Contractually Wed
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Tara Pammi
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CHAPTER ONE
SNEAKING INTO THE Manhattan penthouse of the intensely private and vengeful Greek billionaire Apollo Galanis, a man she’d already annoyed a few times, at nine in the night, wasn’t how Jia Shetty foresaw her twenty-sixth birthday evening going.
But given that no one had even remembered the date, much less celebrated it—not unusual either—it was the most excitement she’d seen on one. Though it was a panic-ridden OMG what’s he going to do to me when he finds me here? kind of excitement rather than a belly-filled-with-butterflies kind.
Honestly, Jia had no idea how that kind of excitement tasted. Except maybe that one time when her rough sketches for the new wing of a billionaire’s private library had been accepted. But only a flicker even then, because her family’s well-being had depended on getting that contract. When her designs had been lauded innovative and environmentally intelligent, there had only been relief.
Because it hadn’t been her name on the design, or her being praised for designing an architectural marvel. Tonight, her degree in architecture—only allowed by her father because Jia had shown talent for it and his own had long-ago deserted him—had come in handy as she planned to infiltrate Apollo Galanis’s penthouse in a luxury hotel he himself had designed.
Whatever else the man soon to be her brother-in-law was, he was a brilliant architect, an innovator who believed in achieving more with less, a billionaire who was determined to leave the world better than he had found it.
Except for her family, that is.
Having studied the blueprints and worked as a cleaning lady for the past month at the hotel, Jia had finally figured out how to get into his penthouse. Learning the man’s agenda for a given week wasn’t that much of a stretch. From the moment he arrived in Manhattan, he demanded the presence of her older sister, Rina, his fiancée, like a master calling his prized poodle to attention.
Just thinking of her sister made panic tighten Jia’s chest. Rina’s tears last night as she’d sobbed with her head in Jia’s lap that Apollo Galanis was a ruthless monster who expected her to sit, stand and perform at his command, had been playing in Jia’s head in a loop.
How was her gentle, tenderhearted sister supposed to survive the strain of being Apollo Galanis’s society wife if she couldn’t even bear the stress of being his fiancée? How was Jia supposed to protect the only person in her life who had ever shown her kindness, if not by throwing herself as bait at the monster?
Relief hit her in waves as the key card she’d stolen from Galanis’s designated maid worked on the digital menu and the elevator carried her away to the penthouse. She added another item to her increasing to-do list: make sure the maid didn’t get into trouble for her actions.
The elevator opened with a swish and Jia stepped out, her eyes widening as she took in the architectural marvel of the penthouse.
Sweeping stairs made of wood and industrial metal straddled a palace-sized lounge with the ceiling stretching up to two levels. The ceiling and the walls were all glass, with load-bearing pillars breaking it up. Even those added to the modern industrial look of the space, fitting seamlessly into the concrete jungle around it. With the glittering lights of Manhattan and the sky itself open to the eye, it was as if one was standing in the midst of one of the most diverse cities in the world. As if one was both witness and a part of its constant reinvention of itself.
Other than a couple of turn-of-the-century art pieces in metal and wood again, the other adornment was lots of greenery. A giant fiddle-leaf fig and two monstera were the only plants Jia recognized among sturdier and more exotic greenery that warmed all the metal and wood, turning it into a much more intimate setting than the soulless chrome it could have been.
How could a man so eager and ruthless in his punishment of her family be the same one who had designed and given shape to this urban space full of such heart?
Jia knew she was violating his sacred space. He hadn’t invited even her sister here. Maybe if Rina saw this, she would understand him a little better? But her older sister didn’t have the same affinity that Jia had for old buildings and clean design lines. Neither was she as...worldly-wise as Jia was. Pampered and privileged and never having to doubt her parents’ love for her. It was the first time life and their father were demanding something of Rina and she was simply crumpling against them.
In her case, life had forced Jia to learn to be tough, to understand that she had to provide value in any relationship.
Now Jia made a beeline to the kitchen, her stomach gnawing on itself. Munching on an apple, she looked through the state-of-the-art refrigerator that was big enough to hide in. Grabbing cheese and grapes and a wrapped bowl of what looked like pilaf with nuts, Jia spent the next few minutes trying to find the microwave hidden among the dark gray cabinets.
Finally, her pilaf was steaming, the grapes were cold and juicy, and the cheese perfectly crumbly as she reached the lounger that faced the Manhattan skyline.
Eating a meal with no one crying, losing their temper or conspiring in panic near her had become a luxury in the last few months. It also should have felt unnerving to sit in a space that belonged to the man who was turning their lives upside down.
Instead, Jia cherished the sweet tartness of the grapes and the buttery richness of the nutty pilaf. The cheese, she washed it down with a glass of chilled white wine and felt herself disappearing into the snug hold of the soft leather. Soon, she was snoring, her worries about selling herself to the devil all but forgotten.
Apollo Galanis walked into his Manhattan penthouse after a long, exhausting business trip to the Philippines and was in a sour mood since the property development deal there hadn’t budged in two months.
His group of junior architects had made barely any changes to the designs he had already rejected. That they had the gall to invite him down there for another meeting pissed him off.
He’d wanted to fire the whole lot of them. Except these were the crème de la crème from the finest architecture programs across the world and if they didn’t deliver, who would?
Neither could he fire them for something he himself was unable to deliver. He was blocked, or burned-out, or a bitter combination of both and he was beginning to see the reason.
It was this engagement he had talked himself into with the Shetty heiress. After more than a decade and a half of planning and strategizing and calculating ten moves ahead, he finally had Jay Shetty in his clutches.
The very man who had destroyed Apollo’s father by stealing his designs and selling them as his own. His deepest trust betrayed, Papa had returned to Greece heartbroken and bankrupt, and had never recovered. Apollo was firmly planted on the board of directors of Jay Shetty’s design company, with no way to gain controlling stock.
The older man, a conniving strategist, had shamelessly offered up his eldest daughter as a prize before Apollo could take even more drastic steps, like sending the man to prison. Jay’s daughter would transfer her stock to Apollo after three years of marriage. It was clear that Jay was desperate to avoid other consequences Apollo could rain down on him. Was hoping to change Apollo’s mind in three years.
The idea of reveling in Jay’s desperation that Apollo might be sidetracked from revenge—a goal he’d pursued for nearly two decades—was immensely appealing. Giving the man a taste of the misery he’d brought on Apollo’s family for years, by being present in his life as his son-in-law, by being the sword that was forever dangling over his head...sounded deliciously fitting.
Even though the last thing Apollo wanted was a wife.
One of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, Rina Shetty was also demure, had acted as her father’s society hostess for years, and was the kind of woman who would mold herself into whatever Apollo needed her to be.
Apollo had played into Jay’s negotiation because Rina wasn’t a bad choice for a wife for a man like him. A man who didn’t believe in love and all that nonsense, a man who liked order and control in his every day, a man who would eventually need sons to carry on the legacy he was building. And really, who better than the grandchildren of the very man who had destroyed his family, to continue on the Galanis dynasty itself. There was a certain poetic justice in that.
Soon, Jay Shetty’s company would be nothing but a speck absorbed into Galanis Corp, forgotten even by its own disgruntled, unhappy employees who were more than eager to prove their mettle and loyalty to the bigger, meaner predator that was circling their CEO.
And then maybe this hunger in him would appease, Apollo thought, with little faith in his own maybes. Maybe then, after nearly two decades, he could take a moment to celebrate everything he had achieved.
He took off his jacket, undid the buttons on his shirt, poured himself a glass of red wine and walked to his favorite lounger—the only piece of furniture he had restored and brought here from his home in Athens—to enjoy one of his two favorite views in the entire world.
Only to find it already occupied by a woman in a maid’s uniform.
An empty white wine bottle sat on the floor next to the lounger, along with a tray full of empty bowls and forks, all neatly stacked.
He had never invited even his mother or sisters to visit this particular project of his, and to find a member of staff not only breaking her professional code but invading his privacy, was untenable. He understood exhaustion and hard work but still...he paid exorbitantly well for his privacy.
Her white cap was on the floor, and the woman’s gold-threaded dark brown hair fell in thick, lustrous waves, framing her familiarly angular face. He moved closer and turned on the Tiffany lamp, and let out a curse. Recognition came instantly and following it, fury.
Of course this was no maid transgressing his private space. This was a woman he had barely tolerated and he had known that the dislike was completely mutual.
In fact, in all of his thirty-nine years of life, Apollo had never met a woman, or even another person, who rubbed him the wrong way just by existing. Her mere presence had been like rubbing salt into a sunburn.
As if to provoke his ire even further, the sleeping woman let out a loud snore followed by an awful belch. Apollo had had enough. Before he could think better of the juvenile impulse, he was upending the glass of red in his hand over her head. At least it wasn’t cold, he told himself.
She came awake, sputtering and squealing, unfolding like a mangy dog, and then mumbled something incoherent.
He grinned, wondering when he’d had so much fun in recent memory. Not even as a poor undergrad student at Harvard, or later when he’d made his first million, or even when he’d won environmental awards for his designs.
Finally, she stopped mumbling, rubbed her eyes and smeared the wine all over her face. Belatedly, Apollo realized he had just ruined his favorite lounger and the pristine carpet. Christos, not even a minute near her and she’d reduced him to a playground bully.
A grin appeared on her face even as she threaded her fingers through dark, wispy bangs that almost covered her eyes. “Just realized you ruined your own chair, did you?” she said, looking up at him, and running the tip of her tongue against that wide gap between her front teeth.
It was the first thing he had noticed about her—the imperfection of her crooked smile next to the pearly, near-perfect smile of her sister.
The differences between this woman’s tall, boyish figure, with her thick glasses and thicker, untamed hair and her gap-toothed smile and her purple lipstick and her entire forearm covered in colorful tattoos and her skinny jeans and combat boots, against Rina’s full, curvy figure, her polish and perfectly pitched tone when she spoke, her cream-colored jumpsuit, her hair neatly cut into blunt shoulder-length style, and a barely-there pink lip gloss on her lips, and the way she carried herself had nearly...had discombobulated him. Bringing into sharp contrast what he definitely didn’t want in his life.
At the first meeting with Jay Shetty, his useless bag of a son, Rina and this...wild creature who sat next to her sister and asked impertinent questions, even as her father sent her dirty, shushing looks, Apollo had been unable to look away from her.
It was like watching a car crash, he had thought then. But two more meetings with her—where she was supposed to keep her sister company and where she had asked him too many intrusive, invading questions about what their married life was going to look like—Apollo had amended his first impression of her, begrudging it every inch of the way.
She was like a wild sunset, all splashy colors and a warm blaze.
And now when she grinned at him, not even a little effaced by the fact that he had caught her inside his private sanctuary, Apollo admitted what about her provoked him so much.
There was a rough, untamable kind of beauty to her, as if she had been born to be unleashed in the world to create a maximum kind of chaos. And he loathed chaos anywhere near him with a visceral reaction.
Still, even as he acknowledged that she equally attracted and repulsed him, he began to wonder why Jay had never offered her up as the proverbial lamb being led to slaughter. Why it had been his eldest he’d pushed toward Apollo.
“You have two minutes to explain why you’re here, Ms. Shetty. Or it will be the jail for you. Not a big surprise that you will blend in very well with your...” he ran a hand over her form “...colorful persona.”
Standing up, paying no heed to the fact that he was standing close and threatening her with prison, she grabbed a napkin from the tray and started dabbing at her uniform. Which only arrested his attention. The damned dress was short on her, barely covering her upper thighs. When she wrung the hem to get out an extra two drops of wine, it revealed the tops of her lacy tights hugging her lean, muscled thighs.
His gaze went up, noting the tight tuck of her waist and the two buttons that had come undone at her chest, revealing small breasts and gleaming golden-brown skin. The tail end of another tattoo snuck up under the collar of the dress, playing peekaboo with him.
Apollo looked away too late. Lust coursed through him like a sudden bolt of adrenaline shot into his very veins. He let out a shocked curse, something he never did in company, for it revealed too much of his state of mind. No, not this woman. Christos.
Lusting after his fiancée’s sister...smacked too much of that wildness he disliked about this woman. Of being out of control.
Standing too close, she ran her tongue over her teeth. “You have to tell me which vintage that is,” she said, making a rude, smacking noise. “As a rule, I don’t drink reds since they give me horrible headaches. For that one, I might risk it. In fact, maybe you can just gift it to me, seeing that we’re going to become close soon.”
He gritted his teeth and prayed for a calm that felt out of reach. “Jail, Ms. Shetty.”
“Fine,” she said, her breath hitting him on a shuddering exhale.
Apollo knew he should step back, give his lungs air that was free of that lush red rose scent threaded with a twang of sweet sweat. But he didn’t. He liked it too much and then there was the whole point of him backing away from her. Which he never would.
It was the latter mostly, he decided. She had invaded his home, showed little to no shame over it, and the last thing he was going to do was show her how much her presence...rattled him.
“Keep talking, Ms. Shetty.”
“Okay, sir. Getting to it now, sir.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, somehow controlling the urge to laugh out loud at her cheekiness. Or maybe drag her close and teach her some discipline if she was going to do that anyway. He closed his eyes, wondering why his mind was going to these strange, forbidden places, especially around this woman.
“If you insist on calling me Ms. Shetty in that tone, which by the way reminds me of my history professor, I have to call you that. My name’s Jia. How come I’ve never heard you use it?”
“I have no need to become that...familiar with you.”
“And yet, you have no problem getting all chummy with the rest of my family.”
“They do not...provoke me like you do.” He stepped farther into her space, which was his to begin with, forcing her to look up at him. Though it wasn’t by much. She was taller than most women and he didn’t have to look down at her as if from some great distance, and he liked this too. He wasn’t supposed to like anything about this.
Something else struck him all of a sudden. He scowled. “How did you get in here? The security is infallible.”
“And yet, here I am.”
“You better start spewing answers to my questions, Ms. Shetty, or else...” He grinned, and opened the contacts list on his phone. “I have a feeling telling your father about your recent stunt is a better punishment than jail for you.”
A soft, imperceptible shudder went through her and she stared at him, eyes wide. For once, that rough, I can take on the world no matter what attitude she wore like a second skin fell off, revealing the very young woman she was beneath. She looked at him as if he’d hit her below the belt. And damn if it didn’t make him feel guilty. “I’m calling your bluff. You didn’t squeal on me the last couple of times, Apollo,” she said, making him feel foolish for the thirty seconds of guilt and curiosity he had felt for her.
Something about the way she drawled his name, as if she’d said it in her head many times and with less sweetness than she used now, hit him in the pit of his stomach with a honey-like languor. “So you admit that it wasn’t a mistake that Rina went to a different restaurant to meet me the first time, and that you nearly got tackled by my bodyguard the second time, and the third...time,” he finally choked out on a swallowed laugh. Even he had found that third stunt enormously funny, with her using her brother’s credit card that she’d filched from his jacket when she’d accidentally bumped into him and then gotten into trouble for making Jay Shetty’s vein pop in his temple.
“Of course, I admit it. Not that I succeeded.”
“What was the success criteria?” he said, suddenly curious.
“To make you despise our family enough that you’d leave Rina alone.”
“And the recent episode where your sister burst into tears at the thought of moving to Athens with me?”
She flinched, as if she herself was in pain. “I wouldn’t make her cry. Even to get rid of you.” Then she brightened, “Wait! Clearly it put you off—”
“Not enough to break off the engagement. Rina, as your father explained, is gentle and completely overwhelmed by her good fortune.”
The woman snorted. She actually snorted, probably spraying spittle onto his shirt.
Apollo refused to show, even by the twitch of his eyelid which was a hard thing to stop when he was pissed, that she was getting to him. “I assume that this...little stunt is to get my attention. So why don’t you start with how you got in here in the first place?”
“I have been working at your hotel for the last month, cleaning suites. I studied the plans and figured out which elevator rides up here and the shifting schedule of your security. I made friends with the woman Sophia, the only one allowed to clean your penthouse. I stole her key card, got your schedule from Rina’s phone and here I am.” She said the last to some show tune he didn’t recognize, her arms and hands gesticulating as if she were some great conductor.
He covered another step between them and now when that lush scent of hers wrapped around his body like a tendril of lust, he knew he was making a tremendous mistake. Still, he didn’t back down.
Her big brown eyes widened and her shoulders trembled but she stubbornly stayed still. “Now that you’ve cost Sophia her job, tell me why you’re here like an annoying pest.”
“If you fire Sophia, I’ll go to HR. I collected every document I could about how religiously on time she is, how many years she’s worked here and how there hasn’t been a single complaint about her. HR chose her for you because she hails from the same village as your father in Greece.”
Apollo was struck speechless, having never met a worthier opponent. She had not only done her homework but she’d done it because she didn’t want an innocent to get fired for her reckless act. Definitely not a trait he expected of Jay Shetty’s progeny.
Another reason he’d thought Rina was perfect for him. She lacked personality and smarts and the kind of cunning that should be rampant in Shetty blood. This one had it in spades.
“What do you want?” he said, wanting nothing more than to get rid of her.
“I came here to make you a proposal.”
“About?” he said, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest as if he were once again standing in line for an interview as a junior draftsman in a big architecture firm, nothing but dreams and goals in his wallet.
“An exchange of sorts. You release my sister from your engagement in return for...”
He waited, knowing that the flash of panic in her eyes was all too real. And yet like a predator hungry for a slice of flesh—her flesh—some unknown thing in his stomach grew. It wanted to eat up all her fear and taste the wildness writhing beneath. It wanted to pull away all that attitude, all those things she covered her skin in and reveal the real her to his gaze.
Seconds piled into minutes and the tip of her tongue flicked out to lick her wide lower lip. “In return for me,” she said, her chest rising and falling. “I came here to sell you on the idea that I would make a far better wife to you than my sister.” A harsh, self-deprecating laugh escaped her lips. “I broke into this maximum-security gilded cage, risked another woman’s livelihood, risked more than your usual contempt, to sell myself to the devil. That’s my evil plan.”
