Married For His Heir

Three (#uc326afac-62c1-547b-a7ac-f9c46086a279)

“Excuse me—did I hear you propose marriage?” she asked, her heart thumping wildly. “Did you just propose to me?” Shocked, she stared at him and he gazed steadily back.

“Yes, I did,” he replied, sounding surprised, as if he were telling himself as well as her.

“Oh, my heavens.” Her head swam and she gulped for breath while she stared at him. “I may faint. I’m not going to,” she added hastily. “I’ve never fainted.”

“Hattie needs someone with her who loves her. I’m a stranger and so is my whole family. Anyone I’d hire would be even less concerned with her welfare. You love her and shower her with love and she loves you. Hattie needs someone to love her. You and I can have a marriage of convenience.”

Talia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She would get to be with Hattie. She turned to look at the baby playing on the floor. She would get to be Hattie’s real mother. “Nick, if we married, I could adopt Hattie. She would really be my baby, my daughter. Actually, our baby.” Her hands flew to her chest. “I feel as if I’m in a dream. A dream come true. Do you really mean that? You’re actually proposing marriage?”

“A marriage of convenience. We’ll both benefit. I know we’re not in love. I can’t love again and we don’t even know each other. But it’d be a legal marriage to keep Hattie happy and help us both out.” He grasped her hands and asked her again. “Will you marry me in a marriage of convenience?”

“I don’t think you know what you’re doing, Nick. How happy I am.” Excitement made her shake. “I can adopt her legally and Hattie would really be my little girl.”

“That’s right. You could adopt her.”

She held back a gasp when it finally all sank in. “But you’re right, Nick. We don’t even know each other. Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am,” he said quietly, looking as if he was still giving it thought.

“Nick,” she gushed and stepped closer to throw her arms around him.

He caught her, slipping one strong arm around her waist while he laughed softly.

Smiling at him, she felt light-headed and giddy. “Oh, my. You just made my biggest, deepest wish come true—to get to be Hattie’s legal mother. I get to watch her grow up. You just gave me the world.” She leaned back to look at him, gazing into green eyes that hid whatever he was thinking or feeling. Then she hugged him tightly.

“So... I take it your answer is—”

She stepped back to laugh. “Yes. My answer is yes. I’ll marry you, Nick Duncan.”

“You do realize I mean a legal marriage, but not a real marriage. That wasn’t what I had in mind,” he said. “You’ve heard of a marriage of convenience, right?” He didn’t wait for her response. “We can marry and work out how we’ll live. If we marry legally, the state can’t touch us and you can legally adopt Hattie.”

“I understand, Nick. Your proposal is still a dream come true. I love Hattie more than anyone or anything else and you are enabling me to keep her, to raise her, to love her and be with her. You have my forever thanks.”

“There’s no need to thank me,” he said. “We’ll be helping each other out.” He gestured to the sofa and they both sat. “You’ll have to get me up-to-date about your life and your history. You seem to know mine sufficiently.”

That part was true, she silently acknowledged. She stared at him. She could easily see that Nick Duncan was a sexy, good-looking man, but her research had told her a lot about him. He was a billionaire oilman, rancher, widower with three brothers. He had a father he rarely saw and a grandmother living on his ranch. The Duncans were part of Texas history because it was a generations-old ranching family with immense wealth and political influence partially because his great-grandfather had been in the Texas Senate.

And here he was, offering her a marriage of convenience.

She looked at Hattie and couldn’t get her breath. She hadn’t imagined there was any way on earth to get to keep Hattie, and yet Nick was holding one out to her. While she couldn’t imagine marrying a man she didn’t know, that was what she was going to do. But she wasn’t worried. The PI hadn’t turned up anything bad about Nick. If she married him, she would always have Hattie. She could barely think beyond that point. She would become Hattie’s legal mother, and as long as they both lived, Hattie would be part of her life.

Her gaze went from Hattie to Nick and she was suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. “Nick—” She broke off, placing her hands over her face.

In seconds, she felt his hands on her upper arms, gently holding her. “Talia, don’t cry.”

“I can’t keep from it. I’m sorry. It’s just so overwhelming.” She fumbled in a pocket to pull out a dainty handkerchief and wipe her eyes.

“Talia, if you need them, I can give you references. I promise you, I’m a good guy. I—”

She looked up at Nick, her brows knitted. Why was he talking about references? Then it hit her, and she smiled. “I don’t need references, Nick. I’m crying for joy. Because it’s too miraculous to be possible that I might get to keep Hattie.”

“Oh.” He smiled sheepishly.

“You just thought that up, didn’t you? The whole marriage-of-convenience idea.”

“Yes, but the more I think about it, the more I think it will work.” He stood up, walked to Hattie and picked her up.

“Talia, this is my child. I don’t want to take her from someone she loves and trusts and thrust her into a houseful of strangers, most of us men. She needs a loving mother. I couldn’t bear to have had Artie put into a home of strangers. She’s only fourteen months old and I know she’ll adjust, but if we marry, she will go right along being the happy little child she is and she won’t have a big adjustment to make. I’ll have someone I think I’ll like to love and take care of Hattie and help me raise her. And you’ll be with Hattie and be her legal mother.”

Her thoughts swirled and she looked at Hattie in the crook of his arm, which looked so natural.

Nick sat with her on his lap and Hattie immediately climbed down. Holding to his knee, she reached for a small table and then moved to plop down on the floor in front of a brass box filled with magazines. Hattie pulled one out to toss it behind her and Talia hurried toward her.

“Let her play with the magazines unless she’ll get paper cuts,” Nick said. “She’s not going to hurt anything in that box. Those magazines will be recycled whenever Tina and her cleaning crew get to them.”

“Cleaning crew, a limo, two mansions... Nick, I don’t have that kind of life.” Under normal circumstances she didn’t think it would ever work out between her and someone like Nick. But this was a marriage of convenience. “But I can’t get beyond the realization that now I get to keep Hattie and I’ll become her mother. I can hardly sit still. I feel like dancing around the room. I feel as if I could dance all night and shout for joy.”

He smiled. “I’m glad. I think this will be good for both of us. It lifts a ton of worries off my shoulders.”

She sat down beside him. “The biggest thing is that we don’t know each other at all.”

“We’ll get to know each other and you can adjust to the other stuff. Riding in a limo is not that different from riding in a car,” he added and she shook her head. He sat back, placing one booted foot on his knee. He looked handsome, sexy, strong, and she realized she could easily fall in love with him, but he would never love her in return. They already had lightning streaking between them if they barely touched. How could she marry him, be around him constantly and keep from falling in love? She didn’t think he ever would because all he had talked about since she met him was how much he missed his wife and baby. Was she willing to risk falling in love with him to get to be Hattie’s mother? That was her fantasy, and now it was coming true. Yes, falling in love with Nick was worth the risk.

“Why don’t you tell me about yourself,” he suggested.

“I’ve had a very ordinary life in many ways. I don’t have much family. I’m an only child and my mother died of breast cancer when I was a freshman in college. My father died suddenly from a heart attack when I was fifteen. He had insurance and he’d had a good job in the insurance business, so I was financially okay. I invested most of my inheritance and have done pretty well with it. I went to college on part of it, and I had scholarships for the rest of it.” She stopped and stared at him. “I can’t believe we’re doing this, Nick.”