"Like what?"
"Like . . . I'm about to lose my inheritance." She stared at him, her face expressionless, her eyes rapt. "My grandfather, he's, well, he's a control freak, in addition to being crazy and old-fashioned. He has this theory that a good woman makes a man, well, a good man. So he promised to cut me off by my thirty-second birthday if I wasn't married to a good woman. And I mean, I've dated a lot of girls, but I just haven't met, you know, the one."
She raised her eyebrows. "You believe in the one?"
"Everyone believes in the one, whether they admit it or not."
"Go on."
In for a penny, in for a pound. He might as well tell her everything. "Diantha is an old friend. She agreed to marry me before I turned thirty-two so that I could secure my inheritance. Our plan was to get a quiet divorce this summer."
"Huh," she said, taking another sip of wine. "When's your birthday?"
"Tuesday."
"Four-days-from-now Tuesday?"
"That's the one."
"You were born on Christmas Eve," she said.
He nodded, pouring himself another glass of wine.
"What was her cut?" asked Eleanora.
It was the last thing he expected her to ask. "Wh-what?"
"I assume you were cutting her in? Since your-" She cleared her throat. "-your marriage was little more than a business transaction?"
"Yeah. Okay." He chuckled softly, nodding at her with grudging admiration for her candor. "Yeah. I was cutting her in. I would get fourteen million. I promised her one. Not that it matters now because-"
"One million dollars."
"Yeah, but she didn't-"
"One million dollars," she repeated.
He nodded. "Yep. But-"
"I'll do it."
Tom's head jerked back as he stared at her in shock. "What? You'll do what?"
"I'll marry you for a million dollars."
Laughter bubbled up inside him, and he let it rip for several seconds until he realized she wasn't joking. She was staring at him unblinkingly, her hands folded on the table as if they were working out a business deal at a conference room table.
"You're serious."
"I don't joke about money."
He chuckled, this time nervously. When she didn't join him, his grin faded. She was completely serious.
"I don't think you understand. It was an arrangement, and yes, I was giving her a portion of my inheritance, but Diantha was actually planning to marry me. Our families have known one another for ages, and we'd been friends since grade school. Everyone believed that we'd started dating last summer and fallen in love. It took some planning, you know?"
She didn't say a word, just stared back at him, her eyes owl-like in their intensity.
"I don't even know you. My family doesn't know you. We just met twenty minutes ago." He tried to keep his voice gentle because he really didn't want to hurt her feelings. "I just don't think it would work."
"You don't think I could pull it off," said Eleanora candidly.
Tom shifted in his seat, placing his arm along the back of the booth between them and facing her.
Her blonde hair was natural, and her face was pretty. He didn't know if she'd had braces or just been blessed with good teeth, but he suspected the latter. She was trim and bright and interesting, but . . .
His eyes slipped to the collar of her uniform, then to her chewed-up nails, and finally to her white tights and sneakers. She was a "breakfast-all-day" waitress from Colorado, not a viable contender for the wife of Thomas Andrews English. She wouldn't last a minute in Main Line society, and more important, his grandfather would see right through her.
As his gaze skated up to her face, he found her eyes glistening, but she lifted her chin proudly. "Forget it. It's a completely ridiculous idea. I . . . I'm going to go."
She started sliding around the booth to escape him, but that strange feeling of desperation encroached again, and Tom stood up quickly to move around the table and block her way. He squatted down, looking up at her. "Wait. Just . . . please. This got weird so fast. We can still talk and there's wine and-"
She swallowed, shaking her head and pulling her coat more snugly around her. "No, thanks. I feel really foolish. It was an absurd suggestion."
"Not absurd, just . . . unrealistic. No one will buy it. They all believed I was in love with Di. They all know I was just stood up by her."
"I get it," she whispered, still looking down at her lap. "Please let me go now."
"What would you do with it?" he asked softly. "The million?"
She relaxed a little, lifting her eyes to his. "I'd buy Evie a nice little apartment here so that she'd feel secure and stop-well, you know-hooking up with random men. And then I'd go to college somewhere like Princeton. Like you and Brooke Shields."
"And then?"
"I'd buy a business . . . or start my own."
"What kind?"
"I don't know. I know how to waitress, so maybe a restaurant. Although what I'd really love is a bookstore. Or a chain of bookstores maybe. And also . . ." Her voice took on a slight edge, and she averted her eyes. "I'd knock down the library in my hometown and have another one built. A good one. A better one."
Because it saved you. The thought tiptoed across his mind, and he knew, in his gut, it was true.
He knew what Diantha had planned to do with the money: she would have financed a new wardrobe, buy a convertible Ferrari, and rent a villa in Monaco for a year. But Eleanora? She'd buy herself a whole new life. A better life. And suddenly, more than his own inheritance, more than anything else on earth, Tom wanted her to have that chance.
"We'd have to go to Vegas," he said quickly before he could rethink it.
Her neck whipped up, her eyes wide and surprised as she searched his face.
"Vegas?"
"There's nowhere else we could get married so quickly."
Her lips wobbled, but she kept them from turning up.
"Vegas," she murmured.
He nodded. "Tonight. So we could be married tomorrow. That would at least give us the weekend to get to know each other."
She tilted her head to the side and finally let her lips spread into a smile. "Are you serious?"
"Are you?"
"You think we can pull it off?"
No. "I have no clue." He shrugged, grinning at her like a stupid fool. "Want to give it a try?"
"I . . ." Her shoulders trembled, and she giggled, still staring up at him. "You're a decade older than I am."
"I don't care if you don't."
"You're rich and classy, and I'm . . . a waitress."
"I think you're more than that."
"I've never been outside of Colorado."
"Maybe it's time to broaden your horizons."
"You're really serious," she breathed.
"Think of it as an adventure." He stared into her eyes, prying one of the hands on her lap into his and weaving their fingers together. "Eleanora Watters, will you marry me for a little while?"
She beamed at him, nodding slowly at first and then faster and faster, her slim fingers gripping his tightly as her cheeks turned pink and her eyes sparkled like a million white lights at Christmastime. "Why not?"
Chapter 3
As the private plane left the tiny Vail airport, headed for Las Vegas, Eleanora trembled with fear and misgivings. Fear because she'd never been on an airplane before; misgivings because she was headed to Las Vegas to marry a complete and total stranger.
Sitting beside Eve Marie, she closed her eyes and tried to take a few deep, calming breaths, but her cousin wouldn't shut up.
"I mean, look at this plane! It's, like, the most beautiful place I've ever been in my whole life, and that lady gave us Champagne, Ellie. Champagne! The real stuff. Can you believe it?" She lowered her voice a little. "Are you crazy? Or drunk? Please tell me you're drunk. Why are you marrying him? It's not like you're pregnant! Are you? No, that's impossible. Oh my God, these seats. They're real leather, Ellie. Real leather. Do you know how much this plane probably costs? I don't. Are you going to sleep with him? What if he's bad in bed? Then you're stuck with him for life. Maybe you should have tested the goods first. Sweet Jesus, are those Godivas?"
The stewardess held out a gold box filled with delicate-looking chocolates, and Evie took four. Eleanora's stomach, which wouldn't stop flipping over, forced her to decline.
She'd already told Evie three times-once when she and Tom interrupted Evie and Van in Van's hotel room, again while they packed their suitcases in the small shared bedroom of their apartment, and again right before liftoff-that while she was marrying Tom, she wasn't really marrying him. It was a temporary marriage; it was just an agreement, an agreement of convenience, the outcome of which would hopefully change Eleanora's life for the better.