“What about your cousin? Is she in a position to reassure your grandfather?”
“I would have thought so, but she and her husband have recently divorced. It came out of nowhere, and I think that’s at the root of all this. My grandparents thought Fleur would provide the next de Garmeaux heir, and now, that’s looking less likely.”
“So you want to assuage his worries?”
Matthieu met and held her eyes for several seconds and then looked away, an emotion she didn’t understand crossing his features. “That’s part of it,” he said quietly. “And the rest of it is immaterial. I’m asking you to come home with me. Meet my grandparents, pose as my fiancé.”
“For how long?”
“At least until after Christmas.”
She let out a low whistle. “Not, like, just a weekend?”
“No.” His eyes narrowed. “Your contract here is for three months. I presume you’re going back to Australia after that?”
“That’s the plan.”
“So work for me instead.”
“Work for you?” She squeaked.
“This would be purely professional,” he promised her. “You’d be my fiancé in name only. Obviously, around my family, we’d have to act the part, and given the degree of media speculation in such a serious relationship, you’d have to live with me as well—no one would believe this to be legitimate if you didn’t.”
“Hang on, Matthieu. This just…it doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it does, for someone like you, but I just can’t see how…I mean…Is this really necessary?”
A muscle jerked low in his jaw. “My grandfather does not have long. If this is what it takes to give him peace at the end of his life, then I’ll do it.”
Sympathy misted her eyes. To contemplate the loss of an obviously cherished grandparent was hard to do. “What would we do at the end of our engagement?”
“Break up,” he replied, steel in his tone. “It would all be my fault. The media will find it easy to believe, given what happened to my last engagement.”
Skye’s jaw dropped. “How many times have you been engaged?”
“Just the once. Believe me, that was enough for me.”
“And what happened?” She continued, wondering at the strange sense of acid that was rolling through her.
“You really don’t know anything about me, do you?”
“Does that offend you?”
“No. I like it as much now as I did the day we met.”
“Good. I don’t mean to be rude. I just don’t habitually google celebrities…”
“I wouldn’t call myself a celebrity.”
She waved her hand in the air, then took a gulp of the wine. “A person of interest?”
“That makes me sound like a suspect in a murder or something.”
She laughed, despite the seriousness of what they were discussing. “I hope not. I could definitely never agree to marry a murderer.”
“Does that mean you agree to this?”
“No.”
He took a far more measured sip from his glass of wine, his eyes locked to hers.