Chapter - 1

Dimitri Stefanovich Kaverin sat on a stool facing his best friend slash co-worker, Tyler Moore, in a cheap bar drinking cheap beer and ranting on and on and on about how his mother was blackmailing him into marrying someone soon.

From what Tyler had gathered from his best friend's angry rant was that Valéry, Dimitri's mother, a women he knew better than to mess with, was hounding him to marry someone for at least two months now.

Though Dmitri, being the stubborn brat that he was, had paid no heed to his mother's requests and had continued to go about his life as he usually did.

After two months of listening to his pathetic excuses for not wanting to marry, Valéry thought that she'd had enough. So the fiery red head went ahead and gave him an ultimatum.

The ultimatum was that if Dmitri didn't marry a girl within the next two months, she would give the whole company away to charity- charity!- and this was the same company Dimitri had worked his ass off for the last six years to take it to the heights it was at today. It was the same company that Dimitri was supposed to inherit in a few weeks time.

".....and she won't fucking listen to me no matter what I say. How can she do this to her own son, dammit! Her own flesh and blood! I swear that woman is going to be the death of me. I've already talked about this to Samantha but she said that she's signed a six month contract and if she so much as mentioned the word quit, the production company will sue her. She can't marry me for the next five months! Five damn months! Fuck! I'm screwed man! I'm royally screwed!" Dimitri stopped to breathe and gulped down the rest of his beer.

Ah, Tyler had almost forgotten about his best friend's "girlfriend", Samantha Gage, a tall, beautiful, seductive and sexy as sin model.

Dimitri and Samantha had been in a relationship for almost a year now but because the paparazzi had a nasty habit of making Samantha's and Dimitri's private life public, seeing as they both were pretty successful in their field of work, they both had kept their relationship a secret. How they had managed to do that was beyond Tyler but that was just the way it was.

Tyler didn't specifically like Samantha. It wasn't that he held a grudge over the girl or anything but there was just something about the way she behaved whenever he was around that didn't sit well with him.

But he didn't say any of that to Dimitri.

Instead, he laid a heavy hand on his friend's shoulder and said, "Man, I think you should marry someone. No offense there but Valéry is stubborn as fuck and you and I both know that she can, and she will give away the company if you don't do as she says."

"None taken man, and I know that she'd hold true to her threat if I don't do as she says." Dimitri muttered.

Tyler didn't say anything after that as he let Dimitri think things through. He knew his friend well enough to know that he would come up with something or the other to get himself out of this mess and in case Dimitri couldn't, he was always there.

Dimitri knew that his mum would follow through with her threat if he didn't find a girl and marry soon enough, even if it was just to prove her point.

He understood pretty well where his mother was coming from. Dimitri was twenty seven, almost twenty eight now, and he hadn't had a serious relationship with a girl since high school or at least that was what his mum thought.

She was worried about her son, it was as simple as that. The last time she had come to see him at his pent house apartment, she had said that he was missing a female's touch at his place and that observation was all it took for her to say that he should get married.

But there was no need to threaten him like this dammit! He knew his mum wanted him to settle down soon and he wanted the same for himself. But he wanted to settle down with Samantha.

Valéry didn't know about her son's relationship with Samantha and Dmitri intended to keep it that way. He had once mentioned about Samantha to his mother when they had just met. His mum had taken one look at the girl's face and said that she didn't like her one bit and then she had gone ahead and said that Samantha was a good for nothing gold- digger.

Dimitri knew that Samantha was anything but that.

She was a successful model and was quite rich, not as rich as him, but rich all the same. Why would she be with someone just because the guy was rich when she had enough money of her own? But there was no way he could explain his mum the same.

He knew that his mum herself belonged to a rich family while his dad was a bartender. They had met at the diner where his dad worked at and fallen in love. His mum's parents didn't approve of their relationship but Valéry, as stubborn as she was, had left everything to go and stay with his dad.

Apparently the man was only with his mum for the money so when his mum told him that she'd left everything and come to him, he had flat out refused to take her in and had said that she was a useless piece of shit for him now.

Valéry had kneed him where the sun doesn't shine and left his place with tears streaming down her face. She was too embarrassed to go back to her parents for help and lived on the streets for a month before her parents found her and she realized that she was pregnant with Dimitri.

His pathetic excuse of a father had knocked her up and then left her.

His mother decided to keep him and his grandparents supported her. Valéry was only eighteen when she had him. It wasn't easy to be a single teenage mom but she did her best.

She provided him with everything and anything that he would ever have needed and he loved his mum for that. But the woman was too stubborn for her own good. It was something he admired about his mum's personality but sometimes it became too much to handle and today was one of those days.

He had to give some credit to his step dad, Stefan, whom his mum had married when Dimitri was thirteen, for putting up with her. Two years after their marriage, the twins- Eric and Natalia were born and he got to be a elder brother.

He got along well with the twins and his step dad. Although Stefan had told them that it was fine with him if they didn't take up his name, yet he and Valéry had willingly done so.

He had a business of his own and never interfered with theirs. Originally, The Red Velvet was a hotel started by his mum's grandparents, then taken over by his mum who had successfully expanded their business, converting it into a chain of five star hotels. Now, the business would be inherited by him, that was, if his mum didn't give it away to charity.

He knew that he could just tell his mum that he wanted to marry Samantha and he would, after her contract was over, but he knew that his mum wouldn't allow it. He also knew that even if his mum didn't agree- which she wouldn't- he'd just go ahead and do it anyway because, well, he wanted to and it felt like it was just the right thing to do.

But his mother wasn't the reason he wasn't doing it, well she was part of the reason, but there was more to it.

If he did tell his mum about it, she was going to go ahead and announce it to the world that he and Samantha were going to get married, regardless of the fact that she agreed with it or didn't agree, which won't be good for the contract Samantha had signed.

She obviously will have to quit if she was going to get married and since she was already a month into the shoot, the production company had all the rights to sue her for it. It was all written in the contract she had signed and yes, he had read it all.

He was a businessman and a successful one at that so he could always pull a few strings and get her out of the mess if it came down to that but that would ruin Samantha's name and reputation which she had worked so hard to attain.

Not to mention that this was by far the biggest contract she had ever had the opportunity to sign and he couldn't take that away from her. Besides, if word spread that Samantha quit in the middle of a contract then no one would be wiling enough to sign another one of those with her.

He didn't want to risk her career over marriage.

He couldn't.

The guilt of it all and the disappointment Samantha would feel would be too much for him to handle so it was best if he kept his mouth shut.

But he knew he had to do something.

Anything.

He had tried talking his mum out of it, going as far as asking his step dad to talk to her about it, but all in vain. His mum was dead set on changing his bachelor status and there was nothing he could do or say that would change her decision.

He knew for a fact that even if God himself came down to convince her to do otherwise, she'd tell him to stuff it because she was stubborn like that.

He couldn't thank the Almighty enough for none of the twins had acquired that stubborn trait from her or he'd be pulling his hair out by now.

He was going to go crazy thinking about what to do.

He had to go to work tomorrow but here he was, sitting in some cheap bar at almost one in the morning, worrying about what to do when he should have been at home, trying to get some sleep in.

Well, a businessman, as rich and as successful as me sitting in a cheap bar, wallowing in self pity, now ain't that a sight. Dimitri thought bitterly to himself.

The paparazzi were going to have a field trip if they came to know about any of this, that was for sure. But what could he have possibly done? He wanted to go to a place where no one recognized him. So going to any of the elite bars was completely out of the question because he was sure that someone or the other would recognize him there and then he'd have to socialize.

Listening to some rich brat spewing out stories about how he took over a new company or how much fun he had in Vegas last weekend was the last thing he wanted right now.

So his ever lively best friend suggested they go to some cheap bar where no one would recognize him, let alone talk to him.

He agreed, anything to get away from home for a while.

So here they were, at some bar on the outskirts of Denver, with soft music and drunken people dancing- more like grinding- against each other to the low hum of the music. Why the music was low, he had no idea, but it wasn't like he was complaining. The last thing he wanted was a headache in the morning.

Ah, fuck! He groaned internally. Just what the hell was he doing? Sitting in some stupid bar, thinking why the stupid music was so low, that's what.

Just what is wrong with me? He thought angrily. He wasn't one to sit and wait for a miracle because, well, he knew there was no such thing as miracles.

If you want something bad enough, then you work to get it.

That was the one and only rule he had followed all through his twenty seven years of life.

His no nonsense attitude and hard work had gotten him where he and his company were today. Helping his mum with the company when he was just nineteen because his grandparents had died, hadn't been easy. What with him getting himself enrolled in online college classes, it seemed next to impossible.

But he had done it all, no matter how difficult it seemed. Now, he was the soon-to- be owner, well that was if his mum didn't give it all away and decided that he was worth it, of a chain of five star hotels with the hotels spread out in almost all of Europe, south east Asia and America.

Never one to shy away from his problems Dimitri had taken every problem that life had thrown his way head on and he wasn't going to change that anytime soon.

Come hell or high water, he was going to going to get himself out of this, dammit!

With his new found determination, he straightened up in his seat and scanned the area for a possible candidate who could be his wife for a year.

Oh yeah, he was going get married alright.

He was going to find a girl who would sign a contract with him in which it'd be clearly mentioned that she was to marry him for a year and then she'd take whatever the amount of money and never show her face to him again.

That'd solve the problem with his mum about him not getting married and since this was a contract marriage, he didn't think Samantha would have any problem. Also, he could be with Samantha since his 'wife' won't have any right to tell him whom to be with and whom not to unless he kept it out of the eye of the media. He'd make sure all that is mentioned clearly in the contract for the girl to read.

Now, all he had to do was find a girl.