Heidi Rice - The Virgin's Shock Baby

And setting her up as some kind of Mata Hari? The idea would almost be funny if it weren’t so appalling.

‘You can’t ask me to do this,’ said Megan. She’d always strived so hard to please her father, to prove herself worthy of his trust. There weren’t many things she wouldn’t do for him, but this request scared her on so many levels. ‘You wouldn’t ask me to, if I were your son,’ she added, trying to appeal to her father’s sense of justice. He wasn’t a bad man, he was fair and, in his own gruff, distant way, he loved her and Katie. Obviously he was so stressed he had completely lost his grip on reality. But he had to be under a huge amount of pressure, if De Rossi was sniffing about the company.

She knew enough about De Rossi’s business practices from the financial press to know that once his conglomerate got their hooks into your stock you were as good as dead in the water. He was famous for asset stripping. If he really was planning a hostile takeover, he could reduce Whittaker’s to rubble in weeks, a legacy company destroyed in a heartbeat simply to feed his insatiable appetite for wealth at any cost. But her father’s solution was beyond desperate, not to mention illegal, and doomed to failure. She had to make him see that, and find another way.

‘If I had a son and De Rossi was gay, that would be an option.’ Instead of looking persuaded, the tic in her father’s cheek went ballistic. ‘As neither is the case, it’s a moot point.’

The blush seared her skin, the knot in her stomach tightening into a hollow ball of anxiety. It was no good, she was going to be forced to state the obvious.

‘De Rossi might as well be gay for all the interest he’s likely to take in me. He dates supermodels.’

And I’m hardly supermodel material.

At five-foot-five, and with the lush curves she had inherited from her mother, Megan had felt like an over-endowed pixie next to the slim, stunning woman who had fawned over De Rossi at the Met Ball.

But Megan’s lack of appeal to men had always felt like a boon. She didn’t want to become any man’s decorative accessory. Especially not a man like De Rossi, who even on their brief acquaintance she suspected was as ruthless with women as he was in his business dealings.

She could control those mini explosions. They were nothing more than a biological reaction.

‘Don’t sell yourself short.’ Her father huffed, looking exasperated now as well as desperate. ‘You have enough of your mother’s charms to attract him if you put your mind to it.’

‘But I—’

‘If you don’t do it, there’s only one other person I can ask.’

Megan’s panic downgraded. Thank goodness, he had someone else he could ask. She would not have to even attempt something that was bound to humiliate and degrade her, and was extremely unlikely to be successful. ‘Who?’

‘Your sister, Katie.’

The panic went from ten to ninety in a nanosecond.

‘But Katie’s only nineteen,’ she cried, shocked. ‘And she’s in art school.’

After an endless string of school expulsions and acting out against their father’s authority, Katie had finally found her passion as a talented and brilliant artist. And she didn’t give a fig about Whittaker’s.

‘An art school I pay for,’ her father remarked, the dispassionate expression chilling Megan to the bone. Katie and her father had been at loggerheads for years—ever since the sisters had moved to New York after their mother’s death. It had taken Megan months to persuade their father to pay for the exclusive academy that had only offered Katie a partial scholarship—something she had never told her sister. She didn’t know how Katie would react if she discovered their father was paying some of her tuition fees and was prepared to pull the plug on the dreams she’d worked so hard for to save Whittaker’s. But Megan doubted it would be good.

‘Your sister is also as reckless and wild as your mother,’ her father added. ‘Given the right incentive, I think we both know she’d pass this assignment with flying colours.’

No, she wouldn’t, she’d be crushed, Megan thought.

Katie was as lively and spirited as Megan was cautious and grounded. But for all her recklessness, she also had an open and easily bruised heart—and absolutely no regard for business ethics or expediency. Katie would be appalled that their father could ask such a thing of either one of them. And Katie’s own worst enemy was usually Katie. She was volatile and unpredictable, especially if she was hurt. So much so that Megan had no idea what she’d do if forced into this situation by their father. She could have a mad passionate affair with De Rossi or annoy him so much he’d destroy Whittaker’s just for the hell of it. But one thing was for sure, putting a hothead like Katie into the path of someone as ruthless as De Rossi would be a car crash of epic proportions, and Katie would be the one who got destroyed.

‘The only reason I haven’t already asked her is because she knows nothing about computers,’ her father said. ‘And De Rossi likes his lovers more mature, according to Annalise,’ he added. ‘You’ve got a better chance. But if you leave me with no choice I will have to explain to your sister that if she wants to stay at her fancy art school she will have to—’

‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ Megan jumped in, before her father could state the unthinkable. ‘I’ll give it my best shot.’

Even if her best shot had very little chance of being a success, her pride and her ethics felt like a small price to pay to save her sister from heartbreak—and Whittaker’s from guaranteed annihilation.

‘Good girl, Megan,’ her father said. ‘Take the day off tomorrow. Annalise will accompany you to select an outfit suitable for the occasion and take you to her beautician to get you properly prepared.’

‘Okay,’ she said, feeling dazed at the enormity of what she had just agreed to—and how ill-prepared she was for the challenge. Annalise’s alluring sense of style and supreme sexual confidence had always intimidated Megan.

‘Don’t disappoint me. Whittaker’s is counting on you,’ her father finished, dismissing her as he turned back to the papers on his desk.

‘I know and I won’t,’ she murmured, trying to sound confident.

But as she returned to her small office on the building’s tenth floor, the pressure of what she had to achieve sat in her belly like a brick. An annoyingly hot brick seeping an uncontrollable and completely unregulated warmth throughout her body.

She didn’t feel confident; she felt like a sacrifice, about to be staked out in the wolf’s lair, with nothing to protect her but a designer gown and heels and an overpriced beautician’s appointment.

CHAPTER ONE

‘NO WAY, KATIE. You need to stay in your room when he gets here.’ Megan’s hand trembled as she picked up one of the diamond drop earrings Annalise had loaned her to match the sleek, blue, satin, floor-length gown it had taken her father’s mistress an eternity to select during their endless shopping expedition that afternoon. The sting as the thin silver spike penetrated the rarely used hole in her lobe did nothing to calm the rapid flutter of Megan’s heartbeat. She breathed deeply and picked up the other earring. She needed to stop hyperventilating or she was liable to pass out before De Rossi even arrived.

‘But I want to meet him, to make sure he doesn’t take advantage of you,’ Katie said, the fire in her eyes accompanied by a petulant pout. ‘He’s rich, arrogant and scarily gorgeous. You’ve got zero experience of guys like him. Did you see the cover shot of him on that boring business magazine you get? He even looks hot in one of those stuffy suits.’

Yes, she had seen the magazine, she’d even re-read the interview with De Rossi to give herself some useful topics of conversation. But all the article had really done—illustrated with all those photos of him looking broad and muscular and indomitable—was make her panic increase. And Katie’s misguided attempts to protect her were not helping.