The Inconvenient Bride Read Free Page B

slack-jawed. But at least she’d finally found her voice. And privately Dominic was satisfied that he’d actually succeeded in shocking her.
    â€œThat’s what I said.” He grinned now, daring her.
    And, because she was Sierra, she tipped her sock-it-to-me chin right straight at him and dared him right back. “You’d have to pay me a million bucks!”
    â€œHalf a million.”
    â€œWhat!” She went beyond slack-jawed, straight to flabbergasted. “Be serious.”
    â€œI am serious.” He grabbed her arm and dragged her out into the reception area where half a dozen pairs of prying eyes couldn’t oversee and an equal number of ears couldn’t overhear. “You want a half a million bucks, fine.”
    â€œBut—” she started to protest, then looked at him narrowly, suspiciously. “Why?”
    â€œBecause.”
    She laughed. “Because? Oh, there’s a reason. This from the man the Times calls ‘focused, decisive, a man who knows his own mind.’”
    Dominic snorted. “One reporter’s impression.”
    â€œBacked up by pretty solid evidence,” Sierra said. “So, I repeat, why do you want to marry me?”
    He rubbed a hand over his hair, still damp from the rain and admitted, “I don’t.”
    Sierra’s hazel eyes flashed. She folded her arms across her Day-Glo orange rib-topped chest, but not before he’d noted the faintest outline of her nipples. He felt a stirring in his groin.
    â€œWell, then?” Sierra eyed him narrowly. She tapped the toe of her boot.
    Dominic gritted his teeth. “I need to get married.”
    â€œI thought only women needed to get married.”
    Damn her smart mouth! He could feel heat climbing up his neck. “It’s time I got married. CEOs look more responsible when they’re married.”
    â€œYou’re marrying me to look responsible?”
    â€œI’m marrying to shut my old man up! I want him to get the hell out of my life! I want him to stop trying to find me a wife. I want him to get his claws out of me and out of the company and stay the hell down in Florida playing shuffleboard where he belongs!”
    â€œLike you would be content to play shuffleboard.”
    Dominic blinked. “What?”
    Sierra rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t want to spend your life playing shuffleboard. And you’re just like him.”
    â€œThe hell I—well, so what if I am!” Dominic scowled and kneaded the taut muscles at the back of his neck. Then he found his rationale. “He’d do the same damn thing I’m doing then. He’d do things his own way.”
    â€œHe’d marry me?” Sierra said skeptically. “He’d marry a woman with magenta hair?”
    â€œIt’s not magenta,” Dominic muttered, giving her tousled locks a quick assessing glance. “It’s purple.”
    Actually it was more of a magenta, now that she mentioned it. A very vivid magenta and not easily ignored, unless you looked the other way, which was what he tried to do. But his eyes kept coming back to it with a certain morbid fascination.
    But morbid fascination, to be honest, was a good part of Sierra’s appeal. Maybe not the only part, but it would serve the old man right when Dominic introduced Sierra as his wife. He could see what he’d driven his eldest son to!
    â€œPurple, magenta,” Sierra brushed his quibble off. She was still looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I’m thinking maybe green next week. I did it green for St. Patrick’s,” she told him with a grin.
    She was baiting him and he knew it. “So, what do you say?” he persisted.
    â€œI think you’re insane.”
    â€œProbably.” He waited.
    â€œYou’re actually serious?”
    â€œI’m serious.”
    Still she hesitated. She nibbled on her lower lip. Dominic remembered nibbling on that lip.