He would never forget that his father had thrown him away like so much trash. He refused to forgive it. He did not hunger for revenge, necessarily—he wanted his life to be its own reckoning. Pascal chose to dominate from afar and show his father precisely as much interest as had been shown to him. And he had not wavered in this purpose since he’d been a small boy—save for that one regrettable winter.
It was not every man who could say that his rise from the ashes was not metaphoric, but entirely literal. The way they always did, Pascal’s fingers found the grooves on his jaw that told the tale of the car crash that had left him scarred forever.
He quite liked them. The scars reminded him who he was and where he’d been, and how close he’d come to walking away from his purpose and ambition for what was, in the end, such a small temptation.
Not that his memories of that time were…small, exactly.
Nonetheless, the office reminded him where he was going. What he’d built with his own hands and force of will. It reinforced his goals. All of them sleek, moneyed, and each a pointed jab at the father who had never claimed him and the memory of a lost mother who had left him to his fate with no more than a shrug.
He had no intention of forgetting every last moment of how he’d come to be here.
“If you’ll turn your attention to your tablet, sir,” came his secretary’s voice, excessively placid. Its own pointed jab, as usual. “I have arranged a selection of heiresses for your viewing pleasure, ordered in terms of their social standing.”
Pascal turned away from his offices, all that granite and steel that he found so comforting here in the middle of ancient Rome. The building was filled to bursting with his vision. His money. His people acting to bring his dreams to fruition.
It was time for him to take the next step and find a wife.
Whether Pascal wanted to be married had little to do with it. A wife would make him look more stable, more settled, which some of the more conservative accounts preferred. A wife would conceivably keep him out of the tabloids, which his board would certainly prefer. And a wife would give Pascal legitimate heirs to his fortune and power.
Pascal would die before he consigned a child of his to the things he’d suffered, first and foremost being the lack of his father’s name.
In addition, getting married would put an end to the mutterings of his board. That Pascal, as a single man with healthy appetites, was an embarrassment to his own company. That Pascal was somehow less trustworthy than other CEOs, imbued as they all were with wives and children, all legitimate and legal.
No one ever mentioned the mistresses and unclaimed bastards on the side, of course. No one ever did.
Pascal dropped his hand from his jaw. Something about his scars—which he knew were faded now to white instead of the angry red they’d been at first—was making him maudlin today.
Welcome to December, a voice inside him said. Snidely.
He knew what time of year it was. And why his thoughts kept returning to the crash and the flames that had very nearly been the end of him. But he had no intention of celebrating that anniversary. He never did.
He eyed his secretary, waiting with obvious impatience, instead.
“What makes you think that this collection of desperate, grasping socialites will be more appealing than the last?” he asked.
“Are we looking for appealing, sir? I’m not sure I had that on my list. I was looking more for suitable.”
Pascal was sure he saw the hint of a smirk on his secretary’s face, though the other man knew better than to succumb in full.
“Careful, Guglielmo,” he murmured. “Or I may begin to suspect that you do not take this enterprise as seriously as you should.”
He walked back to his desk, a massive slab of granite that looked like what it was. A throne and a monument to Pascal’s hard-won power and influence. Guglielmo gestured toward the tablet computer that lay in the center, and Pascal checked a sigh as he picked it up and scrolled through the offerings.
Lady this, daughter of Somebody Pedigreed, the toast of this or that finishing school. The daughter of a Chinese philanthropist. Two French girls from separate families that were connected—somewhere back in the deep, dark, tangled roots of their family trees—to ancient kings and queens. An Argentinian heiress, raised on cattle money halfway across the world.
They were all beautiful, in their way. If not classically so, then polished to shine. They were all accomplished, in one way or another. One ran her own charity. One performed the flute with a world-renowned orchestra. Another spent the bulk of her time on humanitarian missions. And not one of them had ever been mentioned in a tabloid newspaper.
Pascal refused to consider anyone with a whiff of paparazzi interest about them or near them, like the California wine heiress who was herself marvelously spotless, but had been best friends since boarding school with a celebrity whose life played out in headlines across the globe. No, thank you. He wanted no scandals. No dark secrets, poised to emerge at the worst possible time. No secrets at all, come to that.
Pascal was a scandal. His whole life had been first a secret, then a shock, trumpeted in headlines of its own. His tawdry, illegitimate birth and his shipping magnate father’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge his existence throughout his life might as well have been another set of scars on the other side of his face. He had always felt marked by the circumstances of his birth, his parents’ poor choices.
He would always be marked by these things.
His wife, accordingly, had to be without stain.
“You do not look pleased, sir,” Guglielmo said drily. “Yet again. I fear I must remind you that an unblemished heiress of reasonable social standing is, in fact, a finite resource. One we may have exhausted.” He inclined his head slightly when Pascal glared at him. “Sir.”
“I’m meeting with the last of the previous selection of possibilities tonight,” Pascal reminded him.
“I made the reservation myself, sir. Moments after you informed me that the meeting you’d had with another woman on that list was, in your words, appalling beyond reason.”
“She did not resemble her photograph,” Pascal said darkly.
“Sadly, that is part and parcel of the digital dating culture we all now—”
“Guglielmo. She was a sweet-looking, conservatively dressed blonde in the pictures you showed me. She showed up with a blue and pink Mohawk and a sleeve of tattoos. I liked her more that way, if I am honest, but I can hardly parade a punk rock princess in front of my board. If I could, I would.”
“The woman you’re meeting tonight has a robust social media presence and absolutely no hint of punk rock about her,” Guglielmo replied blandly. “I checked myself.”
Pascal found his fingers on his scars again. “Perhaps I will be swept away tonight and all of this will prove unnecessary.”
“Hope springs eternal,” Guglielmo murmured.
After Pascal dismissed him, he didn’t launch himself into one of the numerous tasks awaiting his attention. He could see his emails piling up. His message light was blinking. But instead of handling them he found himself sitting at his desk, scowling out at the physical evidence of the empire he’d built. Brick by bloody brick.
Because once again, the only thing in his head was her.
His angel of mercy. His greatest temptation.
The woman who had nearly wrecked him before he’d begun.
It is December, he reminded himself. This is always how it feels in December. Come the New Year she will fade again, the way she always does.
His