The thought of even attempting to tame Luca sent a thrill through Constance she couldn’t quite contain. But she’d be damned if she let him see it.
“I’m flattered,” she said drily, “but again, I don’t see what your father has to do with me.”
Luca leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’ll help you out of your mess if you help me out of mine.”
Constance drew in a careful breath. “What does helping you out of your mess entail?”
“Our company is set to open its new offices in New York. If I want to run them, as I have been anticipating, I need to prove I can settle down and start ‘behaving like a responsible adult’ as my father puts it. Otherwise, the job will go to someone else and so will most of my shares in the company. I’d like to avoid that if possible.”
Constance nodded. Sounded reasonable enough, although she still wasn’t sure how she could help.
“You, I take it, would like to keep your position and remain with your charges.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“So my proposal is that for the next month you pose as my fiancée.”
Constance’s mouth dropped open, but for the life of her she couldn’t make herself speak. If he had told her his plan was to have her dress in feathers and parade around town clucking like a chicken she couldn’t have been more surprised.
“I…I…” She took a deep breath. “How does that help you?”
“It gets my father off my back. If I’m engaged to a respectable person such as yourself, he’ll assume my old ways are behind me. We play up the lovebird act for a month or so until I’ve been made president of the New York offices and am in full control of my shares, and then we both go back to our own lives.”
“How is that supposed to help me?”
“I’ll speak to your director, tell her that you were bringing the girls you care about so much to meet me, at my request. If we are engaged, it would be natural for them to meet me as I would become part of their lives as well. It still might not be ideal for them, but it’s better than the alternative: that you brought the girls with you so you could trespass on private property and once there, accost the poor, unsuspecting owner—a much-sought-after celebrity—with your young charges watching.”
“But that’s not what happened!”
“It’s only a slight twist of the truth and the pictures support the story.”
“That’s blackmail!”
“I choose to see it as helping each other out.”
“You can choose to see it any way you wish. It’s blackmail and you know it.”
Luca shrugged. “What choice do you have?”
Constance fumed, fury flooding every cell in her body until she nearly vibrated with it. She took a deep breath, struggling for calm. “What exactly would this charade involve?”
Luca leaned back against the couch with a smug look that Constance itched to smack off his face. He waved at Joseph, who came forward and handed her a stack of papers.
“I will have a contract drawn up, complete with a nondisclosure agreement similar to this.” He handed her the papers. “At the end of the month, well, six weeks because your association will need to extend at least a week or so past the date Mr. Vasilakis is approved for the position, your relationship will dissolve. At that time, you’ll be free to go your separate ways with the stipulation that neither of you reveal any details about the relationship and its validity or anything that took place during the time of your association. You’ll need to spend a great deal of time with Mr. Vasilakis, of course.”
“But the girls…this isn’t a babysitting job. I’m their legal guardian. Their mother for all intents and purposes. They live with me. I can’t disappear for six weeks.”
Joseph jumped in. “The girls are welcome to accompany you, of course.”
“Joe,” Luca snapped. “We’ve already discussed that.”
Constance frowned, not understanding.
Luca filled in the gaps for her. “Joe feels my hanging out with orphans will help drive home the message that I’ve changed. A little extra PR.”
She glared at him. “You are not going to use my children as some sort of prop for this ridiculous farce.”
“Of course not. I’ve already told Joe no pictures.”
“I wasn’t suggesting they be used as…props, for lack of a better word,” Joseph said.
“Good,” Constance ground out, her threshold for politeness rapidly disappearing. “Because I absolutely won’t allow that.”
“No, no, of course, not,” Joseph said. Then he turned back to Luca. “But as they must stay with Miss Constance and we need her with us, it stands to reason…”