Elizabeth Harbison - A Groom for Maggie

She frowned for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Oh, no.” She stood up and shook her head. “No, no.”

“What?”

“Is this about sex?”

He lowered his brows and tried to keep from laughing. “Who mentioned sex?”

She put her hands on her hips. “You increased my salary because I will also have to perform wifely duties. Do you mean you expect me to sleep with you?”

“Did I say ‘perform’?” He pushed away the thought of her shapely legs wrapped around him. “I don’t think I said ‘perform.’”

She threw her hands up. “I don’t know what you said, but it certainly sounded like an improper proposition to me.”

He looked at her calmly. “Maggie, are you prepared to take money for such…services?”

Her face flushed red. “Certainly not!”

“Then why do you assume I’m prepared to pay for them?”

She eyed him for a moment, then her mouth quirked into a smile. “Okay, you have a good point. I leapt to a conclusion. How about if you tell me what you meant by ‘wifely duty’ and I’ll reserve judgment. For a moment.”

He studied his Mont Blanc fountain pen. “When news gets out that I’m married there will be business functions now and then that you’ll be invited to attend with me. Now, I can probably get you out of most of them, but I can’t guarantee you’ll never have to come along.”

“Business functions?”

He nodded and put the pen down.

“Of course.” She met his eyes. “I don’t have any problem with that.”

“Good.” He tapped his fingers on the armrests of his chair, amazed that the conversation was really happening. It wasn’t difficult for him to consider marriage as a business proposition—after all, there were a million legal ways to protect himself. But it was another thing to think of Maggie as his wife and remember that it was strictly business…with only a fraction of the usual marital benefits.

She sat down again and crossed her long legs. Inside, Alex groaned. “So when you talked about my role as your wife and said this was a legal marriage, you meant…?”

“Legal means legal…in the eyes of the state,” Alex said, glancing at her long slender legs. He returned his gaze to her eyes, but not without a momentary pause at her exquisite lips. “You will keep your own room.”

She raised her chin and looked at him for a moment before nodding. “Okay. So we’re agreed. No…marital interaction.”

He didn’t mean to hesitate but suddenly he had to swallow. “Of course not. No sex. Not with one another at any rate.”

She looked up sharply. “Do you have someone in mind?” Her words were unexpectedly crisp.

“Do you?” he countered.

“I’m not sure that’s a question you should be asking me.”

“Why not?”

She shifted in her chair. “Because I’m not sure it’s any of your business.”

“You asked me.”

“Well, yes, but…but I’m not the one who brought it up in the first place.”

There was no one else in her life. That was a relief. If Maggie had been interested in someone, it would really have muddied things up. Where Kate was concerned, that was. “Okay, we’ll make a deal. We’ll have a no-questions-asked policy.” Now he felt safe proposing this. “Discretion is the only requirement.”

“Another deal,” Maggie mused. She reached up and pulled her long golden hair back from her face.

Alex watched and swallowed hard. Every once in awhile he’d seen her do that and each time it struck him how much she looked like Grace Kelly. Funny, when he was young, he’d seen Rear Window and developed a tremendous crush on Grace Kelly. He’d forgotten that until just now.

“Do you agree?” he asked, after a silence that he knew had gone on too long.

“Yes.” Her chest rose with a deep breath and the buttons of her blouse strained slightly. “So how do you want to do it?”

His heart skipped a beat. “Do…?”

“The marriage,” she answered quickly. “The actual ceremony or what have you.”

“Ah, well.” He straightened in his chair and shuffled some papers on his desk. “I suppose we’ll go to the courthouse.”

“The courthouse. Fine.” Maggie swallowed. “When?”

He tapped his fingertips on the desk, then steepled his fingers in front of his face. For some reason he didn’t want to appear too anxious. “I’ll have to check my schedule and get back to you on that.”

Some expression flitted across her features, but too quickly for Alex to identify it. She heaved a sigh and regarded him for a moment. There was such a look of intelligence in her eyes. Alex found it disconcerting. As if she could see right through him.

“Fine,” she said, breaking his thoughts. “But I don’t suppose we should wait too long.” She nodded toward the paper listing her visa expiration.

“No,” he agreed. “I just have to make a few calls and then I’ll have my secretary make the arrangements.” He added, “You do realize that an immigration review board will want to set up a time to interview us.”

She blinked. “Why?”

“To make sure our marriage is real. This is an eleventh hour move, after all.”

“How are they going to confirm that?”

“It’s my understanding that they’ll ask us a series of questions about each other and our life together. We’ll have to spend some time together preparing.”

“Should I be worried?”

“I don’t think so. It’s like any other test. We’ll just make sure we’re prepared.” He hesitated. “Do you have any other points to clear up?” He nodded toward the paper she’d brought along.

She glanced at it. “How do we handle…the end? In three years.”

“At the end of three years, I propose to give you a lump sum, again for your personal use. I imagine that you’ll use it to establish yourself as single again.” He pulled the pad over, wrote, then passed the paper to her.

She took it and gasped. “Are you sure you wrote this correctly?” She held it up for him to see.

He didn’t bother to look. “It’s not enough?” He poised his pen. “I’ll only go up another ten thousand.”

“ Another ten thousand?” She shook her head. “It looks like you’ll be eager to be rid of me.”

He couldn’t imagine it. “I only want to be fair. That’s the way I do all my business.”

“Then it’s no wonder you’re so successful.” There was a hard edge to her voice. “But this —” she looked at the paper “—isn’t necessary. Not for me.”

Alex looked at her sharply, hating the clutch in his gut. “You don’t like me, do you?”

“Do you care whether I do or not?”

He couldn’t care. But how could he explain that to her? “It’s not imperative.”

She eyed him in silence, then asked, “What if one of us wants to get out of the marriage early?”

He went cold. “Is that a possibility?” he asked in a tone more sharp than he’d intended.

She met his eyes. “I don’t know, is it? What if you fall in love and want to marry someone else?”

He grimaced. “That’s not going to happen. For me. And if we make this deal and you want to marry someone else, you’re going to have to wait until the end of this term. Kate must be settled in a new situation before you leave.”

“Naturally.”

“Furthermore, you must agree to stay in touch with her afterward. I know it’s a big commitment, but otherwise, there’s no deal.” He watched Maggie’s eyes. “Can you agree to that?”

“Of course.” She straightened her shoulders. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s even on my list.” She held it out halfheartedly.