Momentary Marriage(25)

Backing down a notch then, Jared strained for control. He wanted to seduce the woman into marrying him, not convince her he was a randy teenager.

Nibbling softly at the corner of her mouth, he lifted a hand to her back. With the other, her smoothed her hair away from her face. She had hair like dark silk, not black, but a hundred deep shades of brown, rich and lustrous. He wanted to see it spread on his pillow.

Lightly stroking the curve of her cheek, he lifted his mouth from hers and looked into her dazed eyes.

Kelsey blinked, her hands braced against his shoulders for support.

“Better than I’d thought,” he admitted, his voice rough with the lingering shreds of passion.

She blinked again, pulling slowly away, the stunned look still on her face. “Um.”

Clearing her throat, she stepped back to subside into her chair again.

“Okay,” she sighed slowly. “We have…chemistry.”

Jared sat down, watching her across the desk. He still felt the buzzing in his ears, so powerful was her effect on him. But he had to close the deal. He was so close, yet she could slip through his fingers still. Then she’d be off trying to find someone else to marry her.

Striving to sound matter-of-fact, he said, “Of course, the particulars need to be determined.”

“Particulars?”

“To make the whole thing believable, we’d need to stay married a while. Say, a year?”

“I guess…anything shorter would look…funny,” she agreed.

“What else?” he asked, his voice musing.

Kelsey said slowly, “To be convincing, we’d have to pretend to be….”

“Desperately in love,” Jared finished for her, knowing the word stuck in her throat.

“Yes,” she said. “At least, around Amy and Doug.”

“And the people who know either of them and maybe people who know people who know them,” Jared pointed out.

“Jeez.” Kelsey’s slender fingers filtered through her fringe of bangs.

“Just to be safe, we might want to make it a general policy,” he said. “Frankly, I’d rather my family believe us to be devoted to one another. Fewer questions.”

“Your family. Of course.” She frowned.

“We’ll have to live together,” he said with a faint smile, wondering if she’d realized this implication. In these days, sex didn’t necessarily mean a couple even spent the night together.

But he wanted Kelsey in his bed every morning, in his life for more than a year.

“Oh, this is crazy!” she exclaimed suddenly. “People don’t actually get married for a reason like this.”

“Not usually,” he agreed, the words smooth. “But then you have an unusual problem. Got any better ideas on how to solve it?”

“No,” she said slowly, frowning as she looked out the window.

“Are you very attached to your apartment?”

“What?” She looked at him. “I…guess not. It’s just that I’ve never lived with anyone.”

Jared tried to keep his pleasure at this news from showing on his face. He’d always been fairly good at keeping his emotions to himself. Business, like playing poker, required a certain ability to hide one’s hand. But Kelsey would try him, he knew. He couldn’t let her see how she affected him. Not yet.

“I have a place overlooking Central Park,” he said. “Would you like to take a look at it?”

The corner of her mouth curled and he saw the humor glimmering in her eyes. “I'm sure it’s lovely. Most everything in that area is.”

“You need to see it. Then we’ll decide where to live,” Jared said, suspecting she was struggling with the idea of giving up her own place. Living with her at her tiny apartment would be a small enough sacrifice to win the overall game.

He was very aware that she hadn’t actually accepted his proposal.

“What about the rest of your family?” he asked, curious to hear her take on her background.

Kelsey shrugged. “My mother lives in Spain currently with her husband. She flies in to shop, but not often. I don’t think we’d see much of her, but…it would probably be better if she thought we were in love. My mother seriously believes in love.”

Jared glanced at her furiously tapping pencil, noting the faintly bitter tone of that last remark.

She dropped the pencil on to her desk. “Oh, we can’t be serious. Talking about getting married, for heaven’s sake!”

“For Amy’s sake,” Jared inserted. “Her and Doug.”

The animation in her face shifted to remorse. “Yes.”

“What about your father?” Jared probed. “Does he live here?”