The Inconvenient Bride. Anne McAllister
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as he well knew, that wasn’t all she had. She also had mile-long legs and kissable lips and a wicked teasing tongue. She made his blood sizzle and the windows steam.
He’d met a million more suitable women, but he’d never met one who’d set him on fire—except Sierra. He’d never met one he’d wanted to go to bed with more.
Or again.
He could have taken or left any one of the others. But not her.
They’d made wild passionate desperate love one night three months ago. He’d been reliving it every night since.
Half an hour ago he’d married her—to be a sober reliable married man, to put an end to his father’s meddling—but mostly so tonight they could set the world on fire again.
But they had to get through dinner with his father first.
He tucked her into the same hired car and got in after her. Outside, rain slashed against the window. Horns honked as the driver cut into the traffic and began the journey uptown. The faint warmth of the spring afternoon had all but dissipated now. And against the far door Sierra seemed to be shivering inside her denim jacket.
“Are you cold?” Dominic asked.
She shook her head fiercely. “I’m fine.” She wrapped her arms around her damned tackle box and sat hugging it like it was some great plastic shield. For an instant she glanced his way long enough to shoot him a quick flippant smile, then stared straight ahead again.
He still thought she looked like she was shaking.
So if she wasn’t cold, was she nervous? Sierra? Not likely!
He doubted she’d ever been nervous in her life. He studied her out of the corner of his eye—her purple hair, her stubborn chin, her pert nose, her raccoon eyes. He fished in his pocket and thrust a clean handkerchief at her.
“Here. Wipe your face. You’ve got eye gunk all down your cheeks.”
Sierra looked startled. Then, “Thank you so much,” she said with false politeness, making him wonder if she’d rather appear in public looking like a raccoon.
But she snatched the handkerchief out of his hand and pressed the button to roll down the window.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
She thrust his handkerchief outside into the rain. “Unless you’d rather I spit in it?”
Dominic flushed. “Of course not.”
“I didn’t think so.” When she decided the handkerchief was sufficiently damp, she put the window back up and scrubbed at her cheeks. It took two more dousings of the handkerchief, followed by so much scrubbing he thought she’d rub the skin off her cheeks.
Finally she quit and turned to look at him. “Satisfied?”
Now she just looked like a prizefighter with two black eyes. Dominic didn’t say so, though. Apparently his silence said it for him.
Sierra shrugged. “Well, let’s just hope I get a chance to stop in the ladies’ room before your father arrives.” She stuffed his handkerchief in the pocket of her jacket, then folded her arms around the tackle box again.
She looked young and innocent—even in her purple-haired insouciance—and he wondered if he ought to coach her so she wouldn’t feel out of place.
But, of course, she would be out of place—it was part of the reason he’d married her, after all. He felt a twinge of guilt and promptly smothered it.
No one had made her say yes!
Besides, there was no point in telling her how to behave or how to act. If he tried she’d bite his head off, he was sure. And anyway, her very presence, looking as she did, was her act.
Still, he couldn’t quite leave it there.
“Do you need anything?” he asked her. It seemed like the least he could do. “A briefing?”
She looked at him, incredulous. “To meet your father?”
“Never mind,” he said, feeling like a fool. “Well, fine. If there’s nothing you need—” he picked up his briefcase, set it on his lap and opened it “—I’ve got work to do.”
She was married.
To Dominic Wolfe.
It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so real. If he hadn’t been sitting less than a foot away from her in his suit that probably cost more than two months’ rent on her apartment. If he hadn’t had his nose stuck in papers that Sierra was sure had to do with a merger that would allow him control of more wealth than the average small country.
Had she lost her mind?
Apparently. Never very much given to second guessing herself, even Sierra couldn’t refrain from second guessing this.
What on earth had possessed her? Why had she said yes to Dominic’s outlandish proposal?
She knew he didn’t love her.
Most of the time he barely acted as if he even liked her!
Except in bed.
In bed they were dynamite. In bed things happened that Sierra wouldn’t have believed could ever happen—especially between Dominic and herself.
Out of bed, though, she feared they had nothing in common at all.
He was using her against his father. He’d admitted as much.
Well, she was using him to help Frankie, she reminded herself. And she hadn’t even admitted that.
Not that he would care. He wouldn’t even ask. He’d just cut the check.
Her husband. Dominic Wolfe!
“Someday,” her mother used to warn her, “you’re going to bite off more than you can chew, missy.”
“Someday, kiddo,” her far more blunt farmer father used to say, “you’re going to leap without thinking and land headfirst in the manure pile.” Only he hadn’t said manure pile. He’d been a little more graphic.
That was about where Sierra felt she’d landed right now.
She shivered inside her jacket and considered opening the door and throwing herself out into traffic. With luck she’d be squashed by a passing taxi.
With her luck, she’d be knocked over by a bicycle messenger and Dominic would simply peel her off the pavement, mop her off and trundle her away to meet with his father.
God.
It was as close to a prayer as Sierra had been in a while. She was not big on praying. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in God. Or prayer. She did. But for the weak and the downtrodden and the desperate.
Not for herself. And definitely not when it came to asking for things. Asking was for people who couldn’t help themselves.
Sierra had always been sure she could.
Until now.
What on earth was she going to do now?
She shot a quick glance at the man sitting next to her. He had his briefcase open on his lap and was running his pen down a column of figures. His pen probably cost more than the rent on her apartment!
But it wasn’t just about money. It was about style. About values. About their whole very different approaches to life.
Like this restaurant they were heading toward.
She didn’t dare hope that Dominic was taking her to an uptown diner or a groovy little club for his little tête-à-tête with daddy.
No, it was bound to be one of those stuffy obnoxious places, all wood-paneling and hunt club prints of dogs with dead birds in their mouths. A muffled elegant place where the maître d’ would look down his ski-jump of a nose