The Inconvenient Bride

Now she stepped round Finn and looked up into Dominic’s ice-chip eyes. “What do you want?”

“I want you to marry me,” Dominic said.

He didn’t care that she looked poleaxed or that Finn looked murderous or that everyone else seemed to think he’d just escaped from bedlam.

He repeated the words. “Marry me,” in case she wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard them.

“Marry…you?”

It was the first time he’d seen Sierra Kelly slack-jawed. But at least she’d finally found her voice. And privately Dominic was satisfied that he’d actually succeeded in shocking her.

“That’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!”

“Half a million.”

“What!” She went beyond slack-jawed, straight to flabbergasted. “Be serious.”

“I 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.”

“But—” she started to protest, then looked at him narrowly, suspiciously. “Why?”

“Because.”

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.”

“Backed 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.

“Well, then?” Sierra eyed him narrowly. She tapped the toe of her boot.

Dominic gritted his teeth. “I need to get married.”

“I 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.”

“You’re marrying me to look responsible?”

“I’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!”

“Like 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.”

“The 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.”

“He’d marry me?” Sierra said skeptically. “He’d marry a woman with magenta hair?”

“It’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!

“Purple, 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.

“I think you’re insane.”

“Probably.” He waited.

“You’re actually serious?”

“I’m serious.”

Still she hesitated. She nibbled on her lower lip. Dominic remembered nibbling on that lip. He remembered the taste of her—hadn’t been able to forget the taste of her! He smothered a groan.

“Sierra?” he said impatiently.

“Half a million?”

It was the last thing he’d figured she would say. Sierra Kelly—the nearest thing to a free spirit he knew—was not a money-grubber. At least he hadn’t imagined that she was. He frowned at her, but she didn’t back down. And he had gone too far to back down now himself.

Besides, a half a million to get the old man off his back permanently was a bargain.

He shrugged irritably. “Half a million.”

“Now? You’ll give it to me now?”

“You want to stop at a bank on the way to the courthouse?” He was halfway between sarcasm and disbelief.

But Sierra nodded gravely. “Yes. Please.”

He stared at her, wondering what went on inside her magenta-colored head. But he was annoyed enough, and reckless enough at the moment, not to care. “It’s a deal,” he said. “For half a million bucks you’ll marry me this afternoon.”

Sierra only hesitated a second. “Yes.”

Any minute now, Sierra figured, she’d wake up.

She’d yawn and stretch and open her eyes to stare at the cracked ceiling above her narrow futon bed. And she would laugh at the craziness of her dreams.

Marry Dominic Wolfe?

Sierra had had some weird dreams in her lifetime, but never one as weird as that. She blinked as she spritzed Alison’s hair. She rolled her shoulders and shook her head, trying to wake up. Surely it was time for the alarm to ring!

“What’s the matter with you?” Dominic demanded.

The matter was that she was awake.

He lifted his arm and shot back his cuff to glance at his watch. “We need to get moving.”

“Can’t,” Sierra said. “Not yet. I have work to do. A job. A commitment,” she explained when she realized that he wouldn’t think her job was worth bothering about. He understood commitments at least.

His jaw tightened, and she thought he would object. But finally he nodded. “Then do it. Let’s get this show on the road.”

And as Sierra stood there, mouth ajar, he pitched in and got things going.

No, that didn’t describe it. He didn’t pitch in. He commandeered. He took one look around and decided what needed to be done.

“You,” he said to Alison, “Stop sniveling and get dressed. You, too,” he said to Delilah. “And get your fingers out of your hair.”

To a stupefied Ballou, he said, “Stop standing around like a moron. Get those dresses out and ready. Shake them out. Have the next one ready as soon as Finn finishes.”

To Finn he said, “We need to be done by two. And we’ll need witnesses. Sierra and I are getting married. Have her—” he jerked his head toward Strong “—call Izzy.”

Finn stared, poleaxed, first at Dominic, then at Sierra. “You’re going to marry him?” He sounded as disbelieving as Sierra felt.

But there were some things Finn didn’t know about. Like the chemistry that had been bubbling between her and Dominic for months. Like the night after Mariah and Rhys’s wedding. Like the most sizzling sex she’d ever experienced. Like the fact that she hadn’t been able to forget the man she’d shared it with even though she knew she should, even though she’d tried. Like Frankie.

Especially Frankie.

“I’m going to marry him, yes.” She nodded her head.

If Finn considered arguing, a long look into her eyes apparently made him decide not to. “Right,” he said. “Two it is.”

“We can’t,” Ballou protested.

“No way,” cried the models.

At five of two they were done.

“Let’s go.” Dominic was tapping his foot as she packed up the tackle box in which she carried her gear. Then she grabbed her jacket, stuffed her arms in it, and picked up the tackle box, hugging it against her chest.

“Where are you going with that?” Dominic demanded.

“It goes where I go,” Sierra said stubbornly. She looked down at his briefcase. “Like yours.”

He sighed mightily. “Fine. Come on.”

“What about a license?” she asked as he spirited her down the elevator.

“We’ll get one.”

“What about a waiting period?” She was sure there must be one.

“Normally twenty-four hours,” Dominic said. “I can get us an exception.” He was dragging her out the door, through the rain, and into the hired car waiting at the curb.

“This is insane, you know that, don’t you?” she muttered, scrambling in ahead of him. The windows were steamed. She remembered other windows…

“Yes.” Dominic climbed in beside her. He was so close she could feel the heat from his body, remembered how very hot that body could be…

“You’ll regret it tomorrow,” she said with an edge of desperation to her voice.

“Very likely.” He banged the door shut behind him.

“I’ll regret it tomorrow.” She clutched the tackle box like it was a life preserver in a storm-swept sea.

“Without a doubt.” Then he turned to face her squarely, and she saw a wild, reckless look in Dominic Wolfe’s normally cool blue eyes. Hot ice. That was what it made her think of. It was a look Sierra remembered seeing only once before—on the wildest, craziest night of her life.

“So you have to decide—are you in or not?”

For three months she’d tried to forget that night. She hadn’t forgotten.

From the glitter in his eyes, she knew Dominic hadn’t, either.

Marrying Dominic was insane.

She would regret it. So would he.

They had nothing but sex between them. Primal attraction. Animal hunger. Lust. A four-letter word that started with L, but hardly the right one on which to base a marriage. But what was the use of being a gambler if you never threw the dice.

They went to the bank.

He got her a check. Made them print it out, spelled out her name. “Sierra Kelly Wolfe,” he said, “because you will be when you cash it.” And he thrust it into her hand.

He didn’t ask what she was going to do with it. He didn’t seem to even care. “Satisfied?” he asked as she stared at it, counting the zeroes.

Sierra, trying not to gape, nodded dumbly. “Yes.”

“Good.” He steered her out of the bank and bundled her back into the car. “City hall,” he told the driver.

Sierra hadn’t been to city hall since she’d applied for her cosmetology license. She was amazed to find they got their marriage license in the same room. She didn’t mention this amazing bit of news to Dominic. He wasn’t listening.

He was arranging their wedding.

He gave the clerk information. Then it was her turn. She gave the answers by rote, filled in the forms, signed where she was told. If she’d doubted his ability to arrange an exception to the waiting period, she didn’t doubt for long.

He called a friend, who called a friend. In a matter of minutes it was arranged that someone called Judge Willis would perform the ceremony in his chambers.

“Almost there,” Dominic said, and taking her arm once more, he hauled her toward the door. “I’ll call Finn. Tell him and Izzy where to meet us.”

“You don’t want to call Rhys?”

Dominic had been best man at Rhys and Mariah’s wedding. Sierra had been Mariah’s maid of honor.

In the act of opening the door, Dominic stopped and arched a brow. “Do you want to call Mariah?”

Never in a million years! Mariah was sane and sensible. She would throw herself in front of a speeding train before she would let Sierra do something as stupid as marry her brother-in-law on the spur of the moment.

“Didn’t think so.” Dominic pulled out a cell phone, checked his organizer, and punched in Finn’s number. “Finn? All set,” he said without preamble. “Meet us in Judge Willis’s chambers at five.”

He rattled off the directions, then grabbed Sierra’s arm again. “It’s not in this building. Let’s go.”

It was two streets over, five flights up, down two long corridors. Dominic’s legs were a lot longer than hers, and Sierra was panting by the time they arrived. Finn and Izzy and all four of their kids arrived moments later.

“What the—?” Dominic looked aghast at the sight of nine-year-old twins, Pansy and Tansy, three-year-old Rip and baby Crash. He turned his gaze on Finn’s wife, Izzy, his look both accusing and appalled.

Izzy didn’t give him a chance to object. She poked her umbrella at him. “You want me to get a baby-sitter, you have to give me more than ten minutes’ notice.”

Then she turned her eyes toward Sierra. “Are you crazy?” she demanded. To be marrying Dominic, she meant.

It was a question anyone knowing them would ask, and Sierra knew it. She shrugged. “Probably.”

It wasn’t the answer Izzy was looking for. Scowling, she turned back to Dominic. “Are you coercing her?”

“I am not.” His expression went from appalled to offended.

“Then why—”

Finn redirected the umbrella tip away from Dominic’s midsection. “I don’t think that’s our business, Iz,” he said to his wife quietly.

“But—”

“You don’t have to worry about her,” Dominic said firmly. “I’m not going to beat her. I’m not going to mistreat her. I’m not going to tie her up and dye her hair brown. I’m just going to marry her.”

Izzy didn’t look happy—or convinced.

But before she could argue, the door to the judge’s chambers opened just then and a pointy-chinned woman looked down her nose and said, “His Honor will see you now.”

Dominic cast one more despairing glance at the assembled group and ushered them all in. He introduced himself, Finn and his wife, then drew Sierra forward.

His Honor took one look at her and his eyes bulged. His jaw flapped. His gaze went straight to Dominic. “I misunderstood. I thought when Harvey called, he said you wanted to get married…”

“I do.”

Sierra felt Dominic’s arm come around her as he hauled her close, just in case there was any question in the judge’s mind about who the intended bride was.

The judge’s eyebrows hiked halfway up his bald head. But at the sight of Dominic’s fingers tightening on her shoulder and his steely glare, His Honor nodded his head. “Very well. Come in.”

Dominic and Sierra went in. Trailing behind them were a pair of saucer-eyed red-headed twins, then Finn with Rip on his shoulders, and Izzy who carried a wriggling Crash.

The pointy-chinned woman let out an audible sigh, shut the door and left them to it.

The ceremony itself was an anticlimax.

The judge mumbled something about the power vested in him by the State of New York. Then he read lines out of a book.

Dominic repeated them.

Then the judge looked at Sierra and read more lines. She repeated them every time he paused and looked at her.

They were lines she’d heard a hundred times. Richer. Poorer. Sickness. Health. Nothing about obeying, thank God. She didn’t think she could ever obey anyone. Not even Dominic.

Especially not Dominic!

She slanted a glance at the man standing so stiffly beside her in his two-thousand-dollar tailored suit and his hand-made Italian shoes. She caught just a glimpse of the edge of his subdued gray-and-burgundy striped tie. It was the same tie…

“…till death do you part?”

Sierra jerked her mind away from his tie—the tie that had started it all. She gathered herself together, recollected the solemnity of the occasion and dutifully stared straight ahead. Behind her one of the twins sighed. Rip gave a little hop. Crash gurgled. Finn and Izzy sucked in their breaths.

The judge looked at her over the top of his glasses. She smiled back at him. He cocked his head and looked at her expectantly.

Beside her, Dominic cleared his throat. She glanced over at him. He gave her a speaking look, the sort she was sure he gave underlings right before he put them through the paper shredder.

Sierra gave him one right back.

A muscle in his jaw twitched. His fingers strangled hers. He nudged her clunky boot with his polished black dress shoe. “Well, damn it, do you?” he muttered through his teeth.

Sierra blinked. “Do I what?”

“Take him for your lawful wedded husband, young lady?” the judge said impatiently.

Sierra suddenly realized they’d been waiting for her. “Oh!” she said, then gave them all a blinding smile. “Sure. Why not?”

CHAPTER TWO

SURE. WHY NOT?

As if it were that easy.

It wasn’t—as Dominic well knew. He’d tried it once twelve years ago, and had regretted it ever since.

He’d had nightmares for years about that disastrous day—that sunny June morning in the Bahamas when he’d been left at the altar in front of two hundred avidly curious onlookers.

He knew he could never do it again. Knew he couldn’t face a huge production, a mob of people, a bride he had to count on, a wedding he had to wait for.

Well, he hadn’t had to wait for this one.

He’d accomplished the whole thing, start to finish, engagement to ceremony, in a matter of hours.

And now he was married.

To a purple-haired woman with raccoon eye-shadow eyes.

What had he done?

The words reverberated in his head almost as insistently as Sierra’s bright, “Sure. Why not?” But he glanced at his watch and knew he didn’t really have time to think about it now.

Finn kissed the bride. “How about we take you out for a champagne toast?”

“Sure,” Izzy seconded. “It’s the least we can do on such short notice.”

“Great!” Sierra said brightly.

But Dominic shook his head. “Thanks, but we can’t. Another time. We’ve got to meet my father for dinner.”

And with a quick handshake and a few more words of thanks, he spirited Sierra away.

“What do you mean, we’re meeting your father?” she protested as he steered her toward the elevator. “Your father’s in town and you didn’t even invite him?”

“You think he’d have stood there with his mouth shut, then wished us well?”

Sierra opened her mouth, then shut it again.

Dominic nodded grimly. He’d made his point. She’d met his father when her sister had married his brother. She’d had a glimpse of Douglas then. Not much, but he was fairly sure his trying to commandeer the wedding party and drive them to the reception in his Lincoln Town Car instead of the cars they’d arranged had made an impression.

They rode down in the elevator in silence. Sierra staring at the doors, Dominic at the top of her purple head.

What had he done?

He’d got married, that was all. Exactly what the old man had wanted.

But to Sierra Kelly, of all people!

Sierra Kelly with her purple hair and her Day-Glo spandex, with her clunky boots and ribbed black leggings. Yes, but, 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.