The Heiress Takes A Husband

But then again, this was Miracle Harbor, Brittany thought. What if it was him at the door? The one. Her own Prince Charming to escort her to the ball, and through life ever after.

She opened the door, her breath stopping in her throat at the man who stood there. “You.”

Was he going to show up every single time she contemplated wedded bliss? Did that mean something?

He looked down at her, and for a moment she was so mesmerized by his eyes that she was frozen. They were a shade of blue that reminded her of a sleepy ocean on a hot day.

“I’m Mitch Hamilton,” he said, in that voice.

A voice that could make a perfectly proper girl like her think very naughty thoughts of what exactly it meant being married…

Cara Colter shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail and a golden retriever who answers best to ‘bad dog’. She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night.

She also says, ‘I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, that I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.’

The Heiress Takes a Husband

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Prologue

February 15

Brittany Patterson, who considered herself to be unshockable, was in shock.

It was everything she could do to keep her hands calmly folded on her lap, instead of wrapping her arms around herself and hugging, hard and long. It was everything she could do to keep the hot tears that smoldered behind her eyes from falling.

Sisters.

She, who had always been alone, was no longer alone.

Brittany wanted to scoff at her own sentiment. She hadn’t been alone, precisely. She’d had her adoptive parents. Friends.

And yet when she glanced again at the faces of her sisters, so eerily similar to her own, she felt as if she had been lonely all her life, her heart waiting for something it knew.

Not just sisters. But triplets. Brittany Patterson had just found out she was one of triplets. She wanted to gaze at them, drink in their features, marvel at the quirk of Abby’s mouth, Corrine’s toss of her hair, mannerisms she possessed herself.

Instead, she forced herself to listen to the silver-haired Jordan Hamilton, hoping the lawyer would say something that would unravel the mystery of why they had not always been together.

Instead the mystery deepened.

He did not know why they had grown up apart, each unaware of the existence of the others. He knew only that they had been reunited, here, in his office by a person he would not name. And that same person had bestowed a gift on each of them.

Vaguely she registered her sister, Abby, had received a house. Vaguely she registered conditions. And then her own name penetrated the warm, misty fog of her brain, and she listened, some part of her alert, while the other still swam in the warmth of her discovery. Sisters.

“…the gift of the Main Street Bakery, 207 Main Street, Miracle Harbor, Oregon, on the condition that Miss Patterson reside in Miracle Harbor for a period of one year, and that she marry within that time period.”

Brittany drew in her breath sharply, landed solidly on Planet Earth, and eyed the distinguished, silver-haired lawyer, waiting for him to laugh.

But he wasn’t laughing.

“Mr. Hamilton, my parents are behind this, aren’t they?” she said. She supposed they were regretting that they had taken such a firm stand after her car accident. They probably had found out, somehow, she had sold the beautiful Fabergé tennis bracelet just last week. In a way, their plot was brilliant.

“Your parents?” Jordan Hamilton asked. He seemed genuinely astonished.

“You know,” she said, “buy me a career and get me married off in one fell swoop.” She said this lightly, as if it didn’t matter one little bit to her that her parents did not think she was capable of looking after herself. Not that that assessment would be completely unfair.

Six months had passed since they had cut the purse strings, right after she had wrecked her beautiful apple-red Corvette and wound up in the hospital. Their terms were brutally simple. No allowance, no loans, no credit cards, no access to the bank account. They had told her they were not going to pay for her to kill herself, that it was time for her to join the real world, learn to be a responsible adult, make her contribution to the human race.

Six months, and Brittany had yet to find a job. Even though she was trying so hard.

“But what about us?” one of her sisters, Corrine, asked. “How could your parents manufacture us?”

“Why would your adoptive parents give me a house?” Abby chimed in.

Brittany started, and looked again at the other two women in the room. It was the strangest and somehow the loveliest feeling she had ever had.

She smiled, amazed at how much relief she felt that her adoptive parents weren’t behind the fact she was sitting in this lawyer’s office. Couldn’t possibly be behind it.

“I guess,” she said thoughtfully, “not even Mr. and Mrs. Conroy Patterson are rich enough to clone people. Not that I think they’d want to clone me.”

“Why not?” Abby, the one in the navy blue dress that looked like something a nun would choose, asked with mild indignation.

So, Brittany thought, and nestled deeper into the warmth creeping through her, this is what it meant to have a sister. Abby didn’t even know her, and it was evident she chose to believe the best of her, anyway.

But about getting married—

The door to the lawyer’s office whispered open behind her. Brit glanced over her shoulder, and felt her eyes widen.

If that’s what appeared when you even thought about getting married in a place called Miracle Harbor, then she was all for it, after all.

He was gorgeous. The proverbial tall—at least six feet of him—dark—crisp black hair and olive-tinted skin—and handsome—slanting brows, straight nose, sensual lips and strong chin. Add to that the fact that his conservative clothing did nothing to hide a lean body that rippled with easy male strength.

Then she noticed his eyes and felt her heart would tumble from her chest. They glittered wickedly, an impossible shade of blue, almost aquamarine, framed in a sooty abundance of spiky lashes.

Those eyes met hers, and held, coolly professional, and yet just beneath that look lurked something else. Something wildly intriguing…a hint of the untamed, a suggestion of potent male strength, a shadow of leashed sensuality.

In fact, despite the impeccable cut of the white linen shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, the silk tie, loosened slightly, she thought he’d look very at home with those long, muscled legs wrapped around a big black, silver-chromed engine-growling motorcycle, or a plunging wild-eyed stallion or—

She felt the heat rising in her cheeks, and looked swiftly away from him.

“My son,” Jordan Hamilton murmured by way of introduction, “Mitch.”

“Dad, I just have the Phillips’ contract I need your signature on.”

His voice was like raw silk caressing heated skin, and Brit shivered as if he had touched her. She felt almost panicked by the attraction she felt to him, curbed her urge to drink him in, and studied her fingernails instead until he had left the room.

“Now,” the elder Mr. Hamilton said apologetically, “about the bakery…”

She tried to keep her mind from wandering out of the room with the intriguing younger Mr. Hamilton. Frankly a bakery wasn’t even remotely close to what Brittany was looking for. Something in public relations had seemed more her line, or marketing. Or being the buyer for a posh clothing store. Something like that. A fun job where she had an expense account and a clothing allowance and flew to Paris and Milan on a regular basis.

But since not one of the companies where she had applied for such positions had even had the courtesy to call her back, she’d have to use a dumb bakery to show everyone just what she could do, to live up to the faith in her that she saw shining in her sisters’ eyes.

An hour later, she was walking arm and arm with her sisters, reveling in the looks of delighted surprise they attracted from the citizens of Miracle Harbor as they sashayed down the main street.

A main street out of a picture book. White-capped waves crashing against a sandy shore on one side of the street, lovely old brick buildings, with colorful awnings lining the other.

“This won’t be such a terrible place to spend a year,” she decided, out loud. “It’s cute and quaint. Perfectly adorable. And being here with you, with my sisters, and getting a chance to know you…” she sighed happily without finishing the sentence.

“You seem to be forgetting the husband part,” Corrine pointed out, sourly. Corrine was dressed in blue jeans with a rip in the knee and a denim jacket faded nearly white.

“Oh, pooh, people get married all the time for less than romantic reasons. I doubt any of the couples my parents know got married because they loved each other. Certainly my parents didn’t.” Nothing in her tone of voice revealed a little girl who had ached for authentic love, the only gift her wealthy parents had seemed incapable of giving.

“I think that’s sad,” Abby said softly, just as if she had glimpsed that little girl despite Brittany’s carefully measured tone.

“It’s realistic,” Brittany said quickly, and added with a devilish wink, “If I like my bakery, I’ll put an ad in the paper—Husband Wanted. Must be tall, dark and handsome. Something like that gorgeous lawyer who came into the office to get something signed. What was his name?”

As if she would ever forget. But if Brit had a talent it was for not letting people know exactly what she really felt, a talent for never being too vulnerable. It seemed to her it might be unnecessary to protect herself from her sisters, but on the other hand, old habits died hard, and in this one area she always chose to err on the side of caution.

“I think it was Mike,” Corrine said.

“No, it wasn’t,” Abby corrected her. “Mark.”

“Well, definitely an M,” Brit said, secretly delighted that neither of her sisters had apparently seen him as a prospect.

“I’ll move here for a year to get to know both of you,” Corrine said, “but I can’t just drop everything and come. It will be at least May before I can get here. And I’m not getting married because someone tells me I have to. Forget it.”

“I’ll help you find a husband you like,” Brittany said cheerfully, “but first we’ll have to lose the jeans. You’d look wonderful in Ralph Lauren because,” she giggled, “I do.”

And then she laughed at Corrine’s dark expression. She squeezed her hand, and was rewarded with a small smile that allowed her to glimpse the sweetness of her sister Corrine’s spirit.

It seemed to Brittany that Abby and Corrine’s love was wrapping around her, an unconditional gift she had done nothing to earn, and it was as soft as the fragrant mist off the sea.

She felt she had never been so happy, so full of hope, so excited about life and all its wonderful possibilities.

She looked up at the bronze numbers over the businesses, and felt herself holding her breath. 201, 203, 205…

Then, she saw the bakery. Her bakery.

Chapter One

Two months later…

“Just a minute,” Brittany called, when the knock came on her apartment door, again. She looked in the full-length mirror in her bedroom, oblivious to the unmade bed, the scattered clothing, the open makeup pots.

“I look awful,” she wailed. “Awful.”

The knock came again, firm, unrelenting. She ignored it.

It was hopeless. The bridesmaid’s dress was peach chiffon. Sleeveless, it fit her like a dream, swirled around her trim figure, showed off the slender length of her legs, the swell of her bosom, the curve of sun-kissed shoulders. The dress was perfect.

And her makeup was perfect, too. Her high cheekbones accentuated, the blue-gold of her eyes shown off, her lips looking dewy and wet, her skin golden peach.

Her long hair, expertly highlighted so that it glittered with threads of gold and wheat and honey, was piled up on top of her head, just the odd wild tendril allowed to escape.

She looked absolutely stunning, in every way, and it was spoiled, totally ruined by one disastrous detail. Paint.

Pink paint.

A thick stripe of it ran through the gold strands of her hair, and speckles of the same shade were scattered over her bare arms from wrists to shoulders. Nothing would convince it to go. And she knew, because she had tried everything from paint thinner to nail polish remover.

It was the result of repainting the interior of her bakery, without question the most grueling labor she had ever done. She had chosen an absolutely posh shade of pink. Okay, after four whole days of doing nothing but working with it, it was not nearly as appealing as she found it at first, but that was perfectly understandable.

And she really didn’t care for it as a fashion accessory, but she reminded herself firmly, no sacrifice was too great to make for her bakery, and for her successful entrance into the Miracle Harbor business community. She had been given a brand-new chance. A brand-new life, really, and what was a little pink paint in the face of that?

Bang, bang, bang.

If whoever that was didn’t quit knocking on the door, she was going to scream. Except maybe successful business people weren’t allowed to scream.

She’d settle for leveling them with a look, whoever was at her door, impertinently ignoring her request for just a little more time. No doubt it was the escort, rounded up for her by her sister, Abby. With the bakery reopening next week, Brit simply never had enough time anymore for anything.

So, how had Abby found time between her seamstress job, and raising a baby, and getting married to find a date for her sister for the wedding?

Given Abby’s schedule, Brit thought it would be unreasonable on her part to expect much for an escort. How humiliating, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, being subjected to her first blind date. How dreadful that for her first Miracle Harbor social outing her companion for the evening might be less than stellar. Old. Ugly. What if he was wrinkled?

On the other hand, this was Miracle Harbor.

Look what had happened to Abby.

What if the very same thing happened to her? What if, within a week of arriving here, Brit met him. The one. Her very own Prince Charming to escort her to the ball, and through life ever after.

With one last resigned glance in the mirror, and one more sigh about the paint, she whirled and moved determinedly in the direction of her front door. She tried not to notice how humble the furnishings of her apartment were, tried not to see them through the eyes of her escort. Her place was an apartment above the bakery and it had come furnished. On her best days she could see that as a blessing, on her worst she hated to think about the rump that had left that worn dent on the fading sofa.

“Oh,” she muttered to herself, “he’ll probably be too decrepit and wrinkled to even notice anything beyond me.” And my pink paint, she added wryly to herself.

He banged again. The click of her high heels might have conveyed just a touch of her impatience, but she pasted a cool smile on her face before she flung open her front door.

“I said just a min—” her voice stopped in her throat. “You.”

Was he going to show up every single time she contemplated wedded bliss? Did that mean something?

It meant the pink paint, and the furniture mattered.

She stepped out onto the narrow wooden landing with the delightful view of Main Street’s back alley, and pulled the door mostly closed behind her.

He looked down at her, and for a moment she was so mesmerized by his eyes that she was frozen. They were a shade of blue that reminded her of a sleepy ocean on a hot day.

“I’m Mitch Hamilton,” he said, in that voice, a voice that could make a perfectly proper girl like her think very naughty thoughts of exactly what being married meant.

It meant his lips and his hands claiming her, holding her, owning her. It meant that deep voice in her ear growling incredible endearments. It meant waking up to his face every single morning, the sharp hollows of his cheeks shadowed with whiskers.

“Mitch Hamilton,” he said again, faintly bemused.

She drew herself up short, stunned at where her thoughts had gone, stunned by the force of the attraction, stunned to see nothing reciprocated in those ocean eyes.

Miracle Harbor or not, she decided, she was not making a fool of herself over any man.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said formally, diamond-edged ice in her voice.

Still, despite the small victory over her voice, she could not look away. It wasn’t just that he was compellingly handsome, or that he, of course, looked unnervingly perfect, in a navy blue suit with a fine pinstripe. Custom tailored, she guessed, to encompass the immense broadness of those shoulders. He had on a crisp white silk shirt, that made his skin look bronze and sun-warmed, a dark tie, the knot perfect and square. His legs were long, the slacks just hinted at the ridged cut of a very muscular thigh.

He looked every inch the successful man. Still, for all that sophistication, for all the obvious expense of the suit, she still saw it there. A glint in those amazing eyes that hinted at a part of him untamed. Perhaps even untamable?

Inwardly, she wondered how Abby could do this to her. She suddenly found herself wishing for what had moments ago seemed like it would be her worst nightmare. Someone old and wrinkled and ugly.

A man she could handle with one arm tied behind her back, and several gallons of paint splashed over herself.

But this man…he was a man out of a dream. Handsome. Well-made. Oozing male confidence and subtle sensuality. He was the kind of man who simply took a woman’s breath away, made her go weak with strange and forbidden longings.

And she had pink paint in her hair, and reptilian spots all over her arms. Which, to give her credit, Abby didn’t know about.

Yet.

“How could she do this to me?” she murmured, to herself, but out loud this time. She gave her head a rueful shake, hoping to clear the spell she was floundering under and become herself. Cosmopolitan. Sophisticated. Witty. In control.

“Pardon?” He took a step back and glanced hopefully for an apartment number, as if he were suddenly wishing he was in the wrong place.

There was no number. Hers was just one set of stairs in a long line of them that came up from the back lane to the stuffy little apartments located over the main street businesses.

“Are you Brittany? Brittany Patterson?”

“Unfortunately.”

“I’m sorry. Who did what to you?” He cocked an eyebrow at her, tilted his head.

“My sister. You.”

“My father, Jordan Hamilton, asked me if I would escort you to your sister’s wedding,” he said with a certain stiff dignity.

She realized he had been roped into the task of escorting her to Abby’s wedding. And that he obviously was not nearly as swayed by her, as she was by him.

Adjectives kept running through her head, as she gazed helplessly at him. Gorgeous. Stunning. Dazzling.

Because she wanted more than anything else for him to want to take her to her sister’s wedding. And because that made her feel weak and silly, and the way she least liked to feel—vulnerable—she said, “I’m sure everyone’s intentions were great, but I certainly don’t need an escort. I’m quite happy to go by myself.”

His eyes narrowed and she felt a funny shiver go down her spine as she recognized that his will was at least as strong as hers. Perhaps, heaven forbid, stronger.

“My orders are to get you to the church on time.” He slid back an impeccable sleeve and glanced at a watch. A Rolex watch. “Which means we have to leave. Now.”

She noticed again his voice, deep-timbred, even more sensual with that note of implacable sternness in it. But for all the smooth confidence of his voice that same hint of something wild ran at the edges of it.

Of course, the autocratic note she could do without.

With incredible effort she pulled herself together. That would be the day when she ever let a man like this get the upper hand, let him think she would allow herself to be bossed around like an errant child!

“Well, we can’t leave right now,” she said firmly. “I can’t. I’m not ready.”

This invited his inspection. He looked at her closely, his gaze suddenly uncomfortably intense, nothing in it suggesting he was coming up with a lovely list of adjectives to describe her.

“You look fine to me.”

Fine?

“Except you seem to have,” he reached out a tentative hand, and touched, “something in your hair. Bubble gum?”

She jerked away from his hand, appalled by the ridiculous sensation that electricity had shot from his fingertips.

“Paint! It’s on my arms, too. This is unbelievable.” That she was standing here talking to this ravishing man about this. “It will not come off. How can they manufacture something like that? Aren’t there laws?”

“I’m afraid laws concerning paint products are not my specialty.” His amusement was reluctant.

“What am I going to do?” she asked, more to herself than him.

“Hope for dim lighting,” he suggested, without an appropriate amount of sympathy. “We have to go now.”

“I can’t. You don’t understand.” He really didn’t understand, how important it was that today, of all days, she be absolutely faultless. And not for herself and not so he could see her at her ravishing best, though certainly that would have been a bonus.

“It’s Abby’s day,” she whispered, “and it needs to be perfect. I’m a bridesmaid. I’ll be in all the pictures. I can’t wreck her pictures.”

She had the funniest feeling that she had just revealed something more of herself than she was prepared to have rejected by his Royal Handsomeness, because he was looking at her closely as if he was seeing something he hadn’t seen before.

“The pictures will probably be in that horrible little paper,” she said swiftly. “I can’t be seen like this.”

His eyes became impatient, but his voice did not. “It doesn’t look that bad. Bubble gum is obviously not your shade, but I really don’t think it’s that noticeable. Not like, say, neon green.”