into Malcolm  McNeill's vision for the future. And the catch was, each of them could  only obtain his share of McNeill Resorts upon marriage, with the share  reverting to the estate if the marriage ended sooner than twelve months.

Out of overinflated loyalty, Cameron seemed ready to tie the knot with a  woman, sight-unseen, after choosing her from a matchmaker's lineup of  foreign women eager to wed. Either that, or he was hoping a ludicrous  trip to the altar would make their grandfather realize what a bad idea  this was and prompt him to call the whole thing off.

It had always been tough to tell with Cam. For Quinn's part, he was  content to take a wait-and-see approach and hope their grandfather  changed his mind. The old man was still in good health. And he'd  conveniently booked a trip to China after the meeting in his lawyer's  office, making it next to impossible to argue with him for at least a  few more weeks.

"Cam, look at it this way. If it's so important to Gramps that the  company remain in family hands, he wouldn't have attached this new  stipulation." Quinn ignored the phone vibrating in his pocket as he  tried to convince his brother of the point.

"Gramps won't live forever." Cameron raised his voice as a jet took off  overhead. "That will might be ludicrous, but it's still a legal  document. I don't want the company to end up on the auction block for  some investor to swoop in and divvy up the assets."

"Neither do I." Quinn's coattails flapped in the gust of air from the  nearby takeoff. "But I'd rather try to convince the stubborn old man  that forcing marriage down our throats might backfire and create more  instability in the company than anything."                       
       
           



       

"Who says my marriage won't be stable? I might be on to something,  letting a matchmaker choose my bride. It's not like I've had any luck  finding Ms. Right on my own."

Cameron had a reputation as a playboy, a cheerful charmer who wined and dined some of the world's most beautiful women.

Quinn shook his head. "Since when have you tried looking for meaningful relationships?"

"I don't want someone who is playing an angle." Cameron scowled. "I meet  too many women more interested in seeing what I can do for them."

"This girl could be doing the same thing. Maybe you're her ticket to  permanent residence in the United States." Shouldering his way through a  small group of businessmen who emerged from the terminal building  stumbling and laughing, Quinn opened the door and held it for his  brother. "How much do you know about your bride? You've never even  spoken to this woman. Does she even speak English?"

Where the hell was their master negotiator brother, Ian, for  conversations like this? Quinn needed backup and the reasonable voice of  the middle son who had always mediated the vastly different  perspectives Cameron and Quinn held. But Ian was in meetings all day,  leaving Quinn to talk his brother out of his modern-day, mail-order  bride scheme.