by Lucy Monroe
“Look, Daisy, I’m serious about this.”
Two small fists landed on hips just meant for a man’s hands to cradle and her expression turned downright mean. “So am I. If you want a ride, get in the car. Otherwise you can catch a taxi.”
She didn’t mean that.
She tapped her foot and looked meaningfully down at his trousers. He followed her gaze and ground his teeth. No way in Hades was he calling a taxi in this condition.
“I don’t like other people driving me,” he bit out, trying again to get through her stubborn little brain.
“I’ll make you like it.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
She got all vulnerable and wounded looking and he wanted to punch something. How did women do that?
“And kissing me was?”
“No, of course not. Did it feel like a joke when you were screaming like a banshee in my ear?”
She averted her face, embarrassed...again. He wondered how long that attitude would last once he got her in his bed on a regular basis.
“You told me you’d make me like your tongue and I believed you.”
“No you didn’t. You made me promise to stop if you hit my shoulder.”
She shrugged, her sweet curves bouncing a little and scattering most of his concentration and pretty much all of his annoyance. “I still let you kiss me.”
“That was more than a kiss.” It was important to him that she acknowledge what had happened was bigger than that.
“Yes, it was.”
“So, let’s go to your house so we can talk and explore where some more kissing might lead us.” And get him out of his clothes. Yeah, getting naked sounded really good.
She turned her head. “I drive.”
He rolled his eyes. “N—“
“I told you I’d make you like it.” She winked and he lost it.
What was left of his righteous man in control being thwarted by a sexy little termagant anger melted right out of him and he laughed out loud. “Promise?”
She grinned, looking so cute he had to lean down and kiss her. Just once. Full on the lips.
He stepped back and she gave him a dazed smile. “I promise.”
He got in the passenger seat for the first time since he was eighteen.
***
She lived in a renovated Victorian era farm house on the outskirts of New Hope. The bright white exterior with wine trim and neatly manicured lawn fit her personality. Organized. Shy. Always well-groomed. It had been a toss-up for personnel whether to get her on the accounting track or marketing. Marketing had won by a very small margin.
She had creativity, but it was mixed with the mind of a bean counter, perfect for the marketing department.
She smiled as she parked her Xterra in the attached garage. “Did I make you like it?”
He took his white-knuckle grip off the dash board and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t hurt her feelings. “You don’t drive like I expected you to.”
Sedate and carefully, like the woman who had edged her lawn with perfect precision should do.
One dark, shapely eyebrow cocked over her twinkling eye. “What does that mean?”
“Heck, Daisy, you drive like Mario Andretti on speed.”
Far from looking hurt, she giggled. “I know. It’s my only vice.”
She pressed the button to lower the garage door and then got out of the car.
He followed her, his adrenalin pumping every bit as hard as it had been on the desk in her office. “It’s a dangerous vice. I don’t want you speeding anymore.”
“I didn’t open it up until we were on the highway.”
“It doesn’t matter. Driving like that is going to get you killed.”
She stopped at the door to the outside and turned to face him, crossing her arms over her chest just like she had in her office. “How I drive is none of your business.”
“It will be.” And he’d make darn sure she did it safely or got chauffeured everywhere from here on out.
Her chin went so high in the air, he didn’t know how she could see where she was going as she turned back around. “That remains to be seen.”
Her hips swayed just enough to make him twitch with renewed sexual interest as the walked from the detached garage to the back door of her house.
Arguing with her turned him on. Big time. Being with her at all did it too. Heck, if he were honest with himself and he usually was, he had to admit it only took thinking about her to get a hard-on that could double as a flag pole.
She led him to a guest bathroom. One entire wall had been painted to look like a plate glass window with a view of an old-fashioned rose garden. It looked so real, he could practically smell the flowers and then he realized she had a bowl of dried rose petals on the back of the toilet.
The other walls were a soft wine color and the counter top of burgundy tile shone as if she’d just polished it. From what he’d seen of the rest of her house on the way through, it was all done with the same eye for color and artistic appeal. No way could she afford an interior designer on her salary.
His eyes wandered back to the mural on the wall. “It’s beautiful. Who painted it?”
“I did.”
He spun to face her. “You did? It’s amazing.” And it explained how beautifully put together her house was.
Her chocolate brown eyes warmed with pleasure. “Thanks.”
“I think you might be wasted in my marketing department.”
She shook her head vehemently. “This kind of stuff is fun as a hobby. If you made it my job, I’d get bored with it. Besides I like working for Sloane Electronics.”
They were going to have to talk about that.
She might find it uncomfortable to keep her current position when she became his wife.
Taking a lot for granted, aren’t you buddy?
Not nearly as much as he wanted to.
“The towel on the shower rack is fresh.”
Of course it was. “Thanks.”
“I’ll just let you take your shower, then.”
He nodded. Wondering if the said towel would provide adequate covering for their discussion later. No way was he getting back into his pants.
They were write-offs and he doubted she had anything that would fit him.
He stepped under the hot, pulsing spray, wishing Daisy had opted to join him. It would have been a whole lot more fun. The warm water restored some of his equilibrium, but he grimaced when he had to wash his hair with shampoo that smelled like the herbal tea a former secretary had drunk every morning at her desk. Chamomile, or something.
When he got out of the shower, a pair of running shorts and t-shirt were waiting on the vanity counter.
He hadn’t heard her come in, which was probably a good thing since he might have done something he’d regret. Like drag her, fully clothed, into the shower with him.
He eyed the frosted glass door of the enclosure and wondered how much she’d seen when she’d brought the clothes in. Imagining her looking at his naked body did bad things to his self-control and he forced his mind down different paths.
He slipped on the shorts and then the t-shirt. They fit way too well to be anything belonging to her. He wondered if he was wearing her dead husband’s clothes. The thought gave him the creeps.
When he stepped out of the bathroom, he could hear a shower running somewhere else in the house. What would she do if he joined her? Would she get mad? Would she scream? Throw soap at him? Or...welcome him? She’d told him no to sharing a shower, so he had no way of finding out.
He wanted her to trust him, to know that when he gave his word, he kept it.
So, he went in search of the kitchen. He made pretty good coffee for a guy who’d had a housekeeper most of his life. He’d given up a lot of things when he went to New York to run the Sloane Electronics offices there.
He’d wanted to be independent and that meant learning to do everything for himself, including the cooking.
> The coffee was just finishing when she walked into the kitchen. She’d pulled her black hair up into a ponytail and changed from her work attire into a pair of navy blue flannel pajama bottoms with little white sheep all over them and a clingy t-shirt the same color as her pants. She looked cute and sexy. Very sexy.
Was she wearing a bra? He couldn’t see the lines of one and the longer he stared, the more pronounced her nipples got. Definitely no bra.
“Stop that!”
He looked up into snapping brown eyes. “Sorry.”
She was blushing, which was something he realized he liked. It made him feel all man to evoke such a vulnerable reaction in her, plus it let him know her thoughts were running parallel to his own.
“Yes, well...is that coffee I smell?”
He gave her a look that told her he wasn’t fooled by her bland conversation. He knew what she was thinking and it was making him hard all over again. “Yeah.”
“May I have some?”
He shrugged. “It’s your house.”
She nodded and scooted around him to get mugs down from the cupboard and fill them both with the fresh brew. “Do you want anything in yours?”
“No.”
She handed him his mug and he sat down, watching with amusement as she doctored her coffee with enough milk and sugar to turn it a soft shade of tan.
He shook his head as she sat down. “Why don’t you just heat the milk up and add sugar to it?”
“I do, at night before bed sometimes.” She sighed. “I probably shouldn’t. I could stand to forego the sugar on a lot of things I guess.”
“Why?”
She looked at him like he was teasing her. “Come on, isn’t it obvious? I need to lose a few pounds.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She wasn’t anemic, but she wasn’t too big either. “You’re perfect.”
“That’s not what my husband thought.”
He didn’t have a good feeling about this. “What did he think?”
“That I was fat.”
“He said that?” Good thing the guy was dead or Carter would have decked him.
“Yes. The women in his crowd thought anything bigger than a size three was moo-queen material.”
“What were they, a bunch of drug addicts?”
He’d seen enough of that in New York. Pencil thin women who kept their figure using recreational drugs. So, they were skinny as hell, but about as rational as a menopausal woman going through their last bout of PMS.
She shocked him when she nodded. “Yes.”
“What about your husband?”
“He died of an overdose of heroine.”
He said a word his mother had told him never to use in front of a lady.
Daisy winced. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s over.”
“You’re probably a little leery about marriage then, huh?” He hadn’t expected that complication.
But she shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Hey, I’m not wearing his clothes, am I?”
She smiled, shaking her head. “They’re my brother’s. He stays here when he’s in town visiting the family.”
“Where is he the rest of the time?”
“All over the world.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a merc.”
If she’d been going for shock value, she’d gotten it. In spades. “Your brother is a mercenary?”
“Amazing isn’t it, that a boring, plain Jane like me could have a brother who does something so scandalous? My little sister is a model too, or at least she was until last year. I’m the unexciting one in the family.”
“You don’t bore me, or didn’t you get that earlier?” How could she think so little of herself? “You’re sexy.”
She laughed, just like he’d made a joke.
“I’m not kidding. Do you seriously think I come in my shorts for every woman I kiss?”
Her laughter dried up like a drop of water on an Arizona highway. She put her hands to pink cheeks. “Don’t say things like that.”
“All right, as long as you don’t mind me doing them, because, baby, that’s not an option.”
She took a sip of her coffee, choked and started coughing to beat the band. He jumped up and got her a glass of water, made her drink at least half of it before sitting back down again.
“Tell me about your proposition,” she said, still sounding a little wheezy.
“I want you to marry me. In exchange I’ll settle a lump sum of five-hundred thousand dollars on you.”
Her coffee cup went flying and they spent the next five minutes cleaning up the mess.
Afterward, he dragged her into the living room. “I think we better finish our discussion in here. The kitchen isn’t a safe place for you.”
She let him draw her down onto the couch. “It’s not the kitchen. It’s you. You just offered me a half-a-million dollars to marry you.”
He didn’t figure the problem was that she wanted more money. “My dad died four years ago.”
“I know.” She laid her hand on his thigh in comfort, but comforting feelings were not the ones heating up his insides at that small touch. “I’m sorry”
“Thanks. He left a will.”
Her lips quirked. “Most men in his position would have.”
“Not like this one.”
“What do you mean?”
“The will stipulates that I have to be married within five years of his death or Sloane Electronics goes on the auction block and the proceeds are to be put in a memorial fund at the hospital in my father’s name.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“I agree. Unfortunately, it’s also legit. My dad could not control the finances while he was alive, but he could control them in his death. My grandfather’s will was a little screwy too.”
“I hope you aren’t going to be so stupid.”
“To try to control people with money?” He shook his head. “No. Even the thought disgusts me.” That’s why he wanted to give her the lump sum on their marriage.
He didn’t want her to feel trapped like his father had in a marriage he no longer wanted.
Not that Carter thought his dad’s choices had been all that great, but too many people had been hurt by his mother and his grandfather’s use of money to control. Carter would never be guilty of that.
“So you want me to marry you in order for you to keep your company?”
“Yes. It’s not my mother’s only source of income, but it’s a big part of it and I’ve just worked out terms to split the company with my brothers.” They’d both refused an equal split, but had agreed to take a small percentage of Sloane Electronics as part of their individual holdings. His brothers were every bit as determined as he was. “I’m not letting it go on the auction block.”
“Brothers? I thought, I mean...”
“That Rand was my only brother?”
“Yes.”
“Apparently my father didn’t keep it zipped when he was out of town on business either...at least on one occasion. I’ve got brother who’s a year younger than me. We just found out about him not too long ago.”
“What’s he like?” She seemed totally diverted from the original subject.
“He looks like a football player with a crew cut, but he’s about as conservative as any man I’ve ever met. I like him. So do Rand and Phoebe.”
“You and Rand used to be enemies.”
“I was never his enemy, not really, but it took our father dying and time away, living on my own, for me to accept I was his brother.”
“And Rand accepted you too?” she asked, sounding fascinated.
He wished it had been that easy. “That took some doing. He had a lot of reasons not to trust anyone named Sloane.”
“But you’re not like your father.”
“Yeah, I finally figured that out and so did he.”
“What about your other brother?”
“Colton?”
“Is that his name?”
“Yes.”
“Was he glad when you found him?”
“You know, he was? Of course, he knew about us, or me at least in a conceptual way, so he wasn’t shocked when I called. His mom raised him pretty unconventionally, but he values family.”
“That’s really neat.”
Four years ago, discovering he had another brother wouldn’t have made him all that happy. He’d spent his childhood paying for his father’s indiscretions, but he’d finally come to accept that good could come from bad and he agreed with Daisy. Having a couple of brothers was in fact pretty neat. “Yeah.”
“And you want to split your company with them?”
“It’s not just my company. It’s their heritage too.”
She didn’t argue about it with him like his mother had, like his darned brothers had. She simply nodded. “Why don’t you just contest the will?”
“That would bring a lot of media exposure, something that would hurt my mother.” Appearances were all that mattered to Cassandra Sloane.
Again, that was not how he chose to live his life, but he loved his mother. As cold as she was, she was still the woman who had given him birth and he owed her whatever protection he could give her from harm.
Besides, he liked the idea of marriage to Daisy.
She chewed on her bottom lip. “You’re right, Mrs. Sloane wouldn’t like that, but I don’t think she’d like you marrying one of your employees either.”
She’d have to come to terms with it. He’d made one mistake trying to marry a woman his mother would deem worthy. He wasn’t about to make another.
“Unless you aren’t planning to tell her?”
“What do you mean not tell her?” He turned toward Daisy, his knee coming up on the couch and brushing her thigh. “Of course I’ll tell her. She’s my mother.”
“Oh.” Her hands twisted in a knot in her lap. “I thought maybe you planned to keep it a secret and then get an annulment or something after the terms of the will were satisfied.”
“Right. After today, do you really believe we can share a platonic marriage?” That was one of his chief reasons for wanting to marry her. He wanted her in his bed every night and as many mornings and afternoons as he could manage.
“But...”
“I want you in my bed, Daisy. All of the time.”