The Fraudulent Fiancee
Auteur
Muriel Jensen
Lezers
19,6K
Hoofdstukken
18
PROLOGUE
March
EMILY FRENCH looked into Greg Roper’s evasive blue eyes and read in them all the things he wasn’t saying.
“I want to set a wedding date,” he insisted, bringing his hand to her cheek, “but it’s distrustful and demeaning to make you sign a prenuptial agreement. Keith lost a lot in an ugly divorce, and now he thinks all women are out to fleece wealthy husbands. Anyway, I’m not telling the rest of the family about us until my brother and I have worked this out.”
As a sous-chef at the Atlantic Eden, one of three hotel/convention-center complexes belonging to Roper Hotels, Emily was well aware of Keith Roper’s reputation. President of the corporation and manager of the California Eden, Keith Roper handled labor disputes swiftly and fairly, was said to know every facet of the business and was purported to be ruthless in protecting his family’s interests.
He’d been pointed out to her once when he visited the Atlantic Eden. He had the arrogant bearing to suit his reputation.
Emily took Greg’s hand. “I told you I don’t mind signing a prenup,” she said quietly. “But that’s not really the problem, is it?”
Greg smiled and wrapped his arms around her. “My biggest problem has always been my brother. But I’m going to set him straight on this once and for all. If he won’t change his mind, then he can just find a new manager for the Atlantic Eden and a new sous-chef, because you and I are out of here.”
Emily moved back a step. “Greg, I don’t want to be the cause of a rift between you and your family. If you don’t want to get married, please be honest with me.”
She couldn’t say precisely what had changed, but something had. Recently Greg seemed to have become someone else—someone less open, a little less spontaneous, much quieter than the warm and laughing man she’d fallen in love with.
Of course, two things had happened this week that could account for that. The first was her discovery that she was pregnant. The second was the sudden appearance of Greg’s brother, Keith, and his parents, who ran the Northwest Eden, on the Oregon coast.
Greg pulled her back into his arms. “Please, Emily, be patient. I want to marry you more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I just need a chance to talk to Keith. First we have to deal with business, then I’ll get to us. He and the folks are here to find something wrong with my running of the Atlantic, I know it.”
Emily held him, waiting to feel the rush of warmth and excitement she used to feel in his arms. But the knowledge that she sheltered another life inside her made her less trusting than she’d been before.
“Greg.” She pushed him away again and looked searchingly into his eyes. “I don’t want a halfhearted father for this baby. If fatherhood isn’t what you want, tell me. Then we just go our separate ways.”
He met her gaze and held it. “I told you. I’m fine with it. We’re going to be married, but on my terms, not Keith’s.” He glanced at his watch and gave her a brief kiss. “I’ve got to go. Keith’s meeting me in my suite in ten minutes, then the family’s getting together for dinner. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Emily watched from the doorway of her staff cabin as he walked to his Mercedes, waved and drove away. Then she pushed the door closed against the chilly March afternoon—Florida was unseasonably cold this month—and replayed their conversation in her mind.
I’m fine with it, he’d said about her pregnancy. Not the I’m delighted or I’m thrilled she’d hoped to hear. Disappointment joined her concern over the subtle changes in his behavior.
In fairness, she had to remember that Keith was here. Greg had told her how his parents had always favored Keith. They’d showered their affections on him when the brothers were children and now entrusted him with all the plum positions in the corporation while leaving everything that needed reorganizing or retooling to Greg—like the Atlantic Eden.
Greg had been sent here from the California Eden two years earlier because of the center’s failing profits. Though the hotel and the dining room were generally full, expenses remained high, and Greg suspected that his family had arrived to express displeasure over his inability to put the center in the black.
Emily drew a deep breath, patted her still-flat stomach and went into the bedroom to dress for her shift. She would try not to worry about Greg tonight. The situation would be clearer after Greg had his conversation with Keith. He’d promised to share that with her in the morning.
In the meantime she would simply do her job and let her mind wander to the miracle of the life growing inside her.
KEITH ROPER poured scotch into a tumbler of ice and fought the anger he always experienced when he was forced to deal with his brother. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Greg. In fact, fraternal instinct made him approach each encounter with the hope that this time it would be different, that this time he would find some glimmer of character at work in Greg.
But he was invariably disappointed.
“So you’re telling me you’re still operating like a tomcat despite what’s going on in the world today?” He turned to face Greg and took a sip of his scotch.
“Her protection failed,” Greg replied. He paced nervously, hands in his pants pockets. “She’s a nice girl, but now she thinks she’s my fiancée, and marriage is really not what I had in mind.” Greg turned to Keith, his eyes both frightened and regretful. “I was going to call you about this, but now that you’re here, you have to help me.”
Keith couldn’t count the number of times he’d heard those words. There’d been the cathedral’s broken stained-glass window when Greg had been six and he’d been ten, the gate left open at the country house in Connecticut that had resulted in the loss of six purebred springer spaniel puppies, the joyride in a friend’s father’s Rolls that had ended with the car in the bottom of a river. Not to mention the girlfriends he’d wooed and conned into believing they had a future with him when nothing could have been further from the truth.
Greg’s career, too, even though he worked for his own family, had been one disaster after another. And it wasn’t that Greg didn’t have a head for business. He simply didn’t have the heart for work—of any kind.
Keith swirled the ice cubes in his glass. “You played out an adolescent fantasy and fooled around with…who? The aerobics instructor?”
“No.” The reply was grim. “She works in the kitchen.”
“A waitress?”
“A sous-chef.”
Keith shook his head. “I’d have thought a woman experienced enough to be a chef would know better than to swallow the tripe you dish up.”
“She likes me,” Greg said defensively, jabbing a thumb at his own chest. “She isn’t always on me for what I do wrong or what I don’t do. And I like that about her.”
“But not enough to follow through on what you’ve started.”
Greg shrugged. It was a familiar gesture, one that usually followed a misdeed and preceded the excuse.
“I don’t want to be tied to anyone.” Greg looked around the elegant suite he occupied. “God knows being tied to the family business is bad enough.”
Keith pointed to the door. “Freedom’s just a few steps away.”
Greg smiled crookedly. “I’d never make it on my own. We all know that. That’s why I stay and that’s why Dad keeps me. So are you going to help me or not?”
Keith squared his shoulders, accepting his brother’s assessment of himself as the sad and simple truth. “What does she want?” he asked.
Greg studied him a moment, then sighed and turned away. Keith wondered if his brother was feeling pangs of conscience.
“She wants to get married,” Greg said, looking out the window at the setting sun. “But I thought maybe you could buy her off and transfer her to one of the other Edens.”
Keith swallowed the last of his scotch, hoping to drown the disgust that rose in him like nausea. Greg’s character flaws couldn’t be genetic. His father was as honest as the day was long, and his mother considered the most junior person in housekeeping before she thought of herself. It had to be some aberration individual to Greg that made him the selfish coward he was.
“I’ll see that she has money,” Keith said. “But I’m not getting you off the hook. You want out of her life, then have the decency to tell her the truth. Now come on. The folks are expecting us for dinner.”
Keith wandered into the hotel dining room’s kitchen while Greg brought their parents up to date on the Atlantic Eden’s spring conference schedule.
The Atlantic’s chef had worked for the Ropers since Keith was in college. He was French, with a weakness for opera and women.
His kitchen ran like some sophisticated piece of machinery, parts moving smoothly, even humming—and that was literally. Edouard Chabot, in full chefs regalia, was pum-pum-pumming his way through some aria Keith didn’t recognize, and a much smaller figure in a matching outfit was singing along in an exaggeratedly high falsetto while deftly chopping parsley.
The aria was completed at the same moment Edouard removed a pan of scampi from under the broiler and transferred it to a plate. After a sprinkle of chopped parsley, it was passed to still another figure in white who put on the designer garnish, then handed it to a waiter.
Edouard laughed and threw his arms around his small assistant in a quick hug. As they drew apart, Keith saw bright dark eyes under beautifully arched brows, a straight little nose and a warm open smile. A woman. There was only one woman on staff in the Atlantic’s kitchen. The one carrying Greg’s baby.
For an instant Keith simply stared, thinking how pretty she was, a considerable accomplishment in that formless outfit and with all her hair tucked up under a chef’s hat.
Her hair, he was sure, would be as dark as those beautiful eyebrows.
Celine, his wife, had been blond and cool. She’d bowled him over with her beauty and led him, unresisting, to the altar. She’d made his life miserable for a year and a half and then taken him to the cleaners. She got the Ferrari, the place in the Hamptons and half his stock portfolio.
After Celine’s cold indifference, he’d longed for a woman with fire in her eyes, passion in her soul, laughter in her voice. And here she was—about to be cast off by his brother.
As he watched her laugh and talk with Edouard, he wondered what had ever attracted her to Greg. He supposed it was possible she wasn’t as smart as she looked. He’d been without a woman for a long time. Maybe he was seeing in her what he wanted to see.
He’d swear he could even tell she was pregnant. Though it didn’t show at all in her body, he could see it in her face—in the delicate ivory complexion that ran to high color on her cheeks, in the glow of her eyes, in her manner that suggested magical forces at work.
A latent greed rose in him and he found himself wishing fervently she was his. Imagined what he would do with her if she was. Spoil her. Protect her. Love her often and well. His mind even conjured up an image of them wrapped together in the middle of his mahogany bed.
Then Edouard turned and saw him. He hurried over and enveloped Keith in a hug, too, one that probably would have rendered him unconscious had he been smaller.
“Keith!” Edouard exclaimed, holding him at arm’s length, then embracing him again. “How good to see you!”
Keith noticed the young woman look up abruptly from her work. He caught her eye and watched the lively warmth there turn to animosity. Ah, he thought, Greg has no doubt been telling her about his cruel older brother.
Edouard began interrogating him about life in California, and the woman moved to the other side of the large kitchen.
That was the last he saw of her.
He brought Edouard out to join his parents, then watched the diners come and go while his parents caught up with their old friend.
From where he was, Keith could see through the dining room’s open doors to the hotel desk. Either business had taken a sudden upward turn this particular weekend, or there was some kind of unidentified drain on the hotel’s income. Activity was far livelier than profits indicated.
He was going to have to look into it.
And somehow he would have to get the pretty sous-chef out of his mind. She’d fallen for Greg, after all. A woman had to have more savvy than that to get by in this world.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Emily had a clear picture of her situation before Greg even said a word.
He stood on the mat in front of her door, an air of impermanence about him, as though he was eager to be off.
“I’m sorry, Em,” he said, turning a long white envelope in his hands. He glanced at her once, then went on, “Keith says he won’t let us marry without the prenup, and if we do, I’m financially cut off. Then what would our baby have?”
As love shriveled and died inside her, she felt a terrible rage at herself for having been so deluded.
Under other circumstances, she might have been amused by the flimsiness of his story. But she understood it wasn’t the story that was flimsy, it was the man. And that was sad.
She’d had only a quick glimpse last night of Keith Roper’s handsome arrogant face, but the way he’d looked at her had stayed with her all night long. He’d obviously decided she wanted more from his brother than love, and was determined to protect his family’s fortune.
But she didn’t believe that any man with backbone would let another man dictate his future and whom he could love.
She nodded regretfully. “Our baby would have the love we give it. Still, what’s that worth?”
Greg studied her suspiciously, as though he suspected sarcasm.
“He’s sending me to California for a short while,” Greg said, “so that you and I don’t have to, uh, see each other every day.”
“How generous,” she said.
Greg frowned at her, then held out the envelope. “He wants you to have this.”
“Is it a check?” she asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“A big one?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She took it from him, tore it in half and handed it back. “Put one-half in each ear and push. I’m sure they’ll meet somewhere in the middle. Now get the hell out of my life.” She slammed her door with great satisfaction.
It lasted about two minutes.
Then she sat at the kitchen table and cried her heart out. She cried for one hour for having been gullible and stupid enough to have fallen for a man everyone had warned her about.
Then she cried for another hour from sheer terror. She was having a baby alone.
Raised by a single mother who’d worked around the clock to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, Emily had done many things in her life alone. But she’d hoped that when the day came she had her own child, she’d have a husband by her side and they’d walk into the future together.
Instead, she would have to do what her mother had, and her child would be faced with the same loneliness she’d known.
She spent the next hour drinking tea and convincing herself that didn’t have to be the case. She would find a way out. There had to be a solution.
She was good enough to work in any five-star-hotel dining room—Edouard told her so every day. But until the baby was born she would have to stay with the company that carried her health insurance.
Perhaps she would ask for a transfer to the Northwest Eden. Oregon was supposed to be beautiful, with clean air and clean water and a low crime rate. Yes. That was what she would do.
She rubbed her hand gently over her stomach. Her baby was going to have every chance she could give it.
