Sitting across from Douglas in a comfortable leather club chair, Shane slugged back the rest of his scotch as his boss droned on and on about the daughters he’d never wanted.

“…always wanted a boy. A son. Someone like you.” Douglas scowled darkly. “Instead I got them. A mouthy rebel, a shrinking violet, an airhead, a hippie, and a big baby. Five girls.” He sighed. “Ellen miscarried a boy, you know. Between Alice and Margaret. Margaret should have been a boy. My son. Instead . . .” He finished off his own glass, then reached for a bottle behind his desk, holding it up to Shane.

Shane nodded, leaning forward with his empty glass raised. If he had to listen to this whole damn speech, he may as well get drunk for it. The scotch splashed in his glass and then in Douglas’.

“I know my responsibility to them. To buy their dresses and pay for their weddings. But the least they could do is bring home a decent man. Someone to help me shoulder the burden of five girls. Someone to take over the family business so they can start having some grandchildren and be good mothers.”

Inwardly, Shane cringed at this.

No, he didn’t have any sisters.

And no, he didn’t have any close friends who were women.

And no again, he didn’t have a whole lot of experience with women romantically.

But Douglas Story’s reactionary ideas about women and men were pretty awful. Whether Margaret had intended to betray and embarrass him tonight or not, he still felt compelled, as a gentleman, to defend her. He cleared his throat. “Margaret is very bright, sir. In fact, she’s—”

“I didn’t want Margaret,” her father boomed. “I wanted a son! Someone like you!”

Jesus, this is tedious, thought Shane, wondering how long he’d have to sit here and listen to Douglas’ tantrum about his disappointed dreams when his boss had, in fact, produced some pretty exceptional offspring.

Alice owned her own successful importing company, and Margaret was an accomplished businesswoman. From what he could gather, Douglas’ third daughter, Elizabeth, whom he’d never met, was a legal eagle, and his youngest, Jane, was about to begin her medical residency. It seemed absurd to Shane that Douglas was so mired in his antiquated ways that he couldn’t see the talent in his children merely because they were female.

Well, he qualified, the talent in four out of the five.

His mind shifted easily to Priscilla, conjuring a mental image of her standing in the foyer of Forrester tonight, greeting him and Margaret. Priscilla wasn’t a businesswoman, a lawyer, or a doctor, but he had to admit, there was still something exceptional about her. He couldn’t put his finger on it. But with the amount of time he’d wasted letting her walk through his mind uninvited, he had to concede that Priscilla certainly wasn’t ordinary.

He looked up at his boss, whose face was still lined in anger and frustration, and sighed. One thing Shane wouldn’t miss, upon leaving Story Imports, was his boss’s temper. But he would miss the company very much…and grieve all of his unrequited plans to make it a global player. He wished there was another way to stay on and still achieve the role and title he deserved.

“Well, sir, I’m sorry it didn’t work out tonight,” he said. His next statement was carefully calibrated to confirm the notion that he needed to move on: “I hope that Margaret’s refusal won’t jeopardize my advancement at Story Imports.”

“Didn’t work out?” asked Douglas, looking up from his desk, his eyebrows deeply knitted. “Did I misjudge you, son?”

“Sir?” he asked, genuinely thrown off course.

“You surprised the gal. Made her nervous. She’ll come around eventually. I have faith in you.”

Was he delusional? Margaret had made her position clear. She couldn’t have, in fact, made it clearer without telling Shane to go straight to hell and never return.

“Margaret isn’t interested in me.”

“I’m not concerned about Margaret’s interests!” he spat. “I’m interested in a son-in-law to take over the family business. I’m interested in grandsons to carry on the Story bloodline. If it isn’t you, Shane, it’ll be someone else. You’re expendable, son—unless you can get Margaret to change her mind.”

Expendable? After all the work he’d put into the company? He sat up straighter in his chair, anger mounting, making his voice more clipped. “Margaret isn’t in love with me, sir. She’s a lovely girl, but it’s not going to—”

“I don’t care if she’s lovely or not! I don’t care if she’s fat or thin, fair or foul, beautiful, plain, or downright ugly. I don’t know if she’s smart or stupid, interesting or dull. I don’t know, and I don’t care. Do you know what I do care about? Her pedigree. She’s a Story. If you want to run Story Imports someday, Shane, well, you’ll need to become a Story too. By marriage and by having a child with Margaret. It’s imperative for my plans, which I’ve already explained to you. I’m sorry, son, but it’s nonnegotiable.”

Nothing’s nonnegotiable, thought Shane. Perhaps Douglas needed a reminder of Shane’s contributions to the company. He took a deep breath, reminding himself that the best strategists stayed calm while negotiating.

“I understand how you feel about a family member eventually taking over Story Imports, but I’ve been with the firm for four years now. You seem pleased with my performance. Certainly my compensation is commensurate with your approval.”

“And it will continue to be.”

“Then, sir, I ask that you rethink your position about only promoting from within your family.” He looked down at the desk for a moment before nailing his boss with a shrewd look. “If not—and let me be crystal clear, sir—I’ll need to start looking for another position elsewhere.”

“Hmm,” intoned Douglas, sipping his drink. “Didn’t take you for a quitter, Shane.”

Something flared within Shane. He didn’t think of himself as a quitter, and he didn’t particularly appreciate the use of the word in this instance. “I’m not. You’re placing me in an untenable position. I have asked Margaret to marry me. She has refused. But I appreciate the opportunities at Story Imports and would like to remain there. That said, I can’t do that if I am unable to rise up in the ranks.”

“I see.” Douglas nodded slowly. “A threat.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” said Shane calmly. “Truly it’s more of a warning. I will leave if I can’t advance. Any man would do the same.”

“But you can advance,” said Douglas. “Woo Margaret. Get her to change her mind.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Shane. I intend to retire at the end of next year . . . and if I don’t have a son-in-law to run Story Imports by then, well, I’ll just sell it.” His beady eyes were narrow and shrewd when he continued. “But if you can get Margaret to say yes, it’s yours. It’s all yours, Shane Olson. President and CEO of Story Imports . . . to do with whatever you like.”

Shane’s breath caught.

“Everything you want is right here,” whispered Douglas, his voice practically hypnotic. “Right within your grasp.”

President and CEO of his own company by age twenty-eight? It would be seven years ahead of his schedule. And all he had to do was figure out a way to make Margaret agree to marry him. It was too good a deal to pass up without giving it one last shot.

But he was damned if he knew how. Despite the attention he received from women, Shane simply wasn’t the smoothest operator, and he knew it. He’d majored in business and finance, not human relations. How the hell was he supposed to make Margaret change her mind? She’d just shot him down with laser-lock accuracy. Besides, he thought as he recalled the absoluteness of her frigid refusal, was he even up to the humiliation of trying?

Sighing heavily, he looked up at his boss, half-hating him for putting Shane in this position in the first place.

As though Douglas could read Shane’s mind, he smirked, chuckling softly. “Ambition’s a bitch of a mistress, ain’t she?”

Yes. Shane sat back in his chair, swirling the rest of his Scotch. Yes, she is.

“So?” Douglas raised one bushy eyebrow. “I trust you won’t be tendering your resignation quite yet?”

Throwing back the rest of his drink, Shane placed the glass on his boss’s desk with a decisive plunk and sighed again. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“That’s my boy,” said Douglas. “Let Margaret cool off. Regroup. You’ll come up with a new plan. I’ve seen you in action at the negotiation table, and it’s a beautiful thing. I have faith in you . . . son.”

***

Priscilla, who had been listening to Shane and her father’s conversation outside the study door, ran to the staircase, climbing up halfway, then turning around to wait until Shane exited the study.

She and Shane both had a problem, and in a very strange turn of events, they could also be each other’s solution. As long as Shane would agree to marrying her instead of Margaret, she would have a preapproved father for her child and full access to her trust fund after a year…and Shane could marry into the Story family, ensuring his eventual control over Story Imports.

Her hands sweated as she heard the knob turn on the study door, and she started down the steps, looking up just as Shane stepped into the hallway.

“Shane.”

He blinked at her, as though surprised to see her. “Priscilla.”

“Are you leaving?”

He nodded curtly, turning toward the door. “Yes.”

She hurried across the hallway to catch up to him. “How was dinner?”

“Terrible.”

He opened the front door, stepping onto the outside landing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, following him outside and pulling the door shut behind her.

He turned to look at her, his eyes connecting with hers, then sliding lower to land, for a second, on her lips. He huffed softly, reaching up to drag a hand through his hair. “Good night, Priscilla.”

She reached out and grabbed his arm just as he turned away. “Wait.”

He pivoted slightly to look at her, but suddenly she was distracted by the bare forearm she held tightly. She had expected Shane to feel elegant, not muscular, and the hardness under her fingers surprised her. She stared at his arm for a moment before sliding her eyes up his chest to his face.

“I want to talk to you,” she said.

“It’s been a long evening. I’m not in the mood for games.”

“No games. I promise,” she said, releasing his arm. “Just a possible solution.”

“To what?”

Her cheeks flushed. There wasn’t much that embarrassed Priscilla, but she was about to ask a virtual stranger to marry her: this was downright awkward. “To the reason dinner was so terrible.”

He flinched, then straightened, his eyes shrewd with interest. “How do you mean?”

She flicked a glance at the house, hoping that her father had fallen asleep on his desk but not willing to risk his involvement should he see them talking outside. Cocking her head to the side, she smiled, hoping to lighten the mood and put Shane at ease. “Walk with me for a little bit?”

Shane sighed. “I’m really not up for—”

“Shane,” she said, using the same no-nonsense tone that Margaret and Alice used when they wanted to be taken seriously in business, “what I have to say is worth a few minutes of your time. I promise.”

Without waiting to see if he’d follow, she slipped around the side of the house, her bunched shoulders relaxing when she heard his footsteps crunching on the gravel behind her.

“What’s this about, Priscilla?”

She slowed down so they were walking next to one another, over the white stone path that cut across the great lawn of Forrester and up to the stables on a hill. “We both have a problem.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, you weren’t at dinner…so what’s mine?”

“Voices carry…especially when they’re upset,” she said. Then, taking a deep breath, she turned, stopped walking, and seized his eyes. “My father wants a son-in-law to run Story Imports, but Margaret won’t marry you. It’s never going to happen.”

“How do you—?”

“When Margaret was eight, our nanny made us a breakfast of English porridge. She set it in front of us on the nursery table, all jiggly and gray. Margaret took one look, and without trying it, she declared it disgusting.” Priscilla laughed softly, remembering the look on her older sister’s face. “Nanny didn’t want to hear it. She told Margaret to eat, and again Margaret refused.” She looked up at the barn, at the spring sun setting behind it, bathing it in gold. So beautiful. She’d love to paint it or grab her camera and—Don’t get distracted. “So Nanny said that Margaret would sit at that table until the porridge was gone. The rest of us held our noses and ate the porridge. And Margaret was right,” she said. “It was disgusting.”

“I really don’t know what this has to do with—”

“How long do you think she sat there?”

Shane shrugged. “I don’t know. Until lunchtime?”

“Longer.”

“Dinner?”

“Longer.”

“Bedtime?”

“No,” said Priscilla. “She sat there until the breakfast dishes were cleared the next day when she was finally excused. She missed two meals in a row, peed her pants twice, and slept with her head beside the bowl of cold, congealed porridge.”

He screwed up his face in shock. “Margaret?!”

She nodded. “Mm-hm. She’s got a backbone of steel.”

“Margaret,” he said again, shock still thick in his voice. “But she’s so…so…”

“Polished? Proper? Yes, she is. But she’s also strong, and she knows her mind. And in case you missed it, she’s a romantic.” She gave him a look, then sighed. “And your proposal wasn’t exactly romantic, Shane. Your proposal wasn’t even in the same universe as romantic.” Priscilla started walking again. “She will never, ever marry you.”

“Fantastic,” he growled. “Great talk. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“You didn’t ask what my problem is,” she said, turning to watch him stalk off.

He turned around as she knew he would. “Fine. What’s your problem, Priscilla?”

She took a deep breath and held it. “I need a husband.”

***

I need a husband.

The words hung in the air between them as Shane stared at Priscilla in shock. “What?”

“I need to get married…fast.”

“W-Why?”

She dropped his eyes for a moment before raising her chin and looking up at him. “I’m pregnant.”

His eyes skated to her abdomen, which was hidden under a billowy dress, then slid back up to her face. “You’re…pregnant? Who’s the father?” He paused, remembering what Margaret had asked her sister when they arrived at Forrester this evening: Is Xavier here with you? “Xavier Pernaud.”

“The very snake.” Priscilla nodded, then gestured to the barn up ahead with her chin. “Walk with me a little more. I haven’t been down to the stables since I got home. I want to check on something.”

He fell back into step beside her, remembering his brief meeting in person with Pernaud last year when he visited Philadelphia. He was a self-important, preening little bastard, and Shane hadn’t been a bit impressed with him. Priscilla, however…she had lit up like a lightning bug every time he entered the room, and Shane had felt a sharp pang of jealousy that entire day. She hadn’t flirted with him once, lowered her blouse or licked her lips or made him feel special. All her attention had been stolen by Pernaud, and Shane had hated him for it.

“Surely you should be marrying him,” said Shane. “Pernaud.”

“That’s what I thought.” Priscilla sighed. “But he’s already married.”

Shane sucked in a surprised breath, his heart racing with this new, dastardly information. Pernaud had flirted endlessly with Priscilla during his visit, his words oozing with innuendo. Only a bona fide pig would hit on his supplier’s daughter while his wife waited for him back in France.

“Asshole.”

“Oui,” said Priscilla. She sighed again, the “mmm” sound lingering, tantalizing and warm, making a shiver run down his back. “It’s a lovely night, isn’t it? Oh, I love the spring.”

He darted a glance at her, noticing the freckles over the ridge of her nose, the way the gold streaks in her hair caught the copper color of the sunset before them. The slew of mismatched bracelets on her wrist jingled together like a chorus of tiny bells as she walked, and though the feathers dangling from her ears should have looked absurd, they didn’t. They looked exotic in a way that set him off-balance and made him follow her.

Man, but she was pretty. Pretty and kooky and—blessedly, for the time being—nothing like Vicky or Margaret.

“So…yeah,” she sighed, looking away from the sunset and back at him. “I’m in a pinch.”

“A baby.” …with no father. He cleared his throat, looking ahead at the stables. “What are you going to do?”

She shrugged. “I need money and insurance.”

“You have millions,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Not really.” She leaned down to pick a daisy, twirling it between her thumb and forefinger before sticking it behind her ear. “As you may or may not know, I don’t have access to my trust until a year to the day after I’m married. And if I remain unmarried, my father won’t give me a dime when he finds out I’m pregnant.”

“A catch-22.”

“Exactly.”

“So you need a husband.”

“Mm-hm,” she confirmed. “For at least a year. Then I’ll have my trust and my freedom. Voilà!”

They walked in silence for a few minutes, her bracelets still tinkling merrily and their elbows brushing against each other as Shane processed everything she was saying. Despite the fact that she was a Story, from one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia, there was no denying it: she was stuck. She had no money of her own, no job, no insurance…and, he guessed, once her father found out she was expecting Xavier Pernaud’s child, nowhere to live either.

She cleared her throat. “And from what I can gather, you’re in the market for a wife. Specifically, a Story wife.”

“Yes, but…”

…but there was a vast difference between Margaret Story and Priscilla Story.

Marrying Margaret, an arrangement about which he had felt mostly void, was a sensible business agreement. She didn’t make him feel anything primal or distracting.

But Priscilla? Priscilla was primal—a storm, a tornado, a wild thing, the very definition of distracting. She wasn’t sensible. She wasn’t predictable. And she definitely wasn’t convenient.

“But what?” she asked, turning to face him as they stopped in front of the barn.

He chuckled softly, looking down into her big brown eyes, which she’d surrounded with some sort of ridiculous blue makeup. He concentrated on the garishness of it, ignoring how wide and vulnerable it made her eyes seem. He lifted his chin. “No one would buy it.”

She blinked at him. “Daddy would. And you’d get your promotion. Isn’t that all that matters to you?”

Without waiting for him to answer, she opened the stable door and walked inside. 

***

Concealing her worry as best she could, Priscilla felt the fierce hammering of her heart as she walked into the cool, fecund air of the stable. If he said no, she was out of options for now. She didn’t know of anyone else whom she could ask to do this favor for her.

She’d have to throw herself on the mercy of Margaret or Jane—Margaret, who was probably going to be fired after tonight’s rebellion and be in dire straits of her own, or Jane, who was finishing med school and barely had time for herself, let alone the wherewithal to take in her pregnant older sister. She shook her head, reaching for Elizabeth’s elderly mare, Snowflake, and pressing her nose to the horse’s soft muzzle.

“No, actually,” came Shane’s voice from behind her. She opened her eyes but didn’t look at him, still concentrating on Snowflake. “He isn’t all that matters.”

“Really?”

“Really. Business matters more. Good, sensible business decisions that will further my career.”

“Decisions like marrying my sister.”

“Exactly.”

“Then I don’t see what the difference is if you marry me instead. It’s not like you were in love with her. It’s not like you’re in love with me. We’re both Story sisters.”

“Yes, but marrying Margaret meant a partnership…meant launching Story Imports into the twenty-first century together. It was logical. It made sense.”

She turned to him. “And I don’t make sense?”

His eyes rested on the feather in her ear, skating down the column of her throat to the scooped neck of her peasant-style dress, then sliding down her bare arm. His gaze rested on the bracelets that concealed a tattoo he’d noticed earlier. His expression was dry when he met her eyes again.

“I’m not interested in looking ridiculous.”

She felt her eyes flare with indignation at the insult. “And marrying me would make you look ridiculous? Pardon me, but weren’t you the one just hitting up my sister for a marriage of convenience? Not sure if I’m the only ridiculous one in this situation.”

She could tell she’d struck a nerve because he raised his chin to match hers, his expression tightening. “I didn’t mean to insult you, Priscilla…only to say that we’re very different.”

“Yes,” she said, still playing haughty. “You grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere.” She gestured to their surroundings, summoning her mother’s haughtiest tone. “I grew up here.”

“We’re in a barn,” he said.

“A million-dollar one.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do you know I grew up on a farm?”

“You mentioned it once when you were staring at my tits.”

His languid stare was ruined by the bright and immediate spots of red high on his cheekbones. He obviously couldn’t help his reaction, but the stoic way he fought to look unaffected made something deep inside of Priscilla catch and clench in response. She liked affecting him. Slipping her lower lip between her teeth on purpose and staring up at him, she waited for him to say something.

He put his hands on his hips, his expression pinched.

“Maybe this concept isn’t ‘in the same universe as romantic,’” he said, using air quotes to throw her words back at her, “but Margaret and I matched. We made sense. We looked right together.”

“And how you felt about each other didn’t matter?”

“I didn’t say that. Feelings matter in traditional proposals. But my proposal wasn’t about love. It was about business. And, besides, I respect Margaret.”

“And you don’t respect me?” she asked, wide-eyed and a little fascinated by his boldness in insulting her so unapologetically.

“Stop putting words in my mouth,” he said calmly, though his eyes narrowed with frustration. “I respect Margaret as a businesswoman. She isn’t—”

“Pregnant and desperate,” blurted out Priscilla, balling her fists by her sides and daring him to say something nasty about her baby.

“Wild!” he barked. Staring at her, he huffed with annoyance, his carefully composed demeanor showing cracks. He raked a hand through his neat hair, mussing it. “I barely know you, Priscilla, but what I do know feels…wild. Too wild. Agreeing to anything having to do with you feels reckless. In too many ways to count.”

She took a deep breath, looking into his flashing blue eyes and marveling at this sudden show of emotion, of passion. Without intentionally shifting her thoughts, she found herself wondering how experienced he was with women. It wouldn’t surprise her if he wasn’t very experienced at all. What surprised her a lot more, however, was how much the idea of being with him turned her on…the things she could teach him made her head spin.

“I truly don’t mean to hurt your feelings or be ungentlemanly,” he said softly. “This is a damned awkward conversation.”

“Hurt me?” She scoffed. “Do you think you’re the first person to call me wild or reckless? Have you met my father?”

He nodded at her, his face softening a little around his lips as she joked with him, almost like he was holding back a smile. “I have.”

Taking some encouragement from this reserved show of feeling, she changed tactics. “Think of it this way: You’re a businessman, right? This is just a business deal, as it would have been with my sister. And it’s still a good one. You get a promotion…I get my freedom. What do you really have to lose?”

His eyes flared, dropping to her lips for the second or third time since they’d started talking. “A great deal, I think,” he murmured, almost as though he was saying it only to himself.

She couldn’t make sense of his words, so she ignored them, hurrying on with her reasoning now that he seemed less opposed to the idea.

“My father has to release my trust fund to me once I’ve been married for a year, and—and I’ll share some of it with you if you want. Like, a fee for your services. You could invest it or—or I don’t know…do whatever you want with it. You’ll have long been promoted. And you can have a divorce, of course. I won’t contest it. I need this favor…” She whimpered softly. “Shane, I need you.”

 “Priscilla, I would never take your money, and I just don’t think—”

“I can be more conservative,” she said quickly. “I know how to be as proper as my sister. I can dress differently, more like Margaret. I can wear my hair up in a bun if you like that better. No, um…no blue makeup. No more feathers in my ears,” she said, reaching up to touch them. She ran her fingers over them, then took both out of her ears, hiding them in the deep pockets of her dress. “I can behave appropriately and be on time and you won’t have to worry that I’ll embarrass you. I can do all that for a year. I’ll make sure that we don’t look ridiculous. I promise, Shane.”

“Would we live together?” he asked, his expression troubled.

“Not immediately,” she said. “But you won’t get your promotion unless we make it official and believable. So…once we announce our elopement, yes. It will need to appear that we live together, or it won’t be convincing.”

“Well, that’s another problem. You’re living with your father,” he pointed out. “And I have a studio apartment on a fourth-floor walk-up, Priscilla. It’s too tiny to share.”

“I have an idea!” Her heart leapt with hope because it finally felt like he was considering her offer. “Come with me.”

Grabbing his hand, she pulled him down the hallway between the stables, through a door, and into the tack room. Pushing through another door, she started up a pine staircase that led to the second floor.

“Hello?” she called as they stepped into a large, windowed room that looked out over the paddocks on one side and the grounds of Forrester on the other. It had two leather couches, a game table, a potbelly stove, and a flat-screen television mounted on the wall. In one corner was a small, open kitchen with a round table and four chairs. And on the far wall, opposite, were two doors that, if memory served, led to two large, fully furnished bedroom suites intended for the head groom and his assistant.

Tugging on Shane’s hand, Priscilla crossed the room and turned the knob on one door. It opened easily to a dark, quiet, unoccupied bedroom/living room. Stepping to the side, she turned the other knob and found the second apartment in the same condition. It was likely that the present groom was living off site and commuting to and from his home to work, using the office downstairs, on the opposite side of the stable from the tack room, as his home base while here.

Which meant the apartment was empty…and the perfect place for “the Olsons” to live together while they told her father they were looking for a house.

“I was thinking,” she said, turning to look at Shane, still holding his hand in hers, “that we could, theoretically, live here.”

“In a barn?” asked Shane, screwing up his face at her, clearly horrified.

“Sort of,” she said with a grin. “I don’t want to cramp your style, so really…you wouldn’t have to live here at all. I would live here, away from the main house. There’s a separate driveway that goes out to Hemlock Road. The groom uses it, I’m sure, and it’s how we get the horses to the vet or farrier. We don’t drive them over the lawns, you know. Anyway, my point is, you wouldn’t come and go from the Blueberry Lane entrance, so my father wouldn’t really know how often you were here.”

“If at all,” said Shane, looking around the apartment, which was lit only by the golden sunset outside, dust motes surrounding them like fairy dust. “A true marriage of convenience.”

“Exactly.” Priscilla nodded. “For one year. You get what you need and I get what I need.”

He looked down at their fingers, as though realizing, finally, that they were entwined, a fact that surprised Priscilla too.

When did that happen? she wondered. And why didn’t I notice?

Gently, he extracted his fingers from hers, taking a deep breath and sighing before looking down at her, his expression wary. “What about the baby?”

Her hands instinctively covered her belly. “What about it?”

“Do you expect me to claim it?”

She stared at him, feeling hawkish. On this point, there could be no compromise. “Yes.”

“So your child’s surname will be Olson?”

“Publicly, yes. Privately . . . I don’t care.” She swallowed. “I mean, I don’t have to put your name on the birth certificate if you object. I can just leave the father’s name blank.”

“That’s a mistake. It won’t be official if anyone, like your father, ever goes digging. Your child will be, technically, illegitimate.”

As they discussed the terms of their agreement, Priscilla imagined them sitting across from each other at a conference room table, pitted against each other to protect their own personal interests, so it surprised her a little when he paused to counsel her, to make certain that she was protecting herself.

“Okay, then,” she said softly. “Baby Olson.”

He flinched, though she would have missed it if she hadn’t been watching carefully, it happened so fast. She barely had time to consider his reaction before he asked her another question. “How far along are you?”

“Almost three months.”

“So we’ll say that he or she came along three months prematurely? That’s not very believable.”

She blinked at him, feeling a smile quirk up the corners of her lips. “But no one would ever ask.”

“You’re certain?”

“They’ll whisper, of course, because they’re all fucking hypocrites,” she said pleasantly. “But no one will actually say anything. It simply isn’t done.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Scout’s honor,” she said, holding up three fingers.

He looked deeply into her eyes, his expression troubled. “Let me think about it?”

She was about to say yes. Truly she was. But she found she couldn’t. She and her baby couldn’t stay in this terrible limbo. They needed an answer. Priscilla needed to know that they would be safe.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Deal’s on the table…but I need to know now.”

He flinched. “In case you’ve forgotten, I was dating Margaret until five minutes ago.”

“So what?”

“So I’ll look inconstant.”

“Like maybe you didn’t love her as much as everyone thought you did?” deadpanned Priscilla, shooting him a look.

 “I wouldn’t want anyone to believe I’d thrown her over for you.” He put up his hands quickly and defensively. “Not because there’s anything wrong with you. Just because…well, it wouldn’t be gentlemanly.”

She almost teased him. It was the second time he’d mentioned “gentlemanly” behavior, and it was on the tip of her tongue to make a comment about gentlemen who went around marrying sisters willy-nilly, but his face was so earnest, she swallowed the words, finding charm in his intentions and nodding in understanding.

“If I say yes,” he continued, “we can’t announce it for a few weeks, okay?”

“Honestly,” said Priscilla, “I don’t really care when we announce it. I’ll leave that entirely up to you. The marriage date will be on the official certificate, and my father won’t be able to do a goddamned thing about it when a year is up. My trust will be mine. But I do have a condition: we do it as soon as possible, Shane. I want it done. I need it to be legal. I need the clock to start ticking down toward my freedom, and I need to be able to show my father a marriage certificate when or if the need arises.” She paused. “Something else…I have forty thousand dollars to live on, but I haven’t been checked out by a doctor in the states yet. Our private insurance bills go to my father, and until we announce our marriage, he can’t know that I’m seeing an obstetrician.”

“The minute we’re married, you can go on my insurance,” said Shane, flicking a concerned glance to her stomach. “Human resources has to keep my insurance information confidential by law. You don’t need to worry about that.”

She was touched, deeply touched, that he was already thinking ahead to her needs, and something inside of her—something that had been fraught and frightened for days—eased. She was safe. He would not only help her achieve her freedom from her father but also keep her, and her baby, safe, and it felt so wonderful, she almost sighed with relief. He was her savior, her unlikely, stiff, buttoned-up, gentlemanly hero, and she would never forget his kindness to her.

Holding out her hand, she chanced a look into his eyes. “Do we have an agreement?”

Shane stared at her hand for a moment, then clasped it firmly in his, his blue eyes capturing hers, searching them with misgivings. “Okay. Deal.”

Priscilla’s shoulders slumped with relief, and she nodded at him, a growing smile stretching her cheeks. “Really?”

Worried at first, his expression gentled into a small, uncertain grin as he nodded back at her. “Yeah. Deal.”