by Anna DePalo
“As opposed to my father’s proposal of a real but bloodless and indefinite dynastic marriage?”
Sawyer inclined his head.
“You’re proposing that we double-cross my father?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Sawyer replied, “but one rascal deserves another, don’t you think?”
The image that his words conjured brought an involuntary smile to her lips. Would it matter to her father what type of marriage she and Sawyer contracted if the bottom line was that he got what he wanted—seeing Kincaid News into capable hands?
And yet. “We’ll never convince my father that we have a real marriage.”
Sawyer arched a brow. “We’ve just proven we’ll have no problem convincing people the passion is real.”
She felt a rippling warmth suffuse her.
When had she turned so hot and bothered where Sawyer was concerned? Perhaps when she’d discovered their kisses had her seeing a kaleidoscope of colors.
Still, she hedged. “You said this would be a marriage of convenience.”
He gave her a bland look. “Are you asking whether I’d expect you to share my bed?”
She kept her expression unchanged, but at her sides, her fingers curled into her palms. “I just want us to be clear.”
He smiled lazily. “The answer is no. That is, unless you decide you’d like to be in my bed.”
“Hardly,” she replied tartly.
His eyes laughed at her. “A man can dream.”
She felt a quiver in response to his compelling magnetism. She turned away to hide her reaction, surveying her domain, and then hugging herself. What was she willing to give up to save this?
Not too discriminating to do business with the devil.
Sawyer’s words came back to her, and now she knew he was right.
“Six months,” she said without looking at him. “That should be more than enough time—”
“However long it takes.”
“You said it would be short-term,” she countered, her tone faintly accusatory.
He settled his hands on her shoulders, warm and caressing. “I’m looking forward to it.”
When he bent and nuzzled her neck, she closed her eyes. He kissed her throat, and she couldn’t help thinking he was sealing the deal.
And then a moment later, he was gone, out the door.
With her fingertips, she touched the still warm and tingly spot where he’d kissed her.
What had she done by bargaining with the devil?
“I’m going to marry Sawyer Langsford.”
Her statement was met with a joint gasp.
Tamara looked from one to the other of her friends. Pia’s eyes had gone wide, while Belinda just looked at her in frozen silence, her coffee cup halfway to her lips.
They were sitting in Contadini having a casual Sunday brunch, but her announcement blew the relaxed atmosphere right out of the water.
Tamara glanced at Pia. “Any chance you can squeeze a small and hasty English wedding into your schedule for next month?”
“Oh, dear Lord,” Belinda breathed, rolling her eyes. “Tell me you’re not pregnant!”
Tamara looked at her friend in alarm. “Of course not!”
Was it her use of the word hasty that had made Belinda jump straight to pregnancy?
Belinda set down her cup. “Well, we can rule out drunk, since it’s Sunday morning and you’re sipping orange juice, so…what is going on?”
“She looks sane to me,” Pia murmured to Belinda, who nodded in agreement.
Belinda and Pia were both back in New York for the moment, and Tamara had decided that now, at one of their regular brunches, was as good a time as any to spring her momentous news on them.
“Of course I haven’t lost my mind,” she said.
At least, she didn’t think she had.
Belinda gave her a penetrating look. “Has your father strong-armed you into this? I know he saw you and Sawyer together at the wedding reception—”
“Oh, Tamara,” Pia jumped in, her brow puckered, “there has to be a way out!”
“And it’s easier to find a way out before the wedding than after,” Belinda muttered.
Tamara took a fortifying breath. “My father hasn’t pressed anything.” Sort of. If it hadn’t been for her father’s conditions on the merger of Kincaid News with Melton Media, Sawyer would never have proposed. It was a humiliating way to have received her first marriage proposal, but a humiliation that brought salvation for her business. “In fact, I’ve hardly ever given a decision this much calculated thinking.”
“Uh-oh,” Pia breathed. “Calculated thinking for a wedding? Oh, Tamara!”
Tamara repressed a sigh. Of course, Pia, the eternal romantic, would be shocked and alarmed at the idea of a marriage of convenience.
“Beats the opposite,” Belinda put in. “I don’t recommend the impetuous elopement.”
Tamara raised her hand. “Hear me out.”
“I’m all ears,” Belinda replied. “This I have to hear.”
Tamara steadied herself. “You both know Pink Teddy Designs has been in financial difficulty for some time.” It was a painful admission. Her business was everything to her—her dream, her quest for validation. “But what you don’t know is that recently things have come to a head. My rent is set to increase and I’ve tapped out my credit.”
Belinda’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re marrying Sawyer for financial reasons?” she guessed. “Can I just weigh in with the fact that money is on my list of bad reasons to get married?”
Pia shook her head. “It’ll never last.”
Tamara pushed at her breakfast plate. “I don’t want it to last!”
Pia’s eyes rounded. “And what about poor Tom?”
“Poor Tom is on his way to Los Angeles, hot on the trail of a record deal, thanks to Sawyer.”
“Wonderful,” Belinda remarked sarcastically.
“I mentioned my father had a long-cherished wish to unite the Kincaid and Langsford families,” Tamara said. “But what I didn’t mention is that he’s made his agreement to Melton Media’s merger with Kincaid News conditional on Sawyer convincing me to marry him.”
Pia gasped, her hand briefly covering her mouth. “You’re willing to throw away your chance to marry for love?”
Tamara was tempted to say she was a bit cynical about love after the examples set by her parents, but she stifled her reply. She supposed in Pia’s business, it was helpful—maybe even necessary—to believe in true love. Why disabuse her friend?
And, truth be told, Tamara conceded, she wasn’t a hardened cynic. Her secret indulgence was chick flicks that made her misty-eyed. She’d wonder whether it was possible to find a man who set her pulse racing and held her close to his heart. She’d wonder if, despite her parents’ example, a happily-ever-after was attainable for her.
She pasted a smile on her face. “No, don’t worry. I’m not giving up the chance of love forever. With any luck—” her lips twisted self-deprecatingly “—a second marriage will be the charm.”
“Or third,” Belinda muttered.
“Or third,” she agreed, since it was clear her friend was hoping for a third wedding.
Thrusting aside the fact that her own father had been married three times, Tamara quickly explained the terms of her agreement with Sawyer for a short-term marriage of convenience: Kincaid News in return for the money to save Pink Teddy Designs.
“I don’t know,” Pia said doubtfully when she’d finished, shaking her head.
“What could go wrong?” Tamara asked. “In six months, a year at most, we both go our separate ways.”
“Famous last words,” Belinda said. “It’s taken me more than two years to get an annulment.”
Tamara needed to know her friends were behind her. More importantly, she needed both her friends’ help if she was to convince her father that she and Sawyer had succumbed to dynastic expectations rather than come up with a plan of their own.
&n
bsp; “I need you both to act as if you believe Sawyer and I have finally decided to do our family duty,” she said baldly. “Otherwise I’ll never convince my father.”
Pia’s eyes widened, and Belinda snorted disbelievingly.
“Your father will never buy it,” Belinda said.
“It’s my only hope.”
Her only hope, and Pink Teddy’s.
Neither Belinda nor Pia had a ready reply, but Tamara could tell from their expressions that they reluctantly understood her predicament.
She sucked in a breath. “So will you do it? Will you show up when I marry—” she stumbled over the word, and Belinda looked at her keenly “—Sawyer? Even if it turns out to be in a drafty British castle?”
Belinda sighed. “I’ll bring my Wellingtons.”
“And I’ll help coordinate,” Pia chimed in.
Tamara glanced from one to the other of her friends. “Even if Colin and Hawk are almost certainly going to be there at Sawyer’s invitation?”
There was a palpable pause.
Pia grimaced. “You know you can count on me. Just keep me away from the hors d’oeuvres.”
“I’ll bring my attorney,” Belinda added grimly.
Tamara laughed.
For a moment, thanks to her friends, she could forget just how complicated a situation she was getting into.
Still, this was surely going to be some wedding.
Six
“Tell him to come in,” Sawyer said into the speakerphone, and then rose from behind his desk.
Floor-to-ceiling windows revealed a spectacular view of the Hudson River. The corporate offices of Melton Media were located on the upper floors of a gleaming midtown Manhattan building.
Sawyer had taken several strides when his office door opened and Viscount Kincaid strolled in.
“Melton,” the viscount acknowledged jovially as he came forward and shook hands.
Sawyer wasn’t fooled for a second. Though Tamara’s father was a couple of inches shorter than his own six-two, the older man had an air of prepossession and command that only someone born into authority or accustomed to it for a long time could exude.
In Kincaid, diabolically, the genial visage of a Santa Claus was joined to the shrewd mind of a Machiavelli—a trap for the unwary.
“Shall we proceed down to the executive dining room?” Sawyer asked.
It was well before the daily news deadline for East Coast newspapers going to press, but they were both busy men.
“I’m ready whenever you are,” Kincaid said, nevertheless reaching into the inner pocket of his suit jacket for his buzzing BlackBerry.
Kincaid kept up his end of the phone conversation as they made their way downstairs via the suspended metal staircase that joined the executive floors of Melton Media. They were far from the chaos of the newsroom. Melton Media’s corporate offices were housed in a separate building from The New York Intelligencer.
Sawyer listened as, apparently, Kincaid attempted to verify by phone a juicy rumor that he’d heard at a cocktail party the night before. Clearly, the viscount had the news business in his blood and wasn’t averse to rolling up his sleeves and working the phones himself when necessary.
Tellingly, though, Sawyer couldn’t discern from Kincaid’s end of the conversation what the rumor was or whom the older man was talking to. Sawyer felt the competitive juices start to flow in his blood.
Kincaid was a worthy adversary and would be a worthy business partner.
“Rumor confirmed?” Sawyer asked with feigned idle curiosity when the viscount finished his call.
“Yes,” Kincaid replied with a note of satisfaction.
“I thought we were on the same team,” Sawyer said with mock reproof.
“Not yet. Not until the merger goes through.”
Sawyer’s chuckle held an element of respect. Viscount Kincaid might be a family friend, but he was a fierce competitor.
When Sawyer had asked for this meeting, he’d suggested he pay a call to Kincaid headquarters, but the viscount had gainsaid him. Perhaps Kincaid wanted another opportunity to take a look around the company that would soon merge with Kincaid News.
Sawyer had inherited an already significant company from his father and had built it up, branching out internationally from the British newspapers and radio station that his father and grandfather had run. His grandfather had married into the newspaper business by wedding a publishing heiress, but he’d taken to it like a natural.
Kincaid was a different animal altogether. He’d labored in the trenches of the news business, selling family real estate in Scotland to build up his company. His gamble had paid off handsomely, but Kincaid was no fool. He knew that, in order to survive, Kincaid News needed fresh blood—someone well positioned and savvy enough to take advantage of the new mediums of communication out there, from online sites and streaming to smartphones.
Namely, the viscount needed Sawyer.
And Sawyer was eager to absorb a competitor at a relative bargain.
At that thought, Sawyer paused and mentally grimaced. Correction: a relative bargain and a bargaining relative. Kincaid had turned the business into a family legacy, and he wasn’t going to let it pass into other hands without a familial tie.
He and the viscount entered the executive dining room, which was one floor below Sawyer’s office and had an equally impressive view of the Hudson. The long table had been set for two.
They dined on steak frites accompanied by iced tea. The conversation moved idly from politics and the upcoming elections to the doings of various business associates, until, finally, Viscount Kincaid set aside his fork and fixed Sawyer with a piercing look.
“Well, I know you didn’t invite me here to discuss golf,” Kincaid said gruffly, “so out with it, Melton.”
Unperturbed, Sawyer took his time wiping his mouth and setting aside his napkin. Then he looked at the other man squarely.
“I’d like to ask for Tamara’s hand in marriage.”
Kincaid’s eyebrows rose. “Bloody hell, you’ve done it.”
Sawyer nodded.
“How?”
Sawyer gave a ghost of a smile. “I don’t suppose it could be my charm and persuasiveness.”
Kincaid shook his head. “Hogwash. Tamara would never fall for it.”
“I have been wooing her.” It wasn’t far from the truth. He had been trying to convince Tamara to see things his way.
Kincaid’s eyebrows drew together. “Since when?”
“We preferred to conduct our relationship away from prying eyes.”
Sawyer thought back to his last private encounter with Tamara. She’d been so responsive in his arms, her luscious female curves pressed into him. And he—he’d wanted to tumble her backward and have hot, sweaty sex with her right there in her studio, her red hair fanning out on that damnable red velour couch.
Sawyer felt his body tighten at the memory, and shifted in his seat. “I think you’ll find that Tamara isn’t unaware of her familial obligations.”
His last statement was met with a pause, but then Kincaid waved it away with one hand. “Certainly not in character,” the viscount growled. “She’s shown nothing but disregard until now.” Kincaid shook his head. “Her sisters, too. Three daughters and not a one with an appreciation of what it took to built Kincaid News or how I footed the bill for those fine prep school educations.”
“She does bear you some affection, you know.”
Sawyer would bet that beneath Tamara’s tartness and Viscount Kincaid’s bluster lay a genuine—if oftentimes fraught—bond between father and daughter.
A light appeared in Viscount Kincaid’s eyes, but it was quickly replaced by a look of cloaked cunning. “Is that so? Then I’ll expect a grandchild to be in the cards in the not too distant future.”
Sawyer schooled his expression—this was a complication that he hadn’t foreseen. “Perhaps Tamara and I would like to enjoy ourselves first.”
“Enjoy yourselves later.”
Kincaid settled back in his chair. “In fact, I like the idea of a grandchild so much I fancy I’ll make it a condition of the merger.”
Cagey bastard.
“My daughter enceinte before the merger goes through.”
“That wasn’t part of the agreement.”
“How much do you want this merger?”
“As much as you do, I would have thought,” Sawyer replied drily.
“I can wait,” Kincaid returned. “I’ve got some life in me yet, and God knows I’ve long since pinned my hopes on a third generation taking over the reins of Kincaid News.” Kincaid leaned forward. “The question is, will you or someone else be a worthy caretaker for Kincaid News in the meantime?”
Sawyer said nothing. He’d learned long ago that a tough bargainer didn’t jump in with his next best offer right away. He stayed cool and deliberated his options.
In this case, he supposed he could call the older man’s bluff. Good luck convincing Tamara or either of her sisters to marry another newsman.
But an image suddenly flashed through his mind of Ta mara being bedded by some faceless pretender to the throne of Kincaid News, attempting to conceive the sought-for grandchild. He discovered that the thought of some other man fathering Tamara’s child didn’t sit well with him.
Better me than some faceless bastard, Sawyer thought.
Kincaid sat back in his seat, a smile hovering at his lips, seemingly satisfied by Sawyer’s reaction, or at least lack of immediate objection. “Marrying Tamara is the first step. I’ll do everything in my power to see that you actually make it to the altar, including making all the necessary public pronouncements that I’m overjoyed.”
“Naturally,” Sawyer said sardonically.
Kincaid leaned forward again, apparently warming to his subject. “I’ve done all I can up till now to help you, including—” Kincaid looked suddenly sly “—sharing all I know about Tamara’s comings and goings.”
Sawyer had to admit Kincaid had been helpful in that respect. Without inside knowledge, he’d have had a harder time.
“But the second step, the necessary step before I sign over Kincaid News, is getting Tamara pregnant,” Kincaid went on, quirking a brow. “And for that, you’re on your own.”