The Bad Boy Billionaire's Wicked Arrangement by Maya Rodale Page A

tech talk. Boredom would have been welcomed. Instead, Augustus and the others had questions about Duke and me.
    We all took seats around a long, sleek wooden table. Chandeliers with Edison bulbs hung overhead. Each place setting contained fine, handmade porcelain plates, silver cutlery and delicate glasses. The restaurant was homemade, rustic chic that served farm-to-table fare.
    Duke and I found ourselves sitting on either side of Augustus. Was it a mark of favor—or was he suspicious about our engagement?
    “Welcome to dinner,” Augustus began, raising his glass. “I know you all are ruthlessly competing for funding. If you are at this table, it’s because I think your startup has promise. But I’ll probably only decide to fund one of your companies.”
    “What criteria are you looking for?” asked a youngish guy with thick, black-framed glasses.
    “I choose the winner based on criteria I will not disclose.” His reply was followed by the sound of disgruntled murmurs up and down the table. “It is non-negotiable,” Augustus said firmly. “If you do not think this fair, take to Twitter and see if anyone cares. Remember that you are free to leave at any time. Nor was your presence here required. In fact some of your presences were not even requested,” Augustus said with a pointed look at Duke, who adopted an expression of utter innocence and said, “Fortunately, we have corrected that appalling oversight.”
    My mouth dropped open. We hadn’t even been invited to this dinner?
    Across the table, Duke just winked at me.
    “You’re lucky you’re charming, Duke,” Augustus said dryly. “Otherwise I don’t know how your fiancé abides you.”
    “She has the patience of a saint,” Duke answered. “And she likes her chardonnay. A lot.”
    “It’s the only way to tolerate him,” I replied dryly, with a dark look across the table at my “fiancé.”
    But Augustus’s lips quirked into an approving smile.
    “Indeed,” Augustus said “Fortunately you’ve enough sense to settle down with a woman of wit and intelligent, though I have to question her judgment if she’s marrying you. Now what was I saying?”
    “That we are all competitors for funding and you will decide based on top secret criteria. Any complaints can be addressed to Twitter,” Duke summed up.
    “Well done,” Augustus said plainly. “All your boozing and drugs haven’t fried your brain after all.”
    “Why don’t you just declare him and his fiancé the winners and let us all go home?” one of the other startup guys asked, not quite able to disguise the anger in his voice.
    “After everyone has traveled all this way?” Augustus asked. “Duke and his fiancé could still screw up.
    “To building the future,” Augustus said, raising his glass. Everyone else raised their glasses as well. I nervously plucked my glass of white wine, but aware of skeptical and accusatory eyes on me, my hand shook and I dropped the wine glass. It shattered.
    Across the table, Duke gave me A Look I couldn’t quite read. Dinner had only just begun and already I had screwed up.
    After the appetizers had been cleared, disaster struck again. A guy named Jack asked what would have been considered a polite and innocuous question under any other circumstances.
    “So how did you two meet?”
    “The news that Duke was engaged was one hell of a surprise,” added another guy—I think his name was Justin. “Never thought he’d be the marrying kind.”
    My smile tightened and my stomach started to ache.
    I looked to Duke, hoping the alarm I felt wasn’t apparent in my expression. We had made up some tweets about our first date, but we hadn’t concocted a story—especially one that we could tell in the cute couple-finishes-each-other’s-sentences kind of way.
    I thought of our flight from NYC to SF. I wrote and he slept when we should have been getting this stuff straight.
    Duke just lifted his brow. I know—I was the writer. The romance writer. I