Fiona Brand - The Fiancée Charade

“No Messena bride would wear anything but these jewels.”

“There must be something smaller, cheaper in the box—”

“If there was, no Messena bride would wear it,” he repeated.

The words Messena bride sent a small thrill through her. “I’m not a bride—not even close.”

“And that’s not even close to an excuse.” Picking up her left hand, Gabriel slipped the ring on the third finger.

She blinked, unexpectedly emotional, because the ring, this scene, was something she had never dared dream about. Yet here she was, and Gabriel had just placed the most beautiful engagement ring she had ever seen on her finger. It should have meant fidelity and undying love—instead it was all a charade.

FIONA BRANDlives in the sunny Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Now that both her sons are grown, she continues to love writing books and gardening. After a life-changing time in which she met Christ, she has undertaken study for a bachelor of theology and has become a member of The Order of St. Luke, Christ’s healing ministry.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Once again huge thanks to my editor, Stacy Boyd.

To the Lord, who helps and supports me in all things—especially writing. Thank you.

Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

—Matthew 11: 28, 29

Zane Atraeus Dates Good-time Girl….

The tabloid headline halted billionaire banker and entrepreneur Gabriel Messena in his tracks.

A subtle tension gripped him as he paid the attendant at the Auckland International Airport newsstand and flipped the scandal sheet open to verify just which good-time girl, exactly, his wild cousin Zane Atraeus had been dating this time.

His gaze was drawn to the color photo that went with the story. Every muscle in his body tightened as he studied familiar Titian hair, creamy skin and dark eyes; a long, sensually curved body that possessed the engaging grace of a dancer.

Not just any woman, Gabriel thought with a bleak sense of inevitability as he studied the cheerful glint of Gemma O’Neill’s gaze. Once again, Zane was dating his woman.

Emotion, sharp and clarifying, clenched his stomach muscles and banded his chest. When he had first discovered that Zane was dating Gemma, he had checked out the situation and had been satisfied that the dating was on a strictly business level. Although, according to the tabloid, at some point that had changed.

The attraction Zane felt for Gemma was a no-brainer. She was gorgeous and smart, with an impulsive nature and a fascinating bluntness that had captivated Gabriel when she had worked on the Messena estate as a gardener. Although, he couldn’t understand what drew Gemma, who had never seemed to be the A-list party-girl type, to his younger, wilder cousin.

Jaw taut, he examined the fierce sense of possession that gripped him, the powerful desire to claim Gemma as his own, despite the fact that he hadn’t seen her in almost six years. His growing fury that Zane, who had women lining up—and, apparently, enough time in his schedule to date them all—just couldn’t seem to leave his former personal assistant alone.

Damn, he thought mildly. He had no problem identifying the emotion that held him in thrall, destroying his normal clarity. He was jealous of Zane: searingly, primitively jealous.

It was an emotion that made no sense given the length of time that had passed and the fact that what he and Gemma had shared had been nothing more than a steamy encounter that had spanned a few incandescent hours.

Hours that were still etched in his memory because they were literally the last fling of his carefree youth. Two days later his father had been killed in a car accident along with his mistress, the beautiful Katherine Lyon, a woman who had also happened to be the family housekeeper.

Amidst the grief and the scandal, the responsibility of managing the family bank, his volatile family and the media had descended on Gabriel’s shoulders like a lead weight. Any idea that he should echo his father’s disastrous mistake by continuing a liaison with an employee, no matter how attractive, had been shelved.

Until now.

Frowning at the sudden sharp desire to pick up the threads of a relationship that had its basis in the same kind of obsessive fatal attraction that had brought his father to ruin, Gabriel refolded the paper.

Strolling to the first-class counter, he checked his luggage and handed his passport to the attendant. While he waited for his boarding pass, he glanced again at the sketchy article, which also chronicled a number of Zane’s fiery liaisons. Affairs that Zane had apparently been conducting with other women while he had kept Gemma on the back burner.

Intense irritation gripped him at the idea that Gemma had clearly thrown away her pride and reputation in favor of pursuing Zane. That she would allow herself to be treated as some kind of standby date. It just didn’t gel with the strong streak of independence that had always been such an attractive part of her personality.

His gaze snagged on a phrase that made every muscle lock tight. Suddenly, the anomaly in Gemma’s behavior was crystal-clear.

She was no longer strictly single. At some point in the past couple of years, she’d had a child. Presumably, Zane’s child.

Taking a measured breath, Gabriel forced the humming tension from his muscles, although there was nothing he could do about the slam of his heart, or the curious hollow feeling as he grappled with the information.

Too late to wish that he had listened to what the tabloids had been blaring for almost two years. That at some point, Zane had decided that having Gemma as his PA had not been enough, that he had installed her in his bed, as well.

He jerked at his dark blue silk tie, needing air. He needed to refocus, to reassert the control he’d worked so hard to instill in himself in place of the hot-blooded, passionate streak that was the bane of all Messena men. But something about the sheer intimacy of Gemma bearing a child cut deep. The fact that the child belonged to Zane, his own cousin, rubbed salt in the wound.

It was an intimacy that Gabriel, at age thirty, hadn’t had time for in his life, and which was not in his foreseeable future.

But Zane, with all the irresponsibility of youth, had experienced that intimacy. And now, evidently, he no longer wanted the woman whom he had bound to him with a child.

But Gabriel did.

The thought dropped through the turmoil of his emotions like a stone dropping through cool, clear water.

Six years had passed. But in that moment the stretch of time barely registered. He felt like a sleeper waking up, all of his senses—the emotions he’d walked away from the night his father had died—flaring to intense, heated life.