Irresistible Devil (Black Rose Auction #4)
Chapter 1
1
“ Y ou’re getting married, sugar.”
The term of endearment rolled off my father’s tongue, but there was a bite to it. He’d barely been able to look at me for days.
He sat there in his perfectly tailored tuxedo, his hands folded calmly on the desk in front of him, even though the tension in his jaw gave away how angry he was.
My heart raced in panic, but I only allowed my cheeks to lift into a polite, hopeful smile, the reaction he expected of a Bryson woman. I’d known I was in trouble when he summoned me shortly before the gala he was hosting at one of his hotels, but I hadn’t expected it to be this dire.
He slid a stack of printed papers across the desk with enough angry force that they rained down across my lap. Tabloid after tabloid with mortifying pictures of me. I was in a dance club, showing more skin than I’d ever shown in public before, my raven hair fanned out in wild, sweaty curls with parts of it sticking to my neck and shoulders.
Bryson Heiress Goes Wild. Bryson Sister Gets Dirty on the Dance Floor . Juliet Bryson: Virgin No More?
A strategically placed cameraman below the elevated dance floor had captured me grinding on some guys, inadvertently flashing my panties at that angle. In one image, a guy’s hand was under my skirt. Though I’d swatted it away seconds later, the pictures kinda made it look like I was letting someone touch me intimately in the club. I’d admittedly been trashed, too trashed to think about things like my image, but I slept in my own bed alone that night, which was more than anyone I’d been out with could say.
I was just out dancing with friends!
I didn’t dare try to defend myself. The facts didn’t matter, not to my family. Public perception was everything.
“You think I need this right now? I buried your brother a few months ago, and this is what you think I need right now?” He waved an errant page at me, barely containing his fury.
I bit my tongue and shook my head.
I buried my brother a few months ago too, Daddy. The grief was like a fist around my windpipe, but I held my breath until it felt like I could release it without sobbing. All I’d wanted when I went out dancing was to escape the feeling. I thought maybe if I drank enough and did the things normal people did to have fun, then I’d manage to forget for just a few minutes that my brother was dead.
It hadn’t worked.
My father’s angry expression drained away until he just looked grim. “There’s blood in the water after your brother’s murder, and the sharks are circling, wondering just how weak we are. On top of that, the business is bleeding money, and I can’t figure out why—something I’m just barely managing to keep out of the news—and now you go and do this.”
“Daddy, let me help! I can look into the business.” I’d been begging to be given more responsibility for years, but my father was fundamentally old-school. Women had an important role to serve at their husband’s side, but it wasn’t in the office.
“The accountants are already on that,” he said dismissively, flicking his hand like my degrees in finance and accounting and the fact I’d been working as a forensic accountant for years were meaningless. “You can help by securing the partner I need to solve all three problems. You settle down and start rebuilding your reputation, we gain a strong ally to weather this storm, and he infuses my businesses with cash. With your brother gone, I need an heir.”
Geoff had been my only brother, the only one my father had ever considered as his replacement.
“What about Brenner?” My older sister’s husband wielded considerable influence in political circles.
“Brenner serves his purpose, but he’s not ruthless enough to be a territory leader. I need you to marry someone who isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty, but who’s smart enough to keep their image clean.”
What about what I need? “Mama said that I could choose who I married.” I was on dangerous ground questioning him, but when they’d decided to parade me in the press as a virgin who’d chosen to wait for marriage, I’d gone along with it eagerly because it came with the promise of a choice. I was willing to abstain from sex and keep my image squeaky clean if it meant I wouldn’t be forced to marry someone of their choosing. Or at least I’d managed to keep it squeaky clean until that night in the club.
He fixed me with a cold stare. “Your mother is in the ground with your brother. You made your choice by acting like a whore.”
He let out a deep breath and straightened all the objects on his precisely organized desk. We were in one of his hotels, but this floor was set up as a residence for our family, so this office was an exact replica of his office in our family home. When he looked back up at me, it was with a gentle smile on his face. To anyone else, he would’ve looked calm, but I’d seen that look before.
“I need this alliance, Juliet. We need this alliance. If you fight me on it, I’ll offer him your sister.”
I gasped. “Sophia’s already married!”
“Jacque isn’t.”
This time I didn’t gasp because I’d stopped breathing. “Daddy, she’s eighteen.”
He shrugged, and I knew he meant it. Girls had always been secondary to him: more of a liability than an asset but potentially useful as a bartering tool. He’d married Sophia off to a senator, a match that had secured my uncle his second term as president of the United States. To the public, Uncle Charles was the head of our family, the powerful one. But Daddy was the true puppet master pulling all our strings.
Jacque was the baby of the family, ten years younger than me. I had Daddy’s dark hair, but Jacque looked so much like Mama that it sometimes made my chest ache. She was willowy and blonde, with a million-dollar smile, but we both had Mama’s cornflower blue eyes. All I wanted was for her to have a normal youth. I couldn’t possibly give it to her, but I could protect her from this.
I sighed. “Okay. Who is he?”
Daddy laughed, already more relaxed now that I was cooperating. “I’m not telling you yet, sugar. I don’t need you arriving to meet him having done full opposition research on the poor bastard.”
He’d tried once before, much less forcefully, to send me on a date with a business partner’s son, and it hadn’t gone well. It wasn’t my fault the smug jerk hadn’t come to dinner prepared to defend his questionable political stances.
Daddy spread his hands, still wearing that effortless smile, the vicious one people mistook for charming. “You’re not to debate him. You’re to charm him. Make sure he sees the full value of having you as a wife.”
The way he said it turned my stomach. I folded my hands neatly in my lap, trying to hide how badly they were shaking. “Are you telling me to sleep with him?”
He narrowed his eyes just a fraction. “I don’t want him thinking my sweet pea is a slut to be used and discarded. Charm him. If offering him a taste is what it takes for him to see the long-term value in a potential partnership?” He shrugged.
I was really having this conversation. With my father.
I didn’t have the first clue how to seduce someone. I’d spent my entire life trying not to seduce people…because I’d always known putting a single toe out of line would lead here. No moment of fun was worth the loss of my autonomy, and the second anyone in my family caused a scandal, they rarely got a say in how it was resolved.
I was an accountant . A magnificent forensic accountant, but an uptight, number-crunching nerd nonetheless. Deep down, I wasn’t like the polished women who ran in our circles, the ones who could derive power from nothing but conversational charm and sex appeal. He was sending a virgin to do a siren’s work.
“What if he doesn’t like me?”
My father cocked his head like I was being ridiculous. “You’re a Bryson. Make him like you.”
He gestured to the door with an upturned palm—a firm dismissal since this matter was settled, and we needed to get dressed before the guests arrived.
I stood and let him escort me out, grasping for some way to tell him I couldn’t do it.
“What if I don’t like him?” I said in a small voice, the weak one he hated.
His expression turned hard. “Find a way to like him, sugar. I know you won’t let me down again.”