Kate Hoffmann - The Mighty Quinns - Sean

It would be a way of buying herself some time, Laurel mused. Sooner or later her uncle would have to see that his insistence on marriage was antiquated and untenable. After all, she’d nearly married a criminal to get her hands on her inheritance. Pretending to marry a handsome private investigator wasn’t nearly so serious. Once her uncle saw how far she was willing to go to build her dream, he’d have to relent.

“All this just to save you a little embarrassment?” Sean asked, leveling her with a suspicious gaze.

“Yes,” she lied. He didn’t really need to know the truth, did he? After all, she was paying him well for his services as a stand-in groom.

“And you’re going to pay me to do this?”

“Yes. Ten thousand. That’s a lot of money,” she said. “You could afford to get a decent haircut.”

He stared at her for a long moment, his gaze intense. “I’m not sure I trust you.”

She felt a shiver skitter along her spine. She’d planned a wonderful honeymoon in Hawaii and was tempted to make that a requirement, as well. Maybe another ten thousand would cover a week of frolicking on a secluded beach. An image of Sean Quinn, shirtless, his skin burnished by the sun, flitted through her mind. It was immediately replaced by an image of him diving into the surf…naked…the water gleaming over his—

Laurel cursed inwardly. This was getting ridiculous! She’d nearly married another man today and she couldn’t stop fantasizing about a guy she barely knew. “I’m not paying you to trust me. I’m paying you to marry me. If it will make you feel better, I’ll put it all in writing.”

He thought about the offer for a moment longer, then sighed. “All right. I suppose I could help out. I could use the money.”

Laurel threw herself into his arms, unable to contain her joy and relief. But when he slipped his hands around her waist and held her just a bit longer than proper, she found herself wondering what it might feel like to kiss Sean Quinn. “I—I’ll write out our agreement while you get ready.” She hurried to the door, then turned around before she opened it. “You’re not going to back out on this, are you?”

Sean picked up the tuxedo and looked at it critically. “With that right jab you’ve got? I’d be fool to make you angry again.”

THE DOOR CLOSED softly behind her. Sean released a tightly held breath, then shook his head. “What the hell am I doing? I’ve got to be insane.” He glanced over at the window and wondered if he could get it open and crawl out before she returned.

The day had started out with such promise. He was going to close a big case, take a sleazebag off the street and collect a nice fat fee. But he’d made an error in judgment by offering to do a favor for that sleazebag and look where it got him. He hadn’t needed Eddie’s hundred-dollar fee; he’d already had a good day financially. Greed had gotten him in this mess.

He thought back to the tale of Ronan Quinn, how the wolf had nearly eaten him because he’d gotten a little too greedy. Now he had a chance to collect a tidy ten thousand acorns from Laurel Rand, just for pretending to be Edward Garland Wilson.

It would be ten hours’ work maximum, at a rate of one thousand dollars an hour. He’d have to be a fool to turn that down. And what did he have to lose? His only real plans this evening had been to stop by Quinn’s Pub and have a few beers, then go back to his apartment and type up the bill. And Laurel Rand was right—he hadn’t signed any marriage license, so the whole thing was off the books. Just a charade for her high-society wedding guests.

Sean slowly unzipped the garment bag and withdrew the tuxedo. He checked the label, noting the fancy designer name. The jacket looked like it might be a little small and the pants on the short side, but at least the shirt collar wouldn’t choke him.

This was certainly not what he had in mind when he thought of marriage. Of course, he’d never thought of marriage for himself at all. Sean had been told all the cautionary tales of his Mighty Quinn ancestors—as had his brothers. But Sean had been the only one in the family to recognize that the odds were against all six brothers being able to achieve eternal bachelorhood. When his oldest brothers had fallen victim, he had assumed that his odds for avoiding matrimony had improved considerably.

But there was a part of him that envied his five brothers—and even his little sister, Keely. They’d all found something that he’d never once experienced in his life. Sure, there had been women, even a few who imagined themselves in love with him. But not one had come close to touching his heart—a heart that he’d kept well protected over the years.

His attitude about marriage might not have been so harsh had he a decent example to follow. His father had been horrible at it. And his mother had been…Sean paused. He used to think of her as an angel, the perfect mother. But that had changed one day, shortly after his fourteenth birthday, when he’d learned the truth about his parents’ marriage.

He shook his head, pushing the thoughts aside. His father’s imperfections and his mother’s infidelities were in the past—so why couldn’t he forget them? A shrink might say he had trust issues, but Sean didn’t believe in that kind of psychobabble. He was who he was and there was no use trying to analyze it. He just had to live with it.

Sean took a deep breath, shrugging out of his jacket and dropping it over the back of a chair. Then he stripped down to his boxers and tugged on the finely pressed black trousers. He’d just pulled the zipper up when the door opened.

Laurel Rand slipped inside and hurriedly closed the door behind her, turning to face him. For a moment she froze, staring at him mutely, her gaze dropping to his naked chest, then flitting back up to his face. His eyes met hers and for a moment he was struck again by her beauty. But then he forced himself to look at her rationally. She’d just learned her groom wouldn’t be attending the wedding, yet she’d seemed to accept the news without hysterics and tantrums.

Sean rubbed his hand over his abdomen, his muscles still tense from when she had punched him. Every instinct told him that Laurel Rand shouldn’t be trusted, but the money was just too good to resist. Ten thousand dollars didn’t fall into his lap every day. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I’ll do it.”

A tiny smile curled her lips and Sean took satisfaction in the knowledge that what he was doing had pleased her. She really was extraordinarily beautiful, especially when she smiled. Some might think her mouth a little too wide or her cheekbones too high. Taken alone, each feature of her face wasn’t all that pretty. But when put together, she had a beauty that he found arresting.

She slowly approached and handed him a folded piece of paper. “I wrote it all out,” she said. “And…and I wrote you a check. It’s dated for the day after tomorrow.”

He took the paper and the check, then grabbed the tuxedo jacket and put them both into the breast pocket. “Thanks.”

“Aren’t you going to read it?” Laurel asked.

He shrugged as he slipped into the pleated shirt. “I trust you.” Sean stared down at the front of the shirt. “No buttons,” he said.

“Oh, there are studs,” she said, grabbing up the garment bag and fishing around until she found a card. “Here.”

Sean fumbled to get one off the card, but his fingers were clumsy with nerves. It dropped to the floor and skidded beneath the chair. “I never could figure these things out,” he said, bending to retrieve the stud.

“Let me,” Laurel said, taking the errant stud from his fingers.

He stood in front of her, the shirt gaping open. When her fingers brushed his skin, a current of sensation rushed through him. He held his breath as she worked at the studs, trying to focus his thoughts on something other than a vivid fantasy of her smoothing her palms over his naked skin and brushing away the shirt altogether. Of her damp lips trailing across his—