His Marriage Bonus

Mitch had the feeling if she ever finished fixing it up and restoring it to its former glory, she would have so much invested in it, she wouldn’t want to sell it. “Or you could turn it into a museum,” he said.

“Or a bed-and-breakfast.” Lauren opened the lid and fingered the chipped ivory keys on a badly neglected baby grand piano.

“Are you thinking about that?” Mitch grinned as her noodling picked up speed and the familiar melody line of “Heart and Soul” filled the room.

He took over the bass and joined her in an impromptu duet of his childhood favorite. “I can’t really see myself as an innkeeper,” she admitted, making a face, as they continued to play on the hideously out-of-tune instrument. “I don’t particularly like cleaning up after people. Tidying up after strangers is even worse. But you’re right, I could make it a museum.”

Mitch studied her as the song wound down to an end and they stepped away from the piano. “But you don’t want to do that, either.”

Lauren shrugged as she went to the window covered with moth-eaten velvet drapes. “A home this lovely deserves to be lived in. It’s been roped off for far too long as it is.”

She had a point there, Mitch knew. Still… “It’s too large a place to live in alone,” he said.

She gave him a look that let him know she had no intention of living the rest of her life alone. “I’ll get married someday,” she promised softly. She paused, a defiant gleam coming into her lovely dark brown eyes. “But I won’t do it because my father has auctioned me off in exchange for some business merger.”

Mitch leaned against the wall, facing her. “You’ll marry for love.”

Lauren lifted her slender shoulders in an indifferent shrug. “That’s the only reason to marry.” She paused, looking deep into his eyes. “But I can see you don’t agree with me on that.”

Mitch thought about what “love” had put him through. Feeling abruptly restless, he moved away from the wall, walked across the room. Hands braced on the frame on either side of him, he looked out into the spacious hallway, appreciating all over again how big and majestic this mansion really was, before turning back to face Lauren. “I think maybe your father is right,” he said with all due seriousness. “Maybe we’d all be better off if we approached marriage and relationships with the clear-headed approach we use on business deals.”

Lauren rolled her eyes as she breezed past him and continued down the hall, to the sweeping semicircular mahogany staircase that dominated the center of the house. “You really want to date me, don’t you?” she mused.

Mitch caught up with her on the stairs. He wrapped his hand lightly on the railing as they made their descent. “I really want the merger that will make Deveraux-Heyward shipping the most powerful firm on the entire eastern seaboard. And,” he concluded as he reached the main level once again and turned to face her, “if spending time with you for one week is what guarantees that, so be it.”

Silence fell between them as Lauren plucked her blazer off the railing and tugged it back on.

“We can do this, Lauren,” Mitch insisted as he sat down on the fourth stair-step up. He clasped his hands between his spread knees. “It’s really not that much to ask.”

“Says you,” Lauren retorted back as she paced to the front door and back. She leveled an accusing fingertip at Mitch. “You haven’t had my father trying to control your life in every way possible for the past twenty-eight years.”

Mitch shrugged, and still feeling overly warm, folded the cuffs back on his shirtsleeves, nearly to his elbows. “From what I could tell, your father seems to love you very much.”

Still pacing, Lauren threw her hands up in exasperation. “He does, which of course makes all his behind-the-scenes string-pulling on my behalf all that much worse.” She paused, propped the back of one hand on her hip and looked straight at Mitch. “It’s like he doesn’t believe in me to be able to make the right decisions on my own.”

“I’ll be the first to admit that’s unfair,” Mitch commiserated quietly. “But you shouldn’t let your pique with him about that keep you from owning this place and lavishing on it the tender loving care you know that it deserves and needs.”

Abruptly, Lauren broke into a sweet-as-sugar, and just as impudent, grin. “Oh, you’re good, Deveraux,” she said. “Real good.”

Mitch couldn’t help it—he grinned back as he straightened. He drew nearer, finding himself still a good six inches taller than she was, despite the two-inch heels on her shoes. He looked down at Lauren, a little taken aback by the undercurrents of chemistry between them. “Does that mean I’m persuading you?”

“It means,” Lauren delineated bluntly, with a take-no-prisoners look, “that I want to own 10 Gathering Street as much as you want the Deveraux-Heyward merger. So okay,” she conceded on a reluctant sigh. “I’ll date you every evening for one week. But I’ll do so only on my terms.”

“And those are?” Mitch braced himself for the demands to follow.

“It’s strictly platonic.” Lauren firmly ticked off her demands. “No kissing. No hand-holding. No fringe benefits of any kind.”

Given the way she was looking at him—as though she just dared him to try anything the least bit romantic—it was all Mitch could do not to take her into his arms and kiss her senseless, then and there. “How about opening the door for you?” Finding his own pulse racing in what could only be anticipation, Mitch stalked her in deliberately predatory fashion.

Lauren stepped back, a slight look of alarm on her face. “No.” She folded her arms in front of her tightly.

“You don’t want me to pull up your chair,” Mitch noted, pretending he couldn’t imagine why not.

Lauren regarded him skeptically. “No.”

“What about coats?” he asked lazily. “Should I help you on with your coat?”

Lauren flushed, the same soft hue as her blazer. “It’s too warm for coats,” she stated, digging in where she stood even more. “Besides, should I want to take one off, I can manage it on my own. And one more thing. I know my father and what he’s banking on here, but you should know outright that no matter what else he offers me, our dating will not lead to marriage.”

Even as he struggled over his own guilt over the secret dowry her father had already offered him, Mitch felt compelled to take on the role of devil’s advocate. “Why are you so opposed to the idea of that?”

“I don’t know.” Lauren shrugged. “Maybe because it would be arranged?”

“Not if we decided on our own to wed,” Mitch said.

Lauren stared at Mitch in mortification. “And why would we do that?”

“Because it makes sense,” Mitch explained. “At least in a strictly business way.” Able to see Lauren wasn’t the least bit convinced, he explained, “The first tenet of business is to keep an open mind when trying to achieve your goals. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a short-term need or a long-term one. When a good idea is presented to you, you should make the most of it. Especially if it helps you meet your objective.”

Lauren looked down her nose at him as she said dryly, “Let me guess. You think an arranged marriage is a good idea?”

Mitch paused, uncertain how much to reveal. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Lauren, and he had a feeling that if she found out about the secret dowry he had been offered, she would be very hurt. “To tell you the truth,” Mitch said eventually, “I’ve never really considered an arranged marriage before—” But now that he was thinking about it—with Lauren Heyward as his potential bride—an arrangement like that could work. Given the right circumstances and attitudes, of course.

“I haven’t thought about it either,” Lauren interrupted unhappily, “and with good reason—it’s an outdated concept.”

“But now that your father has brought it up I can see he’s got a strong case for such a liaison,” Mitch persisted. One that seemed a little more intriguing with every second he spent with Lauren Heyward. Seeing she was going to need a little more persuasion, he leaned closer and said softly, “Think about it. We have similar backgrounds. We both understand the shipping business because we grew up with it.”

“But only one of us is actually interested in the shipping business.”

“Even better,” Mitch said emphatically. “Should we decide to marry one day, we won’t be fighting over who gets to run it—I’ll automatically have the honor. Plus a marriage-driven merger would allow us to expand and strengthen both our businesses, while still keeping both firms private and ‘all-in-the-family’ so to speak. Financially, it would be good for both of them.”

Lauren went very still. “What about passion?”

Mitch had only been with Lauren a few minutes, and he was already fantasizing about what it would be like to make love with her. But sensing she wouldn’t want to hear that, he merely smiled. “I think every marriage should have some.”

“Exactly,” Lauren replied with a mixture of satisfaction and relief. She looked at him in a way that seemed to imply on that score they weren’t compatible at all.

He sized her up and then decided a level of truth was called for after all. “I am attracted to you, Lauren.” He’d also never been able to resist a challenge—and the thought of taking her to bed and discovering all the ways to give her pleasure was very intriguing, indeed.

“Well, that’s too bad,” Lauren retorted with a haughty toss of her mane of golden-brown hair. “Because I am not in the least bit attracted to you!”

Fibber, Mitch thought. “Want to bet?” Mitch asked, and then did what he had been wanting to do since she had first stormed into—and out of—her father’s office earlier in the afternoon. He took her in his arms, lowered his lips to hers and put her declaration of immunity to the test. She gasped as their mouths fused and he kissed her long and hard and deep. Until he felt the need pouring out of her, as surely as the desire and temper. Until she moaned softly and melted in his arms. His mouth tingling, his whole body aching with the yearning to make her his, Mitch reluctantly lifted his head.

“Okay,” Lauren said breathlessly as he continued to hold her close, “maybe you are attractive.” She braced her arms between the two of them, doing her best to keep them from touching above the waist. “But that doesn’t mean I’m attracted to you, Mitch Deveraux.”

Mitch smiled at the stubbornness of her complaint, and bent her backward from the waist, determined to make her face the truth, no matter what it took. “Kiss me again and then say that,” Mitch challenged playfully, kissing the nape of her neck, the curve of her ear, before taking the softness of her lips and molding them to his. He kissed her again and again, persuading, tempting, until her body trembled even as it strained to be closer to his and her arms moved up to wreath his neck. And once he felt the soft surrender of her body, tasted the sweetness of her mouth, there was no stopping with just one kiss. Never mind one intended merely to prove a point.

Mitch’s heart pounded in his chest. The rest of his body went rigid with desire. Knowing the only way to be close enough to her would be to take her to bed and make her his, he tugged her nearer yet. He hadn’t wanted a woman as much as he wanted Lauren, since…well, maybe never. He couldn’t even say why, exactly. He just knew there was something special about her. Something special about this. And she knew it, too, Mitch thought. He could tell by the way she was kissing him back. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the way he wanted her—on an ill-thought-out whim. Reluctantly, he drew back. Waited for her reaction. Which turned out to be every bit as predictable—self-protecting—as he thought it would be.