The Tycoon's Red Hot Marriage Merger (15 page)

“
Buenos
.”

Marco squeezed her hand, then guided her down the walkway until they reached Cassandra’s parents.

“Welcome,” her father said, and shook Marco’s hand.

“Thank you,
Senor
Nelson.” Marco shook her father’s hand, then turned to her mother. “
Senora
Nelson, you’re lovely as always.”

“Thank you,” her mother replied primly.

Great. A terse greeting, but at least her parents were on speaking terms with Marco. That was a beginning. “Mother, Father,” she said, giving them each the perfunctory kiss on the cheek of a dutiful daughter. “You look great.”

Her mother smiled, the lines beside her eyes crinkling with genuine pleasure. “Darling, I love your dress. And those shoes are amazing. You’re going to blow everyone out of the water with your new look.”

“Thanks, but I’m still the same girl on the inside.”

“No, you’ve changed,” her mother said, looking at her from the tip top of Cassandra’s head all the way down to her strappy, high heels and back at Cassandra’s face. “Not just on the outside. I can see it in the glow on your cheeks.”

“Yes.” Her father tugged his collar and cleared his throat. “Marriage agrees with you.”

Cassandra shot her father a pointed look. While he had come a long way from the day he had raged about her break up with Peter, the hurt hadn’t completely disappeared. “Marriage to Marco agrees with me.” She moved closer to Marco’s side, drawing strength from his solid, muscular presence.

A muscle twitched in her father’s jaw, much to her satisfaction. “We should go in,” her mother said, “and greet your guests. After all, this is your reception and everyone is dying to see you again.”

Cassandra doubted her mother’s statement. But she couldn’t wait to see everyone’s reaction to the person she had become since she had married Marco. “Absolutely,” she said.

Flanked by her parents and Marco, Cassandra stepped inside the room where, by her calculations, more than one hundred of the wealthiest and powerful members of her family’s elite society had gathered.

The room fell silent and she felt like a specimen in a Petri dish—exposed, vulnerable, and considered for a complete dissection. “Why is everyone staring?” she asked.

“Maybe they’re blown away by your drop-dead beauty,” Marco said.

She stifled a snort. “Yeah, right.” Cassandra pressed closer to his side while they walked into the room. “Most likely they’re more blown away by you. After all, you were the sexiest man in Argentina’s tabloids last year.”

“Let’s face it,” her mother said. “Your marriage to Marco has caused quite a stir.”

“That would be the understatement of the year,” her father added.

Blush-colored roses, white hydrangeas, and sage greenery filled vases of varying heights, scenting the air with their sweet perfume. “Mom, you outdid herself.” Cassandra brushed her hand against one of the rose gold linen cloths draping the round tables while they crossed the hardwood floor.

“Thank you.” Her mother hooked her arm into Cassandra’s free one. “I wanted to please you.”

“You have,” Cassandra said.

Tall pillar candles bounced light off the bank of arched Venetian windows that overlooked the lawn and palm trees outside. The sound of waves crashing on the shoreline competed with the eighties pop song that a four man band played. Several couples danced, but their gyrations couldn’t compete with Marco’s finesse.

Delight and a measure of wariness warred. Did her mother want to please her or the people she had sucked up to for years? Cassandra didn’t voice her skepticism because the little girl in her wanted to believe her mother cared.

“There’s Alan Brown.” Her father indicated his chin toward one of the bars located in the west wing. “He left his team a few months ago. Contract negotiations stalled.”

“Excellent,” Marco said, lifting two champagne flutes off a circulating server’s tray. “I want him on mine. Money’s not an object.”

To think that less than a month ago, she’d planned a different sort of wedding reception in this club. Now Cassandra stood beside Marco in a surreal fog, glancing around the room and realizing every regatta racer they wanted to recruit had accepted their invitations to the reception. “Everyone we considered for a crew position showed up,” she said.

“Doesn’t hurt that they know the
Barracuda
is the one to beat,” her father said.

No thanks to whoever had leaked the news of her design, but Cassandra withheld that remark. She didn’t want to stir up trouble. Not tonight. “Mmm.” She sipped the sparkling water she had chosen to trade her champagne for, not wanting to risk any harm to the baby that she might be carrying, and gazed at Marco’s handsome profile. Effervescence and something more delicious bubbled beneath her skin. “Doesn’t hurt that the best helmsman in the circuit is out of retirement, either.”

“You mind if I steal your husband to go talk to them?” her father asked.

A model-thin redhead wearing a low cut silver gown teetered toward them. Cassandra recognized her former private school nemesis, Bridget, and stifled a groan. “Of course not,” she said. Though she didn’t want to meet and greet the rest of the partygoers without Marco’s powerful presence by her side, Cassandra refused to let the she-demons of her past steal her future. “Go. Recruit a team that will win this year’s Platinum Cup.”

“You sure?” Marco asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Great.” He kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back soon.” Then he joined her father and weaved his way through the throng of well-wishers, pausing to accept their greetings along the way.

When Marco glanced at her over his shoulder, his look of triumph warmed her to the core. “Now that that’s taken care of, we should go and say hello to your friends,” her mother said brightly.

Friends? Oh, how she wanted to tell her mother the truth. That the three giggling women who had joined her nemesis, Bridget, and making their way over to her mother and Cassandra, had never been her friends. That these four women had teased her and poked fun at her for years. That going to school had been a daily trip into a world of cruel, belittling girls who thrived on bringing her down so they could feel better about themselves.

And why? Because she had once made the mistake of demonstrating her greatest strength in a fifth grade math class. Apparently, the ability to create the perfect makeup palette far outweighed the ability to calculate the square root of any number in one’s brain. Oh, how she prayed that these women had graduated from their mean-girl mentality.

“Congratulations, Cassandra. You’ve made quite a catch,” Bridget said, stretching to her full height and casting a sidelong glance down her store-bought nose. “However did you manage it?”

Nope. Bridget definitely didn’t get the Nice Girl Diploma. But that didn’t matter. If Cassandra showed any sign of weakness, or let the old hurts dictate her response, Bridget would pounce. Cassandra inhaled and computed the square root of one million and twenty-four, then calculated another mathematical co-sine before speaking.

“What can I say?” Cassandra inspected her manicure, feigning nonchalance. “Turns out I’ve got more than brains going for me after all.”

“That’s for sure,” one of Bridget’s friends said enthusiastically. “I mean, wow. You look terrific. And that gown is divine. Fits you to perfection. You have to tell me your designer’s name.”

“It’s an Adeline Andre original,” Cassandra said in a cool tone. “The designer released it after this fashion season’s runways in Milan.”

The blonde’s gray eyes bugged wide. “Niiice.”

“You definitely married up in the money world,” Bridget said, her voice dripping with acid. “But money can’t replace good breeding.”

“And good breeding can’t replace manners,” her mother interjected before Cassandra could speak. “I should like to think that your parents raised you better than that, Bridget.”

“Well, I…” Bridget’s cheeks flushed. “Really, Mrs. Nelson. You can’t possibly be happy about this marriage. I mean. He’s a
foreigner.
”

“Marco Delgado is my son-in-law.” Her mother seemed to grow another foot when she spoke. “I will not tolerate any prejudice against him, or my daughter.”

“It’s okay, Mom.” And it was because she didn’t give a damn about what Bridget or her snobby friends thought. Their standards didn’t reach Cassandra’s. “I believe I have the best man in the room and that’s all that matters.” Sure, Marco’s wealth had no bounds, and she had proposed in desperation. But she’d discovered a genuine heart behind his tough façade in every way he treated her from that moment on. Now Marco’s strength of character meant more to Cassandra than all the piles of money he controlled.

“You’re happy,” Cassandra’s mother said quietly. “That’s what matters most to me.” She turned her foot toward the bank of Venetian windows that overlooked the club’s grounds. “Bridget, give your parents my regards, and good luck with that little habit you’re trying to break.” With that last remark, Cassandra’s mother stepped away from the quartet of women.

“Humph.” Bridget scowled. “Come on girls. We’re wasting our time here.”

“No,” Cassandra said. “I’m wasting mine.”

She hurried to join her mother who stood a few feet away. “Mom, you were awesome.”

Her mother turned, her blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Why didn’t you ever tell me how awful these girls treated you?” she whispered. “Is this why you never wanted to go to any of their parties or hang out at the clubhouse? You must have been so lonely when you were growing up. I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”

Cassandra’s throat constricted. “I wanted to tell you, but you and dad are friends with their parents. Plus, once Justin found out what they were doing to me, he took care of the worst of it.”

“Until he died. And then no one could talk to me,” her mother said, hugging her and then holding her at arms’ length. “Listen to me. I know you married Marco to save Nelson Industries, but if you’re pretending to be happy for your dad and me, then you can stop. And from now on, if you have a problem—especially one that comes with heartache attached on the sticker—then I want you to know you can come to me and I’ll help you no matter what.”

The fact that she felt responsible for her brother’s death kicked her in the sternum, but she didn’t dare reveal the truth now. Not when everyone had what they wanted, including Marco. “I’m not pretending. But are you sure? Because Dad—”

“Your dad was an idiot,” her mom said. “He acted without my knowledge. I never could figure out what you saw in Peter Evans.”

“I thought you liked him.” And Cassandra had once trusted Peter with the reason for her phobia and anxiety after she’d refused to go to sea with him. At the time he’d promised to keep her secret for the family’s sake and with him no longer in her life, she didn’t have to worry about the truth creeping out.

Cassandra’s mother “I was nice because he was your fiancé, but no. I never liked the man.”

“And what about Marco?”

“I can tell that man worships the ground you walk on and you?” Her mother touched her pink blush pearls. “I may have been clueless about what was happening to you when you were in school, but there is no mistaking that you’re on cloud nine. You look like you always do when you’ve solved a difficult equation.”

“I have an ‘aha’ look?”

Her mother nodded. “You’re not just happy, you’re in love.”

“I am.” And though Marco hadn’t expressed his feelings with words, he had shown her how much he cared by protecting her secret and helping her move past the pain and guilt of her brother’s loss. Soon, after she confirmed what she already believed to be true in her heart, there would be a baby.

Marco would be thrilled, but for now she tucked that precious idea into her wait-until-it’s-confirmed pocket and linked her arm with her mother’s. “And I’m ready to celebrate with my husband.”

“Good idea,” her mother said. “I might let mine out of the doghouse for the night.”

Cassandra laughed. But when she looked across the room, she caught Marco’s gleaming green eyes. Beside him stood the one man she’d hoped never to see again.

###

“Cassandra doesn’t look a thing like she used to.” Peter Evans knocked back the rest of his top shelf vodka martini. “What did you do? Give her a plastic surgery makeover for a wedding present?”

Marco gritted his teeth. After brokering contract meetings with Alan Brown and the rest of the men he’d invited to the reception, he had wanted to tell Cassandra the good news, but this guy insisted on buying him a celebration drink. Wanting to be polite—after all, he’d paid a steep sum to get into this club membership’s good graces—Marco had reluctantly agreed. But all Peter had done was put down Cassandra and mock her geekish ways. And now his single malt scotch no longer appealed.

He downed rest of the glass, the drink tasting bitter. Cassandra had explained how cruelly these people had treated her, but he hadn’t been prepared for the lengths to which they’d go to put her down. “She’s a natural beauty. Only a fool would think otherwise,” he said.

Though he and Cassandra had come together for all the wrong reasons, somehow—miraculously—they’d found passion, and friendship, and something more. Something special. And something he believed could last a lifetime because they wanted to be together, not because they’d agreed to an arrangement.

“You know what they say,” Peter said, swaying and clapping him on the shoulder. “One man’s treasure is another man’s junk.”

Anger coursed through him, making his ears roar.
Dios
. Peter Evans was a jerk, and his crudeness deserved a fist in the nose. “Some people wouldn’t know a diamond from a cubic zirconia.” Marco gripped his scotch glass tighter to hold back the desire. A public spectacle wouldn’t do him, or her, any favors. “Cassandra’s beauty and brains are a rare combination.” And Peter Evans was a loser who had taken one drink too many and unworthy of Marco’s time.

Now he wanted to dump this jerk and find Cassandra. The music waned, and he heard the band winding down. Much to his relief. The sooner they were seated for dinner, the better. Because Marco didn’t know if he could bank his growing temper much longer.