Bound By Marriage(2)

"You'll be signing a pre-nup."

She heard the unsaid statement loud and clear. "I won't be trying to get  the land back in a divorce. You bought it free and clear." And in doing  so, he'd saved it from the developers who would have destroyed it  completely.                       
       
           



       

Paying the price he'd demanded-marriage-hadn't seemed like such a  sacrifice then. Especially since she'd believed that the marriage would  ask nothing from her in terms of emotional commitment, allowing her to  keep body and soul safe.

Protected. It had never crossed her mind that Gabe might not permit her that distance.

Until he'd kissed her.

"My lawyer will bring over the papers tomorrow morning."

"Fine." Gabriel's money itself had never been the thing she was after.  It was losing the right to step foot on the very land she'd been  entrusted to hold that she couldn't bear.

Silence filled the cockpit. Dropping her head against the seat, she  tried to think past the painful knot in her throat. Damon was separated.  A small, selfish part of her, the part that had loved Damon forever,  wanted to tell Gabe to call off the wedding. But she'd stopped lying to  herself a long time ago. Even if Damon was acting like a single man  again, he'd never once seen her as anything other than his best friend.

To counter that logic her mind insisted on remembering Damon's  unexpected phone call, the things he'd said. Swallowing, she fought back  with the knowledge that he'd been drinking. He hadn't meant it. Any of  it. She couldn't afford to think otherwise.

"What's with the weight loss?" Gabe's sharp question cut through the air like a knife.

"It just happened." A combination of grief, shock and the stress of  those first few months in a strange city. "I thought you'd be pleased."  Because his women had always been long-limbed, slender beauties. Even  now she was short and not quite skinny.

"I'm not marrying you for your body."

She bit her lower lip. "No." Despite that devastating kiss, she knew too  well that rich, successful and extremely attractive Gabriel Dumont  wasn't marrying her for her body. Nor was he marrying her for her wit or  her confirmed knowledge of station life. No, Gabriel was marrying her  for one simple, practical reason: unlike every other woman who'd ever  crossed his path, she had no romantic illusions about him.

She didn't want or expect him to love her, not now, not ever. And that  made her imminently suitable to marry a man who had no ability to love,  and didn't want to be bothered with a wife who'd disrupt his life with  dreams of romance. "I got a dress in L.A. For the wedding," she said, in  an effort to fill the emptiness between them.

Gabriel wasn't buying Jess's apparent calm. "Not the least bit hesitant?"

"You gave me a year. I'm ready now."

I need to find out who I am before I become Mrs. Dumont for the rest of  my life … I never learned to stand up for myself and I know I'll have that  with you.

If I don't, you'll destroy me without meaning to.

Her desperate plea the night they'd made the decision to marry slammed  into his mind. The sheltered only daughter of late-in-life parents,  she'd still been floundering three months after the loss of her single  remaining parent-her father. Yet she'd had the courage to say to Gabe's  face what many never would-that he was quite capable of destroying a  softer, less powerful personality with the unforgiving pragmatism of his  own.

The woman beside him sounded nothing like the broken girl of twelve  months ago … except for that underlying thread of courage. "Good," he  said, not certain he liked that quiet hint of steel. He'd chosen Jess  because he'd known she'd ask less than nothing from him. All she cared  about was keeping the former Randall Station in her family.

"You," she said, stopped, then restarted. "You didn't find another woman?"

"I want you to be my wife, Jess. I want you to live on Angel Station,  take my name and bear my children." He made sure she heard the  determination in his voice-he'd made his choice and he'd stick with it.

The fact she felt nothing for him didn't faze him in the least. He'd  decided long ago that love would play no part in any marriage of his.  "Unlike Damon, I've kept it in my pants since we got engaged."

"Are you going to throw his name into every conversation we have?"

He glanced over at the unexpected rebuke to catch her with her eyes  narrowed and her arms folded. It amused him. She might have grown up a  little but Jess was still a featherweight in comparison to him. "Who do  you want to invite to the wedding?"

She gave a frustrated sigh and thrust a hand through her hair, sending  red curls every which way. He found his eyes lingering on the fiery  strands. That was one thing about Jess that hadn't changed-that wild,  silky mass of hair so incongruous with her quiet, undemanding  personality.                       
       
           



       

"I'd like to keep it small and if we invite some people from Kowhai,"  she named the nearest town, "and not others, it'll cause hard feelings.  How about we limit it to the station folk?"

"Nobody else?"

"No," Jess said, wondering if she was imagining the renewed edge in his tone.

"Do people … ?"

"Some have been guessing since they heard you were coming back and going  straight to Angel." He reached to flip a switch and she was transfixed  by the pure strength under the golden-brown of his skin. "After the  wedding is early enough to confirm the rumors."

Jess nodded, unable to stop thinking that soon Gabe's hands would be  touching far more intimate things than the controls of a plane. The  thought threatened to reawaken her earlier panic but she forced it down.  The day she let that panic show was the day she lost any hope of making  this marriage work. Gabriel would never respect a weak woman. "That'll  make it easier."

"Four p.m. tomorrow all right for you?"

Her throat was so dry she had to cough lightly to clear it. "Okay."  There was no reason to wait-they'd made their bargain on a rainy night a  year ago.

Now it was time for her to pay up.





Chapter 2





"I've put your things in the guest bedroom for tonight." Gabe braced his  hands on the verandah railing on either side of her, the masculine heat  of his chest searing her back.

Her stomach twisted though she knew full well he would never force her.  Gabe might be ruthless, but if she said no, he'd back off. And all talk  of marriage would end. She'd be escorted off the station with no  invitation to ever return.

"Only tonight?" she asked, focusing on the distant grandeur of the Alps.  Located in the basin beneath those magnificent behemoths, the Mackenzie  stunned even in the final grip of winter. But the aching beauty of her  homeland couldn't calm her at this moment. "You can't mean us to … so  soon?"

"We're going to be married, Jess."

"I know. But we can't-"

"I was upfront with you about wanting children."

It took every ounce of her courage to continue in the face of his  intractable will. "I'm just saying we need time to get used to each  other that way."

"What way?" The words were spoken against the sensitive skin of her neck, his breath a hot caress.

Desire flashed through her bloodstream, a shock that threatened to turn  her world upside down. "You know what I'm trying to say."

"I've been celibate for a year." A flat declaration. "If you want more time, find another man."

"I can't believe you said that." She tried to turn but he refused to allow it.

"You're telling me you'll call off the wedding if I don't agree to have sex with you straight away?"

His body was an inescapable trap around hers. "Think about it, Jess. Why  are we marrying? You want to keep the Randall land in your family and  I'm thirty-five, at a stage in my life where I want children to ensure  Angel Station's future.

"Essentially, we're marrying to provide heirs for both of us. If you're  not willing to do what it takes to create them, what's the point? Either  we start as we mean to go on or we don't start at all."

It was a brutally practical depiction of their bargain, heartbreaking in  its truth. And it made her furious. Why couldn't he have even tried to  soften things this one time, when she most needed it? "I'm a virgin,  Gabe. So if I make a few mistakes tomorrow, you'll have to excuse me."

He went completely, utterly motionless behind her. "What did you say?"

She was at once proud for having caught him off-guard, and more than a touch nervous about her admission. "You heard me."