A Christmas Proposition

“It’s a bed-and-breakfast and it’s full.” She raised her chin, her aquamarine eyes flashing in warning.

“I’ll sleep in my SUV.” Emmett tipped his head in challenge. “It’s either this or you don’t go. Your brother’s right about it being dangerous. Your image is plastered all over social media. I’ve seen you in the spotlight before. Paparazzi chase you, Stef.”

She was beautiful and young and easily the most famous female billionaire in Dallas, if not the state of Texas. The combination of her it-girl reputation and a rumor that she was going to marry the mayor’s sworn enemy made for tempting media fodder.

She opened her mouth, probably to argue.

Emmett lifted his eyebrows, silently communicating. Give me a break, okay?

Miraculously, rather than arguing, she gritted out, “Fine.”

“Great. Get out,” Chase said. “Both of you.”

So, his best friend was prickly. So what? Emmett wasn’t one for being handled with kid gloves. His rhino-tough hide had been hewed at a young age.

“Come on,” he told Stef, opening the mayor’s door for her to exit. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

Emmett held open the passenger door of his black SUV, a gas-guzzling, tinted-windowed, way-too-big-for-a-road-trip vehicle.

“You can’t be serious about taking this beast to San Antonio. We’ll have to pull over every fifteen miles to refill the tank.”

“Get. In.”

She glared up at his chiseled jaw and perfectly shaped head beneath very short, dark brown hair. He wore it cropped close and rarely was it more than a few inches long on top. He was bedecked in what she’d come to think of as his “standard uniform.” A crisp white shirt open at the collar and dark slacks. His brawn and bulk and attitude were better suited for a T-shirt and sweats, but his job title required a dab of formality.

She tossed her purse inside and grasped the SUV’s door handle and the front seat to climb in. Emmett’s warm, broad palm cupped her elbow to steady her, and she nearly jerked away in shock. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was the first time he’d ever touched her.

It was...alarming.

And not in the get-your-damn-hands-off-me kind of way. His touch had felt...intimate.

Once she was inside he dropped his voice and leaned close. She ignored the clean leather smell of him. Or tried to, anyway.

“Heads up. There’s a suspicious cyclist over there.” He shut her door and walked around to the driver’s side.

She scanned the immediate area outside her brother’s office twice before she spotted a casual-looking guy on a bike with a cell phone conspicuously propped on the handlebars and pointing at the SUV.

Damn.

As much as she hated to admit it, Chase might have had a point about media attention.

Emmett settled into the driver’s seat and turned over the engine, sending her an assessing, stony gray stare. Typically, his eyes held a note of blue, but today they mirrored the cloudy skies above.

“What?” she barked. “Do you want me to congratulate you because you’re right?”

He smirked. “Buckle your belt.”

“Let’s get one thing straight, Neanderthal,” she said as she jerked the belt over her torso. “You may believe a woman’s place is in the passenger seat. Or that I can’t handle anything on my own without one of you big strong men to help me out, but FYI, I am not yours to command.”

Though some foreign tingly part of her suggested that Emmett might be the perfect specimen to take commands from.

She swallowed the rest of her speech about being an adult and handling her own problems, mainly because they both felt like stretches of the truth. In all of her attempts not to involve her family in her life, she’d somehow managed to tow them in. Her parents, Chase, Penelope, Zach and now Emmett.

Angry with herself more than her driver, she stared out the window in silence as the SUV pulled away from the curb.

Three (#u7f37cb16-ca47-5398-8f88-56c798742046)

Stef had gone to bed late last night, staring at the ceiling for a long while, her mind lost on her current predicament.

She hadn’t stayed up late to pack—she’d done that already and her matching luggage was lined up dutifully next to her apartment door. Knowing that Emmett would pick her up promptly at 7:00 a.m., she also hadn’t indulged in more than one glass of sparkling rosé before bed. No, her insomnia couldn’t be blamed on a lack of planning or too much alcohol. She’d lain awake, earning this morning’s puffy eyes and groggy brain for one reason.

She was tired of being everyone else’s problem.

It wasn’t enough to tell her parents and her brothers that she was an adult. She had to show them. In order to show them, she needed to take care of the Blake situation herself.

Penelope was equipped to handle any PR disaster, but the more Stef thought about it, the more Pen’s plan to “wait and see” sounded like a slow track to a solution. Chase’s election was less than six months away. Stefanie refused to let Blake continue to drag her family’s good name through the muck.

Chase had made it clear last fall that he didn’t hold Stefanie accountable for her act of indiscretion with Blake. In spite of his absolving her, her guilt remained.

That Blake held this much power over her infuriated her. She refused to let him cause her to lose even one more minute of sleep.

Last night while staring at the ceiling of her apartment, she’d decided not to let Blake have that power over her family, either.

Penelope’s words rang in her ears.

If you were anyone other than my sister-in-law, I’d advise you to get married.

Well, why hadn’t that been Pen’s suggestion? It shouldn’t matter that Stefanie was her sister-in-law. A solution was a solution! There was only one eensy-weensy problem. Stefanie would have to find someone to marry, and fast.

She wasn’t sure who to approach, let alone how to ask. She’d climbed out of bed during the wee hours, unhooked her phone from the charger in her kitchen and poured one more small glass of wine. Then she started scrolling through her contacts in her phone’s address book.

Every prospect she thumbed through seemed worse than the last. She passed over ex-boyfriends, hookups and acquaintances alike. None of them were marriage material—not even temporarily. Plus, how would she ask for a favor like that from someone she hadn’t talked to in months, or years in some cases?

Hi, I know you haven’t heard from me for a while, but would you mind marrying me for a few months?

Not to mention she would need her groom to keep their marriage arrangement a secret. The entire purpose of the ruse would be to convince the press and that horrible blogger woman that Stefanie wasn’t involved with Blake. Then Blake would be forced to recant his bullshit statement.

After she’d thought it through, she decided an engagement announcement would look like a desperate cover-up. It gave Blake too much wiggle room, and she couldn’t risk him slithering into her family’s life again.

Wineglass empty and fatigue finally overcoming her, Stef had dragged herself to the couch, pulled a blanket over her body and caught about three hours of tossing-turning sleep.

The knock on her front door came way too early, even though she was ready for it. She’d pulled her hair into a sloppy bun on top of her head, dashed on a layer of makeup and donned big, dark sunglasses so that if a photo was snapped of her in the wild, she wouldn’t look like she’d had a sleepless night fretting over Blake.

Stef had called Pen yesterday afternoon and suggested releasing a statement that she was no more marrying Blake than she was marrying Kermit the Frog, but Pen had recommended against it.

We can’t turn this into he said, she said, especially while you’re out of town. Let’s let the dust settle and we’ll handle things in the new year. Enjoy your Christmas party!

Despite what she’d led everyone to believe, Stef wasn’t going to a Christmas party with her girlfriends. She was hosting a massive charity dinner that she’d arranged for some of the poorest families in Harlington, a city outside San Antonio.