Anne McAllister - The Inconvenient Bride

That all seemed downright normal compared to the dinner she’d just survived.

She sank into the back seat of the taxi, clutching her tackle box, and shut her eyes. She was dimly aware that Dominic had climbed in beside her and was speaking to the driver. As the car begin to move, she heard Dominic sigh as he settled back next to her. She kept her eyes shut and waited for him to speak. But he didn’t say a word.

Maybe he was as tired as she was.

Acting did that to her. Drained her. Left her limp and exhausted. Playing Alice back in high school had wrung her out.

This had been harder. Lots harder. That she’d rehearsed for. This had been complete improvisation. And while she thought she’d acquitted herself well enough, she was still exhausted. She just wanted to go home and go to bed.

She didn’t open her eyes until the taxi stopped.

“We’re here,” Dominic said.

Sierra hauled herself up and blinked as she looked around. Then she jerked upright and her eyes went wide. “Where? This isn’t my place!”

“Of course not. It’s mine.’ Dominic was handing the driver some money and opening the door. “Come on.”

But Sierra couldn’t. She stayed right where she was. “I’m not going to your place!”

Out of the car, he bent down to stare at her. “You’re not—Why not?” He looked white-faced and furious.

“Because I’m not! I never agreed to—”

“You agreed to marry me. You did marry me.” His voice was icy.

“I know, but—”

“Marriage implies cohabitation,” he reminded her. He was gritting his teeth.

“Not…not necessarily.” It was one thing to have mad passionate sex with Dominic. It was entirely another to get sucked up into his apartment, his world, his life! She folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not getting out,” she told the taxi driver. “I need to go downtown.”

“The hell you do!” Dominic protested.

But Sierra ignored him and gave the driver her address.

“You can’t—!”

The driver flipped on the meter, then glanced at Dominic. “Mister, you gotta shut the door.”

“No. I don’t. She’s not—!”

“Yes, I am. Now. Drive,” Sierra commanded the driver. “Go on!”

“No!” Dominic resolutely held the door open, not moving an inch.

The driver looked from one to the other of them, annoyed. “I got a business here.”

“So take me—”

“No!”

“D’youse two suppose youse could maybe settle this somewhere else?” the taxi driver said plaintively.

“Yes,” Dominic said.

“No,” Sierra said.

Their gazes locked. They glared.

“Please!” the taxi driver implored them.

Sierra clutched her box and didn’t budge.

Finally Dominic flung himself back into the cab and slammed the door “Fine. Take us to her place.” He challenged Sierra to contradict him. “We’ll stay there.”

“You can’t stay here!” Sierra said for the umpteenth time as Dominic followed her up the narrow stairway to her flat.

“You refused to stay at my place,” he reminded her. It was getting hard to breathe, and not from the three-floor climb. Rather it was a result of being on eye level with Sierra’s curvy bottom the whole way up. Her denim mini-skirt barely seemed to cover it. And it didn’t matter that the rest of her was discreetly covered in black ribbed leggings, Dominic had a good imagination.

And a good memory.

At last Sierra stopped in front of a tall metal door. She fitted a key into a lock, undid it, moved on to another one, undid that, then unlocked a third, and pushed open the door. “It doesn’t mean you had to come here.”

“Apparently it does, if I want to spend my wedding night with my bride.” He followed on her heels, suspecting that she would shut the door on him if he gave her half a chance.

Apparently the thought had occurred to her, because the color was high in her cheeks and she aimed a disgusted look in his direction when he shut the door himself and leaned against it, arms folded across his chest, smiling at her.

She set down her tackle box and stood glaring at him from the other end of the tiny room. “Well, you can’t. Not here. It’s not big enough.” She waved an arm and practically hit one of the walls. “There’s no room.”

Dominic shrugged indifferently. “It was your choice.”

“It was not my choice! I didn’t invite you here.”

“But you refused to come home with me,” he said reasonably.

“I don’t need to come home with you! I went to dinner with you! I shocked your father for you. I stopped Viveca from marrying you. What more do you want?”

“Fifty-three years.”

“What!”

Dominic raked a hand through his hair. He shoved away from the wall, wanting to pace, to move, but there was no room. “Nothing!” he muttered. “Never mind. You’re the one who said it.”

“Tommy’s the one who said it.”

“And who raised her glass in toast?”

“Would you rather I’d said, ‘Oh, how about six months?’ Your father would really have taken us seriously then.”

“How the hell is he going to take it seriously if you won’t come home with me?”

She wrapped her arms across her breasts. “He doesn’t have to know that.”

“Of course he’ll know! He’s probably got someone tailing after the cab right now, just watching. I’m surprised he didn’t demand to see the license.”

Actually Douglas would never do any such thing—not in public anyway. He wouldn’t want to admit that Dominic had bested him. “He expects us to be together. I’m staying.” He began to loosen his tie.

“Stop that!”

“What?”

“Undressing!”

“You’ve seen me with my tie undone,” Dominic reminded her mockingly as he yanked it off, tossed it on the chair, then undid the top button of his starched white shirt. “You did very creative things with my tie, as I recall.” Things that, remembered, could still send shivers straight to his groin.

Sierra turned bright red. “That was then!”

“And now we’re married” He arched a brow. “Do you only have sex with single men?”

“I’ve never had sex with a married one!”

“It’s allowed,” he told her. “When you’re married to him.”

He finished unbuttoning his shirt and stripped it off, then tugged his T-shirt over his head. The chill in the room was a shock to his heated flesh. He wanted to go to her and wrap her in his arms.

But all the while she watched him like a fawn caught in headlights. Swell, she was going to turn into Bambi. Sierra, of all people. Who’d have guessed?

Dominic’s hand went to his belt. She sucked in a breath. He glared at her, annoyed. “Are you going to pretend this isn’t why you said yes?” he asked.

She blinked rapidly, then swallowed, and he thought for a moment she would deny wanting him at all. But finally she gave a jerky nod. “Only partly.”

“Right.” His jaw tightened. “There was the check, too. The little matter of half a million bucks.”

She scowled. “The money had nothing—well, almost nothing—to do with it,” she told him defiantly.

He would have liked to ask what the hell she intended to do with half a million dollars, but right now it wasn’t important. He didn’t care. He wanted another more important answer. “Fine. Then why fight it? It’s what we want. What we both want. Unless you only believe in one-night stands?”

“Of course not!”

“Then maybe you’re a chicken.”

Her eyes flashed. “I’m never a chicken!”

“No?” Dominic challenged softly. “Then prove it.”

For a long moment she didn’t move. Then something changed. A gleam came into her eyes, a gleam he remembered once before. The corners of her mouth turned up in a smile that set his heart to pounding. And quite deliberately Sierra reached out and snagged his tie from where he’d tossed it on the chair.