“And the fact there isn’t should tell you something.”
“But—”
“I can find you a better building.”
She didn’t want to sell her grandparents’ home. Her memories there weren’t the greatest. Her Grandfather Madison had often made Jeremy Archer look warm and cuddly by comparison, but Maddie’s mother’s stories of her own childhood had been filled with delight.
Maddie always wished she’d had a chance to know her grandmother, Grace Madison.
“I’ll have to sell the mansion to finance another purchase.” No matter how much she might not want to do it.
The school was too important to give up and Vik was right, as he so often was—the opposition to a boarding school in that neighborhood for the underprivileged was bound to be stiff.
Vik shook his head decisively. “I’ll buy the other building.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Consider it my wedding gift to you.”
“Presumptuous.”
“I’m the only man I will allow you to consider.” Dark brown eyes fixed on her with unmistakable purpose.
She ignored the way his words sent shivers through her insides. “You’re assuming I’ll agree to marry.”
“Your father doesn’t realize it, but I know he didn’t need anything beyond his first threat to convince you to fall in with his plans.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Are you in another relationship?” Vik asked, the words clipped, something like anger smoldering in the depth of his gaze.
“No.” Maddie saw no reason to hedge.
“Dating anyone?” he pressed.
“No.” She frowned. “Why are you asking about this now?”
“Because if you were in a relationship with someone who mattered to you, no pressure your father brought to bear would sway you into marrying someone else.”
He was right, but it rankled. “You think you know me so well.”
“I know that your dad means more to you than you want him to believe.”
“It’s not a matter of what I want.” Her father didn’t think he mattered to Maddie because she wasn’t all that important to him. Not in a personal way.
“Jeremy isn’t going to back off on this.”
“Why now?”
“You need to ask?”
“Yes.” Her father had been too unconcerned about Perry’s scandal for it to be what tipped him into must-get-my-wayward-daughter-married mode.
“Jeremy has been worried about what will happen when you come into your majority for the Madison Trust for a while.”
“Now he knows.”
“I don’t believe he saw that one coming.”
“No. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that I would purposefully put Archer International Holdings at risk.”
“No.”
“But apparently the idea that I might marry someone who might do that had already occurred to Jeremy.”
“Yes.” Something about the quality of Vik’s stillness said he might have had more to do with that than her own father’s paranoia.
“So, he was already considering how to get me to marry the man of his choice?” Maddie surmised. “He’s using Perrygate as a vehicle for his own agenda.”
She wasn’t surprised by her father’s mercenary motives, but she didn’t have to like them.
“You would have to ask him.” Vik indicated to the waitress to bring their bill. “I think the reality is more that he is afraid you’ll end up with Mr. Timwater. Your father will do anything to prevent that.”
“To protect the reputation and future of the company.” Considering Perry’s poor luck with his own business ventures, she could understand her father not wanting him to get even shallow hooks into any part of AIH.
“Sometimes, I think you are as willfully blind as your father.” Vik shook his head. “He wants to stop you from marrying a man who would go public with the kind of claims Perry made in his interview.”
“And Jeremy believes you’re a huge improvement.”
“You don’t?” Vik asked, his tone more than a little sardonic.
She wasn’t about to answer that. “Perry has never been in the running.”
“Several articles in the media over the past six years would suggest otherwise.”
“And the media never gets it wrong.”
“You’ve never denied it, not publicly and not to your father.”
“That’s where you are wrong.” And she had no satisfaction in that truth. “I told my father that Perry was just a friend, but he never believed me. He’s always been more interested in his own interpretations and those of the media than anything I might have to say.”
“I don’t think that’s true, but he is stubborn.”
“So are you, in the way you defend him.”
“Would you respect me if I had no loyalty for my friends?”
“Is my father your friend?”
“Yes.” The single word wouldn’t let her doubt his sincerity.
She used to think Vik was her friend, too.
Then things changed.
Now, she was facing the reality that it wasn’t just that her father wanted her to marry Vik, but so did the man himself. Both had their reasons, but while different those reasons all centered around AIH, not Maddie.
She wasn’t sure where, if anywhere at all, she came into the picture, other than as a minor piece on the chessboard. She certainly didn’t feel like the queen.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I’LL BE BACK at three to take you to the lawyer’s office,” Vik informed Maddie as she unlocked her door and stepped inside.
“Are you sure that’s not a conflict of interest?”
“Would you rather go alone?” he asked, a mocking twist on the masculine lips she’d spent far too much time studying as a teenager.
“No.” Especially not after witnessing the media circus outside her building.
The paparazzi had always found her interesting, but it had never been like this.
And it was only getting worse as the morning wore on.
She’d managed to sneak out of the back entrance earlier, but the story and her location had spread in just that amount of time. There were almost as many media leeches haunting the other entrances to the building as in front now.
Even the parking garage hadn’t been free of their presence.
She’d expected Vik to have his driver drop her off, but she could only be grateful he had insisted on getting out of the car and escorting her all the way to her apartment door.
He’d kept his body positioned protectively between her and the reporters stalking her. Vik was also very good at remaining silent no matter what was thrown at them and Maddie found it easier not to react with him as a buffer.
“Security will have the parking garage cleared,” Vik said after a short text conversation on the elevator.
“Thank you.”
They stepped off the elevator into a thankfully empty hallway.
Vik looked both ways before leading her toward her door anyway. “You need a security detail.”
She shrugged, not wanting to get in to this argument right now, and not at all sure she would win it.
“When was the last time you had this lock changed?” he asked as she opened the door.
She looked up at him, wishing it didn’t feel like all the oxygen got sucked out of the air every time she did that. “Why would I have it changed?”
“At least tell me you had new locks installed when you moved in.”
“Why would I?” she asked again. “I’m sure the building management took care of it when the previous tenants moved out.”
His expression said he didn’t share her confidence. “You don’t own the apartment?”
“No.” She’d always planned to move into the mansion once she’d turned it into a school after she got control of her Madison Trust inheritance.
“Who has a key to this door, besides any previous tenant?” h
e asked with sarcastic emphasis on his last words.
Maddie leaned against the doorjamb when he showed no signs of following her inside. “Romi.” She grimaced. “Perry, but he’s not going to show his face.”
Vik just shook his head before pulling his phone out and making a call. “Get the building access cards affiliated with Madison Archer’s apartment deactivated and new cards issued for her, Ramona Grayson and myself.”
He listened in silence for a moment. “Yes, have Ms. Grayson’s delivered to her and the others to my office. I will pass Miss Archer’s on when I see her later this afternoon. I want a security system installed, along with high-grade safety locks while we are gone.”
The day before, Vik’s high-handedness would have made Maddie livid. Today? It just felt like someone was watching out for her.
“You know, for a corporate shark, you’re pretty good at this white-knight stuff,” she observed as he tucked his phone away.
“I make a good ally.”
“But a terrifying enemy, I bet.”