Anne McAllister - The Inconvenient Bride

She had very carefully not seen him since that time—just as he had very carefully not seen her.

She had done her damnedest to forget him.

And she’d certainly never expected him to turn up in the middle of Finn MacCauley’s studio, heading straight toward her.

But before he reached her, Finn stepped between them. “Wolfe?” He looked perplexed, obviously wondering what his friend Rhys’s high-powered CEO brother was doing here.

They all wondered—the annoyed Strong, the slack-jawed Ballou, the starry-eyed models, the makeup artist—and Sierra.

Especially Sierra.

Since he’d pushed his way through the door, he hadn’t taken his eyes off her. And whatever amazing electricity had begun sizzling between them the first time they’d met when she’d stormed into his office last summer, demanding the whereabouts of his brother, was still sizzling all these months later—even though they denied it, assuaged it, tried to ignore it.

Now she stepped round Finn and looked up into Dominic’s ice-chip eyes. “What do you want?”

“I want you to marry me,” Dominic said.

He didn’t care that she looked poleaxed or that Finn looked murderous or that everyone else seemed to think he’d just escaped from bedlam.

He repeated the words. “Marry me,” in case she wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard them.

“Marry…you?”

It was the first time he’d seen Sierra Kelly slack-jawed. But at least she’d finally found her voice. And privately Dominic was satisfied that he’d actually succeeded in shocking her.

“That’s what I said.” He grinned now, daring her.

And, because she was Sierra, she tipped her sock-it-to-me chin right straight at him and dared him right back. “You’d have to pay me a million bucks!”

“Half a million.”

“What!” She went beyond slack-jawed, straight to flabbergasted. “Be serious.”

“I am serious.” He grabbed her arm and dragged her out into the reception area where half a dozen pairs of prying eyes couldn’t oversee and an equal number of ears couldn’t overhear. “You want a half a million bucks, fine.”

“But—” she started to protest, then looked at him narrowly, suspiciously. “Why?”

“Because.”

She laughed. “Because? Oh, there’s a reason. This from the man the Times calls ‘focused, decisive, a man who knows his own mind.’”

Dominic snorted. “One reporter’s impression.”

“Backed up by pretty solid evidence,” Sierra said. “So, I repeat, why do you want to marry me?”

He rubbed a hand over his hair, still damp from the rain and admitted, “I don’t.”

Sierra’s hazel eyes flashed. She folded her arms across her Day-Glo orange rib-topped chest, but not before he’d noted the faintest outline of her nipples. He felt a stirring in his groin.

“Well, then?” Sierra eyed him narrowly. She tapped the toe of her boot.

Dominic gritted his teeth. “I need to get married.”

“I thought only women needed to get married.”

Damn her smart mouth! He could feel heat climbing up his neck. “It’s time I got married. CEOs look more responsible when they’re married.”

“You’re marrying me to look responsible?”

“I’m marrying to shut my old man up! I want him to get the hell out of my life! I want him to stop trying to find me a wife. I want him to get his claws out of me and out of the company and stay the hell down in Florida playing shuffleboard where he belongs!”

“Like you would be content to play shuffleboard.”

Dominic blinked. “What?”

Sierra rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t want to spend your life playing shuffleboard. And you’re just like him.”

“The hell I—well, so what if I am!” Dominic scowled and kneaded the taut muscles at the back of his neck. Then he found his rationale. “He’d do the same damn thing I’m doing then. He’d do things his own way.”

“He’d marry me?” Sierra said skeptically. “He’d marry a woman with magenta hair?”

“It’s not magenta,” Dominic muttered, giving her tousled locks a quick assessing glance. “It’s purple.”

Actually it was more of a magenta, now that she mentioned it. A very vivid magenta and not easily ignored, unless you looked the other way, which was what he tried to do. But his eyes kept coming back to it with a certain morbid fascination.

But morbid fascination, to be honest, was a good part of Sierra’s appeal. Maybe not the only part, but it would serve the old man right when Dominic introduced Sierra as his wife. He could see what he’d driven his eldest son to!

“Purple, magenta,” Sierra brushed his quibble off. She was still looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I’m thinking maybe green next week. I did it green for St. Patrick’s,” she told him with a grin.

She was baiting him and he knew it. “So, what do you say?” he persisted.

“I think you’re insane.”

“Probably.” He waited.

“You’re actually serious?”

“I’m serious.”

Still she hesitated. She nibbled on her lower lip. Dominic remembered nibbling on that lip. He remembered the taste of her—hadn’t been able to forget the taste of her! He smothered a groan.

“Sierra?” he said impatiently.

“Half a million?”

It was the last thing he’d figured she would say. Sierra Kelly—the nearest thing to a free spirit he knew—was not a money-grubber. At least he hadn’t imagined that she was. He frowned at her, but she didn’t back down. And he had gone too far to back down now himself.

Besides, a half a million to get the old man off his back permanently was a bargain.

He shrugged irritably. “Half a million.”

“Now? You’ll give it to me now?”

“You want to stop at a bank on the way to the courthouse?” He was halfway between sarcasm and disbelief.

But Sierra nodded gravely. “Yes. Please.”

He stared at her, wondering what went on inside her magenta-colored head. But he was annoyed enough, and reckless enough at the moment, not to care. “It’s a deal,” he said. “For half a million bucks you’ll marry me this afternoon.”

Sierra only hesitated a second. “Yes.”

Any minute now, Sierra figured, she’d wake up.

She’d yawn and stretch and open her eyes to stare at the cracked ceiling above her narrow futon bed. And she would laugh at the craziness of her dreams.

Marry Dominic Wolfe?

Sierra had had some weird dreams in her lifetime, but never one as weird as that. She blinked as she spritzed Alison’s hair. She rolled her shoulders and shook her head, trying to wake up. Surely it was time for the alarm to ring!

“What’s the matter with you?” Dominic demanded.

The matter was that she was awake.

He lifted his arm and shot back his cuff to glance at his watch. “We need to get moving.”

“Can’t,” Sierra said. “Not yet. I have work to do. A job. A commitment,” she explained when she realized that he wouldn’t think her job was worth bothering about. He understood commitments at least.

His jaw tightened, and she thought he would object. But finally he nodded. “Then do it. Let’s get this show on the road.”

And as Sierra stood there, mouth ajar, he pitched in and got things going.

No, that didn’t describe it. He didn’t pitch in. He commandeered. He took one look around and decided what needed to be done.

“You,” he said to Alison, “Stop sniveling and get dressed. You, too,” he said to Delilah. “And get your fingers out of your hair.”

To a stupefied Ballou, he said, “Stop standing around like a moron. Get those dresses out and ready. Shake them out. Have the next one ready as soon as Finn finishes.”

To Finn he said, “We need to be done by two. And we’ll need witnesses. Sierra and I are getting married. Have her—” he jerked his head toward Strong “—call Izzy.”