Harlequin Desire September 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: Claimed\Maid for a Magnate\Only on His Terms (36 page)

She tried again. “You know, there's a lot of your father in you. I recognized it right away, when you and I were talking in the library the other day.”

He turned to look at her again, more thoughtfully this time. “That was who you meant when you told me I reminded you of someone.”

She nodded.

“But he and I had nothing in common.”

“You look like him.”

“Not surprising, since we come from the same gene pool.”

“You told me a joke, right off the bat. That was just like something Harry would do.”

“That was just like something a lot of men would do if they were trying to impress a—” He halted abruptly, then said quickly, “That was just like something a lot of men would do.”

“It still reminded me of Harry.”

Harrison returned his attention to the trading floor. “He brought me here when I was a kid,” he said quietly. “Once. I was six or seven. He wanted to show me how fortunes were made and lost. He said this—” he gestured down at the chaos below “—was what made the whole world work. He told me money was more important than anything, because it could buy anything. Not just material possessions, but
anything
. Adventure. Culture. Intelligence. It could buy friends. Allies. Even governments. Not to mention things like respect and dignity and love.”

Gracie wanted to deny that Harry could have ever been that cynical or said anything that cold. Especially to a child. Especially to his own son. The man she'd known had thought money was what caused all the world's problems, not solved them. And he'd known it was a person's actions, not their income, that garnered respect and dignity and love.

“You can't buy love,” she said softly.

Harrison looked at her. “No?”

She shook her head.

He glanced back down at the floor. “Maybe not. But you can buy something that feels like it.”

“No, you can't,” Gracie countered. “Maybe you can lie to yourself until you believe that, but...”

When he looked at her this time, she was the one to glance away.

“But what?” he asked.

She shook her head again. “Nothing.”

He studied her so long without speaking that it began to feel as if he were trying to insert a little piece of himself inside her. What was weird was that a piece of him should feel like a pebble in her shoe. Instead, it felt more like more a ray of sunshine on her face.

“You must be hungry,” he finally said.

There was a huskiness in his voice when he spoke that made something in her stomach catch fire. She didn't dare look at him for fear that those blue eyes would be burning, too. How did he do that? How did he make any given situation feel almost...sexual? He'd done it in the library that first morning, and again at breakfast yesterday. The man was just strangely potent.

“A little,” she said, hoping her stomach didn't decide to punctuate the statement with the kind of growl that normally preceded a lunge to the jugular.

“My mother suggested I take you to my father's club for lunch,” he said. “By the time we get there, they should be ready to serve.”

“Lunch sounds great,” she told him.

Even if lunch actually sounded like another opportunity for the two of them to find something to be at odds about. At least food would quiet the wild animal that seemed to have taken up residence in her belly.

Now if she could just figure out how to quiet the wild thoughts suddenly tumbling through her brain.

* * *

Harrison watched Grace from the other side of the table at the Cosmopolitan Club, doing his best to not notice how, in this place, surrounded by all its Art Deco splendor, she looked like some seductive film-noir siren. Her form-hugging suit, the color of forbidden fruit, was buttoned high enough to be acceptable in professional circles, but low enough to make a man—to make Harrison—want to reach across the table and start unbuttoning it. She'd worn her hair down today, parted on one side to swoop over her forehead, something that only added to her Veronica Lake, femme fatale appearance. All she needed to complete it was some raging red lipstick. As usual, though, she didn't seem to be wearing makeup at all. Meaning she was once again that combination of sexpot and girl next door that made him want to—

Okay, so it probably wasn't a good idea to think further about what her appearance made him want to do. Probably, it was better to look at the menu and figure out what he wanted. Besides Grace, he meant.

How could he want someone who had almost certainly taken advantage of his father and pocketed the family fortune? On the other hand, what did ethics and morality have to do with sex? It wasn't as if Harrison hadn't slept with other women who were ethically and morally challenged.

Wait a minute. Hang on. He replayed that last sentence in his brain. It wasn't as if he hadn't slept with
other
women like that? Meaning that somewhere in his subconscious, he was thinking about sleeping with Grace? When did that happen? Then again, why shouldn't he sleep with Grace? He might as well get something out of this arrangement.

“What's good here?” she asked, bringing his attention back to the matter at hand.

“If you like light, go with the brie salad. If you like sandwiches, try the club. It you want something more exotic, the curried shrimp.”

“Oh, that does sound good,” she said. She scanned the menu until she found a description, then uttered a flat “Oh.”

“What?” Harrison asked.

“There aren't any prices listed on this menu.”

He still couldn't decide whether or not she was pretending to be something she wasn't. If this was all an act, then she really did deserve an award. If it wasn't, then she was a pod person from outer space. No one could be this naive.

“You don't know what it means when prices aren't listed on a menu?” he asked skeptically.

“Of course I know what that means,” she said. “No one's that naive.”

“Then what's the problem?”

“I can't afford a place where the prices aren't listed. The money your father left me isn't mine.”

“It is until you give it to someone else.” And he still wasn't convinced she would do it.

“But—”

“Look, it's my treat,” he interrupted. “I'm a member here, too.”

“Oh,” she said again. Only this time it wasn't a flat
oh
. This time it was a surprised
oh
. As in “Oh, you have your own money?”

“I do have a job, you know,” he replied before she could ask.

“I didn't mean—”

“You thought I was just some lazy, entitled player who never worked a day in his life, didn't you?”

“No, I—”

“I actually have my own business,” he said, hoping he didn't sound as smug about that as he felt, but figuring by her expression that he probably did. Oh, well. “Sage Assets,” he continued. “We're consultants in financial risk management.”

She clearly had no idea what he was talking about, a realization that nagged again at his conviction that she was driven only by money. “Which means what?” she asked.

“We advise businesses and investors on how not to lose their shirts in times of financial crisis. Or any other time, for that matter. I started the company right after I graduated from Columbia, and it took off right away,” he added modestly. Well, sort of modestly. Okay, not modestly at all. “That being a time of financial crisis. And my father wasn't the only one in the family with a gift for trading.” Then, because he couldn't quite keep himself from saying it, he added, “I made my first million when I was twenty-three. I was worth tens of millions by the time I was twenty-seven.”

Beating his father's timetable on those achievements by years. At the rate he was going, he'd be beating that hundreds-of-millions thing, too, by a good five years. Not that his father had ever realized—or would ever realize—any of those things. Not that that was the point. Not that Harrison cared. He didn't.

Grace didn't seem as impressed by his achievements as Harrison was. Then again, she had fourteen billion dollars. He was a lightweight compared to her.

“Well, for what it's worth,” she said, “I didn't think you were a lazy, entitled player who never worked a day in your life.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “I figured you had a job.”

Only when she punctuated the statement with a smile did he realize she was making a joke. He refused to be charmed.

“Then you did think I was an entitled player.”

Instead of answering, she glanced back down at her menu and said, “You know, I do like a good club sandwich...”

Their server came and took their orders, returning with their drinks. Grace reached for the sugar caddy and used the tongs to pluck out four cubes for her tea. After stirring, she took a sip, and then tonged in two more. As if Grace Sumner needed any more sweetness.

It didn't help that she kept glancing around the room as if she'd just fallen off the turnip truck. Of course, the place was pretty impressive. The Cosmopolitan had been built in the Roaring Twenties by a group of rich industrialists so they and all their equally wealthy friends would have a sumptuous sanctuary to escape the wretched refuse of New York. The furnishings were as rich, extravagant and bombastic as they'd been, all mahogany and velvet and crystal, and the current owners spared no expense to maintain that aura of a bygone era. He and Grace might as well have been lunching with Calvin Coolidge.

“I don't think I've ever been in a place like this before,” she said. She grinned again before adding, “Unless you count the Haunted Mansion at Disney World.”

Harrison smiled back, surprised to discover it felt genuine. Not sure why, he played along. “I wouldn't count that. They let in all kinds of riffraff at the Haunted Mansion, and the dress code is way too relaxed.”

She gave the room another assessment and sighed. “I can't imagine Harry here. His favorite place for lunch was Golden Corral. And I never saw him in a suit.”

“I don't think I ever saw him in anything but a suit,” Harrison said. “When I was a kid, he was always already dressed for work when I got up, and he usually didn't get home until after I went to bed.”

“What about on weekends?” she asked. “Or vacations? Or just relaxing around the house?”

“My father never relaxed. He worked most weekends. The only vacations I ever took were with my mother.”

She shook her head. “Everything you tell me about Harry is just so not Harry. What happened to him, that he was so driven by work and money for so long, and then suddenly turned his back on all of it?”

Harrison wished he could answer that. Hell, he wished he could believe everything Grace had said about his father was true. But none of it sounded like him. Not the part about having a sick little brother, not the part about his dropping out of school and definitely not the part about coaching Little League or serving meals to the homeless.
Was
she a con artist? Or had she been as much a target of his father's caprice as the rest of them?

“If what you said about my father's childhood was true—”

“You don't think I was telling the truth about that, either?” she interjected, sounding—and looking—wounded.

“I don't know what to believe,” he said honestly.

He still wasn't convinced she was as altruistic as she claimed. The return of his mother's house and the Manhattan penthouse were only drops in the ocean when it came to the totality of his father's wealth. She would still have billions of dollars after shedding those. And she hadn't committed any of those billions to any causes yet.

“But if what you said is true,” he continued, “then it's obvious why he was driven by money. Anyone who grew up poor would naturally want to be rich.”

“Why is that natural?” she asked.

He didn't understand the question. “What do you mean?”

“Why do you think the desire to be rich is natural?”

He was still confused. “Don't you think it is?”

“No. I mean, I can see how it might have motivated Harry, but not because it was natural. A lot of people are content with what they have, even if they aren't rich. There is such a thing as enough.”

“I don't follow you.”

At this, she leaned back in her chair and sighed with unmistakable disappointment. “Yeah, I know.”

He was about to ask her what she meant by that, too, when their server returned to deliver their selections, taking a few moments to arrange everything on the table until it was feng shui-ed to his liking. After that, the moment with Grace was gone, and she was gushing about her club sandwich, so Harrison let her comment go. For now.

“So where else does Vivian want you to take me?” she asked.

“To one of my father's businesses and a prep school whose board of directors he sat on. And tonight one of his old colleagues is having a cocktail party. I was going to blow it off, but my mother is going and insists you and I come, too.”

A flash of panic crossed her expression. “Cocktail party?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Kind of. I didn't bring anything to wear to a cocktail party.”

“Fifth Avenue is right around the corner.”

Her panic increased. “But Fifth Avenue is so—”

When she didn't finish, Harrison prompted, “So...?”

She looked left, then right, to make sure the diners on each side of them were engrossed in their own conversations. Then she leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “I can't afford Fifth Avenue.”

Harrison leaned forward, too, lowering his voice to mimic hers. “You have fourteen billion dollars.”

“I told you. That's not mine,” she whispered back.

Seriously, she was going to insist she couldn't afford a dress? He leaned back in his chair, returning to his normal voice. “My father told you to take some of the money for yourself,” he reminded her.