The Tycoon's Make-Believe Fiancée Page 0,4

suddenly realized what she’d done and forced her eyes to look back at his. “Yes, but if you don’t know my name immediately, it will at least give me a running start.”

She had a point. And she was funny. He was even more intrigued. “What’s your name?”

Miranda knew she couldn’t keep it from him and she was being ridiculous to even try. But she instinctively knew that flying under the radar with this man was the best way to go. An innate sense of self-preservation reared its head and she suspected that giving him her name would be dangerous. But what was the alternative?

“I can see that your name is a difficult question. So let’s try another one. What do you do?”

She blinked, her lips pursing as she tried to remember her role. “Um….”

That supercilious eyebrow went up once again. “I can see that I’m probably paying you too much. You don’t know your name and you don’t know what you do for my company.”

“Miranda!” she snapped, irritated by his deep voice that sounded like he was laughing at her. But that couldn’t be true because Royston Carmichael was reputed to not have a sense of humor. “Miranda Lillith. And I work in your finance department. I help the chief financial officer with the quarterly and monthly reports.”

He nodded his head, thinking that he liked her even more because of her spirited reply. “And how long have you been working for me?”

She tried very hard not to fidget, but he was so close! She wanted to step back, put some space between them. Enough space so she couldn’t smell his incredible, male scent that filled her head with some sort of enticing spice that she couldn’t identify. “Two years.”

“Where did you go to school?”

She thought about telling him the name of her elementary school, but really didn’t want to be fired. “NYU,” she finally replied.

Royston watched her, sensing something deeper than she was revealing to him. “Are you married?”

“No!” she replied, bristling.

“Boyfriend?” he demanded again.

Had he moved closer? “None of your business,” she came right back, trying not to breathe in too deeply. Maybe if she stopped breathing, she wouldn’t smell him. Was that chocolate? Good grief the man smelled good…she shook her head, telling herself that she didn’t need to identify what this man smelled like. He was the enemy! “And why are you asking me all of these questions? Don’t you want to know about your profit margins or the new productivity numbers?”

That surprised him because someone at her level shouldn’t understand all the numbers on that report. “What do you know of the gross contribution for my divisions?” he tested.

Whew, she thought, relieved that he was moving away from personal issues. This was familiar ground. “Which division?” she asked.

“Retail.”

She straightened her shoulders and started spewing out the numbers for his various companies within the retail division. He owned several department stores and she quoted the increase in sales from this quarter to the previous year’s quarter. “In the United States, the west coast and east coast stores are doing better than the Midwest, but the stores located in the southern states are doing the best, increasing their margins as the economy starts to recover.” She then went on to quote specific percentages and variances.

He couldn’t help but be impressed. “What about overseas?”

“Europe is doing well but Asia is taking off. The stores in China are slowing down as their growth also slows, but the comparison isn’t linear.”

He shot question after question at her, moving to his desk and reviewing the report. He waved her into one of the chairs opposite his desk, shooting out rapid fire questions about his businesses and he was stunned by the amount of knowledge the woman could quote from memory, but she had also done some in-depth analysis of the problems and successes, which products were off and which ones had either met or exceeded expectations.

“What’s your boyfriend’s name?” he finally finished off.

“I don’t…” She stopped as soon as she realized what he’d done, glaring at him across his desk.

Royston couldn’t help the deep chuckle that escaped once again. She looked so adorable sitting there glaring at him as if she had the right to admonish him. “That was cheating,” she told him, crossing her arms across her chest.

Royston was delighted with the woman and instinctively knew that she would be perfect for the role of his fake fiancée. He considered his plan for a long moment, factored in all the problems