that mean that even if you cheat on me I have to stay with you?”
“As I will stay with you,” he said, his voice hard. “The union, the legal marriage, is what I need. I cannot project thirty years into the future, but I will ensure that you are still with me.”
Vanessa was having a hard time breathing. It was as though he’d turned over her solid wood desk and placed it on her chest. Thirty years. This wasn’t a temporary arrangement. He was talking about the rest of her life. Shackled to this man.
She tried to imagine turning away again. Imagined telling him the deal was off, and he could take his shares and the entirety of Pickett Industries to hell with him for all she cared.
But she couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come. They wouldn’t even form in her brain in a cohesive manner. The idea of Lazaro losing his hold on her didn’t open up a wide arena of possibilities for her life, rather, it showed just how narrow her scope of options truly was. Without Lazaro, the company crumbled. Without the company she had no job, no relationship with her father.
She’d promised her father, the week that Thomas died, that she wouldn’t fail him, and she’d set out to make sure she didn’t from that day on. She’d dropped out of the photography club she’d been in at school, started doing some basic business courses instead. Done whatever she could to ensure she didn’t let her father down.
In her mind, she was a Pickett. She was a loyal daughter. She was the CEO of Pickett Industries. Without that … she didn’t know who she was beyond that. And without Lazaro’s help, she wouldn’t be any of those things. Of course, it was his interference that forced her to choose. But without him, there might not be any choice at all other than to watch Pickett slowly sink beneath the waves of debt, another casualty of a shifting business landscape.
And while this might not have been her first choice for how her life would end up, it was the right thing. At least this way, she would keep the business going. She would have children who would eventually take over.
Her stomach cramped at the thought. Yes, she’d planned on having children someday, but if she said yes they would be Lazaro’s children. The room suddenly seemed much too small, Lazaro’s presence in it far too big.
Another thought, small and insidious, reminded her of that moment of pure exhilaration when she’d realized that she had changed her future. That she had diverged from the path so carefully laid out for her.
If she said no now, it was back to that path. Everything would stay the same. The thought was suffocating.
She shook her head. “I don’t want that.”
“What is it you don’t want?”
“You have to be faithful to me, Lazaro,” she said, her throat tight. The entire conversation made her body feel hot, restless and edgy. She knew that she would be sleeping with Lazaro, and just the thought made her feel charged with adrenaline.
But the sex would be a purely physical act, with legal paperwork to make it all legitimate. There would be no feelings. No love. She didn’t even have to ask him about that. The hardness in his dark eyes answered that question.
Fair enough, since she couldn’t imagine falling in love with the cold man standing before her. It was shocking enough that her body seemed to respond to him. But she didn’t want to share him either. There were a host of reasons why that thought didn’t sit well with her, her health being foremost among them. Another being pure, possessive jealousy. But what woman would want to share her husband? None. Love or not.
“You have to give me that at least,” she said. “If we have children … I assume you want children?”
“I need them.”
He was talking in terms of producing heirs, and in that sense, she needed them too. It felt wrong to think of them that way, when it never had before. She’d always been confident that she would love her children, so it had never mattered if that was part of the incentive for marriage. But now, knowing Lazaro felt the same way made her see just how cold it was. Made her worry that he wouldn’t ever see the children as anything more than vessels for his legacy.
Like your father?
She shook the thought off and continued, “If we have children, I think they need to know they can aspire for better than a marriage filled with lies and infidelity.”
“I will honor the vows I speak,” he said, clenching his jaw tightly.
“Good. Then I’ll honor mine. And even if we’re a miserable, distant, sexless couple, I will stay with you.”
“Inspiring.”
“Why should it be?” she asked. “This is a cold, mercenary agreement. I’m not pretending it’s anything other than that. I don’t want or expect you to fall in love with me, but respect would be nice. I consider knowing that the person you’re sleeping with isn’t out sleeping with other people to be a great sign of respect.”
“Then you will be faithful to me,” he said, his voice hard.
“I said I would be.”
“And you will not deny me when I come to your bed.”
Vanessa put her hand on her stomach, trying to calm the butterflies that were staging a riot inside of her. “After the wedding.”
He nodded once, his eyes trained on her face. “After the wedding.”
“My father isn’t going to like this. I have to … Well, there’s the arrangement I mentioned. And his family will be—”
“You are engaged to this other man?”
She held up her ringless left hand. “No. But there was an understanding.”
“Your father will be grateful to you if he finds out the circumstances surrounding the union.”
“No.”
“You don’t want him to know?”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t … I don’t want him to know how far things have fallen … how … how bad things have gotten.”
“He will have to know what I’m bringing into the union,”
Lazaro said, dark eyes glittering. “I want him to know that I intend to revamp Pickett. I want him to know that I am saving it. That I’ve done what he could not. If you want to take credit for meeting me while pursuing my help, it is of no concern to me. But I want him to know that I was the one to pull this dying, outdated company into a new life in the modern era.” His voice was hard, uncompromising. He knew what it would do to her father to have to accept help, let alone to have to accept help from someone he believed to be beneath him, and Lazaro was relishing it.
Vanessa had never been able to believe what her father said about some people being better than others thanks to their bloodlines. She’d seen too many cruel, horrible people in her social class. People who wasted their money and used those around them with no thought to anyone but themselves. Believing that those people were somehow better than the rest of humanity was depressing.
And when she’d been sixteen, her emotions had been held captive by a boy her father considered to be lower than them. A boy who had grown into the man standing before her.
Looking at him, she felt her chest get tight, pride swelling within her. It shocked her. But she was, she realized, proud of what Lazaro had become, professionally at least.
“Showing you have the real power?” she asked softly.
“Money is the real power, Vanessa. Money is how I got into this position, how I managed to purchase Pickett’s shares.”
“Then why do you care about the rest of it? Why do you need me at all?”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “Because I can have you.”
Her stomach tightened. “The