Claimed by the Millionaire: The Wealthy Frenchman's Proposition. Michelle Celmer

a sweet tone, smiling indulgently toward Tristan.

      Again the toast was in French. Tristan didn’t lift his glass this time. Instead he put it on the table and stood up, leaving the room without a comment.

      Sheri felt awkward. “I’m sorry, my French isn’t good enough to know what you said.”

      Blanche shook her head. “I just said that we were happy to see him moving past the pain of heartache and moving into a new love.”

      But the way they were all staring at her, she realized they knew what she’d known all along. That Tristan wasn’t in love with her. It was fine for the two of them to know that lust was all they had between them. But his family…

      “I’m not the love of his life,” she said.

      “I’m not so sure about that, Sheri. You’re the first woman he’s brought to meet us in eight years.”

      Sheri took small comfort in that. “Will you please excuse me?”

      “Of course. If you are looking for Tristan, try the third floor. Fourth door on the left.”

      She left the room without another word. Walking slowly through the house, she was reminded again that there was a huge difference between her and Tristan. This one—the material things—didn’t seem as big a deal as their difference in willingness to love.

      Tristan was such a dominant, arrogant man, she had a hard time imagining that he was afraid of anything, especially falling in love again.

      But those rumors about his first marriage…about his first wife… She needed to find out exactly what she was up against.

      She climbed the curving staircase, looking at the huge portraits hung on the walls. Pictures of men who resembled Tristan, and some portraits of people who were vaguely familiar to her. His famous grandparents, she thought.

      He’d grown up surrounded by a rich history, whereas she had only what she took with her. Aunt Millie’s warm memory and the cold emptiness of her father’s desertion.

      She got to the third floor. At the landing there was an upholstered chaise centered under a dominant portrait of the Sabina siblings when they were younger…probably late teens, she thought.

      Blanche was seated in the center and Rene and Tristan stood on either side of her. Blanche was elegant even as a teenager, smiling beguilingly out of the portrait. Rene was serious and even then looked as if he were all business. And Tristan. Her heart caught in her throat. He was laughing, very much the rebel in his casual rock T-shirt, whereas his siblings were dressed to the nines.

      She had never seen an expression like that on Tristan’s face and she thought that this is the part of him that died when his wife did.

      She reached out to touch his face, letting her fingers hover over the curve of his mouth. It felt like what she’d done so many times in her apartment late at night. Lusting after a man she couldn’t have.

      And now that she had the Tristan she’d thought she wanted, she realized he only was giving her half of himself. The part he thought she’d accept without question.

      And she knew now she wanted more. She was falling in love with Tristan Sabina, and she wasn’t going to be satisfied with merely keeping him from leaving.

      She needed him to fall in love with her. Not just to care for her, but really fall head over heels in love. She turned to walk down the hall and saw the gilt-framed mirror and the reflection of the woman there.

      She was going to have to make some serious changes if she was going to win Tristan’s love.

Nine

      Two weeks later, Sheri wasn’t sure who she was anymore. Despite the fact that Tristan wanted their lives to remain the same, they had been changed by the “engagement.” Blanche had even taken her shopping before allowing her to leave Paris. And Sheri had enjoyed her time with Blanche.

      She found herself interested in clothing for the very first time. Standing in front of her closet in the brownstone in Brooklyn, she realized that it might be a bit small. It never had been before.

      But then, she’d never had a closet full of outfits for every type of event known to man. She’d turned into a socialite without even trying. She was exhausted, because Tristan had been extremely serious when he said that he still wanted her to work for him.

      Her phone rang while she was in the middle of getting dressed in a Chanel linen-and-cashmere strip tunic that ended well above her knees, showing off her trim calves and ankles. She’d never really thought about her body, but Tristan’s lovemaking and comments left no doubt that he liked hers. Her legs were slim because she’d always lived in the city and walked everywhere.

      “Hello?”

      She was getting better at accessorizing, but had been keeping the outfits put together the way Blanche had arranged them for her. Trying to make Tristan fall in love with her, trying to remember how to be fashionable and avoiding the paparazzi were a lot to add to her life. Most of the time she felt as if she was juggling and dropping most of the balls.

      “Bonjour, ma petite. I’m downstairs in the car waiting for you.”

      “Good morning, Tristan. I’m almost ready.”

      Propping the phone between her ear and shoulder, she paired the tunic dress with a pair of lizard-and-lambskin sandals and a calf-skin belt in white with a distinctive Chanel belt buckle. She had a chunky bracelet that she put on her right arm and then she carefully opened the box with the diamond watch that Tristan’s parents had given her as an engagement present. They’d had her initials and the date of their engagement—the date she and Tristan had made up—engraved on the back.

      “This would be a lot easier if you’d just move in with me.”

      “No, it wouldn’t.”

      “Why wouldn’t it?”

      “Because then I’d have to move out again when the engagement was over. This way, I’ll never have lived in your house.”

      “Or slept in my bed for an entire night,” he said.

      She always came back home after they made love at his apartment. And he never stayed the night at her place. She was doing everything she could to insulate herself against the pain of heartbreak, but she had the feeling that no matter what she did, it was still going to hurt her if he left.

      “Well…”

      “Well, what? Why are you so stubborn about this one thing?”

      “Because I’m your pretend fiancée, Tristan. If I were really your woman and you were going to claim me in front of the world, then I’d be living with you in a heartbeat.”

      He said nothing, as she’d suspected he would. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

      She hung up the phone and turned back to the mirror. Her dark brown hair now had highlights and she knew how to put on makeup so that she looked like all the other women who had always surrounded Tristan. A part of her was amazed at how she looked, another part disgusted. She was changing every part of herself for a man who was her pretend fiancé, and she was no closer to figuring out how to make him fall in love with her.

      She stared down at the engagement ring on her left hand. Tristan had wanted something big and flashy but she’d stubbornly refused. If he really loved her and was buying her a ring that symbolized his love, she would have bowed to his wishes, but he’d been buying the ring for others to see and she had dug in her heels.

      She liked the understated platinum ring she had on. It fit her hand and her finger. And unlike a more costly ring, it didn’t make her feel as if she’d sold herself to Tristan.

      The clothes she knew she’d donate to Dress for Success when she was done pretending to be his fiancée—if she didn’t turn