Considering the wall-to-wall muscle flexing imperceptibly beneath designer cotton, it was no surprise he didn’t budge.
“Just hear me out—”
“No.” She tried to back away but he had her cornered, railing at her back, lunatic at her front. “I’ll scream.”
He laughed. “Go ahead. I’m sure the gamblers fifty-four stories below will rush to your aid.”
She swore.
He laughed harder. “It’s the perfect business arrangement. I need a wife. You need money to save your sister’s business, correct?”
“I don’t need money that desperately,” she muttered, wishing he’d get the hell out of her way.
He was too close, too intimidating, too everything, and she couldn’t breathe.
In the seconds it took to process his outlandish proposal, a small part of her wondered what it would entail.
“A significant amount of money could make your problems go away.”
She glared at his throat in response, annoyed when the sliver of bronzed skin visible between his lapels made her wonder if he was that tanned all over.
“How much do you need to get Party Hard into the black?”
Damn him for his persistence. Against her better judgment he’d piqued her interest. Hearing those words in the same sentence—Party Hard, into the black—sounded pretty damned good.
What if she could not only save Sara’s business, but set her up so she wouldn’t have to rush back to work? What if Sara could take her time recovering in the knowledge she had enough money to cover overheads, costs, and then some? She knew Sara worried about the business, even if she said she didn’t. Her sis had always been an overachiever, setting a good example to make up for the emotional shortfalls of their parents. Failure didn’t sit well with Sara, never had, and the fact her marriage had failed had been the catalyst for an underlying chemical imbalance they’d never known about.
“How much?”
“Five hundred thousand dollars.” She threw it out there as a taunt, wanting to shock him as much as he’d shocked her with his bizarre proposal.
“Done.”
“What?” Dread slithered down her spine.
He reached out and gripped her upper arms, and she was too shell-shocked to pull away. “Let me make this simple for you. Investors are angsty because of an incident that tarnished my company’s reputation recently. I need their backing for a major deal and they won’t give it because they see me as some lecherous playboy heading a den of iniquity.”
His grip eased but she didn’t move away, the sincerity in his tone getting through to her like nothing else could. Wouldn’t hurt to hear him out before she told him where he could stick his crazy offer.
“Being married to an intelligent, beautiful suburban woman will give me the respectability I need to nail this deal.” He splayed his fingers, the brush of his fingertips through the silk of her shirt setting off a static buzz. “And you get to save your sister’s business single-handedly. Win-win.”
Speechless, she shook her head.
“My deal gets done. Then we go our separate ways.”
Damn him for making it sound so logical, so easy, while she still reeled. Hotshot guys were used to wielding power and money to get what they wanted, but marriage? Beck Blackwood was either seriously delusional, seriously arrogant, or a staggering combination of both.
She rolled her eyes. “That’d be great publicity, throwing my own divorce party.”
He missed her sarcasm when he smiled, and his lack of superciliousness impressed. “Yeah, think how business would boom.”
“Except for the part where I need to remain anonymous.”
“Hey, with the amount of money you’d be depositing in your sister’s account, who cares if the whole damn town doesn’t knock on her door again?”
Good point.
“Okay, on the off chance I lose my mind and consider this for longer than one second, how exactly would it work?”
“Logistics are my forte.” She hated his triumphant grin almost as much as she hated herself for considering this.
What kind of crazy person married another for money?
Actually, when she phrased it like that, it didn’t seem so bizarre at all. People did it every day: for the security and high life money could bring. At least she’d be doing it for an altruistic cause.
But freaking married?
She was the least romantic person she knew and the whole white dress/man of her dreams had never been high on her to-do list. Marriages made people do dumb things—she’d seen that firsthand with her sister. As for love? Waste of time. Love faded, gave way to antipathy at best, derision at worst. Why take the risk?