“I’m new in town, care to show me the sights?”

The blonde’s husky, sultry, entendre-laden voice was a temptation most men would be morons to refuse. Now, I’d hate to say something like “but I wasn’t most men” because any man who says that sound like a complete fucking douchebag. But, in this instance, and on that day, I really wasn’t like most men.

Not when it came to thin innuendos from overly-primped up blondes. And definitely not when I’d already chosen to make today the day I made my offer.

“You know, I’d love to,” I grinned, my deep voice rumbling through the air between us, making the blonde’s breath catch a little. “But I have work to do and an early day tomorrow. How about you drop by some other time?” I gave her a wink with hazel eyes that were more gold than anything, and one of those patented grins that always drew the ladies in. Charming, sexy, but also a little self-deprecating. They ate that shit up.

Plus, it was just a line. And in this case, a completely empty, meaningless one. Something bartenders say to be charming, I guess. Not a single part of me actually hoped she’d ever stroll back in to drape her tits over the bar like that. I mean, c’mon, I was a red-blooded guy just as much as the next, but something that, well, laid out and easy never appealed to me. The blonde was just trying too hard, and to me, it came off as unappealing, no matter how low her shirt was unbuttoned or how high she’d hiked that skirt of hers.

Her response though was to lean even further over the bar, crooking her finger at me. I smiled to hide the roll of my eyes as I leaned down to let her whisper whatever last resort she was going for into my ear.

“Or you could take me into the back room right now and fuck my brains out.”

…And they say subtlety is a lost art.

Look, I’m not going to lie and claim to be some sort of monk. But again, no. She was too obvious, too devoid of any sort of mystery. Or maybe it was some ancient Neanderthal need in my male brain to want to have to chase—something that in-your-face was unappealing somehow.

In any case, no. No to her, and no to her eye-rolling offer. I had a bar to run. I wasn’t just the bartender, I was the owner, and I had things to contemplate. Things like taxes, my father’s death and his will, my best friend’s sick little girl, you know, important shit. Shit that couldn’t be brushed off to bang a hot blonde in my office, even if it was a distraction most guys would kill for.

And besides that, there was the fact that today was the day I was making my offer. Today, I had a date with destiny, and it didn’t include this woman.

…It included the mousy little non-vixen in the olive-green cardigan sitting in the corner of my bar.

I glanced at her to see her nose stuck in her book. It was always in a book, that cute little nose. She might have been cuter, if she didn’t hide behind a huge pair of glasses, frumpy clothes, and with her light brown hair pulled into a severe bun that must have hurt her head.

And somehow, that night, without any sort of lead up, I was going to have to figure out how to convince her to marry me.

Yeah.

In name only, of course, but I’d do it the old-fashioned way if she wanted. She gave me the impression there was a tiger underneath that façade, and I’d always been curious. She was a quiet patron, but a regular, and never caused me problems. In fact, she could solve a huge one for me, if she’d agree to the fucking ludicrous offer I was about to make her.

The blonde finally took a hint and walked away, leaving me to contemplate the woman I only knew as June. She was quiet, an introvert if I’d ever seen one. I’d had a bomb dropped on me earlier that day, one I hadn’t expected, and as soon as June had walked in earlier, I’d know she could be the answer to all of my problems. I’d given her the usual, a glass of chilled Chardonnay, and waited on the few other patrons I had.

I’d been about to sit down to talk to her when the blonde came in, full of desperate promises and all but squirming with desire. Maybe another version of me would have hated to brush her off, but that wasn’t the me right now. I had too many things to think about, and take care of. So with the blonde gone, I eyed up June again.

Shit. I was nervous, and I never got nervous. I knew this could go a hundred different ways, and all of them could end up with me slapped upside the head. That or flat-out punched in the mouth.

But with June, I was nervous, and I knew why. It was that this girl, for whatever reasons I couldn’t even hope to understand, got me twisted.

She had for just about as long as she’d been coming in here. The one-word answers to questions, the way she avoided eye-contact, the frumpy clothes, the mousy overall look. Yeah, all of it should have made her invisible to me. But it didn’t. It did the opposite.

…It made me want her. Badly. Maybe it was because she was so aloof. Maybe it was the standoffish way she seemed to barely acknowledge me. It was like dare.

I watched her and noted how the light gleamed off of her silky hair. I wondered what would make a woman so young, so obviously beautiful, hide the way she had. A bad childhood? An awful experience? Or was she just one of those that wasn’t interested in cookie cutter appearances, uninterested in clothes and makeup? That was always a possibility.

Hmmm, now that she’d taken her glasses off to rub at her eyes, I could see her face much better. I could see she really was beautiful, even without the makeup. Like, that kind of natural beauty that takes your breath away. She pushed the glasses back onto her face and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Her eyes caught mine and I smiled at her. She looked surprised but didn’t look away.

Yeah, it was time.

I cleared my throat, stepped out from behind the bar, and strolled over to her table.

“Hey, June.” She’d been a patron since I first opened the bar a few years ago, and I’d made it a point to ask her name after a while. She never volunteered much in the way of information, but I’d learned a little bit about her.

She ran a local nonprofit organization. Something about… nope, shit. I had no idea. I knew she lived alone, though. No boyfriend. No husband. No kids. She never got drunk, ever, and she was always… quiet. Even when you were near her and spoke to her, there was this air of calm around her. I’d noticed it, but never thought about it before. I felt it then as I took a seat across from her and asked how she was. It was something I’d do when it was slow, go around and talk to the regulars, just to check on them.

“I’m, uh…” she jerked her head up, her eyes blinking quickly. “Uh, good?” It came out like a question, and her face reddened as she smiled a little awkwardly at me. “How are you, Tiago?” She gave me a polite smile before she dropped her eyes back down at her book, as if to say, leave me alone, can’t you see I’m busy.

“Peachy. How’s the book?” I saw her left eye squint for a minute and knew instantly she was one of those people that hated to be interrupted when she had a book open. Especially with stupid question like mine.

“Sorry, look, I need to talk to you about something. Something that might just seem, uh, well…” I cleared my throat, looking around at loss for the right word. The fuck was the right word for how to jump into what I was about to jump into? But then it came to me.

“Insane, maybe. Yeah, it will probably sound insane.”

June’s brow arched as she put the book down, nervously eyeing me. “Okay?” She looked at me steadily, that dark eyebrow arched over light green eyes. She had magnificent eyes, really. Fuck, how hadn’t I noticed that before?

“So, it’s a little complicated. My dad passed away recently, you see.” I paused as she made a sympathetic noise and leaned forward across the rectangle shaped table. I shook my head. “We actually weren’t very close. Don’t worry about it.” A shadow crossed my face. “Actually, we weren’t close at all.”

My father was, for lack of a better term, a total piece of shit. A bastard. The kind that funded drug wars in faraway countries, just for laughs. He’d had money, a lot of it, the kind of money that came from generations of inheritance that only a stock market crash and a government seizure could wipe out. He’d used it to amuse himself, rather than doing good with it, and to increase the bottom line, of course.

He’d been a hard man to grow up with when my Portuguese immigrant mother had died at my birth. He’d loved her, in his own way, but he’d resented me because I’d “killed” her. I didn’t know anything about that side of my family, and probably never would. I’d left my home, and my dad, as soon as I graduated high school and never looked back. He’d cut me out of his life then, which suited me just fucking fine, and I’d figured that was the end of it.

That is, until he died and two weeks before and left me his fortune. All of it.

That’d been the first bombshell. I’d assumed he’d leave it to a cousin, or to some sheikh in the Middle East just to give me the finger, but he’d left it to me. With his own fucked up idea of conditions, of course. And it was those conditions that were the other bombshell he’d come back from the grave to drop on me like a bag of bricks.

“I can understand not being close to your parents.” June smiled innocently at me. “What can I do to help?” She’d looked a little surprised, and then more sympathetic. One of those types that liked to help people.

That’s good. I thought. ‘Cause if she was the type to give a shit, she might not run away screaming once I’d laid it all out for her then.

“It’s like this,” I paused again, at a loss for words once more. How to approach this? I felt my face draw into a mask of concentration and tried to think of how best to get the words out.

“It’s okay, you can just tell me. I won’t run away. You know,” She smiled warmly, pushing her book to the side. “I actually work with children whose parents have been sent to prison. Trust me, I’ve heard some tales that would make you cringe. I know not everyone has a rosy childhood, so don’t be afraid. I won’t judge you.”

Right. June probably thought I just needed a sympathetic ear. I almost wanted to laugh. Yeah, I needed slightly more than that.

For a moment I was distracted by the sound of her voice. She had the kind of smooth, husky lilt that should be used to sing sultry blues songs. It was the longest I’ve ever heard her speak. Shit, it was the first time I’d heard her speak to me that didn’t involve politely ordering a glass of Chardonnay. And the sound of it completely hooked me.

And she works with kids.

That, I hadn’t known. But damn, the job seemed to be absolutely perfect for her. She was the kind of quiet, open type that kids would respond to well.

Which was going to come in real handy when it came to that other bombshell in Dad’s will. His lawyer had read it to me earlier in the day, and each line had just made me angrier. I would have just told the attorney to take dad’s blood money and flush it down the fucking toilet, but I needed it.

…Tiny little blonde-haired and blue-eyed Layla needed it actually—my goddaughter. And I’d crawl over broken glass to give her whatever she needed.

I wouldn’t have even gone to the meeting if it hadn’t been for Layla. The money didn’t mean shit to me, not when my father had used, and earned so much of it in ways that had left me shocked, and deeply ashamed when I learned about it all the year before I finished high school. But for Layla, I’d go to hell and back. A meeting with dad’s attorney I could do.

I was still lost in my thoughts when June cleared her throat politely to bring my attention back to her. I felt my pulse jump and my head started to pound. This was stupid. It was a stupid idea, but little Layla’s face cropped up in my head and I felt my resolve come back.

Fuck it. Here goes nothing.

“I need to get married, June.” My eyes locked with hers, unblinking. “To inherit my father’s estate, I have to get married. Like this month.” I winced as the words came out badly, without any kind of finesse.

June blushed, her cheeks flushing pink as she dropped her eyes to the table. “Oh.”

Oh. Just this sad little word that fell from her lips.

“Who’s the lucky bride?” She looked back up, and her green eyes blinked at me steadily, without betraying a clue as to what she might’ve been thinking.

Huh. Evidently, I hadn’t made myself clear.

Here went nothing.

“You.”

I said it, and the word just hung there between us, frozen.

Shit.

Normally, I was able to banter and charm my way through any situation. But for some damn reason, I was tripping over my own tongue like an asshole.

“Me?” She laughed, a sound that matched her husky voice, and her personality. A quiet laugh of disbelief.

Fuck. This seriously wasn’t going well.

“Yeah, you. I need to get married, I’m a single guy, you’re a single woman, and it would only be for a couple of years…”

Terribly. Like, fucking train-wreck terribly. I could see it in the way she tried to hide more nervous laughter. She took a quick sip of her wine, her eyes a sparkly display of her not so hidden confusion and leaned back against the red leather of the booth.

“You want me to marry you so that you can inherit your father’s money? He was a sadist, then, this father of yours, wasn’t he?”

“Just a bit.” Then I realized she’d meant the remark about herself and frowned, shaking my head. “No. Not that marrying you would be torture, just that he thinks he can prove to me that I’m no better than him at this married life and family game.”

June choked out a laugh, looking away. “Well, you must be desperate for that money if you’d ask me to marry you.” She glanced over me, something between self-deprecation and humor-as-armor in her eyes. There was something else there, something I didn’t quite understand, a message.

I’m not the one for you, maybe that look said. Or did it say, I want to be the one for you? Something… there was something there and it was a message meant only for me. I felt an odd sensation, in my brain and in my body, when she looked at me like that. I had no idea what it was, and I’d never felt it when I looked at someone before, but it was kind of like when I looked at a motorcycle that I wanted. A need? Desire?

I’ve felt those before, but this was different.

“Tiago?” She called my name and the spell was broken. “Did you really just ask me to marry you?”

I nodded, and she raked her teeth over her bottom lip.

“Why me?”