Chapter 2 Fiancée For Rent
DUNCAN
Every man in my organization knows better than to keep me waiting, but my father-in-law-to-be apparently didn’t get the memo, because tell me why his daughter has been unavailable for seven months now, making me continuously change the date for the engagement party. And unavailable isn’t a word I tolerate from people who owe me their careers.
Governor Cole was put on that seat with my money, my connections, and my thinking, and in exchange, I get his daughter, a wedding, and a family name clean enough to give me a good image with the feds.
That was the deal, signed before Cole Wattson got into power, but suddenly, it’s been seven months of him not keeping up his end of the bargain.
In his words, she was trying to tie up loose ends in her life abroad before returning home, which I understood to mean she told him no and he was too much of a coward to say it to my face.
For seven months, I’ve listened to excuse after excuse. First, it was her business. Then, it was her studies. After that, she supposedly needed time to settle a few personal matters before coming home. Every time I asked when she’d be back, the answer was always soon. Soon, became weeks. Weeks became months. Months became seven.
I’m not a patient man. I didn’t become who I am by waiting for people to decide whether or not they wanted to honor their promises.
And because I built an empire on the principle that a man who lets people stall him is a man people learn to stall, I found her myself.
Adaline Cole wasn’t difficult to find, not even under the fake name of Norah Wells. Not with a face like hers that stands out in a crowd.
What surprised me wasn’t that she had changed her name. It was what she was doing with it.
While her father sat in America, feeding me excuses and postponing my engagement party for the seventh time, his runaway daughter had built an entire business for herself in London.
A fiancée-for-hire business, of all things.
The woman refusing to marry the man she’d been promised to was making a fortune pretending to be engaged to other men.
I booked a session under my middle name to see the kind of woman who turns down a Moretti to play pretend to strangers at two hundred pounds an hour.
I found her and her idea of business amusing, to be honest, which is why I’m going to let her have her fun while I have mine.
Dialing Governor Cole’s number as soon as I got into the car, he picked up on the first ring. Always does.
“Mr. Moretti?” His voice carried the carefulness of a man who already knew he was in trouble and was hoping his politeness would make things easier for him. “Is there a problem?”
My driver pulled away from her curb and merged into one of the less busy streets of London.
“Your daughter has been unavailable for seven months, Governor.”
“She’s…” He sighed heavily. “Can you give me one week? Please. She just needs time to adjust to the idea of getting married to someone she does not know.”
I almost laughed at that.
The idea that his daughter’s feelings somehow mattered in a business arrangement negotiated before he got into power would have been amusing if it weren’t wasting my time.
“One week? Governor, you’ve had thirty of them.”
“I assure you she’s coming home. I just need a little more time.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to a timeline for her approval, Cole. I remember agreeing to a wedding.” I watched the London traffic crawl past the window, unbothered. “I found her.”
“You what?” he stammered, his voice trembling.
“I found her in London, Cole, running a business I assume you know nothing about, because if you did, you’d have called me already, terrified.”
The future wife of Duncan Moretti, pretending to belong to other men.
I will be yours for as long as your paycheck allows.
Just how many men has she said those words to?
“What business?” Cole whispered, too afraid to even say the words out loud.
“Ask her yourself,” Fuck that. He already lost that right. “Or don’t. I’ll be handling this personally from here.”
“Moretti, please,” Cole begged. “I can talk to her myself. I can make her understand_”
“You’ve had seven months to make her understand.”
Ending the call, I slipped the phone into my pocket and stared out the window.
Listening to him apologize was only going to get on my nerves. I don’t enjoy listening to men apologize. It never fixes anything in my experience, and it wastes time that I don’t get back.
Marco, my little brother, was already in my hotel suite by the time I got back, arms crossed over his chest, looking unhappy.
Ignoring him, I walked straight to the bar, picked up a bottle of Sex on the Beach, and gulped down a shot.
“You found her.” I guess he spoke to one of the men I had watching Bloom & Co. “What happened? Did she fall on her knees and apologize for the insult?”
“I had a meeting with her.”
“You had_” He stopped himself. Many years of being my brother taught him that I hated repeating myself. “Duncan. Tell me you told her who you are.”
“I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“That is none of your fucking business.”
Tagging him along with me to London was for business, not for him to question my private decisions.
“What the fuck, Duncan? If I had gone to your place, I would have told her about the deal her father made, collected her, and had her on a plane by morning. That was the plan, Duncan! Cole owes you a wedding!”
Before I could respond, my phone chimed with a notification.
Pulling it out, I opened the fake email address I created specifically for Adaline and clicked on the mail she’d sent.
OUR NEXT MEETING HAS BEEN CANCELLED. BLOOM & CO WILL NOT BE WORKING WITH YOU. PLEASE FORWARD YOUR ACCOUNT DETAILS FOR THE NECESSARY REFUND.
My fingers tightened around the phone, my jaw clenching as I slowly lifted my gaze to Marco.
It took a lot to surprise me these days. Being rejected by my future wife using a company email was apparently one of them.
“She did not,” Marco said, leaning over to read the message before bursting into laughter. “Your fiancée just rejected you as a client.”
For seven months, Adaline Cole had successfully ignored an engagement contract worth millions of dollars. Now, after meeting me once, she decided I wasn’t worth two hundred pounds an hour.
Interesting.
“The plan has changed,” I said, slipping my phone back into my pocket. “Find me Adaline’s residential address.”
No one, absolutely no one, rejects Duncan Moretti.
