A Merger by Marriage (5 page)

She wouldn’t want to be with him until she’d solved all his problems. Made him see the silver lining in everything that had happened in his past. She’d expect him to come around to her positive way of thinking and would grow frustrated when he didn’t.

A splash from the pool below drew his attention. Violet swam through the turquoise water, her stroke powerful and elegant. JT watched her as she came up for air at the far end of the pool. Once again she dove under. She used her feet and legs to push away from the wall with great power. When she surfaced, she headed for the opposite wall in a strong freestyle.

He watched her lap the pool for fifteen minutes. Her focus and determination amazed him. It was how she approached everything, he decided. Once she set her mind to something, she wasn’t going to be deterred.

At long last her energy seemed to burn itself out. She lazed in the middle of the pool and her stillness roused JT to the uncomfortable realization that she was naked. Cursing, he pushed away from the railing and headed for the stairs that led down from his terrace to the pool house and lounge area.

He enjoyed throwing parties and often his guests forgot to bring a suit along so he kept a stock of bathing suits in the pool house for their use. By the time he found a bikini he thought might fit Violet, she had gotten out of the pool and had wrapped herself in a towel. She looked up in surprise as he approached.

“Next time you decide to go swimming,” he began, holding up the bikini he’d selected, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t skinny-dip.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, taking the bathing suit from him. Water streamed from her long dark hair, dampening the towel. “I didn’t realize you’d still be up.”

It eased his irritation a little that she looked so utterly mortified to have been caught. “Like you, I’m often still working at this hour.”

“Thanks for the suit. I won’t bother you any further tonight.”

Was she kidding? He’d never get to sleep with the tantalizing glimpses he’d had of her naked body parading through his thoughts. JT ground his teeth as she retreated toward the house. Only when her towel-clad form had disappeared from view did he return to the master suite.

At least one positive thing about this marriage in name only was that they didn’t have to live under the same roof. After less than an hour alone in his house with her, he was a finger snap away from tossing her over his shoulder and spiriting her off to his bed.

Thank goodness he wasn’t going to share his living space with her day and night. His control would snap like a dry twig if he had to put up with her sassy humor and artless sensuality. Before she could remind him of their agreement, he’d have her in his bed, her beautiful body writhing in pleasure.

Making love to her would only be the beginning. Soon she’d be ferreting out all his ugly childhood secrets and he’d be living in fear that something she discovered would be so awful she’d cut him out of her life.

And then he’d be alone again, turned inside out, his raw emotions exposed for all the world to see. No. That was something that could never happen. And if he kept her at arms’ length, it wouldn’t.

Four

A
t eight the next morning, Violet found JT in the room he’d dubbed his playroom. She paused just outside the door, needing a second to collect her wits before approaching him.

Clad in worn jeans and a black cotton button-down shirt, he was bent over what looked to be an antique pool table. With his left hand, he rolled the eight ball toward the far bumper and caught it as it returned, all the while studying the papers scattered over the table’s beige felt. The briefcase she’d filled with Tiberius’s files sat empty on the floor beside his bare feet.

Being confronted by so much casual masculinity first thing in the morning wasn’t fair. Especially not after she’d lain awake staring at the ceiling until the sun starting lightening the horizon, regretting that she’d kissed him, wishing she’d dropped her towel when he confronted her on the pool deck. Her conflicting desires were tearing her apart. She’d have to choose one path and commit to it.

“Did you get some tea?” he asked without glancing her way.

His question made her realize she’d been silently staring at him for far too long. “Your housekeeper made me a cup. It’s delicious.” She didn’t need to ask why his kitchen was stocked with four different blends of green tea. She already suspected the house saw a lot of guests. While in Miami, JT had been known for his parties. She doubted much had changed in the last six years. “Find anything that might help us?”

“My uncle accumulated copious amounts of information and enjoyed making detailed notes on all his business dealings. Every share he bought is documented. What I’m missing is the information on the family members who turned him down.”

She drew close enough to the table to see that he’d created two lists of names. From past experience she knew how much Tiberius loved to collect information. The files from his home office overflowed with details—some of them helpful, most of them too trivial to waste time on.

“Let me help. Maybe I can speed things up.”

She waited for him to acknowledge her offer, but he remained lost in thought. Had he not heard her, or did he want to handle everything himself? If it was the latter, too bad. She’d come up with this plan and intended to be involved at every stage. Running her gaze down JT’s list of relatives who still owned their stock, she saw he’d notated which ones were definitely in Preston’s pocket.

“You should know Paul and Tiberius had a huge argument three years ago,” she said, indicating his mother’s cousin. “Something about a rare comic book that Tiberius and Paul supposedly bought together using Tiberius’s money when they were eight. Paul kept the comic book, but never paid Tiberius for his half and now it’s worth like ten grand.”

She shook her head. No matter what the comic’s worth, it was silly to still be feuding about it all these years later, but Tiberius wasn’t one to forgive a slight. She glanced at JT’s strong profile. It was a characteristic Tiberius shared with his nephew.

“Thanks.” JT made a note next to Paul’s name and returned to the file he’d been reading.

“You’ve gotten a lot done.” She assessed how he’d organized the files, and then pulled five out to make a third pile. As she finished, she noticed JT’s glare. “What?”

“I had a system.”

“And now it’s better.” She flipped open the top file and pointed to a gossip article about his third cousin. “Casey is in the middle of a nasty divorce. He has a mistress with very expensive taste tucked away and I believe she sees herself as the next Mrs. Casey Stone. Then there’s the problems he’s been having with his investment firm. He’d probably be receptive to an influx of cash.”

JT looked no less displeased. “My father has done several favors for Casey. He has no interest in selling his stock to me, nor would he throw his votes in my direction.”

Violet opened her mouth to argue, but decided from JT’s set expression that she’d be wasting her breath. Instead, she set Casey’s folder aside and opened the next one. She sifted through several documents before arriving at the one she wanted. “Your great aunt Harriet has recently come under the influence of a rather clever con man who has convinced her to fund his charity in New Orleans.” Seeing the flicker of interest in JT’s gaze, she sidled closer. “I can be a big help. No one knew the way Tiberius’s mind worked better than me. Did you know that over the past thirty years Tiberius had collected a storage unit full of Las Vegas history? Some of it was significant. Most of it was trivial nonsense. He left the entire collection to Scarlett for her
Mob Experience
exhibit.”

“I’m sure that’s fascinating, but you’ve done enough.” He pushed away from the pool table and nodded toward the open door. “Have Pauline fix you some breakfast. I’ll take you back to Fontaine Chic when you’re finished.”

She repressed a protest. Assuming he’d accept her as his business partner just because she’d come up with the idea of getting married was shortsighted. A man as closed off as JT wasn’t going to jump at the chance to work with her. If she didn’t accept that, frustration was going to make her crazy.

“Before we head back to town, there are a few things we should talk about.”

“Such as?” He crossed his arms over his chest.

“How would you like me to explain this?” She held up her left hand and indicated the ring with her right pointer finger.

For a moment he didn’t speak, just stared at the ring. “However you’d like.”

Violet gnashed her teeth and tried a different approach. “What are you planning to say about our impulsive wedding last night?”

“If it comes up, I will say we’ve been involved for almost a year, but we’ve been keeping it quiet.”

“And that’s it?”

“I do not expect anyone will press me for details.”

“Truly?” How could he not comprehend people’s curiosity? “You don’t think someone will ask where we met? How long we’ve been seeing each other?”

“They won’t.”

“Isn’t there anyone in your life you share things with?”

His isolation continued to baffle her. Did he choose to keep everyone out of his life or was he such a pain in the ass that no one was interested?

“My staff knows better than to show an interest in my personal life and those I see socially aren’t interested in my business dealings. Since our arrangement falls in neither of those categories, I won’t have to explain our marriage to anyone.”

“That’s great for you,” she retorted sarcastically. “But I have two sisters and a mother, who when they hear I got married, are going to expect me to share every juicy detail of what we’re doing and why.”

At last he gave her his full attention. “There are no juicy details.”

She shoved her hands into the back pocket of her jeans to keep from acting on the desire to jolt him out of his stoic calm. “Can I tell them what we’re really doing?”

“Do you trust them to keep the truth to themselves?”

Given his tendency to play his cards close to the vest, the question shouldn’t have shocked her as much as it did. “I trust them completely.”

She bared her teeth in a spiteful grin. “But if you don’t think I should, I could tell them that you’ve pined over me for years, but were too afraid that Tiberius would ruin you if you made your feelings known.”

Irritation tightened his mouth into a thin line. “They won’t believe something so ridiculous.”

“Scarlett will.” Violet gave free rein to the demon riding her shoulder. Being reasonable hadn’t worked, and she badly wanted a peek at the hand he held. Time to play dirty. Maybe if she antagonized him, he’d let something slip. “She already has it in her head that you show up in Baccarat every night because you want me.”

If he denied it, she wouldn’t be surprised.

“And she bases that on what exactly?” His even tone gave nothing away.

Violet found herself in deeper water than she expected. Nothing for her to do but swim hard for shore and hope she wasn’t eaten by sharks. “The way you look at me.”

“And how exactly do I look at you?”

Violet frowned, trying to remember exactly how her sister had phrased it. “She said you look hungry.”

JT might be a master at hiding his thoughts, but Violet swore she saw a slight widening of his eyes. To her delight, she’d scored if not a direct hit, then one fairly close to the mark. Fascinating. She was pondering the possibility that he wasn’t as disinterested in her as he’d claimed when he spoke up.

“Your sister has a flare for the drama,” he said. “She’s fallen in love and sees nothing but potential love matches all around her.”

“You’re probably right.”

But he hadn’t actually come out and denied it. Violet decided she’d pushed enough for one day. Much more and she’d run the risk that he’d become even more enigmatic. By allowing herself this tiny win, she now had something she could build on. It was like gaining the trust of a wild creature. Better to use short positive sessions to get them to drop their guard than to try and rush things and make it more skittish.

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

“An hour ago.”

She masked her disappointment. “I’ll eat something quick and be ready to go back to town in half an hour if that works for you.”

“I think I’m in a place where I can take a break and I could use another cup of coffee.” He scooped an empty mug off the edge of the pool table and followed her out of his playroom.

Violet’s pulse kicked into high gear. Maybe she’d learned the secret to dealing with JT: she’d pretend she didn’t care if he spent time with her or included her in his plans to take over his family business and wait for him to come to her. It wasn’t the way she was accustomed to dealing with the men she got involved with. Most of the time they liked her to take the lead.

That would never be the case with JT.

“You were right about the view,” she remarked a half hour later. She and JT were sitting in the breakfast nook just off the kitchen. The wall-to-wall windows offered a panoramic view of the desert and the mountains to the north that speared an impossibly blue sky. “Do you miss the ocean? Growing up in Miami, I would think the desert would be hard to get used to.”

“At first I was worried that I’d hate the dust and the heat, but the mountains make it all worthwhile. And if I need to get on the water, I have a boat on Lake Mead.”

Something about the view or sharing a meal—he’d sampled her eggs and stolen half the fruit off her plate—had worked some sort of magic on him. For the last half hour he’d been almost...charming. And Violet was loath to break the spell. So she sipped tea and nibbled on toast, delaying the end of the meal so she could prolong her time with this more accessible version of her new husband.

“Sounds like the best of both worlds.” She popped a grape into her mouth. “I am curious though, why are you living on a horse ranch out here instead of closer to Titanium?”

“My grandmother grew up on a horse farm in Kentucky.” He took Violet’s left hand and regarded the ring he’d put on her hand to seal his wedding vows. “Even after she married my grandfather and moved to Miami, she kept several show jumpers. Starting when I was five, my mother used to take me to watch her. I’d sit in the stands and marvel at how she and her horse flew over six-foot-high jumps.”

As he spoke, his gaze grew less focused. He’d stopped seeing his grandmother’s ring and was revisiting a happy moment from his past. The muscles of his face relaxed into a fond half smile. Violet watched him with dawning wonder. This wasn’t the first time he’d opened up to her—after all, he’d shared his decision to quit his family’s company. But it was the first time he’d shared a happy memory from his childhood.

Based on their interaction to this point, she’d labeled him as guarded and brooding. She’d assumed his unhappy childhood had left him emotionally shut down and incapable of letting joy in. But maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t feel but that he felt too much? If he was a powder keg ready to explode, what happened when someone lit a match?

“She insisted I learn to ride,” JT continued, oblivious to the thoughts churning inside Violet’s head. “During the summer, she would take me to her family’s horse farm in Kentucky and we would spend hours riding. When I was good enough to compete, she took me to horse shows. It all stopped when she died.”

JT had lost his grandmother when he was ten. Hearing him speak so warmly of her, Violet suspected he’d been devastated to lose the one person who’d showered him with love and attention. She remembered what a tough time Tiberius had gone through when his mother had died. He’d taken Lucille and Violet to the funeral and she remembered how unwelcome they’d been.

“I never had any grandparents around when I was a kid,” she told him. “My mom left Cincinnati when she was seventeen and never looked back.” She smiled wryly. “And you know the situation on my father’s side.”

“I’ve never met any of my father’s relatives. His parents died when he was very young.”

“I remember Tiberius saying something about that. I guess I didn’t realize Preston didn’t keep in touch with his family. Wasn’t he from California? Have you ever thought about looking some of them up?”

The shutters were back over JT’s eyes. As soon as he’d mentioned his father, his expression became as remote as the mountaintops that made his view so extraordinary.

“No.”

His abrupt answer discouraged further conversation on that topic. Violet sighed as she realized JT was done sharing.

“If you don’t mind,” she began, setting her napkin on the table beside her plate. “I think it’s time I headed back to Fontaine Chic.”

“I’ll get my keys.”

* * *

While JT waited in the foyer for Violet to collect her overnight bag, he replayed their conversation in his mind and revisited every expression on her lovely face. He’d enjoyed sharing breakfast with her. So much so that instead of giving her a brief, dry explanation of why he’d chosen ranch life over a house in the city, he’d gone all sentimental on her and let her see how his grandmother had influenced him.

Nor did it surprise him how tempted he was to trust her. Her earnest curiosity and upbeat outlook weren’t a clever cover for ulterior motives. She honestly wanted to help. Her impulsive suggestion that they get married so he could get control of Tiberius’s Stone Properties stock had demonstrated she was far too quick to believe in people.