Marrying His Runaway Heiress Read online

  ‘Micah.’

  ‘Good to meet you, Mr Williams.’

  She took his hand. Shook in two quick pumps. It shouldn’t have heated his blood. Shouldn’t have had any effect on him whatsoever.

  It did.

  ‘If I call you Elena, you’ll have to call me Micah,’ he said, hoping to heaven his voice was normal and not tinted with the desire he suddenly felt.

  ‘It feels...’ she hesitated ‘...wrong to call you Micah.’

  ‘Wrong?’ Another interesting fact. ‘How so?’

  ‘Unprofessional,’ she clarified.

  ‘This is about the article.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She frowned. ‘What else could it be about?’

  This unexpected attraction between us?

  ‘Nothing else. We’re on the same page.’

  He pressed the button that called the flight attendant, and when the man appeared ordered himself a drink. With alcohol. To shock his system into behaving. Elena ordered a water. There was that professionalism again. It obviously meant a lot to her. But why?

  ‘I promise not to consider you unprofessional if you use my first name,’ he said, accepting the glass from the flight attendant. ‘I won’t tell anyone at the newspaper either.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Her tone was somehow a mixture of dryness and gratitude. Fascinating creature, the John heiress. ‘I’ll call you Micah—’ he ignored the thrill that beat in his heart ‘—for the duration of this week. Since we are spending it together, it might be strange to continue speaking to you so formally.’ She didn’t give him a chance to process before she was asking, ‘Is the itinerary for this week finalised?’

  She was putting distance between them, he realised. He kept his smile to himself. He wasn’t sure what was amusing him more: the fact that she felt the need to put distance between them when they’d barely known one another for an hour; or how seamlessly she’d done so. He was being managed. Expertly. He hadn’t thought much about how her being an heiress would affect this business trip. Well, other than his plan to endear himself to her. But now he was experiencing it.

  A journalist had never put him in his place so skilfully before. Nor a woman. He barely felt that he’d been moved, let alone gently, if firmly, lowered to the ground. It was tied into the professionalism somehow. The attraction. He had no idea—and he wanted to know. Except that wasn’t why she was here. He needed to remember that.

  ‘It is. The one my assistant emailed to you is accurate, apart from two meetings that I have scheduled for our last day in Rome. It was the only time my client was available,’ he added apologetically.

  ‘You don’t have to explain,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘I know how it goes with business trips.’

  ‘I imagine you do.’

  Her brow lifted, but she didn’t engage. ‘Is there a reason Serena isn’t joining us?’

  ‘I wanted time to speak with you.’

  ‘That’s why you don’t have your laptop open either?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have my laptop open when I have a guest.’

  She laughed. It was a light, bubbly sound he found delightful. Again, not relevant.

  ‘We both know guests don’t get in the way of business, Micah.’

  He lifted his glass to his lips thoughtfully. ‘I’m beginning to think your experience of business and the way I conduct mine are different.’

  She studied him for a moment, then reached into the huge white handbag she’d brought with her and pulled out her phone. She pressed a few buttons, and suddenly a large red dot was gleaming up at him.

  ‘I’m beginning to think so, too,’ she replied, despite the minutes that had passed. ‘Why don’t we start talking about those differences?’ She touched her finger to her phone’s screen. The device began recording. ‘What inspired you to start this business, Mr Williams?’

  An expert at managing, he thought again, and answered her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MICAH WILLIAMS WAS too suave for his own good. Or for Elena’s own good. She wanted to get beneath the businessperson persona. That wasn’t part of her job, obviously. She was only meant to portray the businessperson. She had enough of the basics to write a good introduction. She could already see it.

  Micah Williams is charming, but ruthless—a fact he wouldn’t want you to believe. The latter, that is. He enjoys his charm almost as much as he thinks his audience does. And perhaps his audience does.

  His eyes light up when he talks business, though there’s always an intensity shadowed there, regardless of the business topic. He knows just what to say and he relishes saying it, knowing it’s exactly what he should be saying.

  But it’s in that very fact that his ruthlessness lies. Williams has no qualms about telling you what you want to hear even as he uses what you don’t want to hear against you. He’s a lion, circling his prey, if the lion was tall and handsome, and—

  Maybe she needed to work on that last line.

  But the sentiment remained. Micah was giving her information she could have surmised from the handful of interviews he’d done before her.

  She was good at reading people through what they didn’t say as much as through what they did. It was what made her so good at writing pop culture pieces. She could deduce what people wanted the public to know and what they didn’t. So she narrowed in on what they didn’t; there was almost always a story there.

  There was definitely more to Micah’s success than ‘hard work and good luck’. It had something to do with both his charm and his ruthlessness. If he so much as got a whiff of the fact that she thought him ruthless though, he’d protest. He was trying much too hard to get her to believe he was a harmless domestic animal.

  He was definitely a lion. Nothing else.

  She particularly knew it because of the way he was circling around her family.

  She refused to indulge him.

  ‘Can we take a break?’ he asked after they’d been talking for an hour. ‘I’m starving.’

  Since they’d covered a lot more than she thought they would on the first day, travelling, she said, ‘Sure. Will we be eating Chef Gardner or Ike today?’

  He smiled. ‘You’ve done your research.’

  ‘I’m insulted you thought otherwise.’

  ‘Wouldn’t want that,’ he purred. ‘I apologise.’

  She stared. ‘You aren’t as charming as you think you are, you know.’

  His eyelashes fluttered. She mentally patted herself on the back for surprising him.

  ‘I have no idea what I did to deserve that.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. You’re on, all the time. It means you don’t have time to reflect. Probably,’ she added in the unlikely event that she was wrong.

  His jaw tightened. ‘Presumptuous.’

  He wasn’t trying to hide that he didn’t like that comment. It was the first authentic reaction she’d seen from him—the first one that wasn’t an acceptable reaction—and it made her heart thud.

  ‘Journalists presume until they don’t have to,’ she said.

  ‘Journalists?’ There was a deliberate pause. ‘Or heiresses?’

  When threatened, a lion would attack. Micah had done just that to the elephant in the room.

  An uncomfortable ripple went through her, but she was saved from replying when the flight attendant came in and took their orders for food. She was going to be eating steak on a plane, which was the kind of food she’d forgotten about eating on a plane since her parents had divorced. Her life had changed then.

  If only it had changed enough for her to stop trying to please her unpleasable father.

  ‘You’re offended,’ he commented after the flight attendant left. His expression was smooth again, as if he hadn’t shown he was human minutes earlier.

  ‘You implied my talents were a result of having a rich fam
ily.’ She paused. ‘You implied other journalists wouldn’t have those talents unless they come from a rich family.’

  ‘You’re offended on behalf of other people?’

  ‘It’s called empathy. It’s what makes me a damn good writer.’

  And person.

  She’d worked hard at that after her parents had all but abandoned her after the divorce. Granted, they hadn’t been model parents before. Her mother had always been distant; her father an unyielding presence. That didn’t stop her from trying to get their approval. Their love. A normal task for any child; a useless task for her. Her mother was travelling the world, living as though she had no child. Which was...fair. For all intents and purposes, Helen John did have no children. And Elena had no mother.

  As for her father... Things were more complicated with him. The fact that he wanted her to marry someone for the sake of his business proved it. Especially when ‘wanted’ was a tame word to describe Cliff John’s demands.

  But indulging family issues wasn’t professional.

  ‘I...er... I shouldn’t have said that,’ she said.

  Emotion flickered in his eyes. She had no idea what that emotion was, or why it felt dangerous. Alluring.

  ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned your family.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you refrained from mentioning them again.’

  The dangerous, alluring emotion flickered again. It gave her the distinct impression she was being toyed with. Everything inside her went on alert.

  ‘Things aren’t what they seem in the John family, then?’

  She took a moment. Leaned forward. ‘If you want to do this, Micah, you better be ready to do this. Because if my family isn’t off-limits, neither is yours.’

  * * *

  A challenge.

  Micah thought he’d learnt everything he needed to know about Elena during the interview portion of their conversation. She was sharp, insightful, compassionate. He wouldn’t have thought her combative though. But how else could he interpret her challenge?

  A fair response to you pushing the issue of her family?

  That might have been it. Beyond wanting to know more about the John empire, he had no real reason to keep pushing. Did he want to provoke her, then? And if so, wasn’t it fair for her to respond in kind? Except she wouldn’t be able to if he didn’t reveal how much of a sensitive topic his family was. He needed to pull back before he did.

  This was part of why he never wanted to engage with people on more than simply a surface level. He didn’t want to talk about his parents, or the distance they’d put into their relationship with him. He certainly didn’t want to talk about his efforts to breach that distance. Efforts that had failed over and over again.

  It made putting effort into any other relationship too exhausting to contemplate. So he didn’t. Which wasn’t entirely a problem since people who wanted relationships wanted to be engaged on more than a surface level. Even those who claimed they didn’t want that. The women he dated always said they were fine with what he offered—at the beginning. As the months went by and he continued to dedicate himself to his business, to his relationship with his parents, they would express unhappiness. Eventually, they left. He no longer believed them when they said they wanted what he could give.

  But he believed Elena. Believed that she would dig deeper into his family if he didn’t stop her now. He couldn’t afford to be intrigued by her. She might have been a puzzle of emotions he couldn’t solve, but she was dangerous. He couldn’t keep trying to put the pieces together, especially when he didn’t have the full picture to work from. She wouldn’t provide her picture, and he wouldn’t provide his, and they would get along fine.

  Why did that feel like a lie?

  ‘I’ve already told you about my family,’ he said, keeping his voice steady.

  ‘You were “raised by a single mother, a lawyer with her own firm, and saw your father on occasion”,’ she recited. Tilted her head. ‘Is that right?’

  The side of his mouth tilted up. ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s what all the other articles about you said, too.’ She pretended to examine her nails. ‘It would be great to go into more detail. What was it like having a mother with her own law firm? Was it challenging? Inspiring? Did her success affect her relationship with your father? Did it affect yours?’

  ‘Good,’ he said after a beat. ‘Great, in fact. Get all these questions out now, in the plane, so that when we get to Italy we don’t have to waste time going through them.’

  Her lips curved. ‘Not fun, is it?’

  It took him a moment. ‘That was a trap.’

  ‘It was and it wasn’t,’ she said easily. ‘I would love to have that information for the article. But I also understand that you don’t want it in the public realm. Because of my empathy.’

  He studied her. Saw both triumph and sincerity on her face. She was slippery. Smart, too. He wasn’t sure if he liked the combination. No—he wasn’t sure what it meant that he did like the combination.

  He didn’t dwell on it. He needed to figure out what to do about her curiosity first. He didn’t want to tell her the truth about his family. What would his parents say if they were included in an article about him? Would they even care?

  His father had a brand-new family. Well, not new any more. His baby sister was twenty and his brother, seventeen. Regardless, his father had other things to worry about than what his thirty-two-year-old son said about him. Back when his father had had him, the idea of legitimacy still mattered. That was how his father had treated him. Like a mistake he didn’t have to validate except on the rare occasion, when his guilt got the better of him.

  And his mother? His mother would...not read the paper. She worked, hard, and that gave her little to no time for leisure. Elena had hit it on the head; his mother running her own law firm was both challenging and inspiring. But it was the inspiring part that mattered most. Perhaps, if he said something like that, Elena wouldn’t speculate. And if his mother did ever see this, there would be no reason for her to be upset.

  ‘Fine.’ His tone was reluctant. Annoyed. He could see it in her smile. He cleared his throat. Hoped it cleared the emotion he didn’t need her seeing. ‘I’ll answer one of your questions. We won’t talk about family again after this.’

  He didn’t expect the agreement he got.

  ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘It’s that easy?’

  ‘It’s that easy,’ she replied. There was nothing but sincerity in her tone now. ‘I’m writing an article about you. I’m shadowing you for the next seven days to do so. None of that will work without a bit of give and take. From both of us.’

  Those last words were heavy with implication. He barely refrained from rolling his eyes.

  ‘We’re in agreement, then. Family is off-limits?’

  ‘Between me and you, yes,’ she said brightly. ‘I still want to offer my readers a good article.’

  She’d told him he wasn’t as charming as he thought; what would she think if he told her she was more charming than she could ever believe?

  He stiffened at the thought. Told himself to get a grip. He was getting distracted from his plan. Elena herself—her personality, her looks, all of her—had already caused him to trip on some of the steps. But he would keep his goal in mind. That meant thinking clearly, strategically. No distractions.

  ‘My mother is incredibly successful,’ he said, keeping it concise. ‘She worked hard, and was ready for the opportunities that came her way. That’s what she taught me, too. To work hard and be ready. I did, and I was.’

  ‘With Killian Leather and The Perfume Company?’ she asked, naming the two clients he’d signed in the last year. Two of his biggest clients, who were part of the reason he’d been named Businessperson of the Year.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘She sounds like she inspired you.’


  He tensed, but answered. ‘She did.’

  ‘Wonderful, thanks.’ She switched off the phone he hadn’t even realised she’d put on again. ‘That was great.’

  He nodded. Slowly let out the air that had been accumulating in his lungs. He’d survived it. He’d survived talking about his mother. Elena seemed content with his answer, which was great. She wouldn’t ask any more. Or was he being naïve, believing her? He wasn’t sure he would believe anyone else. But Elena was genuine in a way the other journalists he’d talked with hadn’t been.

  What if that was wishful thinking?

  A sigh distracted him.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘I can almost taste the steak.’ She sank down in her chair, closing her eyes. Her hair pushed forward, framing her face with thousands of curly strands. ‘I’m going out on a limb here, but I bet there’ll be fries with it. Maybe a mushroom sauce.’ She looked at him. ‘Am I right?’

  He lifted a finger of one hand and picked up his phone with the other. He relayed Elena’s suggestions to the chef, who grumbled as neither had been on his menu. But he agreed. Micah did pay him a significant amount of money for that agreement.

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said when he was done.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘What’s the point of having a private chef when you can’t do that?’

  ‘It’s so...privileged, isn’t it?’

  She spoke thoughtfully, giving him a clue that he shouldn’t give the startled laugh he wanted to.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a moment. ‘I have no idea how to respond to that.’

  ‘You aren’t that out of touch that you don’t know people don’t live like this.’ She gestured around them.

  ‘Of course not. I used to be one of those people.’

  Her pensive expression deepened. ‘Not entirely though. I can’t imagine the mother that owned a law firm left you struggling in your life.’

  ‘A lot of my mother’s money went back into the firm.’

  ‘Are you saying you grew up poor?’