by Carol Rose
“And, no, I wouldn’t marry ‘someone’ just for sex. But you have the potential to offer me…rewards…on multiple levels.”
Kelsey’s eyes widened.
“Oh,” she squeaked, her voice an octave higher.
Jared smiled at her. He didn’t care how he had to maneuver; he was convinced she was a prize worth winning. He’d make it work for her, make her so happy, she wouldn’t want to leave.
She took a deep breath, a speculative look in her eyes. “You’ve never even kissed me. What makes you think the sex would be that great?”
He was out of his chair instantly, pushing her office door shut.
“Would you like to give the chemistry a test drive?” he challenged, holding his hand out to her.
Kelsey hesitated, her gaze swinging up to meet his. She wanted to kiss him. He knew it in that instant. And, God, he wanted to kiss her. It had taken every ounce of his willpower to walk away from her at her door after the banquet, her slender, curvaceous body mouth-watering in that sinful red dress.
All the way down the elevator he’d cursed himself even though he’d known it was the right move to walk away. He’d never win the game if he signed on as just another one of her boyfriends.
Her eyes met his now, the crystalline blue of Caribbean water. The blue material of her shirt rose and fell quickly with her every breath.
She looked down at his hand…and placed hers in it.
Jared pulled her up from her chair, tugging her into his arms. He felt her tension, the fine alertness that ran through her beautiful body.
She fit in his arms perfectly, a matching puzzle piece. The dark fall of her shiny hair brushed softly against his arm.
Kelsey stood in his embrace, waiting, he knew, but he didn’t give her what she wanted, not yet. He’d thought of this moment too long, waited too many months to rush.
She was on the tall side. All Jared had to do was bend his head to find the sweet curve of her ear. Her scent hit him like a punch in the gut, the clean, natural potency of apple orchards in bloom.
He nuzzled the tender skin of her neck, hearing her swiftly in-drawn breath. Oh so honeyed, the spot just below her ear. He could lose himself exploring her riches.
Jared heard her faint, breathless moan, felt the sway of her body against his, and thought he’d go insane.
Suddenly, he had to taste her lips.
Lifting his head, Jared stared down into her eyes, dilated now with the blue irises only a rim. Her soft red mouth was barely parted.
He took it like a pirate finding treasure. She tasted warm and sweet, the tangle of her breath mixing with his as their lips met. The softness of her mouth open beneath his nearly undid him. His pulse zipped into high gear, his entire body tensing.
For a crazed moment, he thought of lifting her to her desk top and making love to her until she cried out loud enough to bring the entire office in on them.
But Jared restrained himself at that thought. When the time came, he wanted no interruptions.
Drawing her tight against his body, he plundered her mouth until he felt dizzy. Her lips, soft and sizzling, her tongue meeting his with no shyness. She kissed like heaven and hell, her mouth moving against his, her scent flooding his senses.
He was hard as a rock. With Kelsey wrapped around him like tissue paper in a strong wind, he fought for control.
Her mouth, open and hungry beneath his, mating with him like a wanton goddess. Her breasts, firm and incredibly arousing, thrust against his chest. The sweet flare of her hips snug against his erection.
Giving into temptation, he cupped her fanny in his hands, his fingers smoothing over her roundness. Jared rocked against her, only twice, making himself stop when she moaned again, the sound deep in her throat.
This was it.
He’d made love to women, maybe not hundreds, but enough to know lightening when it struck. This moment, this woman trembling in his arms. Nothing and no one had ever come close to her effect on him.
Backing down a notch then, Jared strained for control. He wanted to seduce the woman into marrying him, not convince her he was a randy teenager.
Nibbling softly at the corner of her mouth, he lifted a hand to her back. With the other, her smoothed her hair away from her face. She had hair like dark silk, not black, but a hundred deep shades of brown, rich and lustrous. He wanted to see it spread on his pillow.
Lightly stroking the curve of her cheek, he lifted his mouth from hers and looked into her dazed eyes.
Kelsey blinked, her hands braced against his shoulders for support.
“Better than I’d thought,” he admitted, his voice rough with the lingering shreds of passion.
She blinked again, pulling slowly away, the stunned look still on her face. “Um.”
Clearing her throat, she stepped back to subside into her chair again.
“Okay,” she sighed slowly. “We have…chemistry.”
Jared sat down, watching her across the desk. He still felt the buzzing in his ears, so powerful was her effect on him. But he had to close the deal. He was so close, yet she could slip through his fingers still. Then she’d be off trying to find someone else to marry her.
Striving to sound matter-of-fact, he said, “Of course, the particulars need to be determined.”
“Particulars?”
“To make the whole thing believable, we’d need to stay married a while. Say, a year?”
“I guess…anything shorter would look…funny,” she agreed.
“What else?” he asked, his voice musing.
Kelsey said slowly, “To be convincing, we’d have to pretend to be….”
“Desperately in love,” Jared finished for her, knowing the word stuck in her throat.
“Yes,” she said. “At least, around Amy and Doug.”
“And the people who know either of them and maybe people who know people who know them,” Jared pointed out.
“Jeez.” Kelsey’s slender fingers filtered through her fringe of bangs.
“Just to be safe, we might want to make it a general policy,” he said. “Frankly, I’d rather my family believe us to be devoted to one another. Fewer questions.”
“Your family. Of course.” She frowned.
“We’ll have to live together,” he said with a faint smile, wondering if she’d realized this implication. In these days, sex didn’t necessarily mean a couple even spent the night together.
But he wanted Kelsey in his bed every morning, in his life for more than a year.
“Oh, this is crazy!” she exclaimed suddenly. “People don’t actually get married for a reason like this.”
“Not usually,” he agreed, the words smooth. “But then you have an unusual problem. Got any better ideas on how to solve it?”
“No,” she said slowly, frowning as she looked out the window.
“Are you very attached to your apartment?”
“What?” She looked at him. “I…guess not. It’s just that I’ve never lived with anyone.”
Jared tried to keep his pleasure at this news from showing on his face. He’d always been fairly good at keeping his emotions to himself. Business, like playing poker, required a certain ability to hide one’s hand. But Kelsey would try him, he knew. He couldn’t let her see how she affected him. Not yet.
“I have a place overlooking Central Park,” he said. “Would you like to take a look at it?”
The corner of her mouth curled and he saw the humor glimmering in her eyes. “I'm sure it’s lovely. Most everything in that area is.”
“You need to see it. Then we’ll decide where to live,” Jared said, suspecting she was struggling with the idea of giving up her own place. Living with her at her tiny apartment would be a small enough sacrifice to win the overall game.
He was very aware that she hadn’t actually accepted his proposal.
“What about the rest of your family?” he asked, curious to hear her take on her background.
Kelsey shrugged. “My mother liv
es in Spain currently with her husband. She flies in to shop, but not often. I don’t think we’d see much of her, but…it would probably be better if she thought we were in love. My mother seriously believes in love.”
Jared glanced at her furiously tapping pencil, noting the faintly bitter tone of that last remark.
She dropped the pencil on to her desk. “Oh, we can’t be serious. Talking about getting married, for heaven’s sake!”
“For Amy’s sake,” Jared inserted. “Her and Doug.”
The animation in her face shifted to remorse. “Yes.”
“What about your father?” Jared probed. “Does he live here?”
She laughed suddenly. “We won’t need to worry about playing a role for my father. Yes, he lives in the city, but I haven’t seen him since I was two or three years old.”
“Bastard,” Jared said, his voice level. He could just imagine a little Kelsey wondering why her daddy never came.
Glancing up in obvious surprise, Kelsey shrugged again. “Probably. All I know about him is that he’s supposed to be successful on Wall Street. It’s not that big a deal, not knowing him. Fathers bail out on their kids all the time. Mothers, too, sometimes.”
“It’s still a big deal.”
She fiddled with a piece of paper on her desk. “I suppose so, at least when you’re a kid.”
“So,” Jared said, trying not to hold his breath, “will you marry me?”
Kelsey laughed, the sound a mixture of anxiety and resignation.
He reached across the desk and captured her nervous hand. “We could start the play acting now. Shall I drop to one knee?”
“No,” she said, raising her blue gaze to his. “I think we should play act for other people and be straight with each other.”
“Will you marry me?” he asked again, her slim fingers still in his. “Give your sister a chance to win the man she loves while we share a year of mind-blowing sex?”
Kelsey took a deep breath.
“Yes. For my sister’s sake, I think we should get married.”
CHAPTER SIX
Jared sat back as the limo pulled away from the curb. His rapid decision to propose to Kelsey a half hour before sat comfortably on his shoulders. It would work, this alliance between them. If his mind hadn’t been completely made up before, the kiss had settled it.
The memory of it returned instantly to him, tightening his gut. How perfectly she fit against him, her slender body soft and erotic as she melted in his arms. The apple blossom scent of her hair.
Shifting in his seat, he turned his mind away from their kiss. No point in arriving at his office too hard to walk straight.
She pushed all the right buttons, that dark-haired witch. Seduced his mind and body with her intelligence and the smokey invitation in her eyes. The fact that she continually surprised him only added spice to the mix. Who’d have thought the trouble he’d stirred up with Amy and Doug would lead to this?
Looking out the limousine’s dark windows as the city streets passed by, he thought about how much his family would love her. In truth, they would be eager to meet any woman who’d captured his heart. But Kelsey’s friendly demeanor and charming smile couldn’t help but win them over. Only his mother might be concerned at the swiftness of his engagement, he supposed. Mothers were inclined to worry.
Still, she’d mentioned more than once in the years after his divorce that he needed to put his failure behind him and find a woman who would love him and help him make a home for a family.
“We are headed back to the office, aren’t we, sir?” Clarence glanced at him in the rear view mirror.
“Yes,” Jared confirmed. He had a meeting with several of his top executives from all over the country and had decided to use the limo to make their day even more luxurious.
“Do you have the gate number?” he asked his driver. “You’ll need to go on to JFK as soon as you drop me off.”
“Yes,” Clarence confirmed.
Jared ran through the day’s schedule in his mind. He really hadn’t had the time to stop off and see Kelsey, but how fortunate for them both that he’d made time.
She was going to marry him. If she didn’t bolt before the big day.
A grim smile eased onto his face. No doubt about it, he’d chosen a skittish bride. Her sister’s love for Doug might get Kelsey to the altar, but he’d be the one conniving a way to make her stay married to him. What would win her heart? Convince her that they could make a good life together?
Drawing his cell phone out of his pocket, he punched in her office number and wait while the receptionist connected him to Kelsey’s extension?
“Hello?” Her voice sounded frazzled, as if she were in the middle of something.
“I’ll pick you up at five,” he said. “We need to tell Doug we’re getting married.”
“Jared,” she said with an uncertain laugh. “Are you sure this isn’t really crazy?”
“Yes,” he said in complete confidence. “Five o’clock?”
He heard her hesitation.
“Better to do the thing all at once,” Jared advised. “Commit to the plan. You have to do this.”
“You’re right,” she agreed, her tone stronger. “Okay, five o’clock it is.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up.”
“Okay.” The light disconnected.
Jared returned his phone to his pocket with satisfaction, in no way upset by her irresolution. He was the only man for Kelsey Layton, but he wasn’t foolish enough to expect her to realize the fact. Not yet. She fully anticipated them to divorce a year after marrying. He, of course, had other plans.
Maybe if he got her pregnant.
Jared smiled to himself again, imagining a rounded belly on her slender body. His baby in her arms. Yes, a pregnancy would definitely please him.
He’d have to work really hard to make that a possibility.
***
This had to be one of the crazier things she’d done in her life, Kelsey decided as Jared walked with her up the stairs to Doug’s apartment. She was actually getting married to convince her best friend to get over his infatuation with her so he could fall in love with her sister.
Hardly more than six hours had passed since she’d accepted Jared’s unexpected proposal and here they were taking the irrevocable step of informing Doug. Jared was right to do so immediately. She only had a week, he had reminded her when he picked her up, before Amy took the London offer.
Jared glanced at her, reaching out to take her hand in his. “You okay?”
“Yes. Just a little nervous. Maybe we should have called instead of stopping by.”
He shook his head. “Always more impact with a face-to-face meeting.”
“I suppose so.” They climbed the last few stairs, Jared still cradling her hand in his.
“You know you have to be the one to tell him,” Jared said, meeting her eyes steadily. “You have to be the one to make him believe it.”
“I know.” She let her gaze fall away from his. Acting like she was in love wouldn’t be that difficult. Anyone who’d had seven stepfathers learned how to feign emotion.
Jared led her down the hall, stopping in front of Doug’s apartment door. He knocked.
Kelsey couldn’t shake the sensation of unrealness about this whole thing. Part of her mind still clung to denial. Surely Amy was blowing Doug’s feelings for her out of proportion. She was an ordinary woman, not some femme fatale who snared men’s hearts.
But the memory of Doug’s behavior at the banquet kept reasserting itself, along with the suddenly-significant moments through the last few years. Doug was too available to her, too ready to adjust his life to hers.
Maybe this was his dysfunctional way of avoiding commitment himself. Certainly people found ingenious ways to deal with their fears. But none of that addressed the thoughtlessness of her own behavior, her insensitivity to both Doug and her sister. That was why she stood here next to Jared, waiting to tell Doug of her impending marriage.
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She’d used him, unawares. Doug had been a source of security, a sweet, adoring rock amid the sometimes turbulent waters of her life. Still, that didn’t excuse her.
Doug opened his door, just then, his face registering surprise at their presence on his doorstep, followed swiftly by a flash of consternation on his features.
“Good evening,” Jared said, smiling. “I hope this isn’t a bad time, but Kelsey and I have some news we couldn’t wait to tell you.”
“Of course it’s not a bad time. Come in.” Doug stepped back to allow them in, looking a little flustered.
Kelsey smiled at him, meeting his puzzled glance with a strong urge to reassure him things would be all right. Things would be all right, that’s why she was here. Why she was marrying a man who prickled her with his teasing and sizzled the soles of her feet with his kiss. A man who she’d normally skirt with all the caution of an intelligent girl determined not to get hurt.
But she was doing this for her sister. No way could she find another, less-risky stand-in groom in less than a week. Whatever else, the marriage thing had to be convincing and for some reason, she knew Doug would believe she’d fall for Jared more than some of the guys she’d gone out with.
As they stepped into the room, Kelsey caught sight of Amy, sitting on the couch, her body tense, her face pale.
“Amy!” She reached out to hug her sister. What was she doing here, Kelsey wondered in a sudden panic. She’d been prepared to tell Doug about her engagement, but she’d envisioned a more private way to give the news to her sister.
She hadn’t actually decided whether to tell Amy the truth about the engagement. Kelsey didn’t know which was better, trying to convince Amy they’d been having an affair all along or burdening her sister with the knowledge of her marriage’s falsity. But now that Amy was here with Doug, the decision seemed to have made itself.
“Uh, Jared, you remember Amy,” Doug said awkwardly, gesturing toward her as if he had no idea how she’d ended up in his living room.
“Of course.” Jared smiled, offering his hand.
“Are you…feeling better?” Kelsey murmured, noting her sister’s sardonic glance.
“A little,” Amy said shortly.