Page 6 of Contractually Wed

Apollo took one look into those big, brown eyes, saw the tears she blinked away in a quick flash and knew she was telling the truth. Fury gripped him, even as his usual rationale tried to wrangle it into control.

He shouldn’t be surprised by further proof of Jay Shetty’s duplicitous nature. Suddenly, all of the older man’s attempts to keep his younger daughter away from Apollo made sense. He had assumed Jay was attached to Jia and he’d had no interest in the woman with her rough edges and vulgar stories and her constant attempts to draw him into a fight.

Now he realized how perfectly Jay had played him by dangling his beautiful, perfect, dull-as-cardboard firstborn in front of Apollo. But why rob his own daughter of her name and her accolades...why pass it on as his son’s talent...?

“You studied architecture. Your brother on the other hand was thrown out of college,” he said, having cast a cursory glance at her records when the PI he’d hired had dug up everything on the Shetty family.

Usually, he would never overlook the details just because it was a woman. But from the first moment she’d walked into the restaurant pretending to be her sister and let herself loose on him, Apollo had decided that she was of no significance to him, that she was no more than a buzzing fly.

She shrugged, her mouth clamped, all of that dark humor and the teasing taunts gone. Her admission had clearly come at a high price and she’d still done it.

Her claim was that she wanted to save her sister from the horrible fate of being married to him? But why put herself in his sights, then? Nothing about Jia Shetty made sense to his logical brain.

“Is this another game your father’s playing?” he said, his voice full of irritation at himself.

She went to sit on the couch. Tucking her feet under her knees, she leaned back and let out a loud exhale. The maid uniform rode up on her thighs, revealing smooth skin on top of the stockings and another button popped on the bodice, revealing the curve of a breast. She thrummed with an artless sensuality he found irresistible. “He’s going to hate me for spilling the family’s dirty secret.” He heard the slight quiver in her words. “You can be sure of that.”

“Why are you going against your own family, then? Or is lack of loyalty a family trait, passed down in blood?”

Her bow-shaped lips flinched. “My father is playing a foolish game, thinking he can change your mind in three years. Thinking he can impress you with my talent at the helm. He doesn’t realize how many things could be ruined by continuing this...feud. I’m trying to save everyone.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? You’re here, having maneuvered yourself onto the board, because my father stole something from yours more than two decades ago, aren’t you?”

“Not a small something,” Apollo said, gritting his jaw. The die was cast and yet some part of him wanted to understand her. “Your family doesn’t deserve—”

“That’s my decision.”

She looked up at him as he moved toward her, the lamplight throwing the long line of her neck into relief. Everything about her was achingly lovely, perfection stitched together painfully with a multitude of imperfections.

He should turn away from her and her proposal, turn back on the entire idea of ruining Jay Shetty, and yet, Apollo had never been so aroused, his interest engaged on many levels. Everything about her was a challenge, a lure and a promise and the extreme achiever in him wanted to unravel her on every level. And conquer her.

“Maybe all this is a scheme to tie you to myself?” She let out a throaty laugh, and the collar of her uniform shifted to reveal a little more of her tattoo. “Maybe I’m stealing you from Rina because of my uncontrollable lust for you?”

For all her flippant taunts, she stiffened when he sat down on the coffee table in front of her, caging her between his legs. Elbows on his knees, he leaned forward until he could see the browns of her eyes widen into large pools.

“What are your conditions?”

Her soft gasp was a whistle through the gap between those front teeth, tiny beads of sweat over her bow-shaped upper lip. It took her several more breaths to focus on his words and he suppressed a smile at that. Maybe the lust thing wasn’t just a bluff. Her gaze met his finally, a steely resolve in it. “You will not retaliate against my father for this.”

“And?”

“You will divorce me after two years, after you’ve exploited everything you can out of me.”

“I intend to marry only once in my life, Tornado,” he said, making it crystal clear that he wasn’t giving her up. Not when he was just discovering what a treasure she was on multiple levels. “Whether that’s your spineless sister or prickly you, I will make it work. I’ll relish your father’s—”

“I’m already aware of your elaborate revenge scheme. But believe me, you aren’t going to want me anywhere near you in a year, tops. I’m generously granting you two.”

He didn’t hide his smile then. And when her gaze skidded to his mouth with a near-comical helplessness, he felt punch-drunk with desire. “No.”

“You promised,” she said, almost stomping those combat boots on the floor, in something akin to a tantrum.

He raised a brow, thoroughly unsure of what to make of this woman-child creature. If his assessment of those designs was right, and he was always right, she was not only brilliant but innovative in her field at a young age. There was the fact that she was writing her life away into the enemy’s hands to protect her undeserving family. Then this...outward toughness she projected—from how she dressed to how she talked and acted—then there was the quicksilver flash of fear coursing through her body and her trust in him. And he felt as if he was standing at the door of either his biggest victory or his doom. The excitement in his blood though, the sudden hum in his veins...it seemed to not care.

“You should have specified that it was about the marriage itself.”

“Ugh, you’re...”

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