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Marriage Made on Paper(17)

By:Maisey Yates


“That’s why they call it a personal life, Gage, although clearly you didn’t get the memo.”

“Tell me this, Lily, is there any point for me to try and hide my personal life? You know how the media is, and if you aren’t up front about what goes on behind closed doors they make it up, or someone makes it up for them.”

“Okay, I see your point. But you tend to … flaunt.”

“No, I happen to date women who are as high profile as I am, and that makes us targets. We go out, and that seems to constitute as news. We can’t stay in my bedroom all the time.”

The way he said that, his husky voice low and intimate in the confines of the limo, made her heart rate skyrocket. Why, why was he able to this to her? Why did he have the power to fill her head with images of tangled limbs and the sounds of heavy breathing, the scent of sweat-slicked bodies? Men, in a real life, personal sense, never did that to her.

She liked men, she just liked them from a distance. Like in the pages of a glossy magazine or on a movie screen. She had a sex drive, just like most everyone else, but in actual, personal application … that was what made her feel anxious. Which wasn’t conducive to arousal. Orgasm required a loss of control she couldn’t fathom being able to achieve, or even wanting to achieve, with another person.

But it was as if Gage was able to bypass all of her natural issues, all of her closely guarded reserve, and make her want things she’d never anticipated having a desire for. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to abolish her personal barriers so that she could experience real desire and satisfaction with Gage, it was a matter of them seeming to dissolve and her desperately wishing they would return. He was her boss, and work was too important to even consider engaging in an affair that would damage that.

Fine for some women to have flings and keep themselves emotionally separate, but she was afraid she wasn’t one of those women. Her mother certainly wasn’t. Every man she ever slept with consumed everything she had. All her emotion, all her time, her self-respect. It had made growing up a living hell for Lily. There had been nothing she could do at the time, but now, it was up to her how she ran her life, and she chose to maintain total control.

End of story. So her hormones could just deal with it.

“I don’t suppose you can,” she said, teeth clenched.

“Check your alerts,” he said, back to his high-handed self.

She took her phone out of her pocket and pulled up her email. She’d received a few email alerts, letting her know Gage’s name had popped up in search engines. She opened the first one. “It looks like our engagement is big news. Huge news, in fact.”

“How about Maddy?”

“The story’s still there, and I wouldn’t call it buried,” she said, looking through the pages of search results. “But it’s quieted.”

“Good,” he said.

Gage took his phone from his jacket pocket and dialed Maddy, setting the mobile to speakerphone. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, Gage. I’m fine.”

She didn’t sound distraught, but he could tell she’d been crying, which made his stomach tighten. “It’s handled.”

“I saw that,” she said. “I don’t want you doing this for me. I’m an adult, Gage. I have to clean up my own messes.”

“Not this one, Maddy. Callahan is a bastard to drag you into this, and it’s way out of your league. Let me handle it.”

“Gage, you have to let me stand on my own sometime.”

“I know,” he said, his chest tightening. “After this.”

He knew Maddy was an adult, and he understood her feeling like she needed to fight her own battles, and, if he was honest, he was more than ready to have a little less involvement with her life. But he wasn’t letting her deal with this on her own.

“I’m sending you over to the Swiss resort for a couple of weeks. Just until all of this dies down.”

“Gage …”

“Maddy, let me fix it.”

He heard her heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “Okay, Gage, I’ll go to Switzerland. Are you still going through with your fake engagement?”

“How do you know it’s fake?” he asked, looking over at Lily, who was still staring out the window, trying to ignore him. Her slight shoulders were set rigidly, her long, stocking-clad legs crossed. And they were extremely fine legs. Lily wasn’t very tall, she barely skimmed his shoulder, even in her man-slaying stilettos, but those legs were long and shapely, just begging for him to run his hands over them, to draw one up so that she had it wrapped around him, bringing her closer so that he could …