The Bride and the Bargain

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  He hadn’t needed just any wife. He’d needed a wife who came with a child. And she—given the situation—had filled the bill just fine.

  How many times had he told her he was just like Harry? He’d taken his sons from his ex-wives.

  Had that been Gray’s plan, all along? Not to satisfy an old man’s wishes for family, but to protect his inheritance? If Timmy was his nephew, he’d certainly be able to convince a court that he would be the better guardian. All he’d have to do was buy off Gerry—who’d already proven his only interest was money.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  Amelia shook her head.

  “So he doesn’t even know where you are?”

  “I just…ran.” It had been surprisingly easy, actually. Everyone in the house had been focused on the reception.

  “Well, now what?”

  “I have to go back. I know that.” She crossed her arms over her chest, blinking hard.

  “You think he’d stop paying for Daphne’s medical care?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. He lulled me into thinking there was…something more…than just that hateful agreement. I could have handled the two years, you know.” She dashed her hand over her cheek. “I could have handled anything but—”

  “But falling in love with him,” Paula finished softly. She handed Amelia a box of tissue. “Lie down before you fall down,” she suggested.

  “I need to get Tim’s bottle going. He’s probably starving by now.” She could hear him beginning to fuss from the other room.

  “I think I can manage,” Paula said gently. She pushed Amelia onto the bed and closed herself out of the room.

  She pretended not to notice the way Jack, looking guilty, quickly set down the telephone.

  “Where is she?” Gray said the moment Paula opened her apartment door to him. She held Timmy in her arms, his hands eagerly clasping his bottle.

  “In the bedroom. I think she might have fallen asleep.”

  He exhaled slowly. Ran his hand down his face, trying to brush away one of the worst nights of his life, then looked over at Jack and Molly, who were sitting on the couch, looking dazed.

  “You did the right thing, calling me,” he told Jack.

  “She’s gonna be mad. Last night she made us promise not to make any phone calls.”

  “It’s okay.” He tossed Jack’s gamer to the boy. When he’d found it, he’d looked at the most recent game he’d been playing. Math Crusher. “You’re nearly at the top level. You’re not going to have any problems in math next year, are you.” He crouched down in front of Molly. “Are you okay?”

  Giant tears welled in her eyes. “I was scared,” she whispered.

  “I know, sweetheart.” He gently tugged the end of her very lopsided braid. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

  She scooted forward on the couch and twined her arms around his neck. “It’s okay,” she said softly and patted his back as if he were no bigger than Timmy.

  He had to swallow, hard. He kissed her cheek. Pushed to his feet and cleared his throat.

  “I’ll just take Timmy and the kids down the street to the park,” Paula suggested. “She’s in there.” She nodded toward a closed door leading off the hall.

  “Thanks.” But when they’d left, all he did was stand there and stare at that door. Afraid of opening it. Afraid that she’d turn him away.

  Or worse, that she’d go back just because of the commitment she’d made signing that godforsaken agreement.

  And then it didn’t matter, because the door creaked and she was suddenly standing there. Her pink T-shirt was wrinkled and her hair was a mess of curls from her hairstyle of the night before. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her nose red.

  And she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  He’d met with heads of state and negotiated deals worth billions of dollars and thousands of livelihoods. But never in his life had he felt so uncertain as he did facing the woman who was his wife across that apartment. “I’m sorry.”

  Even across the room he could see the glisten of tears in her eyes.

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out her pearl pin. “You promised never to go out without that.”

  Her lashes swept down.

  “We were worried. After the third bus transfer you made, we couldn’t pick up your trail. It’s a wonder Harry didn’t have another heart attack.”

  Her lashes lifted, a spark of temper glimmering. “That’s completely unfair.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. He tossed the pin onto the table next to the couch. “Unlike my brothers, I’m a completely unfair bastard. I know it. And now you know it, too.”

  Her lips twisted. “I didn’t want to be found.”

  “Obviously. Be angry with me all you want. Just—” He broke off, looking away. He propped his hands on his hips, grappling for composure. “Just keep yourself safe,” he finished roughly.

  “Worried about losing track of the tickets to your inheritance?” Her caustic voice broke midway through.

  “Worried that I’ll be burying another woman I…I care about.”

  Her lips parted. Her jaw worked. “You don’t care about me. You didn’t even marry me to make your father happy. It was all about your inheritance.”

  “Not in the way you think. Harry doesn’t have to leave me a cent. He knows it. It was HuntCom. He threatened to sell it off.”

  “And you’d all still be rich as Midas. Big deal.”

  “The deal is that if HuntCom were sold, it would have been sold in pieces. Hacked up into small enough portions that could be bought. And at least half of the thousands of employees we have would have been out of jobs.”

  “Why would your father have done that? HuntCom was his brainchild. His—”

  “His life,” Gray finished. “And you’re right. He wouldn’t have done it. He couldn’t have, any more than I could chance it happening. At least that’s what I believed before he started meeting with potential buyers. I also knew my brothers didn’t deserve to lose what mattered to them on the chance that I was wrong about Harry, and we all had to meet his terms.”

  “That seems…extreme.” Her voice was faint.

  “Yeah, but my father can be a man of extremes. He’s a genius, but not when it comes to people.”

  “He’s been nice to me,” she murmured.

  “He nearly died. He’s working on ‘nice.’ But HuntCom—” He exhaled. “It’s been my life for as long as I can remember. I didn’t care about anything else. I didn’t…need—” his jaw tightened painfully at the admission “—anything else. Anyone else. Until you.”

  The tip of her straight little nose reddened even more. “What you needed was a child. How ironic that I was the one who kept trying to believe—and trying not to believe—that you already had one. Wouldn’t it have just been easier if you’d said he was?” Her lashes flickered. “After…our pretend marriage supposedly fell apart, you could have ensured that Timmy would never have left your clutches. You could have followed so…admirably…Harry’s methods.”

  “Dammit, I didn’t want to be like Harry.” He shoved his hands through his hair. “After Gwen—” He broke off, swearing. “I met her in college. And I fell hard. I thought she was the answer to everything that was wrong in my life. So we were going to be married. No big announcements. No huge affairs. Just go off and get married at the end of the term and get on with life together. Only a few weeks before we could, she was kidnapped. Harry refused to pay the ransom.”

  Amelia paled. She pressed her fingertips to her throat, covering the diamond he’d given her.

  The fact that she hadn’t taken that off, too, gave him some strength to continue. “He had the FBI handling it from his end. Acting as negotiators. The kidnapper had to show proof of life. So Gwen was put on the line. She only had time to tell me she was pregnant before the call was cut off.”

  Amelia took a step forward, as if she couldn’t help herself.

  “After that I didn’t care what H
arry wanted to do or not do. I didn’t care that they believed the ransom wouldn’t get Gwen back. I pulled together every cent I could, and I went to the drop. Only the FBI was following me, too. The kidnapper picked up the money. The feds followed. But the kidnapper panicked and made a run for it. The car he was driving flipped down an embankment. When the bodies were recovered that’s when we discovered the truth.”

  “What?”

  “Not only was Gwen in the car, she was in on the plan. She’d set me up from the very beginning. Had binders of research about me before we ever even met.”

  Amelia moaned and slid her spine down the wall until she hit the floor, hands covering her face. She could hardly bear to listen. But Gray continued, his voice so raw she wanted to weep.

  “Everything we seemed to have in common, everything that I believed made her so perfect, had only been a well-executed plan.”

  “And the baby?”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “That turned out to be true. She was pregnant. Autopsy tests proved it was mine.” He looked out the window and his profile was as stark as his expression. “You want to know how powerful Harry is? Try to find some public record of what happened. There are none.”

  “No,” she agreed faintly. “There weren’t.” If there had been, she’d have come across it.

  “I swore I’d never let it happen again. Never be used. Never let a child of mine be used. I found a doctor who could keep his mouth shut, and that was the end of it. The only person who knew was Marissa, and that was only because of a paternity claim some woman I met in my twenties tried to bring.”

  “Naturally you knew Timmy couldn’t be yours, either.”

  He picked up the pin and studied it for a moment. “I never let myself care about anyone enough again to be truly concerned with their safety. To be in a position where they could be used as a tool against me. Against HuntCom. And then you and the kids came along. Hate me if you have to, Amelia. I won’t kid myself that I don’t deserve it.” He knelt down beside her and slowly, carefully, pinned the tiny A to her shirt. “But…please…”

  Her eyes burned. “I was—” angry, her head said “—hurt.” Her heart had her admitting the truth, instead. “I thought you’d planned it all along. That marrying me wasn’t as much about making Harry happy as it was about keeping your inheritance.”

  “Harry doesn’t have to leave me a cent. I have more money on my own than I’ll need in ten lifetimes and he knows it. It was never the money. It was—”

  “HuntCom,” she whispered.

  “He thinks I hate him.” Gray’s voice was low. Rough. “Would be easier, sometimes, if I did. But he’s Harry. He’s my father.”

  “And instead of being the perfect son to him—when he barely noticed his sons—you became the perfect successor to him.”

  “Yeah. Only now that I’ve got what I always wanted, I’d give it up in a second if it means keeping you.”

  She sucked in a shaking sob. Dashed her hand across her cheeks. “Oh, Gray. What a mess we’ve made of things.”

  “Too big a mess to clean up?”

  She bit her lip. Struggled to get the words out, but it was so hard to trust, to believe. “I—”

  “Wait. Here.” He pulled a wrinkled, well-folded sheaf of papers from his back pocket and fresh tears hit her eyes when she saw the unsteadiness of his hands. He unfolded it, but she already knew what it would be.

  Their marriage contract.

  He grabbed the top edge and rent the pages in two. Turned them and tore again. And again. Until nothing remained but a litter of confetti lying around his knees.

  She lifted a handful of shredded paper. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Do I need to go find a huge roll of tape?”

  She gave a shaking laugh at his suddenly grim expression. “No.” She let the scraps drift through her fingers. “No more legalese. I don’t want you to give up anything for me.”

  “I would. In a heartbeat. I love you, Amelia. And I never thought I’d say that to a woman again. Whether you have guardianship of Daphne’s kids or not, it doesn’t matter to me. I want you with them. I want you without them. I already knew it, but until you disappeared last night—” He shook his head. “I had half the city looking for you. The guys we sent here called me only a minute before Jack did. I know I’m not their father, but I swear, I can be the next best thing. If you’ll help me.”

  Her lips parted. She didn’t know what to say.

  He grimaced. “I know I’m hardly a catch.” He lifted his hand when she made a strangled sound. “The vasectomy, for one thing. I can’t give you one of your own children. I should have told you, but—”

  She covered his lips with her fingers. “There were lots of things we should have told each other.”

  He pressed his lips to her fingers, then drew them away. “If I could rewind time, do anything so you wouldn’t have had to overhear the way you did, I would.” His voice was hushed and so un-Gray-like that her heart cracked wide.

  “I know it was childish of me to run. I scared the life out of the kids.”

  “I didn’t lie about Gerry. Until Daphne can confirm it or not, it’s the only reasonable explanation.”

  “Then we will just have to wait until she’s able to make a decision about telling him herself.”

  “She may never get to that point,” he said gently.

  “I know. We’ll just have to figure it out as we go along.”

  “We?”

  The uncertain hope in his blue-green eyes finally gave her the courage she needed. “I love you, too.”

  His eyes closed. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to the palms in her lap.

  Tears slid down her cheek. Fell on his thick, rumpled hair. “Oh, Gray.”

  He straightened. Didn’t even try to blink away the moisture in his eyes. He reached into his pocket and drew out two rings. “Will you marry me?”

  She already had. “Yes,” she breathed.

  He took her hand. Slowly slid the slender platinum wedding band into place, followed by the second narrow band.

  Her fingers curled around his. The diamond baguettes flanking a simple square sapphire glistened in the morning light. “That’s not the engagement ring you gave me before.”

  “You hated that ring. You were right to. It wasn’t you.”

  “And this one is?”

  “Both of these,” he said quietly, “come with my heart. I love you, Amelia White. I will for the rest of my days. Everything I have, everything I am…is yours.”

  She felt the promise of it to her very soul. “That’s Amelia Hunt,” she corrected softly and pressed her lips to his.

  His arms swept around her, pulling her tight as he kissed her as if he never wanted to stop. But eventually he did. Lifting his head. Searching her face. “Are you sure? What about kids? What about—”

  “What about taking us all home,” she suggested, smiling a little. “Where we belong. For now, that’s the only plan we need.”

  His frown slowly disappeared. His lips curved. He pushed to his feet. “Home.” He took her hands and slowly drew her up beside him. “For the first time in my life, that sounds perfect to me.”

  Hand in hand, they went downstairs, collected the children, and they went.

  Home.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-1248-4

  THE BRIDE AND THE BARGAIN

  Copyright © 2008 by Allison Lee Davidson

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any r
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